NASA engineer Roy Whitson was ready, willing and able to answer any questions that we could throw at him! He told us how Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, nearly botched… CONTINUE READING >>
Retired NASA engineer Roy Whitson was ready, willing and able to answer any questions that we (or anybody else for that matter) could throw at him. Incredibly personable and knowledgeable, Mr. Whitson happily relayed first hand accounts of some of the innermost workings of the space program, all the way from the early days in the 60s to the present.
Mr. Whitson was there through it all, designing systems for the Gemini, Apollo and finally the Shuttle programs. He knew all of the astronauts personally, and referred to these pioneer explorers in the most familiar, nonchalant manner of a trusted colleague and friend.
Our favorite story had to be how Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, nearly botched the lunar landing by overtaxing the computers on the landing module. The technology of the day was so primitive by today’s standards, that handling two tasks simultaneously was causing the on-board flight computer to shut down. We literally carry around more computing power in our pockets these days than was available for man’s first landing on a celestial body in space.
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It was absolutely mesmerizing! Lit by ultraviolet light, the hypnotic jellies glowed while they bobbed and flowed across… CONTINUE READING >>
We got an up close look at life in The Indian River Lagoon at The Smithsonian Marine Ecosystems Exhibit. We wandered through the many displays detailing the reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves of the lagoon until we came upon a tank filled with jellyfish. Then we were stuck, it was absolutely mesmerizing! Lit by ultraviolet light, the hypnotic jellies glowed while they bobbed and flowed across the aquarium. Once we finally pulled ourselves away, we turned around and went back a few minutes later for another view. It was addictive.
It was a difficult few days for us as we were forced to confront thoughts and feelings that we would have much rather avoided. We addressed issues that many of us Americans would like to think have been completely resolved. But it seems to us that turning a blind eye is not the solution.
The lesson we learned is that the light of day is best, because as much as this is fairly recent history, we were taken aback by how little we knew about the details. In Birmingham, the details are on display – front and center – and in Montgomery… CONTINUE READING >>
As we continued our journey across The South, our trek led us to The Heart of Dixie, Alabama.
Our first stop was Montgomery. As the capital of the state and former capital of The Confederate States of America, this city is steeped in history, but for people of our generation the more recent history is burned more indelibly in our memories.
Montgomery might be the epicenter of the modern civil rights movement, beginning back on the first of December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus.
Our knowledge of these events was sketchy at best, so we decided to seek out some of the sites of these historic events with a bit of our usual spur-of-the-moment tourism.
Without any advanced plans, The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the Troy University campus was the first of these sites that we came upon.
After chatting with a few of the students that staff the museum, we headed inside to the focal point of the presentation, a re–creation of the bus Mrs. Parks was riding.
We entered a darkened room they call the Cleveland Avenue Time Machine, climbed aboard, and were taken for a ride through the years from Jim Crow in the 1800s to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and 1956.
The Rosa Parks incident triggered the boycott, which began as a one day event but ended up lasting over a year, before being settled by an agreement that nobody could be forced to give up their seat based on race.
The success of the boycott led to more efforts to end segregation and secure voting rights. The story of those struggles led us to The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Civil Rights Memorial Center.
The Memorial captured our attention as we walked up the street toward The Center.
The smooth granite circular slab is engraved around the outside edge with the names of people killed in the struggle for equal rights. Water washes over the stone as a constant reminder of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words, “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The Memorial was created by Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin, who envisioned the plaza as “a con-templative area — a place to remember the Civil Rights Movement, to honor those killed during the struggle, to appreciate how far the country has come in its quest for equality, and to consider how far it has to go.”
Inside The Center there is a tribute to each of the victims and information on many of the cases The Law Center has fought through the years.
After we browsed the exhibits and watched a film in the theater, it was hard not to let anger be our overriding emotion, but then we came to The Wall of Tolerance just before the exit.
Tolerance and nonviolent resistance were the hallmarks of the movement, certainly we should carry on that tradition today.
The twenty by forty foot wall is an electronic display of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have pledged to stand up for equality.
After seeing the stories of so many brave souls who gave their lives in the fight for basic American rights, it was not a difficult decision to take the pledge and add our names.
“By placing my name on the Wall of Tolerance, I pledge to take a stand against hate, injustice and intolerance. I will work in my daily life for justice, equality and human rights – the ideals for which the Civil Rights martyrs died.”
It was a deeply emotional moment watching our names appear on the wall, we’re sure we were not alone in walking out the door with tears in our eyes. Actually, Veronica was openly sobbing and the nice volunteer at the exit had kleenex at the ready, so we’re absolutely positive we weren’t the first.
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as pastor, stands just around the corner, literally in the shadow of the capitol building that was the birthplace of The Confederacy and site of George Wallace’s famous “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” speech.
Obviously the atmosphere was pretty charged around here back in the early sixties when advocates began to arrive from around the country to stand up to segregation and register African Americans to vote.
This led to some of the most extreme violence perpetrated during the entire movement, most notably the beating of Freedom Riders as they arrived in Montgomery to integrate bus service and depots in 1961, and Bloody Sunday at the Selma to Montgomery Marches for voting rights in ’65.
One of the lesser known participants in the marches was Viola Liuzzo. After the final march Viola volunteered to drive people back to Montgomery from Selma and committed the unforgivable act of being a white woman in a car with a black man. Nothing got a bigot’s blood to boiling like that.
So four Klansmen chased the car down Highway 80 and about halfway between the two towns, pulled up beside the car and shot Viola four times in the head. Even though one of the shooters was a known FBI informant, not one of the murderers was convicted by their all white juries.
In 1991 the Women of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference placed a marker for Mrs. Liuzzo near the highway at the site of the shooting.
We felt that we should see it, so we stopped on our way to Selma. We wanted to cover the exact route of the Selma to Montgomery Marches (though we were going backward), to get a real feel for what happened there.
We had to watch closely, the marker can be easy to miss, as we did on our first pass. But after doubling back we found it. In a sad commentary as to how far we still have to go, the marker has been knocked down and defaced, often by painting Confederate flags on it, many times.
We entered Selma at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, scene of Bloody Sunday, when 600 marchers were beaten and gassed as they tried to cross the bridge on their first attempt at marching to Montgomery.
Two days later Dr. King led another march, this time only planning to go as far as the bridge, to prove the point that they had the legal right to do so on the authority of a Federal District Court Judge.
The third march left Selma two Sundays after the first try, with just over three thousand people. They walked about twelve miles a day, sleeping in fields along the way, until they reached Montgomery four days later. By the time they marched up to the capitol building the group had grown to 25,000. But later that night the murder of Mrs. Liuzzo marred the success.
Before we crossed the bridge into Selma, we pulled off to see the small memorial below the eastern entrance, but it was in a sad state of repair. Once across we were a little surprised by the lack of acknowledge-ment the town of Selma seems to have for these events and the civil rights movement in general.
With banners hanging from the lampposts reading: “Historic Places, Social Graces,” the city seemed to want to play up its Southern charm more than any of its more recent history. I guess we can’t blame them too much, it wasn’t pretty, but it still struck us as strange after seeing the beautiful tributes in Montgomery.
The two biggest landmarks from the movement in Selma, the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, have not changed much over the decades, so we parked and set out on foot to retrace the route of the marchers from the bridge back to the church that had served as the starting place for all three of the Selma to Montgomery Marches.
As we walked up Martin Luther King, Jr. Street we were struck by how much everything looked like the pictures taken fifty years earlier. Other than the street being paved, The George Washington Carver Homes where many of the marchers lived and took in participants from out of town, including Viola Liuzzo, looked exactly the same.
Sometimes progress isn’t readily visible. We were ready to move on.
Our exploration into the history of the civil rights movement would not have been complete without seeing the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the site of the lowest, most cowardly act ever perpetrated by the segregationists.
On a September Sunday morning in 1963 four Klansman planted a bomb in the basement of the church and set it to go off during a youth meeting at the morning services.
Four young girls were killed in the blast, but only one of the perpetrators was arrested. He paid a small fine for illegal possession of dynamite. No one else was arrested, tried or convicted for the murders until many years later.
The church is still active and it seemed a bit unseemly for us to treat it as a tourist attraction, so we went across the street to The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The Institute, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, had by far the most extensive exhibition about the civil rights movement that we had seen in our travels.
Set up as a walking journey, multimedia exhibits took us through the turbulent decades of the fifties and sixties while the powerful Oral History Project told us the stories from the actual participants, in their own voices.
Across from The Institute is Kelly Ingram Park, which served as a staging ground for many of the demonstrations in Birmingham. Even though it was a bit chilly it felt good to do some walking outside, so we followed the park’s Freedom Walk which circles the four acre green space.
The Walk is lined with several statues, including four that we found had particular impact, by sculptor James Drake.
Drake’s works put us right in the middle of the situations he depicts.
None more so than Police and Dog Attack. The sculpture completely captures the ferociousness of three attack dogs lunging. It was a powerful statement, giving us the feel of what it must have been like to have the dogs turned loose back during the May 1963 demonstration.
Elsewhere along the path we encountered Firehosing of Dem-onstrators, depicting water cannons being turned on protesters, and Children’s March (“I ain’t afraid of your jail”), where we stopped to look through the steel bars of a jail cell window at two youngsters who represent the children that were arrested during the protests.
The last of Drake’s works along The Freedom Walk is Foot Soldier Tribute. This serves as a memorial to all who struggled with “gallantry, courage and great bravery” in the civil rights movement. Mayor Richard Arrington Jr. dedicated the tribute with those words in 1995.
Birmingham was so violent during the civil rights era that it became known as Bombingham, but now the city seems to have come to terms with itself by commemorating its sordid history and celebrating the outcome more openly than either of our previous stops.
It was a difficult few days for us as we were forced to confront thoughts and feelings that we would have much rather avoided. We addressed issues that many of us Americans would like to think have been completely resolved. But it seems to us that turning a blind eye only leads to a situation like Selma, where our eyes could not see much progress.
The lesson we learned is that the light of day is best, because as much as this is fairly recent history, we were taken aback by how little we knew about the details. In Birmingham, the details are on display – front and center – and in Montgomery the good fight continues every day to defend the civil rights of all Americans.
The Walk is lined with several statues, including four that we found had particular impact, by sculptor James Drake. Drake’s works put us right in the middle of the situations he depicts… CONTINUE READING >>
Kelly Ingram Park served as a staging ground for many of the demonstrations in Birmingham. Even though it was a bit chilly it felt good to do some walking outside, so we followed the park’s Freedom Walk which circles the four acre green space.
The Walk is lined with several statues, including four that we found had particular impact, by sculptor James Drake. Drake’s works put us right in the middle of the situations he depicts. None more so than Police and Dog Attack. The sculpture completely captures the ferociousness of three attack dogs lunging. It was a powerful statement, giving us the feel of what it must have been like to have the dogs turned loose back during the May 1963 demonstration.
Elsewhere along the path we encountered Firehosing of Dem-onstrators, depicting water cannons being turned on protesters, and Children’s March (“I ain’t afraid of your jail”), where we stopped to look through the steel bars of a jail cell window at two youngsters who represent the children that were arrested during the protests.
One of the most powerful works along The Freedom Walk also happens to be one that is not Drake’s, Foot Soldier Tribute is by Tuskegee University art professor Ronald McDowell. This serves as a memorial to all who struggled with “gallantry, courage and great bravery” in the civil rights movement. Mayor Richard Arrington Jr. dedicated the tribute with those words in 1995.
Birmingham was so violent during the civil rights era that it became known as Bombingham, but now the city seems to have come to terms with itself by commemorating its sordid history and celebrating the outcome.
“Peace Be Still” depicts Reverends N.H. Smith, John T. Porter and A.D. King in 1963. During a sympathy march they knelt to pray as the marchers were met by police dogs and billy clubs.
There is something about driving to the very tip of a place, the end of the line, land’s end, that we can’t resist. It’s kind of like climbing a mountain for us, we do it because it’s there. In Louisiana that point where State Highway 1 hits the water is Grand Isle.
Building a road across this expanse of wetland took extensive… CONTINUE READING >>
There is something about driving to the very tip of a place, the end of the line, land’s end, that we can’t resist.
It’s kind of like climbing a mountain for us, we do it because it’s there. In Louisiana that point where State Highway 1 hits the water is Grand Isle.
Building a road across this expanse of wetland took extensive engineering and ingenuity. The bridges are marvels of modern construction, while other stretches of highway, that have succumbed to the water, have been rerouted using some less than marvelous methods.
After crossing dozens of miles of swamp and marsh that would be hard to call land, we made it over one last bridge and on to the only inhabited coastal barrier island in the state.
The first thing we noticed – it would have been nearly impossible not to – was that the entire town was up on stilts.
Let’s clarify, all of the buildings in the town are up on pilings, or bricks, or blocks, or poles, or something.
Not only the houses, but churches, schools, stores, restaurants, the fire department, the police station, the post office and the city hall up on stilts. Anything to keep them abovewater when a storm surge washes over the island, which is no rare occurrence.
Grand Isle gets hammered by a hurricane or tropical storm on average more than once every three years and takes a direct shot every eight.
Most recently Gustav and Katrina washed five feet of water over the island, but the worst ever surges have been three times that high.
One local lady told us about a sign showing up hundreds of miles away after a recent assault. Many of the “camps,” as they call these beach houses, have signs with cute names like “Crawdaddy’s Home” or “Sea You Later” and after Gustav her friend got a call from a man in Texas who found their sign on the beach.
The sign was mailed back, nailed back up, and now waits for the next big blow.
As we drove in, the island felt nearly abandoned. As nice as the weather was in late winter, it is still a summer place.
Only about 1,500 folks stay year ’round, but come summertime ten times that many will be soaking up the sun on the beaches. Personally, we’re just as happy to hit things in the offseason.
Our offseasonness allowed us to have a spot right by the beach in the campground at Grand Isle State Park.
In addition to a really nice beach, the park has the only fishing pier that juts out into The Gulf of Mexico in the state of Louisiana, an observation tower for great views of the gulf to the south and swamps elsewhere, nature trails and a lagoon with more excellent fishing opportunities.
Fishing is the main attraction in Grand Isle, especially the annual Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo Fishing Tournament that draws over fifteen thousand anglers every July, but bird watching is big too.
The park protects over 150 acres of salt water marsh that serve as a stopping off point for thousands of migratory birds. Unfortunately for us, those feathered friends don’t show up till later in the spring.
On our walks along the beach and out the pier we were treated to shows from the feathered permanent residents, the Brown Pelicans.
We watched them fly in formations, skim just inches above the surface of the sea, and their most entertaining move by far, dive head first after fish from insane heights. It is beyond comprehension how their necks can stand that kind of impact.
There were also a crazy amount of helicopters flying around. It seemed like there was never a moment without a whirlybird overhead.
Grand Isle is the closest land to many of the offshore oil rigs out in the gulf and choppers are the fastest way to get back and forth, so the helicopter per capita ratio has got to be a world record.
The island is not all that big, about ten miles long and less than a mile wide, so we broke out our trusty bikes and rode from the state park, on the far eastern edge, into the town, at the center.
This time of year the inhabitants consist of mostly fisherman, oil workers and a few of the hardy island types that seem to populate almost every lonely outpost that is surrounded by water. Generally a good group to sit and have a beer with, so we did.
After our bull session, it was time to go in search of some of the local grub… oysters and shrimp.
From what we could gather, Grand Isle is not much of an epicurean destination, and even less so in the offseason.
There are only four or five restaurants and this time of year only a few of them were open. But we did find some delectable oysters served both raw and, in the local favorite manner, grilled over coals.
More interesting was our discovery of a new dish we had not encountered before, shrimp and corn chowder.
Tomato based with a creole flair, this is a traditional wintertime dish and, even though it wasn’t actually cold outside, it did hit the spot.
With our spots hit, we could clearly see that Grand Isle is a hot spot we’re glad we spotted.
