Forest City Of The South

02/11/2026

Best concert I’ve seen live, especially for such a small, “private” feeling venue. It was like watching musicians from another lifetime come back to remind us why we’re here.

Vocalist, Steffanie Christi’an, was incredible. (Side note: She has also worked with Taylor Mac on many projects, who you may know from the musical adaptation of Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil, which is still on track for Broadway.)

Don Was’ group, The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, features top-tier jazz musicians from his hometown. “There’s a unique sound and feel to Detroit that permeates the music in a way that resonates all over the globe,” says Was. “There’s a rawness, a lack of pretension, and an unmistakable underlying groove that reflects the people and culture of the entire city.”

The band includes longtime collaborators such as Blue Note artist Dave McMurray on saxophone and Eminem’s Oscar-winning collaborator, keyboardist Luis Resto. Additional members include trombonist Vincent Chandler, trumpeter John Douglas, drummer Jeff Canaday, percussionist Mahindi Masai, guitarist Wayne Gerard, and vocalist Steffanie Christi’an.



Plant Riverside, Kessler Collection Visit Savannah

DON WAS Music has always loomed large in the life of Don Was. Born in Detroit in 1952, he has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a musician, record producer, music director, film composer, documentary filmmaker, and radio host. Since 2011, he has also served as President of America’s venerated jazz...

10/19/2025

We hear him and take him among us like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister mass, we ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, with word upon murmured word,
We flow, we descend, we turn. . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves on among us like light, like evening air . .

-Conrad Aiken

Photography by Alissa Lee Nicholson

🕸️

10/18/2025

https://storytellersnightsky.com/the-rose-of-winds-and-stars

A compass rose, more poetically referred to as the "rose of winds" actually derives from the rose of stars, which was created by the nomadic peoples of the Middle Eastern desert lands, and which they used to mark the rising and setting of certain directional stars. Just as every star has a name, so....

10/15/2025

“The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, the eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, and lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain. The purple lights leap down the hill before him. The gorgeous night has begun again. ‘I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams, I will hold my light above them and seek their faces. I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .’ The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness, or as a wind blown over a myriad forest…” – Conrad Aiken

https://forestcityofthesouth.com/

06/14/2025

It seems every time you read words by Conrad Aiken, you find a letter sent directly from the cosmos, waiting for you to remember... As you walk through his footsteps in Bonaventure Cemetery, you can sense and feel we are all not far away. Life and death are an interconnected continuum, or as Kahlil Gibran said, “Life and death are one.” The Charnel Rose represents blooming and withering, a symbol of the ephemeral nature of beauty and love, charnel meaning death-like, or even a burial place, based on the origin of the word. Some say a rose has the highest frequency of all plants and living things, and therefore, is the closet tangible thing to love. It can symbolize a spiritual awakening and divine union. It is sacred, ancient, grounding. It represents immanence; the divine qualities so desired “somewhere out there” already exist within everything. For many, the rose is the symbol of the heart, or the soul, and the unfolding of the soul, and it is rich in historical context and meaning. Mary was described as the walled rose-garden — ‘a garden enclosed’ as the Song of Songs described the Beloved and the Bride. “The Charnel Rose: A Symphony,” is one of the most beautiful poems by Conrad. I’m going to quote his lifelong friend below:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Oh, and did you know a compass rose, also referred to as “The rose of winds” derives from “The rose of stars.” I am so in love with this and the compass as a whole.

(Perhaps Conrad was in Bonaventure as he wrote this….)

https://allpoetry.com/The-Charnel-Rose:-A-Symphony

05/10/2025

“You have to love what you can always come back to, what’s home waiting for you.”
- Pat Conroy

05/10/2025

05/09/2025

A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
neglected for years,
the layers of its soil deep and thick.
Trees in the corners with branching arms
and the tangled briars like broken nets.

Sunrise through the misted orchard,
morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs,
I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
if I am really seeing, or dreaming,
or simply astonished
walking towards sunrise
to have stumbled into the garden
where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.

"Easter Morning In Wales"
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

05/02/2025

Did you know there once was a weeping willow at Greenwich Cemetery’s pond that came from Napoleon Bonaparte’s original grave on St. Helena Island?

He was exiled by the British to the ‘little rock at the world’s end,’ as he called it - from 1815 until his death in 1821. The willow was his space for tranquillity and reflection, and he asked to be buried beneath it.

It became common for sailing ships to stop at St. Helena on the long voyage south, around the Cape of Good Hope, in order to take cuttings from the willow.

The tree was finally divided into small pieces and distributed as keepsakes, after Napoleon's remains were returned to France in 1840. French dignitaries and others who traveled to the island to exhume the body took cuttings and stump pieces as souvenirs. These pieces were planted and cultivated around the world.

The tree no longer remains at Greenwich, but you can see it in this postcard. I wonder if the Torrey family took part of it to Ossabaw? Or, if anyone visiting Greenwich through the years did the same? Any tree that grows as a result of a cutting is a duplicate tree, therefore, such a descendant was known as ‘Napoleon’s willow’ wherever it was planted. It is not known how it ended up on Greenwich Plantation in Savannah, or how long it survived there, but it would have been fitting for a cemetery. Botanist, Jean Louis Marie Poiret, said the swaying branches suggested 'soothing, though softly melancholy reflections' well suited for the graveyard; ‘its light and elegant foliage’ flowing ‘like the dishevelled hair and graceful drapery of a sculptured mourner over a sepulchral urn.’

https://www.tea-assembly.com/issues/8/the-napoleon-willow

04/21/2025

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest.”
- John Muir

https://www.instagram.com/p/DItjDrSuwoe/?igsh=MW80MGFpNDNrMnU0aw==

03/18/2025

I wrote a lengthy blog article on the Greenwich Plantation of Savannah, in 2019, after I had discovered a YouTube video by eArtFilm in 2018 that initiated my own research.

I had no idea the city approved the sale of the statuary shortly after, which had been stored at Laurel Grove Cemetery North for many years, sadly collecting dust. Just fascinating history, for anyone interested.

While the plantation no longer exists, the fountain, stables, part of the old dock, bricks in the road, butterfly pond, and many of the magnificent trees still stand.

Savannah City Council needs a way to fund city services in a budget crunch, but hasn't figured the value of assets selected for auction.