I found this article interesting. The guy fighting the Union Hill historic district is right, of course -- gentrification WILL force out long term residents.

It sounds, though, like gentrification is already happening in Union Hill -- the historic district designation would just speed that up, I think.

My house is located in a city old and historic district, but the district was never a poor area -- nobody was forced out by the designation of the historic district. In actuality, the district was formed to prevent a local organization from tearing down one of the old Victorians on the street.

I don't know what the answer is to these sorts of situations -- poor neighborhoods often have houses which just sit and rot for lack of money to keep them up. For example, there's what could be a beautiful Queen Anne over on Laburnum and (I think) Hawthorne (or maybe Noble) that I have watched become more and more decrepit over the years. And you don't want the old houses to fall down -- they are pretty irreplaceable!

In this quote below, I wish the author had kept the "units" the same -- they switched from numbers of black residents to numbers of white families...but let's say that each white family has 3 members, then it is 4,000 black residents and 300 white residents.

The more than 4,000 mostly black residents of the neighborhood who, according to census data, have an average annual income of less than $15,000, aren’t likely to thrive under restrictive neighborhood covenants that serve to please fewer than 100 white families, Corbett says. Those recently transplanted white families have eyes toward the neighborhood’s inevitable gentrification, he contends.

http://www.styleweekly.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=C965B8830ACC413F8A64A2BB4799BE92&AudID=20938C672A3049EEB0CF33069AEE1AE0

Took a short tour on the bike through the neighborhood yesterday to take some pictures of the Fall foliage in the neighborhood -- the leaves have been pretty gorgeous this year!

















I'm not sure what combination of factors caused the extra nice display this year. Maybe because it got cold for a week earlier in October, then turned warm again?

The neighbors came over tonight for our bi-monthly "business" meeting -- meaning food and wine :) We plowed through quite a few bottles tonight!

It was a pleasant evening. I was playing host, so at one point I retired to the kitchen to put some bottles in the recycling, etc. -- the stuff you do as host. I was listening to the "chatter" from the other rooms, so I whipped out the iPhone to record it. "Crowd" noises sort of draw me -- Neighbors.

One neighbor's husband had never been to my house. He asked her on the way if my place was more a "man cave" or "gay guy's house" LOL! I think it's somewhere in between, lol...

Decided to make the bike ride a photo ride today.

I went from my house down Brook Rd to Jackson Ward, Churchill, back through the Bottom and downtown to the VCU area before I cut back through the outskirts of Carver and on back to Northside.


Richmond has a bunch of these "outer defenses" markers -- markers that show where the outer defenses were during the Civil War. My neighborhood is near the outer ring, so we have a couple of them --


Mr. Bojangles --


I had not been through M and 25th since they put a traffic circle in --


One of my favorite little parks in the city is Libby Hill park. This is the river from there --








St. John's Church -- the "Give me liberty or give me death" Patrick Henry speech church --


This view from here is nicer at night. I saw several Segways -- I've been seeing more of them lately. I think you can rent them Shockoe Slip. I did NOT appreciate the gravel in the historic district in Churchill!


You know...some of the hills as I navigated Churchill, the Bottom, and downtown were HARD on me...I was breathing pretty hard! I actually stopped several times to catch my breath, which is not too typical of me.

Farmers' Market in the Bottom --


Capitol Square --


After a 2 year absence, the Carpenter Center, oops, I mean, the "Center Stage" is almost open again. What a debacle...

I had heard at one point about the stormwater assessment by the city, but at the time, the idea had been dropped. Evidently, it came back and was passed by city council, because I got my "assessment" today.

I'll say this -- taxes are already high enough -- pretty irritating to receive this, even if it is for a smallish amount -- $45 for me, based on the number of "impervious" square feet -- in other words, the size of my house's footprint that doesn't absorb rainfall.

So, the city has the highest property rates in the area, the highest water utility rates for most anywhere...and now this extra little charge...


I started cutting Coneflowers to bring in today -- it encourages them to re-bloom, and I like them in vases.

Every now and again, I get into this mood...some might call it a depression, but that's not how I think about it. I usually define depression as being upset inside -- but this particular mood is not exactly like that -- it's more of a withdrawal. This weekend, my "bubble" hit -- I withdrew very deeply into myself, ignoring phone calls and most e-mails, and spent time thinking.

That's not so say that I didn't get out of the house or anything -- I ran my normal errands -- I just avoided all but the most casual social interactions.

When it happens, it's not typically the most pleasant experience, but I usually get some serious thinking done. I did indeed do some thinking yesterday, last night and this morning.

Now, I've decided I need to shake this off...so I'm heading off to the Bellevue Garden walk soon -- I like looking in people's back yards :) Not sure yet if D is joining with, but it's too nice outside to be in my bubble :)

The Board of the Historic District is meeting here tonight. So, I had to make a quick stop at Kroger after work to pick up some chips and salsa.

It's usually a pretty easy meeting -- I've been Treasurer now for about 6 years! It's the only position I will do, lol! The Nominating Committee has done its job, so tonight, the Board will find out the slate of officers (with yours truly included) to be presented at our general meeting on June.

It's not like anyone is knocking down the doors to do these positions -- I've been on the Nominating Committee, and we usually have to bat our eyes and show our pearly whites A LOT to get anyone to fill the positions.

****
I ordered a couple of new roses this year to replace the big hedge rose that I lost to the cold this past year:

Pride of England (I liked the pointiness of the petals on the blooms.)
Pearl Essense (I liked the pale pink color.)

I tend to buy from Heirloom Roses because their roses are "own root" as opposed to grafted.

I had lunch with an old friend today. We went to Merriwether's in the General Assembly building. The food was decent, and less expensive than many places downtown.

He is a state employee, so he just showed his badge. I, on the other hand, had to unload my pockets and go through the metal detector!

Anyways, they have a nice balcony out back, overlooking the Capitol, so I snagged a couple of iPhone shots --




"Old City Hall" does have some interesting architecture --




The friend reads this journal, and one of his comments was that he is surprised at how personal I can get here. It was interesting because my read of his body language when he was talking was that it was too personal, lol! Almost like he was saying that his emotional eyes were bleeding after reading some posts! He didn't say that -- I'm putting words in his mouth, lol!

And the question came up...why do I put those sorts of things out in public?

He provided a possible answer -- that it might be cathartic. I suppose that could be so. But I don't really feel any emotional release putting stuff out here. So, I'm not sure that that is the answer.

If you knew more of the details, you'd know that, by the time I post something here, I've already got some handle around it and started to make sense of it. Any emotional release would have mostly happened by the time I post here about something.

Another possible answer to the question is that I like to entertain the notion that some of this information will be educational to someone -- in a "what-not-to-do" sort of way. I mean, the stuff with my Mom - I would hope that any parent reading this would learn that there are some things that they just cannot do, at the risk of driving away their child.

And any other gay person who reads this -- that they realize that this sort of shit happens to lots of us and not just them!

Another possible answer as to why I do this is that it is historical. I never use the term "blog" for this site -- it is a "journal" in the sense of a diary (although more heavily censored than you may realize from my posts). I really do use this for a sort of historical record -- I search the site with Google site search, in order to find out when such and such happened. Or I use the tags on the posts to find a particular thing.

Another possibility -- this site gives me leeway to say things that I would not say in person -- I can let it all hang out, and then when my friends see me, they can put up the usual mask that everyone wears -- it gives people a chance to process very emotional content before we talk about it!

I'm not entirely sure why I write what I write -- I just type what I'm thinking about right now -- what Facebook terms as "What's on your mind?"

Entering my second week of work -- It's amazing how much I long to be lounging around at home, lol!! But I owe, I owe, so it's off to work I go, right?

There are a few advantages to working downtown (parking is not one of them!) -- there's a level of energy downtown that suburban office parks don't have, and the river brings a lot of good energy to downtown.

I enjoy throwing my backpack on and walking the hills downtown. And, you have state buildings like the state capitol --

Got another bike ride in today (and a walk too!). This time I got off the paved areas and did the Jordan's Branch trail at Bryan Park -- I'm happy that my biking seems to be stronger now than it has been -- I think the walking has definitely made my legs stonger!

***
I saw this article on how popular Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is right now.

I have read Atlas Shrugged on a couple of different occasions in my life, and the only thing that I really remember from the readings was how much "meaner" I felt after each read -- i.e., the book does not encourage kindness so much as it encourages "every man for himself."

After I read the article, I read up on the tenets of Rand's "Objectivism," and I found that I really didn't agree with most of her basic tenets -- or at least I partially disagreed with them. That probably explains why I never much liked the book.

"Atlas Shrugged," her most famous novel, has sold more copies in the first four months of 2009 than it did for all of 2008 -- and in 2008, it sold 200,000 copies. It's been in Amazon.com's top 50 for more than a month.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/04/27/ayn.rand.atlas.shrugged/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I'm excited that a new farmer's market is supposed to be opening in May in the park near my house -- an easy, easy walk!

The only negative thing is that there is already a farmer's market just a mile or two up the road. The other (existing) market is within walking distance, just a longer walk for me. I suspect the new one will cannibalize the customers from the existing one, so I guess I'm being selfish by being glad that the new one will be opening!


****
I found this Salon interview of Jane Goodall very interesting. She gives information about chimpanzees (like chimpanzee violence) that I didn't realize.

And later in the article, she describes an experience related to her dead husband. I had an experience related to my partner Matt, which I won't describe here, but which is still very much a part of my memories of him.

You discovered that chimpanzees hunt. Did anyone know this before you saw it?

No Western scientist knew. I think the local people knew. But it was very exciting the first time I saw it. They hunt young pigs, young bushbuck, and they share the prey after they've had a successful hunt. They beg, with gestures like we use. And the meat is shared.

Some years later, you found that chimpanzees can be a lot more aggressive than people had known. Some of your colleagues saw that chimpanzees will even hunt and kill other chimpanzees.

That was disappointing to find that, just like us, they have a dark side. The first accounts were of male chimpanzees patrolling the boundary of their territory and catching a female from a neighboring social group -- a stranger -- and subjecting her to such a violent attack that she later died of her wounds, and taking her baby and killing it. It was a total shock. Soon after that, the community divided. The smaller group took up residence in the south of the range. And four years later, the males of the larger community systematically hunted down, attacked and killed all of the breakaway males -- seven of them, and two females.

These were all chimpanzees that had once lived together. They had been intimate with each other.

It's like a civil war. And civil wars in human society are the worst. This was horrible.

http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/04/14/jane_goodall/index.html

***
Two gay men attacked near the University of Virginia. Five attackers, no warning -- really cowardly. Too close for comfort.

Early Saturday morning, April 4, at approximately 3 a.m. in the Stadium Road area, a U.Va. student and his guest were violently assaulted, without warning, by five males described by the victim as Caucasians between the ages of 16 and 20. The attackers uttered several homophobic slurs immediately prior to and during the attack. The attackers smashed the victim’s cell phone when he tried to call 911 for help. University Police units responded when the student’s guest was able to flee and call for help. Because the attack was initially thought to have occurred off Grounds, the Charlottesville Police took on responsibility for investigating it and have been in regular communication with UPD Chief Mike Gibson since. Today, when the student visited the crime scene with CPD investigators, it was discovered that the crime appears to have taken place on Grounds and UPD has now taken over the investigation. 

Based upon the facts as we currently know them, we believe this to be a bias motivated crime, in that the perceived sexual orientation of the two victims appears to have motivated the assault. 

http://www.virginia.edu/deanofstudents/april_4_statement.pdf

The ornamental cherry trees in the median are blooming --

The phone screen went well today. It actually sounds like a position that I would enjoy doing! I have no idea, of course, if anything will actually come of this, but it was a good activity for today.

I also got my 4 mile walk in. The sidewalks were still a bit slushy in places, but the temp today melted most of the snow away.

After the phone screen, I wanted to take advantage of the 50˚+ (F) weather today, so I went down to the flood wall on the south bank of the river.










Underneath bridges is always sort of grody...


I like the architecture of the 14th Street bridge. I think it's a cute little bridge --



This evening, a friend came over for wine and cheese. So, all in all, it was a very pleasant day!

I have been sort of a vegetable yesterday and today. I did get a walk in, and I have a Board meeting for my historic district this evening, but otherwise, I've been laying pretty low. I was actually a bit depressed yesterday, but that seems to be lifting today.

I was supposed to go to a career networking meeting this morning, but when I got up, I just really didn't want to go. There's another one tomorrow morning that I plan to attend.

It looks like Saturn should be visible tonight in the night sky. I don't have a telescope but I do have a pair of binoculars. With enough magnification, you should be able to see the rings.

I was using the Stellarium app to find out where to look -- I think after I get out of the Board meeting, I should be able to look towards the East and find Saturn.

I spent the afternoon cleaning out a closet, throwing away stuff, and putting some of O's stuff away. His guitar was HUGE compared to my tiny 1923 closets! I was actually a bit surprised that it fit!

Anyways, while I was cleaning, I found a file of old newspaper clippings that interested me. Back when I was starting to come out, at about the same time I was moving away from my Baptist upbringing and starting down a Buddhist path. Evidently, I kept newspaper articles that interested me (this, boys and girls, was before the internet, when the (paper) newspaper was a source of daily news...). I don't really remember keeping the file - I guess it was part of what I did to validate my feelings at the time.

A lot of the articles were similar to this one -- an editorial by Carl Archachi in July '92 of the local paper. It made me wonder, "Ugh, why are we still even discussing these issues 16 years later?"

We went to Kitchen 64 for dinner last night and then to the art opening at the Gay Community Center last night.

We bumped into friends at both places. I think it is a good idea for the GCCR to have an art gallery and to have openings. Last night, none of the pieces really stood out for me, although I did like a couple of items.

Afterwards, we rented the movie Burn after Reading. It's not a bad movie -- it kept me interested the whole time -- but it was not a great movie. I guess I would label it a black comedy -- I was amused, although I think I only laughed aloud once.


***
A friend sent me this link --> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/garden/15hongkong.html?_r=1&emc=eta1.
There is a slideshow at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/garden/20090115_HONGKONG_index.html.

The guy lives in a 344 square foot apartment in Hong Kong. The apartment "transforms" (by way of flexible walls and hidden appliances) from kitchen to bedroom to steam room to living room, etc. It's interesting.

The smallest apartment (other than a college dorm) that I ever lived in was probably about 500 square feet. So, I could probably make it fine in 344 square feet -- especially if I could change the space around easily.

The yellow light that dominates the space almost has a Bladerunner look to it.

Seeing such a small space is interesting, but makes me appreciate my 1800+ square feet house and my 1/4 acre lot! What would be cool though would be to make use of the ideas and technology in this apartment to make some of my rooms do double time (instead of adding on more space).

Fellow local blogger, Ms Place, writes a couple of blogs that I regularly visit, including one on Jane Austen's works.

I find her Jane Austen's World blog very interesting because of the articles on life in Victorian England. If you're interested in Victorian England or Jane Austen, I would highly recommend the site!

Since I have never read any of Jane Austen's works, she recently very graciously gave me a copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion as an audio book.

I'm excited. Having heard so much about Jane Austen's works, and having seen several TV adaptions, I'm excited to read, ahem I mean listen, to one of her novels myself.

This morning I was up bright and early to get my blood drawn at LabCorp -- just for the standard set of tests you get with your annual physical. I don't mind going, but I hate sitting in the LabCorp waiting room -- it's always packed, and the guy sitting beside me today was one of those types who seems to have to talk, you know? I don't mind a little pleasant small talk, but that's about all I want -- this guy went on and on, completely ignoring my vacant eyes.

Nothing major on the agenda for today. O wants to go get another load from the bottomless pit (his storage unit), but I'm dragging my feet, not really wanting to do that today.

I received some more of what I call my "gardening porn" today in the mail -- magazines and catalogs with pictures of flowers and plants. I told O that he has his kind of porn and I have mine -- actually I like his kind too...but I digress. I'm not even sure why I look at these gardening catalogs because it's not like I have any more room in the yard. I need to buy bigger property, just so that I have more space to garden!

Cyrano

Last night, we watched Cyrano de Bergerac on PBS. It was surprisingly good. There's a clip of it at the link.

Kevin Klein did a great job as Cyrano. Jennifer Garner, well, not so much -- her acting was way too overblown -- it drew attention to her acting style instead of to the character of Roxane. Klein actually had tears in several scenes, which made it seem very authentic.

While we were watching the show (in English), I followed along in my French version of the play. Of course, the English version was a paraphrase, not a direct translation -- after all the original French version rhymes, so it would be hard to translate it directly. But the English was a good paraphrase nonetheless.

Lewis Ginter

I've continued my reading of that picture book about Lesbian and Gay Richmond that I talked about in a previous post.

I live over in a part of town where most of the land was a subdivision of Lewis Ginter's property. What surprised me was to find that Lewis Ginter and John Pope (Pope has a street in the neighborhood named for him) lived together for more than 20 years. They never sought the company of women and had a "most ardent affection" for each other. I don't know about you, but I know what that sounds like to me!

Pope was much, much, much younger than Ginter -- Pope was 16 when he went to live with Ginter. Ginter later adopted him.

It just reminded me of how it pisses me off that so much of gay and lesbian life has been (is) hidden.