home port

Watermen have been oystering from the Callis jetty in Town Creek since 1957. Earlier this year the jetty sold. The idea was, the new owner might could provide the watermen a place to work from, continuing a 60+ year tradition. Hasn’t happened yet. Watermen have been told, at least for now, to move on.
barges and dumpster
The watercraft currently tied up at Callis’ jetty are largely utilitarian. Barges. Can you distinguish them from their land cousin, the dumpster?
Missing the watermen.

Relics, Free, you can’t make this stuff up

“If you want your own slice of Cavalier athletics history, the University of Virginia will distribute bricks from the exterior of University Hall for free Thursday evening.”
ZACK WAJSGRAS/THE DAILY PROGRESS 5/15/2019

queque
Charlottesville got some bad press, fine people on both sides. But real Charlottesville people, I love each and everyone of them, no stain here.

University Hall University Hall is an 8,000+ seat multi-purpose butt-ugly arena on the University of Virginia Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia. Constructed in 1965. Barry Parkhill and Ralph Sampson played basketball under the dome. B.B. King, Steve Goodman, R.E.M., Dionne Warwick, 10,000 Maniacs, The Pretenders, Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys played music here.

University Hall is being demolished.

Christian belief in the power of relics, the physical remains of a holy site or holy person, or objects with which they had contact, is as old as the faith itself and developed alongside it. Relics were more than mementos. The New Testament refers to the healing power of objects that were touched by Christ or his apostles.–Metropolitan Museum

(Or objects touched by Lucille)

B.B.King backstage, 1971.

The healing power of even half a brick can’t be discounted. And the price, FREE.

600' lineBy 6:30 the line was 600 feet long. Initially the bricks were whole, clean, shrink wrapped on pallets but those were gone soon.
But these are good people, Charlottesvillians. They queue up, they wait patiently, they talk to their neighbors in line.

bobcatThey do not riot or fight, they do not mob the one hapless guy driving the bobcat transporting masonry rubble to the faithful.

iPhoneThe people are civil, polite, kind, patient.

head of the lineUltimately they reach the head of the line.

relic bitsTaking home a fragment of Ralph’s house, of the music hall, of the place where Presidents spoke. A fragment valuable because they believed, because they waited for it, because because.

still point

Town Creek sunrise

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
–T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, Burnt Norton

Lowes Hell

Meadowbrook Hardware
Found my hardware store for life shuttered. Mercantile changes which result in a loss of
municipal character are a source of sadness.
Who will feed the Preston Avenue cats?