Beauty. And Amazing Grace.

I have been very negligent about posting this last week or so.  I do have a reason -- I have been glued to the television watching The National Parks, America's Best Idea, the film series by Ken Burns. 

We've visited a lot of these parks and I am loving revisiting them and learning the history, politics and vision that created them.  In the upper corner you will see me, cowering from the rain under my pink umbrella, admiring a steaming geyser in Yellowstone. 

One of the things I did not know was that the Parks Service administers the National Monuments as well.  This jurisdiction enabled Secretary Udall to allow Marion Anderson to have a concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial after she had been banned from a Washington concert hall because of her colour.  An excerpt from the concert was the last item on tonight's segment of the film.  And there was Marion, so beautiful and with a voice that is almost unbelievably good, singing 'My land 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty...."  I cried, simply sat there and wept because beauty and courage are as awe inspiring as thirty foot geysers and towering mountains.

This is an original post for Canada Moms Blog.  When the series is over, Mary G will be babbling about it at Them's My Sentiments.