Frog and Goat

The better-half received his new passport yesterday and mine arrived today. We can travel again. We sent in the paperwork to renew our passports back in late November. We wanted to renew before RFID passports become a reality.

I have to admit I think my passport picture is probably the worst one I’ve ever taken and I’ve been teased that I look like DickCheney in my work ID (must be the smirk). So saying my passport picture is lousy is not an exaggeration. I take pride in having horrible ID pictures because the person requesting the ID is always going to be pleasantly surprised that I’m not a crazy, ax-wielding killer in person.

For months I’ve been taking Leigh street to and from work because of the work on Belvedere. It wasn’t until the leaves came off the trees last fall that I noticed a sign up in an oak tree. The sign sits at the corner of Leigh and Harrison very near to Carver Elementary. The sign appears to be hand-painted and old. The oak tree obscures it when in full leaf. The sign has a design and two distinctly visible Hs. I have been trying to figure out what HH stands for. I ran through all the community names I knew and none of them matched. I asked older people who have lived in the city surrounds for more years than they’d care to admit. And no one had a clue. I guess I wasn’t asking the right people.

The other day I had to make a long looping U-turn through the neighborhood with the HH sign and low and behold there are lots of little signs that say Hartshorn Community (and in my defense this isn’t the best of neighborhoods so I don’t veer off the main drag). I used The Google and found out a wealth of information about the Hartshorn community.

From Wikipedia:

Virginia Union University is an historically black university located in Richmond, Virginia. It was founded in 1865 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. From 1867 to 1870, Union, then known as Clover Institute, was housed in a former “slave jail” owned by Mrs. Mary Ann Lumpkin, the African-American widow of the deceased white owner. In 1899, the Richmond Theological Institute (formerly Clover Institute) joined with Wayland Seminary of Washington, D.C. to form Virginia Union University. In 1932, Hartshorn Memorial College for Women, established in Richmond, Virginia in 1883, became a part of Virginia Union University.

Hartshorn Memorial College was a college created to educate African-American women. The plan was to set the college up in the same manner as Wellesley College. The first classes met in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church is still there and I drive past it frequently.

And from a VCU document about the history of the Carver area:

In 1962, the final phase of the Carver plan was implemented with additional clearance of deteriorated properties north of Leigh Street by the RRHA and then construction of the ninety-eight unit Hartshorn Home community by private developers. This ranch style housing
development offered affordable housing and also a community room and swimming pool. The homes, located north of West Leigh Street between Harrison and Bowe streets, were also close to both the G.W. Carver and Maggie Walker schools. The Hartshorn community had the distinction of being the first of its kind to be insured by the Federal Home Administration.

footnote: Richmond Times Dispatch, 6 January 1963. The Viking Development Corporation of Norfolk, Virginia and the Reynolds Aluminum Service Corporation of Richmond built Hartshorn homes. Homes initially sold for $11,500. Also Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, “The Carver Conservation and Redevelopment Area,” Staff Report, (Richmond, February 1999).

It’s fascinating to me because I’ve lived in the Richmond area my whole life and I never knew about this piece of information. It brings the whole issue of race that plagues this town into stark relief.

Do you have someone you work with that you like in general but drives you absolutely batty so much so that you wish you didn’t have to work with them? And, by not working with them doesn’t then mean you can go on to be great friends? I mean they drive you so crazy that you just want to stop the contact?

I work with someone like that. I was on the phone with my “special project” person (the person I’m helping learn how to provide content for electronic courses) telling her that I think we’re on track and how well things I think are going. You know, giving her some kudos and encouragement. My other line rings and it is the driving-me-batty person. I ignore the call because that is why God created voice mail. To take calls. As the other line stopped ringing my special project said driving-you-batty is trying to call me. I said yeah, she just tried here. We kept talking.

After I hung up driving-me-batty called me back and she sure loves to stir the pot. You know the pot–the pot of no-good-can-come-of-this-behavior. She wants to go around my special project and talk directly to the client and cut special project out of the loop. Which is just bad doo-dad. I have until tomorrow to tell driving-me-batty this is a bad idea. I have until tomorrow because driving-me-batty thinks she’s my supervisor and gives me deadlines/assignments like this all the time.

I hung up the phone and sighed. Luckily it was almost time to leave and I had to look for pictures of Monchichis on The Google. Yes, it is a strange world.

I just looked at the 10-day forecast and the lowest high was 54 and the lowest low was 30. Um? It’s January, could we get with the cold temperatures already?

Today I wore all black as did several other people. Actually there were at least 10 of us in black or mostly black. The reason? A co-worker turns 40 tomorrow and she’s having a hard time with the whole age-milestone thing (and she’s not going to be at work tomorrow). I handed out a sympathy card and a birthday card. She also received a cane. I don’t turn 40 until 2008 but I really don’t see what the big deal is.

On other news, I received a belated Christmas card from my friend who lives in Germany. She moved a year or so ago and I didn’t know what her new address was so I’ve been unable to send her letters or cards. Her card to me was funny as usual and now I’m so excited to send one back to her. I’ve decided I’ll write one draft in English and then translate a draft into German. There was once a time in my life that I could do that with some help from my German-English dictionary, now I’ll just use an online translator.

And, in the I can’t believe I just heard this news (two items today):
Item 1: A co-worker told me her adult step-children told her and their father they didn’t want to go out to eat around the holidays because someone might put something in the food. I said, “what ingredients?” I’m still unable to fathom what a lame excuse that was for preferring to eat a family holiday meal at a family member’s house because the alternative is that these people believe that someone is out to poison them.

Item 2: I mentioned this morning to a co-worker that we’ll be watching Good Will Hunting in one of the classes I’m taking this semester. This co-worker told me briefly of her conspiracy theory that Ben and Matt didn’t write that script because there’s no way at their age they could have written something so well about therapy and the character of Will. I was happy she was telling me this from her side of the wall because I couldn’t help but make the crazy face.

This morning I saw the school bus leaving the neighborhood and I thought, suckers. Today is my last day of winter break and I know on Friday afternoon I will say, “Thank goodness, I need a break.”

In the spirit of the last day, we’ve been trying to figure out what to do. Somehow putting up more shelves in the garage or dying some clothes black aren’t exactly high on our lists of fun things to do. Just necessary things that I think can wait until Friday afternoon or Saturday morning.

I joked that we could sit around the kitchen table trying to figure out what to do until about 3:30 when I’ll get bitchy because we haven’t done anything and by 4 I’ll be fine and curled on the couch with a cocktail.

Speaking of cocktails, lest you think we had a wild time here on New Year’s Eve, I fell asleep shortly after midnight with the remote in my hand. This was after I’d been caught dozing in front of the fire at least twice earlier in the night. We set off two bottle rockets at midnight and I was cheered to hear a few other fireworks in the area. The local fire department sounded their alarm to mark midnight and by about 12:05 all was quiet again.

I think sitting here at the computer is probably also not on the list of fun things to do. Thrills, chills and excitement await us today.

I read the following blurb in the NY Times this morning about the hanging of Saddam Hussein:

At President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex., a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said Mr. Bush had gone to bed before the execution took place and was not awakened. Mr. Bush had received a briefing from his national security adviser Friday afternoon, when he learned the execution would be carried out within hours, Mr. Stanzel said. Asked why Mr. Bush had gone to sleep before hearing the news, he said Mr. Bush “knew that it was going to happen.”

I’m disappointed in the President once again. Saddam Hussein was the reason why we invaded another country and are still there getting ourselves killed and getting Iraqis killed. He was the man who murdered millions of people and was the poster boy for evil. He was the man who could be considered Bush’s arch nemesis. And Bush can’t even stay awake long enough to sit and ponder the meaning of this person’s execution. I’m not saying Bush should have toasted with a martini but a moment of silence to sit and think about what it meant would have been appropriate.

Is it even possible for Bush to show a little bit of class?