Whitwell, TN

This year, we are home during the summer.... and of course we have been getting record high temperatures! For the past two weeks, Paul has been getting outside early and averaging around three hours a morning weeding and watering the yard. I, on the other hand, was only able to do it three mornings, an hour each! The heat and humidity just does me in. We have been enjoying the pool in the late afternoons or early evenings, and it has helped cool and relax us!

Last week we enjoyed the day with the seniors from out church. Because we are gone a lot, we have been unable to join any of the planned trips in the past, but this month the timing was right! We joined them on their trip to Buttonwillow Church in Whitwell, TN., a civil war dinner theatre. We had a fantastic lunch of chicken breast, green beans, sweet carrots, stuffing, biscuits and blackberry cobbler. This was followed by a live performance relaying "southern history with southern humor".





We learned a lot..... from the southern perspective!! (Not the northern, federal government perspective!)

Following, we stopped by the Whitwell Middle School to see the "Children's Holocaust Museum". An after-school project begun in 1998, the paperclip project has become a museum. This authentic German rail car was used to transport victims to concentration, labor, and death camps.


The butterflies were chosen to honor the children of Terezin and as a symbol of new life for the rail car.


Now it houses eleven million paper clips, one for each victim of the Holocaust.


Paper clips were used as a symbol by some compassionate people in 1940's Europe who stood up for the Jews by wearing a paper clip when the Jews were forced to wear a yellow Stars of David. The students decided to collect six million clips, one for each of the Jewish Holocaust victims. They set up a web page asking for help collecting, and by the end of the school year, they had collected about 700,000 paper clips with several hundred letters and documents from all over the world.
A displayed suitcase was sent from a middle school in Germany, along with tags that are notes of apology to Anne Frank.


We had a fabulous time, and hope to join this group again!