We took a day off from traveling yesterday and hung out here in Tallahassee. The downtown is kind of small. No shopping to speak of. Tons of government buildings and guys in suits walking around. I guess they were government guys but, I kept mistaking them for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I expected them to reach into their little self important briefcases to try to sell me a Watchtower!
We wandered all through the old parliament buildings. Tons of displays and lots to read about. It never ceases to amaze me how cruel we are to one another and how big the struggle to control everyone else is. Thank your lucky stars you were born white!!
Our trip through the south has been a bit of an eye opener for us. First of all, it’s been like driving through the Twilight Zone somewhat after the snow storm. I understand how they don’t get much snow so, if an comes at all, traffic comes to a screaming halt but, by the time we drove through both Atlanta and Birmingham, the snow had melted 24 to 48 hours earlier. We couldn’t figure out why there were still hundreds of abandoned cars everywhere along the sides of the roads. Some were damaged, and I’m told some were out of gas but, most were not. I would have thought that by 48 hours later, at least the car thieves would have been out!
The underlaying attitude towards blacks is shocking too. Maybe we (Canadians) live in a very save, liberal or, as George Carlin called it, a pussified world. I’m used to looking at people as individuals and deciding from there what I think of them. That big bad black brushstroke seems to be still swinging widely down here.
We took our time driving through the ‘Florida Panhandle’ or, the ‘scrotum of God’s waiting room’ as I prefer to call it. Nature is beautiful here. Huge sparsely branched but with huge bright green needle pine trees mixed in with palm trees that are constantly opening up to white sand beaches and ocean are spectacular. The number of small towns with more abandoned stores and houses than populated is scary. I’m still seeing signs for houses for sale, no deposit, just take over the payments around, even here in the capital. At home I hear folks talk about how they haven’t received a raise in a few years or, they are working a couple of jobs but, it seems like there are a lot of hopeless folks who have lost everything down here. It makes me think we should thank our lucky stars that we have whatever it is we have. There’s a ton of folks out there with a lot less.
OK – enough depressing shit. We’re heading down the coast today. We’re setting the GPS to Venice. That should get us through the Sarasota / Tampa area’s. I’ve been there years ago on a training trip I was on. I didn’t see much from the front of a classroom and, Lynne has never been down the west coast of Florida so, we’re looking forward to another fun day.
It’d tell you what the temperature is here but, I don’t need another flurry of endless “Screw You” emails today! 🙂
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