"Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last"
It is very difficult to be glib about the Martin Luther King Jr. Centre in Atlanta. The National Park Service has again created a site that is extremely well done, compelling and moving. The entire neighbourhood in which Dr. King grew up has been purchased and preserved, including the original Ebenezer Baptist church at which MLK co-pastored with his father, after his grandfather left the post. We had forgotten that Martin Luther King’s mother was shot dead playing the organ in this church several years after MLK’s death!!! A large MLK centre has been built in the middle of the neighbourhood in which both MLK’s life and the struggle for equal rights are portrayed in detail. Unfortunately, we do not need to travel to Afghanistan or Iraq to find hate. Having the entire struggle for human rights powerfully detailed in pictures, film and first-person accounts will hopefully remind us all, for all time, of the sins of the past. Will we ever learn??
What do you call a bar with a second storey patio looking out over a major Atlanta cemetery? “Six Feet Under” of course. Great seafood and good draft beers too! A hopping spot which my “bride” read about in a guide book. We could have stayed over to try it again but, thought better of it!!!
We finally bid adieu to Atlanta and are now comfortably ensconced on the banks of the Suwannee River (as in “Way down upon the……….”), near White Springs Florida. We are parked under a “live oak” tree with Spanish moss hanging down onto the roof of the RV. It damn well better not stain the white (who’s dumb idea was that!!!!) rubber roof of ours. We just put the RV through a truck wash (you always meet interesting people there!!!) on the way down here. Our auto-satellite dish won’t find the Bell Expressvu satellite due to the trees and the moss but, we have the best Wi-Fi connection we have had yet!! Life is all about compromise!!!
Lots of cotton in southern Georgia but not as ripe as further north. Hopefully some ag student can explain that to us. We are planning to slow it down over the next month and have even booked into a couple of sites for a week or more. It looks like we’ll be in Florida for the entire month of November, heading into Texas around December 1. So blog reports may be somewhat less frequent (unless we find daily reports from Rob’s Green Parrot Bar are necessary).
And now…….a special message for Rob Hammond…a good friend and great traveling companion who has been relentless in providing almost daily tips and advice to assist us along the way. The problem is Rob is a somewhat techno phobic lawyer whose e-mail system will not receive messages from us (maybe he’s smarter than we think). We have been trying to e-mail him twice a day…….morning and night. ROB…….HIRE SOME GEEK TO FIX YOUR E-MAIL SYSYTEM!!!!!!!!
1 comment:
This post made me want to rush to Atlanta, perhaps to ask for forgiveness for all the things I said as a kid. I was raised in an all-caucasian county in Arkansas, and the "n" word was both common and accepted in everyday conversation.
I'm very glad I realized as I left town for various camps that that was very wrong. The American south is changing, but it's still far behind other areas of the country in race relations. Some of the friendliest people I know, who would give you the shirt off their back, were blinders-on racists.
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