I’m headed to Nashville this week for the National Preservation Conference where we’re sure to hear great preservation stories and good music. Putting the two together, I have collected some Americana and roots music for the conference staff to use prior to the Opening Plenary.
I kick off the set with the Martha White Theme (just seemed appropriate given the setting). However, finding preservation-based roots music can be tough. Most country songs that mention “home” generally deal with the loss of mother and dad or a true love – but not too much about the loss of the actual building. So most are instrumentals. The set does include that preservation bluegrass classic The Old Home Place by J.D. Crowe and the New South. However, my favorite is the Jim Lauderdale/Ralph Stanley Highway Through My Home. In honor of the Overton Park (Memphis) and 710 Freeway (California) battles…and so many more…click on the video below and enjoy.
More to come…
DJB
Over the past two days the National Trust Council has toured a remarkable collection of 
If Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum is a symbol of the city’s optimism for the 21st century (see my previous post), then the City Hall is a fine example of the community’s spirit and optimism for the 20th.
What do you get when you ask the public to download a simple sign, find a place that is important to them, photograph themselves in front of that place holding the sign and then download it to the Internet?
Last Friday as I boarded my plane in Dublin, I opened the overhead bin and came across a banjo case. A nearby passenger asked if it was mine, and I said, “No, but I was going to ask the same question.” A slight man with a female companion sitting across the aisle identified himself as the owner of the case, which he said held a 
We have just completed a wonderful International Conference of National Trusts here in Dublin—the 13th in the history of the National Trust movement. I suspect that when a small group of Anglophiles gathered together in the 1970s in Scotland for what became the first gathering of the world’s National Trusts, they could not have imagined either the spread of their movement or the diversity of people, countries, issues and models that we have seen this week from among the 200+ delegates in attendance.
As part of today’s International Conference of National Trusts, I joined a tour into the countryside to explore a bit of Irish history and see rehabilitation and interpretive efforts at work.
Today, we visited the battlefield where that victory was won: The Battle of the Boyne. It was here in 1690 that protestant King William of Orange defeated the army of the Catholic King James II. There’s a recently opened visitors and interpretive center which we toured with a guide from the site. As An Taisce put it in the conference materials, “the outcome of this battle has been the source of much bitterness historically and the correct interpretation of the site has been integral to the Irish Peace Process.” The closing line of the center’s interpretive film put it a little more directly: Issues arose in the battle that “reverberate to today.” The good efforts to focus on how different parts of Ireland view the battle and its outcome were obvious, showing another way historic places resonate even today. You could say that Irish history isn’t even history because it is as fresh as the morning’s news.
Every two years the world’s preservation and heritage conservation community comes together for the International Conference of National Trusts, a wonderful gathering of colleagues and friends working together across the globe to protect, enhance and responsibly enjoy our planet’s fragile heritage. To read my full post on the opening of ICNT13, check out the 
