sitting around on a sunday afternoon contemplating what my top all time tree species are

Takhuk

May, 2021

Michele Moore V

THEM, THEY, US

And Me, in Savannah, Georgia

I was in Gone With the Wind territory, one of those places that had lived in my mind since I was 15 and had read through several nights to dawn, finishing that famous historical romance. I was with Rogerio, taking advantage of his annual travel to a professional conference that was being held this time - 2014 - in Savannah, Georgia. Atlanta, the Georgian city and scene of many of Scarlett O’Hara’s romantic vexations, was a few hours drive away, but Savannah’s surrounding countryside and old town fit perfectly with the vivid scenes in my mind.

Sitting under an umbrella of live oak trees in one of the city’s historic squares, flitting chirping birds innocent and free flashed and disappeared into the green drapery that guarded the fountain, benches, and gardens of the square. Lined up along each side of the square were immaculately preserved stucco and brick homes. Geometric symmetry and timeless materials both hallmarks of these architectural gems, these little mansions. Amongst their clean white exteriors trimmed in glossy black or green shutters and window sashes, their generous iron rails and fences and refurbished stone steps, and the square’s scrubbed clean statue commemorating a past Georgian military or political figure, I, was, there. Smack dab in the middle of the ‘old South’.

Although Gone With the Wind was a torrid love story that certainly appealed to my teenage sense of romance, it was the cultural and historical setting that was the real story, to me. It was the American civil war, that brutal dirty war over abolition. Scarlett O’Hara’s family owned Tara, a large and lavish cotton plantation. If slavery was to be abolished, how would they manage to maintain their mansion and grounds and grow and harvest their cotton crop? For Scarlett, saving Tara became more important than satisfying Rhett Butler’s desires , but what mattered most to my teenage mind was finding somewhere in those hundreds of pages proof that Scarlett would realize the enslavement of Mammy and Prissy and all the other servants and plantation workers was wrong.

Recreating in my mind scenes from the novel, I imagined a luxurious cigar scented ‘drawing room’ beyond the windows of the mansion in front of me. Convening inside were wealthy plantation owners raising money to support ‘the Cause (the war)’, while being served by slaves. When Margaret Mitchell, a native Georgian born in 1900, wrote and published Gone With The Wind, it was 1936, just 70 years since the end of the American Civil war and the abolition of slavery, and years before the era of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. (It would be another 32 years before Martin Luther King was murdered.) In Georgia in the 1930’s, the Ku Klux Klan was a cultural staple and racial segregation was legal standard practice – in other words, it was legal in states like Georgia to prevent black Americans from living, learning, working and recreating where they wished. Those laws are what are commonly known as Jim Crow laws that, although finally banned thanks to people like Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, are still in de facto operation today, as I saw firsthand while visiting Savannah.

Jim Crow laws and the KKK. These facts were Mitchell’s context. Her reality. Yet she wrote a book that disregarded the truth of the slave era, imbuing her black characters with simple minds, suggesting they were content and fulfilled in their roles as slaves.  Through those long nights of reading those hundreds of pages, I kept looking for evidence that Mitchell knew. Because as any 15 year old would tell you, the Margaret Mitchells’ of the world, and every single other person, should know.

Sunshine warmed my bench and back. Women pushing baby strollers passed by, their southern accent adding an audio dimension to the scene in my mind of southern belles in their elaborate gowns, and men in breeches and tall leather boots. All being served by slaves. Those anonymous individuals central to the economy of the slaving era and the production of the wealth still being enjoyed today by the ancestors of plantation owning families and those associated with the corresponding commercial network.

I stood and walked around the fountain, the gardens. The place felt peaceful enough, yet lacking in something. Lacking in abundance – of people, of the layers of life I have witnessed and felt in other squares in the world where old ladies jammed together on benches laughed and pointed, and children chased each other around fountains and families bought sweet and savoury snacks from a rolling cart food vendor.

This square was pretty and pleasant, but it was lacking. And so I moved on.

***

At our first breakfast of the conference,  Rogerio came and went from our large round table as ever more of his professional associates appeared, leaving me with four other women at our table, also wives or partners to engineers attending the conference. (Yes, there were also female engineers in attendance, however, you are right to imagine there were far more males.)

During our initial polite introductions I learned two of these women were from Georgia, one was from South Carolina, and one from Alabama. They had been enjoying these conferences with their husbands for years. As Rogerio and I were outsiders, these friends naturally fell into their own conversation while we did the same. Being a compulsive eavesdropper, I did note references to children and family, revealing they were all mothers with kids in high school or college.

Rogerio and I were eating and talking about my day’s plans when he spotted an old friend across the room and dropped his cutlery to go say hello. Left alone to my own thoughts, I sipped my coffee and opened a small tourist magazine I had brought to breakfast.

But the conversational tone of the other women at the table pricked my ears; they were into something deep. With my eyes on my magazine, I listened to the women complaining. I heard words like ‘maid’, and ‘servant’ and multiple references to ‘she, and them, and they’.  

Although the women had their heads together and were speaking quietly, one of the ladies frequently burst out loudly with hostility over her maid’s failings. Phrases such as, “I don’t see why she can’t just…” or, “they have no business expecting…”

Perhaps it was the fact that I was the only one of us to thank the young black woman who refilled our coffee cups that finally caused comprehension to explode in my mind. I can still feel now the shock I felt then.

How naïve of me, I discovered, to expect that the breakfast conversation at a professional conference in Georgia in the year 2014, 150 years after slavery had been abolished in the United States, to be about ideas that might solve, rather than exacerbate, systemic problems, whether those problems be scientific or social.

The woman who tended to loudness was becoming riled up about ‘them’, so much that my heart began to race with the desire to fight, or flee. At the moment I was freezing. One of the other women caught me looking up from my coffee cup at the hostile woman. Our eyes locked, she saw my distress, she whispered urgently to the loud one, who immediately stopped her tirade.

This was truly an awakening in my life I never expected, imagined, or known could happen. Despite Canada’s own glaring social inequities, despite being perfectly aware of racism in both Canada and the United States, the idea that white Americans still had black domestic servants of whom they would so openly and routinely speak of with such disdain, such separateness, came to me as a true shock. No name was used to reference the individuals. Rather, ‘she’, ‘her’, and ‘they’ were the only identifiers. Speaking a person’s name, of course, acknowledges a level of humanity that would require the speaker to bestow a person with a degree of dignity these women were steadfastly withholding from their subjects.

I went back to my hotel room to record this experience in my journal. Soon after, still shaken, I headed out to spend the day walking the city’s historic centre and riverfront, and to try to understand more of the life of the ‘old South’.

Branching out from another square, I wandered up and down streets lined with more of those stately homes and attractive walk-up low rise apartments, all shaded by the green drapery of those generous old oaks, now whispering to me to look closer, look closer. The breakfast ladies had thrust upon me a new lens through which to view these homes, these squares lacking in life’s richness and diversity, these historic monuments and plaques commemorating selective people and events; expressing a preferred story, but not the whole story.

Eventually, I found the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters. Here, I was able to walk through the simple wooden cabins behind the structured gardens separating the quarters from the mansion. While the mansion was busy with staff speaking with visitors, no staff was in attendance to interpret or answer questions in the slave quarters. And so I moved on.

I walked away determined to find evidence of Savannah’s black community. Where did the waiting and cleaning staff from my hotel live? Where did they go for a cup of coffee on a sunny day off? Down the streets I walked, passing homes and shops exuding prosperity and comfort.

Until I saw ahead a long line of black adults waiting on the sidewalk next to a church. I slowed in front of the building and realized I had found the African First Baptist Church, one of the Underground Railroad’s  hiding places in the south. The Underground Railroad being the secret network of people throughout the U.S. and Canada that provided refuge to enslaved black Americans escaping north to safety and freedom.  

Inside the church’s entry, I followed a posted notice of a self-guided tour of this still active church. I went downstairs first, to the basement, to stand on the wooden floorboards and discover the hundreds of miniscule nail holes in the floor, hammered there to allow oxygen down into the hiding place below. As I tried to imagine the dark damp hole in the ground under me, I wondered if any of the slaves from the Owens-Thomas House hid there, in darkness and silence, inhaling life, exhaling dreams of freedom through those nail holes, those determined, defiant nail holes.

From the website of the church:

The holes in the floor are in the shape of an African prayer symbol known to some as a BaKongo Cosmogram. In parts of Africa, it also means “Flash of the Spirits” and represents birth, life, death, and rebirth. 

Up the worn wooden stairs from the basement I went to the main level and up another flight of steps to the balcony where some of the church’s original pews were still in place. From the church’s website:

The pews located in the balcony are original to the church.  These pews were made by enslaved Africans, and are nailed into the floors. On the outside of some of the pews are writings done in a classical West African Arabic script from the 1800s.

I found examples of that script, by squatting down and looking low, as if the engraver wanted even this evidence of his or her existence to remain hidden. I wanted to touch the script, the patterns were beautiful, but I stopped myself. There was good reason the signage asked visitors not to touch. Such artifacts are truth telling. It seems these artifacts will need to keep speaking for a long time yet.

Feeling sombre over all that I had learned, I left the church and weaved my way back to a street where I had seen a sidewalk café with tables along the paving stones under the shade of those beautiful trees. I needed to sit and reflect, to process things.

But while sipping my coffee, more reality rudely elbowed itself into my space. Two businessmen carrying coffees and sleeves of papers wrangled themselves into the chairs at the table beside me. The space was close, I could smell their cologne, see the precise separations in their gelled hair. They were already talking before they sat down and continued enthusiastically, pouring over papers while they planned openly and urgently to remove from office the president of the United States, who at the time was Barack Obama. Their language and tone was unequivocal: ‘he’ was an affront to the office of President and nothing else in the world mattered but to return dignity to the American people by removing ‘him’ from the White House. Their hatred of Barack Obama was as plain to see as Georgia’s blue sky. Everywhere in the white population here in Savannah, it seemed, was evidence of a bitter, ingrained culture of contempt toward black Americans. I must stress: it was open, shocking, and repellant.

That evening I joined Rogerio on a river cruise and dinner, a special event organized for the conference attendees. Several hundred guests mingled under the shelter of the riverboat’s canopies and inside where a lavish meal was being laid out for our enjoyment. All the waiters were black. The guests were not.

***

I had now spent three days walking to Savannah’s old town and gone in every direction down side streets lined with those lovely houses and walk-ups. I had strolled a famous cemetery, the business district, and the Savannah River, yet I had not found a neighbourhood where I could see people living that might be the staff at our hotel. So on this last walk, I went back to the First Baptist African Church and continued further beyond that landmark. Soon, an abrupt change in the landscape presented itself, and I was walking down narrow cracked streets with no sidewalks fronting small homes and low apartments without adornment, most in need of painting and repairs. A few seniors were sitting together in front of one house on a street otherwise empty and devoid of motion. On another street one little girl skipped her way toward the open door of a home. No other people, no cars were coming and going from these streets, they were almost eerily silent.

Nearby I found a small park, the grass worn down to bare soil. It was a scrappy, sorry looking patch of land, I remember only a low, curved concrete wall, damaged so that I could not read the stamped words along its length.

I returned to my hotel that day feeling profoundly disillusioned and heartsick.

***

We were in a cab heading for the airport, our stay in Savannah was over. We passed a beach where dozens of people were out enjoying the water and sand. Our white cab driver slowed and watched the scene. His window was open, his arm hanging lazily over the door. With his hand he casually indicated to us what he was looking at while saying, ‘yep, them people like that spot, hellofa mess, look at it, but they keep to themselves there so that’s good anyway…”  “us kind have our places, them kind have theirs…”

They. Them. Us.

Postscripts:

I did find one statue in Savannah, far from the squares of the historic centre, of a family of slaves in chains. A quick Google search while writing this piece revealed that Savannah’s leaders are only now beginning to discuss the gaping absence of public art and the complete lack of preservation of the places and acknowledgement of the lives of the enslaved people whose ancestors continue to live in the city and region.

There is a term being used today – ‘food desert’ – which means a lack of grocery stores or other whole food vendors within a low income urban area. The neighbourhood through which I walked where black residents of Savannah live had no grocery store, no corner market, no vendor of food. These ‘food deserts’, throughout the United States, have a high correlation with diseases such as cancer, obesity, and diabetes. Reasons for the existence of food deserts include systemic indifference to the needs of the people living in such low income areas.

www.michelemooreveldhoen.com

photo by Ali Arif Soydas, courtesy of Unsplash

Forever Southern; Forever Brunswick

Only in the South, as you walk the old streets of any of the historical cities like Charleston, Savannah, Brunswick, can you feel the time around you stand still. The architecture is but a small reminder; the history is but a small reminder; the plaques, the brochures, the history books are all but small reminders. If you walk the streets in the dead of night, you can feel the South living; you can hear Oglethorpe’s men calling, the canons blaring, the slaves singing; you sniff the smell of gunpowder in the air, and see the ships coming in from the sea. For time is on a loop, and for a Southerner, you only have to close your eyes to have all your other senses come alive.  

Only in the South do the Oleander bloom and the night Jasmine fills the summer nights, mingled with sweat that trickles down your shoulder blades as you sit in the fresh mown sweet grass, and all the senses are alight in unison. At every hour of a summer eve in the South are your senses met with a brigade of new delights. 

At dusk, the pink and orange hues cross the skies as God's paintbrush dabbles the horizon with an easel Monet could not mimic. In different waters, dolphin fins pierce the water; trout bubble at the surface; rays fly and skip, and turtles lazily float along. Cicadas sing, crickets chirp, alligators croak, dogs bark in the distance, and music floats through the air. Salty fish smells waif through the air as the tide rolls out; swampy mold earth odor embraces the nostrils of the marshlands; pines, oak, and an array of wildflowers play on the breeze if one's lucky enough to get one. Somewhere, someone is forever cooking out on a grill; saliva fills your mouth. If you were raised in the South, you remember your daddy grilling, your momma’s coleslaw, and your grandmamma’s sweet iced tea, and nostalgia flits across your mind for days gone by. 

In the dark, on a moonlit night, the shadows of the South are even more heavenly. Spanish moss hangs from every tree, dancing hauntingly, swaying like a distant lover enticing you to follow it. Bats fly high and low with their sonar beacons seeking the ever-present emblem of the south, “the mosquito”, who can suck more blood out of you in ten minutes than Vlad ever had hoped to. If you listen carefully, you can hear the mournful hoot of an owl crying out to its mate across the fields and trees; moments later, you may catch a response… or not, but the hooting is an ever-present reminder of ages past, ages present, and ages yet to come.

It is the ages past and present that are being lost and forgotten, that which this byline hopes to capture before they, too, are forgotten memories. I want to find the families of Brunswick and tell their stories, no matter how trivial those stories may seem to them. Who wouldn’t sell ten minutes of their own lives to have their own grandparents tell them an “I remember when I was a child story” just one more time?

When you talk about old Southern families, one name has been amongst us since Oglethorpe’s men. Clan Buie of the Scottish Highlanders is written about in the book “The Golden Isles of Georgia” by Caroline Couper Lovell. Brunswick’s history teaches us that many of the coastal cities were settled by Scottish Highlanders for Governor Oglethorpe, Clan Buie being one of them, and one of its descendants, Howard Buie has lived here his whole life. 

Ironically, Howard refers to growing up in Brunswick in the 50’s and 60’s much like “Leave it to Beaver”, while all the time I’m listening to him tell his story, he is reminding me of Beaver’s older brother, Wally. He has this very laid back, easy going, “well, gee dad” personality.  “Except, my mother didn’t wear high heels and pearls.”

Being in the middle of nine siblings, he describes that was the norm. Families had lots of children.

”People reproduced like rabbits”, he laughs.  And the children always played outside, “playing pretend” They were allowed to play in the marshes and trees, playing cowboys and Indians (he was always an Indian because his mother was part Cherokee) and Tarzan.

“But!” he exclaims, “You never did anything really bad, ‘cause everybody’s mom was your mom,” meaning everybody knew everyone. 

On Saturday afternoons, one would go downtown to Newcastle where mom and pop shops thrived, and the owners lived upstairs. Regardless of that, it is a tree that Buie fondly recalls. 

“Much like Lovers Oak, it was right about where Fox’s pizza is now; it was a national landmark; it was huge, and you would always find at least 20 kids in that tree”.  Buie’s eyes momentarily are lost in the memory.

 “I guess at some point they had to cut it down, because it was such an obstruction,” and he’s back.  

“Oddly”, Buie says “segregation never made it to Brunswick” that he recalls. For him, he doesn't recall a time where there was a distinct separation. Blacks and white folks had always gone to school together at Glynn Academy and he was friends with many of them, especially if they played sports. 

This writer’s favorite story is the “Night all the Rich People Left Jekyll Island”.  In 7th grade, Howard’s older friend was staying at the Jekyll Inn, which at the time was holding all the belongings left behind and abandoned in the Millionaire Village: antique furniture, original Hemingway novels, custom-made pieces that had belonged to the Rockefellers and Goodyears.

 “Even at 14 years old, I knew this stuff was expensive and it was really strange seeing it all collected in one place. I later found out how the Millionaire Village became abandoned.” 

“A man that I worked for in the 70’s had lived on St. Simons on what was called the Waycross Colony when WWII broke out…." Howard begins. One night a friend of his from Jekyll came and got him on his sailboat and brought him back to Jekyll Island. Both being military, they had been taught to look out for German U-boats in the Brunswick waters. When they got back to Jekyll, they found all the millionaire homes abandoned with their clothes laid out and jewelry laid out as if they were going to have a big party, but instead everyone had gotten on a train and headed back to New York. 

“It was the eeriest thing the men had ever experienced; every house was like that, just left with all its contents in place”. 

“I think that’s the last time the wealthy people were on Jekyll Island, and I think that was 1944.” Howard finishes.  Later, the community gathered all the furniture and belongings of the Millionaire Village and stored it all at the Jekyll Inn, which is how Howard came upon it still there 30 years later. 

Finally, one cannot have grown up in Brunswick without knowing about the Peanut Man. In the late 50’s, early 60’s, an old man would dress up like a woman, and paint his face purple. Every Saturday he would have a grocery cart filled with little bags of roasted peanuts, and you could hear him yelling “Peanuts”. “He was very friendly, selling a bag for a nickel, but if you didn’t have a nickel he’d give us kids one. Now, what’s really interesting about this man,” Howard leans in, “is he lived in an old shack, but when he died he had over a million dollars in the bank.” 

He had no relatives; the paper wrote an article about him, and according to Howard anyone who lived in Brunswick in the late 50’s will remember “The Peanut Man”.   This is a piece of Brunswick history that should not be lost. Here’s to the late Peanut Man. 

Thank you to Howard Buie for sharing his piece of history with me. 

sss

In the world to come there is little sin. The only thing that can be done is to accept it and move on. You think back to your own past, the things you've done in the name of God. You remember how much you hated them for what they were doing to the world and yet here you are still living as if nothing happened. There are just lots of american alligators. And then one day you're going to have to face up to the fact that you don't want anything more than any other person does. That's when you'll know it's really time to go home. After the election of the first ungendered president, the prediatrain movement caught fire in america. the public transportation in every city became safer. The place you got called into service most waqs on the highway trucking line between satalite cities and the midwest manufacturing preserves. the work was dull but resupplying the big isolated centers of humanity was too important to skip out on just because the big rig industry suddenly became 90% robotic. Most city centers were shut down during this time as well. The demand for american alligator meat skyrocketed as the animal seemed to be in the right place at the right time and survived the mass extinctions that killed off all other mammals. with nothing natural to control their numbers, the alligator filled that role beautifully. Humans responded real well to being treated like alligator prey as well. You wouldn't know anything about that though because you've been on an alligator free diet for years. Whorals where burned to ash while polled hereford heifors fetched over a billion dollars a head in auction. Googizon won the bid to construct for the military the most forward thinking alligator farm in existance. It became an income factory, employing hundreds of rewilders and supporting thousands of predatrain workers in the barren scrub savannahs that replaced our farmlands. Your farm never received a grade a wildfire designation so it was spared being burned by mostly untrained crews. It also wasn't zoned for reforestation but all things happen with corrdination in business. most the savannah was turned back into park land and you got bought out. rrently floats near the okeenokee snow swamp. Peat bogs becoming of fields of fuel for jet planes and stratously bound carriers. remembers why you took the job. modern work is dull. getting burned out after a decade is not uncommon. they say predatrains only live about seven years in this line of work anyway so maybe it doesn't matter how bored you get along the way. concousness fades.......somewhere the lad is saying.....how many more miles.... This is not that story. We are primal ponds inc. and we're on Route 666 going from Bagdad Jim's glooming speakeasy to prospector's HQ, deep in the Oakenshield forest. 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It is important to note that the Historic Charleston Walking Tour KING COTTON, SLAVERY & THE PLANTER ARISTOCRACY is like so much of our American History both a celebration and a tragedy. Our uncensored approach tells all, either the good or the bad. We don’t just shine a spotlight on the negative we do actively celebrate the Planter Aristocracy’s enormous and undeniable positives too. Especially when it comes to the creation, formation and evolution of not just our city but of our nation.

On this rainy Charleston Saturday morning we start with a bright colorful painting courtesy of Diane Britton Dunham encapsulating Charleston’s Lowcountry Gullah-Geechee Community. The head shots that follow are of Gullah men and women that have positively effected our city and our world in ways that the greatest fiction writer would have difficulty imagining. The stories of Congressman Robert Smalls, the Reverend Daniel J. Jenkins, Mrs. Septima Poinsett Clark, Mr. Philip Simmons and Queen Quet are and always will be Charleston’s greatest stories.

The story of Mr. Denmark Vesey and the 34 men who lost their lives at the hands of Mayor Hamilton Jr. and our City will always be Charleston’s most tragic and controversial. Many of you know of this time but how many have read the transcript An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes This ultra censored account may have you thinking differently…….

Before we get to the stories of these Gullah men and women in individual posts let us ask the question; Who is Gullah? I will use the excerpt from my walking tour told at Wragg Mall.

A DISSERVICE It is at this point in our walk that I have to apologize to you all because up until this point I have done you and even more importantly a people and a culture an incredible disservice by only describing these men, women and children as enslaved, Black, African or African American so let me correct that right here and right now.

These men, women and children were human beings with names, brains and heartbeats. They are not some footnote to Charleston’s or our nation’s history, they are the vital and the indispensable component of it. We do not exist as the most powerful entity in the world without their collective contributions, PERIOD!

They were forced to come from Slave Forts and Castles like this, often times chained neck to neck.

THEY BUILT EVERYTHING Everything you see around you in this city if it was built prior to the Civil War or reconstructed after the Civil War, which the majority of has been, was done by African Americans, first slave then free. Their hands are responsible for all of it and their minds much of it, they built this place whether they wanted to or not. But…….Who are they?

GULLAH Gullah was and Gullah is they! The Gullah are our local people and as you go closer to the South Carolina/Georgia border they often refer to themselves as Geechee. They were not, but still are an incredibly proud and distinctive culture who are the direct descendants of Africans whose origins lie mostly in Western Africa from today’s Senegambia region down to Angola.

This African collective had many distinct differences within themselves, including their nationality, what region they were from, what tribe they were members of, what customs they had, how they worshiped, what they ate and what languages they spoke. But…….the one “thing” they all had in common was they were all taken against their will and forced to come here to serve and die for the Planters. For me to describe them as merely survivors is not adequate and for me to only describe them as slave is an insult because they are so very much more than that.

THEY WERE THE PLANTERS MEANS I always purposefully start out our walk that way but never as a sign of disrespect but to brutally reinforce to you, that to the Planters they were, first and foremost their property and only a means to their end, which was the accumulation of wealth.

The Gullah-Geechee were the Planters tool. It did not matter to the Planters that their tool had a heart beat, and a soul and a brain. It did not matter to the Planters that their tool could experience fear, and pain, and sorrow. It did not matter to the Planters that their tool could laugh, and cry, and love and have babies of their own.

WHAT MATTERED TO THE PLANTERS What mattered to the Planter Aristocracy was, what that tool could do for them and any and every other “paternalistic” notion that is spewed today is an ignorant lie, only spewed to lessen and deflect the travesty of humanity that was inflicted on these African men, women and children by those people that still have lineage to this institution and there still exists many here on this peninsula that do.

This point can not be emphasized enough and I make no apologies for my tone when I state it.

WHERE IS GULLAH TODAY? I realize for many of you this might be the first time hearing the term Gullah or Geechee so let me put it in a modern day perspective. The Gullah are a proud people who still inhabit Charleston and her surrounding sea islands from Oak Island, North Carolina all the way to Northern Florida.

Their culture and language is alive today in this region and you can easily meet many Gullah people on our streets and countrysides sewing their history and artistry right in front of your very eyes with Palmetto and Sweet Grass. GULLAH ARTISTRY This artistry has been handed down from generation to generation and can easily be traced back to its West African roots. The pride and detail that go into this craft is not one that is often seen in today’s modern landscape. I can honestly say and ignorantly say that when I first saw how expensive their goods were, I would pass them by and I did this for years when I first moved to Charleston in 1991 and then I began to learn about this art and this people.

THEN I LEARNED I learned how they now have to actually hunt for this once abundant Palmetto and Sweet Grass because seaside development and the continued privatization of land has almost wiped out this essential raw material. I learned that the hunt is becoming harder and harder with more miles traveled to find less.

I learned how long it takes for them to harvest what they need and how it can only be done at certain times of the year and how they then have to go through the process of curing the Sweet Grass in the sun once they have finally got it back home.

I learned how long it takes to make even the smallest coaster let alone those beautiful and intricately woven multicolored baskets and rice fanners.

THE I LEARNED SOME MORE I learned how this was something that was also done in West Africa. I saw how this art tied these people from two continents together by watching a South Carolina Public Television produced documentary on a local Charleston Gullah group making a return to their homeland and how they were immediately connected to one another through this art, their similarity in dialect and their physical characteristics.

I then realized the price they were asking was nothing when you compare it to the price they have paid. There exists no memento any of you can bring back home with you from Charleston that has more soul and meaning and represents this time in our history better than this Gullah art.

GULLAH ON THE LARGEST STAGES The proud Gullah people and those that have descend from them have had their collective presence felt throughout our country far beyond Charleston and on many of our largest stages. You could have also met Gullah in the White House, the former First Lady, Michelle Obama’s paternal great grandfather and great great grandmother, South Carolina, Gullah slave.

You can still meet Gullah in our United States Supreme Court. The Honorable Clarence Thomas raised in Savannah and the first language he ever spoke was Gullah.

You could have been entertained by Gullah many times and never realized it either dancing your behind off or laughing it off, both the God Father of Soul James Brown and comedian Chris Rock born in South Carolina and are direct descendants of Gullah slaves.

GULLAH ATHLETICS In the boxing ring you would have been knocked out by Gullah’s Smokin Joe Frazier who still lives just a short drive away in Beaufort, South Carolina. On the gridiron in the National Football League you would have been run over by Gullah. Who do you consider is the greatest running back of all time? For me and many others it is the legendary Jim Brown. St. Simon’s Island, Georgia native and original inductee in to The Gullah/Geechie Hall of Fame and on the basketball court you would have been dunked on by Gullah, Wilmington, North Carolina native Michael Jordan can too trace his roots back to Oak Island, Gullah.

Heck we have all sung the campfire song Kumbaya which translates into “Come By Here” and whose origins lie right here in South Carolina Lowcountry Gullah.

INTERVIEWS The influence of the Gullah/Geechie people and those that have descended from them still continues all over our country today. The first hand accounts of the lives so many former Gullah slaves led can thankfully be accessed by any of us as a result of F.D.R.’s New Deal and his Works Progress Administration. Thousands of interviews were conducted with those former enslaved and they are archived at our Library of Congress in Washington D.C..

Their personal accounts range from unimaginable degradation and brutality to times of extreme joy, times that they loved and laughed and times when they sang and danced. One constant throughout their accounts was their unwavering faith in both God and the supernatural. The Gullah people are Charleston and Charleston is the Gullah people. We need never lose sight of that.

THE INCREDIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF CHARLESTON’S LOWCOUNTRY ENSLAVED GULLAH-GEECHEE AND THE SO VERY MANY THAT HAVE DESCENDED FROM THEM…….. It is important to note that the Historic Charleston Walking Tour KING COTTON, SLAVERY & THE PLANTER ARISTOCRACY…

The Most Photogenic Places I’ve Ever Visited

Any destination can be a photographer’s paradise if you’re creative enough. But some places are massive overachievers! I’ve visited some countries, cities, and regions where beautiful shots lurk around every corner.

And it’s not always the places you think. I don’t always have the best luck shooting photos in Italy, for example. And as gorgeous as Savannah is, the shadows from the ubiquitous oak trees make it a challenge to photograph. And I was so upset when my first trip to Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, was a near-disaster due to poor photography conditions.

But when a destination gets it right, I have treasures that will last me a lifetime.

Here are my picks for the 10 most photogenic places I’ve ever visited. Some of them are obvious, like Paris and New York — but I’m sure at least a few of them will surprise you.

Copenhagen

I couldn’t believe how many great photos I got in Copenhagen. I don’t say that to brag about my skills; I say that because I was flabbergasted at how every aspect of the city was begging to be photographed. I had to restrain myself from covering my whole apartment in framed Copenhagen photos!

So, what should you look for in Copenhagen? I take a lot of photos of bicycles ordinarily, and Copenhagen is bike-crazy metropolis.

The Nyhavn, the famous ship-filled wharf along a canal, is the most photographed site in the city. I also happened to be there for Sankt Hans, when bonfires are lit in the canal and led to some awesome colors.

The picture with the lines was taken at the Superkilen, which is a great spot for black and white photography. That shot hangs in my black-and-white bathroom today.

Oh, and also get photos of very tall, very attractive people clad in nothing but black and charcoal gray.

Japan

I’m putting the entire country on this list because literally every part of Japan is a photographer’s paradise. Whether you’re in cities, more traditional areas, or in the wilderness, you’ll get to enjoy some of the world’s most beautiful light.

I urge you to see as much of Japan as humanly possible. Some of my favorite places for photography were the Dotonbori neighborhood of Osaka at sunset, Kyoto for the temples and rare geisha-spotting, the tech-crazy Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, and of course Shibuya Crossing.

One thing I’ve always said is that Japan turns you into a stereotypical Japanese tourist — suddenly you want to photograph everything because it’s so different! From vending machines to trash cans, everything is worthy of a photo. And Japanese people are lovely and a lot of fun; many of them turn into total hams when they see a tourist with a camera!

Cherry blossom season is, of course, a very popular and photogenic time to visit, but it can be tough timing it right. Personally, I’d love to visit in the fall when the leaves change.

Istanbul

I’ll spare you the Istanbul is where East meets West and old meets new drivel (god, I hate that so much) — Istanbul is on my list because nowhere else looks like it. I don’t know any other city that looks just as good up close (details in markets! Tulip-shaped tea glasses!) and far away (mosques and minarets dotting the skyline! Colorful seaside buildings!).

There’s so much to see in Istanbul, you could be occupied for weeks. I would start by visiting the Grand Bazaar, Spice Market, and every market that crosses your path. Bowls of olives, brightly colored spices, detailed lamps and hand-painted dishes make for amazing photos.

Istanbul has an amazing skyline and there are fabulous views from the Galata Tower. Istanbul also has some cool neighborhoods — I recommend checking out the hip zone of Kadikoy and the colorful Armenian neighborhood of Kumkapi.

One last thing to photograph — cats. Stray cats are all over Istanbul and they’re well cared for by the locals. Some of those cats are better-looking than most people!

Rural Australia

I’ve been to Australia twice, visiting four of its states, and while the cities are great, it’s the outdoors where Australia truly shines. In no other place in the world have I had as many “I can’t believe this place exists” feelings as I did in Australia. Some of the national parks make you feel like you’re at the beginning of time, a dinosaur lurking around the corner.

Some of my favorite photography spots are Uluru, Litchfield, and Kakadu National Parks in the Northern Territory and Hutt Lagoon (pink lake!), Shark Bay, the Pinnacles Desert, Rottnest Island, and Karijini National Park in Western Australia. I would love to explore the Kimberley, Queensland and Tasmania.

The challenge in rural Australia is getting around safely. WA in particular is very sparsely populated and there is very little public transit; most people either drive themselves or take an organized tour. Of course, driving leads to its own challenges, particularly when kangaroos like to jump in front of your car at night.

Pack your wide-angle for the landscapes and your zoom for the wildlife. And be prepared to take a million selfies with the quokkas!

Oia, Santorini

Ah, the island that launched a thousand calendars. Santorini might be a giant cliché at this point, but clichés exist for a reason. And Santorini’s crown jewel is Oia, the white village on the northern tip of the island.

Oia has been photographed a million different ways, so finding your own take on the village can be a challenge. My recommendation? Just make peace with that fact and take whatever kinds of shots make you happy.

If you want to get the key sunset picture, shot from the fort, I recommend heading there an hour or so before sunset. Bring a book to read; you’ll be glad you have something to do. And don’t leave as soon as the sun dips beneath the surface — stick around for Blue Hour!

Another tip can be photographing the sunset in the opposite direction. It can be surprisingly entertaining to get photos of hundreds of tourists lined up with their cameras.

New York City

It’s a city full of icons. How could New York not be on my list? My only crime is that living here, I treat it less like a travel destination and don’t have nearly as many photos as I should! (That will hopefully change this flower season. I need photos of New York in bloom!)

So, what should you photograph in New York? Definitely get the icons in: Times Square at night, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Staten Island ferry, Central Park. If you want views from above, head to Top of the Rock or One World Trade Center (the Empire State Building is popular, but isn’t the point to have the Empire State Building in the photo?).

But I think the best New York photography comes from neighborhood wandering and seeing what comes your way. Some of my favorite neighborhoods for photography are the West Village, Bushwick, Harlem, SoHo, and the Lower East Side. Spend the bulk of your time here — and don’t fall into the trap of spending most of your time in midtown. Midtown is boring.

Season-wise, you can’t beat spring when everything is in bloom!

Nicaragua

Of all the countries in Latin America, I feel like Nicaragua was the best for photography. (“Not Mexico?!” yells everyone. Sorry, that’s how I feel! Maybe I’ll change my mind when I visit Guanajuato and Oaxaca.) Not only was Nicaragua one of the most colorful countries I’ve visited, it also has the rare combination of extremely photogenic cities and extremely photogenic rural areas.

Nicaragua is a place to focus on details and colors. Think markets, street art, all the fruits you can find. And try to visit at least one volcano; they’re all over the country.

I found León to be the richest photography destination in the country, so many colors and markets, plus that incredible white roof on top of the cathedral. And while I didn’t have a great volcano boarding experience with Bigfoot Hostel, you can’t deny that their orange jumpsuits against the black volcano and blue sky make for some striking shots.

And a little tip: your Instagram followers will love tropical shots of Little Corn Island the most.

Paris

I don’t have to explain why. You already know.

Like New York, I find it best to knock the Paris icons off your list and then dig deep into the neighborhoods. Some of my Paris neighborhoods for photography are Montmartre, St. Germain-des-Pres, and the Marais. My new favorite street in Paris is Rue Montorgueil in the 2nd, which is covered with food shops and cafes so perfect that they look like they’re out of a movie.

But if you’re looking for the best views of Paris, I recommend the top of the Arc de Triomphe, the towers of Notre Dame (gargoyles!), the Montparnasse Tower (I hate that building so much, so when you’re up there you don’t see it!), and the top of the Printemps department store.

Do be prepared for less than ideal weather. One thing that doesn’t get said often enough is that Paris generally has gray weather with sprinklings of rain, not unlike London. Don’t fight it; lean into it and learn to love your gray photos.

Want more? I’ve got 100 travel tips for Paris.

Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

The Balkans are my favorite region in the world to travel, and Macedonia is a particular delight. The first place I visited in the country was Ohrid, the town on the banks of Lake Ohrid (which spans both Macedonia and Albania) and it astounded me with its understated beauty. I’ve never seen water meld into the sky more cleanly than on Lake Ohrid.

I’ve only visited the Macedonian side, so I can’t speak to Albanian shores, but the town of Ohrid is a great place to base yourself. Everyone gets photos of Sveti Jovan, that famous church overlooking a cliff on top of the lake, and make sure you go inside the churches, too — they’re just as interesting as the outside.

One of the best things I did was take a boat trip to Sveti Naum, a few towns away. It’s home to pretty shoreline, an abundance of wild peacocks, and young Macedonian men who don’t speak a word of English but cut you pieces of watermelon with an enormous knife.

Get photos of the lake from every angle — I especially love shots of swimmers from high above.

Also, Macedonia is one of the cheapest countries in Europe and they make surprisingly good wine. Use those facts to your advantage.

  Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a feast for the eyes. So many colors, so many interesting landscapes, an interesting blend of cultures, religions, and people. There is quite a lot packed into this small island, and I was deeply enamored with what I saw.

My favorite photography spot in the country was Galle, home to a Dutch colonial settlement, a fort, and clear cerulean waters. Galle also makes a good base for exploring the nearby beaches. Another must-photograph destination is Sigiriya, home to a giant rock in the middle of the countryside.

Two things that you shouldn’t miss photographing in Sri Lanka: women in their gorgeous dresses, and the tuk-tuks, which are somehow a million times nicer than the ones you’d see in Southeast Asia. And if you’re into mountains or temples, Sri Lanka has both in spades.

While I haven’t been to India, lots of my friends have said that Sri Lanka is so much cleaner and calmer than India. There’s something to be said for that.

Photography Notes: These days the camera I use is a Fuji X-T1, which has dropped in price now that the Fuji X-T2 has come out. I’ve tried the X-T2 and love it, but I don’t feel a pressing need to upgrade at this time.

I use two lenses: my main walking-around lens is the 18-135mm 3.5-5.6, which is versatile enough for most of the shots I take, and I also have a 16mm 1.4 wide-angle lens, which is FAST and FANTASTIC.

I’m also a big fan of the Pacsafe Camsafe V17 anti-theft bag, which is big enough for all my photography and tech gear yet small enough to put beneath the seat in front of me on a plane.

What are the most photogenic places you’ve ever visited?

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