Endings Happen

Tuesday, 29 November, 4:35 PM, Car 2901, Roomette 2, Train 29, the Capitol Limited (Washington, DC to Chicago).  Between our 4:05 PM EST departure and our 8:45 AM CST arrival, we will have traveled 780 miles. Our light is fading, although the clouds are thinning so that most of the sky is now open.  It wasn’t like that today.  We left the hostel at about 11:00 in a light drizzle and arrived at Union Station soaked.  We first thought to wait for the Circulator Bus and then decided to walk to the US Mint to get more of the new Garfield (not the cat, the president) dollar coins.  And eventually we were so wet it didn’t matter anymore.  So it goes.

Our days in DC were busy, probably why I haven’t written.  The hostel was full of youthful travelers and our co-ed room always had two extra males.  I’ve mentioned the two Italians.  We also had several Spanish men as well as several South Korean and Southeast Asians and a young man who deserves special mention.

He was from New York, somewhere in an artsy field.  He told me he was here for a wedding that is costing somewhere past $1,000,000, at which Diana Ross was the entertainment and he, my unnamed informant, got to sit at a table with (an equally) unnamed female movie star.  “I got on everybody’s pictures,” he gleefully told me.  In our three minute conversation, the word “narcissist” flashed into view frequently. A few days later the wedding was reported in the Washington Post.

We visited National Geographic, The Holocaust Museum, Museum of the American Indian, The National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Natural History, The National Gallery of Art.  The first and last two each visited by one of us.  Each is so full of exhibits, displays, and information that we felt overwhelmed and worn out.

Saturday, we rode the Metro to the end of the line at New Carrollton and Brother Al and Carol picked us up for the day.  Here we got a great leftover Thanksgiving meal.  And we talked and told stories.  The light was far gone when they dropped us back at the Metro for our return.  They joined us on Monday so Al and I could visit the Spy Museum.  Pat returned to the Portrait Gallery with Carol.

Sunday morning we walked up 11th a block to The Ascension and St. Agnes Episcopal Church for 10:00 High Mass.  And it was.  In an old, very Motherland looking Gothic church, with earthquake damage to one of the towers and the organ (rendering it unusable), we participated in the Highest of High Masses, a worship so beautiful and heartfelt I spent much of the morning wrapped in goosebumps.  

The priests and deacons and lay assistants walked slowly each of the aisles as wafting clouds of incense drifted through the sanctuary from the censor waved slowly by one of the liturgical party and a robed one and we antiphonally chanted the Great Litany. 

It was there we learned of the Service of Lessons and Carols for this first Sunday of Advent at St. John’s Church, on 23rd just past Washington Circle.  We rode Metro there, got the last two seats in the church, sang (and we all did) lustily, and caught the Circulator home.

What a beautiful and blessed day.

In 2005, we visited the Dachau Concentration Camp. The relatively small camp located a short distance from Munich had recreated barracks, ovens, guard houses, and wire: a prison camp. We walked there from our hotel in the altstadt on a cool but pleasant December morning.  By early afternoon, a winter storm had rolled in with grey skies, sleet and snow, and dropping temperatures.  These were the conditions as we walked the camp and viewed the museum, realizing that here prisoners stood outside, sometimes for hours, in such weather clad only in light, pajama-like uniforms. Our Dachau visit was very much on our minds as we walked among the accumulated horrors documented at the Holocaust Museum.  Through artifacts, numbers, survivor stories, and the photographic history of a village in Estonia with a large and eventually decimated Jewish population, the Museum relentlessly witnessed the years and deeds of the Nazi regime.

We learned also about the list of rescuers, those who hid, helped escape, or otherwise aided Jewish individuals and families.  Joining notables such as Oskar Schindler, we saw Maria Schauer of Wein (Vienna) who hid several persecuted souls in her home.  Even though the Gestapo suspected her, she was able to talk her charges out of danger several times.

The National Geographic exhibit was the “Anglo-Saxon Hoard,” a find of gold buried in a field near Lichfield in Staffordshire, England.  An old guy with a metal detector discovered a large cache of gold only a few inches below the level the field’s owner frequently plowed.  The find, valued at nearly $5 million, consisted of over 3,500 objects, dated from and before 650 AD. The displays of thin filigree, stamped animals or birds decorated with garnets, several crosses, and sword parts both decorative and useful were exquisitely done.

Returning - Train 7, The Empire Builder, Car 2730, Roomette 5.  Currently parked at the LaCrosse WI station. 30 November, 19:42.  

I woke at 03:00, somewhere early in Ohio.  Snow was falling, dry enough to drift around.  We were on a straight and smooth stretch of rail and we flew, blowing a swath of snow as we raced on.    

Taking meals on a train is one of the times I am willing to at least appear social.  Meeting other travelers and sharing stories is nearly always fun and enlightening. 

So far, we have eaten with a lone woman traveling home to Michigan who teaches in a small college, two wonderfully classy and funny African-American women (one a recovered smoker, the other still living in sin) going home to Kansas, and for today’s supper, a couple living out their retirement in West Virginia on their way to Spokane.  All very interesting, but none of them body-sacrificing, limit-pushing travelers.

Returning - Same Train/car/roomette, 1 December, 21:21 CST, ten minutes out of Minot.  Outside our window, the tan brown of weeds and crop stubble contrasts clearly with the newly fallen snow.  On fall-tilled fields, dark clumps of soil create a mosaic with the cold white.  One of those passing plowed fields contained a curious Ring-Necked Pheasant, fascinated by the daily passage of the silver Empire Builder.  Now we pass a small pond cold long enough that a firm sheet of ice covering is itself covered by an inch of unruffled snow.

The train held at Minot twenty minutes for some to get off and have several cigarettes; others to step off and say, “Damn that’s cold,” and hurry back into the warmth of the train.  I walked the length of the train four times, looking for nearby evidence of the spring flood.

The Minot Amtrak office is now located in a former storage part of the building while clean up and repairs take place in the station area.  The larger and more visible impact of the flood lies along a wide area north of the station.  Mud lines halfway up houses, boarded up doors and windows, and houses simply sitting forlornly empty define the area.  I did not learn the extent of the damage, but it looks as though the area has been abandoned of people and services.  We read in the paper that several schools in the area are unusable and sit empty.

Nearing Stanley, our next station, we see signs of the energy industry that has enriched some so much that they have begun wintering elsewhere.  To the north just past an abandoned farmhouse in the last stages of collapse, a large tank farm - framed by one of the famous mile long lignite coal trains - holds North Dakota crude. Pecking birds connected to the tanks pump oil to the surface. This will continue far into Montana.  Talk of returning Dakota to the Buffalo Commons is temporarily suspended.  The snow-capped bright blue water tower with STANLEY emblazoned on its southeast side has been given an extension.

Directly overhead, blue sky fights a slowly losing struggle against an advancing grey wall.  For the moment, fields and snow are brightly sun lit, almost overwhelming sight.  The earlier pheasant should flap his wings and raise his hoarse call.  Too soon, the grey will envelop him and draw him back into the unending struggle for survival.

We have passed already two new oil wells being drilled.  Nearby, a temporary village of camper trailers shelters the workers in brief hours away from their hard, long, and cold work.  Later, when they are in the third day of being unable to see the camper beside them, they will question.

A part of me still lives here in this land of dried fields and drifting snow.  I never really left this alone and empty place that is so far distant from, but so much like the spiritual nursery sought by long ago seers and mystics.

Home Again, Home Again: Saturday, 3 December, 08:30:  The remainder of the return went according to the script.  We arrived in Portland fifteen minutes early.  I had enough time to run downtown to Rich’s to buy three Romeo and Julietta corona cigars.  One will be the first cigar I have had in over six weeks.  It will probably make me retch.  

When we left Portland on one of the Northwest’s delightful Cascade Talgo train, I said to Pat “I can’t help but smile sitting here.”  After near four days on Amtrak’s lumbering and swaying Superliners, we could just sit back and ... smile.

Charleston, Part II

Sunday, 20 November, 7:15 PM, Notso Hostel, the Aimee Room, Charleston, SC: Thursday evening we joined hundreds of Columbians in a street fair and the lighting of the Vista Lights Christmas (Holiday) tree.  Restaurants had food samples and specials available on the street, beer and wine were poured and sold, art galleries were open and showing, stores had great specials, bands played both inside and outside, and strollers and children were present in abundance. 

Friday, our last day in Columbia began with Laundry.  We smelled.  We mailed ourselves two pounds of grits (locally ground, the same I ate at the Blue Marlin), and 3 pounds of pancake mix (North Carolina).  At the Columbus Art Museum, we enjoyed a wonderful collection of Mediaeval to Baroque religious art.  And we ended Columbia by again walking past the statue of Strom Thurmond, this time to go to the Hunter Gatherer Brewpub to sample their ales and menu.  Not as good as either Columbus or Raleigh, but still worth the walk.  

Columbia is a city dedicated to the automobile.  Outside our hotel, Taylor was six lanes heading west.  We looked up the street and it was devoid of cars.  By the time we made it to lane 4, we needed to trot the rest of the way to beat the steel monsters barreling toward us at 45 MPH.  We and poor African Americans (mostly) were the only ones on the sidewalks outside the downtown.  Very few bicycles passed us on the street.  I assumed the riders were all dead and their bicycles too mangled for anyone else to take up the challenge.  Finally, before I leave Columbia, the downtown has no where to sit.  In contrast to Raleigh which, in spiffing up the downtown decided that having places for people to sit outside was a good thing, downtown Columbia has very few such areas.  Certain oases exist --  Finlay Park, the forecourt of the Columbia Art Museum, but these were notable exceptions.  We got ourselves some theological differences here.

We realized this morning that it is still dark out at 3:10 AM, which is when we left our room and boarded a taxi for the short ride to Columbia Amtrak.  The train arrived on time and whisked us off to Rocky Mount for our rendezvous with the southbound Palmetto to bounce us here.  Have I explained why the all day, round about route when a shorter, much shorter, route was available through Savannah?  Money.  A few bucks.  The allotted Savannah pass seats were all gone and we’d have paid extra that we would rather spend, it turned out, on the $40 cab from Charleston Amtrak to here.

They tell us Charleston is expensive.  That is why we found the Notso Hostel in which we have our little Aimee’s room with burned out light bulbs and a chest of drawers in a closet too small to let us open the drawers.  Odds are we’ll find a bus to take us back to the station Tuesday.  Odds are that within a few blocks is another bus that will take us wherever we want to go.  Not having much money should never get in the way of being a traveler.  

I looked at that last sentence a bit and decided that, although inconvenient, not having much money is a blessing.  It gets us with real locals who can tell us, for example, where to get good, authentic food without a 125% pretension mark up.  Local transit riders will also let us know about unsafe areas.  In Montgomery this spring, a panhandler told us about panhandlers to avoid and not engage or be engaged by.  

Which brings us to today.  We decided to do the Charleston volkswalk knowing that the volkswalk routes often give us the best basic foot tour of a city.  And we were not disappointed.

Charleston was an important city in the colonial period and it was the site generally considered the start of the actual Civil War (The War Between the States) when Confederate troops captured Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor.  A monument in White Point Gardens across from the Fort Sumter National Monument honors the Confederate soldiers who defended Charleston and Fort Sumter before it finally was wrested away by the Union.  

The walk also took us to the immense craft market (City Market), on a seawall walkway along the harbor, among endless antebellum mansions with cobblestone or brick streets, and among the upscale shops of downtown King Street.  Just to make sure we had an incredible walk, the temperatures were in the mid 70s and the sky was blue.

We paused before the completion of the walk as we were lured into Hymans seafood restaurant by a pleasant team of young people in yellow t-shirts who wanted only our happiness and satisfaction.  We ate.  And we were happy and satisfied.  We began with a bowl of boiled peanuts after which I had a crab bisque-soup (a Low Country tradition), Pat a plate of hushpuppies and shrimp, and we shared a plate of sweet potato fries.  All this with a locally brewed Palmetto beer.  We thanked the fine people in yellow t-shirts and stumbled the rest of the way to the end of the walk and then to Notso Hostel.  Once there, we felt so good I even shaved and showered.

Tuesday, 22 November, 1:15 PM, Aboard Train 90, The Palmetto: I like the idea of a free day in the schedule.  We picked up most of the sights of Charleston in the volkswalk.  After breakfast, we went looking for the free trolley and eventually found and boarded the re-routed orange line near the Visitors Center.  Pat got off near a yarn shop, and I continued to the waterfront.  

My plan was to check out the Fort Sumter ferry and tour.  I made it to the ticket booth at 11:58, bought a ticket, and ran (in a manner of speaking) for the ferry.  The ramp was pulled off as I stepped onto the boat, and we were underway.  Not much thought in this maneuver.  The boat was full and crowded, with over 100 passengers (so said the NPS volunteer guide).

As a a Park Service intern stated in her lecture at the Fort, this was the site where the shooting war between the states began.  The actual war of politics and words was already in full swing long before Lincoln. 

In April 1861, Sumter was surrounded by local militia loyal to the Southern cause, based at several other forts.  Tensions had been escalating for some time.  The commander of the American garrison, Major Anderson, himself a southerner, was flying a vey noticeable 10X30 stars and stripes flag.  During the night of 12/13 April, a single shell was fired over Sumter, signaling the Confederates ability to fire on the fort.  This was followed by a demand for surrender.  When Anderson refused, a bombardment of the fort was initiated.  On 14 April, the fort was evacuated, along with the really big flag.  And it got worse from there.

Wandering the fort and the destroyed rooms and quarters (after the US abandoned/ceded the fort, Sumter was under attack and siege for several years and Charleston was subjected to a blockade by Union ships), it was easy to see the sites where other forts and gun emplacements were located.  It was even easier to see why one would not have wanted to be there.

Pat called me to let me know the knitting shop was closed Mondays but she had found the Southern Brewery and Smokehouse, probably the only Charleston Brewpub.  We ate well with a barbecued pork sandwich (Pat) and a huge vegetarian Ciabatta sandwich (me) and, because Pat had gotten a coupon along the way, we had a shrimp-cheese dip with chips.  We had two beers, a pale and a wonderfully smooth red.  

We were up early this morning, eager to move on.  Our timed taxi came precisely at 08:45 and we were at Amtrak by 09:10, ready to roll.  And from then until arriving here at DC Union Station, we were on the train.  Charleston, SC is about 450 miles from here, a long day’s ride.

We had on the train early Thanksgiving travelers, some of whom had little experience riding trains and so the good Amtrak people were fighting to stay near schedule.  Unsuccessfully.

Our plan was to ride Metro here, we know a stop is just 3 blocks down 11th.  We went out the Union Station west door, rode the escalator down, looked at the maps and options, and rode the escalator back up and walked to the taxi stand.  Tomorrow we will remember how the Metro works.

And here we are, ready for a night’s sleep in Room 403.  I’m in bed 4, Pat in 3 (upper), and two young Italian men are in 1 and 2.  Pat’s in her glory.

Raleigh to Columbia and the Last Capital

Monday, 14 November, 7:15 PM, Raleigh Amtrak:  Our last days in Raleigh have been a time of mostly pleasant surprises.  This morning we walked to the station to store our bags and, because the Amtrak person forgot to come back to take them, he charged us only $3.00 total, rather than $3.00 per bag.  And apologized.  Pleasantly.

in traveling as we do, travel days can be tough if there is free time and no where to hold bags.  Usually a station will hold bags for a fee, but not always.  It’s also important to watch times.  It doesn’t work to try to retrieve a bag for a late train and the station has closed.  It can happen.

Yesterday, Sunday, we walked to Christ Church (Episcopal) for the 11:00 service.  A very formal service, the music, setting, and all the moves were beautiful.  It was populated by mostly middle aged and older parishioners dressed church formally, expensively, and uniformly.  There were perhaps six men who, like me, didn’t have a suit and tie.  And most of those had shiny shoes.  I was dressed in browns rather than blue or black and wore a sweater.  Walking shoes don’t shine that nicely.

A fashionably dressed woman with (I assume) her daughter came to where we sat (probably where she usually sat), looked us over, and pushed into the pew ahead of us.  One elderly lady talked to us as we first came in, and another spoke briefly to Pat at the end of the service.  This is not that unusual, the conservative rich gather as a group for worship and hopefully give huge sums of offering money so the less rich and less snobby can do useful Christian things with it.  This only works in places where the well-dressed haven’t gotten the notion that because they are rich, God likes them  and their ideas better.

A brief notice in the church newsletter told of a concert Sunday evening:  Schola Cantorum of Raleigh is an eight-voice early music ensemble along with a 4-piece recorder consort, lutes, and viols. The group performs sacred and secular works of different countries, languages and composers dating from the Late Medieval to Early Baroque eras.

Of course we returned and, sitting in the magnificent sanctuary of Christ Church with a small group of people in rumpled academia fashion, enjoyed an hour of music that delighted our souls and made us more than thankful.

Earlier in the afternoon, we had been wandering downtown Raleigh; Pat had a vision of an ice cream cone at Chick-fil-A.  The search was getting dreary and I abandoned her to go to the NC Museum where I learned of a concert of folk and traditional music starting in but a few minutes   I quickly called Pat to inform her and headed to the museum auditorium.  From the Museum website: Sara Grey grew up in New Hampshire but also spent some of her youth in North Carolina, where she heard a lot of mountain music and developed a love for the old time banjo music and songs. She has carried this interest into her adult life studying folklore and collecting and performing music from the various areas in which she has lived, including the U.S., Wales, Scotland and England. She has been concentrating for the last several years on tracing the migration for songs from the British Isles to North America. She performs with her son, Kieron Means, who was born in the U.S. and grew up in Britain gaining a great love of the music of both traditions as well as the contemporary scene. He plays traditional songs from the U.S. and the U.K.; he also writes and performs original songs.

We, with a house full of Carolinians, tapped our feet and slapped our knees in shared joy with Sara and Kieron and music that spans time and place.

The final surprise:  We rode the circulator bus from near the Capitol to near the Boylan Bridge Brewpub and walked the remaining three blocks.  What we saw was a darkened building with chairs on tables and assumed the worst - CLOSED ON MONDAY.  Rather than disaster, we had a minor inconvenience, they opened in an hour.  I took advantage of their wireless and Pat of a picnic table to take a nap.

We shared two ales: the Endless Summer, a light English ale, and a Bruno Bitter, a heavier copper-colored English ale.  Pat enjoyed her chicken pot pie and I devoured every bit of my post roast in a bread bowl.  As dusk rolled in, we made our way down a residential area to Cabarrus St. and the station. 

Thursday, 17 November, 07:04 AM, Rm 124, Holiday Inn Express, Columbia, SC: It was past 02:00 AM when we checked into our room.  That makes, our fourth disrupted night of travel.

We walked yesterday, our 51st capital volkswalk and the completion of this project.  

We began the morning circling Trinity Cathedral, looking for an unlocked door to make it in to 08:45 morning prayer.  We had about given up when Pat walked a bit further down the street and found an open rear entrance to the chapel.  Arriving just on time, we joined an elderly priest and a parish member for the brief service.  After which, we were warmly greeted and invited to a church supper.

Refreshed by the service and motivated by a forecast for rain and storms in the afternoon, we circled the Capitol, and its many historical sculptures and monuments (pausing to discuss states’ rights with Strom Thurmond), turned south on Sumter St. and headed for the University of South Carolina campus. Crossing the campus at class change time proved useful in that any time we stopped to look at the map, a number of bright and pleasant students were eager to help us get back on track.

East of the downtown, past the mural Tunnelvision (photo posted) and Broken Plug (an immense, backed-into hydrant) by artist Blue Sky is a section of larger historical homes.  And the Nirvana Bakery and Chocolate.  Yes we did.

The surprise of the walk was Finlay Park, west of downtown, off Taylor St.  It features a huge waterfall and pond, all precisely landscaped, and with very passable views of the Columbia skyline.

And then we were done.  The kind lady at the Visitors Center took our photograph under a Columbia SC sign and we headed off to the Blue Marlin Restaurant for local cuisine.  Pat’s candied pecan salad and my shrimp and grits (the best I’ve ever had) formed part of the celebration.  A stop at the Publix grocery store gave us a bottle of Biltmore Estate (NC) Riesling, grapes, and peanuts.  Only the celebratory stop at the Hunter Gatherer Brewpub remains.

We were home, showered, and in our travel pajamas when the storm finally hit.  Wind and heavy rain here while other areas of the Carolinas and southwest were hit by tornadoes.  Here, it was over quickly with no visible damage.

11 November 2011, 2:50 PM, Aboard the Carolinian:  After rain late yesterday afternoon and into the evening, a cold front moved in and the predicted high for today is 54F, both in Richmond and Raleigh.  

A hazy blue sky sets off the browns, rust, greens, and scarce reds of mid November. An unnamed county seat with a red domed courthouse, large older homes, a brown brick church with a white spire, all bordered on one side by a dryly waving cotton field, went by as I was waking from my nap.  

I’ve always known trains are excellent venues for napping.  The rocking movement of the train induces sleep easily.  Blended noise of iron wheels on tracks, and the mutter of conversations spread a soft sound curtain.  Barring a pick up on the tracks or the sudden arrival at a stop, one can easily sleep undisturbed for an hour.  Waking, the return of consciousness and light, is a gentle process and the first look at a moving landscape is always a wonder.  It is on a train that I am most relaxed.

The year round volkswalk in Williamsburg began at a hotel a long, round about bus trip from where we boarded near our B&B on Richmond Road.  It went like this:  We got on and rode the entire Blue route, ending at the Transportation Center by the train station.  Then, walking two busses back, we boarded the Grey route bus for the ten minute ride to the walk start.  The problem turned out to be the presence of two Clarion Inns in Williamsburg.  The one on the Blue route was not the one serving as host to the walk start.  

That being done, we registered and began the walk.  The route took us past the myriad historic sites of Colonial Williamsburg and in and around the campus of William and Mary.  Next to Harvard, William and Mary is the second oldest college in the US.  It also has the oldest campus building in the nation. The Sir Christopher Wren Building, designed by Christopher Wren and built between 1695 and 1700, is fronted by a large statue of Narborne Berkeley, Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1768-1770).  

The historic section of the walk included the Commonwealth Capitol, the Governor’s Palace (1722), many recreated shops and some taverns, touring carriages, period costumed interpreters, and the Bruton Parish Church (1723).  

We returned to the Church Thursday for noon prayer and an informative talk on the history of the church.  Located near the seat of power, it was a typical Anglican (now Episcopalian) church.  Many of the early leaders of the colony are buried in the floor of the church and the pews are labeled with the names of the powerful who worshiped there.  Among the names were Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison. 

The church was renovated and restored in the early 1900s and became part of a larger restoration effort which included much of the city.  John D. Rockefeller added considerable money, push, and prestige to the project.  Applewood B&B, built in the colonial style inside and out, was constructed in the late 1920s, paralleling the Williamsburg renaissance. 

 Saturday, 12 November, 04:30 PM, Room 201, Days Inn, Raleigh:  We arrived at Raleigh a few minutes late, yet with enough remaining daylight that we decided to walk to our reserved Days Inn Motel.  Once a kind stranger told us that north was the other direction, we easily made the walk up Dawson St. in twenty minutes.  

Saturday morning, we followed a local couple as they searched for an open breakfast place and ended up at the Helios for a fine breakfast with good coffee.  Had we gone there directly, we would have walked only five blocks rather than the near mile we trekked.

The Raleigh volkswalk began at the North Carolina State Museum, across from the Capitol, and remained near the downtown.  The route skirted many of the government buildings, wandered through City Market, and led us east through the old and stately Oakwood Cemetery.  There, on a hillside under the flag of North Carolina, rested over 1500 Confederate soldiers who lost their lives in their futile rebellion.  Following the route back out of the cemetery, I wandered past the final resting place of Jesse Helms, late senator and contributor of charming comments such as

Atheism and socialism -- or liberalism, which tends in the same direction -- are inseparable entities. When you have men who no longer believe that God is in charge of human affairs, you have men attempting to take the place of God by means of the Superstate" (1973).  After standing there in silence for a few moments, I said, “You know Jess, I could develop a fondness for you like this.”  The ground trembled only slightly and just for a second.

Completing the walk, we followed the advice of a woman at the Visitor’s Center (where we registered for the walk) and ate at Clyde Cooper’s BBQ, a local institution since 1938.  North Carolina barbecue is a vinegar based sauce with a little heat.  I had the pork and chicken combo, Pat a barbecued pork with cole slaw sandwich.  If you’re ever in North Carolina ...

Across the street from our hotel window is the Babylon Restaurant.  We can see candles flickering on tables and gas torches along a wall.  It is unlikely that we will eat there.  

Instead, I have been researching local brewpubs along the way.  In Indianapolis, we dined at the Ram.  In Columbus, we ate and drank at the Columbus Brewing Company.  In Charleston, there was no brewpub.  In Richmond, we attended the Capitol Ale House (not, alas, a brewpub).  Here in Raleigh, we have the Boylan Bridge and the Natty Greene brewpubs, both of which sound pretty good.  

Boylan, located near the Amtrak station, has some train-themed brews.  Natty (Nathanael) Greene, was the general leading the military end of the southern rebellion against England’s rule, and did so, they say, brilliantly.  Tough choice.

Going to Richmond

Thursday, 10 November; Applewood B&B, Williamsburg, VA:  Our last morning of grand comfort.  We are here using our remaining Stash Tea 2-nights-for-one coupon.  Our room, the Tree Top Suite, is a converted attic that has a cozy bedroom with a fireplace, and a long adjoining room with a television, a trundle bed, some antique furniture, a case of books, and a few art prints ranging from a Monet to black and white photographs of Cambridge, England, to two needlepoints, one of the 18th century Bruton Parish Church, just a few blocks down the street.  

Denise Fleck, our innkeeper, has been very kind and gracious, taking time to sit with Pat and talk about the house and her experiences with running a B&B.  She also makes wonderful chocolate and such treats she sets out in a glass covered dish for us to eat.  As I write, I can smell something from Smithfield Ham working its way into our 09:00 breakfast.

But let me catch up.

Sunday morning, 6 November, we rose early, had our last breakfast at the Charleston Holiday Inn Express, and, the day being clear and cool, decided to walk the kilometer or so to the train station.  We were there early for our 08:20 departure, our last ride on the Cardinal.  

The ride was beautiful with the path lined with fall colors, mostly tending toward brown.  We followed the Kanawha River up a gentle canyon, past the confluence of the New and the Gauley Rivers (to make the Kanawha) at Gauley Bridge, and under the 876’ New River Gorge Bridge, the second highest bridge in the country.  The train was full of photographers shooting through the streaked windows.  Right under the bridge, they all suffered stiff necks from trying to see straight up.

We arrived at Richmond at dusk and took a $30.00 cab ride (including tip) to the hotel.  We left Richmond Tuesday on Amtrak for Williamsburg, arriving at the station early to collect our tickets.  This time, the ride to the station cost a mere $3.00 on the city bus.  

Richmond has two stations, an old, once grand downtown station and a newer suburban station about six miles out of the city.  As the automobile fades, people move back into the city and more housing is created for them, these suburban stations may prove to have been not so good an idea.

We walked Richmond on Monday, probably the most interesting volkswalk we have ever done.  The walk included the sites we usually find, but Richmond has also an updated canal system that has been turned into a walking path, and a section on top of a flood wall along the James River.  And, more importantly, the walk begins and ends at the Legend Brewing Company with a good menu and even better ales.  All this and the day, mid 60s and clear, made the walk both unique and wonderful.

Charleston, Part I

Saturday, 5 November, 12:30 PM  We walked this morning through the nearby mall together, stopping to retrieve my hat from the post office where I left it earlier.  After a visit at Taylor Books in search of 1) a depressed and cynical local poet, and 2) information about a local tavern that might do folk and/or bluegrass music (both negative), we parted ways.

Pat went off searching for art shops and galleries, I went wandering, finding the Anchor Tobacco Company (a classy and well stocked cigar store) and not much else.  I returned here to write after a few uninteresting streets.

We walked Charleston Thursday, getting an early and cool start.  The route took us out Kanawha Boulevard - which parallels the Kanawha River - to the West Virginia Capitol.  We circled the Capital Complex grounds and made our own route back, angling up to the Capitol Market, a year-round indoor market.  Picking up supplies for supper, we stopped at our hotel and dropped them off before returning to the Hampton Inn, a block farther, to check out of the walk and stamp our books.  Three capitals remain.

Yesterday, we walked again to the Capitol to view the museum, take a tour of the Capitol, and roam its halls and environs.  On the return, we stopped at the mall food court to take a grilled chicken salad from Chick-fil-A to supplement our supper.

Both the capitals of Ohio and West Virginia have no security checkpoints or barriers, a rather pleasant and unexpected convenience.

We are scheduled to leave, again on the Cardinal, at 08:20 AM tomorrow (Sunday).  Our route takes us to Charlottesville (we visited there a few years ago with brother Al & Carol) where we move to an Amtrak Thruway Bus for the run to the Richmond Staples Mill Station.  All this is a bit bewildering since tonight we magically switch to Standard Time and the morning will be an hour lighter.  

I have enjoyed Charleston.  The setting is lovely and, even though the leaves are past their prime, they are beautiful and and make every walk an aesthetic wonder.  People have been friendly and helpful, nothing unusual in that.  By and large, people “dress up” more than we are used to.  We noticed this right away in Indianapolis.  Heels are commonplace, white shirts and ties adorn young male interns and flunkies.  I don’t think I’ve seen a shop clerk in jeans.

The influence of Big Coal, though waning, is still significant and it’s easy to find someone who is defensive about the issue.  Coal has made West Virginia, and I expect its sudden demise would have a terrible effect on the state’s economy.  And yet Big Coal’s damage to West Virginia, its habitat and people, has been significant.  Looking at the available history, Big Coal has not been a particularly benevolent master and the workers’ battles, especially for health and safety, have been difficult and painful. 

The museum told some of the story of coal.  The geologic part is thorough and well done.  The labor battles, often violent and bloody, were told with a fawning objectivity, but the environmental issues were dealt with with a great bent toward the viewpoint of Big Coal.  We all suck up to whomever is paying the bills, even if it’s with our money.

I am already regretting not getting the Senator Robert Byrd fiddle tunes CD at the museum.  It’s the kind of thing for which I have a fondness.

A Long Night, and More

1 November, 6:00 PM, Greyhound, I-70 south:  We pulled out of Columbus a half hour late with a stressed driver, twin to the Bus Nazi we had somewhere in the south the past winter.  We have been ordered to make no sound.  Fine with me.  

Columbus, we decided, is a fine, friendly, and culturally rich city that has some hard times.  The downtown shows a lot of empty spaces, but there is construction and activity - not as much as Indianapolis which looked in much better overall shape.

Our Comfort Inn was in the German Village neighborhood of Columbus.  Settled by German immigrants in the 1860s to early 1900s, it is a large area of red brick streets, walks, and houses, looking much like those of numerous villages in Germany.  Some houses have been converted to restaurants and shops and include some of the city’s better eateries.  

The Columbus volkswalk started at our hotel, wound through the old brewery district (a focus of redevelopment), up along the Scioto River, past the Statehouse, and then took a winding path through German Village.  It was a lovely, delightful walk on a cool, mostly clear day.

Pat was feeling unwell and at the end of the walk, returned to the room to rest.  She was experiencing an upset stomach, headache, and extreme tiredness.  This was much of what I had been doing earlier.  And, at 2:00 AM, I woke with shooting pains in my left foot.  It was probably the cured deli meats in my sandwich and a day’s walking on uneven bricks.

Sunday, we mostly laid around, slowly recovering.  Monday, I needed to finish and send two submissions for the Salal Review and Pat, now almost back to 100%, wandered the streets and shops of German Village.

We ate last evening at the Columbus Brewing Company restaurant, located near the river less than a kilometer from our hotel.  It is a newer building with the brewing tanks behind a glass wall at the back of the restaurant.  Pat ate an Asian Chicken Salad and I Jambalaya, both excellent.  We started with a beer sampler of the brewery’s menu, including a sort of Oktoberfest and a heavily hopped autumn brew. 

As our bus continues down the road, the sun sits on the horizon and the yellow evening light illuminates the dry harvested fields.  Houses and barns are turning dark except for a west corner reflecting a glowing red gold.  Much of the fields are the dull grey tan of autumn except for green patches of weeds and strips of grass between fields and along stream and drainage beds.

Before leaving today, we wandered downtown Columbus and enjoyed, along with a couple from the UK and a woman from Pennsylvania, a tour of the Ohio Statehouse led by a retired history teacher.  

At the corner of Broad and Front, the 555.5 foot LeVeque Tower, built in 1924, has no public-friendly observation deck as Smith Tower in Seattle does, but we did see a gallery of old photographs of the tower and neighboring area on the second floor, a window behind a huge arch with many ladybugs, and spiffy art-deco murals in a corner of the first floor.  It is a beautiful building and I have taken way too many photographs of it.

Just across from the Tower, the 1928 City Hall is fronted by an immense sculpture of Christopher Columbus.  To continue that theme, we walked briefly along the river to view a replica of Columbus’ Santa Maria and a statue commemorating the city’s Italian immigrants.

2 November, 02:00 AM, Union Station, Cincinnati.  The Cardinal hit someone out of Chicago, we are told, and is running about three hours late.   The later we arrive in Charleston, the less time we have to spend wandering around in a zombie state waiting for our room.  

3 November, 06:30 AM, Rm 327, Holiday Inn Express, Charleston, WV:  The following two news items have relevance:

Officers were called to the (Cincinnati Greyhound) terminal around 11 a.m. Monday after a man on a bus flashed a gun at several employees of Greyhound.  When the workers saw the gun, they ran.  The man then reportedly locked himself in the bathroom of a vacant bus.  Officers tried negotiating with him, but the man shot himself and died. 

(from website of WKRC, Local 12, Cincinnati)

An Amtrak train hit and killed a teenage boy in south suburban Lansing on Tuesday evening, officials said.  The victim was identified this morning by the Cook County medical examiner's office as David Kivo, 16, of the 2600 block of Ridge Road in Lansing. It was not known why he was on the tracks.  Amtrak's Cardinal, headed for New York City, was about four miles north of Dyer, Ind., about 7:10 p.m. when the boy was struck, said Vernae Graham, a spokeswoman for Amtrak ... The train, which left downtown (Chicago) at 5:25 p.m., was heading southeast, traveling about 60 mph when the boy was struck, Graham said. The train was stopped for several hours for the investigation, Graham said. (from the Chicago Tribune website)

We were waiting for our bus at Columbus when Pat heard rumor of the first story.   

Awareness of the second story came to us at the Cincinnati Greyhound Station when I checked the status of the Cardinal.  We were scheduled to leave on the Cardinal (Amtrak train 50) at 03:27 AM.  Julie, the Amtrak robotified 800 lady, said, “I’ll get you an agent,” always a bad sign when dealing with schedules.  The final story was revealed by an announcement on the train in the morning which said the man walked out onto the track directly in front of the train and was hit and killed. It was likely a suicide.

Whether we remain at home, at work, or we travel, we all are in contact with a few whose lives have lost all bearing and meaning, whose integrity and dignity has been stripped from them, who are angry, in intense pain, and desperate.  You know I could go on. For the rest of us, the smug “normals,” we can only rely on Frank Zappa’s assessment that our saving grace is that we don’t know how lame we really are.  There.  You’ve had your dose of cynicism for the day.

Dawn appeared in fog as we rolled past farms and through small towns and forested lanes.  The beauty of morning light and autumn woods is not to be neglected, so I awoke from my restless sleep and watched.  I had only slept about three hours in small snatches and uncomfortable naps, but this was not to be missed.  And as we traveled on, the fog lifted into a beautiful golden sunshine as only autumn can give.

Rather than the scheduled 09:20 AM arrival, we arrived in Charleston at noon and, looking over the downtown across the river, decided to walk to our hotel.  After taking a short lunch stop and finishing our walk, the Holiday Inn Express kindly checked us in early.  We went to our room, dropped our packs, showered, and slept to sunset.

Travel designed to test one's Mettle

23 October 2011; 7:10 PM - Portland International Airport. Virginia backed her black sedan into our driveway at 3:45 PM and popped open her trunk.  We threw in our bags and she drove us to the Kelso Amtrak station.  We arrived in Portland at 5:45, and walked to the MAX station a half block away for light rail to PDX.  With a quick self-check (we printed the boarding passes at home), we were ready to fly.  We both cleared security on the first try.  We leave tonight at 11:10 to arrive midmorning in Indianapolis. 

The hardest part of the day has been getting my compression socks on.  This is a part of a plan to NOT develop a massive blister on the arthritic joint of my right foot, one I typically struggle with until we return home, a month or more later.   

Same Day; 5:51 PM - Room 604, University Center Hotel.  We rode the city Green Line express from the airport and decided, after considering a vague map, to to walk to our hotel.  We left without taxi or transit numbers and it was a smooth, easy, and delightful fall walk, aided and abetted by several IU-Purdue students.  The good people here let us into our room at 1:30 rather than hold to the 3:00 check in.  We slept the interim.  I see it a good sign that we drew an all-nighter which included two hours at the Detroit airport and came out no worse than we did when we weren’t this old.

Tuesday, 25 October.  The forecast for today was for 74F, clear, and windy.  It was accurate and gave us a marvelous day.  We walked from our hotel to the Visitors Center at White River State Park, much of it through the Indiana University-Purdue campus.  There, we registered for the walk, studied the map, bought the necessary postcards, and chatted with the Center staff before we walked off on one of the most pleasant and enjoyable walks of all the states.  Undoubtedly the balmy weather helped.

Indianapolis is a veritable anthill of activity: street work, painting buildings - workers busy everywhere.  A large part of this is preparation for the Super Bowl next year.  It seems another major part is simply a city expressing its belief they have a nice place to live and let’s spiff it up a bit more.  

Almost half the 11K (6.9 miles) walk was on the Central Canal stretching from the White River to 11th St., on the far border of the downtown.  Dug in the early 1800s as part of a commercial transport system, the canal has been reworked several times previous to its emergence as a delightful recreational part of the community.  The autumn leaf littered green-blue water gently flows between bricked walkways, most fronted by homes, apartments, and condos.  

Today, we walked the small shops and eateries of Massachusetts Avenue.  At a small nearby mall, Pat collected some Asian food and I an Italian beef sub from a small cafe called Fresco.  We ate in an adjacent park where we spoke with Lois, a woman who raised her children during the 1970s in a small house she bought from her mother, often feeding the family fish caught just off their back porch in the Central Canal.  

Thursday, 27 October, 11:20 PM.  Yesterday we secured tickets for the Indiana History Museum and for the 2001 IMAX film of Shackleton’s Endurance  The hotel shuttle ferried us and our bags to Amtrak where we stored the luggage then walked back to the museum.

The exhibits were overwhelming.  The natural history portion had room after room of geological exhibits telling the vast history of Indiana’s magnificent rocks.  Millions of years later a special exhibit depicted through photographs, video, and sound recording, the presence of notable Indianans:  John Mellancamp, Dave Letterman, Jane Pauley, Kurt Vonnegut, Red Skelton, sports figures, military leaders, etc., etc.

The Endurance was less than an hour in length. Most are familiar with the incredible story of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica.  Rather than attempt to retell it, here’s a passage from the American Museum of Natural History:

Just one day's sail from the continent, the ship Endurance became trapped in sea ice. Frozen fast for ten months, the ship was crushed and destroyed by ice pressure, and the crew was forced to abandon ship. After camping on the ice for five months, Shackleton made two open boat journeys, one of which—a treacherous 800-mile ocean crossing to South Georgia Island—is now considered one of the greatest boat journeys in history. Trekking across the mountains of South Georgia, Shackleton reached the island's remote whaling station, organized a rescue team, and saved all of the men he had left behind.

Friday, 28 October, 6:50 PM, Room 404, Columbus OH Comfort Inn.  We wandered downtown after the viewing, roamed like teenagers at the Circle Mall and then had a snack and beer (Buttfaced Amber and Pumpkin Spice Ale) at the Ram Brewery, just a few blocks from the train station.  We hung around as long as we could stand the noise and walked to the station.  

We arrived a few minutes early at Cincinnati (3:10 AM) and were the next five hours in the 1933 Art Deco station, making several forays into the large hall and other rooms to view heroic mosaics, intricate wood work, and - later - to look for viewpoints for a brilliant red dawning sky.  Finally, we rode a taxi to the Greyhound station for our bus ride here, to Columbus.  

What is so exciting about this is that we will do this overnight ordeal again, only in reverse, when we return to Cincinnati from Columbus for our train ride to Charleston, WV.

Getting There is the Journey

There is always another "there."  This journey will take us to our six remaining state capitals and the conclusion of our US walking project.  We are now in Indianapolis; our first time here.  Saturday will be Columbus, Ohio, the next week Charleston and on and on.  By now there have been too many to compare.  "Which is your favorite?" People ask.  The question, a normal expected one that I ask others, always throws me and I mutter my way through several answers based on impulsive, random memory.  I can't imagine how this would be if we were doing something important!

I - we, although Pat is less enthusiastic about this idea than I - enjoy snags, failures, getting lost, and all those things that provide color and anxiety to stories.  Not at the time, mind you, but (echoing an idea from Paul Thereux that travel is glamorous only in retrospect) I realize it takes weeks or months - sometimes years - for an anxiety ridden dismal failure that pretty much screwed up my life to become funny enough to be a good story.

You see, although a redeye flight is always painful and unpleasant, it all went quite well.  We landed early, we could have volunteered to be bumped and collected $400 Delta credits, our luggage showed up at the same time and the same place we did, and no drunken sales rep from Mud City climbed over the seat and tried to throttle Pat.  What kind of story can you make out of that?

Ending

We stepped off the bus and stood with our bags at the closed Bowling Green station, hoping that Cousin Clint would be arriving shortly.  

“Is this the only stop in Bowling Green?” Pat asked with an abandoned look on her face.  The station is at a junction of several heavily traveled roads, including I-65.  The Cousins pulled in as we were mulling the question and a minute later we were on our way to Glasgow.

Clint and Corrine’s home sits on a ridge top with a view of the city spread below.  Theirs is a beautiful and spacious home and we were given an upstairs bedroom, one with even better views.  For me, what was most exciting about it was the array of bird feeders Clint has placed in the yard close to window views.  We saw a wonderful mix of feeding birds including cardinals, finches, jays, and others not familiar to me. 

  Glasgow is a city of about 13,000, sited in an old tobacco growing region that nearby has numerous limestone caves and caverns, Mammoth Cave being among them.  A few more days to visit the surrounding area would have been grand (but I say that about most places).

We ate at Moose’s, a local barbecue restaurant.  Moose’s had many families present:  On Thursday evenings, children eat free.  It wasn’t a madhouse - these are all disciplined Christian Conservative children - but there was energy and noise.

Glasgow has a fine area museum with a recreated soda fountain, a living room of an early twentieth century home, a country store, a pioneer cabin, and several Native American displays. Not just a good museum, it was also well cared for.  We finished our day of local culture at a nearby Cracker Barrel store and restaurant for a down home supper of chicken and dumplings amongst a horde of eaters. 

Saturday morning, was a driving tour of Bowling Green with lunch at the Chick-fil-A before being dropped at the small bus station so inconveniently located at the outer edge of the city.  Chick-fil-A is a southern fast food institution.  Based in Atlanta, someone once asked, “How many things can you do with a hunk of chicken?”  And Chick-fil-A was born.  I just checked the internet, and you can find your Chick-fil-A favorite at Bellingham, WA or on the campus of Boise State University.  Oregon is still a Chick-fil-A desert.

A short ride to Nashville for a service stop, a beautiful sunset along I-65, and a 20:20 arrival at Birmingham and we were in Doug’s white pickup on the way to the suburbs.  Arriving at their large and comfortable home, we had a moonlight tour of the trees and a relaxing time in the cool night air.

Doug and Cathy’s daughter Emily and a friend were home for the weekend.  Pat and I joined Cathy, Emily and friend for a tour of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.  The museum and research center chronicled the struggles of the Movement with copies of newspaper articles, video, and a focus on the national and local leaders.  The culmination of the exhibit was a playing of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech.  The visit was a powerful culmination to our visits to and among cities which were the center of the struggles.  In Montgomery, Little Rock, and Nashville, the history and places of the campaigns for equality formed a significant part of the volkswalks.  We couldn’t walk without learning. 

I walked back and forth comparing photographs of Dr. King.  It seemed to me that in many of the informal photographs, he looked alone, uncertain, and at times frightened.  None of that was present in his public speeches where he was always self-assured, strong, and speaking from a place near the mystical.

The Birmingham Botanical Garden is next to the Birmingham Zoo, located in an affluent suburb of the city.  The gardens extend up a hillside and include a Japanese Garden, a large fern garden, and collections of hostas, azaleas, and cacti.  We wandered slowly, catching photographs, studying plants and comparing notes in the partly clear, cool Monday afternoon.  For a bonus, we stopped at an Apple Store where I found a 4g jump drive and a new card reader.  Within minutes of our return home, I had the camera unloaded into the Air and a backup copy in the drive.  That, good friends, was a serious relief.

Our time faded fast.  After a supper at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, we said goodbye to Doug.  He would be gone to work before we would get up the next morning.

Cathy drove us to the Birmingham Greyhound Station to get ticketed for the 13:30 bus to Atlanta.  Together, we walked the clean streets, enjoying spotty sunshine after the previous day’s rain.  Churches - Methodist, Presbyterian, a Catholic Cathedral, all built in the mid 1800s - joined art deco office buildings, and new architecture in a pleasant mix.

* * * * 

The light was just beginning to fade as we stood in the ant hill of the Atlanta Greyhound Station, waiting for our bus to the airport.  Our tolerance for mayhem used up, we walked around the corner to the Marta station and rode light rail to the airport to pick up the shuttle to the Fairfield Inn, our Atlanta home for a short night.

Up at 04:30 and off the tarmac at 07:00, we flew as we came via Houston.  Pat charmed the Amtrak people at Portland into allowing us on an earlier train.  We are now home.  We have new records here for consecutive rainy days and days without sunshine.  The temperatures have hung below average since our return, making everyone cold and wet.  This sometimes impacts peoples’ dispositions.

And again, we marvel at how quickly time -- time we worried whether we would make it through -- passed by.

Yet the Ark floated while listing to the side where the elephants hung out. Wednesday, 8 March

The rain began yesterday evening and continued much of the night.  As I write, a widening runoff stream is flowing under our rental car.  The view from here is not much: Carol J’s Coin Laundry #1 Grandview, written in mirror image, raindrops bouncing off pavement, a patch of grass.  The view ends at a Domino’s Pizza fifty yards beyond.

On the other hand, this is errand day.  A rainy, cool, drab day lets us do our chores without fretting about what else we might be doing.  After the laundry, we’ll find the post office to mail Pat’s ten pounds of Mardi Gras beads and a few brochures we’ve collected.

We began this walking project not long after the turn of the century, adding one or two capitals at a time.  Some quick math told us we just aren’t going to live that long and we began earnest traveling, grouping capitals and making grand tours utilizing car, train, airplanes, ferry, and now bus.  In the 2009 autumn, we visited seven midwestern capitals, the fall of 2010 gave us ten in the northeast, and this, our first winter trip, yielded eight more.  

As we sit here, watching bouncing raindrops, we have six more state capitals to visit and walk - Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  Then we can turn our attention to the remainder of the Canadian provincial parliament buildings.  I still have fantasies of walking the pilgrim path from Hamar to Trondheim, or instead, something ending in St. Petersburg.

It is 10:30 on our last night in Frankfort.  We visited and toured the Buffalo Trace Bourbon Distillery and the Kentucky State Capitol today.  Both were fascinating.  Kentucky is, in our studied opinion, certainly among the top five most beautiful capitol buildings, right up there with Harrisburg and Hartford.  

Tonight, we attended the Ash Wednesday service with the good people at the Church of the Ascension, an Episcopalian congregation that started in 1836.  The current church was originally completed in 1852. 

The End of the Road, Part 1 Tuesday, 7 March

Today we visited Daniel Boone at the monument and grave site he shares with his wife, Rebecca, in the Frankfort Cemetery.  Their remains lie at a peaceful overlook far above the Kentucky River. His neighbors include ex-governors and legislators, business people, frontiersmen, both Union and Confederate soldiers, and probably a few ne’er-do-wells to lend a little honesty to the mix.  Imposing war memorials remind us that we spend more time, and the lives of more of the young, at war than at peace.

The walk from downtown to the cemetery was unpleasant.  A narrow sidewalk wound up the hill, passing an 1850s arsenal (now a military museum), all of it along busy, noisy, and exhaust-smelly Main.  Trucks roar up the hill a few feet away.  We pretended deafness and plodded on.

Once in the burial grounds, the noise and stench fade quickly away and the silence of a jumble of gravestones, memorials, and simple markers transports us to a sad, solemn, and quiet reality.

Well-written directions steered us down the main streets of Frankfort, to the capitol building and its nearby non-flowered flowering clock, and twice across the Kentucky River before the uphill trek to the Boones. 

The Rebecca Ruth Candy Factory gave free samples of bourbon balls, a unique volkswalk experience.  Frankfort has several bakeries, at least one winery, and an historic bourbon distillery, but I found no cheesemakers.  That would have made it a home run.

Misery Loves ... Sunday, 6 March

There are significant historical and theological differences among Lutherans and Episcopalians.  

We were walking in Nashville this morning on our way to Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal) on Broadway when we found First Lutheran Church.  We entered and joined the small congregation that didn’t come even close to filling the sanctuary.  It was a good though uninspired service with a beautiful choir, a good organ and organist, and a few friendly people.  

Theology had nothing to do with choosing the Lutherans, the issue was temporal.  Their service began at 10:30 (we walked in as the service began), and Christ Church didn’t start until 11:00.  The Lutherans would get us back on our trail a half hour earlier.  Done.

Saturday had been miserable.  A line of heavy rain moved across Nashville in the morning and ended about noon, turning to a mere light drizzle.  We deemed it safe and began the Nashville capital walk at 1:00.  Rather than quietly fading away, the drizzle increased slowly while the temperatures stayed in the low forties.  We made our way through seven kilometers of well-planned and interesting walking and, on the steps of the closed-on-weekends Tennessee Capitol (1857), we said, “Enough.”  We were cold, wet, hungry, miserable, irritated and irritating, unhappy, depressed, in pain, and operating without any natural sense of direction.  We made a line down the capitol steps, over to seventh, down to Broadway, and wound our way back to Comfort Inn as quickly as we could.

This morning, with temperatures in the mid thirties with an overcast but rainless sky, we ate our fill of the motel breakfast and, having during the night recovered our resolve, marched off to be side-tracked by the Lutherans for the sake of half an hour.

It turned out to be a good decision.  We needed the time. The entire seven and a half mile course gave us the best of Nashville’s history, architecture, and music.  One of the finest capital walks we’ve done, Nashville - for example - directed us into the men’s room at the Hermitage Hotel to view the aqua and black art deco lavatory.  A sign at the door encouraged women to view the facilities after making sure no men were, at the time, using them.  

Impressed with the Farmers Market complex north of the capital, we warmed ourselves in the food court area and wandered the nearly deserted stalls of a flea market.  Nearby, a 95 bell carillon choir played a few bars of “The Tennessee Waltz” on the quarter hour.  We would have had to wait until the hour to get the whole song.  As an alternative, we hummed the rest.  “I remember the night, and the Tennessee Waltz...”    Just after the railroad overpass, we set off on a large concrete map of Tennessee, very visible from the Tennessee State Capitol up the hill (the area abounds in steps, hundreds of them), walking from Memphis to Nashville to Fort Knox.  The area, besides celebrating and honoring Tennessee, is a memorial to the 1897 Tennessee Exposition and, with commons areas and an amphitheater, is a gathering place during the warm summer evenings.

At Ryman Auditorium, we posed with Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff before trudging to our finish at the Comfort Inn.  Ryman was for years site of the Grand Old Opry.  I remember a bumper sticker on an old red Honda Civic that read, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”  To that candy-assed punk, I say, “If you don’t remember Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl, you’re too young.”  The boy in the Honda is, by now, realizing he has blown most of his hearing on crappy music and will need hearing aids by forty.  “Oh Sonny, it’ll get worse.”

Next: How we celebrated the completion of our eighth and final walk of this series and met Rand Paul...

Goin’ to Nashville 4 March 2011

There is a scent of Bill Clinton in Little Rock.  He is, of course, omnipresent in his Presidential Library.  His face and voice never leave the Library visitor: walking the library rooms is a car wash of excerpts from speeches, ceremonies, and political moments of the life of the former president.  We become, to complete the metaphor, bathed in his high energy extraverted narcissism.  

This sounds a little negative, doesn’t it?  What comes out of the Library experience is Clinton’s perspective - his desire to do good for the people in many every-day ways.  I also saw his desire to have fun and to see that we all have fun.  In spite of his most naughty and privates behavior being laid bare to the public and the hilarious hypocrisy of his opposition, his joy in life continued.

We ate supper at the Flying Saucer - a tavern near a fracking-inspired earthquake zone - which had hundreds of themed plates hanging from the walls and ceiling.  I was emptying a glass of a local IPA when I looked up at a big platter suspended twenty feet directly above me.  Which is probably why they have a half-block long wall of beer taps.  There is in Little Rock a sense of fun and friendliness that probably did not begin with Orville Faubus.

Pat and I talked about our memories of the Little Rock Central High School (the walk took us to the school and the Historic Site Visitors Center) and the struggles of the LR-9 young people who demanded equal treatment.  These students challenged centuries when they marched into the school on 23 September 1957 and into the face of an enraged 1.000 strong crowd of self-righteous and incredibly wrong-headed whites.  I remember writing a letter - we were encouraged to do so by a teacher - that began “Who the hell do you think you are...”  

We learned that there were originally ten, but a young sophomore girl dropped out, sensibly being overwhelmed and frightened by her aloneness (the Nine were all juniors and seniors).  And I was proud to see the news clips of President Eisenhower overcoming his own hesitancies and acting decisively and honorably, as John Kennedy would do a few years later, in support of basic human equality.

Our hotel, the Legacy, was halfway between the Arkansas Capitol and the Clinton Library, on a bus route, and a mere five blocks from the River Market Trolley.

Which leads to a few words in praise of Hotels.com, a site we often use when traveling.  Hotels.com has found for us many good deals certainly, but also numerous uniquely wonderful hotels.  We periodically end up in hotels we would ordinarily have to avoid because of price.  Three examples:

In Springfield, IL, we had a room on the ninth floor of the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel with a view of the city and next door access to nearly all the Lincoln sites.

Just last week, Hotels.com found us a room at the newly opened boutique Hotel Indigo in Baton Rouge, right on the Mardi Gras parade route.

The Holiday Inn (yes, Frank Zappa asked, “Have you been to a Holiday Inn?”) in Hartford was just off the downtown and our 7th floor view was of the Connecticut Capitol.  A big deal if you’re chasing capitals.

So we enjoyed Little Rock.  When you are there, eat at Fatsam’s Louisiana Cafe in the River Market food court building.  More authentic than several places at which we ate in Baton Rouge, and they serve alligator.  I had a shrimp and white beans on rice that was fabulous.

We had a hard time leaving Little Rock.  Oh, we were ready to go, but the 10:10 bus was sold out.  We sat around grumbling, and then Pat appealed over the head of the zombie clerk to the bus driver and we were passengers 49 and 50.  And away we go.

And here we are in Nashville with a day of heavy rain forecast as well as a deluge of young blond women with guitars and NCAA basketball fans.

Next: Pat doesn’t get her star.