Note from 2019 – On this trip I developed an aneurysm in back of my knee. It was a serious problem. In Georgia, it was hard for me to walk. I only later learned what it was. The doctor said that I could have surgery or try to exercise through it. I chose the latter, but worried that I would never recover, might even die from that artery disease. So far, I have mostly overcome the problem. Mostly.
I saw less of Savannah than I could have/should have because it was so hard to walk. I regret.
Driving across the Carolinas
Crossed into South Carolina. Gas is about twenty cents cheaper just south of the border. I got to the station ahead of news of the pipeline accident in Alabama. I expect gas prices to spike up.
I know there is lots of sympathy for those opposing the pipeline in Dakota. I can understand. But as long as we use fuel, we have to move it. Pipelines are usually the most efficient way to do it. We see the dire consequences of a pipeline being disrupted. If they were not built in the first place, these higher prices would just be normal. Meanwhile, fuel would still move, but by road and rail, adding cost, danger and ecological damage.
It would be great if there was really a unicorn option.
Speaking of transport … my other photos are from the Savannah River in front of my hotel. Containerized cargo changed the way we move goods and that innovation is largely responsible for this stage of globalization.
The call it Intermodal freight transport. Those containers can be easily loaded, unloaded and transferred to trucks or trains with less effort, loss, waste or threat. Our world underwent a significant revolution in the 1970s and 1980s and we didn’t really notice.
Most real change is like that. It creeps up on little cat’s feet, silently, until we notice it suddenly and think it just happened all at once.
Savannah Georgia
Have not yet seen too much of Savannah, but what I have seen is interesting. This is where they filmed “Forrest Gump” and the Gump bench is a minor tourist attraction. I will walk up and see it.
In the meantime, I have been close to the hotel admiring the live oak and the Spanish moss. Of course, Spanish moss is neither moss nor from Spain. It is a flowing plant that absorbs what it needs from the air. That is why it requires climates that are generally warm and usually humid. Savannah is like that. The Spanish moss rarely hurts the tree that host it, unless it grows in such perfusion that it shades out the leaves.
Poetry
Last post for today. We used to have to memorize lines of poetry. It seemed a waste of time and it was, from some points of view. There are no poems that I can really recite w/o lots of mistakes. But I do recall the general lines of many. One such is “Flower in a crannied wall” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The lines I vaguely recalled from Miss Ryan’s 12th grade English class at Bay View HS came bouncing back when I looked at a wall with ferns and flowers growing out of the cracks and crannies. The other photos show a bald cypress grove and ferns growing in and on the roots of a live oak. Below is Tennyson’s poem.
FLOWER in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.