I’m a minority. And no, not just in the 6-foot-1 blogger/balding-historian-with glasses-whose-name-ends-in-“Z” way.
The extent of my minority is revealed in the hulking 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States that is just hitting the stands.
The information therein is compiled by the good offices of the U.S. Census Bureau, which thankfully collects this data to provide plenty of fodder for, um, bloggers like me. They’ve undertaken this task since 1878.
According to the SAUS’ Table No. 1064, Commuting by State: 2007, in getting to work, just 10.4 percent of the U.S. population carpools. Some 4.9 percent use public transportation, and a mere 2.8 percent walk.
2.8 percent!
What population walks the most to and from work? The numbers are these: Washington, D.C. (11.1 percent); Alaska (8.4 percent); New York (6.3 percent); and Vermont (6.2 percent).
Virginia barely rings the bell at 2.2 percent.
The greatest use of public transit: D.C (36.4 percent — yes, the Metro is congested); New York (26.4 percent — unless there’s a Subway Series); and New Jersey (10.4 percent). After them, it’s pitiful. Virginia comes along toward the tail end of the train at 3.8 percent.
Since these numbers were finalized in 2007, my hope is that there’s been some rise due to inflation in transportation prices. My bus rides have gotten more crowded, and I certainly see more people on bikes than I used to.
“Throughout the nation, the number of people bicycling to work has increased 43 percent since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,” quoth a Dec. 2009 Reuters report, “as more cities encourage residents to recognize the benefits of using their bikes for transportation.
"Among U.S. cities, Portland, Ore., showed the biggest gain, tripling its proportion of bike commuters between 2000 and 2008 to a nation-leading 6 percent. Seattle, Minneapolis and Sacramento also had relatively high rates.”
But folks taking the shank’s mare, not as much.
However, I can tell you, through strictly anecdotal observation as I watch the cars whip past me while waiting to cross Monument Avenue, that most people drive alone, and far too many of them do so while, according to my guesstimation: A) talking on a cell phone or using some portable device (85 percent); B) drinking or eating (30 percent); C) singing to music from either a broadcast or personal listening mechanism (15 percent); D) Applying makeup (4 percent); E) talking to invisible passengers (3 percent); F) smoking (1.5 percent); G) reading (.2 percent). Yes, I’ve seen people with newspapers and/or books spread across their steering wheels, which is a behavior that I enjoy seeing from the perspective of one who traffics in words, but it also makes me fearful for my life and the lives of others.
The official SAUS backs me up, sort of.
Something like 76.1 percent of 2007’s U.S. commuters drove to work alone. Our fellow countrymen sacrifice an average of 25.3 minutes commuting each way. I can rack up those minutes walking, but that’s because I tend to follow the Three G’s of the Purposeful Saunter: Gawk, Gab and Gallivant.
Now, I know why these figures are this way. Unless you live in a metroplex where it’s just more convenient to get around on foot or by using public transit, the best way to get anywhere is to drive. And that, in my 100 percent personal opinion, is the largest share of the problem. And I really want Richmond to get Zip Cars.
Then when I get asked, sometimes quizzically, “You’re from here?” and I reply, “Yes,” the next question is, “Where’d you go to school?”
This doesn’t mean Virginia Commonwealth University, where I spent six arduous years scrupulously avoiding math requirements, and then trying to learn in the Spanish language in three crammed classes.
No, that refers to high school.
I think this shibboleth needs overturning. Frankly, you are distinctively Richmond if the hospital where your nativity occurred went apartment/condo. Check mine, Richmond Memorial. Then you have Stuart Circle, Johnston Willis and Grace Hospital.
But even beyond that, I think you’re a Richmonder if you get "The Twinge.”
I got it when reading the news yesterday morning about the refurbishing of the executive offices in City Hall.
I guess I’m supposed to be annoyed by this, considering the thousands of dollars involved, but, to me, it’s deferred maintenance. I lately spent some time roaming the halls of the place, and I have to tell you, while not exactly a dump, it’s fairly close.
Not long ago, the heating and air conditioning of the building was out of whack. Despite the vaunted “re-cladding” that stopped portions of the cornice from falling on the sidewalk, the building’s insides still date from 1971. It is lowest-bidder municipal construction, with metropolitan hues of taupe and ecru, as well as bad fluorescents, all of which give the impression of a place you could wash out by lifting off the roof and inserting a hose. The best part about the building is its under-utilized observation deck.
But no, “The Twinge” didn’t come from the money getting spent during a downturn in the economy or from the kvetchers and cavilers online at the Times-Dispatch tut-tutting about a “cesspool of corruption.” It didn’t really activate, either, when my next-door office neighbor, editor Jack Cooksey, said the new curtains in the Mayor’s office look like the sliding blackout variety from 1970s Holiday Inns. It’s not the money that’s disconcerting, it’s the appalling bad taste.
One poster put it well: What do we expect, that the mayor’s office should be in a trailer in the back?
It is our City Hall and should reflect the higher standards of Richmond, and be dressed to impress whatever visitor or stranger happens to show up there.
“The Twinge” to me occurred about halfway into the newspaper article, being familiar with the several years of City Hall’s physical-plant plaints. And I thought: We just should’ve never moved out of Old City Hall. Richmond transacted its political, municipal and judicial business there from 1895 to 1977.
“The Twinge,” for a Richmonder, is this: If the mayor still had his office in that grand building, the repairs would be renovations, not remodeling. Nobody would question it as anything but necessary.
And please. No light-bulb jokes.
While on some errand of research or another several years ago, I was spooling through the microfilm at the Richmond Public Library when this picture caused me to stop.
The artist’s rendering is of the 1896 proposal for the Jefferson Davis Monument by New York architect Percy Griffin. (Griffin went on to design such structures as the Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown, N.Y.)
This massive domed structure was a gigantic memorial — in my view — to Southern Post-Traumatic We Lost the War Syndrome. Grief and nostalgia conflated and inflated memories, and thus this grandiose thing was intended for the middle of Monroe Park. The technical term for it is baldacchino, an ornamental canopy.
An elaborate groundbreaking ceremony occurred on June 25, 1896 (the illustrated page is dated June 30).
The $210,000 pricetag proved too high (thankfully), and it took a few other failed groups and efforts until the United Daughters of the Confederacy hired locals William C. Noland and Edward Virginius Valentine to design something within their budget. On June 3, 1907, it was unveiled on Monument Avenue.
But, should the occasion arise, they can dust this off. As to the location, I’ll let future generations hash that out. By then, rather than a boring statute, they can put a hologram of me under the dome to interact with citizens and visitors. The Harry Hologram could say clever things that I might’ve said, or could be reasonably attributed. Except, of course, it would only work half the time.
First, the ongoing discussion pertaining to the Lumpkin’s Jail site and the nearby graveyards, beneath a parking lot now used by Virginia Commonwealth University. The Richmond Slave Trail Commission favors this location for a museum about the tragic and lengthy history of slavery here.
At 11 a.m. this morning, a press conference called by the commission was scheduled but was canceled without explanation.
If you’re reading this as a relative newcomer to Richmond, the name probably doesn’t mean much to you, but if you’ve been around long as I have, it’s like getting revisited by yesterday’s too-spicy lunch. It’s 2010, and the new decade seems afflicted by a woozy hangover from the good-old, bad-old days of the late 1990s and early Aughts.
El-Amin was one of our more tempestuous Council members, who in 2003 ended up sentenced to federal prison. But he’s back and in fine form.
There was slavery, then the war to end it, and Richmond is a major hub for the study of both. Yesterday, the Board and staff of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar and the Richmond National Battlefield Park, operated by the National Park Service (NPS), announced the union of their visitors and retail sections.
“This site will serve as the region’s 'Gateway to the Civil War,' ” the center’s press release explained. It’ll offer visitors a one-stop-shop. “Visitors can gather information about the region’s battlefields, experience In the Cause of Liberty, the Center’s flagship exhibit, or discover what Richmond’s role was during the war in the NPS exhibit space.
"The new visitor-information area will be located on the ground level of the Pattern Building and is slated to open in October 2010, just in time to welcome visitors for the 150th commemoration of the Civil War.”
The two entities have shared the 8.3-acre landmarked site along the James River since 2006. The long-overdue joining-together will give tourists a far more convenient and accessible entry into the city’s Civil War story.
As is typical with Richmond, we take a step forward, just to take one back.
Back in the days when WRVA played music and I was also member of the Circle 8 Square Dance Club, there was a song to which we actually danced called “Poor Old Kalijah” about a mute wooden Indian who couldn’t win the affections of an antique Indian maid.
I don’t know if this song figured in any of the conversations about the future of what is commonly known as the Diamond Brave. The sculpture is actually named Connecticut, and it's a constant thread through the past couple decades in the career of sculptor Paul DiPasquale, who built it.
And right now, it’s a 2,400-pound, 10-foot-tall challenge for the Richmond Metropolitan Authority, which needs to have the former Richmond Braves mascot removed by April 15, the start of the 2010 season, when the Richmond Flying Squirrels begin playing ball at the Diamond.
The RMA, in charge of the city’s expressways among other things, is the regional agency that also built and is responsible for the much-discussed Diamond.
The RMA has issued a Request For Proposal to move the sculpture to another location, “preferably within the greater Richmond area.”
To assist in choosing the proper disposition of the sculpture, the RMA appointed a group to oversee the decision. According to RMA spokesperson Linda McElroy, this includes: herself; RMA director Jim Kennedy; Venture Richmond’s Jim Watkins; Suzanne Savery, Valentine Richmond History Center's director of collections and interpretation; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' chief conservator and deputy director for collections management, Stephen Bonadies.
“A number of criteria will be involved in the process,” the RMA’s press release reads, “including, the proposer’s ability to maintain and care for the artwork, its ability to pay for the sculpture’s relocation costs, the future location and the public access to the sculpture. The committee will also take into account the proposer’s commitment to the sculpture’s long-term sustainability.”
It’s a tall order to fill.
“That’s wild, isn’t it?” DiPasquale said of the effort. He’s never known of an RFP offered to relocate a public artwork, and he hopes it’ll work. The sculpture is a coprighted work of art, meaning that DiPasquale has final say on its disposition.
“Selecting a place for public art is always unique,” he observes with a good-natured, if weary, chuckle. (His other best-known sculpture is the statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue.) “Not just in recent times but since ancient times. But they are trying to do it the best way they see fit.”
He and Connecticut have been together a long while. DiPasquale was teaching at Northern Virginia Community College outside of D.C. when he chose in 1981 to commit to making a huge piece of public art dedicated to the native peoples. He quit his job and got permission to locate the sculpture at Calvert and Connecticut streets in D.C., overlooking Rock Creek Park.
“I was rather naïve at the time,” he recalls. “I didn’t know how much would be involved.”
He ran through the $10,000 he’d saved for construction of the colossal Indian of isocyanate foam with a skin of dyed fiberglass and epoxy resin. He raised more money in the process by selling 50 original etchings for $200, that sold out in two weeks.
The effort attracted the news media and got into the pages of the New York Times. This drew the attention of both Ed Slipek Jr., then in charge of the Best Products Showrooms stores real estate, and VMFA curator Fred Brandt.
Between them, they got the concept onto the desk of Best Products chief and pioneering contemporary-art collector Sydney Lewis, who favored putting it atop a suburban Washington, D.C., store. And that’s what happened.
“They had it for two years and paid me rent,” DiPasquale says.
Then Lewis retired, and Connecticut was suddenly homeless. The artist began shopping around for locations, but it was in 1985, with the Diamond’s creation and the arrival of the Braves, that the place and situation seemed perfect.
Signet Bank purchased the sculpture and gave it to the baseball stadium. “That paid for my barn,” says DiPasquale, referring to his Fulton Hill studio.
All was well until last year, when the question was finally settled of whether the Braves would stay or go. Since then, somebody somehow got in and ripped off a piece of a finger from the sculpture. McElroy can’t explain how the digital thieves did it.
“We cannot imagine how somebody could’ve stolen this piece," she says. "It would’ve taken a lot to get a finger off that statue. Whoever did it climbed up onto the concession-stand area, climbed down under his arm and squeezed through to get to that part of the finger.”
Dexterous, in other words.
Clearly something must be done with Connecticut; the Flying Squirrels don’t want him. Whether anybody else does remains to be seen.
“I think people will miss it being there,” DiPasquale says. “But they could get used to it if it’s displayed elsewhere, in an appropriate manner — and I should emphasize that — and an interesting one in the public-art realm. It served Richmond beyond being a mascot.”
He thinks the group making the decision is a good one, though he might’ve suggested adding the city’s community-development director, Rachel Flynn, and representatives from the city's economic-development and tourism departments.
Whether Central Virginia Indians may have reason to want it is a question fraught with political and emotional issues. Some Indians seem to like it, others not. According to the artist, “They’ve said, ‘Well, it’s not a Virginia Indian. It looks more like a Plains Indian.' ” Conversely, California Indians he's spoken to believe it to be more Eastern in appearance. “I guess it’s like saying, ‘Make a piece about an Asian,’ " says DiPasquale. "There’s any number of nationalities and ethnic components: Is it Japanese, Chinese, Thai?”
DiPasquale plans to make a presentation to the Virginia Council on Indians in March to gauge their interest in the statue.
