I had never been to this part of town and it was very obvious that the neighborhoods were struggling. There were lots of abandoned, boarded up homes and lots of people loitering on street corners and in driveways. The park is in an open area behind a circle of homes about 1/3rd of which were abandoned. There was also evidence that an arsonist must live in the neighborhood. A nearby vinyl fence had a massive hole burnt in it and some of the playground slides showed evidence that fires had been started on them. But hey, even if it is in a shady part of town a playground is a playground… right?
Not quite. After we’d been there about 10 minutes a group of young men who had been hanging out & smoking on the other side of the park approached us. One of them asked me if I smoked – he had cigarettes to sell. I said no and mentioned that it isn’t good for your health. His follow up question was if I smoked “green” – apparently they hadn’t noticed the “Drug Free Zone” sign at the entrance of the park. I pointed out I was just there to let my boy play on the playground and not interested in purchasing anything. As they walked off, Trey called out to them: “Big boys come back! Come play!”. They ignored him.
I let Trey play a little longer but finally drew the line when he held up a broken beer bottle he found under the playground set. I started to look closely at the mulch around us and realized it was full of shards of glass (being from brown beer bottles it blended in quite well). We left and I took Trey to Chick-fil-a where he had a great, safe time and the only drug pushed was delicious soft-serve ice cream.
It has been raining non-stop for the past two days – to avoid cabin fever, I took Trey out back in the woods as soon as the rain let up. At first I tried to keep him out of the puddles and mud, but he eventually had his way. The overcast skies really made the greens pop. You can check out the photos over on my blog at whaun.com.
Today Trey, my uncle David, and I drove up to Atlanta to visit the Center for Puppetry Arts and the High Museum of Art. At the CPA they were running (a different) exhibit of Jim Henson’s work. Trey enjoyed the Sesame Street characters but was quite disturbed by a lot of the other puppets.
I made the mistake of pressing a button to activate some sort of robotic trashcan/bird from hell despite the bold warning under it that said “MAY FRIGHTEN SMALL CHILDREN” Yup, it frightened him alright! He was out-of-whack for the rest of the tour, whimpering every time we passed a devilish medieval marionette.
** UPDATE: I found a video of that freakish “Trashcan Phoenix”. The footage is sideways, so tilt your head. You’ll quickly understand why Trey was so disturbed **
My uncle David who lives & works in DC decided to spend his precious vacation time with us this week. The last time David came to visit we were living in Florida and Trey was a wee baby in November of 2006. Today we gave him a mini-tour of Macon. We hit Ocmulgee National Monument and downtown Macon where the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain so we’re planning an trip up to Atlanta to visit a museum or two.
Here are some pics (that didn’t make the video) from last night. You’ll see that Trey is enjoying the rides more and more. He’s also brave – he went on several that were pretty fast and bumpy and had the time of his life. On the caterpillar mini-rollercoaster the older kids were holding their hands up in the air and screaming so Trey joined in – laughing away the whole time.
Like our Amelia Island vacation video, this was made with a still camera taking long bursts of photos. I used my Lensbaby for the blur effect. Special thanks to El Ten Eleven for making awesome music.
I had never been to this part of town and it was very obvious that the neighborhoods were struggling. There were lots of abandoned, boarded up homes and lots of people loitering on street corners and in driveways. The park is in an open area behind a circle of homes about 1/3rd of which were abandoned. There was also evidence that an arsonist must live in the neighborhood. A nearby vinyl fence had a massive hole burnt in it and some of the playground slides showed evidence that fires had been started on them. But hey, even if it is in a shady part of town a playground is a playground… right?
Not quite. After we’d been there about 10 minutes a group of young men who had been hanging out & smoking on the other side of the park approached us. One of them asked me if I smoked – he had cigarettes to sell. I said no and mentioned that it isn’t good for your health. His follow up question was if I smoked “green” – apparently they hadn’t noticed the “Drug Free Zone” sign at the entrance of the park. I pointed out I was just there to let my boy play on the playground and not interested in purchasing anything. As they walked off, Trey called out to them: “Big boys come back! Come play!”. They ignored him.
I let Trey play a little longer but finally drew the line when he held up a broken beer bottle he found under the playground set. I started to look closely at the mulch around us and realized it was full of shards of glass (being from brown beer bottles it blended in quite well). We left and I took Trey to Chick-fil-a where he had a great, safe time and the only drug pushed was delicious soft-serve ice cream.
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