City Market 26 Jul 08

City Market
Pat and I made our first trek to the Charlottesville City Market today. It was an adventure in many ways: family, friends, food, fun, and a few other f-words (but not that f-word, nope).

For that lone reader who’s not familiar with the C’ville scene, City Market is a euphemism for a parking lot filled with small-business vendors. I don’t know if the developers modeled it after Eugene’s famed (notorious?) Saturday Market, but it has a bit of that feel; it does not have as many vendors, occupy as much space, or offer as wide an array of items as Saturday Market, but it’s got scores of stalls offering food (to eat now or take home), jewelry, handicrafts, politics, and etc. with sidewalk musicians, balloons, and frivolity. Now, my baseline is from the Eugene Saturday Markets of the 1970s, so I may be off target in several ways.

Anyway, Pat and I discussed walking (I was thinking of cycling, but only one of us has bikes [yes, I now have two; sending later post]), but we abandoned that idea after we estimated that it was a 45-60 walk. We wanted to get there early enough to avoid the crowds and to see Corey. So we drove the ~2 miles.

Parking nearby was an adventure. We probably extended that ~2 miles by ~0.5 miles finding a place to park. We are now more savvy about how people park in the vicinity on Saturdays. Adherence to the rules seems a bit flexible on Sat. AM near the market.

We walked the path among the stalls a couple of times. I got coffee. Pat chatted with friends. We got some berries, flowers, habanero peppers, and free cheese. All in all, it was a good time.

Local folks will all be well ahead of us on this, as we’ve just moved into the city. However, for those who’re looking to learn a bit about Charlottesville’s City Market, here are some links:

• The Charlottesville City Parks and Recreation group’s home page for the market;
• The city’s page referring to the market;
• A page from Local Harvest about the C’ville market (check the LH site for local markets in your area);
• The Virginia buy-local folks’ page about markets in various locales; and
• A major shout-out to Planet Earth Diversified for its efforts to develop, promote, and sustain the market.

HelpIsHope is alive

So, I might be behind the times, but at least I now know that Help is Hope is up and running. Help is Hope will raise funds for victims of the disastrous earthquake in May 2008 in China. It’s staffed by a local group of volunteers. From the “about” page:

China Earthquake Relief Concert Series is initiated and organized by a volunteer team comprised of staff members and students from the University of Virginia (UVa), and supported by International Studies Office (ISO) at UVa, UVa’s Chinese Students and Scholars Society (CSSS), and various musicians and artists who are volunteering to perform on stage.

This endeavor is beyond all national divisions, racial boundaries, and religious differences. We are simply human beings, seeing others falling over and reaching out hands without thinking. Person to person.

We have one simple goal to help ease the suffering of the 4.8 million homeless and countless affected victims of the disaster to recover their lives.

Link to the Help is Hope Web site.

Airing BBB

This afternoon (3 PM local time), WMRA’s Virginia Insight will broadcast an interview about Kay Allison’s program to provide reading materials for inmates in nearby prisons, “Books Behind Bars.” The show will take telephone questions Monday at 888-967-2825, or 888-WMRA-TALK.

Books Behind Bars

Read any good books lately?

That question is getting asked more and more often these days in an unusual place… in prison.

Thanks to a Charlottesville based program, thousands of books are now making thier way into jails and penitentiaries across the commonwealth.

Prince Edward Co pioneers to be honored

I’m pleased to see that Virginia is planning to honor the students in Prince Edward County who, in a 1951 protest about the conditions of schools for black students, walked out of their school, taking action that helped Virginia to move—however, slowly—toward treating its citizens equitably. Thanks to Barbara Johns, Samuel Williams, Rev. Francis Griffin, Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and those kids who participated in the event, the Commonwealth is a better place than it was.

Middle East peace play

Over on Pacifist Posse I just dropped an entry about Jordan Farmar, a professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers, planning to conduct basketball clinics for children from Israel and Palestine. Mr. Farmar is collaborating with the Peres Peace Center, founded by Israeli President Shimon Peres, which promotes social programs, cooperation, and interaction among Israelis and Palestinians.

Link to the post on PP. File this under Shameless Self-Promotion of my other blog, if you wish.

Many moons rise

David Haldane of the Los Angeles Times reported that law enforcement officials, including some in helicopters, dispersed a large crowd of people who were dropping trowsers at passing trains. In “Police halt ‘mooning’ of trains in Laguna Niguel after a crowd of 8,000 gathers: Some bared more than their bottoms, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department says,” Mr. Haldane reported about the 29th annual event where people line up along a chain link fence close to passing train tracks and display derriere as passanger trains pass.

Police were called out to break up the annual “mooning” of Amtrak trains in Laguna Niguel on Saturday when the crowd grew to 8,000 and many began baring more than just their behinds.

“We had some mooners and some female flashers and some people who were nude altogether,” said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “There was also lots of drinking. We felt that it was in the public’s interest to shut it down.”

Weird Universe is up

Alex Boese, Paul Di Filippo, and Chuck Shepherd recently launched a site (essentially, a group blog) that, given their fabulous products individually, promises to be lots of fun. It’s called “Weird Universe,” and it’s devoted to exploring “every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only ’stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.’”

Alex Boese
Alex is best known as the curator of the Museum of Hoaxes, but he has also explored the world of weird science in his most recent book, Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.

I’ve added it to my blogroll.

Updates: Others are pointing at WU and there are, of course, the links from the main authors (e.g., Alex Boese) (thanks, Liz).

KAJ and ALA

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the all-time greats in basketball (many would say the all-time greatest and I’d have a hard time disagreeing with them) as well as a remarkably accomplished writer, has been named honorary chair of the American Library Association’s (ALA) “Library Card Sign-up Month” for September 2008. The ALA conducts this campaign to promote local library membership among children and youth. See the press announcement on the ALA site.