Smoketree

 

I'm keeping an eye out for the "smoke." :-) The flowers, it's said, are clustered in a large open terminal panicles with a fluffy grayish-buff appearance resembling a cloud of smoke over the plant, from which the name derives.

Recital

 

It can be tricky shooting photographs in a theater. I'm still thinking about what I could have done under the circumstances to account for the lights on stage as compared to the darkness in the auditorium. Not wanting to interfere with the recital, I only photographed the musicians as they made their entrances rather than during the recital itself, resulting in some blurring of the images. On the other hand, I sort of like the way that helps capture some of the energy that was in the room.

Peebles Theater

 

CNU

 

Yesterday found me on my way over to the Peebles Theater on the Christopher Newport University's (CNU)  Newport News campus to attend the senior recital of a very talented friend.

The Year That Broke America

 

Finished reading Rice's book. The cover actually describes the contents very well, showing how Rice weaves together several seemingly disparate stories into a single narrative, namely the year that broke America. That year being 2000. There is much here that any of us who lived through that period know very well: the Bush vs. Gore election and subsequent controversy, Trump's first forays into politics, plus events that frankly had receded into the dusty corners of my mind, namely Janet Reno's handling of the Elián Gonzalez case and, for instance, the sequence of events leading up to 9/11.

So, did all these events "break" America? Obviously not. Any country that can go through all of the above and still survive Covid is, in my opinion, doing well. Nevertheless, it serves us well to remember how we got to where we are and for that we can be grateful to authors like Andrew Rice for reminding us.

St. Francis

 

Judging just from the sheer number of St. Francis statues in and around town, one might think he was the patron saint of Williamsburg! So far as I know, there is no formal connection between the two. Still, I think St. Francis might have felt himself very much at home here. :-)

Edging