No. 86: Trash chair thoughts
I wanted to take a day trip last weekend and a friend suggested we go to Charlottesville, Virginia. It was an easy, 2.5-hour drive from D.C.; I’m still trying to figure out the “Don’t Tread on Me” vanity plate we saw that said WHL GUN. We passed a gun store along the way and the parking lot was overflowing with cars. Memorial day sale. Free grief with every purchase.
I am able to empathize with a lot of people on issues that we don’t agree on, but I find it impossible to imagine a single, realistic scenario where someone would truly need a gun. I’m sure they can be fun and useful; but they can also be—in fact, they are expressly designed to be—lethal weapons. No one should ever have to take another person’s life so violently. There are not fine people on both sides.
No one is fine.
We stopped at an antique mall where I bought a paint-by-number of a snowy scene, and a paper fan from the Joseph W. Bliley Funeral Home, offering “Services that are distinctive, yet moderate in cost,” and “Ample parking space in a private lot.” Looks like they’re still in business. We passed towns named after gun magnates, the people who made them rich, and the founding fathers who ensured it would stay that way no matter how bad it got.
How bad does it have to get?
We ate BLTs at the Blue Moon Diner, browsed a used bookstore, walked around UVA’s campus, and took a tour of Monticello. Four people thanked me for wearing a t-shirt that says “our bodies, our futures, our abortions.” I wasn’t sure how that was going to play in a town best known for its deadly 2017 “unite the right” rally.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers (erected in 2019) at UVA reminds us that, from 1776-1865, Virginia held more enslaved people than any other state. The Robert E. Lee Statue in Market Street Park is marked “permanently closed” on Google Maps. Someone has planted grass and sprinkled straw in the bare dirt where it stood until it was removed in 2021. The street where Heather Heyer was killed has since been renamed in her honor. Five years later, chalk is still scribbled on the red brick walls, flowers tied to a “Do Not Enter” sign. I’ve been to hundreds of street protests. I can understand how it all happened.
But never why.
The late-afternoon light at Monticello was perfect for the “nickel shot.” It’s a beautiful house with an even more beautiful view. Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of human beings over his lifetime. He loved mac and cheese and fathered several children with a woman he owned.
Was it all worth it for fresh kale and a few good sunsets?