Kira Rambles

If you were a ghost on a battlefield, would battle reenactments piss you off? As a staff member at Fort Ticonderoga, I participated in my first battle reenactment in September. We reenacted Brown’s raid, when American forces returned to the fort and tried to take it back from the British and their German allies in…

Fort Ticonderoga sits on a bulb of land sticking out into Lake Champlain. State Route 74 t-bones the lake on the peninsula at a cable ferry and heads West, perpendicular to Champlain, where it becomes Main Street in Ticonderoga, NY. Between the ferry and Main, there’s a four way stop, where, recently, I braked for…

I butchered the first board I planed with a block plane in maritime trades at Fort Ticonderoga. I set the blade too deep, and instead of peeling off the thin layers a visitor told me her grandmother used to make a blonde play wig as a girl in the 1890s, I carved out chunks, leaving…

Nothing activates mansplaining like using a block plane in public. As a maritime trades interpreter at Fort Ticonderoga, I’ve been using an antique block plane to smooth green pine planks and make them more hydrodynamic when we bend them around the frame of the bateaux we’re constructing. A bateau (bateau plat in French) is a…

“This train is delayed by 108 minutes. We encourage passengers to use the bar service.”  Informative. Unapologetic. Concise. Favorite train announcement ever.  I almost couldn’t believe I heard it. I almost couldn’t believe I was there. I received a fellowship through my university last Spring that included a trip to France, Germany, and Czech Republic…

My Dad loves spy movies. Maybe it’s his past life in army intelligence, but I grew up with boxed sets of James Bond and Jason Bourne movies in the basement. When we paused to make popcorn, he would take the wooden dowel we used to prop open the kitchen window and fight air enemies, and…