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Brambly Park
This photo is taken in Scott's Addition - it's going through extensive gentrification at the moment... tearing down buildings, turning others into apartments. I think there are at least ten breweries in this area. I spent five hours taking some photos since I don't normally walk here and I hope to leave Richmond soon. Photos capture a moment in time... this area doesn't look today as it did 50 or 100 years ago, and who knows what it will look like in another 5, 10, 50, 100.
Urth Uneek Fingering
1 skein = 435.0 yards (397.8 meters), 100 grams
Purchased at:
Colorful Stitches Fine Yarn in Williamsburg, Virginia
Purchase date:
August 9, 2025
Dye lot:
20225
Colorway:
3012 Gusty
In addition to writings by local history authors living in the area, as well as books by distant writers with roots in the area or with research interests but no personal connections, there are also national series that are visually oriented. They use a template and collect local photos, names, places and descriptions to produce sturdy hardback books for sale to libraries and individuals as a keepsake containing the events and sequences of developments of the place.
Verbal histories allow nuance and careful distinctions to be articulated, as well as less certain ideas to be hinted at, but only the visual accounts can reach the retina and visual frame of familiar meanings and places in a reader's head. Observant readers can dig deeply into the visual detail, while more casual browsers can flip through the pages until something attracts their attention and from there stir thoughts, comparisons, reflections and potential personal connections or interest areas. Together the visual and the verbal communicate much about earlier lives and livelihoods that may be altogether unexpected or strange to modern readers.
Turning to see the rows and rows of bookshelves in the city library, grouped by librarian cataloging classification (Dewey Decimal System, it seems), the aggregated writings of many generations of thinkers, compilers, and analytical thinkers is staggering to imagine. Probably the majority of the names listed as authors are no longer living, or at least no longer actively writing, since the productive life of many non-fiction writers lasts only while there is a source of economic support (day-job or employment adjacent or directly connected to research, writing, and teaching); say, between five and 25 years. For non-fiction writers there is a similar need to earn a living or to be independently wealthy (small income, small requirement; bigger lifestyle, bigger reserves needed), but there is also the creative spark: some have a lot to say and explore, but others have just one or two stories to tell the world.
Visiting a library, small or large, is a reminder of the way knowledge is made, distributed, and made use of. Much of the authoring experience is solitary, but the cumulative linguistic and cultural capital that is stored up gains worth by how widely it is shared and lives on through discussion or reflection from others. In other words, libraries are the tangible expression of intellectual and emotional work - at once the result of a "lone wolf" but also magnified by collective use and reuse. In this way, the words and images (and recorded music, voice, movies) are both timeless (not mortal) and are time travelers (voices of other times and places). There is a connection spanning generations, even though the inked pages do not grow old and disappear.
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