The accumulation of 20-plus years in the same house can be intimidating—not so much from the plastic bins stacked on garage shelves, but from the little stuff, the mementos that weep when you think about pitching them. Do you have boxes of old photographs under the bed or in the closet? Vacation pics from the Grand Canyon or that collection passed down from Great-Aunt Susan that never got labeled (who are these people)? As I was sorting through my last box of photos, and categorizing them to put in another box, it struck me that none of them were more recent than 2008.

On a Tuesday morning, a loud bell echoed across Mary Slessor Academy in Calabar, the capital city of Cross River state in southern Nigeria. Students wearing navy blue and green uniforms scurried to line up for morning devotions and announcements.

On the fenced property sat different classroom blocks for nursery to high-school students. In front of the high-school block, students sang praise songs and hymns. One teacher led a Scripture reading and shared words of encouragement.

Needing escape from the disappointing escapism of midsummer 2019 Philadelphia Phillies baseball, I read of happier times two hours north as obligingly recorded by the pitcher for the pennant-winning turn-of-the-20th-century New York Giants.

Editor’s note: Marvin Olasky concludes his monthly biographical series on key individuals from late 19th and early 20th century American history. In February and March, we looked at the life of John D. Rockefeller. In April and May, we studied Grover Cleveland.

Moments before astronaut Neil Armstrong steered a lunar module onto the surface of the moon, Charlie Duke wondered if he might have to abort one of the most spectacular missions of the 20th century.

While Armstrong hovered over the gray expanse, Duke was a quarter-million miles away, tucked behind a bank of computers at Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston. Duke was the capsule communicator (CAPCOM) for this phase of the mission. With a headset and a microphone, his job was to shepherd Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin onto the moon without catastrophe.

My last column noted the good mood 400 years ago at the July 30, 1619, inaugural meeting of Virginia’s General Assembly. The assembly wanted to maintain peace with the Powhatan tribe and promote “the Conversion of the Indians to Christian Religion.” 

James Horn in his book 1619 shows how settlers and natives fought for several years after the Jamestown founding in 1607, but seven years later the marriage of Powhatan princess Pocahontas and settler John Rolfe improved relations.   

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.” ―Madeleine L’Engle