Vacation Staff Rides

 “There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.”

— John Stuart Mill

The author peers out over the wall along
Fredericksburg's Sunken Road.

Our family doesn’t care much for vacations where we lounge on the beach, relax at some lakeside cabin, or hike in the mountains; we much prefer to engage our minds visiting sites of historical interest across numerous periods and subjects. Whether we’re making a summertime day trip or planning a slightly more substantial journey, we make sure the itinerary includes some places of historical significance to explore. Sometimes we re-visit and re-discover past favorites, other times we venture forth to someplace new. Like the “staff rides” of the 19th century Prussian officer corps — and continued by military personnel to this day — we use them as opportunities to place the history we read about, view in movies, and play on the gaming tabletop in a real-world context we experience first hand.

Summer Reading & Play Pile

 “A home without books is a body without soul.”

— Cicero

Midsummer has come and gone. Around here the holiday quite accurately represents the middle point of my son’s academic summer vacation, for a school system that ends classes right before Memorial Day and resumes classes the first grueling hot week in August. So I apologize that my “summer reading” post comes a bit late in the season. I’ve made recommendations for summer reading in the past. Rather than look over what books and games I’d recommend from the past year as appropriate to summertime diversions, I thought I’d take a look at my piles to be read and to be played, with a few recent, notable exceptions.