Savannah's Controversial African-American Monument

David and I always stay at the River Street Inn when we go to Savannah.  It's a former Cotton Mill.  The street level lobby is on the fourth floor on Bull Street.  The first floor is on River Street with its blocks and blocks of historic buildings.

In 2002, close to the Hiatt Hotel, on River Street, a beautiful but controversial statue was added. It depicts a modern family while chains representing slavery lie at their feet.

But the statue didn't cause nearly as much controversy as the inscription below it.  It's a graphic description of the truth written by Maya Angelou.  City officials fought with African-American and others for months but the inscription won.  Here it is.

We were stolen, sold and bought together from the African content.  We got on the slave ships together.  We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships in each others excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together.  Today, we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy.  

Maya Angelou


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John Wesley's Wild Time in Savannah

David and I love Savannah, Georgia.  It was settled in 1733 by James Oglethorpe.  The city is full of quirky people and wild stories about the past.

When we were there earlier this week it was cold and raining so we took a tour, which we hadn't done in a while.  This particular tour was all about the 22 squares in the old city.

If you've read the book or seen the film "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Monterrey Square is where the Mercer/Williams house is located. 

Reynolds Square is where the statue of the Father of Methodism, John Wesley is located.  I was anxious to hear what the tour guide would say about Wesley in Savannah.  They rarely get the story right.  Our guide said that John Wesley was a failure in Savannah because he was mean to his parishioners.  She was "sort of" right.

John, along with his brother, Charles Wesley were sent to Savannah in the 1700s by General Oglethorpe.  John Wesley was an overly pious and methodical, Oxford educated Anglican priest.  Savannah was a wild town full of wild immigrants.  He did not fit in from the get-go.

Charles Wesley was made secretary of Indian Affairs.  He lasted four months, then (essentially) said, "I'm outta here!"  Back to England he went.

John, a missionary, had met and fallen in love with a young woman named Sophia on the ship on the way over from England. Her mother had hired John to give Sophia French lessons.

After they arrived in Savannah things didn't go well. In Sophia's defense let me say that, although decades later John Wesley would be recognized as one of the greatest reformers in England and was seen by many as single-handedly keeping England from experiencing a bloody civil war, in my opinion, he never really learned how to interact with women.

Sophia finally got fed up with John's inattention and married a guy who worked in her father's store in Savannah.   John retaliated by refusing to serve Sophia and her new husband the sacrament of Holy Communion.  Sophia's husband then sued for damages.  John was hauled into court but a mistrial was declared.  A new trial was set but in the meantime John (essentially) said "I'm outta here."  He left Savannah a defeated man and never returned to the United States.

After returning to England John Wesley got himself turned around and the rest, as they say, is history.


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The Brain Fog is Clearing Up

For a while now - like months - I've been suffering from a kind of brain fog.  I know it has to do with the Meniere's Disease that's always with me, and the medication I take to calm it.  And, of course, there's the getting older by the minute.  I don't mind the physical part so much but I missed my brain. So I decided to get it back.  And I did - with two books and a magazine.

The Artist's Way - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.  I read this book about 15 years ago.  Some of you know it and its famous "Morning pages."  This is an exercise that requires us to sit down and write out three pages of of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness, every single day.  This exercise is not especially for writers.  It's for all of us who want to be creative, to have and share ideas.  This book is designed for creative recovery. It helped me in 2003.  It helped me in 2017.

I've started doing my "pages" again.  Not three pages, but two.  Every day.  It is a discipline - but it works.  Life changes for the good if we do our morning pages.

The New Yorker - I re-upped my subscription.  The New Yorker is full of ideas, interesting people, short stories, poetry, cartoons and smart commentary on just about everything.  The trick is to read all of it. Not just skip around to the few things I love most, like "Shouts and Murmurs" and the cartoons.

The Sun Still Rises - Meditations on Faith at Midlife by Leonora Tubbs Tisdale - I have difficulty finding devotionals.  I don't care for most of them.  Some of them make me want to start screaming (if I only had the energy.)  But here's how I got hold of this one.  Dave has a connection with Yale Divinity School.  Somebody at Yale sent him this devotional.  The writer is a professor of Homiletics at Yale.   Her writing is real and personal.  She's had her ups and downs, just like me.





My body is still having problems.  My vertigo is still acting up.  But my brain and my spirit are currently working on all four cylinders.


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Do I Look Fat in This Shirt?

Apple managed to reinvent products that were already on the market, and got customers to think they had never seen anything like them before.  -  Steve Jobs

I asked Dave for a manly pose in this photo because he's showing off his UNTUCKit shirt he purchased a few months ago.  A recent article in my New Yorker magazine says that these shirts are hot.  Manhattan as gone from one to four UNTUCKit stores.

Why? Because they are revolutionary.  The article goes on to explain the cultural significance of a whole new shirt concept featuring a shortened shirttail that is meant to be worn untucked.  Hence the copywrited name:  UNTUCKit.

Some men think the UNTUCKit makes them look five years younger but ten pounds heavier.  Let me explain this phenomena.  As an older short woman with an expanding waistline I can assure you that I don't want to wear a shirt that cuts me off at the middle.  For me it's "the longer the better."

But I guess some older men who are long time "tucker inners" just feel uncomfortable letting their shirttails flow.  That's where UNTUCKit comes in to save the day.

Since we have no UNTUCKit stores here in Central Florida, Dave had to order his on line.  And, by the way, they are not inexpensive, despite the fact that they offer less material.

Dave did not ask the question posed in the title.  But to answer it, no his UNTUCKit doesn't make him look fat.  Dave's too tall and thin for that.


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Bad Words

In 1972 George Carlin introduced "Seven words you can never say on television."  They were famously called "The seven forbidden words."

This was in reaction to the time, in 1966, when comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for using nine forbidden words.  At the time it was all pretty scandalous but both Carlin and Bruce were fighting for the concept of free speech.  Just so you know, I, myself have never used these words.

But most of them are popular in the arts.  The other night on a talk show I heard Matt Damon say that when they made the film "Good Will Hunting" 20 years ago, they used the F word over one hundred times.  (That's one of the words.) Matt justified this by saying that's the way they talked growing up in Boston.  Last night I heard another one of the words on an episode of Family Feud.

Should we be protected from words that some of us find offensive?  If so, where should we draw the line?

Today we learned that our government is forbidding officials who oversee the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words - but not the same seven words George Carlin and Lenny Bruce used. The words the CDC cannot use are:

• Vulnerable
• Entitlement
• Diversity
• Transgender
• Fetus
• Evidence-based
• Science-based

The CDC was given some alternative phrases.  For instance instead of "science-based" they may use "science in consideration with community standards and wishes."


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Old Ladie's Book Club

I just read some sad statistics about how many Americans read books.  Not many.  For instance, one of the stats said "80 per cent of families did not buy or read a book last year."

Yesterday I went to my holiday book club luncheon.  Most of us are getting up there in years but we're still reading good, diverse books that stretch us.  I've read some amazing books over the years - not because I chose them - but because they were required book club reading.

Yesterday was a treat because we had the author of the book we'd just read, who just so happens to live in Orlando, come have lunch with us and tell us a bit about herself.  By the way, every person in book club has an amazingly interesting story so what our author had to say wasn't as unique as you would think.

Marjorie Radcliffe spoke to us about her book "Teacher on the High Wire."  She was a doctor's wife with two children.  When the kids went off to collage she divorced the doctor.  She needed a job.  She was 48 years old.  She was certified in English, math, French and Spanish so she tried teaching school.  That didn't work so she signed up to be a tutor in the entertainment world!  What a life that led to.  After a while she was assigned to the Ringling Circus.  Or, as she said, "They sold me to the circus."

So the book is about the five years of Marjorie's adventures while traveling with the circus.  I had no idea what that life was like.  It's different.  For instance most of the permanent circus folks lived on the train along with the animals, etc., including 21 elephants.  Ringing had their own - mile long - train.  They definitely had their own culture.  Marjorie tells lots of sorted tails.

Before Marjorie spoke a book club member had an announcement.  Jill, who has magenta hair and is crazy smart invited us to come the the Sak Comedy Club next week when she'll be doing "stand up."

Old ladies who read books are truly an interesting bunch.


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Green Bean Casserole

For the second year in a row Green Bean Casserole has been banned from my Sunday school class Christmas party.  There has been no way of arguing with the head of the planning committee.  She has unequivocally banned it.

If you are a life long United Methodist you've experienced a long life of holiday pot luck suppers sporting green bean casseroles. We Methodist cooksters are pretty famous for sticking with our favorite recipes.  So I can understand that some folks have had it.

I have known church party-goers in the past who've eaten so many mountains of delicious dishes like sweet potato casseroles and lemon squares until they've finally risen up and said "Enough."  But I've never seen the party chairman actually ban a dish, i.e.,

"Get the green bean casserole yearning out of you system before this party because it won't be welcome here."

There are all sorts of recipes for Green Bean Casserole but the best, oldest and most basic is the combination of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. milk, and green beans topped with French's French Fried Onions.  It comes in at 150 calories and 8 grams of fat per serving.

Our party was Sunday night.  It was fabulous.


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Let Me Help With Your Financial Planning

In Ann Patchett's 2004 book, Truth and Beauty, about her friendship with fellow writer Lucy Grealy, she tells a story about Lucy, who was habitually bad with money, dealing with her problems at the time by putting all of her unopened mail (which she thought was primarily bills) directly into a big garbage bag beside the door.

Ann insisted that Lucy mail the garbage bag to her.  When it arrived the next day (because Lucy had Fed Ex'ed it overnight) Ann said, "it was larger and more terrifying than I had expected."

But, as she began the process of opening the letters and putting them in stacks, she realized that it wasn't nearly as bad a either of them expected.  Some of it was fan mail.  Ann soon got it all organized.  She was able to take care of much of it herself.

It's a sweet, short. positive vignette in the midst of a powerful, ultimately tragic story.

I, myself, have had some interesting times trying to help people get their lives organized.  Some were paying taxes for the first time.  Some were renters who were dunned with a late payment every single month. Some were my kids.  One was my husband.  Unfortunately, my willingness to "help them" was usually misguided.

At some point, I had to accept that everybody is not like me - and that, in many ways, is a very good thing.  Getting organized isn't easy. Yesterday I spent a long time on the phone talking with a friend who is overwhelmed with Christmas.  "I'm spending money like a drunken sailor," she said.  I wanted to suggest that I'd sit down with her and draw up a Christmas budget.

But that's not what she needs from me.


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This Is a Planet

In these days when truth is a relative concept we sometimes get confused about basic things.  But...no matter how many times somebody tries to tell you we live in a three-tiered universe (or that the earth is a banana,) ...that's not true.

Apparently, we have a small but growing number of people here in the US who believe the earth is flat.  But even they are dismayed with the Flat Earth Guy in California who wants to set off his home-built rocket in order to prove the earth is flat.  He plans to attach a camera to the rocket which will snap a photo proving the "curvy" concept is a hoax perpetrated by big government.  But the last thing I heard was that "big government" refused to issue him a permit.  And even one of his fellow believers said "even Wiley Coyote wouldn't approve this stunt."

Meanwhile, by 2020,  NASA plans to launch a repair and maintenance robot to work on orbiting satellites.  This must just blow the Flat Earth Guy's mind.

I love the words some of our greatest hymn writers used to describe our world; words like "orb" and "sphere."  In the fourth verse of one of our greatest hymns "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," often called the National Anthem of Christendom,  the words "terrestrial" and "celestial" are sometimes intermixed.

Let every kindred, every tribe
on this celestial ball
to Him all majesty ascribe,
and crown him Lord of all.


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