Travel Through History

In which Christina still Travels

The undeniably gorgeous view from the Rose Hall Great House in Jamaica; a portrait of Annie Palmer, who was not a witch; this is not the tomb of Annie Palmer, despite what the tour guides say. The next Travel Through History will annihilate the "White Witch" myth and ruminate on why the slaves who labored at Rose Hall plantation until 1834 are ghosted during Great House tours.

Three things spurred me last week to change the name of my Substack from Christina’s Travels to Travel Through History:

1: In place of a logo, I’d dropped in a picture of my face. Apparently, the image I used was the wrong resolution, which is pretty much the story of my digital life. It looked like I’d taken it at the Camera Obscura and World of Illusions.

With AI assistance, I created a logo that’s intended to convey a woman traveling through history with an edge of humor (the sword, get it? I do crack myself up sometimes). In response to an e-mail titled “Does this logo suck?,” an actual graphic designer—thank you, Scott Sugiuchi—assured me that it does not suck, which is high praise for any of my artistic efforts. So, I replaced the funhouse mirror image with the logo that does not suck.

Tada! The new logo.

2: I am not “Beyoncé” or “The Rock,” so including my name in the title of my Substack means nothing to anyone other than my mother.

3: I really enjoy exploring, researching, and writing about history.

Despite the fact that my last post was 98% relaxing at a resort in Jamaica and 2% history, nearly all of my other 80+ writings involve a lot more diving into the past and a lot less lollygagging.

Whether I’m sniffing history, drinking history, walking through history, or sitting in history, I am a bit addicted to—you guessed it—history. The majority of my travels involve or are directly propelled by a desire to experience the past with one or more of my senses, and to make connections between the past and the present in a non-boring, non-textbookish way.

Take my recent trip to Half Moon in Jamaica. What I wrote about was relaxing, drinking rum punch, and doing gymnastics by the Cedar Bar at closing time. What else happened, among other things, was that I noticed the framed images below while pouring myself a glass of cucumber-infused water.

From upper left: Jacqueline Kennedy’s Last Will and Testament handwritten on Half Moon letterhead, dated January 11, 1960; Jackie, Caroline, JFK; Jackie swinging Caroline in the ocean near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, MA; the envelope containing Jackie’s will that she mailed to JFK’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.

Transcription of Jacqueline Kennedy’s handwritten Last Will and Testament.

When we returned home, I started digging into the timing of Jackie’s Last Will and Testament. Discrepancies abound regarding when the Kennedys arrived and left the Half Moon in December of 1959: various sources record them landing in Montego Bay on December 21, 22, or 23, for either a two-week or month-long vacation. Since John F. Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy from the U.S. Senate Caucus Room in Washington, D.C., on January 2, 1960, clearly he was not in Jamaica (unless the JFK conspiracies run wider and deeper than previously suspected). Jackie, though, was at Half Moon on January 11, 1960, writing and posting her will. Perhaps she and Caroline stayed for an entire month? Did Jack come back? I am planning a research trip to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston to try and solve this pressing mystery.

Seeing Jacqueline Kennedy’s handwritten will made me realize that, while I am a presidential obsessive, I really don’t know much about what happened during JFK’s brief reign, aside from the extramarital shenanigans, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination. I promptly checked out three Kennedy books from my local library and read way too many articles online.

I confess that my reading was not confined to Kennedy’s policy making. Did you know that JFK and Marilyn Monroe apparently only had one sexual liaison?

My granddad, John Quincy Edwards III, in 1949, well before the Cuban Missle Crisis interfered with his 20th college reunion.

I then remembered that I have notes from a conversation with my now-deceased grandfather, who headed up the Naval Field Operations Intelligence Office during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There’s some really interesting stuff here that I will relate and contextualize in a future post.

For now, I will share his lead-in to our conversation. It’s so typically Granddad that I am getting teary-eyed and laughing at the same time as I hear him say these words in my head:

“Among other things, the Cuban Missile Crisis cost me money. I was supposed to go back to my 20th class reunion at Georgia Tech, and I’d sent in my $100 covering all the events we [he and my grandmother] were going to. Georgia Tech said, ‘No refunds, no refunds,’ so I missed my class reunion because my organization [ONI] was heavily involved in the Cuban Missle Crisis. And the money I paid to go was not reimbursed.”

Damn you, Krushchev and Castro, for making poor Gdad miss his 20th college reunion, the one with the non-refundable fee!

Bottom line here: Christina will still Travel, Through History. And I sincerely hope you will join me.