Mount Vernon, Virginia

Northern Virginia is in essence a suburb of the mighty Nation's Capital, the District of Columbia, the city named for the first President, the General who commanded the Revolutionary Continental Army, the man who embodies the start of the new nation in the New World.

However the reverence one might expect for George Washington's home is hardly in evidence in the hectic traffic of suburban Fairfax County. We saw just two hastily erected little brown signs pointing toward the fabled home.

Once there we found a highly organized reception for the hordes of visitors. I found the bronze statue of the President his wife and grandchildren to be a bit startling. Cheyenne ignored them.

Washington inherited Mount Vernon when he was 22 and enlarged it and worked on it for the next 40 years. He had an 800 acre farm and like Thomas Jefferson listed his profession as farmer in the first census.

Washington was a slave owner of course and maintained an active farm experimenting with various crop growing techniques, harvesting seeds and attempting to grow secure hedgerows around his fields. That heritage is continued today with vegetable gardens and orchards on the fifty acres still surrounding the home.

The crops still grow in orderly rows and animals are kept in fields between the house and the tidal Chesapeake waters on the east side of the home.

It is a living museum too with an active blacksmith, and collections of carriages and farm implements from the era.

It was a baking hot day when we were there and Cheyenne took her usual dunking in a convenient ditch.

She was observed by a curious squirrel, an animal unknown in the Florida Keys but which, also as usual, excited no interest whatsoever in my dog.

The house was bathed in a peculiar heatwave of tropic proportions when I was there with temperatures well above ninety degrees. For those not used to the tropics it was a bit too warm.

But visitors pressed doggedly on touring the out buildings and grounds.

With Cheyenne raising rather too much interest wherever we went I rather felt like pressing on t the main event rather than studying outhouses kitchens and black smith operations among the hordes of young people on vacation field trips.

They were around the grounds all over the place and it did occur to me that Mount Vernon might be better visited in the dead of winter when the industrious little tykes are trapped indoors at their desks.

Mount Vernon is quite the attraction, no longer simply the private residence of the first President.

It is a shrine, a pilgrimage destination.




A place to contemplate.

I had to compare Mount Vernon to Monticello and I came away from the two tours with quite different impressions of the men who called these two ancient Virginia shrines home.

George Washington had a capable wife, money and a stern character and it comes through in the order and well developed property that is still visible and cultivated.

I was surprised to see a banana tree in the garden but apparently they do grow here but they just don't fruit as the do in the tropical Florida Keys.

Aside from the commercial aspects of this operation I preferred Monticello because perhaps Jefferson himself was less accessible and more mysterious, a true genius, flawed and complex and secret where as Washington appears more easily appreciated and understood. A simpler man than Jefferson with his complex ingenuity.

Then there is the fact that Mount Vernon is just 16 miles from the District of Columbia and is thus located nowadays in suburban hell. Monticello is a rural backwater outside the chaos of Northern Virginia.

It was too hot and too crowded to do the place justice but I want to go back with fewer crowds and easier access to the man's tomb, the docks and the extensive grounds. It was a good start seeing this famous place for the first time.



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Civil War Hanging Rock

Driving back to Roanoke from visiting George Washington's home on the Chesapeake we stumbled into the battle field of Manassas, picturesque and filled with walks to be explored another time. Similarly taking Cheyenne for an early morning walk I came across another more modest battlefield from the era, hardy noticed but impeccably maintained.

This state is packed with an unfair proportion of historic sites.

On June 21st 1864 a Union column retreating from a defeat at Lynchburg was intercepted on the Great Road to Salem (modern Route 11) in a small defile called Hanging Rock, and the Federals got their asses handed to them on a plate.

Confederate cavalry General Robert Ransom chased the retreating soldiers of Union General David Hunter and caught them here mangling their cannons and baggage train and ambulances such to make life difficult for the Federal Army.

Nowadays at seven am on a weekday the place is serenity itself, the perfect spot to contemplate life with your dog.

There is a quiet stream gurgling alongside the dirt trail...

...and I suppose a particular rock such as this must have given the place it's name.

Cheyenne likes an early morning tipple...

...so she got busy with the fresh cold stream water. I think Virginia is heaven for my dog, with it's luscious grasses good for sleeping on or eating, cool breezes and generally mild temperatures.

I have no idea what animal left a scent on the trail but Cheyenne found it. She isn't used to squirrels and such like so I wonder if she knew what animal had been there.

I think these are honeysuckle but I am going out on a limb as usual when I make firm pronouncements about flora.

Above, the commuters took their several and various great roads to work.

Better that than being ambushed on the trail below I suppose.


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Virginia Signs

You won't see signs like this in Key West:

Or this in my home town that lives and dies by tourism and denigrates visitors as "tourons" ie: tourist - morons. Staunton Virginia has a slightly smarter attitude toward the people that bring the money to town.

This is a well known school I am told in a state filled with higher education. I read about it on ADVrider, the motorcycle website, in a ride report written by a deaf rider who graduated the place.

Some people do guard their parking spaces with Key West like vituperative signs but notice how worn out the paint is:

And these tow away signs seem like an after thought especially as there was no mention of the tow company that might actually have your car. Here in Key West where towing really happens and all the time, we give you the name and phone number of the offending tow company. Not that visitors to Key West obey the no parking signs...

Here they even have a chain link fence on weekends to keep people's cars safe from towing.

Silly signs exist too in Staunton (pronounced "Stan-ton") Only officials may trespass here? So is it trespassing if they trespass?

This sign says the tree is a kiosk. I refused to believe it.

Cheyenne found food in the bogie wheels of the caboose, but technically she wasn't climbing or playing. Though why they don't open these cabooses as playgrounds I don't know. Oh yes, I remember because you'll sue someone with deep pockets if your brat overdoes it and hurts himself on the caboose. Thus we teach self reliance and taking responsibility for oneself.

I am always astonished when I am answering 911 calls when the caller tells me a "gentleman" is trespassing on their porch. Really? I am tempted to ask, is he in evening dress and a top hat? This one has adopted al tire of Robert E Lee to illustrate the concept and aside from his treason he was in all respects we are told, a gentleman.

I really wanted to know what inaccessible parts this contraption is supposed to reach. I very much doubt a gentleman would pose the question.

I thought "ACME" was reserved for Roadrunner cartoon movies.

This one puzzled me across the street from the SPCA thrift store. Faith Hope and Vietcong?? I had to investigate.

Victory is odd enough in the context but once again, like Saigon in 1975 we declare victory and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps now we will have enough money to maintain Saturday postal delivery.

I saw the above and thought that was a somewhat narrow view but then below someone else made their feelings known in public in chalk like a graffito.

This next sign I saw on the road to Harpers Ferry and is typical of West Virginia sign posting. I speculated they are oversize for all sorts of stereotypically rude reasons but nevertheless they are odd and unique in size compared to anywhere else I have driven in the world. Perhaps they really are licensing blind drivers in West Virginia?

Living proof Highway One is more than a sign on the Overseas Highway:

And my violets are green:

While my instinct is to chide the owner of this sign when one considers how shitty people are about picking up after their dogs one can only sympathize.

The thank you at the bottom of the sign made it perfect. Try some good manners next time you are putting out a ”fuck off" sign in Key West, please.


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American Shakespeare Center, Staunton Virginia

Of all the Bard's plays I could have come across during my vacation in southwest Virginia, A Midsummer Night's Dream was low on the list I'd have chosen as my introduction to this unusual theater:

The Blackfriars Playhouse is designed to represent as closely as possible an indoor Elizabethan theater, such as put on the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

I am glad they got this repertory company and it's home base organized when money (credit) flowed because it's hard to imagine such a venture getting funding today. It is magnificent.

Naturally indoor photography is not allowed except on particular backstage tours so I had to make do with photos from the brochure to attempt a feeble illustration of the remarkable interior of the playhouse.

The stage is a wooden rectangle projecting towards the seated patrons, a few select audience members, children in summer apparently, sit on stage and are the butt of jokes from the players, while others sit upstairs, first come first served when you walk in. Choose your bench and get an extraordinary view of the stage from above. The lights don't dim and there are no props. The actors wore colorful, elaborate Elizabethan costumes and gave it their all.

I am far too shy to enjoy audience participation and prefer to sit as far from the stage as I can, so I was safe upstairs...except the players never forgot us and made eye contact repeatedly with all members of the audience. It was impressive.

They start the performance with singing and prancing on stage to amuse the customers as they take their seats, then suddenly the performance starts, quite likely on time but I was too busy watching the singing and acrobatics to bother with worrying about their punctuality.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an oldie but goodie, not dark of course, but amusing and silly and thus done too often in...midsummer. To see this chestnut played in Staunton was a treat, it was faithful to the script, no dumbing down of the poetry, and the players enjoyed their performance so much you'd have thought it the first not the last show of the Spring season.

They sucked me in completely and before the end tears were streaming down my face and I was gasping for air, in a way you would never expect at a performance of the too well known too well thumbed educational works of Shakespeare. A reminder that humor is not only universal but timeless.

On that basis I would say the ASC with this one play has me convinced they know exactly what the Bard was up to in his day, making people laugh and think and have a fun time out. In fact it saddens me to think of all those kids in school struggling to parse Elizabethan English with no opportunity to come to Staunton (pronounced "Stan-ton") to see this stuff as it was originally intended.

These players tour and do special performances as you would imagine so in the end they do about 300 performances a year. Imagine that, three hundred. I'd love to come in winter and sit with a coffee (mulled wine would be more authentic but alcohol is served inside so who knows) and shut out a gray winter's afternoon. Cheyenne isn't allowed inside and she staged a momentary protest the next morning outside the front doors.

American Shakespeare Company
By the way, the company recently sent a letter out to it's supporters lamenting the death of the upstairs air conditioner, a ten thousand dollar expense. It was no ordinary appeal headed by this quotation from King John:

There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust:
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
I'm telling you these people live and breathe and dream the era they play.

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