• Tag Archives Savannah
  • Savannah Train Station

    Beltane         Waxing Dyan Moon

    Savannah Amtrak Station, waiting on the Silver Meteor which the stationmaster said will be 20 minutes late.

    After leaving the rental car to the tender mercies of the Alamo cleaners, I took a taxi from the airport to the Amtrak station. In the process I rode on early 20th century technology to get to 19th century technology, displaced by the mid 20th century phenomenon of the commercial jet.

    When I first arrived at 6:00 p.m., I had the station all to myself. The stationmaster asked how far I wanted to check “this big boy.” All the way to Minneapolis.

    He gave me a new ticket folder because the trip down had crumpled the old one.

    The first additional travelers to arrive were a short, squat man with brill cream slicked back hair, an Asian boy in sandals whom he treated as a son and two short pinch fenced red heads headed back to some school or the other. They were family and had, apparently long ago, mastered the art of conversations in which each of them talked at the same time. It was a peculiar experience. Like watching unfamiliar animals in their habitat.

    Now there are many people in the station, that movement of people in and out of public places that finds them alternately empty and crowded, as tides of passengers or audiences or students come and go. The change is from dead to alive, a space with no buzz to a space filled with the agendas of strangers mixed together for a brief period.

    It may be the relative novelty of train travel, but all this seems more human, certainly less desparate than the airport, even the small one I left earlier today.

    Now there are two Amtrak employees here.

    Every one stays in their small spaces, talking to those whom they know. One thing travelers do is find small spaces they can claim as their own. This space, no matter if its only a plastic seat in a crowded room, provides a refuge from the chaos of others and their unknown purposes. This is one of the chief advantages of train travel, it allows a space with real boundaries, a place you can fall asleep while traveling.

    Yes, it takes longer, but the process has a definite scale to it that seems to match me. Rather than flung in the air by great jet engines, we will glide over the rails, pulled forward by hulking engines with humans at the controls, in fact riding on the engine itself.


  • Savannah–Creek for Marsh Grass

    Beltane            Waning Flower Moon

    The Gray Line Tour of Savannah did its job.  It was a quick overall view of the city with a dash of information on Hilton Head Island.

    Savannah and Philadelphia (according to the guide) are the only cities in the US laid out to plans conceived before their planners arrived in this country.  Savannah’s plan came from London, a scheme to rebuild it.

    When I lived in Irvine Park in St.Paul, it was much like the older squares in Savannah.  It had Federalist architecture as well as later 19th century styles.  In fact, Savannah reminded me of St. Paul, especially Summit Avenue and Irvine Park.

    The strange part, though, was the weather.  Yesterday Savannah had the lowest maximum temperature (66) of any year since 1875!  It has been rainy and chilly since I got here.  The tour itself lost something of its Southern ambiance with the chill.

    I did see the house where the murder (or misfortune, as the people in the house now call it) occurred that prompted the book and the movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

    Tours rarely attract me, but I wanted a quick look at Savannah to see if I might want to spend more time there. I’m not sure.  Period houses lose their appeal for me pretty quickly.  Maybe if it warms up.

    Kate and I had a low country buffet with her pediatric colleagues tonight.


  • Leaving on A Slow Train

    Beltane                         Full Flower Moon

    A week from tonight I will be asleep or almost so on an outbound train from Chicago to Washington, D.C.  After several hours during the day on Saturday in D.C., the train for Savannah leaves Union Station, arriving around 6:30 a.m. the next day.  Slow travel seems to fit with the life I’ve come to lead, one that waits on the natural rhythms for flowers and vegetables, fruit and honey.

    Travel became a family insignia, we should have trains, planes and ships, buses and taxis on our family crest, the Ellis family crest that is.  We are a peripatetic group.  Mark travels regularly around Southeast Asia, frequenting Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam while basing himself in Thailand.

    Mary will travel sometime this year to Athens from Singapore where she will present the results of her Ph.D. work.  She gets to England now and again in addition to returning to the US.  She will not, however, be able to come this year because the Singapore Government has banned official travel to the US due to the H1N1 flu.  Her travel is official because the university for which she works pays for her ticket and the university is an arm of the government.