All posts by Eric Robert Nolan

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress. Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations. Eric’s poetry has been featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere. His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.

Monument to Mary Washington, Frederickburg, VA, circa 1912

So I found a historical photo that was too good not to share.  What you see here is the grave of Mary Washington, George Washington’s mother, in my college town of Fredericksburg, VA.

It ought to look a bit strange to my college friends who remember the site.  What is now known (officially, anyway) as Kenmore Park/Memorial Park was a popular walking destination for students at Mary Washington College.  (This is the site of “Mary’s Rock.”  And if you partied downtown and walked back to campus, chances are you walked past it.)  This site is just off Washington Avenue.  The Gordon Family Cemetery was behind the obelisk.  (The cemetery is pictured at left here — see the low wall — as this picture is looking northwest.)

Look at how small and sparse then trees were in 1912.  (They were pretty big by the 1990’s.)  This is part of a group of public domain images here at Project Gutenberg.  They vary in quality, but some of them are pretty neat.

 

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Poster for “Lost” Season 1 (2004)

ABC.

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Throwback Thursday: the Mary Washington College Aubade (1991-1994).

This Throwback Thursday is really just for my fellow Mary Washington College grads — what you see below are issues of Aubade, the school’s annual literary magazine, for years 1991 through 1994.  (They appear chronologically.)  For some reason I thought I remembered that the magazine was published more than once a year, but apparently I was mistaken.  (College was a very long time ago.)

I submitted a poem here only once when I was an undergraduate, and it was rejected (probably with good reason).  It didn’t bother me for long.  I’d like to think that I was a don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff kind of guy even back then.

Aubade was really a terrific lit mag.  You can judge for yourself by leafing through these right here over at the Internet Archive.  The site’s layout and format makes it quick and easy — and they’ve got issues of the magazine from as early as 1971.  Wow.

 

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“Another Place” Sculpture at Crosby Beach, Antony Gormley, 2007

Photo by Ian Mcallister, 2008.  England.

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“Portrait of a Pandemic Bedhead.”

(c) Eric Robert Nolan.

Medium: Color photography. Genres: Dystopian horror, tragedy.

Bidding opens at Sotheby’s New York @ 7 PM EST — suggested opening bid is $.35.

 

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Bust of James Leonard Farmer, Jr. at Mary Washington College

Fredericksburg, VA.  Photo by Eduardo Montes-Bradley, 2015.

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Eduardo Montes-Bradley / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

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Cover art for U2’s “Achtung Baby” (1991)

Island Records.

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“Never morning wore/ To evening, but some heart did break.”

One writes, that “Other friends remain,”
That “Loss is common to the race” —
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

—  from ‘Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”.

The original poem is a bit long in its entirety.  The last two last lines above comprise the title of Walter Langley’s eponymous 1894 painting.

 

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