On Oct 26, 2008, at 9:18 PM, shag wrote:
> The good news is: Obama signs were evident, even outside of
> Charlottesville (where Doug once went to grad school, btw). There
> were plenty in Staunton, even way out in the boonies on winding dirt
> roads in the heart of Appalachian farm country.
You say: "C’ville was awesome and, while I realize that Doug and Seth hate this backwoods college towns, aiy, well, for those of us who actually had to grow up even further out in the woods, places like C’ville and Ithaca were … I don’t know what I’d have done without it!"
As I recall, when I used to visit my first mother-in-law in southwestern Virginia (Emory/Abingdon area), C'ville looked like Paris by comparison! Re: C'ville, as a DJ on the great (then at least) UVa radio station used to say, "don't leave the 'harlot' out of Charlottesville!"
In any case, today's NYT travel section had a feature on weekend visits to C'ville. It sounds a lot more civilized than it was in the late 1970s. But even the hardcore urbanite in me has to admit that central Virginia is really beautiful. Once you get away from what an old C'ville friend of mine called "the stinking plain" in the eastern part of the state, Virginia seems to me one of the most beautiful states in the USA.
Doug