amy in alabama

The WHO Farm: sustainability for the White House - and all

www.thewhofarm.org

These guys are driving across America in a school bus to promote the cause for President-Elect Obama to plant an organic garden on the White House front lawn.  Watch the video, visit the sight, sign the petition, pass the word on!

Weekend Thoughts

Every Friday I look forward to the  NY Times Escapes section - where to go, where to go....

This week Sweet Home Alabama - Gulf Shores.

NY Times Escapes: Gulf Shores, Alabama

Are Botanical Gardens the New Travel Destination?

What a great way to think about traveling: where are the good botanical gardens?  Let's go there!

From T+L, Vera Gordon, retired Brooklyn educator says this:

"When you see a garden, you see a culture," Gordon explains. "Through the formality or informality (of the landscaping), or the plants a country has chosen to import and show off, you see how it wants to be seen."

I love this idea.  T+L Great Botanical Gardens has a full article and slide show.

But I have to include one of my personal favorites from the gardens in Rio, if only for the monkeys running around free and wild.  And as they should be, no?  

  

Grammar Girl Rocks!

All writers struggle with grammar from time to time.  Grammar Girl podcasts are short, entertaining and not the slightest bit judgmental or scolding.  Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, is the founding and managing director of Quick and Dirty Tips, a company that creates and distributes digital content in the form of brief, friendly advice.   I love Grammar Girls podcasts!

Quick and Dirty Tips with Grammar Girl  

Sustainable Gift Wrapping

My friend Natalie is a designer here in Florence, Alabama with a strict ethos on sustainable production from the organically grown cotton she buys from Texas to the hiring of local seamstresses who are paid competitive wages for sewing (by hand) her unique designs.  No two shirts, skirts, or jackets are exactly alike.  

A recent blog post bellow points to a traditional Japanese solution for transporting goods, gifts and other small items.  This is green outside the box.  Never mind recycled wrapping paper, a beautiful scarf becomes the wrapping - and a gift around a gift.

Alabama Studio Style - Furoshiki

I'm getting excited about 2009...

Travel + Leisure Magazine highlights a few different ways to look at travel and some upcoming new trends in '09.  No money, no job, no worries.  When you gotta go, you gotta go...flashpacking!

T+L slideshow/Trends for 2009

A Drive Down Alabama’s Natchez Trace:

And a visit with a radical American ghost

By Amy C Collins

I am alone with the open road, my focus on the curves.  Orange-hued woods fall away to open green pastures and glide back into sight, hugging the two-lane roadway.   A peaceful mind prevails.  Just outside the Florence city limits in North West Alabama, the historic Natchez Trace Parkway winds it’s way north toward Nashville, Tennessee and South across the state of Mississippi, ending in Natchez.  A peaceful, scenic drive provides an opportunity to unwind and escape.  The drive sails past nature trails, fishing banks and picnic stops, overlooks and historical markers. The rich history of the southeastern United States, its American Indian beginnings, is preserved at various rests along the Trace through landmark signs.

A few miles west of The Shoals, a collective name encompassing four abutting cities: Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, and Tuscumbia, lies an entrance to the Trace in the middle of the short run through Alabama.  The Trace covers 444 miles from end to end, but this corner of Alabama will take only an hour to travel from the Tennessee line to the Mississippi border.   A perfect afternoon getaway, maybe I eat a brief lunch along the way, there’s still time to catch an afternoon latte back in town. The smooth, easy drive prohibits commercial traffic and strictly enforces speed limits.  I am forced to take time.

The Natchez Trace, before paved in black asphalt, was probably established by migrating bison and giant sleuths, thousands of years ago.  In the last 2,000 years the Trace was trafficked by American Indian tribes trading among themselves.    The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee hunted bison and wild pig and fished the Tennessee River and its inlets for bass, and mussels.   At the turn of the 19^th Century the US Government was awarded permission by the various Indian tribes to use the Trace as a military mobilization and mail route. 

Today, the landscape along the Trace remains protected from civilization, a presumed likeness of how the road may have looked to its early travelers.   An occasional deer, opossum or fox attempts to cross the road.

Sixteen miles from downtown Florence, south on the Trace, the journey crosses the Natchez Trace Bridge and the Tennessee River, from Lauderdale County into Colbert County and drops down by a landmark, Colbert Ferry.  Directly below the bridge, the landing Colbert named “Georgetown”, opens to a grassy area with a few picnic tables and a soft breeze off the Tennessee River.  There are few people on a weekday afternoon and the burnt colors speckling the trees, the damp smell of winter coming, the crispness of the air pushes me to button up my jacket and cup my hands for warmth.

The spot is named for Chief George Colbert, a Chickasaw half-breed with a Scottish father.  George had three Chickasaw wives and strict ethos:  no alcohol, no education, and no white religion. Chief George and his brother Levi, also a chief, were wealthy herdsman.  They raised cattle and hogs and owned slaves.  They were dubious men with shady business practices.

In 1801 General Benjamin Wilkinson signed the Wilkinson Treaty with the Chickasaw tribe, represented by Chief George Colbert.  George dictated a provision that required the US Government to move the Trace, from where it currently ran inland through the Chickasaw territory, further upstream, closer to what is today Muscle Shoals, and where the Tennessee River is too wide, too deep to easily cross.  He established a ferry, and his brother opened a “stand”.  It was a tavern with rooms for rent, food, and whiskey - sold only to the white man.  Under the terms of the treaty, George and Levi were the only men permitted to own and operate businesses in the vast Chickasaw territory.

A path off the side road from this landing is marked with an invitation to stroll into the woods to the original spot of the Levi’s stand, along the Old Trace to the bluff overlook.  The sign tells a brief story of shrewd business ethics: Colbert welcomed Andrew Jackson’s army with shelter, copious bottles of whiskey, and passage across the river, only to send a $75,000 invoice to the War Department once they had left.  Colbert charged $.50 per person per one-way trip.  The whiskey his brother sold fetched a price three times the norm.

Almost 200 years after the Colbert brothers fattened their wallets, I wonder if this place still holds a creative energy.  I wonder if I might absorb some of George Colbert’s entrepreneurial spirit by sitting on this riverbank.  I imagine Jackson’s men making jokes, swapping stories, hung-over from a few nights of drinking and playing cards.  They fall in line to board Colbert’s ferry, marching behind General Jackson.

Maybe I could open a bakery downtown with my sister?  I should sign up for a baking class.  Is there money in bio-diesel?  Perhaps I could acquire a fleet of flat riverboats, like the ones operated by wheat and skin tradesmen from Ohio in the early 1800s, floating south to the Gulf to sell their goods.  I could offer tourist rides leaving from this very spot.  Of course, I wouldn’t want to pick up Colbert’s crooked business practices.

A quick stop in the public restroom, a visit to the visitors center for a souvenir brochure, and I’m on my way.  Several small beaver damns poke through the surface of the water in the inlet, where the boat ramp sits near the exit.  The water is still and reflects impressionistic images of underbrush lining the bank.