Baton Rouge and Mardi Gras

So here we are back at Baton Rouge.  We left about fifteen minutes ago but the driver determined our bus had bad, out of round tires.  Which is why we shook, which we thought was the rough road.  We await, less than expectantly, a different bus.

The prize of Baton Rouge, besides the Hotel Indigo, was in the observing - verily participating in - three Mardi Gras parades (Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening).

The parades, each different, drew huge crowds and an impressive supply of noise.  Rather than candy, the main thrown commodity was beads, cheap strands of beads of various colors, sizes, and shapes.  Some  floats tossed candy as well as variety of toys.  Pat caught a commemorative sponge rubber football, ready to remind us far into our dimming years of our 2011 Mardi Gras at Baton Rouge which is  translated, Red Stick.  Not the same.  

The Saturday evening (18:30-20:00) was the largest, most raucous, best attended, and had the most impressive floats.  

That night, a woman in front of us jumped and danced in a suit she had made of cheap coins - fake doubloons.  She of blond hair jingled when she walked, danced, or jumped.

We are now on the way to unknown parts in a Delta Bus.  All we know is that we transfer at Vicksburg to complete our journey to Jackson.  It is a very quiet bus.  Everyone is either tired from the wait and chaos, or is intimidated by Pat who snarled at several who attempted earlier to jump the line.  I try to stand back.

The Indigo Hotel opened a week ago.  We were among the test clientele. The construction, training, and operational phases overlapped during our stay.  Things like when we were eating supper Saturday evening, workmen with stepladders were mounting a large light fixture two tables over.  Corporate suits were playing doorman, waiter, valet, and sidewalk sweeper, often all at the same time.

Louisiana’s State Museum consists of two floors.  The first gives the usual museum fare of the political, social, and economic histories and development of the state.  The building’s third floor contains the noisy multi-media story of Louisiana’s delightful cultural mix.  And here I learned that Cajun is related to Acadian, as in French Canadian, Evangeline and all that.  To be Creole requires only 2.5 elements:  Speaking French, being Catholic, and being of historical stock.  Some say that having roots from the time of the Louisiana Purchase qualifies one, whether European, Native American, or African American.  I did not learn from all that the culinary differences.

The museum has an extensive Mardi Gras section.  Costumes of Mardi Gras past are displayed in all their opulent excess, and here we learned about the krewe structure and history.  Krewes (crews) are something like the German guilds of Fasnacht.  

Some vignettes:

• At Friday night’s parade, we saw a spiffy blond in tight jeans collide noisily with a fifteen year old young man in jeans and a t-shirt, both lunging for a strand of beads.  
• With the decline and actual disappearance of busing to achieve integration, schools have rapidly re-segregated with hopefully more quality and opportunity.  Marching bands from predominantly black schools had a decided edge in the realms of rhythm and enthusiasm.  Most had strong percussion sections, and a few danced their way down the street reminiscent of the jazz marching bands of earlier last century.
• At Saturday morning’s Red Stick Farmers Market, I sampled several different goat cheeses, a variety of locally made sauces, and ate a breakfast of shrimp in a shrimp gravy sauce on grits with cheddar.  Oh my! Pat’s liking the pecan pie.
• The Museum also had a display of the populist governor and senator Huey Long, including film clips of his speeches and rallies.  He was GOOD.  His ideas may have been harmed by his ego and narcissism, but he was a genuine American home grown socialist who took on the political establishment and the economic powers of his time.  And, until he was assassinated, he was beating them.
• While we waited for the Saturday afternoon parade, I walked to the capitol to check out the crowd and found the end of the Wisconsin solidarity rally with fifty or more solid labor locals showing their common cause with the besieged Wisconsin teachers, government workers, and union members.

Baton Rouge is now fading far behind us as we slowly wind our way to what the Gallup Poll just decreed as the most conservative state in the USA - Mississippi.

More Episcopalians and a Big Cemetery

Wednesday, 23 February, 10:15, I-65 to Baton Rouge

Another sunny day with temperatures predicted in the upper 70s. Yesterday was a day like this, with enough sun to redden our faces and enough overcast to keep us comfortable.

After a good night’s sleep, we dressed and walked across the street to St. John’s Episcopal for morning eucharist and a tour of the church.  Back to the hotel, we scrounged what we could of the “continental breakfast” (the clerk called it) and were walking by 09:30.  The Montgomery capital walk covered much of the historical and cultural sites of the city: Rosa Parks Museum, Hank Williams’ grave in Oakwood Cemetery, Martin Luther King Jr.’s first church (Dexter Avenue Baptist), First Baptist (Ralph Abernathy was pastor in the 1960s), the briefly used Confederate White House, a large field of Confederate soldier’s graves, and other sites and monuments.  While giving a nod to their rebellion, the focus was on the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans.  

The walk completed, we stopped at Wintzell’s Oyster House.  I had a delicious seafood gumbo, Pat a crunchy salad. Gumbo don’t crunch.

Behind the Clarion Hotel (our home for two days) is the Montgomery Auditorium.  In a park next to the Clarion is a life size statue of Hank Williams in his prime; guitar, hat, boots, suit, and sly country boy look.  Hank died on New Years Day 1953 at the age of 29 of what many young musicians die from.  His funeral, held at the auditorium, filled the room while an overflow crowd of 20,000 participated outside.  

We climbed the hill in Oakwood Cemetery to Hank’s grave.  He lies in his ornately decorated resting place just past a field of 78 French and English airmen who died in training near Montgomery during WW-II.  Further on to the west, hundreds of Confederate soldiers sleep by simple military-issue markers on a steeply sloped hillside; only a fluttering rebel flag commemorates their futile deaths.

 

Bus Rides and Evensong

Tuesday, 22 February, Tallahassee Greyhound Station

The obliterating fog is rapidly clearing, showing a clear sky and sunshine.  The forecast high temperature toddy is 78F, too nice a day to spend five hours on a bus.

We are on our way to Montgomery, AL.  We have only two night reservations there, so the stay is short.  On brief stops like this, we do an extended walk, realizing this is the only day we have.  We will do justice to Alabama after we complete the capital walks at Frankfort when we return to Birmingham.

Tallahassee is a spread-out city with a bus system that is difficult to access.  Fortunately, we had a room at the Holiday Inn at which the Florida Capital Walk began.  Following the walk map helped orient us, even though our directions were reversed.  We walked through Myers Park and through the capital complex.  The last part of the walk included too far a distance down Magnolia, a busily traveled four lane road.  The directions were funnily written and at times hard to decipher, but we made it through without getting lost.

Sunday, after perusing several maps, we walked via Lafayette downtown to wander the area.  On Monroe, we found St. John Church-Episcopal and learned of an organ recital and Evensong to began at 15:00.  We were there and it was all marvelous.  The choir filled the balcony and the organ threatened to bring it all down with thundering pipes rattling pacemakers and other implants.

The focus of the service was on American composers and ranged from modern to classical to gospel.The church was full and the singing, both choir and congregation, was strong and inspiring.  Psalm 145 was sung with a melodic chant by Charles B. Fisk who, in addition to his composing skills, was also an organ builder.  The organ at St. John is one of his works.

The bus ride here was amazingly uneventful and boring, as bus rides should be.  When I add up the distances between the capitals, I get 1500 or so miles of uneventful boredom.  Whole different picture.

Doggedly traveling

Saturday, 19 February, Tallahassee

We’re in our room after having done the Tallahassee walk, showered, napped,  and eaten supper at Applebees.    

Let us return to Olympic Centennial Park next to downtown Atlanta.  Did I fail to mention that we paused to rest and wait for “Lunch with the Elephants?” Some kids told us, “The elephants are coming.  The elephants are coming.”  And we believed them.  The circus was in town - we saw their tents beside Turner Field - and in just a few minutes, we saw them, tail to trunk lumbering down the road with visions of apples, bananas, and melons in their eyes.  In anticipation, we all cheered and shouted, “Elephants.”  I’m sure that clears up the questions about the elephant picture.

Yesterday morning we checked out of our hotel and took a slow walk down Peachtree to the Greyhound station.  Arriving two hours early, we nevertheless were among those responsible for a late start.  For improperly tagging our luggage, we were required to take it back in to the station and get the proper luggage registration and identification.  One nice lady was also improperly tagged, and a second had her luggage and tags but lost her ticket.  Still, it all ended happily for everyone except for those who hadn’t wanted to leave 25 minutes late.

The bus ride, only about six hours in length, was uneventful, even boring.  The last two hours dragged by to the accompaniment of someone a few seats behind us snoring.  S/he had no sleep apnea, no halts and gasps.  The snoring was steady as the rhythm of a copy machine.  

We have a free day tomorrow, mostly marooned with limited bus service.  What is exciting about tomorrow that Jeff, the kitchen man here at the Holiday Inn, is going to teach us how to eat gritz for breakfast. 

Walking in strange cities and towns has an element of risk to it.  One could, after all, get run over, or thrown over the top of a van.  Usually though, it turns into an unending game of chicken.  The vehicle, with either an oblivious driver or a pedestrian loathing psychopath at the wheel, comes roaring toward you in a crosswalk.  The average person will stop or jump backwards.  The steel nerved walker continues with a “Not this time,” glance at the driver.  Again, what’s crucial here is the front-end damaging potential of the walker.  

In 1989, we had the opportunity to be pedestrians in Scandinavia.  We learned to watch ourselves because if one looked as if she was even thinking of stepping off the curb, drivers would stop.  By the time we had been back home a week, that behavior had been extinguished.

Tomorrow:  Something potentially mildly interesting happens.  Stay tuned.

My Atlanta

Thursday evening, 17 February, Atlanta:

The round, glass Westin building reflects the golden setting sun and nearby brick towers glow in alpenlight.  The clear sky is rosy around the edges, sunset reflecting from gathering fog and pollution.  

Other than a huge blister on my right foot, the day was good.  We walked, we saw, we didn’t get run over by maniacal Atlanta drivers.  Being large enough to do serious front end damage serves as a deterrent.  

We just returned from our second walk today, a stroll down Auburn to Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, and the tombs of Martin and his wife, Coretta.  

Along the way, we ran into Lester, a thin, tall Black man with several missing front teeth and a black Georgia State sweatshirt.  Joining our walk, he gave a well-scripted narrative of the oldest Black neighborhood in Atlanta.  Lester lamented the fact that most people dash down the street to the MLK sites without paying attention to the community and its history.  That history included competing funeral homes, both founded by Afro-American women, a variety of shops founded and run by Black entrepreneurs early in the twentieth century, an insurance company, and a dilapidated ribs restaurant (the Rib Shack) with origins beyond the thirties.  We passed several shuttered jazz and blues clubs that continued featuring nationally known Black musicians into the seventies and eighties.  We crossed under the freeway that, like Sherman’s march to the sea, split and devastated the community.

The MLK National Historic Site was closed, but we wandered the grounds, visiting an oversized but lifelike Gandhi sculpture, and a civil rights memorial walk featuring shoe prints of Bishop Desmond Tutu, Bill Clinton, Rosa Parks, Sidney Poitier, Thurgood Marshall, and sundry others.  Bill Clinton and I have the same sized feet, besting Lyndon Johnson, Maya Angelou, and Carl Stokes easily.

Martin and Coretta now dwell in white marble in a long reflecting pool that needs some repair.  Several leaks spread across the walkway.  Located across from the Historic Site and the new Ebenezer Baptist Church, the setting is quiet and serene.

Our volkswalk gave us the best of central Atlanta: From the gold-domed Georgia State Capitol (1889) to Turner Field (the grounds are a memorial to the baseball gifts of Hank Aaron) and the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics, back to the Capitol and to Olympic Centennial Park.  Here we left the trail to walk down Forsyth to the Greyhound station and claim our Discovery Pass and verify Friday’s departure for Tallahassee.

Our hotel, the Quality Hotel, was two blocks off Peachtree and two blocks from a Marta stop, with direct rail to/from the airport.  

Oh the packing

Sometimes I think travel is just an excuse to buy spiffy travel things that can be justified for the sake of travel.  Just as we were packing for our northeast USA travels last autumn, our seven year old travel lap top blew up.  We replaced the hard drive, reloaded and upgraded what we could, and were still hampered by its frequent crashes while searching maps.  Seven years old, in dog years, is mid life, and dogs don't get outdated as quickly as computers.  Now we have a Mac Air.

Our destination is the southeast US.  You see, we are walking state capitals.  We go to a capital, find the starting point for the walk, and walk.  This is done through the American Volkssport Association (AVA), a national walking organization related to the International Volkssport Verbund (IVV).  Volkssporting got its start in Germany in the last century, and came to the USA with returning servicemen who had been stationed in Germany.

A state or local walking club develops a walk route that passes a state capital or goes right through the building.  After the walk, we stamp our record books (I carry an event record book, a distance record book, a state capital record book, and a book to record walks that go by bakeries).  We have previously filled a record book about breweries, wineries, and distilleries, and another for libraries.  This is no big deal; I often meet people who carry six or seven record books.

So here's the plan: We fly to Atlanta, walk the capital, pick up our thirty day bus pass, and away we go.  A misshapen  loop will take us to Tallahassee, Montgomery, Jackson, Baton Rouge, Little Rock, Nashville, and Frankfort.  And a month after we arrive, we fly back home, just in time to get very serious about working the soil, planting the garden, and mowing the lawn while - quietly - planning the next trip.

The southeast weather has been .... challenging.  While we basked in balmy 50 degree weather, the southeast has been shivering and probably losing a lot of garden and yard greenery.  But it is picking up.  Now the PNW is moving back into more typical rainy weather and the southeast is warming up.  BUT, will it switch again?  Last week, the packing list said WINTER.  Now, maybe spring?