A Tree Grows in Savannah

I have been promising updates all over the place and then it gets late and i'm tired and it's a new hotel and maybe they put me in a handicap room without a tub so I have to switch, and so on. But here, now, this is an update! Just for you. And you and you and you.

Savannah was lovely. It has the best trees of anywhere, including the scary one whose partial picture I took (see above) in a very old cemetery. There were gravestones you could barely read from the early 1700s through the late 1800s. If Scarlettt O'Hara were a real person, she would have relatives in this cemetery.

The whole city of Savannah is beautifully preserved, and all the pre-Civil War architecture is gorgeous and a little haunted looking. My Dad told me that when the Yankee troops got to Savannah the city surrendered, versus Atlanta where they fought. So Atlanta was burned, and Savannah was spared.

Elsewhere in Georgia (the last state of the tour), we exhibited at Wal-Marts in New Brunswick and Macon. Wal-Mart stops are always tough because people think Big Pink is pretty and all, but they are there to shop and don't necessarily want to take time to haul their groceries inside and sit down at a computer while the popsicles melt. Speaking of popsicles melting, the heat has been intense. And so humid! I don't know how Southerners handle this. Give me snow over heatstroke any day.

Another interesting thing about Georgia has been the real live Southern hospitality. All of the local Komen affiliates who have shown up to volunteer with us (and there have been many more here than in any other state) have brought food. Pizza, fried chicken, even ice cream cake! All incredibly unhealthy of course. Speaking of which, at Wal-Mart yesterday a young mother was feeding her 7 month old ice cream while visiting our trailer. And not like a spoonful or two- the entire ice cream portion of her piece of ice cream cake went into her infant's mouth. Hello, childhood obesity.

And here's an alarming story from New Brunswick. A thirty-ish woman with a baby watched our self-exam video, and afterward while I handed her literature and promise rings and asked what she thought, she said it was "eye-opening." Then she explained that she's had a lump in her breast for two years but has no insurance and so hasn't done anything about it. No doctors, nothing. Whoa. So I tell her to call Komen right away, there are free services, etc etc. She thanks me and leaves. Then she comes back to ask,

"If it was cancer, would it hurt?"

I told her no, usually not. Then she noticed the two breast models with cancer-like lumps on the counter, so I had her feel them up to get the idea. So then she tells me to feel HER lump- which was at the top of her breast tissue, sort of where you would put your hand over your heart to say the national anthem. So I think what the heck, and I feel it, and whoa. It was huge, like a golf ball, and just as hard. How scary is that? She can't have been more than 32 years old, she had a tiny baby with her and has been carrying this lump around for two years. How incredibly eye opening indeed.

In other photo news, pictured is one of the postcards we hand out frequently to under 40 women and sometimes men. I love it and have the 8.5x11 version on my refrigerator. I think it's an incredibly relevant statement and find it empowering and edgy. What do you think?

Tonight we're in Atlanta/Hotlanta, in our last hotel in our last city in our last state. Tomorrow Renee somebody from the Today show is coming to see us. There will be more updates before I fly to Michigan on Monday, at least one of which will be a recap of the books I've been reading while on tour. Yay books!

In case I don't talk to you tomorrow, happy Summer Solstice, and happy pre-anniversary to my brother Adam and sister-in-law-to-be Kelly.

Right now I have to go to sleep because I must rise by 5:30 a.m. Goodnight, Moon.