storm passing

A walk in Earlysville Forest after the rain ended yesterday morning.

roscoe day 3

 

It's all over now, baby blue. But I'm going to rehash it for those of you who weren't here anyway.

Despite his hesitancy to participate in a local event, and even be photographed doing so, our trained professional gamely agreed to march in the Earlysville Fourth of July Parade. Maybe the scene is not in the script. Maybe no one would have consented approval. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I strapped on my vest, and used the Pilot to follow our Professor as he weaved his way across the street, through the parade, to try to find access to a locked office on the far side. On the first take of this cross parade move, as I was walking backwards in front of Craig, I nearly backed into a news camera set up on a tripod. That would have been a sight to see a camera and tripod go down with the operator of a fully rigged Steadicam. I got a last moment warning that directed me away.

At the far end of our progress into the parade, after passing numerous pedestrians and vehicles of various ages, one driver opined loudly, "Is he a Republican or a Democrat? Do I need to take him out?" At that point it became clear to me that the Professor, in his jacket and bow tie, looked much like an undeclared candidate.

All in all, some wonderful material that will fit nicely at the head of the piece. It would have been an entirely different thing if both characters had been in the parade, as I originally planned. This works better in fact.

signs of the times

click 'er for bigger

Our local plaza, within walking distance of the house, used to be a lively assortment of small businesses. When we moved to Earlysville 11 years ago there was a moderately sized food market, a pizza restaurant, a lawyer's office, all generating a fair amount of traffic. Through the go-go Shrubbery years the market changed hands and was given some updates, a furniture business sprouted across the street run by an energetic young couple, and traffic was substantial enough for the landlord to banish yard sales from the adjacent parking lot to accommodate parking for the corner businesses. Fast forward to 2010: there isn't a single business presence in any of the space.

Of course no one is blameless. There was a fair amount of intrigue surrounding the coming and goings of the furniture store proprietors, as in divorce, rumors of embezzlement, etc. Nor should one ignore the outside influences brought to bear: a large supermarket chain opened a massive new store only about five minutes away. Were people willing to forgo the better choice and pricing in order to support the smaller more local market? It didn't seem so, myself included.

Curiously enough, the much smaller country stores scattered around the area appear to still be doing fine, specializing as they do in pickled eggs, chaw, beer, and the white necessities (toilet paper, white bread, eggs, milk) always required prior to a snow storm. As seems to be the case in so much of commercial enterprise these days, there is little or no middle ground. We have Mega Marts in every town, or one location bodegas.