AIROSMITH

AIROSMITH found ourselves in New Orlean, just in time for Mardi Gras.  We were last here pre-pandemic in 2019.  Parades and marches were restricted in 2021, limited in 2022, but back in full this year. We were once again visiting our gracious hosts, Steff’s cousin Martha and her husband Will.  They ferried us to a friends home in the Marigny, just off of Royal Street. This wasn’t the large commercial parades to be found uptown.  This was pure participator celebration.  Costumed paraders and homespun floats.  It was “Masking Day”.  Alcohol flowed almost as much as the fun and merry making.  There were people and music everywhere.  Nonstop from 8AM until Sunset.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here ya go. Graham and Will Steff and Martha My Bride!

  Montgomery Alabama is considered by many to be the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.  A walk on the Trail here will take you to a dozen destinations critical for the fight.  Some where the movement was planned and conducted.  Others like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Equal Justice Initiative that document the struggle while continuing the work. Add the fight for the right to vote in Alabama and you have the March from Selma to Montgomery over the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  There you revisit Bloody Sunday, Turn Around Tuesday, and finally the 54 mile, 5 day March to the State Capitol. AIROSMITH spent a week visiting the area and still left leaving some sites unvisited.  Our visit here was educational and moving.   On December 1st, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus and was arrested.  On December 5th, her day in Court, the Black community chose to boycott the city bus system.  They didn’t return for over a year. The entire B lack comm

  A visit to the National Memorial For Peace and Justice is a must stop on the Civil Rights Trail.  If you have read the book, or watched the movie Just Mercy you will know Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative . The visit encompasses the Memorial, and the Legacy Museum located near each other in downtown Montgomery.  We had planned to visit both on the same day.  We spent 6 hours moving through the Legacy Museum and 3 more two days later.  The following day, we spent another 3 at the Memorial.  To understand, you have to visit.  Though to get an idea, follow the links to the videos on the Memorial webpage.  Photography isn’t permitted in the Museum so these videos serve as a preview.   The Legacy Museum opened, in October of 2021, tells the comprehensive story of the international and domestic slave trade in the building of this country.  It chronicles the legacy of emancipation and reconstruction, and the violent response to setting black Americans free, and how intimida