Where It All Began

     Oh, oh.

     I've been blogging just fine for six years and now Blogspot is conspiring with Google to make it difficult.  The page is a mess, there's no way I can see to upload pictures, and everything's different.  There's a note that switching to Google Chrome will make it all better.  But I like my old browser just as much as I like my old Blogspot blog.  If the change is a scam to make me use all things Google, it won't work.

    I see my blogging buddy Merle is thinking of retiring if she can't get her own blog to work.  Same here.

    Speaking of good old days, while visiting my son Scott in Washington D.C., we took a day trip over to historic Jamestown.  As the tourist brochures say, walk on the same ground where Pocahontas and John Smith walked over four centuries ago.  And we did.

    Historic Jamestown is as much an archeological site as a historic re-creation of the original town and fort.  During the summer archeologists continue excavating the grounds which still hold a treasure trove of artifacts from the first settlers here (no treasure though).

    Scott and I talked to one local historian who showed us where Pocahontas married John Rolfe, pointed out the well that served as a dumping ground for just about everything when the well went bad, and showed us a picture of Bill Kelso.  Bill was a local archeologist instrumental in the restoration project ongoing. 

   The museum on the site testifies to how difficult life was for the first European settlers in the New World.  Disease, starvation and attacks by hostile natives cut the number of Jamestown residents from 500 to less than a hundred.  It's a testament to the will of those remaining that they survived, let alone eventually thrived.

   I wanted to post a few pictures here, but Blogger had other ideas.  So forget that.

   Anyway, it's hard to picture what life was like back then.  When Chief Powhatan ordered his braves to kill any settlers who wandered outside the triangular fort that protected them, those inside were forced to eat anything they could find, which included the horses they brought with them across the Atlantic.  And still many starved.

    I guess my own problem of trying to deal with a new blog template is trivial by comparison.  At least the first settlers had an Indian princess to help them.  What I need is a tech savvy Pocahontas.