Over the years Vision Forum has used the occassion of our Faith and Freedom Tours to travel to the greatest libraries and estates of America’s Founding Fathers. This year we return to Monticello home of our third president.

Thomas Jefferson was simply brilliant. An inveterate inventor, he left a legacy of brilliant innovations. From the “Moldboard Plow of Least Resistance,” to the wheel cipher, to the speherical sundial, to the great clock of Monticello, to the brilliant system of dumbwaiters he placed throughout his home, to the “Orrery” (a model of the solar system),to the weathervane compass, to the polygraph (copying machine), Jefferson’s creativity was applied not only to building instruments of discovery and scientific analysis, but to the creation of numerous time-saving solutions to the practical problems of life.

For years my favorite Jefferson invention was his revolving bookstand. It is a bibliophile’s dream. Jefferson not only designed this invention but had it produced at his own joinery on Mulberry Row at Monticello. On each of my visits to Monticello I would longingly eye the bookstand and remind myself about the sin of coveting my (deceased) neighbors posessions.

Then along comes bosom buddy Scott Brown. Pastor, businessman, Vision Forum board member, and father extraordinairre, Scott is one of these men who is rightly described as “having the milk of human kindness flowing through his veins.” For my birthday, he commissioned a friend to build two of these, one for me and one for himself. What a blessing. I am truly grateful.