Day 4: The King and I, Pt 1

To kick off the morning, I treated Nick and Brigid to breakfast at Ria's Bluebird, an awesome joint near the Oakland Cemetery. The cemetery was unfortunately hit hard by the tornadoes that flew threw recently, and the cleanup process is preventing pedestrian traffic.


Atlanta is known for at least three things: Sherman burning it to the ground, Martin Luther King, and Coca Cola. I spent the first part of my day at the Martin Luther King Center. This museum is awesome. It's basically a chronological summary of his life and the times. A lot of audio and pictures telling a moving story.



Out of curiosity, I researched whether Sherman really burned Atlanta or whether it was an exaggeration. Turns out it happened, and Sherman justifies his actions in a letter to the mayor and councilmen:

But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.

I'm sure this observation isn't unique, but most people view the succession as "It was a Constitutionally valid action" or "We must protect the Union," the latter having the implied notion that it was just a "bad thing." If you look at Mexico, it has never been a stable country. IIRC, they still have major issues with drug lords, corruption, and revolutionary groups, not to mention their economy. There are a plethora of alternate histories based on the South seceding, and I think all of them predict the same thing: war, so maybe violating the Constitution was the right thing overall...

Anyway, back to the trip... The World of Coca Cola and the humongous aquarium were both booked, the lines to get in almost joined each other, so I wandered around a little bit and ended up at the CNN offices where it appears Chinese-(americans, immigrants, ...) were protesting CNN's coverage of Tibet and the Olympics.


I waited a bit for something exciting to happen before heading to the hotel for the bachelor party w/ my friend Chris Bray and his buddies I've never met before, though Mark seemed familiar from somewhere. Lucky for Bray and I we already had facial hair so we didn't have to wear the faux ones.