Reach out and touch some blog

Scobleizer: An old friend gets in touch. This nails why I started blogging to begin with. In 2001 I was living alone in Seattle for the summer and feeling isolated, so I started the blog to stay in touch with friends and family. It still works that way—not only do I keep up with what George and Craig are doing through their blogs, but a host of other people from my past, including Fury, Luisa, and other friends from high school and other parts of my life have contacted me because they found my blog in Google or some other search engine.

Houses in motion

Charlottesville Daily Progress: Varsity Hall’s small trip a huge effort. Huge indeed: the University of Virginia’s one-time infirmary building, believed to be the first dedicated college infirmary, was picked up and moved 185 feet to make room for the new McIntyre School of Commerce building to adjoin Rouss Hall. The move was apparently broadcast over a live webcam (the picture now shows the new location, which the environmental impact statement describes as being on 15th Street at the site of the former Brugh House).

I’ll miss having Varsity Hall so close to the Lawn. I took a language poetry class from Tan Lin there during my last semester at UVA in a close upper room, and despite the poor ventilation and cramped quarters it was still an evocative space for me—particularly the way the building opened into the East Gardens.

“The way a small town disappears”

The Crozet Project is an ambitiously titled site that documents a small Virginia town in transition from its industrial and agricultural roots into another pocket of suburbia. With two main features currently—an exhibit of photos centered around the town’s Fourth of July parade and Fireman’s Carnival, and a series of photos, stories, and audio clips from interviews with the town’s volunteer fire department—it appears the site is just at the beginning of something profoundly interesting as a chronicle of a Virginia home town.