Writings, Wanderings

June 2017 one of my friends from high school and I did a whirlwind trip from Ohio down to the Gulf Coast and back in one week. Our route included stops in Nashville, Montgomery, New Orleans, Jackson, Mobile, and Birmingham alongside several small towns. We ate good food, shared lots of thoughts and laughs, and learned. We had been taught the basics of the civil rights movement over our years as students, but seeing places firsthand gave those lessons true meaning. One important museum in this growth was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. This Alabama museum is located across the street from the Sixteenth St Baptist Church, the site of a horrific bombing in the 1960's that killed four young girls at church. The museum's exhibits are focused in four main galleries: Movement, Barriers, Confrontation, and Human Rights. While the exhibits had artifacts from the time period, they also worked to recreate some scenes. For example, the crucial role played by the churches in Afri...

Last weekend I made a flying trip to South Carolina for a wedding reception. (And when I say flying, I don't mean that I flew but that it was a fast one, just over 48 hours gone from home, at least 18 of those spent in my car.) I arrived about two hours early for the reception, so not wanting to sit sweltering in my car, I drove a few miles over to the town of Fountain Inn and after cruising a few streets, found some public parking. My wandering led me to the Chamber of Commerce which houses a small hometown museum open for a couple of hours on a few days of the week--a few hours that happened to coincide with my visit. The museum is basically one large room that has a series of displays, each one flowing into the next. A little bit of attention is given to the earliest native inhabitants--including a display of a small collection of arrowheads--before moving into the beginning of European colonization. The right-hand side of the room moves visitors through time with a ment...