| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
This network (originally CNN-2) has 48 half-hour segments, each with fifteen minutes of hard news and fifteen minutes of soft news. During the day a stock ticker runs across the bottom of the screen; at night there is a sports ticker.
We also saw CNN International, which started in 1985 as the Hotel Network and was entirely in English. It is now in several other languages as well, including a round-the-clock service in Spanish. And there are studios for CNN Interactive (http://www.cnn.com), CNN Sports, etc.
I can report that CNN uses a Lucent phone system.
We left Atlanta about noon, glad to be away from the chaos (and leaving someone glad to get our parking space). We were going to drive directly to Savannah, but on the way we saw a billboard for the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins (http://www.museum.robins.af.mil). This turned out to be the second largest Air Force Museum (I suppose the largest is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio).
I'm not sure I have a whole lot specific to say about this museum. There was a section on the 14th Air Force (the 'Flying Tigers') and flying over 'The Hump' (the Himalayas), where we learned that Lt. Gen. Claire Chennault (of the 14th) always had hot sauce on his table. There were various other displays, including a jacket for the Korean War with a unit insignia in Korean which was 'not translatable in polite company.' They were still putting together their electronic warfare exhibit.
They had a display on the Tuskegee Airmen (there seems to be one at every aviation museum in the South). They also had the MiG that cosmonauts Ivanov and Alexandrov trained in. (If we send up astronauts and the Russians send up cosmonauts, what do the Europeans send up? And what would a Russian on the shuttle be? Let's just call them all 'spacemen' ('spacepersons'?).)
They were playing traditional World War II music. However, one can get tired of hearing 'God Bless America' played over and over and over and over.
There was also a videotape, 'We the People,' which was either about the Constitution and the three branches of government or about how Georgians (including Sam Nunn) have worked for a strong national defense. It seemed to start as one and change into the other.
We have a quick dinner at PoFolks, a restaurant chain we though had gone out of business. I had the vegetable platter: red beans and rice, fried okra, turnip greens, and fried green tomatoes. And of course, a huge quantity of iced tea. I think I've drunk a swimming pool's worth of the stuff on this trip. Well, maybe a small swimming pool.
We spent the night in Vidalia, Georgia, home of the onion. We've been hampered for the last few days by a lack of maps. AAA didn't give us the strip map for the Huntsville-to-Atlanta stretch, nor maps for Alabama or Georgia. And since we changed our plans from going via a northerly route to Charleston to going by way of Savannah, we didn't have strip maps for this stretch either. (We did have a AAA 'Southeastern United States' map, which helped a fair amount.)
|
We finished our drive to Savannah this morning. Our firsts top was the Savannah History Museum. A videotape on the history of Savannah revealed that Sir James Edward Oglethorpe didn't like slavery because it made the slave owners idle, rather than through any concern for the slaves. (This is like the Puritan objection to bear-baiting because it gave the spectators pleasure.) Oglethorpe barred Jews, Catholics, slavery, and hard liquor from his co-operative Protestant Utopian colony. They survived the first winter, but during the first summer were almost wiped out by fever. They were saved by doctors on a passing ship of Jewish immigrants, so Oglethorpe decided to allow Jews in. Later, they allowed Catholics and eventually slavery. (And one presumes hard liquor as well.)
Savannah's first real claim to fame, I suppose, was that Casimir Pulaski died during the Siege of Savannah (on October 11, 1779). Pulaski was buried at sea, but supposedly also interred in Pulaski Monument in Monterey Square (moved from Greenwich Plantation). I don't understand this.
Outside Savannah is Fort Jackson, the oldest standing masonry fort in the United States, but we've seen enough forts of more historic importance and decided to skip this one. (I'm sure some people are saying, 'They actually skipped a fort? I don't believe it!')
Savannah was the second United States city to install an electric trolley system. (If you recall, Montgomery, Alabama, was the first.)
There was a display about the cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which caused so many people to come to Bonaventure Cemetery that the 'Bird Girl' statue was removed by the family whose plot it was on.
We also saw one of the benches used in Forrest Gump and an Oscar won by Johnny Mercer. There was a display about the Mexican Border Conflict of 1916-1917 (now there was the real 'forgotten war,' although it was more bandits than the Mexican government).
Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was born and lived in Savannah. Her house (which we passed) is currently being renovated.
After this orientation we drove out to Fort Pulaski National Monument on Cockspur Island. There's a sign and a monument out there to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who preached on Cockspur Island. There's also a sign about 'The Waving Girl,' a lighthouse keeper who used to wave at all the departing ships with a white handkerchief.
Fort Pulaski ($2 each covered by the annual pass) was Robert E. Lee's first assignment in 1829. When Georgia seized it at the start of the Civil War, it claimed it for the State of Georgia, not for the Confederacy. On November 24, 1861, Union forces took Tybee Island, a mile away. Fort Pulaski's defenders weren't worried, because up until then no one had guns that could damage a fort at that distance. But the Union had some of those new-fangled rifled cannons, and after bombarding the fort on April 11, 1862, regained it easily. Fort Pulaski was turned into a Union prison, and a photograph taken at Fort Pulaski during this period is the first known photograph of men playing baseball.
In spite of being susceptible to rifled cannon, Fort Pulaski was very well built, and although it was built on pilings on soft ground, there have been no cracks from settling over its hundred-and-fifty-year history.
We had a lunch of boiled shrimp and very good fried onion rings at Williams Seafood before driving to Charleston, South Carolina, for the night. (Well, actually to Mt. Pleasant, just east of Charleston.)
|
Our plan initially had been to see Fort Sumter and the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum today, and Fort Moultrie and Beth Elohim tomorrow. But given the forecast of thunderstorms and the actual rain we were experiencing, we re-arranged it somewhat.
There is a great similarity between Charleston, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island. Both are towns known and visited mostly for the mansions, and both are towns in which we skipped the mansions and instead visited a synagogue and a naval museum. In Newport it was Touro Synagogue and the Naval War College Museum; in Charleston it was Kahl Kadosh Beth Elohim and the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.
Beth Elohim Synagogue (http://www.awod.com/gallery/probono/kkbe/) was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1980, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic American Buildings Survey. Jews settled in Charleston in 1695, and the congregation was founded in 1750. The first synagogue (1780-1792) was in a converted cotton gin. The congregation wrote congratulating George Washington on his election in 1790 and got the following response: 'May the same temporal and eternal blessings which you implore for me, rest upon your congregation.'
The second synagogue was on this site from 1792 to 1838, and it was here in 1824 that this became the 'Cradle of Reform Judaism' in the United States. In 1838 the second Jewish Sunday School in the United States was founded. The present building dates from 1840 (the tabernacle from 1948), making this the second oldest synagogue in the United States (Touro is the Oldest), and the oldest in continuous use. However, Hurricane Hugo lifted the roof off in 1989. This wasn't realized at first, because Hugo set it back down, but water started seeping in, and the synagogue is now closed for renovations.
Judging from the items in the gift shop (which was open), the synagogue's motto seems to be, 'Shalom, y'all!'
Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum is described as the largest naval and maritime museum in the world. I asked Mark what the metric was for that; he suggested rivet count. With an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, a submarine, and a cutter, he could be right. (The nuclear merchant ship mentioned in the AAA book doesn't seem to be there any more.)
We started with the main attraction, the U. S. S. Yorktown. This is not the ship that was sunk at Midway (big surprise!), but a carrier commissioned the following year and named for her. (Battleships are named for states, cruisers for cities, destroyers for heroes, and carriers for battles.) The first ship was the CV-5; this was the CV-10. This Yorktown helped sink the Yamato; during World War II it won eleven battle stars. Its final mission before being decommissioned in 1970 was the recovery of the Apollo 8 capsule.
The Yorktown is not so much a museum of the ship as a museum (or series of museums) on the ship. The first was the Congressional Medal of Honor Display (even though the name of the award is just 'the Medal of Honor'). There were selected biographies of such winners as Sergeant William H. Carney of the 54th Massachusetts (the first Black soldier to earn the award), Second Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer (who earned two Medals of Honor before being killed with his brother at Little Big Horn), Sergeant Thomas J. Higgins (whose bravery in charging the Confederate lines on May 22, 1863, was so impressive that the Confederates refused to shoot him, actually cheered him, and were instrumental in pressing for his award after the end of the war). Also mentioned were Commander Richard E. Byrd, Jr.; Captain Charles Lindbergh (I though he was a civilian at the time and civilians weren't eligible), and First Lieutenant Edward V. Rickenbacker.
There are seven separate self-guided tours of the Yorktown. We were going to get started on one when they announced a guided tour, so we took that. It lasted an hour and a half, covered two of the seven routes, and was given by someone who had served on an aircraft carrier in World War II (the Belknap rather than the Yorktown). This was extremely valuable and added immensely to our visit, as he talked about life on ship, various major battles, and other aspects covered by the exhibits.
The Yorktown, by the way, has two million gallons of water in her ballast tanks and is sitting on the bottom, not floating. Also, her airplane elevators have been removed. There seem to be a few other changes to accommodate visitors, more than on the Alabama (the obvious comparison).
During World War II, the Yorktown had about ninety planes, equally divided among fighters, torpedo bombers, and dive bombers. It had a crew of 3400. |
|
| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
