Icarus shed

which witch, T-111, boy, falling

Reggie

Civility

Home of the Cars?

Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong. Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists' claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership. Epithets--especially joy rider--reflected and reinforced the prevailing social construction of the street. Automotive interest groups (motordom) recognized this obstacle and organized in the teens and 1920s to overcome it. One tool in this effort was jaywalker. Motordom discovered this obscure colloquialism in the teens, reinvented it, and introduced it to the millions. It ridiculed once-respectable street uses and cast doubt on pedestrians' legitimacy in most of the street. Though many pedestrians resented and resisted the term and its connotations, motordom's campaign was a substantial success.

--Peter Norton (More about Peter Norton)

The Charlottesville Police Department has a new statistical tool available for public use on the Internet. A query for all crimes in Charlottesville for the last seven days yields this report:

Had a close call walking Sophie earlier this morning. Almost struck by a car.
It is dangerous walking in our city.

public space

Some trees did break.

In the coming days there will be calls for sidewalks to be shoveled.

I wish there was as loud a call for drivers to share the road, the public space, with pedestrians.
More snow pictures here and here

Gleason's

Mr. Marshall in the center. Names for personnel on his left and right?

election day

waiting on a train

Twymans Mill

last best place

Neighborhood stores are good. Helen and John's in the Woolen Mills closed a few years back, but there was still R&K in Slabtown.

damage

broken green space

waning gibbous

Jinx's Pit's Top Barbeque

1307 East Market Street, Charlottesville, Virginia

Sofa sofa

This photo looks better in color than b&w.
Code to do a rollover with a psd that shifts from b&w to color...?

genetic inheritance

My dad picked up trash on the side of the road in front of our house. I thought it was a waste of time.
Years pass, the genetic inheritance expresses itself. I pick up trash on the side of the road.
The litter is everywhere, primarily fast food meals (McTrash) plus beer cans and bottles ejected from motor vehicles.
Local crime stats indicate that it is difficult to cite a motorist for littering (there were seven 26-1 citations in 2007).

The straw that breaks this camel's back is the free "distribution" of phone-books and ersatz phone-books.
The entities that print these books could limit distribution to those members of the public who actually have expressed an interest in receiving their product. Further, they could hire professional delivery people, the US postal service, Fedex, UPS, people who know how to get product to a recipient.
Instead, the directories are distributed using a fecundatory model, like a buck shad, like a dandelion, many seed are spread in the hope that some will take root.


Some fall by the wayside, some fall on stony ground. What the hell, someone else will pick them up.


Sec. 26-1. Littering.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to dump or otherwise dispose of trash, garbage, refuse, litter or other unsightly matter on public property, including a public street, right-of-way, property adjacent to such street or right-of-way, or on private property without the written consent of the owner thereof or his agent.
(b) When any person is arrested for a violation of this section and the matter alleged to have been illegally dumped or disposed of has been ejected from a motor vehicle, the arresting officer may comply with the provisions of Code of Virginia, section 46.2-936 in making such arrest.
(c) When a violation of the provisions of this section has been observed by any person, and the matter illegally dumped or disposed of has been ejected from a motor vehicle, the owner or operator of such motor vehicle shall be presumed to be the person ejecting such matter. Such presumption shall be rebuttable by competent evidence.
(d) The provisions of this section shall not apply to the lawful disposal of such matter in landfills.

18th Street

days are getting longer

plymouth

festival of the photograph

find Bill Allard...

free tickets

A passel of white people lined up this morning at the Monticello Visitor's center for tickets to the mountaintop's Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony.
It was like being in Vermont, white people everywhere.
I confess, I immensely enjoy the July 4 naturalization ceremony. The new citizens are given a chance to speak. They usually speak about why they value America, why they are choosing America.
Alas, President George W. Bush is coming to the Mountain July 4. Security concerns throw a wrench in the works. The coolest day of the year at Monticello is thus transformed, made formal, a day of lines and limited freedom.
I hope the new Americans say nice things. I'd attend if I could.

size matters

Words ignored, its surface recorded the truck's turn right.

funding priorities

Mary lives at a T-intersection. Both Mapquest and Google maps suggest a route through the T for vehicles traveling in the southeast quadrant of Charlottesville. This is not the truck that struck Mary's house, this is a truck turning in Mary's front yard. There are signs asking tractor trailers not to use this route.

Close to a year and a half ago I posted regarding my neighbor Mary's harrowing experience. A pickup truck crashed into her house, in the dark of night. The hit from the truck destroyed her kitchen, cracked the foundation of her 100+ year old home, and forced Mary to relocate for months while the damage was repaired.
The driver of the truck backed the snout of his pickup out of the side of Mary's house, he drove 3/10ths of a mile west at which point his vehicle succumbed to injuries sustained in the frontal assault. The driver continued his movement away from the scene on foot.

Seventeen months later, the driver has yet to be sentenced.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, the wheels of the pickup turned fast.

Might our City Council consider directing additional funds into the traffic enforcement section of the Police Department rather than spending that money on surveillance equipment?

reggie

Reggie Nowell

jason

Jason Lappa, photographer

tim

Timothy J. Longo, Sr. Chief of Police

lyle

Lyle Solla-Yates

satyendra

Satyendra Singh Huja

tim

eugene

reggie

eddie

today is the birthday of neighbor Eddie Capps

the beach

Patterns of using the beach have changed over the years.

family

take down

Taking down C&O gallery show. Sad day. The C&O is a beautiful place to hang. Nice people. Everything ends.

day of rest

Diane Arbus took a picture in 1962, the boy with toy hand grenade in Central Park.
This picture is the antidote for that one...

photographic life

June 9, Paramount theater, Alex Chadwick interviews Eugene Richards

During Richards' presentation, Chadwick asked several times who Richards was working for during his early career, before assignments started coming in from the likes of LIFE magazine.
"Who's buying at this point?" Chadwick asked while viewing Richards' story on a Mississippi nursing home. "No one," Richards answered. On his stirring series about emergency workers in Denver, Richards acknowledged, "It started out as a magazine assignment and no one would publish it."- from Photo District News Online

PDN and the monkey parts...

June 1

Concrete World opens tomorrow, 5-7PM, C&O Gallery, 515 Water Street. Sixty seven images in the front room curated by Will May. Seven images in the back-room. Hung the show yesterday. June 1 will be a busy photo night in Charlottesville, the town without a single photo gallery. Openings for Bill Allard, Nathan Baker, Lynn Johnson, Sally Mann, Steve McCurry, Rebecca Norris Webb, Eugene Richards, and Mary Motley Kalergis.

witnesses

had a brief visit last week with Mr. Quarles and Mr. Denbow. I enjoy talking with people who are motivated by faith.

Reggie time

Dogs appreciate consistency. When my neighbor backs his car into his driveway Sophie likes that. He backs in almost everyday. When the neighbor drives in front-ways she goes ballistic. Guard and defend.
Reggie is Sophie's favorite neighborhood person. He is kind and consistent. Sophie would dislocate my shoulder if I tried to walk past Reggie without stopping.

we, the people

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in the truth--Sophocles

Thursday, May 17, 4 p.m.-- the taking by typo saga will re-commence in the basement conference room of City Hall.
What does the future hold for the Woolen Mills? Will the legislative action taken by Council in 1993 prevail? Will the fate of a historic property be dictated by a typographic error committed by an anonymous author in 2003?
Invest in the future of this community with an hour of your presence. A watchful and concerned public makes the difference. The Board of Zoning Appeals will be at the top of their game before a room full of people-- and the Woolen Mills needs their very best.

I would urge you to think both about fairness to the parties here and what the most minimum due process requires, which is notice and an opportunity to be heard. And then also to think about the precedent and the way in which this kind of taking by typo would really threaten and jeopardize all of our ability to trust the stability of the records.--Anne Coughlin 4/19/07

hard rain

Timberlake-Branham updates since last Saturday, top of page, three print media articles, one radio broadcast discussion, one independent web-posting. Scratching at the truth.

taking by typo

The map above, received from Charlottesville Neighborhood Development Services January 5, 2007, shows the Timberlake-Branham property at 1512 East Market as being protected by a "minor design control district". This property was conferred "Individually Protected Property" (IPP) status by vote of City Council, October 18, 1993.

I apologize to black and white photography readers for introducing this color subject. I wouldn't do so if it wasn't important to national historic preservation efforts in general and to the Place, the Woolen Mills Village, in particular.

Since January when we received this map, the Charlottesville (Virginia) Zoning Administrator has issued a determination claiming that the size of the Timberlake-Branham IPP (on the left above) was reduced by approximately 75% in 2003 as the result of a clerical error.

Friends of the neighborhood locally and from across the country are passionately opposed to the Zoning Administrator's directive. The delisting is destructive: destructive to the local quality of life and environment, destructive to the possibility of a National Historic Register District nomination for this venerable village.

When local government moves to strip one of the few existing "design control districts" from our neighborhood we turn from sheep to "the Fightin' Sheep." This transformation is absolutely necessary if we hope to survive as a unique residential neighborhood. Since the dark days of the 50s and 60s, erosion of the neighborhood's historic assets has occurred secondary to inappropriate zoning applied by the mid 20th Century "urban renewal" City Council. We won't be slaughtered again.

The Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) heard an appeal of this "taking by typo" Thursday afternoon 4/17/07. It was confusing stuff. There were multiple lawyers in the room.

Additionally the BZA heard from members of the public, friends of the neighborhood, and from one real estate developer who feels the historic designation is inappropriate.

Why does this matter? I will paste in one of the statements from the public hearing.

I can?t speak to the technical threshold questions and, in fact I don?t want to. I heard some of the lawyers mentioning that you?ve already been given voluminous memos about these questions.

I guess my position would be to urge you to try to see through them and to think hard about the very basic questions that you are presented with today.
One of them is the right to property, which is protected by state law and also by the Federal Constitution.

Of course we are speaking about the rights of individual property owners but also the rights of adjoining land-owners and the entire community in protection of the historical-district. The very basic notion being that you have got to give the people due-process, you?ve got to give people notice and an appropriate hearing, you?ve got to give them some forum within which their interests can be heard.

I really think it would be frightening and an unspeakable precedent for you to allow taking of property interest by typo, or by some sort of administrative oversight, it is really a very frightening thing and it doesn?t do fairness to the individual parties in this case, here the adjoining landowners.

Taking by typo? That is just absolutely wrong.

The other thing that I really urge you to think about is the precedents that you are setting for the future., and the ability of the community as a whole to rely on the records.

We have to be able to rely on the accuracy of the records and to rely on the fairness of the procedure in changing those records.

If Mr. Emory hadn't sort of randomly been looking through the records and discovered this error we might not have known about it. Thank heavens he did.

But you can't put that burden on individual property owners to constantly be checking and to be sure that an administrator hasn't introduced an error.

Again, this is not to cast any aspersions on administrators, they are busy and mistakes get made.

Again, I would urge you to think both about fairness to the parties here and what the most minimum due process requires, which is notice and an opportunity to be heard. And then also to think about the precedent and the way in which this kind of taking by typo would really threaten and jeopardize all of our ability to trust the stability of the records.--Anne Coughlin

Thomas Jefferson, for all his faults, was a surveyor "with a difference". The Woolen Mills village, for all its faults, was a residential mill village with a difference. It is a cultural and physical landscape unique to Charlottesville.

The 1922 Davison's Textile Blue Book lists 20 cotton mills, 16 knitting mills, 14 silk mills and 14 woolen mills in the state of Virginia. By 1935, 22 percent of the industrial workers in the Virginia labored in textile mills, many lived in textile mill villages. Yet despite the central place of the textile mill-village in Virginia's history little research has been done on the folkways of mill-villages in our state. To our knowledge there isn't a National Register textile mill residential historic district in Virginia. We'd like to address that lack. We'd like the care and recognition long withheld from this deserving area to be applied.

Woolen Mills Road, a 501(c)3 formed in 2006, exists to serve:
(i) to promote for the general public the preservation and improvement of the natural and historic resources of the Woolen Mills neighborhood located in the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle, Virginia;
(ii) to promote and engage in study of and education regarding the Woolen Mills neighborhood

If you'd like to become a Woolie, the life-time membership fee is $1.00. Please contact Victoria Dunham:

dunham at historicwoolenmills dot org

If you'd like to contribute funds to help battle the Goliath republican lawyer team your dollars will be spent on slingshots and rocks. If you do not believe in pugilism, so indicate, and your gift will be used for research, education and the historic district nomination.

(Audio of the entire meeting is available at the Charlottesville-Tomorrow website,
print and broadcast media links here

Matthew Seven

Matthew 7- 8,9,10
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

greatest generation

Four funerals today and no weddings. Lyne lost his mother, Doug lost his father, Gladys lost her daughter in law and my dear neighbor, Mabel Marrs, is going to ground in Riverview Cemetery.

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in
the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies,
you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I
know of, babies ? 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "-- Kurt Vonnegut

Mabel Marrs and Jean Baltimore