The plaque seen round the world
Hello, Discoverylover!
It’s me – Skyring the Markeroon!
After reading your letter about Markeroni.com, I decided to go take another look. As it turns out, I joined Markeroni five years ago, but never figured out how to log snarfs.*
Linda, the technogoddess who runs Markeroni, is one of my heroes, and I joined up as a token of support. Something about the process was wrong for me, and although I took a few photographs, I never logged my snarfs.
The site has been redesigned and reprogrammed a few times since, and I was able to log a snarf or two on returning to the site. I’ve even collected a heart on what was very likely my first snarf. I know I took a photograph of a plaque outside the Old Executive Office Building in January 2005, but whether it was the day before or the day after this one, I don’t recall now.
Meeting my then Bestest BookCrossing Buddy Sparky-Redhead in Richmond was pure delight. For years we’d been exchanging care packages and books, chatting in the BookCrossing forums, sharing news of dogs and adventures. How could I travel to Washington DC and not go the extra mile to see her?
She was every bit as delightful in the flesh as in the forums. For half a day we looked through the Virginia State House, chatted to the delegates, strolled the snowy streets, checked out the Museum of the Confederacy and the Confederate White House, and inspected St John’s Church, where Patrick Henry delivered his fiery “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech.
Outside, on the street, was this historical marker, and I handed Sparky-Redhead the camera. To tell the truth, I’d always considered the American South to be a land of languid lushness, a semi-tropical place of warmth and ease, but here I was, fair in the capital of the Old South, and there was not a plantation nor a mint julep in sight. A hot rum toddy would have been more appropriate.
There’s a sense of wonder, a sense of place about historical markers. You stand there, the fast food restaurants across the way, the Winnebagos speeding past, and you think, this is where George Washington stood. Or George III, or Horatio Nelson, or the inventor of Spandex at some crucial life moment. For a moment, you and history share the same place, and all that separates you and the shot that killed Kennedy is time.
And a plaque.
Yours aye,
Skyring
* Snarfing – the act of recording a visit to a historical marker.
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