Monday 1st March 2010 - Nothing New Under the Sun

           For the last two years or so, I have had a 'Google Alert' on the word "Glasgow".  That means I've asked Google to tell me every time it gets a mention on the internet.  I wonder, sometimes, if it's getting it right, but, in the end, I just have to accept what I get.  (It's a bit like when Google says, after a search, "here are the first ten pages out of ten million": how are you ever going to know if that's true?)

           Anyway, this morning one of the pages was entitled "Glasgow Middle School takes top honors at Louisiana Science and Engineering Fair"  Oh, no! Louisiana!  I have been relying on the United States Geological Survey's database, and, although it's all been fun, and I've had a real good time, this is not the moment to tell me I've missed one.

           So I drop everything and get Google proper to find me this school.  Which , I discover with great relief, is on Glasgow Avenue in Baton Rouge (the next avenue is called Edinburgh).  I don't think I could have taken another Glasgow at this stage.

 

          Today's mission is the Thomasville History Museum.  The duty grown-up lady is poised behind the door as I arrive.  She said they had been warned I was in town, and they had expected me on Saturday (I think I did tell her counterpart at the Genealogical Library that).  I hope she hadn't spent the entire weekend there, her little heart fluttering like mad.

          But there is nothing much new here (except a rather splendid Model-T Ford out in the garage, and, the house having been built by a lumber merchant, a very fine floor).  There appear to be three standard texts on the history of Thomas County, by William Warren Rodgers, who was professor of history at Florida State, in Tallahassee.  He is now, apparently, 80, and the grown-up lady is expecting him to visit next week.

 

          When I came out of the museum, the bank told me it was 71degrees.  So I thought a bit of tourism was in order.  Thomasville, as well as claiming to be the "city of roses", also boasts an enormous oak tree.

[n1136]

It lives in a park donated by the lady who bought all the Glasgow farms.  She also donated the house the museum is in: one of the planter aristocracy.

 

          Later that night, the local bar is packed.  I'm introduced to a Mancunian, an archeomotrist from Florida State.  Roughly speaking, that's doing archeology by satellite.  That's one way to avoid the perils that befell Indiana Jones.

          I also met an English major, who promised to comment on the literary merits of my blog (and I volunteered for that while I was cold-stone sober).