Opening Day in Savannah, Georgia
Posted by Alex on January 28, 2009, from Savannah, Georgia
Community Partners: Georgia Public Radio, Telfair Museum of Art
The arrival of StoryCorps in Savannah, Georgia was met with wonderful Southern kindness from our partner station, Georgia Public Radio. There were lots of balloons and a huge StoryCorps cake. Nancy Mercer Gerard and her husband Stephen Gerard were the first participants. Nancy is the niece of Johnny Mercer, a famous singer songwriter from Savannah.
The MobileBooth is located right nearby the Telfair Museum of Art in Telfair Square – one of 25 squares in the city. Everywhere you look there are green spaces with oak trees covered in Spanish moss. Plenty of opportunities to sit in the shade and have a good conversation…
Eric Nauert of Georgia Public Radio treated us all to an excerpt from the Thornton Wilder play, “Our Town,” connecting it to the StoryCorps mission to preserve human history. Read the quote as you enjoy the photographs from Opening Day in Savannah:
“[…]Even in Greece and Rome, all we know about the real life of the people is what we can piece together out of the joking poems and the comedies they wrote for the theatre back then.
So I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us […] more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight.
See what I mean?
So[…]people a thousand years from now […] this is the way we were (in the provinces north of New York) at the beginning of the twentieth century. […]This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying.”
January 28th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I am beyond impressed with the cake. Have a wonderful stay in Savannah, Eastbooth!
February 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
i want a piece of cake, please.