These were taken from a moving car — my friends and I were headed for dinner in Salem. As I’ve explained before, I have a weird thing about blurry pictures taken from a moving vehicle. And the foreboding and colorless quality of these shots makes them extra trippy.
The disembodied black blurs that you see are actually trees close to the roadway; I thought the effect was pretty damned cool — especially in that last shot. The second-to-last shot would be great to accompany a haunted house story.
I have no doubt that many of you will find it strange, but sometimes I really like blurry photos of a rainstorm. They have a dreamlike quality and, every once in a while, you’ll get a shot that resembles an impressionist painting.
That’s Edmund Burke speaking, or at least we think it is — the statement was attributed to him by John Stevens Cabot Abbott in 1876. It seems relevant with an eye towards Donald Trump’s apparent equivocation about the neo-nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia.
There are two other Burke quotes that might spring to mind, too, after this past weekend’s alt-right rally and the murder of a 32-year-old counter-protestor, Heather Heyer.
The first is one I grew up hearing from my father, although today I discovered that it, too, may be apocryphal: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (I’ve read that there is no primary source citing Burke as the speaker here; he may have been paraphrasing John Stuart Mill.)
But Burke definitely penned a similar sentiment: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
This is a terrible picture, but … you see those tall, dark shapes ascending from the high, bare branches like grotesque, upright fruit? Those would be buzzards.
Or … turkey vultures. To be honest, I don’t know if there is any difference between turkey vultures and buzzards. I’m from New York.
“Roanoke Summer Midnight”
Its silhouetted mountains
are great blue gods at slumber
the faded-haze azure horizon’s
giants in the dim.
Those slopes have known a billion bones of hares
that raced upon them other midnights, then,
pausing, one by one,
and drawing up their downy legs at last to final sleep.
Where the Shenandoahs’ driving
beryl falls to black,
ultramarine to onyx,
lay legions of hares — generations resting.
There are the hills where ivory
rabbits sleep among gods.
Ahead and under moonlight
the curving rural road obscures its end.
At right, an intersecting well-lit modern block
confuses the curling topography.
The fresh and symmetrical asphalt’s angle
mars the winding thoroughfare with order —
a ninety-degree anachronism.
That new and perfect subdivision
affronts the corner’s antebellum chimney,
broken down to stones and overrun in lavender
— its lilac colors driven plum by sunset.
That last century’s smokestack
was itself effrontery once
to the formless places where natives stayed,
their only edifice the stars,
their only currency the blinding coin of moon.
Eyeing, then, the summits’ crowning cobalt
driving down in royal blue to coal,
I hope to one day take my rest
there, in the darkening indigo,
alongside giants,
among white rabbits in myriad easy stillness,
to pause myself at last and sleep beneath
what meadows stretch in cerulean dark,
where hares will race like moon-kissed silver,
or comets of darting pearl.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2017
Photo credit: By Jessie Eastland (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
If you look closely at the third photo, you can see a helicopter beginning an ascent from the top of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Evidently, the facility’s landing pad is at the top of its cylindrical section. It kept landing and returning the day I took this photo; I’m guessing that a pilot was either training or practicing.
Or maybe not. They’re a good deal blurrier than I’d hoped.
I encountered this lost little lady about an hour ago. She was between a rock and a hard place — the fence and the adjacent road.
I did the best that I could to help her. (Hey, if there is a human who knows what it’s like to be lost and confused in Roanoke, it’s me.)
But my assistance didn’t amount to much. The best I could do was wave at oncoming cars and point out the deer to them. (She kept wandering into the road in desperation. At one point an SUV almost hit her … she collapsed and clattered to the street in fear, and, trust me, that is one heartbreaking sound). I’m not sure what more I could have done; I’m no Deer Whisperer.
Anyway, a pair of pretty girls showed up in a jeep and cheerfully assured me that they would take it from here. They sounded pretty confident, and they seemed like Roanoke natives who were well-versed in country ways. (They had a jeep.)
Either the fawn is now fine, or someone’s serving venison extra tender tonight.
At left is a Bradford Pear tree, at right is a Cleveland Pear.
Bradford Pear.
This Bradford Pear tree was felled by a derecho windstorm.
Termites? A mutant steel-billed woodpecker?
I have no idea what this … organism is, but it looks like the inside of a dog’s ear.
The entrance to Kenmore Park/Memorial Park on Washington Avenue. The obelisk itself is the grave of Mary Washington, George Washington’s mother; right behind it is the Gordon Family Cemetery. Although George’s father died when he was just 11 years old, his mother saw him ascend the presidency. She died in 1789.
Looking east from the park’s entrance, you can see First Christian Church, on the intersection of Washington Avenue and Pitt Street.
Washington Avenue looking south.
Gordon Family Cemetery. The Gordons lived at Kenmore; the gravestones date from 1826 to 1872.
If you were a Mary Washington College student returning from a party downtown in the 1990’s, you could pass the cemetery on your way back to campus at night. I saw a group of high school kids inside the cemetery one night; they scattered in a panic when they realized I’d noticed them. (To my knowledge, no Mary Wash kids were involved in shenanigans like that here.) I believe it is illegal to enter a cemetery like this at night … and I have it on good authority that Southern cops take such an offense very, very seriously.
Behind the cemetery is Meditation Rock. This was an occasional destination for college students out for a walk. Shortly after I arrived at Mary Washington in 1990 from New York, a patient group of upperclassmen “adopted” me and kindly resolved to keep me out of trouble. (One of them is still my “big brother” today.) This is one of the first places they showed me when they gave me a tour of the town.
Am I a weird guy if I suggest that images of Meditation Rock can have Freudian undercurrents? Is that wrong? There is a whole “Picnic at Hanging Rock” vibe here. (The sad thing is, I was actually studying Freud at about the time I first saw it, and it never occurred to me then.) The juxtaposition with the nearby images associated with death and godliness is aesthetically striking.
The Kenmore Apartments are still across Kenmore Avenue on the other side of the park.
Pictured are Willard Hall, The Fountain, Woodard Campus Center and New Hall.
*****
My cell phone’s battery died as my Alumbud and I reached the northern end of Mary Washington College’s campus earlier this month. Hence, there are no pictures of the truly massive Simpson Library/Hurley Convergence Center. (I swear to you, that entire complex is about the size of the goddam S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.)
Willard Hall and The Fountain.
Woodard Campus Center. I don’t remember calling it that when I went to school here in the early 1990’s. Wasn’t it just “The Student Center?”
The student mailboxes.
Inside Woodard. The Eagle’s Nest would be down and to the left. Upstairs was where the fall and spring formals were held. Those were significant social events back in the day.
I thought this was nice — I’m guessing it’s probably a product of the campus-wide remodeling project. And it has the college’s correct name! Beyond it is Seacobeck Dining Hall.
The renovated outdoor deck, another apparent feature of the remodeling project. I much prefer the unenclosed split-level deck that I remember.
New Hall, old man. My battery failed also before I could get pictures of the nearby light pole and the Fredericksburg municipal water tower, both of which I climbed on a dare, back in 1994 when I went through my “Spider-Man” phase while residing here. (That’s my senior year dorm room window behind me.)
“The Bridge!”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 