history

adventures / Auburn / Friday / history / photo — Comments Off on “Lucky we were there! It was a historical event!”
4
Mar 16

“Lucky we were there! It was a historical event!”

There are two days left to see “Assassins,” a Stephen Sondheim musical, at Telfair Peet.

It is powerful show, which goes some good way toward humanizing the people who have attempted, and succeeded, in killing American presidents. The entire production is students and they did a GREAT job. It is dark and comical and thoughtful and full of characters who are inept and darkly successful.

The primary players are: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, and his accomplice David Herold; Charles Guiteau, who killed President James Garfield; Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley; Giuseppe Zangara who tried to kill President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. There’s also Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Byck who targeted President Richard Nixon, John Hinckley who shot President Ronald Reagan and both Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who attacked President Gerald Ford.

(Also, Ford did a walk-on spot and tripped on the stage. The few of us olds in the theater got it. No one under 30 understood the bit.)

The Broadway version of the play won five Tonys Awards. I wonder if anyone ever told Hinckley, who is still taking family furloughs from his institutional psychiatric care (but may soon be released). Fromme was paroled in 2009 and apparently lives in the Mohawk Valley region of New York. Moore was released in 2007. You figure they have to know there is a play featuring them as primary characters.

A friend of ours is the director of the show. I can’t wait to sit down with him soon and hear more about it. Mostly I just like to brag on the players and crew. They always do such a great job, as full time students no less, of bringing together incredibly productions.

history / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Three amazing things
15
Feb 16

Three amazing things

This video dates back to 1897 and is purported to be the oldest videos of Paris on record:

This guy is paragliding through the Aurora Borealis.

Ordinarily I’d be jealous of an experience like that, but I saw this today, kitteh yoga:

history / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Melts in my hand
20
Jan 16

Melts in my hand

Melts in your mouth, not in your hand. That was the slogan, right? That’s the jingle. The motto that the Mars people and the M&Ms sloganeers gave us that line — it was originally a pitch to the U.S. Army — in 1954. So even though you don’t hear it every day anymore, its been in our minds all of our lives.

You can’t hardly see an M&M without thinking about that line.

It melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

And yet, when I have the chance to enjoy some M&M’s, it looks like I’ve been slapping The Joker around:

adventures / history / Instagram / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Hanging out at Forsyth Park
4
Jan 16

Hanging out at Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park is full of history. It was created in the 1840s, and was, in a way, an original part of the future plans of Savannah. French and American soldiers camped on the site during the Revolutionary War around bloody fighting in the town. The French started building siege trenches there and, then just two generations later, the Georgia home guard drilled on the park during the Civil War. The town’s Confederate monument is there.

This is where The Yankee I visit every time we come to Savannah. We have a tree. We got engaged there and took some of our wedding portraits there. It is a beautiful place and has a lot of history, and contemporary vitality, too.

At a nearby novelty shop:

Funny t-shirts:

Late, late editions … watch the lights in these Boomerang videos:

adventures / history / Instagram / photo / video — Comments Off on A church, a park, swings and ads
3
Jan 16

A church, a park, swings and ads

Another beautiful day in Savannah. Here’s your proof, this is the Independent Presbyterian Church, organized in 1755:

The original church was built on land granted by King George II. A new church went up in 1816. The English restoration style, features Federal windows, Corinthian columns, that picturesque steeple, and a beautiful sanctuary with an elevated mahogany pulpit. It was destroyed by fire in 1889, but a duplicate was built on the same spot just two years later and the interior is faithful to that period, including the baptismal, which survived that fire and is still used today. President Woodrow Wilson’s first wife was born on the property. The great hymn writer Lowell Mason worked there for a time.

We found some swings:

I created some Boomerang videos:

A swing, the Boomerang app and Ren. @lmrsmith @laurnsmith

A video posted by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on

I like watching the kids in the background. It is hypnotic, really.

Some of the trees in Forsyth Park:

And some of the ads that were hanging at the restaurant where we had dinner tonight. People today sometimes think flight-sweep was about tail fins. And while they do stand out, they only ran for another seven or so years on American roads after this ad. No, flight-sweep was really centered around Virgil Exner‘s lower, sleeker designs, inspiring car designers you still see even today:

Doesn’t this just make you want to fly to Hawaii?

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