History & Culture
Veterans Day: “Quiet on Western Front” Sequel
To mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, the Library of Congress is previewing a newly restored film sequel to the classic war movie “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The 1937 film sequel, titled “The Road Back,” follows German soldiers from the Armistice through their return home. The film is…
Read MoreFrom Early ‘Lady Writer,’ Washington Cherry Blossoms and a National Geographic Legacy
From NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY NEWSROOM Originally posted January 16, 2018, on National Geographic Voices Blog (Under the transition to Disney partnership in 2020, National Geographic removed previous blog content by contributors. The article below is copied as it appeared on the site.) Eliza Scidmore went to Japan for the first time in 1885. She…
Read MoreJohn Muir Website Adds Page on Eliza Scidmore
Eliza Scidmore now has her own page on the John Muir website hosted by the Sierra Club. The website, established in 1994, features a huge amount of information on all things Muir, with new material added regularly. After learning about Scidmore’s connection to Muir, the webmaster of the site, Harold Wood, invited me to post…
Read MoreEliza Scidmore on Stage at National Geographic
Eliza Scidmore got top billing on stage Thursday night, March 29, in Washington. National Geographic Live! featured a staged presentation of her writings during the city’s cherry blossom season. I was there, and National Geographic VP Greg McGruder kindly introduced me to the audience as Scidmore’s biographer. I had served as an informal adviser to…
Read MoreGirl Scout Patch Includes Scidmore’s Legacy
Washington celebrates the birthday of its famous cherry trees later this month. The city got the first of those trees on March 27, 1912. Two weeks earlier, on March 12, a resident of Savannah, Georgia, founded the Girl Scouts. So, Girl Scouting and Washington’s cherry trees have both been going strong for 106 years. (Many…
Read MoreScidmore, National Geographic Female Explorer
Eliza Scidmore is known largely for her role as the earliest visionary of Washington’s cherry trees. She was also an intrepid traveler. And the National Geographic Society considers her its first female explorer. The Geographic recently spotlighted some of its pioneering women on its blog. I kicked off the series with an article on Eliza…
Read MoreIn St. Louis, Intrepid Women on the Frontier
I had never been to St. Louis until this fall. Funny I should have missed it, as I attended grad school in journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Mizzou classmates and I used to pile into a car and go eat catfish at a tin-ceiling hotel in Booneville. We drove to Kansas City…
Read MorePilgrims at Japan’s Koyasan, Long After Scidmore
Today, Buddhists and other pilgrims flock to the sacred site of Koyasan, a mountainous area of temples in southeastern Japan. The New York Times ran an article about it in the Oct. 22 travel section. Eliza Scidmore wrote about Koyasan in 1907 for National Geographic. It’s interesting to see the different takes on the same place…
Read More‘Railway Man’ a Contrast to Scidmore POW Book
My husband and I recently watched “The Railway Man,” starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. It’s emotionally powerful, and interesting as well in light of my biography of Eliza Scidmore. Her last book was As the Hague Ordains. Written as a thinly disguised novel, it looked at POW conditions in Japan in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese…
Read More‘Drain the Swamp’ Gave Us Cherry Trees
Donald Trump rode a populist wave to the White House promising to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Politicians have used the phrase for decades. Famously, President Ronald Reagan made it a catchphrase of his vow to reduce the federal bureaucracy. The “swamp” really did exist in Eliza Scidmore‘s day. Literally — but not quite. Many…
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