Gary-Summer: March 28, 2025 - Atlanta, Carter Presidential Library

Friday, March 28, 2025

March 28, 2025 - Atlanta, Carter Presidential Library

Title: March 28, 2025 - Atlanta, Carter Presidential Library

Hike Info:

Type:Touring

Description:

I got up at 7 this morning. I guess I am getting used to this East Coast time. I spent most of the next hour conversing with Rachel. She had just landed a couple hours earlier in Chiang Mai. There was an earthquake next door in Myanmar, 7.7 with a 6.4 aftershock. The plane was about to land when the earthquake hit. The plane stayed in the air another half an hour to make sure it was safe to land. She is safe. But there is a lot of ambiguity about her stay there.

Sherri gets up at 8:45. We have oatmeal for breakfast. We are starting to ponder what meals will look like for the rest of our stay-that is for four breakfasts. Today’s destination, which will take most of the day, is the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library

. If we get out of it in time, we will go to MaryMac’s. We get ready to leave and are out the door at 11.

We walked to the Brookhaven Station-what’s new about this? And then take the Gold train to the North Ave Station. From here we pick up the #2 bus. This takes us east along North Ave until we get off at Highland. Now it is about ⅔ of a mile walk to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

It is just $12 to get into the library-$10 for us old people. But in January Sherri and I went to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and got a membership. So entrance is free for us.

The first thing we do is see a 15 minute movie on the life of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. It talks mostly about his time as President and beyond, but it gives background to his life as well. It has the well-known people from his Administration talking about the important events and the impact. This is the thrust of this Presidential Library over all.

Rosalyn Carter

Throughout the displays of his life, there are timelines to guide the visitor on what was happening in Carter’s life. There were three of them: his life before becoming President; the events of his Presidency; and what he did afterwards.

The two Presidential Libraries we have been to previously-Kennedy and Nixon-served as a vehicle to tell their own story how they wanted it told. The Carter Library is no different. Carter’s upbringing and his post-Presidency life is pretty well known and there is not too much new here. At least half of the exhibits are show the years he was President. And there is a positive spin put on events.

As a note: I think my book group has read three of his books: An Hour Before Daylight, Christmas in Plains, and Living Faith. So we already had a pretty good background of him before we went today.

Before seeing the Library, the two big negative lenses which I saw Carter’s Presidency was how inflation took off and the Iranian embassy hostage situation. Neither showed Carter being effective. While the Library did mention in a couple places that inflation was not under control during Carter’s time, it really did not talk too much about it. But there was spin on the hostage situation. There were behind the scene maneuvers to make sure things did not get worse-I did not know about these. Carter pretty much presented that he did not have options to bring home the hostages and negotiations were being non-productive. Whatever he did would have gotten the hostages killed. From his perspective, it was a no-win situation.

Speeches available:

Hands in peace

There are also many things which the exhibits bring to mind which Carter did. He presided through a time when we were in flux about how we used energy which helped cause the inflation experienced. We got the Dept of Energy from him. Through Rosalynn Carter, Mental Health started to be considered a health condition rather than an abnormality. We lived in a time of relative peace while starting to rebuild the military. The Panama Canal accords paved the way for the return to land back to Panama while maintaining US interests-this is now in the news. Deregulation of various business sectors was all the rage.

Then diplomacy seemed to be an area which Carter excelled in. There was the SALT II talks were finished and only delayed by the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. He normalized relations with China while maintaining Taiwan's security. And then getting Israel and Egypt to agree to talk, phasing in the Camp David Accords which lead to the treaty between the two nations. This is still in effect today. Maybe Carter was not as ineffective as I thought.

I think every Presidential Library must have what the Oval Office looks like. At least both the Kennedy and Nixon did and so does Carter. With Nixon, we were able to wander through the office and sit on the furniture. Here it is blocked off. But there was an interesting video display about what a day in the life of the President looks like. In about ten minutes they go through from when Carter got up at 5:30 or so till when he went to bed at 11.

There is a temporary exhibition from the art work of John L Cleveland Jr called T he Nature of the Man. It is paintings from the area where Carter grew up and lived. I had imagined the area to be more dry and dusty. But the art shows an unexpected lushness and greenness of the area. Also the homes portrayed seem to fit the settings rather than flaunting their possessions.

Maybe one of the best things you can say about the Carter', because they seemed to be a team, is that the morality and concerns they expressed during the Presidency enabled them to be probably the most productive people the United States have known during their post-Presidency times. This is the idea behind the Carter Center which was created as a place to allow for the negotiations between factions with profound disagreements. I do not know how much it has been used for that, but it has now an international reputation for humanitarian work. Work such as being election observers, health providing, and creating basic infrastructure.

After his Presidency, Carter's income was from his books

It is good when you go to places like this, to think about what the place is saying and maybe go beyond the presentations. A question which I started pondering was Are there things which are morally right for a man to do and say, but which is not for a nation? Or maybe a different way to say it, is there a different set of morals for a person than for a nation? What is setting this off in my thinking is that the Carter's were very moral people and tried to bring that morality to our nation. But was the nation better off for it? Should a nation live by the code which Jesus set down: to do to others what you would want done to you.

We got out of the Library a little before closing time, after 4pm. We discussed what to do next. It looks like there is enough time to go to MaryMac’s-Finally! So we trot over to Highland and wait for the bus. About 20 minutes later #102 comes along and takes us within a block of MaryMac.

Georgian Terrace

Dinner at MaryMac’s, the last surviving diner in downtown Atlanta, was everything Sherri hoped for. To start with, while you wait, they give you sweet tea to quench whatever thirst you may have. I suspect it is to get you ready for everything else to come. Since we came in before 5, we got seated within five minutes-last Friday when we stopped by on our MidTown tour, the waiting room was full and the dining rooms were packed around noon. Anyway, their menu is straight out of a movie set where everything is what I imagine Southern cooking to be. Our server was fast and friendly. We ordered our meal: Sherri with baked chicken parts and sides of okra and whipped potatoes. I had a fried chicken breast with cornbread filling and gravy with sides of green beans and Mac&Cheese. All was good and all was served with good sized helpings. Sherri ordered a seasonal (apple) cobbler to go.

We walked back to the North Station, passing by the Georgian Terrace Hotel. This is the hotel across from the Fox Theater and caught the Gold train back to Brookhaven Station. We chose a different way to get back. This time going past the Community Golf Course which I walked by Monday. Then it is back to the AirBnB. After a while, I made a bread trip down to Krogers. Then we rested and got ready for the night. I took a shower and went to bed about 10:15.

Some quotes from the displays are: