Final Day

Today was my final full day in America.  As you'd anticipate, a day of real mixed feelings.  I'm very ready to get back home - I need to start eating properly (and lose some weight), see my friends, get back into work, re-engage with everything that's going on with the City Council and the Police and Crime Commissioner election (Thursday - make sure you vote!) and generally get back to normal.  But at the same time I'd gutted that my trip is coming to an end - it's been even more incredible than I might have imagined.  I've checked into my flight home (noticing at the last minute that the travel agent has printed the time wrongly on my itinerary so lucky I'm not going to miss my flight then!) and worked out for the final time what underused and rickety public transport offering I'm going to use to get to the airport.  (Actually, DC's public transport is pretty good so shouldn't be snarky about it).  I've bought so many Christmas and holiday gifts for people that I've had to plan to check in a second bag for the flight home - bearing in mind I've posted five parcels of stuff home as well!

I've not going to to try to even summarise what I've learned on this trip in this post - I've going to leave it some time to percolate through my brain and put it all into my final report for the Roosevelt Scholarship.  

In that spirit, I'm just going to drop a few final photographs into this post and leave it at that - see you on the other side.  

A

Yes, the sky really was that blue!  It was however freezing at 8 o'clock this morning before my official tour of The Capitol

I'm a massive geek when it comes to the US Supreme Court so was very excited to be inside this building

This is the Hirshhorn gallery - one of 19 Smithsonian museums.  An excellent collection of modern art, including a whole floor of Ai Weiwei

Stumbled across this almost by accident but thought a picture of FDR's memorial would be a fitting place to end this post

Georgia On My Mind

(I promise the terrible punning blog post titles will end soon)

I'm in Jasper, Georgia staying the some contacts made through the Roosevelt Scholarship and I've been made to feel incredibly welcome - all you hear about Southern hospitality is totally true.  I arrived on Friday night sorry to leave Bentonville and North-West Arkansas but I've hardly stopped since so I've not had any time to feel sad about my trip nearly coming to an end.  

I'm staying out in Jasper, Georgia which is about an hour from Atlanta and is the home of the Georgia Marble Company - I'm in a company town without even planning it!  The marble from here was used to make the Lincoln Memorial which I'll be seeing in a few days.  The trainline to and from the quarry runs just past the home where I'm staying and I can hear a train clicking past as I type this. 

On Saturday we went to the annual Chomp and Stomp festival in Atlanta - a mixture of beer festival, running event, live music and lots and lots of chilli.  We were able to sample a lot (a lot!) of chilli and I also tried some of the beers from Sweet Water Brewery from Atlanta - I can recommend the IPA in particular.  It was a really warm and sunny day and I could have stayed from much longer, but we were on something of a packed schedule.  I really liked the atmosphere in the neighbourhood that the festival was held - a place called Cabbagetown - it felt a bit like Sherwood in Nottingham: lots of independent businesses, people really engaged in their community and some great green spaces - the kind of place that I like to live! 

People enjoying the early Autumn sun

That is a lot of chilli that's been eaten!

We had to dash off to make sure that we got to Stone Mountain in time.  This is an enormous granite monolith which would be impressive enough but it also has a huge carving of three Confederate commanders in the side to commemorate the American Civil War.  The surrounding park was quite Disney-fied but the mountain itself was pretty spectacular especially the walk down (we took the cable car up!) to ground level.  A great view of Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs.  

A not very good picture of the carving.  The white mound to the left is a man-made ski-run...

Today (Sunda) was a long trip again to see the Little White House at Warm Springs.  This was where Franklin Roosevelt went to get relief from the debilitating effects of Polio and ended up living and working here - it was whilst meeting local people here that he was prompted to develop progressive policies like the New Deal, rural electrification and the Public Works Act. 

A pretty humble house, even for the 1930s. 

The museum here is really impressive - telling a lot of the story of FDR and his work plus what his life was like down here.  You can also travel to the original springs and bathing area where FDR found relief and also prompted the research that ultimately led to the discovery of the vaccine for Polio and its virtual elimination.  I've always been a fan but today really opened up a different side of the man and his work. 

Tomorrow I'm meeting with Coca-Cola at the 'World of Coke' in downtown Atlanta - worried that my Diet Coke addiction might get out of hand once I'm left to roam freely in that place...

Kayaking with FDR's Grandson

When I first applied to the Nottingham Roosevelt Travelling Scholarship I imagined that I would have some interesting experiences.  Well, kayaking down a river in Massachusetts with the grandson of President Franklin Roosevelt is done and in the bag...

I'm staying with Haven Roosevelt and his wife, Bunny in their holiday home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.  It's a beautiful part of the world with a pristine beach and fantastic scenery for miles around.   The neighbours are all pretty much just summer residents with the exception of one couple who live here year round.  I would live here forever if I had the chance!  

Haven is a very keen kayaker (makes his own boats) and I asked if he would be able to take me out for a trip. Based on having been kayaking once about 15 years ago I was a little nervous but it went ok.  We did about an hour on the Slocum River which is tidal and opens out into the Atlantic quickly enough - we didn't go that far!  The houses that line the riverbank are enormous - a real ostentatious display of wealth in some cases I'm sure.  We also saw lots of great wildlife - kingfishers, herons, turkey buzzard and ospreys amongst others.  

Other things of note is the huge number of Scott Brown vs Elizabeth Warren lawn-signs, TV adverts and radio spots advocating one side or another in a very competitive Senate race here in MA.  Warren has pulled ahead of Brown in the latest polling so fingers crossed that that continues through to Polling Day.  I'm loving be in the middle of the election campaign (and pleased that Obama looks like he's pulling ahead) - it's so much better experiencing it live, first-hand and reading papers like the New York Times to see how it's being covered.