TN 3 - Plantations, Picnics, and Parthenons
Today started out with a swim in the hotel pool. Just kidding, it looked like this and I like the number of arms I currently have:
It actually started out with a trip to the Belle-Meade Plantation, the home of a famous civil war general and planter William Giles Harding. We didn't tour the actual plantation mansion house, because it was more money and not self guided so we weren't sure if we wanted to commit to a full tour. Instead we did the self guided tour of the grounds, but because it was a massive southern plantation that still counted for a lot.
We started with the carriage house and stables. There weren't any live horses in their but there was a pretty sizable collection of vintage buggies and carriages. They were really well maintained and beautifully constructed. It was cool to see the differences between what was available more commonly, and what was the height of luxury available only to the very wealthy. It was also pretty clear that people weren't as tall back then on average because some of those buggies would be very tight fits.
Outside the carriage house, we met Roy Overcast, the potter in residence. He was giving a demonstration of his pottery making process. He had a really jovial and flamboyant presentation style and it was really a joy to watch. My favorite thing he said was that he got a B in his first ever pottery class. "I felt like I deserved an A. I worked my patootie off!"
From there we got a look around the grounds, checking out the greenhouse, the ice house, the mausoleum, and most interestingly the old slave quarters. I think the plantation handled this unfortunate part of their legacy in a really good way, by letting the former slaves tell their own stories. They had one cabin completely bedecked with photographs and first hand accounts from former enslaved people. I don't think they were all enslaved on those grounds, but their stories were really powerful, and all the more so that they were all direct from the source. The other cabin was filled with various recovered artifacts from archaelogical digs of the site of the slave quarters. The artifacts painted a really interesting portrait of all the ways people lived and tried to survive in the worst possible conditions imaginable. The opulence of the actual mansion right next to these humble huts was really kind of shocking.
After the plantation, we went to nearby Whitt's Barbecue. They only had counter service, not sit down dining so we decided to pick up a family meal and have ourselves a picnic while the weather was so nice. The family pack came with 1.5 lbs of slow roasted pork, two pints of sides (we got one of mac 'n' cheese and one of mashed baked beans), and 8 buns, all for under $25. It was really delicious, though the barbecue sauce that came on the the side was more vinegar based than the more savory stuff we were used to up north so we generally ate the sandwiches dry, but that wasn't really a bad thing when they tasted that good.
We had our picnic outside of the Parthenon. To celebrate the city's Centennial, they built a full scale replica of the Parthenon of Athens trying to recreate as much as possible the splendor of the Parthenon as it would have been in ancient Greece.
Inside the parthenon was a few museum exhibits. The only rooms that allowed photography were an exhibit on the original centennial celebration where the building was unveiled. There was lots of little memorabilia and advertisements for the massive celebration. It looked like quite the 19th century shindig. The other exhibits that I couldn't photograph were mostly paintings. One was a collection of works by different American artists of landscapes and seascapes all collected by one art aficionado from Nashville who gifted his collection to the Parthenon. The highlight of this collection for me was a work by Winslow Homer called Rab and the Girls featuring two women and a fog by some mountains, an impressionistic work called the Wreck by Frederick Church, and a kinda surreal work called The Hilltop by Charles Courtney Curran. While I couldn't photograph them I found some serviceable images on google.
The other painting gallery was by a local contemporary artist named Camille Engel, who did a special collection on all the Tennessee state symbols but in really weird, lovely and interesting ways.
The highlight however which I was lucky enough to be able to photograph was the throne room upstairs, featuring a 40 foot tall gold plated statue of the Goddess Athena. It was monumental and just a jaw-dropping accomplishment. I was particularly impressed by her shield which had the head of medusa on one side, and an illustration of Gigantomachy, the battle between gods and giants on the other. She was really something to behold.
After the Parthenon, we went back to the hotel for a bit to crash. I took a quick solo trip to get some coffee at Atmology, a nearby coffee shop and local event space. The coffee was great and the atmosphere was really warm and welcoming. Definitely a great place to go and hang out. I tried to be nice and get my buddy James, some Brownie bites. They looked really good, but frankly tasted kind of terrible. I'm choosing to chalk that up more to the vegan and gluten flour than the cafe itself. There's only so much you can do with what you're working with.
When we all reconvened and I had a healthy amount of caffeine in my blood, we all went out to dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery. I guess it's a local chain in the South but we'd never been before and had heard good things. I ordered a flight of their house made beers and a chicken and avocado sandwich. The sandwich was amazing, and a nice slightly lighter touch after a lot of heavy eating recently, The flight featured their Flyer Lager, a Witbier, A red ale, an IPA, a Porter, and Special Aged Brown Ale. The brown ale was my favorite and not just because its name, Paging Dr. Brown, reminded me of Back to the Future. Everything was good, even the IPA (he begrudgingly admits). Mr. Beaudet also got the flyer and enjoyed it, and I was pretty partial to the red and the porter myself.
From there I went to an Open Mic at a local brewery called Smith & Lentz brewery. It was a smaller intimate mic, but the place was very cool and I really enjoyed their house porter.
I went pretty early in the night and had a really good set, but then things kind of took a turn because I got a really unpleasant phone call from an ex-girlfriend that blew up into a big fight and ended with me crying in the bathroom and then manically pacing around outside for a bit. In other words I kinda missed the rest of the mic after me.
What I did see was very good though. I really liked this one comic named Evan Norman, who did a really dark but silly set with lots of solid one liners. "When I was kid, my parents would wash my mouth out with smoke" "I like Mayhem, it's just my kink"
I also enjoyed a guy I'd seen the night before Cody Marley who did a funny bit about how much more athletic great athletes are now then back in the day. "Remember Babe Ruth? A big fat whore mongering slob? The only reason he got so many home runs is so he wouldn't have to run"
After the mic, I cleaned myself up and went back to the hotel and watched Seinfeld reruns with my best friend until we fell asleep. It didn't make everything better, but it did help a lot.
Favorite Random Sightings: Kwik Sak; Double Gun; Nashville Goo Goo
Regional Observations; Ever since crossing the Mason-Dixon, the number of Waffle houses I see on a daily basis has increased exponentially.
Albums Listened To: At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash (Out of alphabetical order but it seemed fitting)
People's Favorite Jokes:
*inspired by a true story* A woman is visiting Cape Cod and going to the beach with her kids. This summer there'd been a few shark sightings so everyone was a little on edge. She noticed that her son was swimming a little far out so she started calling out to him. Suddenly everyone on the beach started running out of the water and evacuating, screaming "Shark! Shark!" The woman runs to her kid, gets him, and runs out to the parking lot. "I can't believe there was a shark," she says. "What do you mean you can't believe it?" another woman says, "You were the one who saw it." "I don't know what you're talking about" the mom says. "You were standing there shouting out that you saw a shark!" the other woman says exasperatedly "I never did that. I was calling out to my kid. "What's his name?" "Finn"
Song of the Day:
