Travel South

I started this while sitting at the Montgomery airport, awaiting a slightly late flight, catching up on some reading on and off line. I've just been in Auburn, AL, with my husband for a conference on university architecture for university architects. It's his conference, but they have a guest program that was wonderful. It's a week long conference, but I am leaving two days early because I was anxious about being gone so long with a home improvement project just beginning (new windows, roof, and railing for the sunroom) and the kids at home, but part of me wishes I stayed until Saturday with my husband ... except they have a tropical storm rolling in from the Gulf, so weather delays could extend his trip. 

Auburn has a beautiful campus, which has grown exponentially in the last decade or two.  We have some friends who are Auburn alumni, and they drove a few hours south to join us for dinner last night. They pointed how much has changed since they were students in the 90's. Like everything built recently, it's bigger, shinier, sleeker. The new architecture blends well with the old, sometimes complementing, sometimes copying. There are some older structures from the 70s-90s that look dated and tired because they were built quickly to look new without reference to the historic references, but those are being renovated or torn down to make way for newer buildings that follow a master plan with more consistent design guidelines, as well as more requirements to support sustainability. 

Our trip included began with a rerouted flight to Atlanta because of bad weather (instead of the originally scheduled Montgomery). Since I had never really visited the city except for the airport, we decided to spend Sunday morning there instead of heading straight to Auburn. After a late night/early morning arrival, we slept in. We ended up going to Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes, which is the oldest church serving the Black Catholic Community in Atlanta.  Needless to say, the Gospel music was incredible, and the Mass was full of vitality. 

Just blocks away from the church is the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Park, which includes a visitor center with artifacts from his life and from other civil rights figures including his wife Coretta, whose influence is underappreciated. His birth place is just down the street, but it was closed to visitors, as was the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was pastor.  We spent some time at the reflecting pool and tomb where he and his wife Coretta are interred. It was moving monument, but in need of some repair and full of potential to be something more educational and transformative. 

Burial monument for Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

MLK's suits and tie tacks and cufflinks. A miraculous medal is among the accessories in the jewelry box 

 

MLK's birthplace. He was born at home here.

 

The Ebenezer Baptist Church

 

Scenes from the Auburn campus:

Samford Hall, one of the early buildings and most iconic on campus

 

This was at one time the university president's home

The stadium holds 87000 people. About 35K students attend Auburn.

Met this baby screech owl at the Auburn Raptor Center, a rehabilitation center as well as home to the war eagle.

 

Retired War Eagle #7 Nova

On our third day in Alabama, the guest program participants were treated to a tour of murals - but rain made this a bus tour instead of a walking tour, which would have been lovely. The tour ended up in the neighboring town of Opelika, where we also drove up and down some blocks of beautiful Southern homes representing various architectural styles. I'm sure this town has been featured in Southern Living Magazine.  The gardens were gorgeous, and many of the homes had deep front porches featured blue ceilings, comfortable furnishings, and big, flourishing baskets of ferns and other plants. 

We lunched at a place called Botanic that was a restaurant and a nursery and greenhouse. A dining and plant experience. 

A magnolia mural in Auburn

An original 1907 vintage Coca-cola mural in an old hardware store in Opelika

 

Scenes from Botanic

  

On Wednesday the guests at the conference visited the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy museums in Montgomery Alabama. Our first stop was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This was a much larger and impactful experience than the MLK, Jr. National Park. The Legacy museum features three locations: the monument, a sculpture park, and a museum. I missed the museum because I had to head to the airport. At the Memorial, metal coffin-sized rectangular prisms recorded the names and dates of men and women who were lynched across the United States. Other areas included narratives describing the victims' stories. It was a somber reminder of the darkness and ignorance that can cloud the human heart and be perpetuated across time and place. Fortunately, goodness and justice can also be spread across time and place, as memorials such as this seek to do.

 

 

  

 

The second part of the tour to the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is reached by river ferry down the Alabama river following part of the path that the slave trade followed to a small island. We got caught in a torrential downpour and the sculpture park does not allow photos except at the very end and very beginning, so I didn't take many photos of this part of our tour. The website includes a few, but many were exceptionally beautiful and moving. The island is dedicated to the story of slavery in the south. There were incredible statues and reproductions of slave train cars and relocated slave quarters.  Stone plinths included poetry and slave narratives. The experience was more moving than I can describe here. I wish I remembered some of the sculpture artists' names to share their work. 

The entry to the Freedom Monument 

This wall contains the family names of over 100000 freed slaves. Like the names of many who were lynched, many slave names remain undocumented. 

While this part of the trip was somber, it was also inspiring. Suffering causes deep and lasting wounds, but resilience and the beauty that comes from survival testify to the capacity of the heart to rise and to continue to love.  Many of the stories at the Freedom Monument recounted the strong familial bonds that persisted even when families were forcibly separated and sold apart. 

I am so grateful I decided to attend this conference. I was a bit reluctant to commit back in the spring, and now I partly wish I had continued with the experience. The kids - meaning my 22, 20 and 12 year old - were fine and kept busy at home working and attending Totus Tuus (the 12 year old helped with the younger kids in the morning and attended the middle school session in the afternoon, so she was worn out by the end of the day.) But life moves on, and we have a full summer ahead. 

 Again I am reminded that every region has natural beauty, historical significance, and wonderful people. One of the many pleasures of travel. 

Another is the peace that settles in your bones when you return home, ready to rest and reconnect.