Thoughts by Kristina Minna Ilse v. Vetter Kast Oglesby
As we enter deep summer, the days stretch ever longer into our nights. The heat boils us from the inside while the sun preys on our mental faculties. It is hot. It is wet. It is steaming the population like a collective bag of crab legs. My brain, in short, is fried.
One has to wonder, is someone or something preparing a meal? Are we in the ‘mise en place’ stage, or are we already in the water as it reaches the boiling point? You decide!I digress.
But let’s digest, shall we?
Last week, Savannah endured the following: A complaint has been dismissed. He said changing “Calhoun” square to “Taylor” square violated state law.
“Calhoun” was a slave-owner and politician. His political ideologies were devoted to the protection of “state’s rights” and the assertion of slavery as a “positive good.”
Did anyone else have to purposefully answer that question wrong on the Scantron during the CRCT, or EOCs, or [insert appropriate acronym here of expensive testing materials here]?
“Taylor,” is here to stay in honor of Susie Baker King Taylor and her incomparable efforts in education and community building where people needed it most.
Calhoun and his efforts, however, will not be forgotten anytime soon as they have surely shaped our world today.
Have you evee hae a taaste of 1209 Bull? It’s gone now. But you can remember. Just lick your fingers..
In more practical uses of spatial awareness, the Kiah house/museum has received approval from the Historical Preservation Commission to use the building at 2001 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. for better engagement.
The “studio” space would provide necessary accommodations for learning opportunities with guests and better preservation of the original house and intention of Kiah’s life’s work.
We do love preservation. No notes!—but only for now, as we wait for the return of the research conducted by the Galvan Foundation on the acquired property’s historical significance and the efforts done for its preservation.
We are all but silly floating alligators in the water, waiting with baited breath…
Lastly, but certainly not least-ly, The Rhino Collective is, as Eric puts it, “staying busy.” The former New Realm Brewing building at 116 Whitaker is set to become an inn with a ground-flour restaurant.
And while not as groundbreaking as “florals for Spring” in our tourist-laden town, one has to wonder what menu we will receive this time from one, Ele Tran.
Tran is behind the popular local Asian fusion chain of restaurants including, but not limited to: Flock to the Wock, Chive, Flying Monk, Coco and Moss, Le Bahn, The Vault, the now-closed Current Kitchen, and Madame Butterfly—a Korean BBQ restaurant named for the famously tragic opera, based in Japan?
I suppose one can see the resemblance in tool use, but the similarities stop there.
Tangent break, take a deep breath:
Madama Butterfly, the opera, was originally written by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini who saw a one-act play by playwright David Belasco in 1900. Belasco’s play was based on the French author Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysantheme and the short story Madame Butterfly by American lawyer, John Luther Long, who based his short story on the memory of his sister’s trip to Japan. The opera premiered at La Scala in 1904.
I am not kidding, but I do digress.
The Rhino Collective has also recently obtained the building housing Envy Nail Bar on Broughton, through bankruptcy court upon the death of the former owner of the building. Tenants, however, have been given little time to vacate.
If anything strikes me this week, it is this: City government is not particularly sexy, nor is any government for that matter, but what I will say makes my brain light up like a Christmas tree is a good, sexy, pattern. And those patterns come in the form of people, “usual suspects,” in names that keep popping up in the feed. You will notice. There are only a few.
We have limited space and more limited, still, with the inclusion of a never-ending tourist season. Storage units cannot provide community engagement. Storage units cannot provide an active service. It just stores and sits like resentment in the muscles. It’s also a demonstrably ugly type of building. This is Savannah, I thought we had a standard of practice in aesthetic presentation as a gem of Georgia. Do we have pride in our looks, or not? I ask you! Your mother asks you, your grandmother, and whomever may have hitched a ride from the cemetery is asking you.
We are in the midst of a housing crisis, stagnating wages, and unprecedented wealth being grabbed out from under us as we work harder and longer. And so, I ask you, who has the money to buy enough things to store and continue to store them? To shamelessly quote myself in a letter to City Council in a similar plea against the rezoning of the Collier-Toomer mansion, to make room for another storage unit facility:
“I cannot write about things that are no longer here. People aren't that imaginative. It's good to have something to point to.”
If our duty to this city is to preserve it, as best we can then why aren’t we?
Final tangent: The old ballet masters had a philosophy about tradition that I hold dear when I find myself confused at people’s application of ‘tradition.’ Ballet, and dance, is an ephemeral art and its history is largely in oral tradition. We don’t have codified scores of dances. They live within their practitioners. Their duty was, and remains, to hold the dance in their body, to dance it as they did, for as long as possible while knowing that it would eventually change by new practitioners. As a dance master, you are living memory. A functional practice in what it means to remember. You hold multitudes. But you do not stop time. The movement will change. That is all.
History is not a hard science. It is soft and squishy, just like you and I. It has faults and doubts, and consists entirely of attempted articulations from us humans with flawed memory functions. We can only do our best. And our best involves looking at the super not sexy rezoning laws, and property sales. It’s our torch to bear, as we endure our own histories in real time.
So let’s do that! Here’s to a new engaging week. We don’t have a choice, yay!
Okay, bye for now, the void calls. In the meantime, wear sunscreen, watch the water tables.