ATLANTA, GEORGIA: JIMMY CARTER LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

We love Presidential Libraries/Birthplaces/Museums. Looking at history in the context of one individual's contributions is enlightening. This was particularly true of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, which happens to be next door to but run separately from the Carter Center, a non-profit human rights agency founded by Jimmy and Rosalyn in 1982.

The approach to the Library and Museum includes a roundabout lined with state flags.

 The library is built on the spot where Union General William T. Sherman orchestrated the Battle of Atlanta in 1864

Carter took office in January 1977, the middle of my senior year of high school. His was the first presidency that meant something to me on a political level. I remember that my mother, usually a Republican, voted for him because of his stance on human rights. I still find him to be one of our most interesting Presidents, partly because of his farm boy roots, something I can identify with.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

I grew up in a small town and went to a small high school. Although we had a smattering of Mexicon students, there really wasn't much diversity. In my three years of high school, there was only one African-American student, and he was from a local boys' ranch.

However, then I married and moved to California and got a job teaching at an inner-city community college. I've mentioned before how we buy Christmas tree ornaments as we travel as mementos of different places and different cultures. Well, the year I started teaching, I bought an African-American angel ornament. It's a little embarrassing to admit that, but to me it represented a shift in attitude and a new appreciation for a culture I had previously had little exposure to.  About one-third to one-half of my students were African-American, and I read their stories for thirteen years until I moved to a college closer to home that draws from a much more upscale population.

I've always wondered if that was the right move. It saves me a lot of time and gas, but I loved teaching at that inner-city college. I loved those stories of hardship and defeat and struggle and grit. Most of my students were not just the first person in their family to go to college, but they were the first to graduate from high school. I developed a respect for what it means to beat the odds.

Traveling in the South and visiting Civil Rights sites is a similar, if not even more intense, educational experience. On our recent trip to Atlanta, we spent several hours at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, a complex that includes a museum, a Walk of Fame, some significant statues, the MLK birthplace, the tombs of Martin and his wife Coretta, and an important Southern Baptist church.

Knowing that this is a popular destination for school groups, we got an early start. Our first visit was to the founder of King's nonviolence movement: Mahatma Gandhi.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: STATE CAPITOL BUILDING

My husband had plans to attend a seminar in Orlando a few months ago, so we tacked on a pre-seminar trip to Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. We figured it was a good time to travel in the South--warm but not too warm.

Wrong.

The day we arrived in Atlanta had a high of 25°, and we froze. However, we were very lucky because just a few weeks later, Mother Nature gifted Atlanta and other parts of the South with highly unusual snowstorms. But I digress.

The only places we had ever been in Atlanta were the airport and Olympic Park. We went to the latter when we had a four-hour layover on a trip to London in 1999. We had just enough time to catch the lightrail into town, take a quick look at the park, and return to the airport. We knew we needed to go back some day.

This time we started our visit at the Immaculate Conception Church. Originally a simple wood frame structure built in 1848, it was the first Catholic Church in Atlanta. Because of the pleadings of Father Thomas O'Reilly, the church, four other churches, and the City Hall-Court House were saved from destruction when Atlanta was burned during the Civil War. (Ironically, the church was almost burned down in a fire in 1982.) The Northern Army did, however, occupy the building and use it as a military hospital. After the war was over, the parish built this bigger and better church on the same site, and in 1954 it was declared a shrine.

Because of its location in tight city streets, it was hard to get a good photo:

. . . but when we turned around, there it was, perfectly reflected in the windows across the street: