As international travel reemerged in 2021, tourists were generally asked to show one or more of the following: Proof of vaccination Recent negative test Proof of recent recovery
But a trend has emerged quietly over the past month: countries, throughout Europe especially, have been getting rid of their Covid entry rules altogether.
Two months ago, every country in Europe still had Covid restrictions for travelers. Today, the following eight countries have entirely scrapped any pandemic travel requirements. No test, no proof, no problem.
🇬🇧 UK 🇮🇸 Iceland 🇮🇪 Ireland 🇷🇴 Romania 🇳🇴 Norway 🇲🇪 Montenegro 🇸🇮 Slovenia 🇭🇺 Hungary
And over the next month or two, expect this group to double in size if not more.
At this point, if you’re a vaccinated American, there are just two countries in Europe that require you to also show a recent negative test: Serbia and Poland (temporarily).
International travel is still down 30-40%, in large part because of uncertainty about border restrictions. The trend towards countries removing these (as the World Health Organization and others are urging) will certainly boost international tourism. But until the US removes the requirement for all arrivals—regardless of vaccination status—to show a negative test, overseas tourism will stay depressed.
WARNING: The BA.2 variant is on the rise in England and may appear here in the States in just a few weeks. So still look out for warnings or changing schedules or entry rules. COVID is still around and still deadly. Safe Travels!
For followers of the blog, you may know that I am a film maker and theatre director. I am very pleased to announce that my short film that I just released to the international film festival circuit just a few weeks ago has already won an award in one festival and is a finalist in another.
(There is a link to the film at the bottom of this page.)
REALE FILM FESTIVAL IN MILAN, ITALY
A Cost of Freedom was a short film conceived in 2004 and shot in 2005. The story is based on a short story by Italian writer, Luigi Pirandello, called War. Pirandello lived from 1867 to 1934. Pirandello’s basic story is a group of parents riding on a train after World War 1 all talking about how their sons died in the war. Some are proud, some are hopelessly sad, some are just hopeless. The story when I first read it in college has always provoked deep emotion in me about the futility of sending young men and women to war, while the makers of war never seem to fight themselves.
PRISMA FILM FESTIVAL IN ROME, ITALY
I was moved to make the film when I read about young men and women who were not US citizens but grew up in the States legally (green card holders) that volunteered to the various services when we were attacked in the 2001 World Trade Center attack (9/11). It has always been the policy of the US Armed Services to give full citizenship to these green card soldiers if they die in combat allowing them to get a military funeral and their families the few benefits that the armed services give out. Yet, when the Iraq War was started by the Bush administration they needed a lot of new soldiers because we were now fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. President Bush got the law changed to now not only offer US citizenship to the dead soldier but to their immediate families as well. A lot of young green card holders saw this as a way to create a pathway to citizenship for their families so they joined the war effort. I took Pirandello’s story and mixed it with the stories of young non-US citizens fighting for us in Iraq to make a film which I felt paid honor to those sacrifices but also laid bare the hypocrisy of this system of using non-US citizens to fight in our wars.
ACTORS MORRIS SCHORR AND THERESE MCLAUGHLIN
Yet when I started to make the film, I found different people reacted to my little antiwar film script in very different ways, especially when I needed a real army uniform for one of my characters. The actor I chose for that part was actually a reserve officer but to use his uniform he had to get permission from his commander. To my everlasting surprise, the commander not only approved the use of the uniform but also gave us access to many other unit elements like official flags and posters and emblems.
ACTOR JOSE ANTONIO
And that has always been the reaction to the film. People have seen past my limited view of my own film to the human elements of love and grief and pride in these real life stories and Pirandello’s brilliant original short story.
ACTOR ABRAHAM CHAIDEZ
The film came out in 2007, a time where there was really no place to view short films. There were festivals back in the day, but it was an expensive and time consuming effort to get your films around the country and the world to be viewed with no real idea that it would be screened. So A Cost of Freedom just sat on a shelf for almost 16 years until a young film editor named Tal Anderson re-edited the film for me and updated the sound and some minor effects. Since its re-release, the film has won a Best Drama award at the Reale Film Festival in Milan, Italy and is now a Finalist at the Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards Festival (in Rome, Italy).
I want to congratulate my cast and crew from back in 2005 especially my producer, Vivian Best, who is now a famous feature photographer, plus my new film editor in 2021 for their hard work and efforts. The praise and accolades should have been there long ago, but at least people are now seeing and enjoying this story told by a lot of very talented people. There is a link to the film below –
Yours, James Carey – Filmmaker of A Cost of Freedom!
I graduated high school and college in a small town in South Georgia called Valdosta. My mother and I had moved there after my father passed away. We joined my oldest sister, her husband and three sons who were living there making this part of Georgia our home. Moving from hilly Tennessee, the typography of South Georgia came as a shock as it is mostly flat, subtropical and filled with lakes, rivers, pine trees and swampland. It is a wonderful place to go hunting or fishing or just driving down a quiet dirt road to discover what’s around the next bend. However, to a teenager and soon to be college student more interested in social activities and girls, the nature that surrounded me was a little concern.
The same could not be said for my oldest sister who while she was a wife, mother and third grade school teacher for over 30 years, she’s always been an ardent environmentalist and genuinely concerned about man’s effect on nature and our climate. So on a recent visit back to Valdosta to spend time with her, I received a lesson from her as Big Sisters often do. Yet this time instead of telling me how I could improve my life, this was a lesson on the nature and ecology that surrounded my former home town that I never even knew was there. On a Sunday with really nothing to do but visit more, she suggested that we go for a hike in an area called Grand Bay Wildlife Preserve. I had no idea what she was referring to and so began the lesson just like the school teacher that she had been.
Just outside of Valdosta near Moody Airforce Base, she took me out to a 1350-acre nature preserve with a 3-mile hiking trail and a 2600-foot wooden walkway that was built out into the wetlands that leads to a repurposed fire tower where you have a 360 view of what is known as a Carolina Bay. Never having heard of what a Carolina bay was, she explained that bays are elliptical to circular depressions concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard that run from New York state down to north Florida. In Maryland, people call them Maryland basins.
She explained that Bays have different vegetative structures, based on the depression depth, size, and subsurface. Many are marshy; a few of the larger ones are lakes. Some bays are predominantly open water with large scattered pond cypress, while others are composed of thick, shrubby areas called pocosins with vegetation growing on floating peat mats. On our hike through and around the bay, she pointed out the rich biodiversity the bay contain, including many endangered species. From the top of the fire tower (flown in by helicopter and placed down in the bay) we saw heron, egrets and other waterflow. I was informed that deer, black bears, and other mammals plus uncountable numbers of insects made their home there besides the expected snakes and large alligators.
And as we walked and she told me about Grand Bay, other hikers would pass us and ask her questions since she seemed to know so much. One man asked her if she was an environmental scientist because of her knowledge while she pointed out to another the carnivorous plants that inhabit Carolina bays like pitcher plants.
So what started out as a hike to get out of the house on a slow Sunday afternoon became an interesting science lesson about Carolina bays and how they were formed. Especially about Grand Bay, a place I did not know even existed in my own home town. All thanks to my Big Sister!
Grand Bay is part of a 18,000-acre wetlands complex of Carolina bays and forested swamp second in size only to Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. Open from daylight Saturday until sundown Sunday, year-round, for outdoor sports including fishing, canoeing, hiking, camping, and deer and small game hunting. Boaters and canoeists enjoy this area. From a launch site on Knights Academy Road, six miles north of Valdosta off Highway 221, they can run a loop through a fascinating array of habitats in the area. Boat motors are limited to 10 hp.
There is no entry fee charged. For additional information please call 229-333-0052.
Photos by James Carey, exploregeorgia.org, visitvaldosta.org
Some information courtesy of WikiPedia.com, and LowndesCounty.com
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off too.” J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
It was 3:15 AM on March 16th and the Road was calling. I was wide awake staring at the ceiling. I had been trying to go back to sleep for the past 45 minutes and it just wasn’t going to happen. What I didn’t know was the strange last-day-in-California adventure that awaited me over the next 24 hours that would include casinos, a salt water lake, an apocalyptic ruin, an Alaskan in the middle of the desert, and a stripper/dance contest in Yuma, AZ. How did the Road sweep me away on this adventure? Well, that’s where this story begins!
The Hacienda. My home for 20 years!
My house was empty! The place I had called home for 20 years was now completely empty.
Everything is gone except these things!
Every stick of furniture, every piece of paper, every knickknack, tchotchkech, and geegaw that I had ever possessed was gone! Over the past week I had sponsored an estate sale and then a truck from a local charity had come by and picked up the last possessions that I had not wanted to keep. For weeks before that I had been packing and sorting and throwing out massive amounts of junk. Then out of a large 17 room house, I only had two small U-Haul pods of possessions left that I had personally loaded and sent on their way towards Atlanta. The only thing that was still left in the house was the long-time caretaker of the property that had allowed me to travel the world as much as I had and who also happened to be my roommate, Kirk. He would be staying in the house for about another month until it sold and then he would be off on his own new adventure. I had said goodbye to Kirk and then booked a room in a Koreatown hotel. After checking in, I had gotten a takeout pizza and two large cans of beer which I had in my hotel room while watching some terrible movie on TV. About 10:30 I realized that I was emotionally exhausted and just crashed only to find myself waking up at 2:30 AM. For the next 45 minutes as I struggled to go back to sleep, my mind kept going “It’s time to go. James, it’s time to go! The Road is calling! Let’s go!”
The Road Calls!
So finally giving in, I got up, took a quick shower and got packed. I was checked out and had the car loaded by 3:45 AM. Before I left Los Angeles perhaps for the last time, I drove by my place one last time. My house, my home, my Hacienda that had been the center of my life for the last 20 years. As I sat in the car and looked at her there in the moonlight, I said one silent last goodbye. I was off on a new life adventure, and she was waiting for the next family that would call her home. I said a silent prayer for both of us, started the car and drove the two blocks to Interstate 10. I merged into the late-night traffic and headed east out of the City of Angels.
For days before leaving, I had tried to think of which highways I wanted to head East on. My sister had urged me to take my time driving across the country and see all the things that I wanted to see. Yet, I had made this trip four times in the last year and a half, and I had stopped every place that I had wanted to stop and had seen everything that I needed to see. So that morning as I drove out of LA, I had no clear plan as to where I was going to go or what my timeline getting to Atlanta was going to be. So I just decide on Palm Springs. I didn’t know if I was going stop in Palm Springs, chill out at Desert Hot Springs or just keep on moving, but Palm Springs was going to be my first stop. Palm Springs is about 90 miles from Los Angeles and that 90 miles even on 8 lane freeways usually takes at least two and half hours because of the California traffic. Yet at four in the morning there is little to no traffic, so I pulled into the parking lot at the large Morongo Casino on the outskirts of Palm Springs about 5:30 AM.
Morongo Casino, Resort & Spa is an Native American gaming casino, of the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians. The Morongo Casino was opened in 2004. It is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The hotel has 310 rooms, and several restaurants and bars are part of the complex. I was already vaccinated so I went inside to find breakfast. The 24-hour restaurant was closed because of Covid and reduced hours, so I got a muffin and coffee at the bakery. Then wandered around and played video poker with the help of a Bloody Mary until 7 AM when the Road called again urging me on.
It is at that moment that I decided to drive the 60 miles to the Salton Sea and check it out. I had lived in Southern California for almost 40 years and never even thought much about seeing it and it was now or never. I headed east on I-10 toward Indio and got off on California 86 South and drove pass Coachella, the home of the famous music festival, and continued on toward the Salton Sea. You reach a point where you can take either the eastern shore on Highway 111 or the western shore on Highway 86. I choose the eastern shore which would lead me toward an artist colony I had heard of called Bombay Beach.
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked body of water that has a high concentration of salts. It was created by water runoff from the Colorado River in 1905 when an irrigation canal head gate was broken through by spring floods diverting a portion of the river flow into the Salton Basin for two years before repairs were completed. The water in the formerly dry lake bed created the modern lake that is about 15 by 35 miles. The lake would have dried up, but farmers used generous amounts of Colorado River water and let the excess flow into the lake. In the 1950s and into the ’60s, the area became a resort destination, and communities grew with hotels and vacation homes. However, by the 1970’s, the lake had begun to shrink and become more inhospitable to people and wildlife. In the 1980s, contamination from farm runoff promoted the outbreak and spread of diseases. Massive die-offs of the avian populations occurred, especially after the loss of several species of fish on which they depend. Salinity rose so high that large fish kills occurred, often blighting the beaches of the sea with their carcasses. Tourism was drastically reduced. During the 1990’s, the lake continued to shrink and the lake bed became exposed, the winds sent clouds of toxic dust into nearby communities making people sick and driving away what was left of the tourist communities. The Salton Sea has been called “the greatest environmental disaster in California”.
Advertising a place that no longer exists!
As I drove South on Hwy 111, I started to pass nurseries that grew palm trees but after a few miles even that sign of activity ended. You came into open arid desert with panoramic views of the lake on your right and nothing but endless desert on your left. I drove by what at one time had been communities, but now all the buildings were either boarded up or in disrepair. I drove by one community where people still lived, and I pulled off the highway to see what I could see. Most everybody in the community was older and at a local Community Center they were handing out food and supplies to the residents possibly because of COVID. What you soon began to understand is this is one of the last places that people with little or no resources can come to and stay in California. They could buy a cheap piece of property, or they might be able to find a room, small apartment or trailer for not much money, but there was just a sense of poverty and loneliness as I got back on Hwy 111.
The US Department of Interior has taken over much of the eastern shore of the lake and turned it into a preserve trying to maintain the wildlife and keep the lake from further eroding. There are many areas where the river has retreated so far from the lake that you can almost not see it from the highway, and these areas unless you have a pass or are willing to pay the daily entrance fee is the only way that you can get close to the lake. Finally I came to Bombay Beach which I had heard about on a television show which they had described as a colony of artists who were banding together on the edge of the Salton Sea. I turned off the highway into Bombay Beach and for the first few blocks as I headed towards the lake it seemed like it was doing well. There were a few art galleries, a restaurant, a couple of bars and a grocery store. Yet, as you drove the last few blocks toward the lake it suddenly became a cross between The Walking Dead and Mad Max. You had the feeling that you were in an apocalyptic ghost town and zombies were going to start walking down the road at any moment to eat you. For blocks, yard after yard of burned out houses and trailers were surrounded by junked furniture and trash. Every once in a while, you would see someone who had a small house or trailer who was trying to take care of their property but they were surrounded by chaos and garbage and ruin. It looked like a whole army of crystal meth heads had ransacked the town looking for anything that they could sell and moved on. The few people that I saw driving on the street or walking were all above 50 and they seemed old and beaten down. I drove out of Bombay Beach with a feeling of sadness at what looked like a desperate situation.
Desperation this way!
Continuing south on Hwy 111, it ultimately dumps out on Interstate 8 that runs between San Diego and Phoenix along the US southern border with Mexico. I turned left and headed east towards Yuma, AZ. A few years ago was the first time I’d ever gone to Yuma, and I have now been back five times. There’s something about this desert community and its colorful history mixed with it easy paced lifestyle that just appeals to me, although the extreme summer heat can makes it very inhospitable. As I drove east, I decide to stop one more time in Yuma before I headed towards Atlanta.
Yuma is located on the southwestern edge of the state of Arizona near the borders of California and Mexico. It is home to a number of snowbirds in the winter and other visitors are often enroute to Los Algodones, Mexico for cheap medical services or for the shopping. Yuma has been a stopping point for centuries. Before dams were constructed up and down the Colorado River, the river ran fast and deep and stretched wide in places, yet because of granite outcroppings the river was squeezed into a narrower channel and Yuma Crossing became known as the safest and easiest place to cross the river. The first Spanish conquistadors who helped settle Los Angeles and San Francisco did not sail up the California coast to settle those areas, they used Yuma Crossing on their way towards California.
Gowan Headquarters in the former US Post Office Building.
I pulled into town and checked into one of several hotels located in Yuma. There are all levels of hotels here from cheap to very luxurious because of the flow of Americans who cross into Los Algodones for easy to obtain medical treatment and prescriptions. I choose one relatively near the historic downtown area of Yuma. It was about noon and the weather was in the mid-80s in March as I headed downtown to get something to eat. Arizona had fairly open Covid laws so as I walked around, I saw people wearing masks and some people not. After lunch, I walked around the historic downtown area and saw many of their restored historic buildings. Some dating from the late 1890s all the way up until the 1960s. Yuma is one of the wealthiest farming communities in the United States specializing in growing winter vegetables for the US market. The Gowan Company is a family-owned agricultural business that started in Yuma and grew into a global leader in seeds and agricultural solutions. They have bought up many of the historic buildings and preserved them using them for office and storage space including many mid-century architectural gems.
Former JCPenney’s store from the 1950’s!
My odd schedule finally caught up with me and I went back to the hotel for a nap. Later, around 8 PM, I ventured out for dinner in the same downtown area. Afterward, I took another walk and ended up at the Red Bird Cage, one of the oldest saloons in Yuma, a real dive bar with friendly bartenders and a great juke box. It was a little close in there with a very casual mask and social distancing policy, but I managed to find a quiet corner of the bar to seat by myself. As the bar began to fill up, a young couple sat down next to me, and we started talking. They were cousins and both really attractive people. Turns out he was an exotic dancer working in the Phoenix area mostly, and she (who I will call Ann) lived in Alaska working at the canneries up there about half the year. The other months, she returned home to Yuma to work in a family business, but she now really preferred Alaska. She told me that she almost did not return to Yuma this year because she just loved Alaska so much.
Colorado River
After talking for about an hour, some of their friends showed and things got a little rowdier. After a couple of rounds of drinks, they started talking about going to the strip club for the “dance off”. I asked what that was, and it turned out that there was some kind of dancing/stripping contest at the local club to see who had the best routine. Ann seemed to be in lust with one of the strippers and wanted to go support her. The whole gang got up to leave for the club, and Ann invited me along. With nothing better to do, I tagged along. Now going to a strip bar in the middle of pandemic is a very interesting undertaking with everyone wearing masks inside including the strippers as they walked around trying to get men to buy drinks. It was very strange to see a woman wearing almost nothing sit at a table chatting up a potential customer with a mask on. The image was just too weird for words.
The “dance off” began and Ann’s favorite came on second. Ann enthusiastically cheered her on while throwing dollar bills on the stage. By now it was about 1 AM and this time the Road was not calling, it was my Bed. So I said good night and drove back to the hotel. Yet as I got ready for bed, I reflected back on the past 24 hours and marveled at all the different things that happened. My leaving LA in the middle of the night, the casino, the desolation of Salton Sea and Bombay Beach, then driving to Yuma, meeting a woman in a desert bar who worked in Alaska and the strip/dance off contest. All in all, an extremely interesting way to leave California.
Thanks for coming!
*Special thanks to Wikipedia for historic information on Salton Sea, Morongo Tribe, and Yuma, AZ. All photos by James Carey except The Open Road @ Popular Science/popsci.com and Leaving LA @KCRW LA.
**Quote from The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien, Houghton Mifflin, Inc., 1938.
Well the packing continues, and we’re almost done. Painters and carpenters, realtors and workmen have been constantly coming in and out of the front door as I have packed and hauled boxes and things out of the attic and basement. Opening boxes of stuff I haven’t seen in years, giving stuff away and holding an estate sale which got rid of my record collection and most of my movie poster collection and my comic book collection. Yet there is so much left in this house!
When I first moved into this neighborhood called West Adams or Kenny Heights or Western Heights, a historical neighborhood just west of downtown Los Angeles, the neighbors called my three story, 65-foot-wide house built in the Spanish Mission Arts and Crafts style – the Hacienda because it looks like a Spanish Hacienda. And that name stuck not only as a nickname but as a reference to our house and also as the name of the business that grew out of having four extra bedrooms and other living spaces that this piece of property provided.
It’s hard to watch furniture that you’ve had in your life for 20-30 years, and in a few cases since I was born, being carted out the front door and loaded onto a truck by two men who really don’t care about the furniture at all. They are junk man and I have hired them to clear my house after on an estate sale that really didn’t get rid of a lot of things. I also don’t have time to hold endless garage sales to try in make this stuff go away. My house has 17 rooms. Why 17 rooms you ask? Are you an idiot? Well my first wife and I bought it for a song and then it became a business and I’ve run it as a guest house and an AirBnb since 2005. Literally hundreds of people have stayed at my house as guests. I’ve made friends with people all over the world. I met my second wife here. We’re no longer together but for a while she helped me run this place and also helped me write a one man show about my experiences of running a guest house where people from all over the world stayed.
But it’s time for me to move on. And it’s hard to see furniture that you care about being taken out and just thrown on the back of a truck with no attempt to protect them. You hope that they will end up going someplace where somebody cares for them but you’re not sure. It’s part of letting go. It’s not easy but it’s necessary.
I wonder if furniture has karma? Whether tables and chairs, sofas and antique desks have feelings and wonder where they’re going and what their outcome will be? Will they end up with someone that cares about them or will they end up in a junkyard?
I know houses have that because I felt it. My house and I’ve had a symbiotic relationship for 20 years. When I first bought her, she was in terrible shape and no one had lived in her for six years and over the past 20 years I have replaced the plumbing, the wiring, the roof, the furnace twice, painted the entire interior of the house all 17 rooms except for the dining room (I just never got around to that), sanded all the floors and made her beautiful and livable again. All during that time she has taken care of me by providing me with an excellent side income. Yet it is now time for us to part ways. I can’t afford to do the repairs that she needs to have done that will elevate her from just a comfortable house to an amazing house and that’s something she deserves. And my time in Los Angeles has ended and it’s important for me to go somewhere else. I will miss her. She has taken care of me and watched over me and provided me a place of comfort and retreat when the outside world got too tough. But as we part ways, I am hopefully she will be reborn as the magnificent house she deserves to be.
I miss my furniture, but I knew by taking it with me it would just weigh me down and I needed to let a lot of things go both materially and spiritually. I’ll miss my beautiful old house. She’s been my constant companion for 20 years. The place I could always come back to and be rejuvenated. I will miss my magnificent lady, my Hacienda, my house, my home!
I am sure you have heard the old cliche about the guy who gets a divorce from his wife, sells his house and all his possessions and then takes off on a trip around the world to find himself? Well, I always thought that was a stupid idea! The wanderlust part of me always thought it was kind of cool, but the practical part of me thought it was absolutely ridiculous. Who gives up their life, their possessions, their job, their business to set out around the world to find themselves because wherever you go there you are. So just deal with it!
Well I have become that cliche!
The Cliché
Due to a dissolving marriage caused by lies, cheating, manipulation, and resentment, my wife and I decided to divorce each other after nine years together and five years of marriage. A very stormy relationship filled with passion and anger and arguing and love. Our views on marriage were just too different, and so what at first was two people trying to figure out how to hang onto each other became two people who were tired of the battles until it became two people who just didn’t care anymore. Like most guys, I hung on longer than my wife did. It has been my experience that when a woman tells you that she’s no longer in love with you, that’s the end and she’s not coming back. Guys tend to hang on longer and rehash the relationship over and over again to find out where it went wrong or what they did wrong or how they can put it back together or will she come back, and the answer is always no. So I found myself still hanging on and waiting for my wife to come back even though she had already found another lover and had moved on with her life. Unfortunately, she never told me that. She kept telling me that she was still just licking her wounds and staying at home to avoid the pandemic and working extremely hard at her job as a film translator. We had decided to blocked each other on social media to save conflicts and hurt feelings, yet one day a good mutual friend showed me her Facebook page and it was filled with references to her new boyfriend and the exciting new life they were leading. So what had started out as an amiable divorce proceeding that we did ourselves quickly dissolved into anger and accusations that ended up with us both ending all communication with each other.
So much stuff to get rid of
The result of which was a deep depression that was helped along by the COVID-19 restrictions in Los Angeles which took me a long time to work my way out from. Then one day I woke up and knew it was time to get out of here. I’ve lived in my home for 20 years. It has taken care of me, provided for me, created a business for me, and for much of my adult life as it was the first thing I had ever owned it defined me to a degree. It’s a large arts and craft house located in a historic neighborhood in Los Angeles and I have lived there with great pride as I have tried to restore this home over 20 years. In many ways I thought I would always be there till the end of my life. Yet with the dissolution of my marriage I realized that the City of Los Angeles a place that I’ve lived in for almost 40 years had suddenly seem to become two blocks wide and one block deep. That all my neighbors seemed to know more about me than I did. I felt like I had become a social pariah and that nobody wanted to talk to me or be my friend. Of course that was not true but everything in my house and everything in Los Angeles had become an emotional trigger for me that made me recall my wife and our failed relationship.
The stuff that is going with me.
So one morning I woke up and I became the cliché. The feeling became so strong then I could literally not sit still. I became the man who is literally getting rid of all of his possessions in an effort to find a new direction and a new life. My destination at least temporarily is an apartment in Atlanta, Georgia where as soon as I arrive and unpack my few possessions, I will probably jump on a plane and go to the Caribbean for two months to work on a suntan, lick my wounds and drink my share of umbrella drinks.
One of these is mine!
Yet, trying to sell your house and get rid of all your possessions takes a little bit more time than you might think. I was thinking that I might be able to accomplish this in just a few weeks. Yet this odyssey has been now going on for three plus months. My house is 116-year-old, and while wonderful does need a few upgrades. It’s a hot market and it’s a hot property but there’s a lot of stuff to get rid of, there were things that my realtor wanted me to deal with before he would put it on the market, and I had to deal with a tenant problem. I have a guest house in the back and a tenant that I needed to move out yet because of the COVID-19 rent restrictions and California’s tenant relocation laws, I had to pay this man several hundred dollars to leave because it’s not his fault that my life has imploded. There is a sum that I’m legally required to pay him, yet he wanted to hold me up for much more money because of the COVID-19 eviction restrictions so this caused a logjam. My realtor wanted me to spend hundreds of dollars on fixing up certain parts of my house which I knew the next owner is just going to come in and rip out, so we came to an understanding. And trying to find a reputable estate sale company took some time but we’re almost there. The few repairs start in just a couple of days, the tenant will be leaving by the middle of the month and the estate sale is next week, so progress is made. If all goes well, I’ll be out of here in a month saying goodbye to LA and headed to my next adventure wherever that may be, Atlanta or beyond.
The packing never ends.
This will be a little bit of an ongoing series that every once in a while, I’ll drop in a new story about my wanderings as I transitioned from one life to another. I hope you enjoy the ride and thanks for continuing to be part of my blog.
I was driving cross country on my way back to Los Angeles from spending Christmas in Tampa. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and I decided to spend a couple of days in New Orleans.
I’ve been going to New Orleans since I was 17 years old when my high school band, the Valdosta Wildcat Marching Band won a band contest, and our prize was to march in a parade that went through the French Quarter on Bourbon Street. I’ve returned many times since then. Eaten amazing food and listened to wonderful music. I’ve also been kicked out of bars and had some pretty wild times in New Orleans. Yet, I hadn’t been back since before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Quarter and the Ninth Ward.
I’d heard that New Orleans had made a comeback, but I was wondering what COVID-19 effect would be on the Big Easy.
I’m sad to say that I think COVID-19 has decimated New Orleans almost as bad as Hurricane Katrina did. Why would I say something like that? Because the economic damage that I saw when I walked through New Orleans and the French Quarter was prolonged and it had been going on for months. There was not the catastrophic devastation that happened with Katrina, however the continual loss of life for over a year and the economic downturn that came with the pandemic in its own way had as much of a devastating effect on New Orleans as the hurricane did.
I checked into a hotel about eight blocks away from the Quarter. The hotel gift shop was closed, and the bar was closed, and the restaurant was closed. The reservation concierge behind the desk told me that the staff had literally been cut in half over the preceding months. After settling in my room and relaxing from the road, I walked down Canal Street to Bourbon Street and turned into the Quarter looking for some real New Orleans cuisine. As I walked down Canal, business after business was boarded up or had for lease signs in the windows. There was a lot of street construction going on so New Orleans is not completely dead, but the theaters were shut, restaurants were closed and even the few package stores that were open looked like they weren’t doing well.
As you turned into the Quarter you noticed that a lot of the store fronts were shut up. Now this was a weekday, but it was also 7:00 PM at night and as anyone who’s ever been to the Quarter knows that it never sleeps. Restaurants were closed, bars were empty or if they were open, they were only doing takeout drinks and there would only be one employee working. And even the bars and restaurants that were open were not full and some of them closed early. Pat O’Brien’s, a bar that I have never seen closed in my entire life was shuttered for the two days that I was there. The Quarter was a shell of itself. There were still tourists and there were still crazy people running around doing crazy things, but it certainly wasn’t the jam-packed Quarter that I remember from days gone by.
The only area that was full that I could tell was around Jackson Square. The restaurants around the square seemed to be doing OK especially Cafe Du Monde where you went to get chicory coffee and beignets. Yet even the street merchants and artists who sell their work around square seem to be struggling. There weren’t many street musicians who were out performing. In the two days that I was there I literally saw only one street jazz band. While the art galleries and souvenir shops around Jackson Square seemed to be attracting a lot of business, elsewhere in the quarter there were signs for apartments and storefronts for lease everywhere, and empty buildings with going out of business signs on every street.
Now maybe people were waiting for New Year’s Eve or they were waiting for Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to come into town so Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints could beat them in the NFL playoffs (which did not happen), yet there was just a feeling as you went from street to street that there was a pall over the quarter. I don’t know what the rest of New Orleans was like. Maybe restaurants are doing well. Maybe people were going out and shopping, but the tourist area of the French Quarter was hurting really badly. And it was so very sad to see such a lively and vibrant place brought to its knees by an invisible enemy that no one has an answer too.
New Orleans is a resilient city. It will come back once people have found a cure for this pandemic. I just hope there’s enough of it left for people to want to visit when they do return.
After spending the late fall in Atlanta, GA during 2020, when the cold wet winter arrived I escaped further South to Jekyll Island just before Christmas. The weather was in the low 60s and the island had decked itself out with its annual Christmas light show. The light show is a self-guided driving tour that takes you through several parts of the island and ends at the historical district with amazing lighting displays in front of the houses and through the 100-year-old Oak trees that are spread throughout the historical district. Then after the tour, I went inside the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, and had an expertly made Old Fashion at the bar while maintaining social distance. It was a warm and lovely way to kick off the Christmas season even during such a horrible year as 2020!
Christmas Light display in the Historical District.
Jekyll Island which is part of the Gold Coast of Georgia has a rich history that stretches back to at least the 1400s where it was first a Native American settlement as part of the Creek Nation. Starting around 1510, white man arrived and over the next couple of centuries it was colonized first by the French, then the Spanish and finally the English until it became part of the United States. But in the late 1800s, Jekyll island was taken over by an entirely new type of invader, the American Captains of Industry!
Road through the Historical District.
After the American Civil War, the original owners of the island returned and set up shop once again. Previous to the war Jekyll island had been a plantation whose work force was based on African American slaves. The island was owned by the Du Bignon family, who were refugees from France that had escaped the French Revolution. Upon their return to the island, the father, Henri Charles Du Bignon divided the island among his four children.
The 100 year old Oak trees between houses in the Historical District.
JEKYLL ISLAND CLUB
In 1875 John Du Bignon started to buy out the rest of his family and set about trying to market the island as a winter retreat for the super wealthy of the Northeast on par with summer retreats such as Bar Harbor, Maine and Newport, Rhode Island. The plan came to fruition on February 17, 1886. He and 53 wealthy investors formed a private club called the Jekyll Island Club, and a limit of 100 members was imposed to preserve the club’s exclusivity.
Side view of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel
The first building of the new club to be built was the large Jekyll Island Club Hotel, a two-winged structure that served as the centerpiece of the club. The “club” began to sell off plots in the area surrounding the Hotel and soon some of the wealthiest families in America had built large mansions called “cottages” which became known locally as “Millionaires Row”.
Moss Cottage, Home of the Macy Family. The shingles are made from local Cypress trees on the island.
Some of the millionaire owners were the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Goodyear family, the Macy (the department store) family, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Joseph Pulitzer. They would arrive by private railroad car or private yacht bringing with them servants, horses, buggies, and other toys to amuse themselves during the winter months. It is rumored that every time Carnegie’s yacht arrived that he demanded that a cannon be fired off in salute to him.
The back of Indian Mound Cottage, home of the Rockefellers. Named for a mound in front of the house thought to be an Native American burial site. It was really a large mound of oyster shells buried.
The largest and most expensive winter home built on Jekyll was Crane Cottage. Richard Teller Crane, Jr – think Crane plumbing fixtures. 20 Bedrooms and 17 Bathrooms! It caused quite an uproar, as Club members valued the “simplicity” of their cottages. To try and be good neighbors, it’s said the Cranes had marble flooring removed and replaced with wood.
View of the Crane Cottage from the gardens.
The “club” also played a role in the formation of the Federal Reserve system of banks that we have today. According to history, a duck hunt on the island lead to the creation of our national banking system. In November 1910, Senator Nelson Aldrich and Asst. Secretary of the Treasury met with five of the country’s leading financiers in the Club Room of the Hotel and devised a plan to create a national banking system that became the Federal Reserve which is the agency that sets national banking and monetary policy for the US.
Jekyll Island Club Hotel, centerpiece of the Historical District. Hotel is still operational 12 months a year.
Jekyll Island was also part of the first transcontinental phone call which took place in 1915. The call took place between President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., Alexander Graham Bell in NY, Thomas Watson in San Francisco and Theodore Vail, president of AT&T who was on Jekyll Island. Remember when long distance was expensive? It was REAL expensive when it first became available – a call between New York and San Francisco? $20.70 for the first 3 minutes.
The Sans Souci, the first “condo” building on the island. Six luxury apartments for single Millionaires right next to the Hotel. No children or mistresses allowed. There large balconies on both front and back of the apartments.
From 1888 to 1942 the club opened every January for the winter season, yet even the wealthy suffered during the Great Depression, and the club had financial difficulties. When the United States entered World War II, it ordered the island evacuated for security purposes, ending the era of the Jekyll Island Club. After the war in 1947, the State of Georgia bought the island.
Map of the Historical District including the businesses that serve the tourists.
In the midsection of the intercoastal side of the island is a designated 240-acre (0.97 km2) Historic District. This includes most of the buildings erected during the Jekyll Island Club period, which have been carefully preserved. The district revolves around the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. Thirty-three buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries surround the hotel and many of them are the elaborate mansion-sized “cottages” built by the rich. Some cottages offer rooms for rent for temporary stays. Others have been adapted for use as museums, art galleries, or bookstores. The hotel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The historic district itself has been listed as a National Historic Landmark District since 1978.
Tram tours originate from the Jekyll Island Museum located on Stable Road directly across from the historic district. They run several times daily and guides describe much of the history of this area.
The view of the shoreline from the Jekyll Island Wharf.
THE NEXT TO LAST SLAVE SHIP
Sadly, Jekyll Island also played a part in the end of Slavery in the United States. America ended legal slave trade in 1808, but the practice was continued illegally until the beginning of the Civil War. The last ship to bring slaves from Africa to the US was the Clotilda out of Mobile, Alabama in July 1860. Yet, the next to last ship was the Wanderer, a pleasure boat that was converted by Southern slave traders in Africa and brought the last large load of slaves from Congo to Georgia in 1858. Of the 500 Africans bought for the voyage, 409 survived and arrived off the southern tip of Jekyll. The crew smuggled the captured Africans ashore and then on to the mainland. News of the slave ship set off a wave of outrage. The federal government’s effort to prosecute the conspirators was unsuccessful. For several years, it was thought that the Wanderer was the last documented slave ship to arrive in the USA before proof of the Clotilda was found.
View from the front of the Crane Cottage (Mansion). The waterway in front is part of the Inter-Coastal Waterway.
Jekyll Island Tourist Information
The island also serves as host to Georgia Sea Turtle Center which is a functioning hospital and rehabitation center for sick and injured Sea Turtles and is the only center of its kind in Georgia. It is open to the public. For more information about times and events, call 912-635-4444, or go to https://www.explorejekyllisland.com/Sea_Turtle_Center.shtml .
Jekyll Island Historic Tours & Gift Shop offers a variety of tours for the whole family. Take a guided tour and step back in time as each historic building’s story unfolds, and the Jekyll Island Club and the National Landmark Historic District come alive. For more information, please call 912.635.4036. Or visit https://www.jekyllisland.com/history-category/tours/.
Sailboat on the Inter-Coastal Waterway which runs by Jekyll Island.
Photos by James Carey
Information provided by Wikipedia and Jekyll Island Historical District and www.explorejekyllisland.com.
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