lighting up the night

cranes all over the viewshed

the one on the left won't be up much longer since that building is almost topped out --- the one behind the plaza will be another two or three months i guess --- the one in the foreground will be going on for most of the next year --- none of them will negatively alter my viewshed, atlhough some of the folks at plaza midtown are going to feel kinda hemmed in before it's all done --- and all three towers are residential, representing another thousand or so residents in the neighborhood --- yay, midtown!

the blue ridge

we spent a fine day saturday driving up the blue ridge parkway --- a section of it was closed above asheville and much of the route over the balsam mountains --- but we got on at spruce pine and drove 80 or 90 miles north and then back south until the road barricades --- 

hiked around linvale falls, which i had never seen before --- purty wonderful ---  one of your more interesting water falls, geologically speaking

grandfather mountain is now a biosphere reserve or something like that, which is part of why they built the linn cove viaduct (1987) around part of the mountain, and the last segment of the parkway to be completed, more than fifty years after construction began in 1935 --- seeing it was another first 

moses cone's flat top manor was all closed up, but it didn't matter --- the place is really spectacular

the parkway is one of our greatest treasures and even in the winter is really wonderful,with all the browns and grays of the deciduous trees and huge swaths of dark green of the rhododendron and an occasional splash of color from some lichen-covered stone or the galax --- and there weren't very many other people at all, which was luxurious

sliding in to the solstice

the light is awfully weak this time of year, only days away from the solstice

cataloochee

an excellent weekend in asheville with an old friend i hadn't seen in seven or eight years --- today we drove over to cataloochee, where i had been wanting to go since the national park service re-introduced elk in 2001 --- it was wonderful to sit along the road for a while just watching them do their elk thing --- the valley itself was simply spectacular, with great buildings, and the drive up and across cataloochee ridge on a fine gravel road was outstanding --- will definitely go back

errata

another almost 5 hr long meeting last night --- it was after 9 before i got home --- i'm always so wound up after one of those and just being downtown after dark

a long day at the office today before putting it all away in anticipation of a long weekend in asheville catching up with mr. woodall, whom i haven't seen in years

i just wish that new building wasn't messing up my winter solstice sunset, dammit

dex just wants to be on my chest

nothing will make this right

finally, the country and the world knows what we knew all along: the u.s. was torturing people, pure and simple --- what we did at abu ghraib and guantanamo in the name of national security was every bit as evil and cruel as anything the spanish inquisition did in the name of religious orthodoxy --- we even tortured innocent people to death even as we trampled our own civil liberties in our terror after sept 11 --- tenet, rumsfeld, w, and most of all the evil one himself, cheney, ought to be in chains on their way to the hague right now to be tried for war crimes --- they won't be, but we can have the satisfaction of knowing their names will go down in history as the worst of what this country has to offer, or in bush's case, maybe just the dumbest ---

bon voyage and merry christmas

rain all morning then cleared off just in time for the egleston xmas parade --- excellent going-away soiree for a-ron this evening --- twenty people in the house, including a grammy nominee, which impressed the hell out of robert

i liked the guys on the seventh floor in their santa claus caps drinking champagne

working and walking

i've had my nose to the keyboard virtually none-stop for the last week but made good progress on the xmas-deadline project --- interesting buildings and i've learned a lot about the beginnings of tennessee, east tennessee especially, that i didn't know before


i would really like to know exactly how old is the cottonwood (a city champion) in front of the academy of medicine --- it's been sad watching it slowly lose its limbs --- each spring i wonder if it's going to leaf out again

blount mansion, original story-and-a-half, hall-and-parlor house built in the mid 1790s and added on to multiple times until it looked more or less like it does today by the end of the war of 1812 --- built by a scoundrel who was governor of southwest territories, one of first tennessee senators, and the first senator to be impeached --- exactly how the house came to be called "mansion" is beyond me, but it's a national historic landmark

across the street from the blount house is the craighead-jackson house, built in 1818, front porch added in the 1880s and other alterations after that --- restored in 1963-1965, using excellent paneling and what not from the poor house below (1790s) that was torn down in 1965

light time

xmas lights going up, including in my unit ---

probably my favorite christmas tree this season

the euphorbia trigona all decorated up for the first time --- it presents itself in a far more orderly fashion, not to say blob-like, than did the giant euphorbia tirucalli, which i chopped down this summer but which has now re-sprouted