1) they were spent with someone I adore
2) they took me out of my everyday life
3) I am a little different now from when I left
4) I am ready to go home and do some science!
We left Chattanooga this morning and drove the 2 hrs to Atlanta. As usual for the trip, traffic wasn't a problem. At the Atlanta airport we had one last plate of ribs (nothing to write home about. I wonder how long I have to wait before going to Big Fatty's in Vermont...) and started missing each other preemptively. It's always so abrupt, the parting after a long visit.
We logged more than 2300 miles in the South. If you include the round trip from San Marcos to Santa Barbara, we did 2700 miles all told. Over these miles, we saw:
-very moving historical places like Tuskegee, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Harper Lee's home town, Vicksburg, and the Oak Alley plantation
-a couple of very cool cities (Mobile and Birmingham)
-seven baseball games in all sorts of conditions. Our hearts are with the Montgomery Biscuits, though!
-My good friend Matt and the incredible natural beauty of the Smoky Mountains
-many, many plates of ribs
My overall impression of the South is pretty much what I expected it to be: amazing in some ways and disturbing in others. I don't know whether this is just my pre-conceived notions getting reinforced by selective vision, an inadequate sampling of the region, or some level of reality. Probably all three.
The conservative atmosphere was intense in all ways: religious, political, and historical. The past still lives there, often not in a good way and many there certainly seem to see the past through lenses of their own choosing. Surfing the radio, listening to conversations at restaurants, talking to people at the B&Bs in Montgomery and Vicksburg, seeing the aggressively defiant bumper stickers and plethora of Confederate flags on vehicles, the mixing of God and nationalism in a way that makes them one-in-the-same, all lead to this same conclusion - there's not much will to "play well with others" or to change with the times. One perhaps trivial example (but I think a telling one) - our trip was almost completely devoid of opportunities to recycle, both in public places and at hotels. Basically, I only saw any recycling in Birmingham and the Atlanta airport. I didn't realize how "standard" that had become to me. The scenario I have going on in my head is that this is considered new-fangled, Northern, and Liberal, so nobody does it. If that is in fact the reason, I would certainly call that pig-headed while we all slowly get buried under a mountain of waste.
The other thing was the large number of gun stores (many more than I've ever seen), which brings me to my biggest fear: that the combination of a whole bunch of anger/stubbornness and a whole bunch of guns is going to erupt in this country. That fear isn't really assuaged by the trip (in fact, it's probably increased). Independently, I learned that it's STILL difficult for blacks to register to vote down there, at least in Mississippi. I knew about the Texas thing, but I guess naively thought it was isolated. This knowledge made our visits to Civil Rights sites a little less joyful because there sounds like some row still to hoe. I try to question my own prejudices on this, but come on, at what point does one call a spade a spade? At what point does one stop making allowances for the other? At what point does is one permitted to get impatient and say "You are NOT living in in 1850 anymore. In fact, 1850 was atrocious for half your population, so own that. You are living in a world with 7 billion very diverse people and it's getting very very crowded. Stop acting like whiny children"? I guess I'm ranting more about the general in-your-face conservative wave in the country, in which people are very up on their "rights" but don't think their "patriotism" should cost them any money.
Reading back those last two paragraphs, I see that they themselves are really whiny, as well as ignorant. Somewhat akin to visiting France for two weeks and coming back with the conclusion "the French are rude" after being ignored by a café waiter. Having not lived in a place, one's impressions are very superficial. I'm going to leave them, though.
There were many many good things good things on our trip. The knowledge possessed by the people at Vicksburg and Oak Alley did in fact give me different perspectives on things. Our tour with Wanda at MLK's church in Montgomery was both moving and enlightening. Matt's views as a liberal who has lived in the South for years, and who sees both good and bad there, were very good to hear. The fellowship of baseball never ceases to amaze me. And two weeks of constant companionship with my daughter on the road: finding Waffle Houses, keeping score at games, exploring new places and historical sites, binge watching "Vikings", tolerating each other's moods and idiosyncrasies... I could do that anywhere.
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