My 46th Year-Experience: Where every new arrival chooses how much of their background to help inform toward the American Character.

No matter our birth origins, the potent thought in American Experiences is the notion I found via the writings after arrival in Penns Landing; and often I was drawn to their sources. Look to what built the life we enjoy which is expressed as joy in the arts, as trust in business, or morals that avoid violence and seek how to adapt to such a life. It's a vast literature in the English Language by thoughtful minds that reasoned every ambition in clear prose. See Andrew Carnegie's article on wealth as one example that clues the reader to pause in silence--or The Federalist Papers by its density. The notion that Britain and London offer the means by which America became Great, that unified the Continent by managing the complexities by infrastructure and internal improvements, that it became a global power, that education is foremost, I knew no where else to draw such lessons. Scotland, Wales would agree I think by their rise since their union. Looking ahead, I maintain such trails are useful to a New American.

About or soon after the American Civil War, Prince Consort Albert leads an exhibition and overseas the construction of a Crystal Palace in London; its architecture is ingenious even to modern eyes, and the mind will detect the consistent habits that look to design and engineering, which Prince Philip took on with purpose as the Commonwealth Character took hold in the Space Age. The attraction by a whole-of-society comes by varying details and intervals unique to the individual as I see in my experience and shows its distinction in the Atlantic States in America.

Soon after the turn of the 20th century, London unfolded many of our most comprehensive writings to suit the Lay PUBLIC and the Admiralty and the Parliament and The King; names like Toynbee, Wells appear readily. It was when the UK in conjunction with the US, began the long steps towards the Commonwealth while the latter cultivated independence in a Post-Colonial Period--which both wanted in my narration. It was a shared nature impelled by a love of Parliament that is capable to represent different regions while impressed by the ceremonial and religious role of the Sovereign in the UK--the founder of the West. Around Word War I, a German would again join the royal lineage to help win two global wars while reminding us that the royals are not a venue for celebrity or glamour but a vivid portrayal for duty. The Mother of Parliaments, from a different perspective in this vintage photograph, renders the skills to debate, to form a government, to increasingly represent the citizens, fund a global army & navy while conversant with the Symbolic Unity that is the Islander. Ever mindful of time, the Glorious Revolution calls each person to shape his life's purpose. The American Colonials yearning to seek representation by a parliament in America were burdened by the post war period that followed the French-Indian, while the restored friendship requires explanation to new arrivals.

Trafalgar invokes Nelson and the army components that could instill a balance of power. The battle-scarred Admiral on a three year sailing display across three seas readily invites Americans in this layout, as I read it: The freedom of navigation as a home front as only they can maintain in old and "new seas."

This is the scene that captivated me when I read a signage to memorialize the oldest Women's School affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (link). Later on moving here, I discovered it named after Pamela Fox, University President, and where Woodrow Wilson once spoke on its porch. And discovered Woodrow's remarkable scope of activity and insight by writings nearby (link), and that his relation to the Baldwin Family of New England, which planted a branch in Virginia, who in Mary Julia leads this school to prominence by its founder's rendition that women are "rational beings," that its faculty can write extraordinarily muscular or witty history and that here the humanities of the West begets the school spirit to shape a dedicated alumnae for national themes. To become a Mary Baldwin Man took up my cause while bewildered a little by currents. Where is the Woman President to lead the University and its Colleges, portrayed as only Virginians can? In the South, women are frontier women and rebuild after wars. One can easily gain confidence in the Presbyterian and Episcopalian biographies who contributed to date. Art work credit: Joe Nutt, a prolific artist of homes and buildings in Augusta County (link).