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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Travel tips

Facts you may need to know about Atlanta:
All the taxi drivers are Somali (based on my sampling).

The 20,000 square foot painting (biggest painting in the world) at the Cyclorama, depicting the very bloody Battle of Atlanta (May-September, 1864) weighs 9935 pounds. 12,000 gallons of paint were used to create it.

In the Cyclorama Gift shop you can buy a blue stuffed bear with a union cap and a USA belt buckle OR a gray stuffed bear with a rebel cap and a CSA belt buckle.

All Saints Episcopal Church has an excellent choir and they wear red robes, which match very nicely with the deep scarlet used to paint the interior of the apse. According to MBL, architectural historian par excellence and my mother, this color is correct for a Gothic revival church.

The High Museum is home to Madonna and Child with Six Saints (ca. 1390) by the Master of the Saint Verdiana Panel. For those of you who don’t know, Saint Verdiana was a contemporary of Francis of Assisi, though obviously much less well known. For 34 years she lived in a small (10’ x 4’) stone cell with only a small window opening into the oratory. It was through that small window that 2 snakes entered one day and they stayed with Verdiana for years. They tormented her and ate from her plate, but she never complained. Hence their appearance in all paintings of Saint Verdiana.

The airport is famous for exceedingly long lines at security.

Some school in Georgia (University?) has a team called the Bulldogs, which means that (at the airport, at the last minute, assuming you made it through security) you can buy tasteful tee shirts and other useful items featuring a ferocious bulldog for all your loved ones.

Back home, the bees in the tree trunk swarmed and clustered on the grape vines nearby.

1 comment:

Rebecca Rice said...

I love all the quirky facts about Atlanta!

Some others: Atlanta is the birthplace of Margaret Mitchell, who wrote Gone with the Wind. She attended Smith College for a year, but apparently left because she was offended by the presence of a black person in her class.

Atlanta is also home to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both Martin Luther King, Jr. & Sr.
preached. Barak Obama spoke there on King's birthday this year.