downstream from Monasukapanough

Rivanna River

For thousands of years the Monacans were widely dispersed over all of Piedmont and Mountain areas of Virginia. Towards the Late Woodland era, ca. AD 900 - 1700, a pretty strong emphasis of villages on the major rivers for access to transportation and trade and good agricultural soils. From the South Fork Dam east along the Rivanna there is abundant evidence of Monacan villages, as any local farmer or housing developer can tell you, all the way to juncture with the James. --J.L.Hantman

see also Th. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

Time's voice returned

Developer update.
The efforts of three earnest young men to carpet the backyard of Woolen Mill Village Lot #1 with dwelling units continue apace. Busy as beavers they are.
The proposed project's design has changed for the better, but its poison bolus aspects remain.
In a neighborhood that has been defined by its rural feel and folkways for 200 years the New Urbanist Trio hopes to install housing at a rate eight times as dense as the neighborhood average.
Once upon a time, a time miser lived in the house on top of the hill.
Did Jefferson fear time, did he love time? I suspect he danced with time. He always had a timepiece nearby, slept with a clock at the foot of his bed. He managed time as well as any human can.
He had this wonderful seven day clock mounted at his front door. Inside it told the day, the hour, the minute and the second. Outside the clock had an hour hand and an aural component. The clock is said to have audibly announced the hour, with a resounding gong.
How I would like time's voice returned.
In former days the sound was audible from the Mill Village.
Warren Graves yard, ground zero for the present volley from the development class, is closer to Monticello than to The Paramount.
The passage of time takes all sentient beings but it does not have to destroy the fabric of history.

"The Chinese have a thing made of a kind of bell metal, which they call a Gong, and is used as a bell at the gates of large houses, &c. It is in fact precisely of the shape and size of a camp oven, about 20. I. diameter and 5. I. deep . . . I wish for one to serve as the bell to a clock, which might be heard all over my farm. . ."--Th. Jefferson

(posts from the development front)

Richmond Virginia skyline

first roll of 35mm b&w film, 1968

globalization

Stopped in Kannapolis NC. In 1960, 23,000 people worked at Cannon's Plant #1.
Pineapple man owns the Mill property now. People overseas have the jobs.

day of rest

Oak Grove Baptist Church

Joe Thoms, Sr., a slave harness-maker, founded Oak Grove Baptist Church during the Civil War at his nearby log cabin, which burned in 1869. The congregation then met here, on land owned by John J. Robinson, a white farmer, in a grove of oaks they called the "bush arbor." In 1870, Joe Thoms, with Deacons Ambrose Tolliver, Frank Walker, Ed Redd, John Williams, Charles Brock, Spot Mallory, and Ambrose Thoms, built a small frame church here. The third church replaced it in 1894, when Robinson donated the land. A great-great-grandson of Joe Thoms became pastor in 1982.

-Virginia Department of Historic Resources

Pope's Creek

38 10 970N 76 55 154W

Visited Geo. Washington's natal home yesterday, about the time the geese woke up. No tourists around, too early, too cold.

The Park Service maintains the location as a National Monument, the only way to keep it free of pavement, crackers, MacMansions and private enterprise.

Washington's people lived at Pope's Creek for three generations before he was born.

The gentry had problems in the 1600 and 1700's. Lots of them died. In addition to owning hogs, geese, horses and cows they owned humans. Problematic.

The thing that seems sweet about that time was the ignorance. A person lived in and focused on their own patch of earth. Ambition and its effects were local. No global village. No images of the Prophet, no airplanes carrying gas lasers.

Independence Day

Ieoh Ming Pei, 88, architect, born in China, spoke at Monticello today, welcoming new Americans.

Also speaking, J. Harvie Wilkinson, newspaperman, law school teacher, potential Supreme Court nominee.



The sisters diverge...

By the big stream

On the road, a brief reunion of my family, 2 daughters, wife, the span of domesticity from two decades ago that brought twins into my life,

The river rolls.

#2 above wanted to be in the Navy but his mother had lost two brothers in a shipwreck, no way her Bill was going near the water.

He spent his life at sea.

The Algonquin name for this place means ?by the big stream.? One of the daughters has a 24 hour liberty, we are visiting. She is hoarse, from sounding off, a tad bruised from running the Obstacle course. Responds to me with Yes Sir.

Who defends the US? Our daughters, our sons.

Semper Fi.