Fall in NOLA Update

Jessica made the McKenzie cookies, and Alma made it to the pumpkin patch!  Slowly but surely, we are celebrating fall in New Orleans. 

Laura Bush Op-Ed

Afghanistan must embrace women's rights.  This article is a must read.  Thanks to all the men and women who serve our country to defend our freedom. 

I Skyped for the First Time Today

I know, I am SO behind the trend.  But, how cool?!  I didn't have the microphone set up on the old work computer, but I was able to see my sweet cousin who is a freshman at TCU.  She was sitting in her dorm room, on her bed, in a big TCU sweatshirt.  Reminded me of myself 10 years ago!!  Page, thanks so much for being there while I tried to make sure a conference call between New Orleans and Los Angeles will work for Friday.

Art for Arts Sake

My favorite find at Art for Arts Sake was Tupelo Honey Design.  A precious stationery/design/photography studio of a girl named Maria who recently moved here from New Mexico.  Everything she makes is unique and very Anthropologiesque - her favorite store.  I wish I had a wedding to plan because I would definitely let her design my wedding invitations.  Instead, I have wedding showers and baby showers to plan, and unfortunately, as much as I love my friends, I think her price range makes her likely out of the question.  However, you should visit Tupelo Honey if you have a love of craft and originality.  Everything, Maria creates is unique in a way you have never seen unique, and I wish I had pictures to prove it!  She had a cute way of presenting handkerchiefs for a second line, smores for a bon fire, and she had these precious blank books on the table for guests to sign entitled, "What is your funniest memory of us?"  Love, Love, Love the store!

Fall Foliage

Ashley, my sister, seems to be obsessed with the month of October.  She wants to experience fall.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to experience fall in Louisiana, please let me know.  In DC, we would pick apples, go to vineyards, carve pumpkins and roast the seeds, watch the leaves change, etc.  In New Orleans, I am not quite sure what you do.  Corn Maize in Baton Rouge, Pumpkins at French Market -- please help!!  Point in fact, if you google "fall leave new orleans la", the images that appear are pub crawl, Jesuit boys at Galatoires, Mayor Landrieu, and Angelia Jolie and her numerous children.  If you google "fall leaves washington dc", you see the beauty you would imagine.  I am with Alma.  I want to experience fall in Louisiana, too.

Sir Dudley Digges

Sir Dudley Digges in Residence on Audubon Street

My dad's name is Dudley Digges Morgan, III.  Dudley Digges isn't just one of those names you find in a name book or happen upon when walking down the street (like the name Taylor).  This name is rooted deeply in my family history, and it dates back to a British Member of Parliament in the 1600's and later a "Virginia Adventurer," an investor who ventured his capital in the Virginia Company of London, Sir Dudley Digges.  My dad is a true lover of history and genealogy, two interests he has passed along to me.  Thus, Sir Dudley Digges and his manor home, Chilham Castle, have been a large part of dinner table conversations for most of my life.  Needless to say, when the Morgan family decided to make a pilgrimage to the United Kingdom, a trip to Chilham Caste was indeed included on the itinerary, even if it only was to peer through the gates of the Castle through the town square. 

Well, I should have known better, but for months, my mother was scheming behind my father's back trying to find a way to get him inside the castle. My mom is great at surprises, and somehow, on a whim and a prayer, she always manages to pull them off. And, this task of getting her family in to the castle, she seemed to meet with much ease.

So you may ask, how did we get in to the castle that is privately owned by a lovely British family?  This is a side story indeed worth telling, due in large part that it is another example of my dad's deep love for history and our ancestral roots.  My mother serves on the board of the Stratford Hall, home of the Lees of Virginia and the birthplace of Robert E. Lee (a.k.a the place where Alexander and Ashby fell in love!).  She assumed this position as a result of my grandmother Rosalind "RaRa" Morgan who served on the board over 50 years ago, and a friendship my mother made with Kathy Hendricks, while her son Nat and I attended college together at Sewanee.   

Stratford Hall is located on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and its Board of Directors represents the the fifty United States and the United Kingdom (we must not forget our roots when preserving our history!).  The United Kingdom representative, Liz Vyvyan, is actively involved in historic preservation in both the States and the United Kingdom, and therefore my mother asked her if, by chance, she knew the owners of Chilham Castle.  It just so happened that she did.  Indeed, a small world it is, thanks to Mrs. Vyvyan!  So, while my father was emailing chilhamcastleinfo@gmail.com begging for the right to enter beyond the gates, my mother exchanged a few emails with the Lady of the Manor, and we were in.  In, not just beyond the gates, but in for lunch and a tour with the Wheeler family, the current owners of the Castle. 

Getting to the Castle was the only kink in my mother's plan.  We stayed a bit too far from the Castle the night before, and we got lost on the British highways.  You could have cut the tension in the car with a knife.  My mother was furious, plain furious, that we were running late to Chilham, and my dad thought she was just mad for the umpteenth time about him not getting the GPS in the car.  Little did he know...

Driving in to Chilham Square

When we finally arrived in the town of Chilham, my mother told my father to drive on up to the gates of the Castle that she, herself, was going to find a way to get us inside.  She told my dad to ring the door bell to which he replied, "Lynn, I am not ringing the doorbell."  I was ready to get out of that car, so I marched right up to the buzzer, rang the bell, and exclaimed it was the Morgan family.  The gates magically opened, and my father's jaw dropped. 

And the Gates to the Castle opened for DDM, III

Tessa Wheeler, the Lady of the Manor, greeted us outside of her home.  We were terribly late, so she ushered us in to the drawing room to meet her weekend guests that were anxiously awaiting to meet the Manor's ancestral guests.  It is customary in the Wheeler household to invite a cross-section of guests to the Manor home each weekend.  The current owner, Stuart Wheeler, remarked that when he was young he was invited to a weekend estate with a diverse array of people, each with a different story to tell, that it made a lasting impression on him and he hoped to be able to recreate it for his friends one day. 

After a few Pimms and story exchanges with the guests (one of which will likely compete in the 2012 Olympics in London), we were invited in to the stately dining room.  Tessa Wheeler had a beautiful old book where she recorded her seating arrangements for each meal, and after reviewing the assignments, she directed us to our chair for the dinner.  The perimeter of the dining room had a stunning banner of the family crests of each inhabitant of Chilham Castle.  We dined on lamb and vegetables, red and white wines, consumed a cheese course, dessert and port, and then we retreated to the drawing room for coffee and liquor.  I could have crawled in to bed, but we had yet to tour the house. 

My words will not do justice to the beauty of the gardens and the castle, so I hope you enjoy the pictures below of the Morgan Family at the ancestral Chilham Castle.  It is my hope that readers, like my father, will comment on my rendition and provide a bit more detail to important parts of the story and this history that I am missing.  I will say this though, many people dismiss their family history or do not give it the attention it deserve (or make fun of their father for being too in to it), but it is truly fascinating to visit a place where you're family once lived and prospered.  In a country as young as America that is rapidly growing and expanding, it is important to pause and reflect on the past and preserve it for future generations.  The Wheeler's are great stewards of the property and the history of the Digges family, and to them, the Morgan family is grateful for their interest and their hospitality. 

Above the threshold to the Castle, the inscription reads, "The Lord is My House of Defence and My Castle".

And beneath is engraved, "Sir Dudley Digges A.D. 1616 and Lady Mary Kempe"

Click on photos to view

Above the Threshold

The Approach

The Man in front of his Castle

The Morgan Family at Chilham Castle

The gardens

The back door

The Two Digges

Dad and Tessa

The Morgan family with the Lady of the Manor, Tessa Wheeler

The entrance to Chilham Castle

Dudley Digges compares his portrait (pictured at top of blog) to the one owned by the Wheeler's.

Sir Dudley Digges at home in Chilham

For more photos from our visit, please click here. 

Good Friendships, Great Health

I consider myself blessed to have many friends from different parts of my life.  Sacred Heart, Alleghany, Sewanee, DC, work, friends of friends, parent's friends children, family, neighbors, roommates, volunteer projects, you get my point.  Clearly, there are friends that I keep better in touch with than others, but almost every one of my friends is constantly on my mind.  I always think to call them, but I seem to find a way to put it off or send a text or write on their facebook wall to make a quick connection.

Recently, I was able to catch up with a dear college friend who had been living in Spain since we graduated from college.  It was crazy to sit down over a lunch of Tex Mex and dish out the scoop of the last five years.  It was so invigorating and so needed.  But, I also had a bit of regret that it had been almost five years since we communicated directly with one another.  The good news is: we picked up right where we left off even though our experiences over the last five years have been drastically differnt.  She was living the life of an expat in Europe, and I was working hard to promote this great country in our nation's capital. 

Last night, I went to dinner at Il Posto with another friend who I consider to be very close to me from Sacred Heart.  I hadn't talked to her in six months since we went on a walk around Audubon Park together.  Six months isn't a really long time, but it is when you live in the same city and work relatively close to one another.  Schedules and other demands on life prevent us from connecting, even when she is a quick gchat, phone call, text or drop by away. 

I write this article today because when I got home last night, I realized that a dear friend from my time at the White House passed away.  He was much older than me, tall, slender, Aruban man, who lived with a plethora of nuns in the District and spent his evenings at the Willard Hotel drinking champagne before he darted off to the South of France for a little hob nobbing twice a year.  He loved the Pope, his faith, his President, his country, and his Hermes ties that he so daintly threw over his shoulder while at work to ensure each child who wrote to the President received a response from the leader of the free world.  He was the most peculiar man in the best kind of way.  He had a zest for life, and a grand party.  Linus has been on my mind, but I never reached out to check on him, even after he listened and coached me through all of my growing pains during my time in Washington.

May this entry teach me and you a lesson to pick up the phone or seize the moment to get together with a friend when the opportunity presents itself.  Dr. Marjorie Jenkins, Executive Director of the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women's Health and a mentor of mine, says it best in this article; reach out to a friend for no reason other than its good for your health.