dom.blog

This past weekend I had a “mystery weekend” on my calendar courtesy of Randi, which I figured was probably a trip to somewhere either (a) objectively interesting to visit, or (b) in a new state. On Friday night it turned out we were on our way to Atlanta, which ticks both boxes! What follows is our busy 48 hours in Georgia’s capital. Ignore all the grey skies and raincoats… in comparison to Chicago, it was basically tropical.

Welcome to Atlanta!

Visual metaphor for the rain

So, a couple of things about Atlanta. As its Wikipedia entry notes, the city was burned to the ground during the Civil War, before regrowing to prominence as a well-connected railway hub rather than a classic southern seaport city such as Charleston. Walking around, therefore, it doesn’t feel so different to a typical Midwestern city, aside from the large number of construction signs which begin with the word “pardon”. (“Pardon our progress!”) That said, it was pleasantly and surprisingly walkable, and the city has invested in some dedicated walking/biking routes as well as a rapid transit system. And to Georgia’s credit, Atlanta is the state capital rather than a town in the middle of nowhere as often seems to happen. I suspect, however, that the politics inside the golden-domed Capitol building is quite at odds with the city around it. There are still four large plaques by the entrance, erected by the “Daughters of the Confederacy” in 1920, retelling the capture of the city by the “enemy” Union forces. Travelling in the age of Trump can make you twitchy about such things.

Wouldn’t win any prizes in a Historical Argument & Practice essay, but still

Because fact into doubt won’t go

This was particularly true on the tour of CNN’s global headquarters, which is one of the major tourist attractions in the city. In ordinary times, I wouldn’t exactly be a CNN ‘fan’, but this is 2018 and the world is a strange place, so we went on the tour. At first everything was lighthearted and jovial, our guide cracking a joke at the BBC’s expense in the same way the guide on the BBC Broadcasting House tour will throw shade at CNN. But then a solitary guy in a leather jacket starts asking repeated questions about political bias before launching into an intense monologue about news “propaganda”, while the poor tour guide puts on a neutral listening face and murmurs “fair enough” and I wonder if we’re all about to die. I’m not sure if this guy was expecting to stumble across the top-secret Fake News studio on a public tour, but it was a good microcosm of the era we’re living through.

My “always pleased to see a railway” face

Later I got cocky (and then wet)

Oh, Jimmy…

Atlanta is also home to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, so I was excited to expand my celebrated art series of stupid poses with presidents. Disappointingly, though perhaps in keeping with the humble legacy of the Carter administration, the best I could find was this photo on the wall. (Later I found an actual statue outside the State Capitol, which made up for it.) The most striking thing I learned about Carter was that his Oval Office furniture arrangement was all out of whack, with back-to-back sofas and a desk in the middle of the room. Clearly things were never going to go well with that layout.

The most significant figure from Atlanta, of course, was Martin Luther King. The National Park Service maintain a historic site including a museum, his birth home and the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where he preached. If you visit you can sit and listen to a recording of one of his sermons, and I like to think it wasn’t a coincidence that they were playing the one where King warns against cynical advertising of cars a week after the very same speech was literally used to sell cars during the Super Bowl.

An actual statue!

Ebenezer Baptist Church

A puffin!

We had planned to see the World of Coca Cola, but there is a limit to how ‘ironically’ you can do such things, so we opted instead to see the cool fish, amazing dolphins and cute puffins at the famous Georgia Aquarium. And while I realise this is an awkward-as-hell transition, it does remind me of the excellent seafood place we ate at on Saturday night too… 😳

Other food highlights this weekend included the obligatory fried chicken with biscuits and gravy [sic] and Mary Mac’s, a giant ‘tea room’ with a home-cooked vibe. I wish we could have stayed longer, because I’m not done with their side plates!

Fish, searching desperately for the plastic they are used to

Choose your own adventure

Atlanta, you were an awesome surprise.

Like Florida, I had Pennsylvania down in my mind as a state left in an untidy state. I had visited the city of Philadelphia before, back when I looked like this…

At the Liberty Bell!

…but another trip was required, so I could make it ‘official’ and take lower-quality pictures of grown-up me with the same underwhelming Liberty Bell like this…

Back at the Liberty Bell!

At the Magic Gardens

…so that is exactly what we did. Together with Mike, Randi’s friend from New York, we enjoyed a whirlwind but quite glorious weekend in Philly. I’d forgotten how much I liked the East Coast! Since we were only there for one night we stayed in a ‘proper’ B&B (the kind with cooked breakfast and free wine in the evenings) as an extra treat, right in the historical centre, which put everything within easy walking distance. We saw the quirky Magic Gardens, took an excellent walking tour, hung out by the harbour, ate lunch at Reading Market, visited Independence Hall (“we don’t really know what the actual layout was, and this isn’t the original furniture, since the British burnt it all”) and were treated to lunch by my something-something-somewhat-removed cousins Roger and Lily Ann. Oh, and before leaving I made sure to eat a proper Philly cheesesteak too. All in the sunshine!

There is a lot of history here, but ‘Franklin walked down this alley’ is pushing it

Our walking tour guide outside (surprisingly cheap) historic homes

Ice cream: easy to obtain, harder to eat

Lunch with Roger and Lily Ann

I turned up too late for my constitutional input to be recognised

The most unexpected experience, however, came in the last few hours of afternoon wine at the B&B. In the living room, a cheerful couple from Georgia introduced themselves, explained that Southerners will always start up conversations with strangers, and told us that they were on a trip to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Things got a little weird when they started to enthuse unironically about the ‘life-sized’ Noah’s ark in Kentucky, and it soon became clear that we were sitting opposite two bona fide creationists.

“Were you brought up in the church…?” asked the man. You have to understand that he had the sweetest, kindest face you can imagine, sounded a little like Bill Clinton, and we were all having a warm and friendly conversation. So we certainly didn’t want to start fighting with them. Randi parried the church question with her Jewish upbringing (which earned warm smiles and much praise for Israel) while I tried to use “I’m English!” as a euphemism for ‘godless heathen’.

I really wanted to gently introduce the a-word at some point, just so they could go home and tell their own stories about meeting out-and-out atheists at a B&B, but sadly I never quite worked up the courage for fear of derailing the vibe. Instead, when Randi and Mike left to catch their bus to New York, the couple asked permission to say a prayer over them for their safe journey. Later, once Randi and Mike had gone, the three of us tiptoed around the topic of healthcare together, and I saw again how the “some people are cheating the system” feeling can be so overpowering of all other rational consideration.

To be clear, I’m not trying to mock them. They were obviously wonderful people, and while I’m sure we were not that far away from reaching more uncomfortable topics, they actually said nothing ‘offensive’ on the Great Culture War issues you can easily think up. But I did feel sad, because creationism always makes me sad, and despite being sat on a sofa opposite them we might as well have been on different planets. No possible way to get through. As a human being, it’s a terrible thing to not know what you are, what you’re made of, and were you came from. (That’s why the moment Buzz Lightyear discovers he’s a toy is so devastating!) And yes, I know they feel exactly the same way in reverse.

At the Kingston Mines with Rhi

Earlier in the week, back in the secular bubble I inhabit, I had a birthday to celebrate! Randi prepared a carefully curated list of restaurants to eat at, and naturally I picked our nearest Indian place because (a) I’m unimaginative, and (b) Cumin is really and truly delicious. For a few days we also hosted Tash’s friend Rhi on the Chicago stop of her around-the-US trip (by train, obviously). We wanted to make sure Chicago made a good impression, so lined up a blues night at Kingston Mines plus Like It, Love It, You’ve Gotta Have It at Improv Shakespeare. (It was a particularly good production, as two dairy farmers sought revenge on the King for murdering their cows.) Rhi is the kind of sophisticated, thoughtful traveller who has already written her own blog post on the visit so you can judge for yourselves how successful we were on Chicago’s behalf.