Kelly Ingram Park

Across from the museum is the Kelly Ingram Park, the site of large scale demonstrations during the civil rights era. There is a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. and memorials to the demonstrations. Fred is shown with the monument depicting the water cannons which were trained on the children. We arrived fairly late on the 26th, so came back on the 27th to tour the Institute.

Birmingham, Alabama

Our first place to visit on this trip was Birmingham, Alabama. We went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is a museum and much more. We spent three hours there and were totally drained. It tells the story of the battle for civil rights. The only thing that I can compare it to is the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Across from the museum is the Kelly Ingram Park, the site of large scale demonstrations during the civil rights era. There is a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. and several statues depicting scenes from the demonstrations: the water cannons which were trained on the children and the dogs that were allowed to threaten and terrify the demonstrators. There is a monument to the children who were jailed: on the jail, upside down, is written "segregation is a sin" and across from the jail are statues of the children who vowed they would turn the jails upside down.

Westward Ho!

When Fred and I agreed to drive our friends' red Miata West for them, we didn't know what we were getting into. Art and Kathy Buono moved to Colorado just in time for all the December 2006 blizzards. We picked up the car at their old house in VA, and fifteen minutes into the drive home, the Buono curse hit us too. The snow in our driveway melted before we left, but more snow flurries hit just as we were leaving on Wednesday the 24th of January.

We stopped in Staunton, VA for lunch at the Hi Nieghbor restaurant. The salt on the side of the Miata is a testimony to the snowy conditions that had been around.

We spent the night near Knoxville, and left the next morning in, you guessed it, snow flurries.