The primary reason for our trip this weekend was to see President Jimmy Carter, who still teaches Sunday School lessons at Marantha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.

When we scheduled this trip, we didn’t catch that today was his 93rd birthday. Expecting large crowds, we were at the church a little after 5 a.m., the lesson didn’t start until 10 with a service afterwards at 11.

It was totally worth it. A colleague had told me she felt this was the best thing her family had done since they moved to Georgia five years ago.

She was underselling how powerful it was.

We headed to middle Georgia with some friends for a weekend pilgrimage, today’s main stop was at Andersonville and the National Prisoner of War museum.

During the last year of the Civil War, the Confederate army built a 16 acre stockade and in it the housed up to 33,000 prisoners – with no buildings. They were just penned in, building lean-tos and digging what were, essentially, their own graves.

It’s a powerful place and the recreated main gate (above) gives a much more bucolic feel than Union soldiers would have experienced.

The only source of water was a stream that ran through the stockade, but it didn’t have much flow and was contaminated.

Adjacent to the prison is the museum and national cemetery, where some of the 13,000 prisoners who died at Andersonville are buried.

That evening, we headed to Americus for dinner and walked the downtown area, mostly closed by 5 p.m. on a Saturday.

Dan Petty came to visit us as part of the Society of Professional Journalists-Google News Lab training program and he led a session on 360 degree imagery. Watching the kids spin on the lawn was fun.

More students caught working on campus, they’re everywhere at this time of the year.

I routinely bring Stanley Leary in to talk about business practices with my kids and he has ended up helping several get jobs. This trip, he brought three of those alums with him … so they could recruit a little after class.

Too many things going on … again.

I used to do a lot more night driving when I was a working photojournalist, so headlights were important. I really wish my cars had lights like my Mini – these high intensity discharge lights are staggeringly awesome.

I never want to go back to halogens.