Canadas at Play: Postcards from New Jersey

Canadas at Play: Postcards from Alabama

Birmingham, Alabama

November 10-12, 2000: Poor Birmingham. Like Detroit, Gary, and all of New Jersey, it has a reputation that does not exactly attract tourists. Indeed, it probably keeps many people away. They don't know what they're missing.

Lisa, Essie, and I were in town for the South Atlantic Modern Language Association's annual meeting, where professors of English and several foreign languages gather to share ideas about language, literature, and teaching. In addition to attending sessions on Truman Capote and Harper Lee, "great books," Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, I gave a presentation called "Real Work, or How Students and I Learned to Like Composition."

We also took some time to get out and see Birmingham. On Saturday, for example, Lisa went shopping while Essie and I spent the afternoon downtown. It turns out that Birmingham has some great spots for kids. We started at McWane Center, a children's science museum with dozens of exhibits. Essie's favorites, of course, were ones involving balls. She must have spent a half-hour or more using columns of air and water to suspend balls in the air. While at the museum, we also attended a presentation on turtles, and Essie got to pet a real one. As luck would have it, Saturday was Veterans' Day, and after our visit to the McWane Center we caught Birmingham's Veterans' Day parade, which featured horses and marching bands. We wrapped up our sightseeing with a visit to the Birmingham Museum of Art, where Essie got to spend some time in an "artist's studio" designed for kids. Later, I popped her in the stroller and went on a whirlwind tour of the adult exhibits, which featured works by some of my favorite artists: Auguste Rodin, Frederic Remington, and Albert Bierstadt.

Downtown Birmingham

Although I didn't know it until I arrived, downtown Birmingham is also a perfect spot for a jog through history. Eager to add to my list of "moving experiences," excursions that involve both sightseeing and exercise, I left our hotel early one chilly morning and went for an exhilarating run through the city's Civil Rights District. There I saw the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where a bombing in 1963 killed four girls and inspired "The Ballad of Birmingham," a song I have taught in my Introduction to Literature class. I jogged through Kelly Ingram Park, the location of some famous civil-rights demonstrations in the 1960s and the current site of some striking sculptures designed to encourage visitors to reflect on the experience of the demonstrators and on racism in general. Other highlights included the Fourth Street Business District, where black businesses emerged in the early 20th century and continue to this day, and an impressive outdoor sculpture honoring hometown hero Eddie Kendrick, lead singer of the Temptations.