later that day, Lts

where are you now?

dog and president

Today is the birthday of Dick Cheney (1941), Sophia (2000) and FDR (1882)

Post, post South Carolina

the Washington Post is not a happy place for the Clintons today
Zipper Trouble
Cards From a Worn-Out Deck
Staying the Coarse
The Race Turns to Race
Stop Them Before They Co-President Again

undertaker

oops

Scientists at a California company reported yesterday that they had created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a significant advance toward the goal of growing personalized stem cells for patients suffering from various diseases. WaPo

Highgate Cemetery

Her Faithful Pet
"Jack"
In Fond Memory
of
Theresa Augusta Pierssene,
Who Died 20th November 1927,
Aged 67 Years
"God Takes Our Loved Ones From Our Homes
But Never From Our Hearts"
Also of
Harry Pierssene
Husband Of Above
Who Died 30th June 1949
In His 90th Year
And Their Devoted Daughter
Daisy
Who Died 17th March 1977

Highgate Cemetery

And God said: Go down, Death, go down,
Go down to Savannah, Georgia,
Down in Yamacraw,
And find Sister Caroline.
She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
She's labored long in my vineyard,
And she's tired--
She's weary--
Do down, Death, and bring her to me.--James Weldon Johnson

Highgate Cemetery

And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.--Judges 16:30

Highgate Cemetery

"He's a cat with an uncanny instinct for death," said Dr. David M. Dosa, assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine and a geriatric specialist. "He attends deaths. He's pretty insistent on it."--Boston Globe

Highgate Cemetery

Job 38:17-19

Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.
Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof.-- God

Highgate Cemetery

"George Eliot doesn't have any birds either, and look, her tomb is sinking.
That's because they buried her with all her books." I said.
"How do you know her tomb is sinking if you can't see?" asks a girl.
"Because I read the books," I said.
You could hear a day laborer spading up wet earth beside a fallen stone.--Stephen Kuusisto

Highgate Cemetery

Ravens were sitting atop Samuel Taylor Coleridge's tomb.
"They buried him with a little bell, in case he should wake up and need rescuing," I said.
"Karl Marx didn't get a little bell, and you'll notice there are no birds on his tomb." I said.--Stephen Kuusisto

Highgate Cemetery

"Why are you taking us to the cemetery, Professor?"
I recalled D.H. Lawrence saying: "I like to try new things so I can reject them."
"So you can see how the Victorians pictured their place in history," I said.--Stephen Kuusisto

time machine

1970

Urban Archery Season

odocoileus virginianus mortuus

Big gun deer season ended in Virginia a week ago. But for the enterprising, deer can still be hunted, unintentionally, with motor vehicles. Additionally. the Urban Archery Season runs from now until March 29.
Really. For details, visit the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Which Virginia City should tote your bow and arrows to? My suggestion, Rocky Mount.

"...the bear wandered by Carillion Franklin Memorial Hospital and stepped on the sensor that triggered the automatic doors to open. People scattered as he entered the emergency room area and moved down the hallway."

Joshua

Have I not commanded thee?
Be strong and courageous.
Be not afraid
Neither be thou dismayed
-Joshua 1:9

Post-mortem, paperweights

Dan Bluestone presented Councilors shattered roof tiles, paperweights, in memory of a day of destruction.

All cities contain areas, sites, or structures of architectural and/or historical interest or significance. Such structures and areas contribute to the particular uniqueness of each city and form an important part of that city's physical and cultural heritage which, if lost, cannot be replaced. The loss of its heritage deprives the city of its individuality. Unless means can be found to retain important structures and areas in urban areas, our communities face a future of historical and architectural sterility.--Satyendra Singh Huja, 1976

Day of Vandalism- audio, Dan Bluestone's comments before Charlottesville City Council, 1/7/08

Hard Questions- audio, Aaron Wunsch's comments before Charlottesville City Council, 1/7/08

The Charlottesville City Council has endorsed a series of recommendations by city staff to strengthen the protection of historic buildings within the City.- Charlottesville Tomorrow provides complete coverage

complacency

Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading--the jive-plastic commuter tract home waste-lands, the Potemkin village shopping plazas with their vast parking lagoons, the Lego-block hotel complexes, the "gourmet mansardic" junk-food joints, the Orwellian office "parks" featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass as the sunglasses worn by chain-gang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield, the freeway loops around every big and little city with their clusters of discount merchandise marts, the whole destructive, wasteful, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle that politicians proudly call "growth."
The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other world-wide catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity that it represents.-- James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere