(Charlottesville Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator) Amanda Poncy out for a morning walk with Buddy, five year old tricolor hound. Coincidentally, Poncy is walking on the 1976 TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a 4247 mile transcontinental trail established for the Bicentennial.
One of my favorite aspects of snow is the momentary reclamation of the street, the commons, the several square miles of our city which we ceded to the automobile in the last century.
Pedestrians momentarily rule. People see and speak to each other. Smartphones are stored.
A calmness prevails. A chance to look around and see all we have created.
Walking about, everything is almost black and white, a most salutary condition.
cut through
City neighborhood streets are used as an interchange by regional motorists. Getting from point A to point B in the County? Drive local streets through the neighborhoods (in this case Woolen Mills and Belmont), avoid collector streets and traffic signals.
hedera helix
It is an evergreen climbing plant, growing to 20–30 m high where suitable surfaces (trees, cliffs, walls) are available, and also growing as ground cover where there are no vertical surfaces. It climbs by means of aerial rootlets with matted pads which cling strongly to the substrate.–Wikipedia
Lots of ivy in CHO. UVA is smart, they keep it off their buildings.
Wikipedia continues:
In the United States, H. helix is considered weedy or invasive in a number of regions and is on the official noxious weed lists in Oregon and Washington. Like other invasive vines such as kudzu, H. helix can grow to choke out other plants and create “ivy deserts”. State and county sponsored efforts are encouraging the destruction of ivy in forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Southern United States. Its sale or import is banned in Oregon. Ivy can easily escape from cultivated gardens and invade nearby parks, forests and other natural areas. Ivy can climb into the canopy of trees in such density that the trees fall over from the weight, a problem which does not normally occur in its native range.For this reason, it is especially important to remove ivy from trees, creating “survival rings”. In its mature form, dense ivy can destroy habitat for native wildlife and creates large sections of solid ivy where no other plants can develop.
edge of town
suspended solids
Clarke’s Three Laws are three “laws” of prediction formulated by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke. They are:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.–Wikipedia
Magic work going on at the local wastewater plant, advanced bacteria wrangling. Can’t remember the nutrient removal figures, but as far as the chunky stuff:
Influent Biochemical oxygen demand of 234 mg/L, BOD of effluent 0. Total suspended solids in influent 215 mg/L, 1 mg/L in the effluent.
house of dreams
D.H. Griffin Companies is a group of six independently owned but integrated companies that perform contract demolition as well as environmental and site development services. It was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were the largest contractor responsible for cleaning up the World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks.–Wikipedia
(Griffin Wrecking employees at work on the Cinema 4, Charlottesville VA)
we understand intention
Carlton Avenue
Southwest view of Carlton Avenue, Charlottesville, Virginia
Avenue:
a. a wide, usually tree-lined road, path, driveway, etc., through grounds to a country house or monumental building.
b. a suburban, usually tree-lined residential street.
C.A.T. nap
