Savannah on my mind

Savannah is one of those places you can return to time after time and find something new with each visit. I spent my three days off at Thanksgiving there, hoping it would be as good as I remembered, and it was.

My discovery this time was a locksmith's shop, Bradley's. It reminded me so much of Busy Bee Hardware in Detroit that I had to go in.

Who could resist a place with witty sayings like the ones on the sign?

In addition to scissors and knives, get your axes sharpened here too. I know there's a legit reason for sharp axes, so why did Lizzie Borden immediately come to mind?

The owner is a collector, as evidenced by the shoeshine chairs to the right. Why does he have them? Well, silly, it's a place for customers to wait while their keys/locks/axes are being attended to.

If he don't got it, you don't need it. See the skate key on the lower right? Who's old enough to know what it's for? The answer "skates" doesn't count.

Across the room from the red chairs is this collection. No idea. No idea why, no idea what. Just no idea.

I didn't see this on my way in, my eyes too busy looking through the door, but caught it on my way out.

If you saw my post on Tucumcari, New Mexico, you know I love old signs. The fading signs like the first two are called Ghost Signs, I think. If not, they should be. I love spotting them and catching them in pixels because they won't last forever.

Nicely preserved, don't you think?

Savannah is a very walkable city, and going through the neighborhoods always rewards with scenery like this. I'm not sure I'd like my garden wide open to public view, but I appreciate the people who allow me to admire their property.

Detail from a county building.

Pirate's House was full up for Thanksgiving dinner so I went on Wednesday instead. It turned out to be a good thing because while walking around on Thursday night, I saw lots of flashing lights on lots of fire trucks on the street next to the restaurant. A nice guy took my picture while I waited for my meal. I appreciated his shaky hand because it blurs the lines and wrinkles. I'm a little wind-blown, in case you're wondering about the coiffure.

It was cold and it was cloudy most of the time but a walk along River Street when it cleared some showed me this nice sunset.

There was also time for Bonaventure Cemetery. Remember Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? Weird movie. This is the place where some of the action took place. The "Bird Girl" statue from the cover of the book and shown at the end of the movie has been moved to a city museum because she was being loved to death. 

Here are just a couple of views from Bonaventure. I can't wait until I can go back.

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Thought of the day:
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton. (William Tecumseh Sherman, to President Lincoln, when he captured Savannah in December, 1864.)

A good man

Tonight, thanks to the Andersonville bookstore manager, David, a few of us went to Plains, Georgia to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site's visitor center. He said there was going to be a community Christmas carol sing-along and what's more, the date had been changed from next week to today. His guess was the change was to accommodate President and Mrs. Carter's schedule. 

What luck. The sing-along was fun, with the audience alternating songs with community groups and church choirs. The first group was a rousing gospel chorus that I wished would go on for hours. The last group was from Georgia Southwestern State University. Their first song was a madrigal and I thought, oh, crap, because I really don't like madrigals but they proved me wrong. It was wonderful. They performed four songs and partway through I noticed that two of the performers, as well as the director, looked pretty familiar to me. Because I don't get out much I didn't have to think hard to figure out that they all played parts in a performance of White Christmas I saw in Americus last week. This is a small community.

The real stars, though, were President and Mrs. Carter. We scored seats two rows back of where they sat. Right behind them were two Secret Service agents, and that was the extent of their protection detail. No clearing the building, no metal detectors, no wanding. Everyone just walked into the auditorium and sat wherever, except for the four seats reserved for the Carters and their security.

Before they took their seats they came down our row to greet us. Thank heaven I put on a clean shirt. And after the show they spent time with anyone in the audience who wanted to speak to them. I asked one Secret Service agent if I could take a picture of President Carter and my friend, a World War 2 vet, and he said I could ask the President myself. Imagine that. I did and he said, "I'm a World War 2 vet myself."

This is how close I was sitting to the Carters. Yeah, I'm a star-gazer.

The Carters with part of the University group and its director. These young folks are so talented - beautiful voices and they mastered difficult music.

The World War 2 vets, born five months apart and still going strong.

 
It was a fun time, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I said afterward that President Carter is the only living President I'd choose to shake hands with. He's always struck me as a good, decent man. I'm so happy to have had the chance to meet him.

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Thought of the day:

People make a big fuss over you when you're President. But I'm very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn't go to my head. (Jimmy Carter, and he's done a good job of it)

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/good_man.html#v3u287Fw0cl18ikI.99

 

What are you thankful for?

A Ranger here at Andersonville has a favorite saying: "No whining!" Is it cold? Are the gray skies starting to get old? No whining! Is it too long until lunch? No whining! You have shoes, you had breakfast, you had a bed to sleep in last night. He makes a really good point. I might not be happy with everything every day, but I have many things to be thankful for:

• A warm, safe place to live
• Healthful, plentiful food
• Good health
• Being productive and helpful
• Friends and family who've supported me through some rough times
• The ability to appreciate beauty that's everywhere around me
• Health insurance (and today I'm not whining about the cost)
• The means to live the way I do

This is not all. The one thing I am most thankful for is that I am loved. What more could anyone ask for than to be softly tucked into someone's heart?

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Thoughts of the day:

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude. (A.A. Milne - 
Winnie-the-Pooh)

Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' (Anne Lamott - Traveling Mercies)

It stains my soul with color

I went to Macon for the second time a couple of weeks ago. That place is an architectural gold mine. When I found four places listed on the National Register, I thought I'd gone to heaven, but when I tried looking up a particular house online, a gorgeous confection on the corner of Spring and Georgia, I learned that there are more than six thousand properties listed on the National Register in Macon alone. I was quickly brought back to earth. I have a lot of work to do to see more of what survived Sherman's army.

One beautiful place is St. Joseph's Catholic Church. It was built from 1899-1903, was designed by Brother Cornelius Otten, features a domed cupola, flying buttresses (not so sure about that), stained glass windows from Bavaria, and a high altar of Carrara marble.

Here's a photographic serenade to this wonderful building:

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Thought of the day:

...I'm innocent still - inside me are stained glass windows that have never been broken - and when I see your light it stains my soul with color ... (John Geddes, A Familiar Rain) 

The mystery of the Andersonville dove

Civil War grave number 12196 marks the final resting spot of Maine Sergeant Lewis S. Tuttle. 

His headstone would be nearly anonymous among the sea of almost 13000 headstones of those who died at Andersonville, if it weren't for the dove that is posed atop it.

Tuttle was captured in Virginia with his brother on May 19, 1864. Not much is known about him, other than what his service records say: he was six feet tall, fair-skinned, with light hair and gray eyes. He had a wife named Lydia Ann and two daughters, Clara Ella and Addie Cora. He died November 30, 1864 of diarrhea, a common cause of death. In fact, diarrhea, dysentery, and scurvy caused the most deaths at Andersonville. 

Lewis's brother David also died there; his grave is number 12322. The graves are numbered sequentially in order of death or in order of the death being recorded, in most cases generally coinciding. This means David died within a week or two of his brother. A third brother, Loren, was perhaps the luckiest of the three: he was shot in the shoulder and was discharged.

No one knows when or how the dove appeared there. It's one of the enduring mysteries, certainly a sweeter one than the mystery of the identities of the nearly 500 soldiers whose graves merely have the notation Unknown Soldier marked on them.

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Thought of the day:

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known? (Charles de Lint)

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/mysteries.html#GDCRcfOOKr1AVpaU.99