Brian

We’re so excited to celebrate America’s 250th birthday with Japan’s gift of 250 additional cherry trees! Keep an eye on our accounts as we celebrate both the 1912 gift and the 2026 gift of cherry blossoms throughout the festival season! Together we bloom!🌸

U.S. Catholic college Ave Maria University is establishing a new campus in Ireland at a 200-year-old Cistercian monastery that closed last year. Daniel Schreck, Chief Strategy Officer for Ave Maria University, shares more about the site.

I love the Olympics. Winter, summer, every single games, I tune in. I love it because we see how sports bring us together. I love it because we are reminded that sports are the ultimate equalizer. Look at weightlifting in the summer Olympics or downhill skiing now. The weights and the mountain don’t care what country you come from, how much money you have, or what religion you are. The weights and the mountain are the same for every single competitor. I love it, most of all, because the Olympics remind us of a core life lesson: greatness and heartbreak live right next door to each other. You can’t find greatness without a few meetings with heartbreak and failure. We saw this very clearly over the weekend. Like many of you, I’ve been following my friend Lindsey Vonn’s inspirational comeback. She’s 41, one knee is completely rebuilt, and now she went into the Olympics with a freshly-torn ACL. As storylines go, you can’t get any better. It is gutsy. It is brave. It is a little bit crazy. And it brings out all of the losers to do their naysaying. “Why would she do this?”  ”She must be missing something in her life.” “It’s irresponsible.” What these people don’t understand, because they’ve never tried anything great, because they’ve never pushed themselves to the absolute edges of their limits, because they’ll never know their real potential, is that there is no such thing as risk-free greatness. Yesterday, when her Olympic dreams ended in that horrible crash that left all of us praying for her in front of our televisions, the haters were out in full force. I don’t need to repeat it. Twitter has given losers enough of a platform; I won’t be amplifying them in this newsletter. (1/x)

Members aren’t asking to be “educated” - they’re asking for the basics: well-kept places, unbiased interpretation, and a welcoming day out. The National Trust needs to refocus on its core job: conserve and look after what members pay to protect.