Markerless Quest: Samurai in the White House

I have returned from Zenkaikon and am, however reluctantly, taking up my real-world activities once again. (But I have no reluctance about returning to the blog! On our way home, Kevin and I took a detour to the city of West Chester to collect some markers, so I've got plenty of Chester County content for a while.) Our anniversary was very pleasant and the convention was a lot of fun - the entire week's vacation was a great time in so many ways.

If you're visiting this blog after meeting me at Zenkaikon, hi! Thank you so much for coming to see what I do here! And if you aren't familiar with Zenkaikon and are wondering what exactly it is, here's a video explanation. This documentary was created for the con's 20th anniversary, but I wasn't involved; my contributions to being on the anniversary committee involved the museum and the trivia game we held on Friday night. I was there for the documentary debut on Saturday evening, though, and it's beautifully made.

My presentations all went extremely well, and the one on which I got the most feedback was the one which had a tenuous connection to Lancaster. As you probably know, President James Buchanan was a native of Lancaster. But what you probably don't know is that during his presidency, the White House welcomed a delegation of visitors from Japan, including three actual samurai warriors. Several of the people who attended this presentation mentioned wanting to share it with others, so I thought I'd make it the final blog post of March. This one didn't get filmed; instead, I'm sharing the write-up I used to narrate the slide show, as well as the pictures which appeared in the slides. At least this way I don't have to worry that I'm mangling the pronunciation of Japanese names or words, as I did when presenting.

Also, to make a blog-ish version of my perennial con presentation joke, if you're not completely satisfied with this post, please return the unused portion for a full refund.

James Buchanan's Birthday, Lancaster, Lancaster County

It's been quite some time since I did a 'special edition' post on this blog, but instead of covering a marker this week, I'd like to tell you all about something you could call marker-adjacent. This past Saturday, April 23rd, was the 231st birthday of James Buchanan - the only President of the United States who was born, died, and is buried in Pennsylvania. Traditionally, there is a ceremony at presidential tombs each year on their birthdays, at which wreaths of red, white, and blue flowers are presented in memory of their years in office. For the last few years, because of the pandemic, these ceremonies have been suspended. This year, Lancaster was able to hold theirs again, and my husband Kevin and I decided to make the trip down there and see what this entailed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Adams County

I'm not a big fan of winter, as you might have guessed from previous posts. The temperatures this week have been remarkably unpleasant, even for January. So I'm heading back to my sunny weekend in Gettysburg for today's quest.

I'm sure that Dwight Eisenhower doesn't require much of an introduction. He was a hero of World War II, President of the United States, and so on. I imagine that at least some of my readers are also aware that, after his Presidency, he retired to a beautiful farm on the outskirts of Gettysburg, which today is a historic site toured by thousands of visitors annually. However, that's not where we're going, because that's not where his Gettysburg marker can actually be found.

Wheatland, Lancaster, Lancaster County

It's been quite a hectic opening to September here. Between heavy rainfalls and my regular job being very busy, I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to take my planned birthday trip to Gettysburg this past weekend. I'm happy to report, however, that the trip did indeed happen - my husband Kevin and I had a great time, we learned a lot, and I collected a bunch of markers in Adams County. Gettysburg is something I feel every American should see at least once; I don't have words for the experience, though I'll try to find some for a post later this month. 

Meanwhile, this is the blog post I had planned for the last week of August, but schedule conflicts just kept cropping up - as they did this past week too. It's taken me a lot of effort to finally get this thing posted! It's a bit more image-heavy than most of my posts, because there was just so much to see. These are pictures from Kevin's birthday trip back in July, when we visited Lancaster and took a tour of President James Buchanan's beloved home at Wheatland.