Monthly Archives: June 2019

Aztalan State Park

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After tooling around Lake Mills, Wisconsin, for a few hours, we got around to the original reason for driving up to southern Wisconsin for the day, a visit to Aztalan State Park. The park is a few miles east of the town, occupying 172 acres near the banks of the Crawfish River.

It’s a small version of Cahokia in Illinois, near modern-day St. Louis. The comparison isn’t idle, since both settlements were created and occupied by Middle Mississippian Indians more than 1,000 years ago.

Like Cahokia, Aztalan features manmade mounds and a rich archaeological legacy, despite 19th-century depredations. The Indians at Aztalan similarly and mysteriously abandoned it like those at Cahokia, centuries before the coming of Europeans.

The name is a misnomer in the sense that in the 19th century, one of the ideas about the prehistoric people who lived here saw them as ancestors of the Aztecs. The ancestors of the Aztecs were thought to be from a place north of Mexico called Aztalan. So the name was applied to the site, even though the Mississippians are no longer believed to be Aztec ancestors.

Then again, what the people who lived here actually called their settlement is unknown. I’d speculate that it was some variation of Our Place or This Here Place in their language, but who knows. Aztalan is as good a name as any in our time.

But why did they settle in the future Wisconsin? The Milwaukee Public Museum posits: “Things such as copper, lead (for white paint), deer, and certain types of stone materials such as Hixton Silicified Sandstone, were the basis of Mississippian trade interests in the northern frontier, and may have influenced the location of Aztalan as a Mississippian outpost in Wisconsin. Trade and other social and political processes expanded Cahokian influence out into much of the Midwest, as well as eastern and southeastern North America.”

Aztalan State Park sports tall grass, mounds and stockade posts, with mowed paths connecting different areas.
The stockade posts are 20th-century reconstructions, but I understand they were placed in the original holes.
One of the mounds. The second largest one, I think.

The path to the largest of the mounds. Large and small are relative terms for the mounds at Aztalan. Compared with Cahokia, they’re all pretty small.

Another path leads down to the Crawfish River, which I assume supplied Aztalan with its water and some fish.
Near the river is what I take to be an active archaeological dig, complete with screens for sifting the soil.
I don’t think I’d have the patience for that kind of work. But I’m glad there are people who do.

Glacial Drumlin State Trail

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I might have heard the term drumlin before, but if so I didn’t remember what it meant. On June 2, after lunch and looking around Lake Mills, Wisconsin, for a while, we took a walk on the Glacial Drumlin State Trail, which runs through the southern part of the town.

A drumlin is a kind of elongated hill. The kind of formation receding glaciers are apt to leave. “One end is quite step, whilst the other end tapers away to ground level,” says the Geography Site, a British page with helpful diagrams.

The section of the trail we walked didn’t have any kind of slopes at all, but the name refers to the drumlins that the trail passes by or over during its entire length, which is 53 or so miles. It runs from suburban Milwaukee to suburban Madison, or the other way around.

The trail began as a section of the Chicago & North Western’s main line between Milwaukee and Madison. The railroad abandoned the line in the 1980s, after which I assume the Rails to Trails Conservancy did its fine work.

I first noticed the trail on Google Maps and decided to investigate further when I saw that the trail crossed a part of Rock Lake on a feature called Glacial Drumlin Train Trestle, which sounds like an English folk revival band from about 50 years ago. I decided I wanted to see the trestle.

We accessed the trail from a parking lot near a renovated depot.
To the south of the trail at that point is an industrial complex belonging to Vita Plus. In its way, as interesting as anything we saw in Wisconsin that day.
The company provides “feed, nutrition and management expertise to dairy and livestock producers,” according to its web site.

Moving on, we headed deep into the woods. Except that for most of the way to Rock Lake, residential districts were on both sides, maybe 30 feet from the edge of the trail.
Still, it was a pleasant walk, crowded with neither bicyclists nor hikers. Phlox were a-bloomin’ along the trail.
Eventually we got to the trestle. Because I didn’t bother to check Google Images, I was expecting to see some kind of bridge substructure. The term “trestle” inspired that idea. Instead, we crossed a nice enough but not very dramatic bridge occupied by a few fishing enthusiasts.
Views of Rock Lake from the trestle, to the north and to the south. Pyramids lurk under the waves, they say. Built by aliens, no doubt. To harness pyramid power and teach mankind to live in peace and harmony.

A local Nessie would be better, but I’ll pass along whatever tales are on offer.

Lake Mills and Its Pyramidal Oddity

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In late May, I benefited from a bit of service journalism offered by the Chicago Tribune, which told me that the state of Wisconsin wasn’t charging entry fees to state parks on the first weekend in June.

So on June 2, we sought to take advantage of the situation by driving up to Wisconsin for the day — and probably proving the marketing arm of the state right when it calculated that such an offering would attract some out-of-state visitors, especially from Illinois.

Before we went to any state park, however, we stopped in the pleasant town of Lake Mills, which is in Jefferson County in the southern part of the state, between Madison and Milwaukee. We had a satisfying lunch at a diner called Cafe on the Park, which is on Main St. across the street from Commons Park. Then we took a stroll over to the park.

Visible from the park are some interesting buildings, such as the former Odd Fellows Hall and local opera house. Now it’s occupied by an antique mall.

The charming Lake Mills Public Library. Closed on Sunday, or I would have gone in.

There’s a bandstand in the park. Wouldn’t be a proper small-town park without one. With patriotic bunting. Nice touch. Formally it’s the Franklin Else Memorial Bandstand, though you (I) could argue it’s a large gazebo.

The Veterans Monument in the park is a little odd. It’s respectful and all, but has some unusual design elements.
It has a triangular shape, for one thing, with three triangular columns rising from a triangular base to support a triangular top. Triangles are also etched into the design in various places.
Besides all that, a black stone pyramid is the centerpiece of the memorial. Why? Or, if you’re feeling more surprised, WTF?

No marker on or near the monument explains. I didn’t know what to make of that local oddity until I got home and looked around some.

Twenty years ago, the Tribune published an article about Lake Mills and its adjacent body of water, Rock Lake.

“There’s something in Rock Lake.

“What, exactly, lies at the bottom of this placid fishing hole east of Madison is the stuff of local legend, the obsession of scores of divers and the spark of an unlikely controversy that has raged among locals for decades.

“Believers, including many old-timers and diving enthusiasts, say that ancient pyramids, ruins and even a serpent-like, 200-foot-long rock figure lay beneath these algae-filled waters. They say pre-Columbian dwellers built the structures on dry land before the area was flooded by geological upheavals and a dam built in the 1800s.

“Skeptics… say there’s nothing but natural piles of rocks below the 40-foot depths…. the otherwise unremarkable town of Lake Mills, which abuts Rock Lake, [calls] itself ‘City of the Pyramids.’ “

City of Pyramids, eh? Sounds like something a ’30s newspaperman made up and a ’50s chamber of commerce ran with. A little whimsical to incorporate into a veterans memorial, no? Then again, do such memorials need to be somber to the point of sameness, ignoring local lore?

That’s hardly the end of online descriptions of the supposed structures at the bottom of Rock Lake. Grazing through some of them, you come up with lines like:

“You can’t mistake certain things. There’s a city down there. There’s no question about it.”

“There are remarkable, artificial underwater structures beneath the waters of Rock Lake, Wisconsin but unfortunately for many years these prehistoric ruins have been ignored by researchers.”

“Much like Judge Hyer before him, Taylor believed that the three to four pyramids (the number changed with each reporting) was [sic] Aztec in origin and were built during a drought when the lake was completely drained and they were sacrificial altars to the rain god to bring the rains back.”

“Aerial photos, side boat sonar scans, and underwater divers eventually charted a complex of at least nine different stone structures, including: two rectangular pyramids, several stacked-rock walls, two ‘Stone Cone’ areas, a conical pyramid, and a large ‘Delta Triangle’ structure.”

“Former state archaeologist Bob Birmingham told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2015 that the tales were ‘a bunch of baloney.’ ”

Bob Birmingham chalks up the shapes to piles of rock left by receding glaciers, and notes that such piles are found in other Wisconsin lakes. My, that’s boring. Tales of ancient peoples building mysterious structures are awfully romantic.

Somehow, I’m inclined to agree with Bob.

Cole Porter’s 128th Birthday

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This year’s back yard grilling and gabfest has come and gone, when old friends gather to sit on our deck and gab. You know, old-fashioned conversation. It’s been an annual event now since 2014 on the second Saturday of June. In recent years, I’ve been claiming that we gather to celebrate Cole Porter’s birthday, which was on Sunday this year. No Porter songs were sung at the event, however, probably because none of us can sing.

Beer bottles remain behind. Actually, beer and hard cider this year. I drank the Two Hearted Ale and tried one of the ciders this year, though I forget which.

We had a domestic array of alcohol this time. Know-Nothing brews, you might say. In fact, not just domestic, but all Midwestern.

The Holy Moses White Ale was brewed in Cleveland, while the Two Hearted Ale originated in Comstock, Michigan. Both ciders were from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, despite the Union Jack-themed label, and it did my heart glad to learn that.

Among Wisconsin towns, I have a sentimental attachment to Stevens Point, where I spent a few days in the summer of ’78. If you can’t be sentimental about the summer of ’78, when can you be?

Southern Loop Debris

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When were driving through LaGrange, Texas, on the first day of the trip, I began to wonder. What’s this town known for? I know it’s something. Then I saw a sign calling LaGrange “the best little town in Texas.” Oh, yeah. Famed in song and story.

On the way to Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, we took a quick detour — because I’d seen it on a map — to see the Beer Can House at 222 Malone St., a quick view from the car. Looks like this. Had we wanted to spend a little more time in Houston, I definitely would have visited the Orange Show. Ah, well.

We enjoyed our walk along Esplanade St. in New Orleans, where you can see some fine houses.
Plus efforts to thwart porch pirates. We saw more than one sign along these lines during our walk down the street.
We spent part of an evening in New Orleans on Frenchman St., which is described as not as rowdy or vomit-prone as Bourbon St., and I suppose that’s true, though it is a lively place. We went for the music.

At Three Muses, we saw Washboard Rodeo. They were fun. Western swing in New Orleans. Played some Bob Wills, they did.

At d.b.a, we saw Brother Tyrone and the Mindbenders. Counts as rock and soul, I’d say. Also good fun, though they were playing for a pretty thin Monday night crowd.

Adjacent to Frenchman St. is an evening outdoor market, the Frenchman Art Market, which we visited between the two performances. The market featured an impressive array of local art for sale, though nothing we couldn’t live without.

Something you see on U.S. 61 just outside of Natchez, Mississippi: Mammy’s Cupboard, a restaurant. More about it here.

In Philadelphia, Mississippi, Stribling St. is still around. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but after nearly 30 years, I wanted another look.

So is the local pharmacy run by distant cousins. Glad the chains haven’t spelled its demise.

During our drive from metro Jackson, Mississippi, to Montgomery, Alabama — connected by U.S. 80 and not an Interstate, as you might think — we passed through Selma, Alabama. I made a point of driving across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, though we decided not to get out and look around. Remarkably, the bridge looks exactly as it does in pictures more than 50 years old.

In downtown Montgomery, you can see this statue. I understand the bronze has been around since 1991, but was only recently moved to its current site not far from Riverfront Park, the river of course being the Alabama.
I’d forgotten native son Hank Williams died so young. Some singers die rock ‘n’ roll deaths, some die country deaths like Hank.

Speaking of death, early in the trip, I was activating my phone — whose dim algorithm always suggests news I seldom want to see during the process — and I noticed the name “Doris Day” in the feed. I figured that could mean only one thing. Sure enough, she became the first celebrity death of the trip.

I hadn’t known she was still alive. In fairly rapid order during the trip after Ms. Day, the reaper came for Tim Conway, I.M. Pei and Grumpy Cat. I didn’t know that last one, but Lilly did.

I remember a time that Tim Conway described himself as “the funniest man in the universe” on the Carol Burnett Show. We all took that as a comedian’s hyperbole. But what if he was right? What if some higher intelligence has made a four-dimensional assessment of human humor and come to that exact conclusion?

As for Doris Day, I will try to park as close to my destinations as possible in her honor for the foreseeable future (a term I remember hearing as long ago as the ’80s in Austin).

Also in Montgomery: the Alabama State Capitol. The Alabama legislature had been in the news a lot before we came to town, as the latest state body to try to topple Roe v. Wade. That isn’t why I visited. I see capitols when I can.

From a distance.
Closer.
The capitol was completed in 1851, though additions have been made since then. The interior of the dome is splendid.

Actually, the Alabama House and Senate don’t meet in the capitol any more, but at the nearby Alabama State House, something I found out later. When we visited, the capitol’s House and Senate chambers seemed like museum pieces rather than space for state business, and that’s why.

Seems like hipsters haven’t discovered Decatur, Alabama, yet. But as real estate prices balloon in other places, it isn’t out of the question. The town has a pleasant riverfront on the Tennessee and at least one street, Bank St., that could be home to overpriced boutiques and authentic-experience taprooms.
Of more interest to me was the Old State Bank, dating back to 1833 and restored toward the end of the 20th century. It is where Bank St. ends, or begins, near the banks of the Tennessee River.

Even more interesting is the Lafayette Street Cemetery, active from ca. 1818.

Lafayette Street Cemetery Decatur AlabamaIt’s more of a ruin than a cemetery, but I’m glad it has survived.
Lafayette Street Cemetery Decatur AlabamaLafayette Street Cemetery Decatur AlabamaLafayette Street Cemetery Decatur AlabamaDuring the entirety of the trip, there were plenty of random bits of the South to be seen along the way.
We also listened to a lot of Southern radio on the trip — something Lilly plans to avoid on future trips, Southern or not, with her Bluetooth and so on — and we had a little game whenever we tuned into someone discussing some social problem in earnest on a non-music, non-NPR station. The game: guess how long will it be before the discussion turns to God. It was never very long.

Road Vittles, Spring ’19

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Once upon a time, you either knew about a place like Davis Cafe or you didn’t. If you didn’t know it already, it wasn’t a place you were likely to stop if you were driving by — even if it weren’t on an obscure Montgomery, Alabama, side street, which it most definitely is.

The view from the outside.
But that was once upon a time. Now the challenge is sifting through too much information to capture a useful recommendation from the fire-hose gush that is the Internet.

I tasked Lilly to find a place for lunch before we left Montgomery. She came up with Davis Cafe. It’s a soul food meat-and-three. Or rather meat-and-two, but that hardly mattered, since the helpings were so ample and so wonderful.

I had the ribs, with black-eyed peas and yams, while Lilly had catfish with collard greens and macaroni, with corn bread for the both of us. Exceptionally good eating and good value as well. My kind of place. Like the gone but not hardly forgotten Mack’s Country Cooking in Nashville.
We didn’t have a bad meal in New Orleans, or even anything mediocre, which wasn’t much of a surprise. We visited a number of spots on Decatur St. in the Quarter, including the wonderful Coop’s Place, where I had rabbit and sausage jambalaya and an Abita beer; another spot where we had shrimp and crayfish and corn al fresco — better yet, on the second-floor balcony, and Lilly said it was her favorite meal of the trip; and a yet another place for beans and rice.

But my own favorite of the New Orleans visit was Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe on Esplanade Ave. in Treme for lunch the first day. It too was located using tech that didn’t exist the last time I was in town.

Li’l Dizzy’s lunch buffet might have been the thing, but we wanted to eat dinner that evening with some appetite, so we ordered off the menu. Had me a shrimp po’ boy to make up for the fact that when passing through Lafayette, Louisiana, the day before, Olde Tyme Grocery was closed for Sunday. Ten years later, my memory of the Old Tyme po’ boy hadn’t faded, and I wanted another. Li’l Dizzy’s po’ boy didn’t disappoint.

(We were hungry all the same in Lafayette, so we stopped at the absolutely nondescript, immigrant-run Charlie’s Seafood. It wasn’t Old Tyme, but it sure was a good place for fried seafood at a low cost.)

Two days out of three, breakfast in New Orleans meant the Cafe du Monde, because of course it did. One of the virtues of the Hotel Chateau was the five-minute walk to the cafe.

The cafe and its beignets are precisely the way I remember them from 30 and more years ago, or at least as I wanted to remember them. Light and sweet and as satisfying as waking up on a day off with more days off ahead.

We did learn, however, that the time to go was around 9, if breakfast is the goal. Earlier than that probably means a crowd of workers there for morning coffee. Later, by 10 or so, and there’s definitely a much larger tourist crowd. I don’t have anything against tourists, except when they all want the same thing as I do at the same time — a potential problem with any crowd.

So one morning we went to the Market Cafe instead, a simple restaurant in the French Market. Had a Southern, rather than specifically New Orleans, breakfast that day: biscuits and gravy, enjoyed while a three musicians played in the background.

The sort of breakfast you have if you’re going to go out and work on the farm all day, I told Lilly. Not too many people work on a farm anymore, but the breakfast hasn’t changed, which helps make us fat in the 21st century. On the other hand, we had a long day of walking ahead of us, so the breakfast geared us up for it.

Sorry to report that Miss Ruby’s is no more. It was a shoebox of a French Quarter restaurant on St. Philip St. that I remember fondly from 1989. Especially the pie. When I get my Tardis-like device to travel to my favorite restaurants, past or present, open or closed, I’m returning to Miss Ruby’s for pie.

Oddly enough, a good description of that long-lost restaurant is in the comments section of a book hawked by Amazon: Miss Ruby’s Southern Creole and Cajun Cuisine: The Cooking That Captured New Orleans (1991).

Reviewer Susan said: “I had the pleasure of many years ago (1980s), stumbling upon Miss Ruby’s restaurant while on a trip to New Orleans with an old boyfriend… Miss Ruby came to the door as we stood outside contemplating a place that looked more like her kitchen then a restaurant. She introduced herself with a big smile and welcomed us in. To this day I can recall what we ate, fried chicken, the sweetest green peas ever, lemonade to die for and I believe a German Forest Cake.”

Except for a few details (girlfriend instead of boyfriend, pie instead of cake), that was pretty much the Miss Ruby’s I encountered late in the ’80s.

In Nashville, we ate at somewhere old and somewhere new, though actually our best meals in town were homemade by my friends Stephanie and Wendall, with whom we stayed. But for restaurant food, we first went to the Elliston Place Soda Shop, which has been open since 1939 and looks the same as it did when I first went ca. 1980. The next day we ate lunch at the fairly new and highly aesthetic Butchertown Hall, open only since 2015.

Nashville Guru says: “Butchertown Hall gets its name from one of Germantown’s old nicknames ‘Butchertown,’ inspired by the numerous German immigrants who worked as butchers in the neighborhood. The first thing you notice when you walk through the Butchertown Hall doors is the appetizing smokey scent coming from the Grillworks Infierno 96 Grill (one of only three in the country). The high ceilings and natural light make the space feel large and open. A mossy rock wall separates the sleek bar and main dining area. There are community tables, two-top tables, four-top tables, and benches throughout the restaurant with seating for up to 130 people.”

It was Sunday, so the brunch menu was on the offing. I had the brisket and gravy — more gravy! — and it was tasty indeed. The place was a little loud, though, making conversation, which is what you want as much as the food during brunch, a little hard.

That there are newish restaurants in Nashville is no surprise. It’s a growing city. What surprised me walking around before and after eating at Butchertown Hall was that the entire Germantown neighborhood seemed new. New apartments, retail and restaurants, created ex nihilo in recent years (but naturally, according to demand). Now Germantown is a happening Nashville neighborhood. What was it 35 years ago? Nothing to speak of. As in, I don’t ever remember hearing anything about it when I lived in Nashville.

This and other Nashville growth nodes — that means you, Gulch — were the subjects of much old-person conversation during the time we were in Nashville. Old, as in me and my friends. Young Lilly put up with it.

Ave Maria Grotto

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From what I’ve read about Brother Joseph Zoettl, O.S.B. (1878-1961), he wouldn’t have cared whether he was depicted in bronze or not. Be that as it may, many years after his death, Br. Joseph stands facing his creation, the Ave Maria Grotto, on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey near Cullman, Alabama.

Driving north from Montgomery toward Decatur on the afternoon of May 17, we weren’t about to miss the grotto. It features 150 or so miniature replicas of famous buildings, almost all created by Br. Joseph over three decades, out of found materials.

“Originally from Landschutt, Bavaria-Germany, a young Br. Joseph found himself headed to America to pursue monastic life at Alabama’s only Benedictine Abbey,” the abbey web site says.

“Little did anyone know that this young Bavarian would end up leaving the abbey its greatest legacy and in an incredibly humble way. Since 1934, people from around the world visit the Ave Maria Grotto to see famous parts of the world in miniature. The former abbey quarry is now the four-acre park that the Grotto and surrounding miniatures rest upon.”

Many of the structures are perched on the side of a slope, with a path winding down below for a look at them.

As you’d expect, most of the structures replicate Christian churches or shrines or scenes, such as the First Christmas.
A wayside shrine, modeled after those popular in Latin America.
Lourdes Basilica and Grotto.
St. Martin’s in Landshut, Bavaria. This was one of the few structures that Br. Joseph had actually seen. The rest he did working off photos — postcards especially.
Sometimes, Br. Joseph decided to build something a little less religious. Such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Or “Hansel and Gretel Visit the Castle of the Fairies.” I don’t remember that part of the story. Maybe it was part of the sequel: Hansel and Gretel vs. the Fairies of Doom.
Roadside America: “The Grotto is not some holy shrine that got out of control. From the start, it was conceived as an over-the-top public attraction.

“Using only basic hand tools, Brother Joseph would shape cement into a replica building, then give it some zing with marbles, seashells, cracked dinner plates, or bicycle reflectors. Tiny-but-majestic domes were fashioned from old birdcages and toilet tank floats.”

The abbey includes a good deal more than the grotto.
There’s a church and school, and a few minute’s walk from the grotto, a cemetery for the monks. Br. Joe’s cross is in there somewhere.

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice & The Legacy Museum

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As you enter the National Memorial for Peace and Justice on a hill in downtown Montgomery, Alabama — as we did on May 17 — it’s hard to see what’s ahead.
The path passes “Nkyinkyim Installation” by Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, erected with the memorial when it opened only last year. The work speaks for itself.

The memorial structure includes over 800 corten steel (weathering steel) monuments, one for each county in the United States where a lynching took place. Engraved on the columns are the names of the lynching victims documented for that county.

Here are the victims in Wilcox County, Alabama, to pick one of the first steel monuments you encounter: Riley Gulley, William Lewis, Arthur Stewart and Ephreim Pope.
Visitors enter the memorial at one corner of the square shape. On the first side of the memorial, the steel monuments are flush with the floor, with the names at eye level or lower.

On the second side of the memorial, the floor begins to slope downward in the direction of travel, but the steel monuments continue to be at the same level.
In the third side of the memorial, the floor slopes even more and the effect becomes very noticeable. The steel monuments are hanging.
You need to look up to see the county names.

The fourth side. The effect is practically tunnel-like by now.
The writing on one wall says:

For the hanged and beaten, for the shot, drowned, and burned, for the tortured, tormented, and terrorized. For those abandoned by the rule of law.

We will remember.

With hope because hopelessness is the enemy of justice. With courage because peace requires bravery. With persistence because justice is a constant struggle. With faith because we shall overcome.

Water flows down the other wall.

The text:

Thousands of African American are unknown victims of racial terror lynchings whose deaths cannot be documented, many whose names will never been known. They are all honored here.

Outside the memorial structure are smaller versions of the steel monuments arrayed in long lines, lying with their text face up. I understand that if a county named on one of them wants to use it as part of a local memorial to lynching victims, it will be given for that purpose. So far no county has taken any of them.

The Legacy Museum, developed by the same organization as the memorial — the Equal Justice Initiative — is also in downtown Montgomery, pointedly in a building where enslaved black people were imprisoned, near the site of the city’s 19th-century slave market. By the mid-1800s, Montgomery was the focus of the slave trade in Alabama.
In full, it is The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. It’s a small museum, 11,000 square feet, but a powerful one.

The EJI web site for the museum says: “Visitors encounter a powerful sense of place when they enter the museum and confront slave pen replicas, where you can see, hear, and get close to what it was like to be imprisoned awaiting sale at the nearby auction block. First-person accounts from enslaved people narrate the sights and sounds of the domestic slave trade. Extensive research and videography helps visitors understand the racial terrorism of lynching, and the humiliation of the Jim Crow South.”

The museum also illustrates that the more recent (and ongoing) war on drugs, a toxic interplay of political calculation and moral panic, has made black Americans “vulnerable to a new era of racial bias and abuse of power wielded by our contemporary criminal justice system.”

A quote from the all together remarkable EJI Director Bryan Stevenson, who lead the effort to build the memorial and create the museum:

“Our nation’s history of racial injustice casts a shadow across the American landscape. This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color, and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice.”

Natchez &c.

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When we left New Orleans to drive to Natchez, Mississippi, on May 15, the uninspired route would be have been I-10 to Baton Rouge and then north on US 61. Instead I wanted to drive across Lake Pontchartrain, because I’ve seen that crossing on maps for years. Better yet, it’s no extra charge, since the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway collects no toll northbound.

The morning was bright and traffic light on the causeway. It’s actually two bridges, one each way, so you don’t face miles and miles of unavoidable oncoming traffic mere feet away. An enjoyable stretch of road under those conditions. Uneventful enough driving to ponder the engineering marvel that’s the causeway while still on it.

Before going, I wondered if there would be a few minutes on the causeway when we would be out of sight of land. I’d read claims to that effect. But the answer is no, not that I saw. I spotted the north shore of the lake in the distance before the south shore had completely vanished from my rear-view mirror. Once you get to the other side of the lake, you’re in Mandeville, Louisiana. I-12 from there connects with US 61 in Baton Rouge.

By early afternoon, we were in Natchez, Mississippi. The town has some good views of the Mississippi River from a park on the bluff.
The local gazebo.
It was too hot to wander around in the noonday sun for long. We decided not to tour one of the local antebellum homes, but rather spend the afternoon heading further north on the Natchez Trace Parkway to seek out antebellum ruins instead.

Lilly drove part of the way on the Trace and I played with my camera.

Others might find the driving dull, but I like driving the Trace for its lush greenery, and also its sparse traffic. No trucks at all.

We took a diversion off the Trace before going to Port Gibson and on to Jackson, along a winding country lane called Rodney Road. Go far enough on that road, and you’ll come to the Windsor Ruins.
I can’t remember where I read about the ruins, but the place has been filed under my Possible Minor Destinations for a good while. That’s such a sprawling, unorganized mental catalog of places that it’s a wonder that I ever remember to take the right detours at the right time.

We were the only ones there once another car left a minute or two after we arrived. Considering that the ruins used to be the heart of an enormous plantation, it’s remarkable how lonely the spot now feels. History has passed it by.

The view from the ruins.
“Windsor, built between 1859 and 1861, was the home of Smith Coffee Daniell II, a wealthy planter who had extensive properties in the Delta and in Arkansas,” the NPS says. “Completed in 1861, the home was the largest house built at that time [in Mississippi], the plantation once covering over 2,600 acres.

Curiously, Daniell died on April 12, 1861. The mansion survived the war, probably because the Union army used it as soon as the area had been captured, but it burned down by accident in 1890.

The fence is fairly new, added by the state, which now owns the site. Guess the state of Mississippi doesn’t want any of the 23 massive Corinthian columns coming down on any hapless visitors. They’re looking a little dodgy.