Dividing Creek

traditional country store
On the way to Dividing Creek we pass this store. Old style. Organic. Presumably grew in response to the needs of the local population and the owners. Forty years ago “country stores” were prevalent, nowadays there is the WalMart.

land people water
I’ve been snapping a Thanksgiving picture for years. There were twenty people in the photo today but only seven repeats from twenty years ago. Whither the absent?
They are covered up, moved on, elsewhere, otherwise engaged and alone. For better and for worse.
The missing are all missed.

hooverville

Occupied

I caught the last hour of speechifying before Charlottesville City Council by the Occupiers. Peace, love and social transformation. Justice! Drunks cured by love and community, abandoning the bottle. The group coming together in support of one another. Liminality and communitas having their beautiful, tumultuous day down in Lee Park. Council’s recommendation is to somehow institutionalize, let the people keep caring for each other and free-speaking, but do it elsewhere. The Rutherford Institute is in the mix. Maybe Charlottesville will get its own Speakers Corner?
Obamaville?
The best suggestion was to occupy the Landmark, the skeletonized ghost hotel on the Downtown Mall.

dark rain

cho mall
sun rises at 0700, sets at 1659. A ten hour day. That is a long time to spend in a tent in Lee Park, shuttling between the porta-potties and the kitchen. When will the CHO Council tire of the Occupiers? Public hearing scheduled on the subject tomorrow night.

Bella


The Italian Greyhound is the smallest of the family of gazehounds (dogs that hunt by sight). The breed is an old one and is believed to have originated more than 2,000 years ago in the countries now known as Greece and Turkey. This belief is based on the depiction of miniature greyhounds in the early decorative arts of these countries and on the archaeological discovery of small greyhound skeletons. By the Middle Ages, the breed had become distributed throughout Southern Europe and was later a favorite of the Italians of the sixteenth century, among whom miniature dogs were in great demand. It is, in fact, due to its popularity in Italy at this time that the breed became known as the “Italian Greyhound.” From this period onward the history of the breed can be fairly well traced as it spread through Europe, arriving in England in the seventeenth century. —Italian Greyhound Club of America