Charleston

There's a lot to like about Charleston, an historic city that sits on a peninsula.  Pineapples, a symbol of hospitality, welcome the tourists that keep the place thriving.

You can't beat the food.  We had oysters for lunch at Leon's, converted gas station.

There's a souvenir market downtown.

Old churches and their cemeteries suggest a deeply religious community.

Lovely homes line cobblestone streets.

This section is known as "Rainbow Row."

Dozens of mansions, some fully restored to their Antebellum glory and open to the public, overlook the harbor.

You can see Fort Sumter in the distance.  The National Parks Service provides ferry service to the spot where the Confederate Army fired the first shots of the Civil War.

That's the thing about Charleston.  As pretty as the city is, it never lets you forget you're in the capital of the American slave trade.  Monuments to the Confederacy abound.

It's not always obvious, either.  Take Henry Timrod, for example.

You'd never know he was the poet laureate for the Confederacy from the brass plaque below his bust. He wrote these lines at the beginning of the Civil War.

Hath not the morning dawned with added light?
And shall not evening call another star
Out of the infinite regions of the night
To mark this day in Heaven? At last we are
A nation among nations. And the world
Shall soon behold in many a distant port
Another flag unfurled!

South Carolina is called "The Palmetto State," a symbol old enough to have adorned Confederate currency and belt buckles.

Given the changes in America since 1961, what will future generations think about the contents of this time capsule?

More Charleston:

City of Mansions and Churches

Spring Afternoon in Charleston

Road Trip

Road Trip

Christine invited me to drive her 2003 Acura to Lake Worth over the holidays.  I took a jammed Megabus to Washington, DC the day after Christmas.  She met me at Union Station.

What's a road trip without an impulsive stop?  The Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, NC beckoned from I-95.

We spent an hour looking at posters, photographs, costumes, and a brief documentary, much of which can be found elsewhere.  But not the 40 portraits painted by Ben Pfeiffer, a true fanatic.

I understand the obsession if not the mouse, crawling up her arm.  Was any Hollywood star more beautiful?  Alcoholism cut short her enviable life which included marrying Frank Sinatra and an uninhibited performance in The Night of the Iguana, by far my favorite film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play.

We had a very late lunch at Perfectly Frank's in Summerville, NC just north of Charleston.

No doubt about what Ava would have ordered.  Find the questionable pun while you're at it.

After dinner in Charleston we walked to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where in 2015 a racist murdered nine congregants during bible study.

You can feel the grace.

It was definitely enough sightseeing for one night.

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