The Performance The Cistern and The Patriarchy

I love bringing students to Epidauros.

Sacred to Asclepius, this site was an ancient spa that people went to in order to receive physical and spiritual healing.  It is also home to the most preserved ancient Greek theatre in existence today. Theatre was not entertainment to the Greeks. It was a chance to learn from the lessons of great men who fell great heights after demonstrating hubris. Oedipus teaches us the folly of attempting to avoid one’s fate, Orestes helps us understand the benefits of moving away from kinship wars and towards the courts of law, and Agamemnon reminds us that it is never to lie to your wife saying that you are marrying your older daughter to the hero Achilles only to sacrifice her to the gods by dashing her skull against the cliffs in order to achieve favourable winds to Troy and then staying away for ten years to fight another man’s war only to bring back a trollop half your wife’s age and ask her to clean up a room for the new guest.

You know. The simple things.

I had some of my students perform a scene from Oedipus Rex. Afterwards I told them to look around and realise that almost three thousand years ago other actors said those same lines with the theatre full of people listening with great interest. I wanted them to hear the applause they received as echoes of what once occurred in this place. Epidauros is a theatre that still produces, still embraces the audience, still performs.

Afterwards we went to Agamemnon’s city of Mycenae. Runs clinging to a high hill overlooking a lush valley, it is a harsh approach and a brutal walkabout in the afternoon heat. The refreshing lunch enjoyed only a half hour ago is long gone. The ancient cistern, a cave with ancient steps hewn into the rock from which water was plentiful, used to be a scary proposition to my students. They were tentative and unsure entering into the thick darkness. But not this group of girls. By the time I arrived to patiently escort them down the steps, they were already returning from the earth into the light.

“Cool,” a couple of them said. Then they moved on as I stood there sweating and panting. George, our guide, shrugs his shoulders and mutters something about changing times.

A few days later we went to the sacred space of Delphi. Home of the oracle of Apollo, this place was an opportunity to commune with the gods themselves as you attempted to ascertain your future. Sprawled along the steep side of Mount Parnassus, this holy place is becoming more and more closed off as the years progress. My first time here we had access to the tholos temple across the highway, the purifying baths and the stadium perched at the top. Now all of these are closed off. They are in need of repair and protection, but there is no money to do it. The ancient Greek legacy suffers along with the modern Greeks as the financial situation continues to be dire.

We have lunch that day in the lovely Arachova, one of my favourite places to visit. Then we head off to the little village of Delphi where we will spend a few nights before our stay in Mykonos.

Jackie Onassis made Mykonos famous and the LGBT community made it fabulous during the 70s and 80s. This trend has receded somewhat, but it is still a party place that is expensive, glossy and showing no signs of austerity.

My room was a tiny house in the resort in which we stayed. I had no view but I had privacy. I also had noise. If the shuttle bus didn’t distract me, the many cats fighting over my doorstep did the trick.

Lydia, my fellow teacher, and I get along really well. We laugh a lot and we seem to have the same general outlook on travel and kids. We immediately fell into a comfortable ease that I think created a sense of security and balance for our kids.  We have an easy repartee that allows us to give each other the space we need while making sure we spend quality time together. We talk of many things, including our lives and our family.

I found myself on this island still famous for its gay connections having lunch with Lydia and two of our students. It was pleasant company and the view was beautiful.  We all laughed as I made the realization that never had I been in a place so famous for being gay while feeling so very straight. It was like I was in an alternate universe.

The days we spent in Mykonos were filled with classes, work and marking, but it was also a nice respite from the bustle of the first two weeks of travel. We returned to Athens for one night and said good bye to Greece by seeing a cultural show where all the dancing happened with the men while the women seem to just shuffle in the background holding hankies. 

At one point the restaurant owner wanted to know what I wanted to drink. I said Fanta Orange and watched the usual reaction of confusion and disdain that I wasn’t ordering alcohol. He then gestured to the girls. “Soda?”  I nodded and gave a similar gesture so that he may go ask them what soda they wanted.  After a short while the man returned with a Pepsi and placed it in front of Lydia.

At first she looked bewildered and then she looked at me. “Did you just order pop for all of us?” I looked down the table as soda was being placed in front of each of the girls.

“Um..I think I did.”

The Patriarchy is still alive and well in 2016.

The Black Sail The Austerity Measures and The Hope for Inspiration

Cape Sounion is the home of the beautiful ruins of the temple of Poseidon. Two rows of columns rise over the sea from atop a cliff overlooking a beach.

When Theseus sets sail for the palace of Minos to battle the Minotaur, it is on a ship with a black sail. His father, Aegeus, tells his son to change the sail to white if he returns. This way, as Aegeus waits for the ship to crest the horizon he will immediately know his son’s fate. Black means he was vanquished, white promises a joyous reunion. Theseus is successful in his quest but forgets to change the sail. Aegeus, seeing the black fluttering in the wind is despondent and immediately jumps into the sea. From this moment on, it is called the Aegean Sea. Named for a bereaved father deceived by carelessness.

Legend has it is from this temple that Aegeus spends his last moments.

The wind is unrelenting in its salt and  vehemence as it buffets against us while we walk around the temple. The voice of our guide is often taken away by the gusts as she relates the key architectural features of the building. The girls follow her obediently as she speaks, but I can tell that their attention is more on the beach than the ruins.

While not surprised, I cannot help but be a little disappointed. I always assume that the kids that come on these trips are as enthusiastic as I am about these things. You would think I would learn by now.

My girls are sweet and kind. They are generous of spirit and love to shop. They giggle and they cluster in groups. They are reluctant to try new things, but are resolved to it when I won’t let them off the hook. As a result some of them like tzatziki, others yogourt with  honey.  All of them like Fanta Orange and not many seem to groove on dolmades.

I walked around the ruins on my own as the girls trundled on their way back to the bus. We would be seeing the Parthenon in a few days, with its bustle and frenetic energy and press of bodies in the heat. But Poseidon’s temple at Sounion is off the beaten path. Our group is essentially alone and I am left to reflect and wander by myself.

I have written before about how I feel that the ancients speak through the stones they leave behind. These sacred spaces, for me, is like a message in a bottle. Often unclear in its total meaning, but the narrative is textured and intimate. The vocabulary is in the columns and the base, the intent is in the geography, the syntax lost along with the pediments. Partial sentences consisting of marble and time, from a people lost long ago.

As the girls frolicked in the waters my colleague, Lydia, and I speak to our guide for the day. Roula is stepping in for George today. She was lovely. Our conversations take a turn towards the modern financial crisis Greece is experiencing. Roula has lost her home and her pension as she reaches an age when she needs both the most.  Her career is grudgingly extended as her retirement plans disappear in with the winds of austerity measures.

“They have stolen our lives away!” she says with glistening eyes.” Our young people cannot work and I cannot stop.”

My partner in this journey is Lydia. She is teaching photography and she has a strong enough personality to put up with me. Two strong willed creative types will either mean a life-long friendship or a battle of wills. Early indications seem to indicate the former. She makes me laugh.

We see the Acropolis a few days later. As I suspected it was crammed full of tourists who have absolutely no sense of personal space. I have already been poked and bruised by selfie sticks. I admit to jostling one held by an obnoxious man who was trying to take a picture of himself with the caryatid statues (the columns that look like women) on the Erechthion.  He kept waving it around like a sword to give him space and managed to smack three people, including me. Hearing him swear as I jostled it with  my arm gave me great satisfaction. I know it was petty. And beneath me. And unnecessary.  But it made the heat more bearable for the next six minutes.

In the last few visits of this place I have keenly watched the progress of the restoration of the buildings of the acropolis. The blocks that have been placed along the outside rim continue to dwindle in number, and the miniature railroad used to move the marble pieces has been reduced in length. The slow progress continues as the results begin to show.

I am only now beginning to decompress from a frantic and challenging June. The heat is intense and Athens is challenging in its air pollution, but as I gaze down at the Odeon I find myself becoming rejuvenated again. The ancient world has always inspired me. I need inspiration this summer.  I need to find a way to look forward toward next year as I continue my own professional and personal journey. Cape Sounion,  the Parthenon, the great museums of the world, these have always provoked me to reflect and inquire, think and dream.

I am a teacher in Europe this summer. Clearly I am also a student.

The Return, The Mask and the Whispers of Welcome

Delphi, Greece

So I find myself once again in Greece. This time I am teaching.

The ancient city of Athens welcomed me with the dry heat that defines the Mediterranean lands and the bustle found in every major airport.  The drive in reacquaints me with the stark architecture of the city; white cubes of balcony-embossed high rises with speckles of overgrown plants and miniature trees. The inner city is teeming with darting traffic and gesticulating pedestrians. The urban decay is evident in the abandoned buildings that present themselves too regularly and the all-encompassing graffiti.

This trip I am accompanied by fellow teacher Lydia (photography) and ten girls. They are sweet girls who are generous of spirit and quite sheltered. They do not see the buildings fly by the windows of our bus. The cell phones are already out.

The President Hotel is too far from the acropolis for my liking, but it is modern and clean and provides the comfort of familiarity to my students.  Wifi is 13€ for 24 hours. Apparently this nickel and diming is more common as the tourist trade becomes more desperate in the current Greek economy. I am outraged. They don’t care.

Our tour guide is George. We have met before. Back in 2002 I went on my first student travel experience as a teacher and this man was our guide. I didn’t remember him a great deal, but he remembered me. He has been doing this work for 40 years now and never plans to retire. He loves the work. And retirement is not really an option these days. He presents himself as a bit of a philosopher and sports a gigantic moustache and an Australian wide brimmed hat. The girls instantly loved him.

We visited the National Archaeological Museum and gazed into the eyes of  the death mask of Agamemnon. We would be visiting his city, Mycenae in a few days and we spoke of his role in the Trojan War. The collection of gold in this museum is breathtaking.

Afterwards we explored the Plaka. This shopping district is a feast of the senses.  George and I showed the girls how to haggle. This was somewhat ironic as I am a terrible haggler. That’s why I have Eric. He will haggle down a vendor until the cash register starts bleeding. Me…not so much. It did not take the girls long to figure out the advantages of flirtation when it came to business transactions. I chose not to notice too much.

From the Plaka I looked up to the Parthenon and felt that sense of wonder ancient ruins always give me.  She looked beautiful up there on her strategic perch. The Goddess Athene surveying the city still protects after all these years. The people, the worshippers, the spirituality behind it all now long gone. 

And yet the ancient marble still whispers across the centuries.  A quiet, gentle welcome among the cacophony of sounds amid the modern market place.

The White Sands, The Seduction, and The Spectre

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

We left our little resort in Fort Lauderdale and began the trek home. This part of the trip is always the most difficult for us as it more about reaching deadlines and planned stops more than it is about the journey. We determined two touristy things to do along the way, bought an audio book version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (there is only so much satellite radio to which one can listen. If I hear Fight Song one more time I will actually vomit), and settled in with determination for the most direct route home.

Then we decided upon our first deviation from this plan.

Seaside, Florida is an unincorporated town nestled along the southern coast of the Florida panhandle. It is very unique because the layout and organisation of the town and its functions were completely planned out before being built. All other additions to the community were decided upon with consensus and were developed within the original plans. It was an attempt to preserve the small town atmosphere of America wherein you could walk to all of your required destinations and that there were plenty of opportunities to meet with your neighbours. This last part is reflected in the central post office with is next to a very large outdoor amphitheatre which is surrounded by all of the shops. Immediately behind this is the school and the streets which spoke out or run parallel to the amphitheatre.  Across the street from the post office are some restaurants and the pristine white sand beach cuddling up to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

It is a perfect place. So perfect that it was used to film the town scenes in The Truman Show. I was immediately smitten with the community and, after eating fresh shrimp on an outdoor pavilion that overlooked the water and then walking barefoot along the beach with Eric, boldly declared that this would be the place I would spend my retirement years as a snowbird!

Eric then noted that the place felt more like a resort than a town. At this point we looked around us again. The restaurants were great, but pricey for what they served. But that is for the tourists. The shops that surround the amphitheatre were not inhabited by the butcher, the fishmonger or the tailor. Instead we had a book store, a vinyl record store, high end fashions and a furniture store that had a very specialised stock.

I do not remember these kinds of things in the small town America I have seen in documentaries or any Frank Capra movie. Apparently there about few hundred people actually living in the town and then a resort than a home.

We also noticed that the only visible minority we could find were overweight people. If you know what I mean.

It was like the Stepford Wives version of a town. Perfect in almost every detail. Almost. I began to feel less smitten and more seduced. I am not totally convinced I would enjoy actually staying in this place for a long time. Certainly I doubt I could afford it!

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful place to visit and we both felt a few hours later that it all felt a bit like a dream or a Twilight Zone episode.

Our next stop ended up being another deviation from the ‘Get Home’ plan.

One of our most cherished movies is Tim Burton’s Big Fish. I have spoken about this in previous posts when Eric and I took a road trip to New Orleans and back. In this trip we visited some of the filming locations, but we did not get to see Spectre. If you know the movie, Spectre is a place the main character visits more than once. Spectre is a small town that serves as an evolving metaphor that examines the concept of narrative and how we perceive our lives and dreams. Spectre holds a great deal of influence over the narrative of this film. If you have seen this film, you know to what I am referring. If you have not seen this film, I recommend it with great enthusiasm.

The set of Spectre, one road leading to a church with buildings on each side along the way, is simple. It is every main street in any small town in North America. The set is located on a private island that you spend three dollars to cross the bridge. The area is used primarily for fishing (of course!), but there also seems to be camping. Being a set, the place is completely dilapidated and some of the buildings are now gone. The shops are gone and a couple of the houses. The church is still there. The mayor’s house, in which the main character ate pie, is in relatively good shape as it was the only ‘dressed’ set for interior use. But the porch stairs and door are long gone on this house as well.

Walking up and down the road of this place brought the name Spectre into a whole new focus. It truly is a ghost town now. When you consider the themes and ideas that were explored using these building consisting only of plywood and artistic license, it seems both sad and fitting that this place, this unreal place, should be left abandoned to fade away from existence and be swallowed up by the natural order of things.

Eric and I have been on sets before, and we hold no romantic notions of preservation. Indeed, we agree that part of the beauty of theatre is its fleeting nature. We left feeling grateful that we were able to visit this place, and knowing that we would never return.

Fleeting. Such is the nature of any spectre.

The Six-Toed Cats, The Chickens, and The Smuggler (Kind of)

Commerce, Georgia

After we left the company of Andrea, Carlos and the girls, with heavy hearts, we left Walt Disney World. Having recognised that we left very little room to go north and get home with time to see some sights along the way Eric made the decision to extend his holiday by three days. With this decision giving us a lot more wiggle room to explore on our way home north we then turned the car towards the south and headed to Key West.

Yes. South.

Why? Mostly because we are stupid, but also because we were on a road trip and Florida had really not been given its fair spot in the sunlight, so to speak. So off we went.

Extending the holiday brought some stress with it. Certainly there was the financial aspect of it, but both of us had commitments that were waiting for us. We knew that this decision would frustrate some people, but we also knew we spent a great deal of time apart during the year making things work for our jobs, our communities and for our friends. And for us, too. Or we wouldn’t be doing them. But time alone with each other has become a very rare gem these past few years and we wanted just a bit more of it. So we took it.

We spent the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale. Between sleeps we went to Key West…which was farther from Fort Lauderdale than we thought. We also got caught up in some wicked traffic for some reason we could not determine.

But the drive was beautiful. While there were no long stretches of beach and surf like I had hoped (too much development), the views were mostly stunning and the atmosphere was blissfully lazy and carefree.

When we arrived in Key Largo, though, it was raining heavy. I wanted to visit the father and widow of a war vet I once knew so I looked them up at the old, dilapidated hotel they still run. Nora Temple, the widow was a spunky, sultry dame and her father-in-law was a decent man who had a difficult life. He was now confined to a wheelchair. Things were going well until this guy and friends showed up and caused some trouble. Real trouble. Johnny Rocco was his name. And smuggling was his game.

Oh wait. That wasn’t Key Largo. That was Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (Dir. John Houston. Warner Brothers, 1948). Nothing like that happened to us. Too bad, though. Edward G. Robinson was awesome!

I had always wanted to see Hemmingway’s Home in Key West. I heard many things about it, especially that it was the home of dozens of cats. Some of these are the descendants of Hemmingway’s six-toed cat.

The tour was mediocre, but being in the space was amazing. Not only did you get a good feel for who the man was…and why…you were also given a glimpse of how life was lived in Key West during Hemmingway’s. Or how the very well off lived anyways. We saw the pool that was so expensive that Hemmingway claimed it took his last penny…which he embedded in the pavement nearby. We also saw the cat graveyard and his writing house.

Before leaving Key West, we stopped off at the marker for the southernmost point in the continental USA.  There were a lot of people lining up for a photo op next to the marker but Eric and I just took it from a bit further away. Also, for some reason I cannot comprehend, there were a lot of chickens walking about. Seriously, in this neighbourhood there were flocks of chickens, hens and roosters, just sauntering up and down the street.

I guess I now know why Hemmingway’s cats decided to stick around.

After our photo we finally began heading north. Not that we had a choice, mind you.

A note about Fort Lauderdale. As two gay men, some of our friends may have expectations about what we did in one of the gay focal points in the USA. There are probably a few of you who are making the assumption that I have chosen not to write about some of the things we did in order to keep it PG rated.

Well, first of all, thank you for your confidence in our ability to be exciting and sexy. But actually, while we did stay at a gay resort and did manage to check out the community a little bit, for the most part we used Fort Lauderdale as a point of reference. As an old married couple our days of spending late nights at the bars and early mornings on the dance floor are long gone. And that is perfectly fine with us. It meant early morning swimming in a pool to ourselves before heading out on to the road.

But I do recommend Fort Lauderdale for all of you more exciting types, gay and straight. It is a very beautiful, friendly place that wants to have fun…and it wants you to join in.

The Mouse, The Evolution, and The Snow

Near Seaside, Florida

I went to Walt Disney World and lived to tell the tale!

Okay, full disclosure time. I walked into this part of the trip firmly ensconced in an anti-Disney perspective. I have had real issues with Disney when it comes to Princesses needing Prince Charming, taking fully textured stories and reducing them to the point of sanitizing anything useful, and basically trying to take over the world. Also, the man himself, complete with helping to blacklist people in the 1950s, has always been a figure of suspicion to me. Now that I have experienced Walt Disney World my perspective has evolved.

I still think they are a part of the Illuminati trying to take claim of the world (The Mouse owns the image of the Mountie and the Star Wars franchise. Star Wars, people!), and I will never forgive taking a beautiful story about a little mermaid and reducing it to a singing crab, but I have to admit I had a great time at Walt Disney World.

Except for the fact that the experience almost killed me.

Eric and I were with our chosen family Andrea and Carlos and our nieces Sophie and Kipi. Together we visited the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. And we managed to take a big chunk out of each of them. We began each morning waking up in our adjoining rooms at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort. Our rooms were Princess themed and included portraits of some of the Disney princesses (which creeped me out a bit as I felt they were watching me sleep) and fibre optice fireworks on the headboards which you can turn on at your leisure via a button on the side. 

Yes…I often invoked the obvious reference required when finding a fireworks display option on your hotel bed headboard. But not in front of the children.

After the hint of a breakfast we boarded the bus to our theme park of the day and spent the morning enjoying our FastPasses which allowed us to skip the long lines. After lunch or a child meltdown, whichever came first, Andrea and Carlos and the girls would return to the resort for rest and pool time while Eric and I soldiered on. Then we would meet for dinner and maybe take in a few more rides before leaving. Once we returned to our rooms we would crash gratefully into bed and then I would lay in the dark on not sleep because I was w-a-y too overstimulated.These were full days, indeed.

The heat and humidity was unbearable. When you left your air conditioned room at 7:30 you would be in desperate need of water by the time you reached the bus stop ten minutes away. Gallons of water led to hours at the restroom, especially with kids. The heat, often at 35 -38 degrees, and an eight and ten year old, required a very slow pace which made our feet ache in despair. By the end of our four days at Disney I must have squeezed out enough fluids to fill a tanker truck. And my feet and legs were completely destroyed! Carlos and I looked like slow release fountains, Eric and Andrea always had that glow, and the girls were excited. Really excited. It was really cute…but damn that fleeting youth!

Thank God the fifteen million souvenir shops nearby were air conditioned! Surely this is unrelated to our discomfort.

Highlights for me included:

-         The Haunted Mansion: waiting area had a headstone that played the instrument you touched on the stone surface; the holograms were magnificent and included one that entered into the car with you at the end. If Disney wanted to make a Haunted House that could scare the crap out of you…they have the budget and technology to do it.

-          Kali Rapids: One of those bouncy raft down the rapids where you and your family ride in a circle and try, in vain, to stay dry. I love these kinds of rides. It was too short, but it was blast from start to finish.

-          Peter Pan: I forget its actual name, but you fly in a sailboat over the narrative of the story. It is really magical.

-          Toy Story 4D Arcade: You are in a car that spins and rolls around to different arcade style games where you use your toy shooter (not a gun) to win a match. Andrea and I played and she kicked my butt

-          Splash Mountain: Medium scary roller coaster with water. It tells the tale of Brier Rabbit and all of the characters found in The Song of the South without Uncle Remus or any reference to the title of what even Disney considers a movie that is too racist to re-release.

-          Mission: Space: Gary Sinise is our captain to helps us get to Mars for a training flight in this simulation. We manage to miss our target, crash land and go past the landing area risking our lives and the multimillion dollar space craft we have been given but we are congratulated for our success and welcomed as astronauts. Hmm.

Eric, Carlos, and Sofie enjoyed the scarier roller coasters while Andrea and I enjoyed the softer rides. We did manage to experience a great deal together as a family, though.

I will admit to loving the Frozen sing-a-long show, though. I have to because it was actually awesome. Watching the girls sing along to every note, spying the boys in the next row look sour and work hard to hate everything, and the campy actors on stage made for a fun time.

Also, Christoff was freaking hot.

At the end, when Elsa finally comes out and we all sing the signature song…again…snow falls from the ceiling. Okay…it was soap suds…but, dammit, for a few moments you are in your late forties and believing it was snowing in the auditorium. I admit I may have had something in my eye and had to wipe a tear or two away.

Such is the magic of Disney.

Which brings me back to evolution. I believe that Disney is beginning to realise that the Prince and Princess story cannot be the only model from which to draw upon. Frozen is about two sisters who look out for each other and the older, the one with more power, must come to terms with her real self in order to fulfill her destiny. And, in this story, the princess is crowned without a prince. In fact, there is no Prince Charming in this story.

And when I think of Pixar and its partnership with Disney, and shows like Up and Inside Out, there is still plenty of magic to be had.

In the meantime, I will try to catch up on my sleep and seek out feelings in my feet and legs.

The Flight, The Southern Belle, and The Haunting

Fort Lauderdale

It has been a long time since my last blog entry. A series of dubious wifi connections and late night check-ins conspired against me, I suppose. I had this fantasy that once I got to Disney World I would be staying in the same place for a few days so I could catch up then. More on that folly in a later blog.

I wanted to mention some time we spent at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. This little place is along the coast and quite small. You often drive along with the sea on both sides of you. Kitty Hawk, of course, is famous for the first successful flight of the Orville brothers. Actually, this event occurred in what is now Kill Devils Hill, but with the closest town at the time being Kitty Hawk it became the famous name attached to the famous event. I suppose when Kill Devils Hill was incorporated there was a determined decision to not associate the famous event with a place called Kill Devils Hill. I have no idea what the origin of this name is, and I am okay with that.

The First Flight National Monument has an information with a full scale replica of the successful aeroplane and there are talks every half hour by Rangers that are clearly enthusiastic as well as educated in this field. There is the pre-requisite walk through display and the required gift shop, but it is when you leave the centre and go out into the field when you feel the magic of the place.

Beyond the replicas of the Wright Brothers’ hangar and workshop (in which they lived), beyond the marker that stands to commemorate the founding of the National Park, beyond the stones that indicate the length of each attempt to fly that day lies the obelisk-inspired monument on top of a fill that makes it clear where lift off took place.

Eric and I walked the length of the flight to the monument and then back again. It is easy to recognise the enormity of the accomplishment even in this day of five hours to Europe. All this because of two guys who fixed bicycles.

As we walked back to the centre to get respite from the heat before returning to our car we heard another sound among the birds and people talking: an airplane. Just beyond the trees next to the path of the first flight there is a small airport. This seemed fitting to us.

Savannah was like a grand old dame who was a little more tired than her sister Charleston, but she was far from worn. Like any good southern hostess she was charming, welcoming and still very much full of life. I loved Savannah from the moment we drove up to the Foley House where we stayed.  The cacophony of cicada hidden among the Spanish moss was constant as was the humidity and heat. Nobody walked quickly or ran. I tend to walk fast but the weather here makes that impossible.

As you make your way through the historic district your path down the street is interrupted every other block or so by a grand old park. These provide respite from the sun. One of these parks, Oglethorpe Park, was a block from our guest house and was where they filmed the ‘box of chocolates’ scenes in Forest Gump. As I made my way slowly through these streets at night I was reminded of Florence, where so many people just walk through the streets quietly as they enjoy simply being in such wonderful place.

Savannah considers itself to be one of the most haunted cities in the country, so we had to take a ghost tour. Actually, what we took was advertised as a ghost walk and a ghost hunt. Some of you may know that I was once a part of a paranormal investigation group back in the day. I was the true sceptic. I was the annoying guy who kept debunking things and not getting excited by orbs. But I always hoped we would find something that I could not explain. Our tour of the Sorrel-Weed House started off interestingly enough. Apparently it was in the library of this house that General Lee began his leadership of the Civil War. We learned of the affair of the house owner with one of the servants and how his wife caught them in the act. The wife threw herself out a second floor window head first into the flagstones below and the servant hanged herself. I think the husband remarried. Hmph.

So, we looked for contact with the two ghosts of the Sorrel-Weed House. Our guide handed out EMF detectors and did not explain their use or why they are used and here we were, about twenty people, waving EMF detectors in various parts of the building.

Meh. With this crowd, I would not have come out to play either.

There was one moment where Eric and I got a little excited about a particular corner in the old carriage house where the servant hanged herself.  I tried to find electrical sockets and other evidence of a manmade electromagnetic field in the room but to no avail. However, after the tour I checked outside the building and found some transponders near the site. Oh well. So much for ghost hunting.

We also heard some ghost stories involving our guest house. Apparently the Foley House was built on a very large Jewish graveyard. I am not sure this explains misplaced dishes and table cloths, but there you have it.

We left the tranquil and elegant Savannah for what we knew would be a very different experience at Disney World.