Atlanta Jewish Storytelling Festival

Our trip to the very first Atlanta Jewish Storytelling Festival was a last minute affair. We purchased our tickets online. We call Lillian and Jordan to see if they'd put us up for the night. Actually two nights because we had also reserved an appointment with the Apple "genius" folks at the Perimeter Mall on Monday morning -- trying to find a way to preserve some voice memos. Long Story.

Anyway we actually managed two arrive a little early.

The skyline in Atlanta is always changing. It seemed so big back in the sixties when Peachtree Center was new... it is so much bigger now.

From the Stadium to Home

For our walk this afternoon Sheila and I drove out to the baseball stadium and walked across the Armuchee connector bridge to the Mount Beery Trail and from there home along that trail. 

We enjoyed seeing the cotton fields and the north end of the trail where we walk less often. Here are some pictures along the way.

At the stadium trailhead

I suspect that the guy on the line-painting machine got distracted/

Jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton.

I suppose this hickory got bent by an ice storm once upon a time. 

The Mount Berry Trail hugs the Oosatnaula River on this section.

The city is busy clearing the jungle of Chinese privet between the trail and the river. This week they have proceeded north of the Vetran's Memorial bridge.

The flotsam and jetsam piled against the Veteran's Memorial bridge is voluminous!

This pond near the Post Office trailhead is a popular fishing spot for people...

...and Great Blue Herons.

As we neared home we could see workers atop the City Clock.

A Walk to Unity Point and around Myrtle Hill

Now that the paint-stripping has been completed the plastic (?) shielding has been removed from the clock's superstructure. It is good to see the renovations of the City Clock underway.

I took this picture two days ago. Notice the big sycamore with the naked roots on the left. The following pictures show the stabilization underway to the riverbank around its roots. Maybe it will be saved.

In 2010 we lost one of my closest friends. Cleve and I were great friends in our teen years -- through MYF at Trinity United Methodist Church, even though we attended different high schools.  I learned to play poker with Cleve and his dad and brother. I bought my first guitar from him. When he and Terri moved back here from Texas, Sheila and I used to get together with them for board games and in 1986 the four of us took square dancing lessons together! Our Brannon and their Keenan were best buddies in their preschool years. Our Lillian and their Daphne were also best buddies as young kids and remain friends today. Our walk today took us right past Cleve's  final resting place. It is hard to lose one's contemporaries, and this loss has been one of the hardest.

It's been a while since we've walked by the meditation garden at Myrtle Hill that was planned and planted by another friend we have lost, John Schulz. It was disappointing to see that the very nice information display has deteriorated so badly so quickly. I hope a longer lasting replacement can be made soon. I sure do miss John. He created outstanding stories and had the courage to, despite his laryngectomy, stand before an audience and tell them.

We walked all the way around the base of Myrtle Hill. The southwest side is a reminder of our sordid history of segregation even in death and burial. I am old enough to remember officially segregated restrooms and water fountains and schools and churches. The election of a racist president-elect reminds us that that evil is sadly still a part of our beloved America in 2024.

The late afternoon light was so nice on this big oak. My picture doesn't do it justice.

Ellen Axson Wilson overlooks the Oostanaula perpetually painting a landscape. When they visit us our grand girls enjoy talking with and encouraging Ellen, a bit impatiently, to finish.

The new residential-commercial complex on West Third is going up.

I am enjoying our Knock-Out roses and Jubilee Hibiscuses* against our old brick ruin this fall. The first frost will kill the hibiscuses back to the ground.

* Hibiscus mutabilis (against the brick ruin) is often called Confederate Rose, but it is native to China not the southern US, and it is a Hibiscus not a rose. I decided I'd give it a new name, Jubilee Hibiscus. Though some of my ancestors were Confederates, however much I may honor them in other ways, I do not honor their racist cause.