Date: Saturday May 14 - Sunday May 15
We left New Orleans with some trepidation since we knew that we needed to cross the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, MS, and we'd been hearing alot about flooding in Vicksburg. We checked road closures on the internet and determined that it was safe. While the river did seem quite swollen when we crossed, we apparently missed the worst of it which was just a few miles down stream.
We spent the night in a small campground in Lake Village, AK, which had been carved out of an old pecan grove. We can feel the weather cool as we head North. It's kind of nice, because it's like we're chasing the Spring North from NOLA.
When we broke camp on Sunday we drove about an hour into Little Rock to visit the William J Clinton Presidential Library. Boy were we disappointed. On the trip we took last summer, we spent a few days in the Boston area, and just loved the Kennedy Presidential Library. We spent several fascinating hours there. It was so well done, and we came away with a real feeling for who JFK was, as well as the challenges, successes, and failures of his presidency. It managed to put his presidency in historical perspective, and never felt preachy or anti-Republican. By contrast, the Clinton library gave us much less about Clinton the man, and spent way too much time trying to justify his failure to accomplish his goals and blaming the Republicans for this or that. Perhaps the difference was that the Kennedy Library had only a 3 year presidency to memorialize, while Clinton was president for 8 years. And perhaps part of the reason why Kennedy's was so much better was that he was dead when it was built, and so had no part in guiding the spin. I felt like historians were in charge in Boston, while Clinton and his cronies were in charge in Little Rock. There was only a very brief reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And no, the blue dress was not in the display cases. I suspect we'll see a lot more about it when there's more age and perspective on his presidency.
Yeah, I'm not surprised about this. I'm sure you'll find this to be the case with all of the libraries of living presidents, and maybe even those who haven't been dead very long. I'm sure Dubya's will be just as biased with little mention/much downplaying of his numerous failures. Hopefully they'll all get accurately corrected after their deaths.
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