Rich Condon

A lot of things are bad right now, but at least there’s soup.

Big thanks to my loved ones and colleagues for their outpouring of support along the way.

On February 3, 2020 I accepted what would be my first position at a new National Park Service site in Beaufort, South Carolina. Within two years of my arrival, I moved into the long sought-after permanent position that I enjoy today; one which I do not take for granted.

Here’s your weekly moment of Appalachian zen.

YouTube video by Jake Wynn - Public Historian Before Reconstruction | Port Royal, Emancipation, and the Civil War’s Turning Point

Many thanks to my dear friend, Jake Wynn, for inviting me back to his public history podcast for another great discussion!

I like my coffee with no ICE.

…checking the advance of every force in our midst that makes for disunion or lawlessness, or against liberty and equality, or a government of the people...”

This is one of the more popular monuments on the battlefield, and rightfully so. They persisted against their foe against great odds.

A standing testament to the Minnesotans who helped stem the tide of disunion at Gettysburg.

During the monument’s dedication in 1897, Gov. David Clough argued that “if…the people of Minnesota dedicate themselves…the future will see the children of the North Star state on every field of conflict…

If you’re cold, they’re cold. Bring a ranger inside.

In November 1983 my grandmother, an Allegheny County employee, wrote to the Pittsburgh Press regarding citizens’ unhappiness with the City Council after they’d finally taken notice of their complacency and uselessness.

Midterms are coming. Listen to Grandma Phyllis.

I have hope that we can still become the “more perfect union” many of us aspire toward, but we have much work to do until then.

Those who have the audacity to assert these constitutional liberties now risk being executed in American streets, but we must continue to make our voices heard. Stand up for your communities and continue to protect each other. To remain silent in the face of actual tyranny is to be complicit.

Now is not the time to remain neutral.

The rights to peaceful protest, to freedom of speech, to responsibly bear arms, to live free beyond unreasonable search and seizure, and to feel safe in our own homes, are to be extended to all, yet are being violated daily.

The evening commute never disappoints.

Scrubbing the 2025 out of my office and trying not to inhale any of that bad energy.

I said what I said.

“It has become fashionable for Anglomaniacs to belittle everything that does not come from England, and call England the mother country. Nothing is further from the truth. The whole world is the mother country of this land.”

-P.F. Rohrbacher, 74th Pennsylvania monument dedication, July 2, 1888

Ranger Point: 1880 ➡️ 2026

Bloch was captured and executed four years later for his part in the French resistance against Nazi rule. In an era of increasing hostility and misinformation I find equanimity in history, considering Bloch’s desired epitaph a point of virtue; dilexit veritatem - “I have loved the truth.

Anticipating his death at the hands of his enemy, Bloch drafted a final thought: “All my life I have striven to achieve complete sincerity in word and thought. I hold that any compromise with untruth, no matter what the pretext, is the mark of a human soul’s ultimate corruption.”

In 1940 French historian Marc Bloch wrote what was to be one of his last publications amidst the growing German occupation of Europe.

Strange Defeat, which was released posthumously, reflects his acknowledgment that “we can truly understand the past only if we read it by the light of the present.”

That time Billy Bob Thornton and Conan O’Brien saved the Union.

Great news last night on the front of battlefield preservation, and I consider myself lucky to be present for such an event.

Not once did the Confederate battle flag enter the US Capitol during the Civil War. In fact it’s something millions of Americans fought to prevent from happening.

The insurrection of January 6, 2021 saw these efforts upended. Reconstruction isn’t over.

Here, Holtzworth was photographed by William H. Tipton (center, seated) at Devil’s Den while leading a tour for Cheyenne and Arapahoe Chiefs, as well as Carlisle Indian School students, on November 28, 1884.

(Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center)

The last time this cane visited this site very well might have been in the hands of its former owner; Civil War veteran, early battlefield guide, and superintendent of Gettysburg National Cemetery, William D. Holtzworth.

The “Peace President” crowd has been pretty quiet lately…

It’s now 2026 and the country has a similar vibe to Century III Mall.

“The Year of Jubilee Has Come” - The First South Carolina Infantry at Camp Saxton As Prince Rivers stood on a freshly constructed platform in the shade of moss-covered live oak trees at Camp Saxton, he looked down upon the faces of...

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At this time, on January 1, 1863, nearly 5,000 people gathered on the grounds of Camp Saxton to hear the words of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Here, for the first time in their lives, formerly enslaved people saw the US flag as a symbol of freedom.