Here’s what I’m Thankfully Happy about this Friday.
1. Tree limbs in historic district Savannah.
2. Buying a new gate for Grandtwins Matthew and Madison, not realizing it’s also a teether.
3. Spring Onions.
4. Cinco de Mayo Sombreros.
5. The color yellow.
Have a glorious Mother’s Day Weekend!
Saturday morning I stumbled out of bed (you would think someone my age could deal with morning a bit better) and walked a few blocks to Savannah’s Forsyth Park to get some fresh vegetables. (It’s spring, so I’m on my Annual Quest to get in Stellar Shape for the maybe two times I go to Tybee Island and the beach during the summer. I haven’t seen abs in forty years, but I’m such an optimist I AM NOT GIVING UP. Do you hear me?! I intend to be on the cover of Men’s Fitness one day.)
The Forsyth Farmers’ Market is the coolest gathering of local vendors offering fresh–often organic–fruits and vegetables, along with coffees, breads, honey, jams, juices, pasta, fish, beef, poultry, herbs, flowers, etc. I LOVE their statement of purpose: “The mission of the Forsyth Farmers’ Market is to promote understanding and participation in a local food system that supports sustainable production and increases access to local products.”
Coolest dog at the market:
Coolest shoes at the market:
What joyful shopping!
Every First Tuesday Savannah’s City Hall opens its doors for free tours. I know, I know, touring City Hall doesn’t sound like the most exciting entertainment venue around. But hold on just a second, compadre. After a hefty helping of Gabriella’s Zesty Chicken (on mashed potatoes) at Zunzi’s, I wobbled down Bull Street, remembering just in time to look up before I reached the river, and saw this …
… Savannah’s incredibly beautiful City Hall.
Completed in 1905 …
… City Hall features two figures who adorn the front, just below the clock and gold dome. And those two pretty ladies represent Commerce and Art. If you know anything about Savannah, you will find those figures so, so timely. Because what was true in 1905 is certainly true today: Savannah is both a big business city (Savannah Port and Gulfstream, for example) as well as a cultured, artistic town (SCAD, Savannah Music Festival, festivals galore).
Come along.
The original clockwork is now in the lobby:
I really loved the wood floor.
Looking up to the interior stain glass dome:
Some important Savannahian. (I want a bust made of me. Where can you go to get that done? Hobby Lobby? Michael’s?)
The plaque below looked historically official, so I stood there trying to read it to make people think I’m smart and all, but then I started daydreaming about the Vanilla Taffy down at River Street Sweets, so I took a picture of the plaque (which sorta still made me look smart because why else would you take a picture?).
Here I am with the really interesting tour guide (and SCAD grad), Luciana Spracher. She knew her stuff!
Did you know Savannah has a flag?
View from a back window of city hall:
Very cool open style elevator cage:
Something important looking:
I pretended to know the mayor. But you can only stand in front of her office for so long before people start to wonder what you’re doing.
TANGENT: A couple of months ago, I attended an event at the Savannah Civic Center with our mayor, Edna Jackson.
Okay, okay, maybe I wasn’t exactly with the mayor, but you can’t tell that from the above photo with her and Savannah State’s President, Dr. Cheryl Davenport Dozier.
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Luciana led us into the Savannah City Council chambers. For some reason I just got so excited.
Here I am sitting at the mayor’s desk. (Does she know people do this?)
What a fun (and educational) tour! Thanks, Luciana.
I Love Savannah!
Savannah’s Broughton Street bustles with activity this past Friday night, even for a warm and gorgeous early spring evening. I suppose Broughton is as close as my quirky, Midnight City gets to having a normal Main Street, as the historic district snakes around twenty-two breathtakingly beautiful squares. (Savannah’s downtown area is unique and hard to describe–come visit us to see what I mean.)
My friend Robert and I venture to the Crystal Beer Parlor, share joyful banter with lovely Hostess Fifi, meet good buddies, consume delicious and perfectly prepared ribeye steak. Friday night joy. Next, Broughton Street Market with dream-laden lottery tickets in hand. Walking toward my car. Traverse past hip young couples pushing into dance clubs; midde-agers brandishing bags with Paula Deen leftovers; older folks leaving Savannah Music Festival venues; SCAD kids with blue hair waving in the breeze. Packed, noisy sidewalks. All well. Very well.
Then fate interrupts–as she often does.
They sit on the sidewalk. No sprawl. As if dumped there. Three young men, in their early twenties. Two dogs. Man and pet, dirty, smelly, retched. Outcasts from society. A block from McDonald’s.
I live downtown and have grown immune to the homeless, the beggars, the street people. They merge and melt into the old bricks, the azaleas, the wooden benches. So what if there is an occassional grocery cart on its side in the shadows? No big deal. It happens.
But then the soiled speak.
“Can you guys help us out? We’re hungry.” Honesty makes me tell you my reaction: No Reaction. Walking on. Past the dirty ones. Then Robert turns, and says, “I can’t give you money, but I can buy you some food.”
Why do I hang out with people like Robert? It’s so much easier to keep walking. Walking past. Walking toward. Past what I don’t want to see, acknowledge. Walking toward the known, the comfortable.
“What are you doing?” I ask Robert, a bit frustrated.
“Getting them something to eat,” he says matter-of-factly.
I try but can’t think of a real reason to stop this interruption of my previously perfect night.
Too late, already inside McDonald’s, I remember a possible reason to have kept walking, a religious reason even: didn’t Jesus say that we would always have the poor with us?
But Robert, reasonless, places the order.
Five minutes later, with a bag of burgers and a tray of dollar menu sweet teas, we walk back toward the vagabonds. One young guy, with his mouth inexplicably sucking on the side of a smoking soda can, with pierced nose tattooed in triplicate black dots along the bridge, stands up in dryrotted pants that touch bony, bare knees. Drunk. Or high. Or both.
I hold out the bag of burgers. Away from my body, and toward his. Embarrassed.
The young leader looks up at me and says, “Man, you guys are beautiful. I gotta stand up and thank you. That’s a cool jacket.”
I want to be anywhere, anywhere but here.
He starts to stand, to reach out to hug me, drunkenly.
But pauses, perhaps sensing my hesitancy.
I then see his eyes.
And my safe world shatters.
For his eyes are the eyes of a real boy. A boy with a mama and a daddy somewhere. A boy who used to be a baby.
“Where are you guys from?” I ask, shakily, terrified but now connected. Joined. Level.
“San Francisco, long way from home,” he replies.
And then my knowing comes: his eyes could be the eyes of my daughters. The eyes of my grandchildren.
Without thinking, I reach out and touch his scraggly face and hold it for a moment. I see him. I really see him. He sees me.
“If this was reversed, I would do this for you, man,” he says haltingly, as he takes the burgers back to the ground, to his low place.
Robert and I walk away.
Less than two blocks later, I feel tears on my face.
Yesterday morning, on a brief walk near my home in Historic District Savannah, I found myself looking down. Here’s a sampling of what I saw.
“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Anyone who has been to Savannah on or around March 17 knows that Saint Patrick’s Day is a pretty …
… in this city! From the Greening of the Fountain and Tara Feis onward, Savannah embraces its Irishness, shamrocks growing and showing up everywhere, an already diverse and fesitval-driven city photosynthetically converting excited energy into green Gaelic joy. And since 2013 St. Paddy Day was Sunday, Savannah opted to hold its primary celebration on Saturday with the parade (the nation’s second largest), River Street revelry and other merrymaking events.
Since Yours Truly lives DIRECTLY on the parade route along Abercorn Street, and since some green Irish blood flows through my veins (Saye =”one who lives by the sea”), I decided to host a little parade-viewing party.
Party Prep Notes: For some reason I will never fully grasp, I decided to make Cabbage and Ham in the Crock Pot (or as I call it, Beverly Hillbilly-ishly, “the Slow-Cooking Pot”).
Now cabbage sounds fine, and even a bit Irish, until you understand that my place is a little under 800 square feet, positioned at the front of a beautiful old building completed in the 1800’s. Well, the slow-cooking cabbage produced a Rather Strong Aroma (try not to imagine it), first in my apartment, then wafting across the hall to my next door neighbor and fellow party hostess Audrey’s place, then throughout the entire old building, and probably up and down the parade route and on to the South Carolina border across the river. People were so nice and pretended that the smell made the party more “Irish authentic.” But a bunch of folks had drinks in their hands, so I’m not at all certain their sensory perception was on target. AND I noticed they would get a bowlful of steaming, fragrant cabbage and then quickly run out the door to see the next band or float they “had been waiting on.”
Here’s me helping to set up the area for guests to sit and watch the parade outside my building (my windows have the St. Patty tacky shamrock cutouts and green garlands).
Before the parade started, I made a quick tour of the squares close to me. A few sights:
I met some cool green-clad new friends:
And then quickly back to my place where the crowd had grown during my foray.
I found this pretty lady pirouetting in front of my apt, so of course I had to get my pic with her:
Here’s across-the-hall stylish neighbor Audrey:
And here’s party guest/good buddy Ellie and her brother encouraging the crowd:
I wish I was brave enough to dance in the street!
Hip green-haired son/father duo Ethan and Kevin:
And Kevin with very significant other Olivia:
Former Everyday Creative Writing Student Jaymes stopped by for a while. (He knows what’s rocking in Savannah.)
Buddies Rich and Edward (who brought party-hit basil lemonade):
Cool St. Patty Baby:
Made great new friends with some folks visiting from Maryland and staying in the vacation rentals in my building (so of course they were party guests too)–Kathy and Karen with their husbands. And don’t they look SO Saint Patricky?
Preparing to kiss the parade marching men:
(Public Service Announcement: I think I will rent out my place next year for St. Paddy Day. Is $2000 for the holiday too much? I plan to include a HUGE bowl of frozen-but-on-the-table-in-a-jiffy Authentic Irish Cabbage and Ham.)
New kayaking friend Tom with Edward, Rich and me:
Church buddy Diane with Rich, Edward, Robert, Jaymes and me:
Good friend Zach and brother Josh marching in the parade (marching, that is, before I ran out into the street and made them stop). Their Irish family has been in the parade for something like 1000 years.
What a wonderfully fun Savannah Saint Patrick’s Day Celebration!
But sitting here after the parade, I started to worry: “What if my Crock Pot Cabbage Smell keeps those hundreds of thousands of visitors from coming back to Savannah next year? Can they trace it all back to me?”
Top of the Friday morning, to you. Here are Five Friday Bringers of Happiness:
1. This cool pic of blooming almond trees in California sent by my new buddy Don Simmons. Don is good friends with Rick and Linda, the couple who moved to Savannah from Wisconsin. One fabulous day they gave me the tour of the “Joy in their own back yard”. Here’s what Don said in his accompanying email: “Since you mentioned almonds in one of your post, as something that brings you joy–I wanted to send you one of the great views that I have here in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where most of the world’s almonds are grown–it’s time for our ‘blossom trail’ and the almonds are certainly giving us a beautiful show–as well as the Sierras!”
2. Finishing up a great Winter Quarter at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). My two classes:
3. Savannah azaleas (near Forsyth Park):
4. The promise of SPRINGTIME:
5. Fresh pineapple.
Have a Lucky St. Patrick’s Day Weekend!
A few reflections on the weekend BEFORE St. Patrick’s Day weekend here in Savannah.
THE GREENING ****
One of Savannah’s coolest St. Patrick’s Day traditions has to be the greening of the fountains. In a week, we will welcome the city’s most popular holiday. And at noon Friday the beautiful fountain in Forsyth Park, surrounded by several hundred people, morphed into a bright green explosion of water color. Soon thereafter the other fountains in Savannah followed suit.
Tangent Ahead: Okay, I know this is a Happiness Blog and all, but let me vent a second, okay? Please? But first, a little background: While I taught up the road at Georgia Southern, I heard this refrain from time to time: “GSU? Oh, what a party school!” That got on my last nerve. My very last. (Similar to the Kardashians’ dilemma over what to do after “reality” TV.) Why did the comment irk me? Simple. GSU (or UGA or Emory or Harvard) is a party school if students choose to party there. But GSU (etc.) is a great place to get a wonderful education for those students who choose to do so (which, by the way, are the vast majority).
In a similar vein, what do many people associate with our city’s incredibly popular March holiday? Drinking on River Street, of course. But that aspect of the St. Patrick’s Day celebration is only one part of the wonderful holiday, albeit a decidedly profitable one, and the one that often gets the most press. However, so much more, SO MUCH MORE captures the attention and interest of most Savannahians. Which brings me back to the greening of the fountains. End of Tangent.
Thinking I would just mosey up to the fountain and watch somebody toss in a bit of green dye, I was shocked at the size of the gathering and the palpable excitement of the event.
Before the greening:
After the greening:
Here’s James A. Ray, the Grand Marshal of the 2013 St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
And here’s his sister, Nancy Ray Johnson, who is the second female in Savannah St. Patrick’s Day history to be the Aid to the Grand Marshal.
TARA FEIS ****
And then on Saturday at Emmet Park near the river, Tara Feis (feis= festival, pronounced “fesh”) burst on the holiday scene with Irish music, dancers, food and fun. This annual celebration of Erin Go Bragh–Ireland the Beautiful is completely family friendly and alcohol-free.
Here’s a bit of the Glor Na Daire Irish dance school performance:
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And perennially popular local singer/songwriter Harry O’Donoghue‘s closing song, “All the Best”:
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Saints & Shamrocks ****
After enjoying the festival for a couple of hours, I went in search of the official St. Patrick’s Day Parade Magazine, and finally found it at the beautifully delightful Saints & Shamrocks boutique …
… specializing in religious gifts, Irish imports and fair trade gifts. There I met the welcoming, helpful owner and new friend Hope (I love that name) Ebberwein …
… who gave me a copy of the magazine.
[Should I dye my facial hair green for the parade viewing? Now be honest. (Some of you weren’t when I asked if I was too old to wear skinny jeans. See item#4 in the skinny jeans hyperlink.)]
Bach Music Marathon ****
Still not finished with the day, I walked into the Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church on Calhoun Square, where organist Christopher Jacobson from South Carolina sat at the incredible pipe organ performing a two-day marathon of the COMPLETE organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach (257 individual pieces!).
Beautiful.
I get tired just trying to hum through Abba’s three most popular #1 hits.
What a tremendously festive weekend! A greening. A feis. A new friend. And a concert. I wonder what the actual Saint Patrick’s Day Twenty-Thirteen will hold. I’ll let you know. I’m hosting a little parade viewing party, since my place lies directly on the parade route.
It’s Friday All Day Long! Here’s what I am happy about:
1. My SCAD ENGL 193 (Composition for International Students) classes and I holding an informal drop-in Visual Essay Exhibition on Wednesday. A rousing success! I was/am SO proud of my students: artists showing off their work!
Here’s the blurb about the exhibition which I printed out on little programs:
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VISUAL ESSAYS:
A Classroom Exhibition Habersham Hall 3/6/13 SCAD
For this project, students in Neal Saye’s ENG 193, Composition for International Students, both think “essay” and forget “essay.” They can do that—they’re smart! How is the project like an essay? Well, they compose, they have a focus and thesis, they have structure, they have support. But it does not evolve in traditional essay format. It births as a sculpture, a collage, a scrapbook, a video, a painting, a mobile, a form, a food, fashion, theatrical presentation, etc.
In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho presents various themes about life and dream following. After reading the incredible text, students choose a theme, a symbol, a character, an idea, etc. and then create.
The visual essay project, then, is a visual representation of one topic narrowed into a clear thesis/point/perspective/idea. The students’ challenge: how to “show” their thesis.
This exhibition reveals their interpretations.
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And some photos from the exhibition:
And some pics of the visual essays themselves:
2. My iPhone (and sense enough to minimally operate it). Can anybody else remember when a phone was this device you used to call people … and … like, talk?
3. The expectant thought of fresh, fat, orange-red, Vine-Ripened Tomatoes this summer. I nearly cried at lunch yesterday at Panera when this pinkish thing pretending to be a tomato slice fell out of my tuna sandwich. I was so embarrassed I put a napkin over it.
4. Raw almonds
5. Our incredible sense of hearing. It’s so amazing. (Well, except when, for some reason, I came across the band Screeching Weasel’s song “Bark Like a Dog.”)
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That does it. I’m going to start a band, Neal and the Bansheeing TurtlePins. I’m working on our first really big hit, “Knead Like Julia, Martha and Paula (Before the Weight Loss).”
Have a Beautiful Weekend. You HEAR me?
NealEnJoy 
