Spider

I got out of bed around 3AM to journey to the porcelain facility. While there, my eyes caught sight of a small black spider on the wall near the bathtub. It was making a web. I watched it for a while. It had started the web in darkness, and I recalled that web-making spiders are usually blind or nearly blind. The spider creates its web without ever seeing it. A web-making spider tunes its web so the web will vibrate when struck by certain frequencies. These spiders “hear” their world through vibration sensors in their legs. A spider can also “pluck” its web’s silk strings and monitor the echoes that return in order to locate things on its web. They’re amazing little critters.

Finally my task was done and I was ready to leave. But first, I grabbed the toilet brush and whacked the spider. One whack sent the spider to spider heaven. I marvel at the things a spider can do, but that doesn’t make me want to live with one.

Gnat Nuisance

It’s mid-summer and I’m fighting the usual summertime battle with the no-see’ums that get into my house. At least, I think they’re called no-see’ums. Notwithstanding the name, you actually can see them if the lighting is right, but they’re tiny and I believe they could pass through an ordinary window screen. I once had a camper van and the manufacturer bragged that their window screens were impervious to no-see’ums, so ordinary screens won’t stop them.

No-see’ums bite, and these critters don’t seem to bite, so either they’re not no-see’ums or they meet their ends before they grow to the biting stage. I considered they might be fruit flies, but they’re smaller than fruit flies. They’re about 1 – 2 mm long. I considered they might be drain flies, but they’re smaller than drain flies, too. Plus, they don’t look like the pictures I’ve seen of fruit flies or drain flies.

Whatever they are, I call ‘em gnats and they’re a nuisance that I don’t need. They’re attracted to my kitchen garbage can. My kitchen can has a lid and I keep it closed, but the gnats find a way in. The garbage can isn’t hermetically sealed, after all, and any tiny crack between the can and lid that allows air (and odor) inside the can to leak out is all the gnats require for their miniscule noses to home in on the garbage. There, apparently, they reproduce. One day I open the lid and hundreds of gnats fly out. Okay, dozens. Whatever. All I can tell you is, it’s a lot of gnats.

I don’t know how other people kill these things, but I use a vacuum cleaner. When they light upon my kitchen cabinets, I switch on the vacuum and suck them up using the wand. They seem to be drawn to my oak veneer kitchen cabinets. Sometimes they light upon my kitchen’s white walls. Since they’re dark in color, they stand out pretty well, and they get suctioned up. Yesterday after lunch, I suctioned 25 of them into the next world, and after dinner I got another 40. It’s time consuming, though. I might spend a half hour killing a single flock of the critters.

Stores sell fly strips, so why not sell gnat strips? There are various home remedies, of course, which focus mainly on preventing them rather than eradicating them. I guess I’ll keep the vacuum cleaner near the kitchen and plugged in, ready to go at a moment’s notice. The battle isn’t quite a stalemate. The gnats are definitely on the losing side. Some people get their thrill by shooting a deer or a bird. I suction tiny black gnats out of the air. Basically, it’s the same thing.

Headlines

With immediate thoughts.

Boeing’s already-delayed Starliner spacecraft suffers propellant leak during engine testing >>

They’re going to get these rocket ships right one day. Mark my words, the day will come when almost all of them don’t blow up. There will be no more drama. Somebody pushes a button, the rocket goes up, and it’s over. Boring. Enjoy these days of exploding rockets while we still have them.

Hot Cheetos and Takis under fire after snacking teen needs gallbladder removal >>

The teen’s mom blames Cheetos and Takis but no one really knows why these things happen. I lost my gall bladder years ago. I blamed fresh vegetables. Since then, I’ve avoided vegetables. For breakfast I’ll eat bacon and eggs with extra bacon grease. Sometimes breakfast is hot dogs. For lunch, takeout burgers, extra cheese and mayo, hold the lettuce and tomato, and a side of fries, extra greasy, extra salty. Occasionally I’ll eat a salad, but I know I’m doing myself no favor. Those garden salads are probably the reason that my cholesterol is too high to measure. Meh.

'Nobody needs to die of AIDS anymore,' Elton John says >>

When it comes to medical science, if you can’t believe Elton John then who can you believe? At any rate, I think what Mr. John really meant to say was “No wealthy celebrities need to die of AIDS anymore.” And no doubt he’s right.

Is Trump a Russian operative assigned to destroy America? >>

Wait, that wasn’t a headline. Just a question I’ve wondered about. Sorry.

Wealthy Shoppers Push Aside Trade Dispute Fears to Fuel LVMH >>

You may be asking, “What the heck is a LVMH?” If so, you’re not a wealthy shopper. Don’t worry, you have plenty of company. LVMH (actual name: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE) is a multinational luxury goods conglomerate. And their business is booming. It’s nice to know that Trump’s tariffs aren’t hurting the wealthy class. That wouldn’t be right.

Trump Will Spend $12 Billion Bailing Out Farmers Hurt by His Trade War >>

Who are these un-American farmers griping about not being able to sell their soybeans because of Trump’s tariffs? They should take a tip from our wealthy class and go shopping. Buy a few feel-good trinkets for the nightstand. I suggest a Steiff Louis Vuitton Teddy Bear for $2.1 million, or a Shimansky soccer ball for $2.59 million. For those who prefer something a little pricier, there are plenty to choose from, including a Lamborghini Aventador Model Car for $4.6 million. I don’t know how many soybeans our farmers have to sell to buy one of these trinkets, but I suspect it’s a lot. Better get to work, guys.

Special Deal

I went out for fast food tonight. The fridge was empty and I needed to pick up some frozen dead food for my freezer. On the way home I pulled into the BK parking lot. I had decided to buy a Whopper for supper. A Whopper plus tax is exactly five dollars. But BK was running a special: Whopper, Chicken Sandwich, or Spicy Chicken Sandwich—any two for six dollars. Sounded good to me.

“Let me have a whopper and a spicy chicken,” I told the cashier.

“We don’t have any spicy chicken and we can’t get any,” she replied.

“Oh,” I said. “You know, the special is a lot less special if you don’t have the special in stock.”

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll have a whopper and a regular chicken sandwich.”

“We can put spicy sauce on your chicken sandwich if you’d like,” the cashier offered.

“Yeah, do that.”

I told myself that I would eat the whopper tonight and the chicken sandwich tomorrow for lunch. So I put the chicken sandwich into the fridge and ate the whopper. After that, my will power lasted about 30 seconds before I got up and retrieved the chicken sandwich and nuked it. I cut it in half, rationalizing that I would eat half tonight and half tomorrow. That didn’t happen. I didn’t even pause between the first half and the second half. I used to have will power. I know because I remember: I was a two and a half pack-a-day smoker and I quit smoking. Will power, I had it! And now? Phttt. Gone with the proverbial wind.

The sandwiches were tasty, with the requisite amount of fat and sodium. The spicy sauce was so mild as to be undetectable. I could’ve sprinkled red pepper flakes on the fillet and made my own spicy sandwich, and it really would have been spicy. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Next time.

It was a big meal but I worked off the calories by mowing my yard. Yup, I drove that lawn tractor around the yard like it was a Porsche 911. Don’t laugh—steering is more work than it looks.

Trump Explained

I have friends who are ardent Trump supporters. I’ve always been ambivalent about Trump. I think it’s obvious that he has narcissistic personality traits, tells more than his share of lies, and wastes time becoming embroiled in Twitter feuds with people we’ve never heard of, but that doesn’t automatically mean he can’t do a good job as president.

However, there is one thing that might disqualify him from being president. I’m not a lawyer and I doubt Trump could be arrested for this, but he might be impeached for it. So what is this one thing? I’m asking the question that surely others must be thinking:

Is Donald Trump a Russian operative?

That sounds harsh, but look at the evidence. Throughout his campaign and during his presidency, Trump created divisiveness both within America and between America and its longtime allies. He has publicly and vociferously attacked NATO. He has attacked the European Union. He has withdrawn the US from at least one treaty, the TPP, for which there was broad agreement that it was a good deal for the US. But he has put nothing in its place. It’s possible Trump thought he could work out a better deal than the TPP offered, but if so, it didn’t work. The other 11 countries have said, in so many words, we don’t need you. They have moved on and aren’t looking back. They are building their own trading order without us.

As a candidate, Trump accepted an endorsement from former KKK grand wizard David Duke—a virtual green light to various white supremacist groups. When anti-Nazi protesters clashed with pro-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Trump said there were “good people” on both sides. (No there weren’t; there were good people on one side and wannabe-Nazis on the other side.) Trump started a trade war which looks likely to cost American jobs as well as create higher prices. Trump has been trying to dismantle the ACA (Obamacare) piece by piece. He makes baseless slurs on immigrants. He enacted a Muslim travel ban when, in fact, Americans are far more likely to meet their deaths at the hands of other Americans with guns. He has nominated extreme and unqualified Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials who then went to war with their own departments. He has criticized our court system because he dislikes any check on his power. He has even gone to war with his own executive branch (especially the intelligence community). He has relentlessly attacked America’s news media, calling any news story he dislikes “fake news”. He has attacked Congress, including belittling and insulting any Senator or Representative who is critical of him. He is un-American in so many ways, and doing so many things to damage America’s reputation, that the only rational conclusion is that he is an operative for a foreign power that wants to hurt America. Which country would that likely be? Here’s a hint: Trump’s White House has many ties to Russia. (This chart on Politico is worth a look.)

On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump called on Russia to find 30,000 “missing” Hillary emails. Within hours, Russian hackers attempted to hack into Clinton Campaign email accounts. Whether or not Trump was speaking in jest (as he later claimed), there is little doubt the Russian hackers were responding to Trump’s request.

Trump’s actions have hurt Americans (see How has Trump hurt Americans) but until now I have attributed those actions to hard-right conservative principles. But with his performance in Helsinki, I now have to consider that maybe, as some have said, Trump really is “Putin’s poodle.”

Trump Deals A Shocking Blow to Our Intelligence Community

Seven U.S. intelligence agencies including both parties on Capitol Hill have concluded that Russia meddled in America’s 2016 presidential election. Those agencies are:

1. Central Intelligence Agency
2. Office of the Director of National Intelligence
3. F.B.I.
4. National Security Agency
5. Justice Department
6. House Intelligence Committee
7. Senate Intelligence Committee

American Intelligence Community:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.” Jan. 6, 2017 > link
Intelligence assessment by the C.I.A., National Security Agency, F.B.I. and Office of the Director of National Intelligence

“The director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment.” Nov. 11, 2017
Mike Pompeo, C.I.A. director

“As you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain.” Feb. 17, 2018 > link
Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, President Trump's national security adviser

“In 2015, Russia began engaging in a covert influence campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” April 27, 2018 > link
House Intelligence Committee

“There is no doubt that Russia undertook an unprecedented effort to interfere with our 2016 elections.” May 16, 2018 > link
Richard M. Burr, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee

“In 2016, Russia conducted an unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the US electoral and political process.” June 8, 2018 > link
Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence

“The Committee concurs with intelligence and open-source assessments that this influence campaign was approved by President Putin.” July 3, 2018 > link
Senate Intelligence Committee

“The blame for election interference belongs to the criminals who commit election interference.” July 13, 2018
Rod J. Rosenstein, Deputy attorney general

“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.” July 16, 2018 > link
Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence

Donald Trump’s responses:

“Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.” July 12, 2017

“And by the way folks just in case you’re like curious, no Russia did not help me, O.K.? Russia. I call it the Russian Hoax, one of the great hoaxes.” Sept. 22, 2017

“He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.” Nov. 11, 2017

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!” June 28, 2018

“They said they think it’s Russia; I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” July 16, 2018

And In today’s news:

The White House has declined to rule out accepting a Russian proposal for the questioning in the United States of Americans, including former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, sought by the Kremlin for “illegal activities”. > link

This is an outrageous request and should have been immediately denounced as such. But Trump was willing to consider it. Is Trump a loyal American? The fact that he would consider, for even a second, turning over a former US ambassador to the Russians for interrogation is unacceptable.

Either we and our allies have the least competent intelligence agencies in the world, or Russia meddled in our election because they wanted to help Trump get elected, and Trump is okay with that. I can’t spin these events any other way.

If Donald Trump is not a Russian operative, he’s doing a great impression of one.

The Raid Reaction

Occasionally I find a cockroach in my house. I went into my kitchen a few minutes ago and found a roach sitting atop my electric range like he owned the place. I grabbed a can of Raid and began spraying him generously. He didn’t like that. He began running and dodging and trying to hide, but I was onto him. I sprayed the Raid relentlessly, following him down to the kitchen floor, across the kitchen and onto the hardwood floor, where he continued fleeing in the direction of the living room sofa.

Now let me pause a moment and explain that Raid is a fine cockroach killer. I’ve seen it work in 30 seconds. But this was apparently a new, hardier version of cockroach. I call it cockroach version 2. On and on it ran, with me holding the can of Raid three inches above it and spraying continuously.

Now the roach was mere seconds from refuge beneath the sofa. I used my last resort maneuver. I hit the roach with the can of Raid. I slammed that Raid can right down on his ass. Human: 1, cockroach: 0.

The roach is now deceased and relocated to its new home: my kitchen garbage can. It’s nice to know that Raid is still an effective roach killer for this new cockroach version 2. Effectiveness is just a matter of how you use the can … how you use the tool you have available. I think there’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that for the reader to ponder.

Hardee’s Revisited

I said to myself, gotta go mow the yard. So I pulled on my jeans and sneakers and went outside and pondered the grass. Is it tall enough to cut? Hmm. It doesn’t look bad. Why should every blade of grass in my yard have to be exactly 1/2 inch tall? It’s societal pressure. Conform or be ostracized. Then I remembered that my neighbors already ostracize me, so screw ‘em. I went back into the house.

Next I decided to drive to Hardee’s for supper. I had a sheet of coupons that came in the mailbox. I used one a few days ago when I ordered a thickburger combo. At that time, I asked the order taker (a young white girl) if I really had to bring in a coupon to get the special price and she said, “No. Just ask for number 5.” Tonight I decided to get a double cheeseburger combo, and I almost left the coupon behind because the girl said I didn’t need it. At the last moment I decided to bring it with me, just in case.

I arrived at Hardee’s at 6:50 PM. I was their only customer. I ordered the double cheeseburger combo which includes what Hardee’s calls “natural-cut” french fries and a drink. (Though I have to ask, what is natural about cutting a potato into long, skinny pieces?) The order taker (a youngish black man this time) punched my order into his machine and asked me if I had a coupon. I pulled the crumpled coupon out of my pocket and handed it to him. I asked him if the coupon was really necessary to get the discount and he replied, “Yes, you have to have the coupon.”

“The last time I was here I asked the girl if the coupon was necessary and she said it wasn’t.”

“You have to have the coupon,” he said. “It’s the only way I can give you the discount.”

Despite the conflicting information, I believe the black guy is probably correct. But who knows? Not me, and obviously not all Hardee’s employees, either.

I selected a table and sat. The meal was brought to me promptly. The burger was warm and tasty and much more suited to the size of my stomach than the 1/3 pound thickburger I had purchased last time. Double cheeseburger, fries, and drink: three dollars. Not a bad deal. The burger was tasty. The diet cola tasted like diet cola. The fries: a different story. I don’t care much for Hardee’s fries. You get plenty of them, but they’re never hot (my experience) and they never seem to have much flavor. I should probably ask for fresh-cooked fries. They’d be hot, and they might even taste better. Also, the fries are too skinny for my liking. Thicker fries seem more flavorful.

I finished my meal, topped off my drink and left. I was still the only customer in the store. Nor had I seen anyone go through the drive-thru. I don’t know why they keep the doors open after 6 PM, but it’s a good time of day to go there if like your fast food fast.

The Wendy’s Deficiency

I don’t want to pick on my local Wendy’s but their service is so often disappointing that I feel compelled to complain. So I choose to complain to the world.

I drove to Wendy’s yesterday and noticed one of the cooks in the parking lot having a conversation with someone in a parked car. I entered the store. It wasn’t busy at all. There was one customer seated and one customer waiting for his order.

As I waited at the register for someone to take my order, the cook that had been outside came in, put on an apron, and proceeded to his workstation. It didn’t escape me that he didn’t wash his hands. I know Wendy’s has rules about hand-washing, so this is a rule-enforcement issue. And that makes it a management issue.

I ordered the Southwest Avocado Chicken Salad. As I waited for my order, I chatted with the customer ahead of me in line. He lives in central Virginia and drives to New York City every week; his mother lives in Brooklyn; he retired from the Army after 23 years of service. And so on. It’s surprising how much you can learn about a stranger while waiting for fast food. Then his hamburger arrived and he left.

Finally, my order was ready and I took it home to eat. Right away I noticed there was no avocado on the avocado chicken salad. That annoyed me because avocado is probably the most expensive ingredient in that salad. If they were going to forget an ingredient, why couldn’t they forget the tooth-breakingly-hard bacon bits?

How do you screw up a salad? Probably by chatting with co-workers while you’re making it.

But other than the missing avocado and the too-hard bacon bits, the salad was tasty. I chewed carefully (I already had a recently broken tooth thanks to an un-chewable bacon bit, so it’s a touchy subject). The salad contained enough diced chicken to get the word “chicken” into the name. There were a couple of squeeze packs of tangy dressing as well. All in all, not a bad salad, if you get everything you paid for.

But Wendy’s needn’t feel picked on. I’ve blogged about several fast-food restaurants in this town. I’m no longer surprised when one occasionally slips up. Now I’m surprised when they get everything right. I’m surprised when the food is hot and reasonably fast, when the fries are salty, when the ketchup dispenser contains ketchup, when the icemaker dispenses ice. I’m surprised when the process works as advertised.

Why is that? It says something about low expectations and the service we’re accustomed to receiving. No doubt many customers leave unhappy about some aspect of their purchase. But they don’t have the time to confront a manager who obviously can’t manage; they have to eat and get back to work or get back on the road. There isn’t enough customer feedback to inform management as to how poorly they’re performing. But management should get a clue when they’re in a good location yet business is slow. They should get a clue when they have to run special offers to entice customers in. They need to take a close look at their store and ask, “Why isn’t this operation working better?”

Or they could read my blog. All the clues are here.

It Can Happen Here

Scenario: a political candidate appeals to voters with a mix of crass language and nativist ideology. Once elected, he solidifies his power by energizing his base against immigrants, people on welfare, and the liberal press. Who is this political candidate?

Think you know?

The candidate is Buzz Windrip, the main character of a book by Sinclair Lewis titled It Can’t Happen Here, published in 1935. According to fact-checker Snopes:

“Lewis painted a vivid counterfactual portrait of a United States of America sliding into dictatorship, one that is still cited as a cautionary tale to this day.”

And this brings us to the most asked question on Snopes:

Did Sinclair Lewis say, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”?

Lewis probably never used those exact words, but he did express the thought in different words.

Let’s put our heads together and see if we can think of a politician who is known for frequent attacks on our free press and our democratic principles, who rallies crowds with attacks on our justice system, who leads populist rallies with calls for political opponents to be locked up—even when their opponents have not been charged with a crime—and who would like to throw out the parts of our Constitution that interfere with his powers. Is there a politician who fits that description?

Yeah, I can’t think of anyone like that, either.

To Sleep Or Not To Sleep

I have insomnia; it’s 3 AM and I can’t sleep. So I got up, but now the question is what to do? I could write a blog post, but what can I write about? I guess I’ll write about the obvious: insomnia. It’s a subject I’m too familiar with.

All animals sleep. Migrating birds sleep: half the brain goes to sleep while the other half continues flying and navigating. Then the two halves swap and the half that was awake gets some snooze time. Whales sleep: pods of sperm whales have been observed sleeping vertically. Even insects sleep. It appears that sleep is an essential requirement for all life forms that have a central nervous system. So if sleep is so important, why do I have insomnia so often? I suspect a lot of people ask that question.

Drugstores sell over-the-counter pills that help to induce sleep. They work for a few nights, then they don’t work. Companies that make them tout this ineffectiveness as an advantage. “Non-addictive” the package brags. Of course they’re non-addictive. How would you become addicted to a pill that doesn’t work for more than two or three nights?

Drugstores also sell prescription sleep aids. They’re stronger and they remain effective longer, but even they begin losing their efficacy after awhile.  And they have many potential side effects, including causing the user to arise during the night and raid the fridge in order to eat mayonnaise and raw eggs (including the shells), or drive one’s car around town while asleep.

I saw a news story about an Italian man named Silvano who, at age 53, completely lost the ability to sleep. In desperation, he entered a sleep clinic and four months later, exhausted, he fell into a coma and died. Italian scientists discovered he had a rare genetic defect called fatal familial insomnia, or FFI. (It’s worth noting that Silvano died from a lack of sleep while he was in a coma. One might think a coma is a state of being asleep, but apparently not.)

On sleepless nights, I sometimes wonder why I bother going to bed. Then I think of Silvano, and I think maybe I should try to get an hour or two of sleep.

The Cat Conjecture

Much has been written about the Drake Equation and it boils down to the question: Where are the aliens? Not the illegal kind of aliens but space aliens. Although, technically, if space aliens landed here they would, in fact, also be illegal aliens. And I don’t know how we would make them leave. Creatures that can travel across light-years of space probably wouldn’t allow us to arrest them. And even if we could arrest them, how would we deport them? We have no regularly scheduled outbound starships to put them on.

But back to the Drake Equation. There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and many, if not most, have planetary systems. If only a small fraction of these planets have spawned life, and if only a small fraction of that life has become intelligent and reached our level of technology, we should be detecting signs of radio transmissions from their planets. But we don’t. So, again, where are the aliens? I think I know the answer. Cats.

I’ve always been a little suspicious of cats. There is something not quite right about them. They have a kind of intelligence that isn’t entirely terrestrial. I understand dogs. Birds can be surprisingly brainy, as well. Even dolphins are quite resourceful. But cats have a kind of intelligence that is, well, alien. And what about cat people—the people who claim to own cats. Do they really own cats, or do their cats own them? Consider the obvious possibility: cats are aliens and they control certain humans that the rest of us consider to be harmless “cat-lovers”.

What dog owner would put up with the behaviors cat owners put up with from their cats? If you want to feed your dog, just open a can of dog food or pour the dry stuff straight into a doggy bowl. But if you want to feed your cat, you have to entice it to eat with just the right combination of dry food and wet food, and it had better be the right brand of wet food. “My cat is particular about his food,” their human companions tell me. “My cat will only eat Fancy Feast.” Cats make their humans jump through hoops, and their humans don’t seem to mind at all. These humans are clearly controlled by their cats.

And did any of us notice when cats required the makers of catsup to re-label all their bottles ketchup? That condiment was spelled catsup for hundreds of years and then, virtually overnight, it was ketchup. And when that change happened, did any of us notice how smug the cat population was behaving?

There is something definitely not right about cats. If you have a cat in your house, you are probably its unwitting human slave. It is likely monitoring the goings-on in your house and telepathically transmitting this information back to its home planet. So be careful out there. Never discuss national security secrets in front of your cat. That goes especially for those of you living in Bismarck, North Dakota. But don’t get me started on that subject. It’s too big to get into right now, but there’s evidence that Space Aliens Grill and Bar is actually owned and operated by cats. Laugh if you want, but remember: I couldn’t put this on the Internet if it wasn’t true.

Monument Avenue

Richmond, Virginia, was the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War. As such, one would expect to find many historical landmarks from that era in the city, such as monuments to prominent Confederate generals and to Jefferson Davis (the president of the Confederacy).

Probably no bigger concentration of Confederate monuments exists in Richmond than on Monument Avenue. According to the National Park Service:

Monument Avenue is the nation’s only grand residential boulevard with monuments of its scale surviving almost unaltered to the present day. The district is nationally significant for its architecture and as an example of city planning. A broad residential tree-lined street extending for some five miles from inner city Richmond westward into Henrico County, the avenue takes its name from the series of monumental statues that mark its major intersections, generally in the center of traffic circles.

“The nation’s only grand residential boulevard with monuments of its scale … nationally significant,” according to the National Park Service.

But now it’s modern times and we must obliterate the remnants of a past that offends us. A “Monument Avenue Commission” appointed last June by the mayor has just recommended to the mayor that the statue of Jefferson Davis be taken down. The removal of the statue of Davis may be the the camel’s nose, so to speak, and other removals may follow. If that turns out to be the case, it would be unfortunate because Monument Avenue is famous for its monuments as much as for its beauty and history.

The remnants of the Old South are being hurriedly cast aside. Elsewhere in Richmond, J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School was recently renamed after Barack Obama. (Stuart was a Confederate general.) That’s okay with me, but it reminds me of a quote from George Orwell’s novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Allow me to propose an idea. Instead of obliterating references to our past, why not add new references alongside the old? We could mix Civil War legends with reminders of the pain they sought to preserve. The contrast between the past as some would glorify it and the real past with its human abuses would be powerful, while a street cleaned of monuments would be, after all, just another street. Monuments depicting the suffering of slaves contrasted against bronze effigies of stern men on horseback make a compelling statement. A street laundered of its memories says nothing.