Easter Sunday morning in the Atlanta Botanical Garden with our friend Susan
Atlanta in April – and it feels like summer already!
We had two friends to see and three days to do it in. Officially Mark had never been in Georgia before – connecting through the airport doesn’t count – so we figured it was worth three days. And indeed it was even though one of our friends ultimately was sidelined with back trouble so we couldn’t see him (getting old sucks). The three days with our friend Susan Shaer, though, was fantastic.
We were close friends with Susan back in Massachusetts, but not long after we left to start our world adventure she sold her house in Arlington to buy smaller places in Denver and Atlanta where her daughters, and perhaps more importantly her grand-children, live. And after these exciting years we had a lot of catching up to do.
After driving down from Nashville we had our first lunch in Atlanta at Bistro Niko, a very respectable French bistro (except that it was about four times the size of anything you’d find in Paris). We ate at the bar and quickly found ourselves in a fun and lively conversation with David and Kelly, locals who were delightfully liberal. Such fun!
Lunches, dinners, drinks – we did it all. Susan is a fascinating woman who had an impressive career working in politics and non-profits. She ultimately survived two unfortunate marriages and these days is thriving on her own spending winters in Atlanta near one daughter and summers in Denver near the other.
Lots to catch up on. But even with all that time with Susan we had a lot of time on our own to explore at least pieces of Atlanta. First, the mistake. Mark spends a lot of time researching where we should stay and based on that research chose a nice Starwood property in the Buckhead neighborhood. A place you’re supposed to be able to walk around and all that. Hah! You can walk as long as you like walking along broad, busy, noisy thoroughfares. And everything that you want to see is miles away. I actually did a bunch of those five- and six-mile walks to get to various places and back … and ended up paying the price when I got a really nasty blister on the last day. Word to the wise: stay in Midtown, not Buckhead!!
Now, what was there to see in Atlanta? Besides some really good restaurants, we enjoyed the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
The boyhood home of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was then known as Michael King, Jr.
The King Center was good, and we were there just days before the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination. I always cry when I see a tape of that last speech in Memphis the night before he was killed. You know the one:
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live – a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
You worry that fifty years later in a land where white nationalists are equated with people protesting racism, the promised land maybe ain’t what was promised.
The tombs
And then we went to the Carter Library. In some ways for me that was even a bigger deal. That was the first presidency that I experienced as an adult, and of course the great Walter Mondale played a big role in it.
Before Carter’s presidency, Vice Presidents were pretty much just so much office furniture. Carter was the first president to give his Vice President real work; thus Mondale was he first consequential Vice President and essentially the model of the modern Vice President. And for what it’s worth, this isn’t a bad legacy.
What was so striking in particular about these exhibits was the juxtaposition of Carter – trained as a nuclear physicist – handling these difficult issues in extraordinary detail and sensitivity, compared to the current piece of shit in the White House. Utterly inconceivable that Trump would ever have intelligent discussions about the minutiae of transportation policy and energy policy and education policy, or could break away from Fox News to spend 13 days hashing out a successful peace treaty in the Middle East. I always thought Jimmy Carter was a good man, but I also recognize that he had distinct shortcomings as a president. Compared the current incumbent, though, he was a giant.
A replica of Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office
Enough ranting about politics; I usually prefer to save that for pre-dinner drinks with Mark.
Atlanta, though, was good. We have quickly leapt from winter in Duluth through spring in early summer here, where the daytime temperature on Easter Sunday was in the low 80s. From here it’s east to Savannah and then south into Florida. Lots of driving but it’s been a great way to visit with old friends.
Mark and Susan in the Botanical Garden posing in front of a glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly
And another picture of Mark & Susan. We were there relatively early on Easter Sunday. The crowds would arrive later as church let out, but for a while we had pretty much free range of the place.
Enough color for you?
Pink Jim with pink buds
More from the Botanical Garden
I have no idea whose house this is, but as I was walking back from the Botanical Garden I thought it was kind of pretty
And then there was the Carter Presidential Library. I expected to like it, but instead I loved it.
The grounds at the Center are gorgeous
This was interesting. I thought Carter pretty much came out of nowhere to enter politics, but in fact his father, James Earl Carter, Sr., had served in the Georgia House. I love the line in the letter “While it would be a waste of your time to go into details as to what I would hope to accomplish in the Legislature when there is no way to forecast the issues which will arise …”. In other words, I’m a good person so just trust me. That seems so simple.
And then there was a photo exhibit of portraits by Yousuf Karsh, an Armenian survivor of the Turkish genocide who moved to Canada (though he died at age 93 in Boston when we lived there). He took this iconic portrait of Winston Churchill, making the great man look every bit the bulldog anti-Nazi he was. The background of the picture – which I read about in William Manchester’s three-volume biography of Churchill – is that after a speech in Canada he learned that Karsh had been told Churchill would sit for him. He didn’t want to but said “OK, you have two minutes,” or words to that effect. Karsh wanted a picture without Churchill’s ever-present cigar but Churchill didn’t want to give it up. The photographer then just reached over, grabbed the cigar out of his hand, and quickly snapped the photo. Churchill was pissed … and this was the result. One of the great portraits ever taken.