A View From Savannah

It was a beautiful spring-like day in Savannah yesterday. I was lucky that I had most of the day to explore. I had been signed up for a training course , which was to proceed the conference I'm here for that starts today. But the training was cancelled, after I already had my reservations and plane tickets. So rather than re-scheduling I decided to use the day to see Savannah.

I walked over seven miles today, exploring almost all of old Savannah, including a very good lunch at Paula Dean's resaurant......Here are a few of the things I learned today as I explored.

* Nathanial Green lived here after the Revolutionary War. Nathanial Green was second in command to George Washington. After the war he was given a plantation outside of Savannah. He was from New England and was not used to the heat and humidity that is common here during the summer. One day while riding his horse, he suffered heat stroke and fell off. He subsequently died, but not of heat stroke. The common remedy for heat stroke at that time was to apply leaches. Nathanial Green was a Hemophiliac .......he bled to death from the leaches. His wife had many children to care for, so after Nathanial's death she hired a tutor from Yale to teach her children. His name was Eli Whitney. Eli invented the Cotton Gin several years later in Savannah.

* One of the most prominate institutions in Savannah is something called "SCAD" - Savannah College of Arts and Design. It's everywhere. It's one of the biggest and most prestigious Arts and Design colleges in the country. In some ways they are sort of like McMennimins in Oregon. Dozens and dozens of historic buildings in Savannah have been restored by SCAD. Everywhere you turn you see another building owned by SCAD...a Libary here, and student center there, and on and on. SCAD has another campus in Atlanta, and a graduate school in Paris France. It costs over $50,000 a year to attend.

Some other interesting items:

* Jingle Bells of composed in a little chuch in Savannah, by a minister there.

*General Sherman ended his march to the sea in Savannah. It was the one place he didn't destroy along the way. He gave the city to Abe Lincoln as a Christmas present, in 1864.

*The Book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was set in Savannah. The statue of the little girl that was on the cover of the book, had to be moved from the cemetery it had been in to a museum so it wouldn't be stollen.

* Part of the movie Forest Gump was filmed here. I saw the place where the bench he sat on was.

* There are 21 "squares" in old Savannah...they are little square block parks, designed by ogalthorp.

*The big stones that pave the streets along the river front are not cobble stones. They are balsat taken from the English ships that sailed here during the 18th and 19th century.

*There is a very large Irish population in Savannah. They came here during the great potato famine. S avannah has the 2nd largest St. Patricks Day parade in the country.

*The Girl Scouts was started in Savannah, by Juliette Gordon Low

I'll share some photos later........