Journey Stories: an OVAHC Activity
Scheduled for Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 12:15 PM in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. You can go anytime with
your traveling buddies. Feel free to set up another date.
This exhibit is on loan from the Smithsonian Museum in DC and one of only five cities across the country to get
it. I think we should go. After we tour the small museum we shall have a late lunch about 2ish nearby.
The Smithsonian traveling exhibit, "Journey Stories," begins at the Community Center in Tower Park at noon.
Admissions are free though we LOVE a donation! More than 50 quilts are being loaned for this show. Great family
stories are told through these homemade quilts. A rosary that traveled through three major wars from father to son
and once more. Did they all make it back safe? Find out for yourself. The exhibit is at the Fort Thomas Military
and Community Museum. This exhibit will begin December 10 and end
January 21, 2012. It will be open daily noon until 4:00. It will be closed for the holiday December 23-25 and December
30-January 1. This entire event will be manned by volunteers
Journey Stories – tales of how we and our ancestors came to America – are a central element of our personal
heritage. From Native Americans to new American citizens and regardless of our ethnic or racial background, everyone
has a story to tell. Our history is filled with stories of people leaving behind everything – families and possessions
– to reach a new life in another state, across the continent, or even across an ocean. The reasons behind
those decisions are myriad. Many chose to move, searching for something better in a new land. Others had no
choice, like enslaved Africans captured and relocated to a strange land and bravely asserting their own cultures, or
like Native Americans already here, who were often pushed aside by newcomers.
Our transportation history is more than trains, boats, buses, cars, wagons, and trucks. The development of transportation
technology was largely inspired by the human drive for freedom. Journey Stories will examine the intersection
between modes of travel and Americans’ desire to feel free to move. It is accounts of immigrants coming in
search of promise in a new country; stories of individuals and families relocating in search of fortune, their own
homestead, or employment; the harrowing journeys of Africans and Native Americans forced to move; and, of
course, fun and frolic on the open road.
The story of the intersection between transportation and American society is complicated, but it tells us much
about who we are – people who see our societal mobility as a means for asserting our individual freedom. Journey
Stories will use engaging images with audio and artifacts to tell the individual stories that illustrate the critical
roles travel and movement have played in building our diverse American society.