Day 29: Atlanta

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Today we decided to Be Educational, so we did a tour of famous Georgia people. Fortunately there aren't very many...

In the morning we visited the King Centre, an area of town managed by the National Parks Office (so all free) which covers things related to Martin Luther King's life. My knowledge of American history is shocking so this was a good chance to swot up. He grew up in the richest black neighbourhood in the USA and we toured his birth home which is Really Very Nice. The tour guide was hilarious: imagine the complete opposite of a National Trust crusty old lady and you have him. Instead of facts, as we went around he told us embellished anecdotes of how 'Daddy King' used to like his baths, or how MLK used to pretend he was superman and jump off the porch. Much more fun than truthful history, and the Americans on the tour lapped it all up. We also saw his grave, which would have been quite moving if it wasn't sitting in the middle of a giant over-chlorinated paddling pool with peeling blue paint. The museum was also a little disappointing since there was no logical order to the exhibits at all (I'm being serious) and no basic overview or introduction. It was a real shame since they had some nice exhibits.

In the afternoon we went to the Carter Centre, built in honour of the president Jimmy Carter and his wife. This is a national public library so has a lot of archives, but there's also a newly-reopened museum which was really good. As well as messing about on interactive exhibits aimed at 5-year-olds, he whole thing followed his progression from schoolboy to navy officer to peanut farmer to politician.

When we got back to the house we were exhausted so we went over to a neighbour's house who had said we could used their swimming pool. It was slightly embarrassing since I decided to teach Alice to dive even though I have no idea how to myself, and we didn't realise they were watching from the kitchen window and laughing at our face-plants and belly-flops.

For dinner the Pearsons had invited over one of the other transplant surgeons, Nicole, and a junior doctor from Islamabad who's name I have forgotten. Nicole did her undergrad at Brown and was a gymnast. Whilst there they tried to cut her team even though they had just won the nationals, so they filed a Title IX lawsuit against the university and won. We also had a lots of interesting conversations about the US healthcare system. Surprisingly to me, they all agreed that although some acute care may be better in the USA, everything else is better in the UK (even if you're paying top money for it over here). The system is such an inefficient mess that nothing runs smoothly; one of the only reasons acute care is good is that poor people rarely visit a doctor until the situation is so drastic that they need to go to A&E. I'm really starting to appreciate how good GPs are as gatekeepers to the NHS - they don't have any here, so people go straight to a random specialist or A&E which is so much more expensive to run as a system. Another crazy thing here is that the kidney donor list operates on a 'first come first served' basis, so the doctors make to attempt to assess how deserving a patient is, or prioritise those who are younger or have a better prognosis. Whilst I see that this is a kind of discrimination, it seems to me the only way to logically ration a limited resource.

I was also really shocked to hear them talking about applying to university. The Pearson's eldest daughter is starting at Emory next week (the fees are free if your parents work there) and said that several of her friends had only got into university (specifically one to Harvard and another to Duke) only on the basis of 'legacy' i.e. they had family who had gone there. The university rationale must be that people are more likely to donate money if they have a strong family connection to the school, but I can help but think it must damage their academic reputations and results at least a little bit.

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Photos

Their grave
This was in the middle of a paddling pool with slightly peeling paint, which I thought destroyed the mood a little

James Brown's boots
They had a pair of shoes from lots of major figures in the civil rights movement

In the Carter Centre lobby
It's meant to look like we're in the oval office, but it's not very good

Jimmy Carter's school report
This was in a case next to an essay he had written on why it's important to brush your teeth!

Peanut earrings
Part of his presidency campaign memorabilia, since before he became govenor of Georgia he was a peanut farmer