Tennessee: the Athens of the South?

Miles: 11057.3
Gallons Burned: 364.1
Caffeinated Drinks: 69
Gigabytes of Pictures: 30.6

I'm in Damariscotta Maine, sitting in the town bookstore/cafe. Unfortunately, the Espresso machine is down, so no Latte... I went with an iced Latte even though it is about 39 degrees outside (about 20 degrees warmer than Maine's average for this time of year). The sun is out and hopefully my appointment for an oil change will work out. The coffee shop is different from the average Seattle coffee shop. They are playing Franz Ferdinand and there are laptops so that matches, but the colors are all happy, and the people are here to be social and enjoy each others' company. Weird! No people gathering together in public so they can collectively ignore each other...yep Seattle is really like that.
Another place like unlike Seattle is Tennessee. I headed north out of Georgia toward the Volunteer State (called that because they sent the most volunteers to Texas to fight the Mexicans in the 1840s), and crossed over at about 3:30pm. I went to Josh's apartment. Josh is a neat cat. He is the mycologist I mentioned earlier who relocated to Knoxville to go to grad school. He is a child genius who finished undergrad at 20 and will soon turn 21 while in grad school! Dang I'm such a slacker. I graduated from undergrad at 20 also, but I didn't start grad school until after I turned 21!! ARGH! Josh beat me...LOL he's awesome like that. So he and his two room mates were kind enough to let me sleep on their couch for 3 nights while I watched the Olympics with them and experienced the Tennessee way of life. Here is Josh...and Josh:

Yep, I'm short.
We took a little road trip to Nashville to see the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. So...I don't like country music (Except for the song about the Devil and Georgia with fiddling and the song where the Lady smashes and scrapes her cheating boyfriend's truck, thanks Sam Bo for forcing me to listen to a lot of country just to show me that there are only 2 good songs). So why would I have liked the "Opryland Hotel"? Well why don't you just look and see:


And some videos:


Josh kept up the suspense all the way there forcing me to imagine 20ft tall cheese sculptures of Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley. I was so wrong. They had 3 indoor tropical/subtropical forests. Outside it was 20 degrees, but inside of the glass domes were it was 75. Just seeing this wonder was worth the drive. But that's not all we saw.
Next stop was the Parthenon. Ok I'm a nerd, so now you all get an aside:
The Greeks were clever folks back in 800-400BC relative to other folks in North Africa, Mesop, and Southern Europe (would say world but I don't know much about what American natives/Chinese folks were up to at this time). The Acropolis (a stony hill) was the place of prominence and pre-eminence in Athens. Since the city was named after the goddess who lent her shield and spear to defend it, they built the best building in the best place to honor her. Inside sat a tall gold statue of Athena. But there is a little trick the architect used to make the temple look balanced. He set the eight front and back pillars in such a way so that to the human eye they would appear evenly spaced...only one thing they are not evenly spaced. The outer pillars are farther apart than the inner pillars (by several feet!).
End Aside.
In Nashville in 1897 some eccentric folks built this:

It was the centerpiece of the city's centennial celebration. The temporary building was an instant favorite of the city and has remained there ever since.
To end the post how about a quiz? Can you name the Greek gods and goddesses on the Parthenon's Front Frieze?


Answer (front left to right): Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Zeus, ????, Ares, ????, ????, Hera, and Hermes. Thank you Hillsdale for a fine Greco-Roman Education.