Category: Humor
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
― Albert Einstein
Want to see a typical schoolhouse for most of rural America for the better part of two centuries? Brace yourself:
That thing is, no exaggeration, smaller than most garden sheds I’ve seen. I went to high school in what used to be a WWII weather station, graduating class of 60 students max. Tiny by most suburban measurements (Jeff, for example had a graduating class bigger than my entire school combined). And even I can’t even wrap my head around school in a closet.
“I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It’s an experience.”
– Elliott Smith
For the 4th, we went canoeing and kayaking on our river which for obvious practical reasons is not photographically documented. We came back a muddy and poison ivy-ed mess. Then my sister linked up with friends and my brother was pretty done in, so Dad and I packed up some chairs and meandered into town for the local parade.
Dad found a prime spot.
Locally, the biggest parade of the year is the Christmas one, the Independence Day one is pretty dinky by comparison but still pretty fun. Boy and girl scout troupes marched, so did local veterans associations, and so on. But most importantly the local fire department.
Our entire county fire department is volunteer based – there simply isn’t enough money to house a full time one and our county is very big, but very empty. The towns came up with a fairly simple but brilliant solution: to share the costs of the equipment needed to fight fires in the country by divvying them up. Thus, one town owns and operates the traditional truck. Another (since water is plentiful but plumbing is not – most ponds near buildings have pumps built into them that serve as fire hydrants), a mobile water tanker. It’s an imperfect system that works remarkably well given their task.
Some country communities revolve around a town hall or a church. Ours, around the volunteer fire department. There are regular fairs and events to support or raise money for them and they are a source of great community pride.
All townships, cities, and areas are represented.
Bumpass is justifiably famous for its unusual name, which is incidentally also a source of local pride, but its history is far less colorful than one would hope. It’s an anglicized corruption of bon pas, or good step, the name of a long ago family.
Most of main street in one shot. Not pictured (but should be and will get it’s own post), Floozie’s Pie Shop.
“The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
– Attributed to Finley Peter Dunne
Why I thought my summer would be relaxing is now a mystery to me. Suffice it to say I am busy with super luxury items of the rich and famous, goat raising, senators, and massive excavators. All, sadly unrelated. What a glorious thriller novel that would be!
However, somethings seriously exciting and amazing happened this week…but I am cruel, minions, and will make you wait for the bottom of the links to find out what it is. (Or you can scroll down, whatever, I’m not your boss.) But THAT is among the reasons I’ve been so frantically busy.
Here are your links – enjoy the weekend!
This week was the beginning of Ramadan. Assalamu alaikum.
Summer’s halfway over [pauses to clutch self and demand where the hell this year is going so fast?!], so get thee to a beach!
While we’re still riding the patriotic high, let’s being some of these back, huh?
Do you want to learn about bread in the Middle Ages, including the signs used for it by silent monks and recipes? Of course you do! Please keep the Ergotism under control.
I have absolutely no desire for an iPhone – but I admit this phone case for one makes a pretty compelling argument. I’d forgotten how much pineapples and Virginia go together, and I’ve been pretty pleased to renew the acquaintance.
Weigh in, kittens: is this particular age of conspicuous consumption done?
French women and that je ne sais quoi. Here’s a list of the top 50 chicest of them all. Agree or disagree with the selection?
Both J. Crew and Five Guys are or are about to be open in London. Jeff and I can continue to worship at our respective shrines. When I tweeted the latter to him, he might have done a little dance.
Jeff is among those who “can quit any time he wants to.” I scoff.
As unsettling as the idea of Schrodinger’s Rapist may be, I feel that this it’s important for many men to understand that women live with this horrible thought pretty much most of the time. I wrote a post on this myself a while back.
London photos, past and present. (I have an overwhelming urge to shout, “Take heart for Mrs. Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!”)
(h/t to Planes, Trains, and Plantagenets for this one) Of course this was going to happen someday. Because of reasons.
And last but not least, I got my first major byline this week for additional reporting on a New York Times story! The delay in informing you has been entirely due to the after effects of happy hyperventilation! Many thanks to Caitlin Kelly for the opportunity to work with her and contribute to it. Great bosses and mentors are hard to find, she is unquestionably both.
“Old houses were scaffolding once and workmen whistling.”
– T.E. Hulme
My desire to own a historic home is a deep, throbbing one born of being travel-spoiled and living too many places with too many fascinating houses (at some point I’ll have to take some photos of some of the local estates that were built before founding of the country!), it messes with your sense of proportion. In Germany we lived in an old house with an orchard in the backyard and a ruined castle up the hill. Our village in England was primarily famous for an Anglo Saxon silver hoard being dug up in someone’s garden. History!
I’m an 18th century house lover myself, but a few miles walk from my parents house is a late 19th century farm house that’s been recently restored. And I want it.
It sits on a couple acres with two huge paddocks/lawns fenced in prettily. It has its own stables (no good to me, I haven’t ridden in years, but it adds beautifully to the charm), and the drive is honest to goodness an old carriage and wagon track. It even has its own herb garden, for heck’s sake. The name of this gem:
Blame Britain but I am a firm believer that every proper house should have a name. My family’s land doesn’t have a house on it yet (Dad has ambitions) but it’s named Stonewell.
See? Absolutely charming. As with all local, old farmhouses, at least one extension was built onto the back, though this view hides it. And it isn’t just the house that gets branded:
In case the horses forget to which house they belong. And, in case you forgot I live in Virginia (home of 18th century, democratic ideals and titles to match), the even older across the country road is called…
Equanimity Farm. You can’t even see that house, it’s set far back from the road and surrounded by privacy protecting trees. The whole spot is just riddled with character!
And really, that’s what I love about old houses – they have character. Mass produced houses built inches apart from and completely identical one another seem just utterly soul-less. But these old houses, they have stories behind them. You can see that lives have been lived in them, you can see that time has left it’s mark on them (some more than others) and you want to know how they went from families living there, people being born and dying for generations, to being reclaimed by the woods. Older houses don’t just have characters, like Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame they are characters in their own right.
Come. On.
Anyone got $350,000 they can spare me?
I just had to document, so that you duckling may flinch with me appropriately, that this song exists.
I caught the last line of it while switching through radio stations driving home from the store and it was so crazy that I thought I must have mistaken it.
But no.
It is comparing checking one’s ladyfriend for ticks (the second vilest vermin God ever turned out wandering, after cockroaches alone) to making the beast with two backs.
Seriously.
I take at least a half dozen of those pestilent parasites off the dog daily and it never stops being disgusting. I feel that I should hastag backwoods or something, but the truth is I’m a bit traumatized.
Worst. Euphemism. Ever.
“Do I want to go to an old drive-in movie theatre [called Goochland] in the Virginia backwoods? What kind of question is that? Get in the car!”
– C.
No doubt about it, things are different ’round here. Last week, after a particularly long day getting my sister to a doctor’s appointment and returning to find the internet in a complete state of disarray (not an unusual event around here, but a consistently frustrating one), I spent the entire afternoon trying to input a load of edits for a project I’d been working on and then send it off. I was also putting a bunch of interview information for another project into some semblance of order. It took hours longer than necessary.
So, when I threw my metaphoric pen down and looked up, I and everybody else were in need of some evening entertainment. The family have turned into big movie goers of late so that’s what they suggested. But going to the movies (locally) these days is taking a step back in time.
Welcome to…
Goochland Drive In!
Pay your fare, find your preferred space, tune into the correct radio station for audio, and play badminton until your double feature starts.
What? How do your kith and kin pass the time in a drive in parking lot, then?
Hands down the best thing about Goochland is that they do things old school! Cartoons before previews, animated urgings concerning concessions, and some old Americana (like the famous Keep American Beautiful commercial featuring a weeping Native American). The preshow is just about as fun as the movies themselves and really preserves this form of entertainment nicely.
Our heroine is kidnapped!
Our well intentioned, but somewhat clueless hero is finally on the way.
The dramatic showdown!
Everything is of course resolved by a quick trip to the concessions stand.
In between features they played old cartoons from the 1960s with villains that looked like these guys:
With everyone’s car radios around you tuned in the movies, the audio is in magnificent stereo and drowns out even the nighttime frogs and bugs. Fireflies add rather perfectly to the atmosphere too. Just pull up some gravel and enjoy! I highly recommend it.
“Borkin: Ladies and gentlemen, why are you so glum? Sitting there like a jury after it’s been sworn in! … Let’s think up something. What would you like? Forfeits, tug of war, catch, dancing, fireworks?”
― Anton Chekhov, Ivanov
Hope all American minions had a happy 4th of July, that the BBQ was tasty, and that all appendages remain in a state of attachment and good health.
First some blog business. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and it just seemed like a good (if random) time to do it. Now that I no longer work at a police department and have no more professional secrets to keep, I’m retiring the semi-anonymity. Those friends of the blog who continue to write anonymously will have their privacy protected, of course, but other than that, we’re throwing off the shackles. I’ve felt a bit constrained lately in sticking to a semi-anonymous blog where there was no need. Prepare yourself, minions, we may even talk politics, religion, and favorite colors at some point.
So, hi there! My name’s Cadence – yes, the musical/military term – though lots of my friends call me “C..” But please, I beg you, don’t call be “Candice,” it’s a seriously sore spot. I’m married to Jeff, formerly known as J.. Everything else you already know: we’re moving to the UK (I just got back from my visa appointment, actually, a grueling 5 hour process factoring travel), he’s an accountant, I’m a freelancer/TBD, and we’re making the rest up as we go along. Howdy.
Back to your regularly scheduled linkage.
I love this gallery of old “seabathing” photos. Thinking about how many clothes people at the turn of the century wore compared to now, you can see why the bathing costume, which looks ridiculously covered up to us, was such a scandalous garment back then.
The heat this week has been insane (though in our neck of the woods it’s mostly been a mass of thunderstorms).
David Suchet IS Poirot, I will fight anyone who says differently. Here’s a charming short film he did about the Orient Express, created for his much anticipated role in Murder On the Orient Express Poirot film. The best part is the little old lady who teases him in mock alarm because if he’s about, someone must be dead!
There are a number of reasons I get huffy when people, usually not related to me, ask when Jeff and I are going to get around to having babies. First of all, unless we’re close friends, it’s well and truly none of your damn business. But close behind this primary irritation is the fact that these people, who are so apparently invested in my as-yet-non-existent spawn, will not be contributing in any substantial way to the care and maintenance of said tadpole. Which means, I firmly believe, that they don’t get a vote in any way, shape, or form. If you’re not going to help feed, tend, monitor, psychologically mess up or in any way help me parent this prospective kid, you don’t get to tell me I should be having one, ask me why I haven’t had one, or lecture me about how selfish I am for not having one. Simply bearing, to say nothing of raising, the next twig of my family tree is a hilariously priced venture in this country, as this piece from the NYT making the social media rounds lays out well. I could rant about this a lot longer, but I’ll just say that simply continuing the human race shouldn’t be this costly, especially while still delivering (no pun intended) one of, if not the highest rate of natal and maternal deaths in the developed world.
Of course it has a cocktail already. Gah, that poor kid.
Pinterest find of the week. This hilarious board follows the future exploits of “Quinoa,” the fake future daughter of the creator and all her ludicrously well dressed and celebrity-baby-oddly-named compatriots. Seriously, the names slay me.
I’ve baked my summer pies for the year, but you minions get on this and report back.
“He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height”
― Gustave Flaubert
Alright, we’re all clear that a certain morbidity level is to be tolerated, yes? Excellent, let’s proceed.
I was talking to friend and Favorite of the Blog, Caitlin Kelly the other day about how philosophically weird the county is. Civilization and wilderness run smack into each other and wage a constant war for supremacy. Unbelievable poverty live side by side with immense wealth – I’m talking massive, old family estates next door to collapsing trailers. This neck of the Virginia woods is a textbook study in contrasts.
And I’m afraid I often come down on the side of rust, ruin, and wreckage. Goodness knows I can scheme about owning my 18th century red brick pile someday, but the truth is I find the falling down bits more fascinating. Some houses and buildings were abandoned slowly, as farms failed, wars took their toll, or families simply died out, and others you get the sense that people just walked away from them all at once and never looked back.
For some reason or another (I suspect the lone, flapping, ghostly curtain and creeping vines), I find this house charmingly spooky. I could be reclaimed and fixed up beautifully – or it could be haunted. Either is possible.
You can see how the area was settled and developed. This is one house built in stages: the left bit is the original (probably single room) cabin and the family, or later generations of it, added on the right bit for additional room and respectability. Then, who knows what happened – I for one long to!
Some of it is haunted (probably), some of it is sad, and some of it is just photogenic.
‘”We’ve restored this building to how it looked over fifty years ago.’
‘No, surely not, no! No one was alive then!'”
– Eddie Izzard
Our county is old, predating the country old (wait until I show you our “main street” with the old courthouse that Patrick Henry worked at). Which means that’s it’s a fantastic mix of layers of history just piled haphazardly on top of one another and land, buildings, and items are constantly being re-purposed. Case in point:
This humble abode was once a local schoolhouse.
Small Dog Syndrome 