Shot Oct. 25, 2009
Here's just about the only other decent picture I shot on the hike with Zach Sunday. It's just a tree, of course, not nearly as interesting as the other shot. But wow, its' a gorgeous tree!
This on is in the neighborhood at the base of Mill Mountain, right at the bottom of Prospect Road.
Zach Casey, 10, holds a blue crab caught Wednesday on the Severn River outside Annapolis, Md. by his cousin, Kelly Titus
Zach and I, his sister Cait and my niece Kelly went crabbing Wednesday afternoon from a community pier along the Severn River here in Annapolis. I grew up in this neighborhood, and crabbing down at the community beach always was one of the most fun activities ever.
We caught about 15 keepers today (and dozens that were too small to keep) and this was the largest one. Zach was really on his game -- he netted the majority of them.
For those of you who have never been crabbing: what we were doing is called "chicken necking." You take some of the less edible portions of raw chicken, like necks or backs, tie them to about 10 feet of string, tie the other end of the string to the pier, then toss the chicken in the water and wait.
Soon, the crabs will try to swim off with the bait. You pull the string in slowly, and when the bait/crab are near the top of the water, you (or a partner) scoops underneath it with a long-handled crab net.
If the crab is 5.5 inches point to point, it's a keeper. This monster was at least 7 inches, and that is a rare size to find in the Severn, at least at this particular location. (Update: It was exactly 7 inches, point to point. And it was delicious!)
If you've got any good crabbing stories, I'd love to hear them.
Back in town this weekend. The column resumes Tuesday.
If you live in western or southwest Virginia, no doubt you've heard of Floydfest, the 4-day music festival in the high rolling fields of Patrick County, Va., just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The event is now in its ninth year; this will be my third.
For those of you from outside the area, check out the Floydfest Web site and begin making your plans for next year. This festival just keeps getting better and better. This year, the Saturday night headliner is Blues Traveler.
I'm heading up there this(Friday) afternoon and may not have access to the blog to approve comments. I'll try to have someone at Roanoke.com do it but if I can't swing it I'll hop on them Sunday when I get back.
My 10-year-old son, Zach, is going with me as he has for the past two years. This year, we'll joined by Anna "Banana," his 16-year-old sister. It'll be her first Floydfest; I'm sure she'll want to come back.
If you're there and you run across us, make sure you say "Hi!"
Three mayors. One deputy mayor. One member of the governor's cabinet. Fire inspectors. Municipal planners. Two state aseemblymen. And five rabbis.
All (except one) Democrats.
All (allegedly) as crooked as the old road up Mill Mountain. All snared Thursday in a vast federal corruption probe involving black-market kidneys, fake Gucci handbags, and God knows how much in laundered money and bribes.
Where else could this happen but New Jersey? From the AP:
Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant - a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago - posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.
Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.
. . .The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit handbags.
That's right. No funny stuff like human-organ trafficking for Jersey pols. They prefer their corruption the way I take my whiskey: neat and straight up. Cash bribes only, please.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love New Jersey. I lived there from ages 7 to 13, in Morris County, in the towns of White Meadow Lake, Mine Hill, and Mountain Lakes.
New Jersey has great towns. It has the best beaches on the Eastern seaboard, by far. You haven't experienced grassroots American patriotism until you've been to an American Legion in New Jersey on Memorial Day or the 4th of July. The public schools I attended in New Jersey would rival the best private schools almost anywhere else.
Some of the funniest and most talented people are from New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen was born in Long Branch, which was also the birthplace of Norman Mailer. Jack Nicholson is from Neptune City; Allen Ginsberg from Newark. Sarah Vaughn. Meryl Streep. Abbott & Costello. Whitney Houston. Frank Sinatra. Antonin Scalia. All from New Jersey. Thomas Edison's invention factory was there. And it's got The Real Housewives of New Jersey, one of the best shows on television. Everything about New Jersey is real, and in your face.
But ranking above all other New Jersey superlatives is graft. No other state comes close. New York and Pennsylvania are mere pikers. Blago tried to grab the honor for Illinois, but he fell way short. Jersey pols were offering themselves for sale before he was even born. Before his mother was even born. The backwater of Louisiana is a soggy and distant second.
Even the pepperoni on New Jersey's delicious pizzas is crooked. There are a few honest people, but they're treated like lepers and and other social outcasts.
Love to hear your New Jersey stories, if you've got them!
The monument placed June 20 at Lynchburg College. Photo by Mark Day
It was mid-June 1864, and the Union seemed to have the upper hand as the "war of northern aggression" raged in Virginia.
Lexington was in flames at the hands of troops commanded by Union Gen. David Hunter. But Hunter's superior, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, had his eye on Lynchburg, an important shipping point in the south because three railroads converged there.
Grant estimated that if the Union could take Lynchburg and cut off those railroads, the war might end as many as six months sooner. So he ordered Hunter to head east with his men toward the town.
But the Confederacy prevailed in the Battle of Lynchburg because of quick-thinking by one of its most aggressive and wily fighters, the Franklin County-born Gen. Jubal A. Early.
As Union soldiers camped outside town and prepared for a June 18 attack, Early ordered the Confederates to run a noisy but empty train back and forth along the railroad tracks all night long.
The ruse, along with fortifications the Confederates already had erected, convinced Hunter that legions of Rebel soldiers guarded the town and that his attack could not succeed. (Actually, the Union troops outnumbered Confederates by almost 2 to 1).
Every place the Union soldiers probed, they were rebuffed. Union casualties numbered about 250 while about 100 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. So on June 18 Hunter withdrew and Lynchburg was mostly saved.
That is the guts of a pretty neat little history lesson I got Tuesday from Dr. Clif Potter, an historian and professor at Lynchburg College.
It's also the genesis for a monument to - gasp! - Union soldiers erected less than a month ago on the college's campus.
Read the rest of the column here.
What do you think about a monument to Union soldiers in Lynchburg? Put your thoughts in a comment below!
From www.bestplaces.net
The Cave Spring area in Southwest Roanoke County has been named by Money magazine as #89 among the best 100 small towns in which to live -- in America! (h/t to Roanoke RnR)
The magazine's criteria included strong local economies, great schools, affordable housing and low crime.
From bestplaces.net:
Two other Virginia localities made the list of the top: #84 Mechanicsville, in the northeast suburbs of Richmond, and #94 Glen Allen, which is due north of Richmond.
The magazine lists Cave Spring's population as 25,300; Glen Allen has 14,400 residents and Mechanicsville has 37,500.
Louisville, Colo., (pop. 18,800) which is just northwest of Denver, got the nod as the number #1 small town in America.
(Note: More than one reader has pointed out that Cave Spring is not an incorporated town. My best guess is the definition of the term varies from state to state, and that Money used "town" as a synonym for "best small places" to live.
Kiplinger's Magazine recently published a story about the best places to live in the United States, and named the top 10 cities, based on criteria such as employment, wage growth, cost of living, the percentage of residents who belonged to the "creative class" and some other factors.
The Mill Mountain Star
Alas, dear Roanokers, we didn't make the top 10. Here are some of the towns that did:
1. Huntsville, Ala.
2. Albuquerque, N.M.
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Charlottesville, Va.
However, the magazine's editors also opened up a Reader's Choice poll of "favorite" cities on its Web site. And Roanoke is doing quite well by that yardstick, thank you. Among the Top 25 cities according to Kiplinger.com visitors, we're #1 #18 back to #1 in the voting, after Kiplinger's caught someone stuffing the ballot box for Lexington, Kentucky and Hagerstown, Md.
Mountain View Italian Kitchen, in Ironto
Here's a little story about an out-of-the-way mom and pop restaurant that happened almost by accident, the dark hints behind a reputation it never deserved, and how those added to the place's charm and made it an even bigger success.
All that and some really great pizza.
Mountain View Italian Kitchen in Ironto shut its doors in the summer of 2006. Recently it reopened. Soon it may be back to its glory days.
If you recall the Italian Kitchen, perhaps you discovered it one day in eastern Montgomery County, heading down North Fork Road, four or so snaking miles off Interstate 81.
You did a double take when you noticed a roadhouse, its gravel lot jammed with cars and motorcycles, sandwiched between a small graveyard and a family farm.
If you went inside and ordered a pie, you never forgot the place. Real, mouth-watering New York-style pizza. Served by counter folk with unmistakable New York accents, in an unassuming cinder-block dining room. Eaten beside a huge picture window that looked out onto three Blue Ridge peaks. Washed down with tall pitchers of cold beer.
In the middle of nowhere.
Like a fur coat in a PETA parade, it was way out of place -- but that was part of the fun.
Read the rest of the column here.
Go to Mountain View Italian Kitchen's (rudimentary) Web site here.
The Ross Barnett Reservoir along the Natchez Trace Parkway/National Park Service photo
The photo on the left is the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 2-lane, 440-mile long ribbon of national park that runs between Nashville, Tenn., and Natchez, Miss. It's kind of like our own Blue Ridge Parkway (without the mountain, that is).
I am riding it this week with some pals . We started Saturday (April 25) in Nashville, and we're planning to hit Natchez sometime Friday. We're going to average about 70 miles a day, counting some side trips to historical sites we're taking along the way.
I'll take plenty of photos and put up a gallery when we return.
From the National Park Service:
The Old Natchez Trace was a series of closely parallel primitive paths carved out of the wilderness by game animals, American Indians, European explorers, and American settlers. Over time, the paths were gradually linked and used for transportation, communication, and trade. For more than two decades, the Old Trace was the most significant highway of the Old Southwest and one of the most important roads in the nation. From 1780 to 1820, it was an avenue of exploration, international rivalry, warfare, trade, settlement and development.
The modern Natchez Trace Parkway, covering a distance of 444 miles from Natchez, Miss., across northwest Alabama to Nashville, Tenn., commemorates the historic Old Trace. The roadway, authorized by Congress in 1938, encompasses a traditional southern landscape that offers travelers manicured grassy roadsides and native tree plantings intermingled with a mosaic of hardwood and softwood forest communities, wetlands, prairie landscapes, agricultural croplands, abundant wildlife, and architecturally significant bridges and structures.
Sites administered by the Parkway include: Tupelo National Battlefield, Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, and the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail.
Earlier this month I wrote a column about my favorite road on Earth, the 'old road' up Mill Mountain. On that page there's also a cool video by Sam Dean.
Many, many people wrote in to say they loved that column, or that they love that road, or both. Thank you for all those responses.
Those inspired me to assemble a little slideshow so folks who haven't walked that road could see some of the glorious sights they are in for. I shot these pictures and Roanoke.com producer/wizard Jordan Fifer put them all together.
Thank you, Jordan!
Both of us hope you enjoy this, and that it might inspire you to check out that road.
If this gets enough responses, it might inspire me to organize a little public hike up the moutain later this spring. We'll see.
Again, the link to the slideshow is here.
