At Considerable Cost

I am uploading so many pictures, but the first purpose of this blog is to serve as a record for our family, so here goes another set! We decided to use Gatlinburg, Tennessee as our home base.   Our hotel was located around the corner from the main strip, so we were in a quiet area, but able to walk downtown in just a few minutes.   We arrived just before midnight from Vicksburg, so we had our first real look at Gatlinburg and the beautiful Smoky Mountains the next morning.   We walked downtown to take in the sights and eat breakfast.   Gatlinburg is a total tourist town with a mix of quaint gift shops and souvenir ones, spread out between several Ripley's attractions and all the varieties of mini golf a person could want.   It has a quality of being wonderfully tacky and uniquely American, and I really mean that in a good way.   I'm a person who has a desire for my children to see both Washington, D.C. and Elvis's Graceland....

Last night, I watched a beautiful documentary on PBS, Defiant Requiem .   It is the true story of a 1944 performance of Verdi's beautiful Requiem Mass in Terezín, a Nazi concentration camp.   The performance was arranged by inmate and conductor, Rafael Schächter.   It was performed by a chorus of his fellow prisoners, many of whom would be shipped out to face death following the performance. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-apuzzo/voices-raised-in-resistan_b_3029488.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment The link above is for a great article by Jason Apuzzo, of The Huffington Post. "Know before whom you stand."  A wall of the secret synagogue at Terezin. There's not much to add to Apuzzo's article, other than: 1. My favorite quote, amongst many: Survivor Edgar Krasa says of the Requiem , "It was a prayer that overcame hunger ... you were there [singing] in that cellar and you were a different person." Another survivor who sang in th...