This morning I had one last fabulous breakfast at the Hotel Warm Springs. My dining companion…not quite as fabulous. When I told him why I was in Georgia, he made a comment about Jimmy Carter being “the worst president of all time.” I remarked “Last I checked, James Buchanan has him beat as, Jimmy Carter ended his administration with the same number of states he started with.” My dining companion then went into conspiracy theories about FEMA, comparing it to Hitler’s brownshirts….and I kept talking about how delicious the biscuits were.
After that, it was back to Atlanta. I had toyed with either going to the Center for Puppetry Arts, or going to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum. This is a vote that Carter won…thanks to his museum having better parking.
With God as my witness…I never want to drive in Atlanta again. I came down with a particularly virulent case of what I usually call “Illinois Tourette’s Syndrome.”
The biggest thing I got a kick out of with the Carter Museum/Presidential library…is, as my buddy Ken has pointed out, often Presidential Libraries take on the personality of their subject. The Carter Museum is exuberantly nerdy. More than one spot I found out about Carter’s great love of reading, which books he’s read, and why he was involved in the local library board. There’s a sizable exhibit just about presidential libraries in general. Also part of that exhibit was explaining what sort of materials could be found in the archives at a presidential library, and even an interactive computer activity where you help an intern determine what’s the best source to use to answer a question.
Another fun exhibit is “A Day in the Life of a President”…it’s a huge display on multiple screens, showing step by step what a day was like in the Carter administration. One thing I especially got a kick out of….in the Reagan Museum, the narrator was Tom Selleck. In the Carter Museum it was Martin Sheen.
After that, I was on my way home. My first trip to the Deep South without major car troubles. Woo hoo!