Pathfinding: Found!

In honor of the end of the summer and the beginning of the school year (starting on Wednesday!), it seemed like an excellent time to wrap up the second major badge project of the summer: the Pathfinding badge.

Only one (required) step remained: to "know something of the history of the place [and] its principal public buildings." And so, in pursuit of the principal public buildings (which the Handbook suggests includes things like town halls, etc.), I visited downtown Brooklyn.

First stop, Borough Hall, which has been (among other things) both a jail and a court. The NY Emergency Response Team was out in full force urging disaster preparedness of all sorts, largely through handing out a lot of hand sanitizer and providing a packing list for a go bag (a concept that just makes me feel to generally uncomfortable to consider creating). Despite my recent be-prepared theme, I didn't explain my current project to those kind folks. They might have thought I was weird.

I checked out the courthouses, too, both the Supreme Court building, guarded by the most bizarre possible triumvirate of statues (Bobby Kennedy, Christopher Columbus, and Moses), and the US Court, which (I'll admit) I first imagined was a movie theater. (That glassy facade just says "let's eat popcorn!" to me.)

Finally, I was surprised (very!) to learn more about downtown Brooklyn's noble history as a hotbed of abolitionists until I spotted the statue of Henry Ward Beecher (abolitionist, adulterer, and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe). Beecher's church was a major player in the Underground Railroad in NYC, and raised so much money for the Union Army and for emancipation that the guns wielded by Kansas' Union soldiers were referred to as "Beecher's Bibles." (Who knew I was this into history?)

So, is it time for a new badge?

I think so.