{"id":4114,"date":"2021-09-25T20:29:37","date_gmt":"2021-09-26T00:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/?p=4114"},"modified":"2021-09-25T20:29:42","modified_gmt":"2021-09-26T00:29:42","slug":"september-25-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/life-in-2021\/september-25-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"September 25, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slept in until 7:45, which is pretty late for us. Neither of got much sleep on the mushy bed, despite the cottage we\u2019re staying in being well appointed otherwise. In the morning we drove a steep, rutted road to the top of a little mountain on the edge of town and hiked a short ways before heading back into town and strolling through the farmers market. Hubby can\u2019t resist the opportunity to buy alpaca wool socks and I couldn\u2019t resist the urge to buy local maple syrup mixed with sap from walnut trees. After stashing our stash back at the car, we wandered up and down the streets, in and out of shops and secret public gardens. We found a hobby shop that carried his favorite brand of puzzle, White Mountain, and ended up buying seven. His logic: \u201cWe saved money because they\u2019re two dollars cheaper here than online, and we don\u2019t have to pay postage.\u201d My logic, \u201cYou don\u2019t save money by spending it.\u201d But, it is his birthday weekend, and these will also serve as Christmas presents. We stashed our stash back at the car, and wandered some more before ending up a Chicano Boy for some outstanding taco samplers.<\/p>\n

Later, Hubby went back to the this morning\u2019s mountain while I rode my bike around town, passing some interesting yard decorations, including fake skeletons of dead rock stars displayed across the street from the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind (maybe that\u2019s how the homeowner got away with it?). The town is full of large, old homes dating to the 19th<\/sup> century, and in some cases the eighteenth century. Many of them are kept up and gorgeous; others are rundown or abandoned all together. Staunton is an old industrial and mill town, and the railroad played a huge role both pre and post-Civil War. Trains still run through, including Amtrak passenger trains.<\/p>\n

In the evening we drove to neighboring Waynesboro to walk along the South River Trail. The place is another industrial town and the first location in the world to produce the textile Lycra, a DuPont creation. From the early twentieth century into the 1960s and beyond, DuPont factories cranked out other acrylic and synthetic textiles (Rayon, Orlon, Nomex) in Waynesboro. Many of the industrial works are now shuttered but they town does still produce these textiles. It makes me sad to see closed and decaying buildings, although who knows what kind of pollutants they pumped into the nearby river. I got to thinking about what it would take to revitalize the old buildings into something different: affordable housing, education centers, shops, distilleries, clean industries of some kind. Maybe even a data center or two (they are way too highly concentrated in the N. VA area). Counting myself lucky that I grew up in a thriving community and live in a thriving community with plenty of work opportunities; wondering what I and others can do to motivate the rehabilitation of other not-so-lucky communities.<\/p>\n

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Slept in until 7:45, which is pretty late for us. Neither of got much sleep on the mushy bed, despite the cottage we\u2019re staying in being well appointed otherwise. In the morning we drove a steep, rutted road to the …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-in-2021"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4173-rotated.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4116,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions\/4116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}