Staunton Green 2020

Continuing our focus on an implied Pollyanna, (We can do it!) today we find her in rather a funk.

However much she would like to see a new world, (a new earth?) born from the ashes of the old, still a battle rages within.

“We must face the truth.”

—”It will never work.”

“Its our duty to instigate positive change.”

—You sound like a liberal, and an annoying one at that. Not that all of you aren’t tiresome.”

“But, but, but…beauty, truth, goodness…”

—”See what I mean?”

And so it goes…

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Voices over the past century warning about drastic changes afoot in our lives have generally met with a mixture of indifference and scorn.

With cheap gas flowing from a seemingly perpetually available spigot, dire messages about the environmental impact of fossil fuels or a coming end to consumer excess were more often than not attributed to wackos. The collective conscious has never liked Cassandras anyway, and since most of the recent ones weren’t as hot as that Greek maven, we really had no use for them.

Its hard to say whether today’s cautionary voices on issues like peak oil and its repercussions, or those wailing over the climate and environmental picture, will continue to go in one ear and out the other, or worse, be met by counter analysts who caricature prognosticators with scathing derision.

Bottom line: Its tough out there in the marketplace of ideas. Still, a girls got to do what a girls got to do, leaving me no choice but to come out to the public as a high-heeled survivalist. (more…)

Picture if you will blocks of charmingly appointed storefronts, elegant eateries and bustling pubs set on a wide avenue paved in herringbone brick. See in your mind’s eye casually strolling pedestrians ambling the decorative paths as diners take in a meal on patios under shade trees and theater-goers line up for an evening’s show.

The gracious environment offers relaxing ease for all participants, who indulge in their chosen activity on the human scale, in community with one another and entirely unfettered by either passing car exhaust or the mindless indifference of a cell-phone addicted driver. Even children meander without arousing parental fear because this quasi-urbanized mixed-use space is car-free, a true walker’s mall.

If, like me, you can envision this hip mini-metropolis on a revived Staunton’s historic Beverley Street, then welcome to the future. Only, in reality, welcome to it a few miles east of downtown, astride Interstate 81 and tucked onto State-conveyed landed adjacent to the Museum of the American Frontier Culture . (more…)

Every time I glance down the merchant corridor of West Beverley Street in downtown Staunton I see a vision of Beverley’s past morphing into its future in the most charming, delightful and exciting way.

Its a vision of bustling activity that exists in the strange place between realms, like a friendly spectral scene done Hollywood style, or the waking remnants of a passing dream that appears close enough to grasp if one could just capture it before it slips away. Because the truth is that Beverley Street and other parts of a once-vibrant Staunton economy are not as bustling as they once were even while the City stands garbed in its past glory and poised to create a promising future. (more…)

Several years ago, when I telecommuted from Charlottesville to washingtonpost.com as the discussion moderator for Live Online, post.com’s broadcast module, I would periodically leave my modem behind to go onsite for face time with my colleagues.

I always looked forward to those trips to the Arlington office because it gave me a nice big city fix, an opportunity after the work day to hit some D.C. hot spots, shop in upscale boutiques and take in unique ethnic food at an outdoor cafe or hipster eatery. Never mind that each visit meant a three to four hour commute from my Charlottesville home, with three of those hours seeming to be just on the stretch between Culpeper and Arlington where I would sit log jammed on 66 with assorted Northern Virginia lemmings for whom this was somehow an acceptable daily ritual. (more…)