Ohio - Cradle of the American Presidents

New Philadelphia, Ohio, nestled along the swollen Tuscarawas River, enjoyed a sunny and warm afternoon. I had a great audience tonight, a mix of college students, seniors and families. A young girl who sat in the front row went home with a teddy bear.

A week ago, I was performing in Captiva, Florida, a beautiful island betwixt the Gulf of Mexico and Roosevelt Channel, off shore from Ft. Myers. Wife, Jenny and daughter, Sam went along. In late March, 1917, T.R. had his last great hunting adventure on and about Captiva. With his host, J. Russell Coles of Danville, Virginia, T.R. harpooned devil fish, giant manta rays, in the Gulf waters. Weeks later, the United States was entering World War I, and T.R. would be busy in the war effort until the time of his passing, in January 1919.

Sam joined me in Vero Beach and Sebastian, Florida, where we enjoyed the people and the critters at the Pelican Island Wildlife Festival, a fantastic celebration of T.R.’s naming Pelican Island our first federal bird sanctuary in 1903. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service employees, with the support of local volunteers, do a wonderful job in an amazing ecosystem.

Between Sunday noon and Tuesday afternoon, I made the long trip from Vero Beach to Sewanee, Tennessee and on up here to South Central Eastern Ohio. Tomorrow, I’m going to see some of the beautiful countryside hereabout.

The Fells - The John Hay Estate - Lake Sunapee - Newbury, New Hamphire

My second visit to the Fells was fantastic. After performing at Keene State College, I took a morning drive to the beautiful home on Route 103A on the eastern shore of Lake Sunapee. Hay called it a farm.

The home is beautiful, a large white wooden two story structure with beautiful gardens. TR visited during his presidency and planted a maple tree in the field west of the veranda. Today, I rested against the tree while I read from the posthumously published Speeches of John Hay.

The relationship between Hay and Roosevelt dates all the way back to the Civil War, when TR's father lobbied Hay and Lincoln to create the Allotment Commisssion. After the war, Hay was an occassional guest at the Roosevelt home in Manhattan. Imagine young TR listening to his father and mother discussing the issues of the world with Hay during a family dinner.

Teddy Roosevelt Show Brings Me Back to Illinois - at Last

It’s good to be back in Illinois.

The family and I toured the fifty states in 2008 and 2009, researching and performing a one man show as Theodore Roosevelt. With a lot of work in the South and on the East Coast, our winter headquarters has been in Sewanee, Tennessee at our alma mater, the University of the South. At Sewanee, in March, I’ll workshop a TR and John Muir play with Lee Stetson, a talented Muir reprisor featured in the Ken Burns series on our national parks.

Summer was spent throughout New York, with the family camped in the 1000 Islands of the St. Lawrence River.

It’s been six months since my last visit, when my father was going through bladder cancer surgery and recovery. I’m glad to say Pops is all through with his chemotherapy and feels better and looks good. Thanks to all for prayers and good wishes for him. He’s performing throughout the Midwest – check out http://www.lasthippie.com/

Today, Pops and I journeyed around Kirkland and Rockford, running life’s errands. It was a great day, and a good supper follows.

I’m in Chicagoland until Sunday night, and if there’s a chance to catch up with friends, I hope you might find one of the following to be in your back yard.

Friday morning starts at the Skokie Theatre, 7924 North Lincoln Avenue for a 10:30 AM Teddy Roosevelt Show. The show lasts until 11:30 AM with another fifteen minutes or so of Q & A in character. Twenty-five dollar tickets are available at the door.

On Friday night, the officers of the Chicago Bull Moose Chapter of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) host a dinner meeting at Francesca’s Tavola Italian Restaurant at 208 South Arlington Heights Road in Arlington Heights. Dinner is a 6PM dutch treat at this $15-20 restaurant, and we have a private space or corner. As the president of the chapter, I would invite you to join us. We are affiliated with the national organization and have been awarded the 2012 annual TRA meeting, where I hope you will help us celebrate the storied Chicago history associated with Theodore Roosevelt, including the 1912 GOP and Progressive Conventions held here.

On Saturday, I’ll be in Fairdale, working on our home property, the old church on Highway 72. Anybody want to buy a church?

On Sunday, I’ll perform for my friends at the Warren Township Republican Party. Their 2:00 P.M. Luau promises to be as delicious as the entertainment is fun. The pig roast luau is at Jesse Oakes, a beautiful shelter complex at 18490 W. Old Gages Lake Road in Gages Lake, IL. The show starts at 3:30. Adult tickets for food and entertainment are $25 and children (11 & under) are free. Military (active, retired, guard & reserve) are $15.

Later Sunday, at 7:00 P.M., I perform the full theatre show at Aurora’s Copley Theatre, 20 East Galena Avenue. Tickets are $20, just $10 for seniors and students.

More information is available at: http://www.teddyrooseveltshow.com/trtour.htm

I leave Monday morning for New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York. I’ll be back for a run right before the February 2 primary. I stay in touch with Illinois every day, and I salute so many of my fellow Illinoisans who are still slugging it out as men and women in the arena. You have good and righteousness on your side, and all the rest is just hard work. I wish you the just rewards of the vigorous life. I shall return.

Bully for you!

The Grand Dame of Madison Avenue - the Roosevelt Hotel

The Roosevelt Hotel New York City – The Grand Dame of Madison Avenue – is a wonderful hotel, with a location exceeded only by the friendliness and helpfulness of the hotel staff. At the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 45th Street, the hotel features a beautiful lobby and lounge where hundreds of guests relax, recharge and come and go through a day and night in the city.

On President Theodore Roosevelt’s 151st birthday, I was delighted to greet guests from around the world and around the country as they arrived at the iconic Manhattan hotel.
Built in 1924, the hotel was famous for broadcasting Guy Lombardo’s New Years Eve concert heard round the world on radio. Now the Roosevelt Grill is a beautiful restaurant at the northeast corner of the lobby floor. As one ascends a split level staircase towards the Roosevelt Grill, one sees a massive bronze relief with T.R. shown as a Western cowboy on horseback, waving a farewell with his cowboy hat, headed for a trail ride in the mountains beyond his shoulder.

The Long, Long Trail is a treasure of a work. Sculpted by James Earl Fraser and based on the drawing of J.N. “Ding” Darling, the Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist, the work was completed in 1922. The original 1919 drawing by Darling was a gift to Mrs. Edith Roosevelt, T.R.’s widow. As a cartoon, the Long, Long Trail was published around the world. After serving with the famed naturalists Aldo Leopold and Thomas Beck on the 1934 Committee for Wildlife Restoration, Darling went on to serve eighteen months as President Franklin Roosevelt’s Director of the Biological Survey. Darling initiated the Duck Stamp program which is such a vital source of funding for wildlife conservation efforts, even drawing the first duck stamp. Later, Darling would join others to found the National Wildlife Federation. The J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Florida, was set aside in his honor.

James Earl Fraser was a pre-eminent American sculptor, famous for the 1913 buffalo nickel and the 1915 End of the Trail. In 1932, Fraser created the Theodore Roosevelt equestrian sculpture that still presides over the eastern entrance to the American Museum of Natural History.

Heading past the Long, Long Trail to the grille, one can dine beneath TR’s gaze from any of a dozen interesting photos and paintings. In the Madison Club Lounge, still more photos and paintings, including a handsome painted portrait of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt of the First United States Cavalry, known to history as the Rough Riders.

For a Theodore Roosevelt fan, the Roosevelt Hotel is full of history. For the traveler to New York, on business or pleasure, the Roosevelt Hotel is a wonderful place to stay. Check out http://www.theroosevelthotel.com/ImageGallery/Photo/ to see this beautiful hotel.

Thanks Ken Burns and Douglas Brinkley.

As I spend my first nights of fall with the Ken Burns series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” I read the last pages of my late summer companion, Douglas Brinkley’s “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.” Both works culminate for me a season of life during which I have become quite clear that portraying TR is the right thing for me to do.

When I was a little boy of seven or eight, I discovered that adventure was open to me not only along the wooded banks of Salt Creek but also in books, in stories of heroic lives and in the pages of the volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica that mom brought home from the Jewel Tea.

A love of books and history is a cornerstone of what I do. TR is quoted as saying, “The only thing I like more than books is children.” As a child and an adult, TR was a voracious reader. He wrote some thirty books, hundreds of articles and several histories, including “The Winning of the West” in four parts. After his political aspirations were thwarted in 1912, TR was elected the president of the American Historical Association.

Not only does portraying TR happily require me to read all sorts of history, it leads me to explorations of literature and scientific texts which TR would have raced through in a day’s reading. I can only say that this part of the job is great fun and Brinkley’s book has been one more brilliant work in a long list of book borne adventures.

Now, just as adventure for me as a small boy was to be found within forest and stream, my adventures as TR have taken me to the tops of Mt. Marcy and Katahdin and to the marshes of Mississippi and the mangroves of Florida. As a family, we have adventured from the snow capped mountains and the tropical forest of Washington’s Olympic National Park to the brim of the Grand Canyon and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Trees in Yosemite. I have seen more of this great, big, beautiful country in the three years since becoming TR than in the previous forty years of my well travelled life, and this time I’m taking time to hike and swim and camp and climb. After years of political and public policy work, mostly at a computer behind a desk, the vigorous life on the road has been an elixir.

On issues of conservation, citizenship, duty, preparedness, morality and more, Theodore Roosevelt, eventually Chief Scout Citizen, embodied the Scout Law and Scout Oath before the Boy Scouts even existed. As we celebrate the centennial of the Boy Scouts of America and countless other beneficent and service organizations, I think TR has much to offer modern America in the manner of pointing the right way.

Whether as a public servant or a policy advocate, I always wanted to live a life that made a difference. Bringing TR to life may be just one way that, in the words of the Scouts, I can leave my campground cleaner than I found it.

On Being Theodore Roosevelt for Modern Audiences

In November, the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), the nation’s premier organization networking, training and certifying volunteers and professionals in the oral presentation of information for parks, museums, historic sites and more, has invited me to present at their convention in Hartford, Connecticut. The presentation allows me, really for the first time, to blend in some TR performance with a telling of the story of the 2008 TR Tour, my family’s fifty state journey in honor of Theodore Roosevelt’s 150th birthday.

As we travelled the states, we took in many a talk or tour led by a park ranger or docent, and our adventure was the more pleasant and interesting for their presentations and answers. In a way, my experience with the professional and volunteer interpreters helped shape my own ideas on how I perform as Theodore Roosevelt, how I share information and how I answer questions about TR.

During this, my second year as an NAI member, I continue to find encouragement in the admonition, inherent in the interpretive community, on behalf of accuracy and historical honesty. Just as I used to advise political candidates, if the accurate answer is “I don’t know” then say so…don’t make it up.

In the words of the Boy Scouts, “Be Prepared.” The NAI encourages its members to train, to investigate, to research and to stay on their game. Know the material, and to the degree possible, know the audience and the range of needs and expectations within that audience.

In Hartford, I’ll share with NAI attendees some ideas about how to keep the interpretive presentation interesting and vital, and how to expand the mastery of material through the investigation of related topics. For example, the calendar, that is the historic calendar of events related to that site, provides an opportunity to seasonally freshen the presentations. In addition, any site certainly has at least one and more likely has dozens of interesting characters associated with the history of the place or times. Investigating these characters and weaving bits of these lives and experiences into the experience of visitors or audience members is a rich resource for that vital ingredient in oral presentation.

While I travel, I research. My summer travels included the Northwoods of Maine, where TR hiked Katahdin in 1879. I’m glad to say I successfully made the ascent in 2009. Performing for friends along the Indian River in Florida, birthplace of TR’s Pelican Island and the Wildlife Refuge System, I have renewed my own ornithological studies. All the while, Douglas Brinkley’s “The Wilderness Warrior” has been by my side and in my pack.

I look forward to writing more and more frequently about this great adventure that comes as a result of deciding to be the best Theodore Roosevelt I can be. I know that may seem a strange undertaking to some, but I assure you, it has been a very worthwhile and fulfilling thing to get good at it.

When climbing Katahdin, making the top of the Abol Trail, I took in the views from Thoreau Springs, a small and tepid natural spring within view of Baxter Peak. Later, after an ascent up Cathedral Cutoff, I enjoyed a little lunch at the springs on my way down the Hunt Trail.

Thoreau’s old line rang and echoed in my mind: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."----- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion, 1854

Gavia Immer

Gavia Immer – the common loon. Common it is to hear the call of the loon across the nighttime waters of the St. Lawrence River. It is a call which penetrates the stillness, and whether it warbles or blasts, rises or falls, has meaning to other loons, meaning both birds and bird watchers.

There is something wonderfully loony about bird watchers. From the enthusiast to the ornithologist, they have a passion and an energy appropriate for an endeavor that plays amongst the mysteries and beauties of feathered flight. The bird watcher, by nature, is in nature. Tramping about fields and marshes in the first light of dawn or floating about at night, pursuing the winged friend at roost, the bird watcher is the least likely outdoorsman to carry gadgets and gizmos and technological distractions. The field glasses and the field book join peeled eye and hearkened ear to keep watch, lest for the blink of an eye, a species is missed that might otherwise have been captured in mind’s memory.

The study of birds is rather new to me. As a Theodore Roosevelt reprisor, it is incumbent upon me to become well versed in the world of birds, that I might pretend and, in the pretending believe, that I can bring TR to life so that I, as him, can share some of his knowledge and passion with audiences today. How's that for looney?

A kayak trip took me against the current of the river and into Bob Hunt’s Marsh on the north end of Hill Island. There, a pair of Great Blue Heron, took roost among the half dead trees. A red tailed hawk circled above, while sea gulls of some sort came fishing. Swallows darted along the cliffs, no doubt enjoying an afternoon snack of the smaller winged variety. A flock of nine young brown ducks took little notice of me floating amongst them, though a gaggle of thirty Canadian Geese preferred my company not.

Pulling a few water lilies to grace the supper table, I paddled back to Indian Rock, glad that TR liked birds.