On this ride I have surprised myself by my interest in national sites, museums, and cultural venues. My brother would be happy to wander the wilds on Isle Royale; I would stay in Minneapolis at the Walker to marvel at how tiny Merce Cunningham was if those dance costumes were really his. Gettysburg, whose experience […]
Selma, AL
Maybe even more important for a Civil Rights experience than the Lorraine Motel, TN, or Jackson, MS, or possibly Greensboro, NC, is Selma, AL. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden have walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge to celebrate the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and honor the marchers, including the late Representative John Lewis. I […]
Life Change – Blakeley State Park, MS
How do you start a life change? Is it like a race? After prep or training, stretching, lined up, waiting for the gun. Pop. You are off. Similarly, how do you finish? Is it crashing through the tape, collapsing, exhausted, dry heaving, hearing manly comments, “Bro. He left it all on the field, man!”? Or […]
Oddities
These may be incredibly silly, boring, or inconsequential. Think of them as Polaroids – and if you don’t like what you are reading or seeing, shake it. Maybe like an Etch-a-Sketch it will give you something more appealing. ======= The campground I am staying at seems to have a number of feral cats. As I […]
Curiosities and Particularities: Still vs. Moving Image
There isn’t a museum or interpretive site that does not use video. They all use still images as well, frequently as a backdrop or wallpaper to highlight, comment, or expand upon the display, image, or video. The orienting video at the Civil Rights Museum, established by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, where […]
Montgomery – My Planned End
I arrived in Montgomery exhausted. I had seen so much at such an emotional pitch from Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel to Emmett Till’s unpublished image as well as Civil War photographs and repeated Civil Rights images. I was a wreck. But I had promised myself that Montgomery would be the terminus of my […]
Curiosities/Peculiarities: Historyomath
Historyomath is my term, like ethnobotany, of combining two disciplines to answer a question. It likely exists, possibly in sociology as demographics or in economics as econometrics. Were I still a professor, I could toddle over to the history department and ask my questions until my annoyance sent me off with a list of books […]
Blues, Capitalism, and Technology
B.B. King lit out for Memphis after a runaway tractor tore off its exhaust pipe while being put in the shed. The museum devotes floor space to an exhibit on the tractor, including photographs of the plantation owner, Johnson Barrett. The exhibit, like most contemporary museums, nudges you to walk along the section. Terminating the […]
Magnolia State
I have fallen for Mississippi. It is an opera — great drama, tragic sadness, indomitable spirit. Geographically, there are four distinct regions: The Delta, which I had always thought was the area where the Mississippi met the Gulf, but is the region between the Mississippi and the Yazoo; the Northern Hills, a border region with […]
Lorraine Motel – National Civil Rights Museum
Note: If you have not been to or know about the National Civil Rights Museum experience, this is a spoiler alert. Read past the ================ demarcation and you will learn about the reveal for which I was unprepared. The National Civil Rights Museum is the most surprising museum I have experienced. The museum has a […]
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