Yearly Archives: 2018

Resolve to Care

Helping_handsSerenity is an element of every good life but it is not the rule.

In a lifetime, we march through a succession of fiery walls, fighting flaming emotional and physical ordeals.These trials that come upon us, one after another, usually pass, with some modicum of serenity restored.

We often survive the unremitting fires searing our soul and person because others cared to help.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

A young man at a retail store days ago asked a series of discount questions about a purchase I was making.

I said, “No thanks, thanks for asking.”

He appeared hurt.

I asked, “So how is your day going?”

“Okay, I guess,” he said.

After a pause, he said, “I’m bipolar.  I take medication.  I spent Thanksgiving alone.  My family told me they were too busy to see me, but I knew they were home and could have seen me.  But they didn’t want to be with me.  My friends abandoned me as well.  I was alone.  It was hard.” Continue reading

How Narrow the Band in Western Loudoun

In this picture is a broadband source to connect to the Internet

In this picture is a broadband source to connect to the Internet

Out in Western Loudoun, near Lovettsville, there are various ways to get on the Internet.

There is of course by satellite connected to a dish by your house.

There are broadcasting links atop various structures including a silo out by Stevens Road.  What else would you expect in the country?  It had to be on a silo.

Dishes are put outside home windows pointed toward the “broadcasting” structures including the devices affixed atop a silo.

You have to look long and hard to see the connecting devices including atop that old silo.

Connection to the Internet via silo

Connection to the Internet via silo

The County Board has promised it was going to make a difference to broad band in Western Loudoun.

But little or nothing has happened to do so.

Some were surprised by the recent pronouncements by Loudoun’s Economic Development folks  that “Loudoun County Leads Virginia in Broadband Use.”

“According to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau,” according to the County’s Economic Development Crew, “Loudoun has the highest percentage of households with a fixed broadband (not mobile) Internet subscription in Virginia.”

Unfortunately, this is “somewhat” off the mark as they are really only talking about eastern Loudoun.

There was a broadband survey that the County conducted earlier this year.  It was in May and was extended through July 27, 2018 for residents to express their opinion.

There was an online map that showed the reaction.

Only “blue” was “great” and that was dominant in the eastern part of the County; “green” was “hit or miss” online (heavy in the West), and “red” was “terrible” (dominant in the West) and, as a result, the map of Western Loudoun looked like the onslaught of a teenage acne condition.

The survey map that was – and isn’t any longer

The survey map that was – and isn’t any longer

By the way, if you go looking for this map, as it appeared, and found in this article, it’s vanished; one source argued that’s what the County does to “hush” up what they don’t want the community to consider.

The original url was http://loudoungis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=1a995526e50c424896bfa48fdb793d9e .

When you go to that address (url) now, you will find a map and an array of only blue dots and no legend as to what the blue dots represent.  Continue reading

Got a Room at the Inn?

There’s an increase of homeless elderly (sketch by J. Flannery)

There’s an increase of homeless elderly (sketch by J. Flannery)

If you’re looking to make a difference for the less fortunate this Chanukah and Christmas Season, to help the homeless find shelter and the hungry to find food to eat, think about “Mobile Hope” in Leesburg as some Lovettsville folk are doing.

If you need some advice on what to give in the way of food, there’s a “window” into what works best in the winter, on the side of the Lovettsville Historical Society. Continue reading

Save, Don’t Pave, Our Gravel Roads

Feather Bed Bridge on an historic dirt road over Catoctin Creek

Feather Bed Bridge on an historic dirt road over Catoctin Creek

There is a growing effort to save Loudoun County’s old gravel roads from being paved.

By some accounts, Loudoun has more unpaved roads than any other County in the Commonwealth – about 250 miles – down from what some say was once 500 miles.

The County has, especially in the West, resisted attacks to develop and destroy the County’s pastoral setting; but, if something isn’t done, there will be fewer miles of unpaved roads.

Some walk or ride down Lovettsville’s Georges Mill, nearby Axline Road, Picnic Woods Road, or Ash George Road.

Over by Waterford, there’s the Clover Hill Road, and Downey Mill Road.

There are an array of roads south of Lincoln, Virginia.

In every direction near Middleburg, there are unpaved roads to discover worth a walk a run, a trot, or a ride.

Tim Jon, a columnist for the Blue Ridge Leader, has been cataloguing the beauty of the roads of Loudoun County for years.

The effort to save these roads has prompted a partnership by and between America’s Routes and the Mosby Heritage Area Association, hoping to underscore the hundreds of years of history and beauty and country peace that these roads represent. Continue reading

HERE COMES THE SUN – Solar Power

The home that Erin and Brian Palmer built with solar panels on the roof

The home that Erin and Brian Palmer built with solar panels on the roof

We’re not talking about Beatle George Harrison’s twangy tune, “Here comes the sun,” but the true power of the sun, even 93 million miles away, to warm our houses, cook our food, and keep our desktops humming on social media.

The simplest way to describe how solar does its work is that sunlight contains photons, packets of energy, that strike silicon cells, creating a flow of electrons and those electrons (traveling in one direction, a DC current) are harnessed in solar panels, later, usually “inverted,” so the current is AC, alternating, and then used in the domestic (and commercial) activities that are now mostly fossil fueled. Continue reading

Closing Comments on Malcolm Baldwin

Pamela and Malcolm Baldwin

Pamela and Malcolm Baldwin

Malcolm Baldwin last wrote to say “these are astoundingly disturbing times” and he had hoped to get together to talk about them, despite his annoying illness because, Malcolm said, “the head still works.”

By all accounts, until Malcolm wrote his last sentence in a draft op-ed on AR-1, on the day his life’s struggle ended, he was clear of mind and determined not to waste a minute of what was left of this mortal coil.

Seneca wrote that it’s not that life is so short, it is instead that so much of it is wasted.

Not a moment was wasted in Malcolm’s case.

Malcolm wrote Phyllis Randall, the County Chair, to say that “I’m doing fine with not being immortal.” Continue reading

The Threat to the Rural West

Convening the Rural Summit at Salamander Resort in Middleburg

Convening the Rural Summit at Salamander Resort in Middleburg

A Rural Summit was convened by the Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Phyllis Randall, last Friday at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, reflecting a concern by many that the push by developers, favoring suburban gentrification of Western Loudoun, threatened to build thousands of residential units that will compromise, if not destroy, the natural treasure that is Western Rural Loudoun.

Lovettsville Vice-Mayor Jim McIntyre who attended the Summit said, “I think the biggest thing we have to communicate is the value of Loudoun’s Rural West.  We can’t emphasize that enough.”

Middleburg Mayor Bridge Littleton said, “It’s all about the Comprehensive Plan.  The Comprehensive Plan is ‘the’ document which will govern land use for all Loudouners for the next 20 or 40 years.  It’s just as important to Loudouners in the East as it is to the West.  If we continue unconstrained development, it means worse schools, higher taxes, more transportation, and we destroy the Western Loudoun … we all enjoy.” Continue reading

The War to End Wars – Veterans Day

Holly Holt (holding 3-week old Harlan Holt Norman)(can you find his ear), and Dad Andy Norman (holding 3 year old Henry Holt Norman)

Holly Holt (holding 3-week old Harlan Holt Norman)(can you find his ear), and Dad Andy Norman (holding 3 year old Henry Holt Norman)

Holly Holt said, “This was such a meaningful day for us and was actually quite a challenge to get the whole family out.”

“My dad would have been so proud to see his grand babies there for him and honoring all veterans.”

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading

Sticks and Stones

“Work makes one free”  Not at Dachau!

“Work makes one free” Not at Dachau!

When I was a kid in the streets in the South Bronx, my parents, said, as my younger brother and I went out to play, that, “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

I learned as a child that’s not quite right.

Words really do matter.

There are anti-Semitic and racial and ethnic slurs, sexist remarks, that hurt terribly, and the act of the uncorrected utterance prompts others to mimic this brutal speech.

Worse, not only is it false that the words will “never hurt you,” but that broken bones, injury and death, may come along with the words that we were wrongly told as youngsters could “never hurt you. “

We had “Charlottesville,” where one woman was killed and 19 injured while white supremacists marched through this once serene and collegial university town.

White supremacists, carrying lit torches, chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

Jefferson wrote of equality in our revolutionary declaration of independence, and George Washington assured a Jewish Congregation that in America, religious tolerance would give way to religious freedom, and, drawing upon scripture, added, “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Continue reading

Symptoms of Discontent

OCTOBERFEST – PAST CHEER & BONHOMIE

OCTOBERFEST – PAST CHEER & BONHOMIE

Lovettsville, the Town of Love and community, is suffering the stress of the pull and push of a political climate that challenges the most stoic to retain composure and respect and dignity.

It’s a feeling and challenge experienced more widely than this old German-Irish settlement in Western Loudoun.  But there are lessons to learn from recent events.

In the last few weeks, first, one individual altered a business sign to insist on a Trumpian view of a Town Plaza.

After that, a woman shouted and cursed in a local restaurant, Andy’s, that a Guatemalan family visiting a friend and family member should show their passports, leave the country, there were obscenities, get the #%@& outa here, telling the family including a 7 year old, they should not speak in any language but English in this country.  The cell phone video has since been widely reported on local nbc tv, Buzzfeed and found its way onto other national news and social media outlets.

There have been various defenses for those offending individuals, corrective steps have been taken, fixing the sign, banning the cursing finger-pointing woman from Andy’s Restaurant, but these remedies only go so far, and they do not alter the offending incidents themselves, no matter how promptly these incidents were corrected by other responsible citizens. Continue reading