Jane Smith

@mustelina

Wading through historical newspapers for glimpses into the past. Listening in April for the Wood Thrush. (Hylocichla mustelina)

236 Folgt239 Follower398 Posts

YouTube YouTube Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir mustelina.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Jane Smith@mustelina· 23d

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jul 7

Of course it would have to be very classy to measure up to Charlottesville standards. 🧐😉😂

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jul 3

I like that cover so much that I found the illustrator’s name—Seltzer—down in the corner and looked him up: More about Isadore Seltzer here: www.legacy.com/us/obituarie... muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Isadore... More about the album here: www.sfjazz.org/onthecorner/... www.discogs.com/master/46689...

2 images:
1. Photo of album cover designed by Isadore Seltzer:
The Nutcracker Suite
All compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
All arrangements by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
2. Photo of ISADORE SELTZER (1930 - 2019) from his 1948 high school yearbook.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jul 2

By the way, John G. Shelton grew up in a house built by his father on land purchased by his father in 1876, at 301 Fifth St SW, at the corner of Fifth and Dice Streets in FIFEVILLE.

1. Recollections of her uncle, John G. Shelton, by Rebecca Fuller McGinness, from her book:Rebecca Fuller McGinness: A Lifetime, 1892-2000
Rebecca F. McGinness, Florence C. Bryant, & William Van Doren
Charlottesville, Va: Van Doren Co. (2001), page 35.
2. The Shelton and Fuller homes at 301 & 303 Fifth St. SW. The home of ATS Principal John G. Shelton, in the foreground, was demolished in 2015, but the home of his parents, John and Rebecca Shelton, later the childhood home of Rebecca Fuller McGinness, still stands proudly at the corner of Dice and Fifth.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jul 2

From THE DAILY PROGRESS, Oct. 13, 1952: White Obituaries Page 3 search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_... Obituary for John G. Shelton, principal of Albemarle Training School 1903-1930; editor of Charlottesville Messenger newspaper 1910-1927. Page 13 search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_...

Image of obituary in THE DAILY PROGRESS, Oct. 13, 1952, page 13, under “Announcements” in Classifieds, between rug cleaning ad and square dance announcement:
“SHELTON: Funeral rites for Mr. John G. Shelton, uncle of Mrs. Rebecca F. McGinness, of 517 Brown Street, will be held at First Baptist Church. Tuesday at 3:30 o'clock. Remains rest at J. F. Bell Funeral Parlors.”

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 28

6. Holsinger also photographed the brides of two of Edmund and Molly Lee’s sons. John Lee (1895-1986) married Marie S. Gordon, and Giles Lee (1912-1948) married Carrie Woodfolk, photographed as a baby in 1914. Giles Lee was a 6-month-old baby when the power plant exploded on February 14, 1913.

1915 Holsinger photo of Marie Gordon in a beautiful white dress holding a bouquet of flowers and her Jefferson School diploma

1914 Holsinger photo of Carrie Woodfolk as a baby sitting on her mother’s lap.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 28

5. Rufus Holsinger took at least 5 photos on Feb. 17, 1913, showing the wrecked power plant and the damaged house. Charlottesville and Albemarle Railway Company Power Plant search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/imag... 204 7th St SW search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/imag...

Holsinger photo showing the power plant after the explosion

Holsinger photo showing 204 7th St with big holes in the brick walls

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 28

4. The power plant has a significant connection to the Hawkins-Lee House at 204 Seventh Street. In 1913 the plant exploded, sending huge metal fragments into a room in Edmund Lee’s house at 204 Seventh Street where Mrs. Mollie Lee was standing at the stove. Miraculously, she was not hurt.

Image of 1913 Daily Progress article telling about the power plant explosion

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 28

3. Is it the remains of the foundation of Charlottesville’s first power plant? I checked the old Sanborn maps and learned that the original Charlottesville and Albemarle Railway Company Power Plant was in that spot until 1913-1914 when they built a new power plant on the Rivanna near Woolen Mills.

Google satellite view and clip from 1907 Sanborn map showing today's open area between 5th and 7th Street SW.

Photo of Charlottesville’s first power plant from 1906 Daily Progress magazine and excerpt from 1914 Electric Railway Journal giving a detailed description of original Charlottesville and Albemarle Railway Company Power Plant located “in the heart of the city” between 5th and 7th St. SW

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 28

2. When I looked at the Google map of the land where the obscenely gargantuan new luxury student housing would sit, I noticed something curious. What is this?

Photo of stone or concrete slabs on the ground in the open area between 5th and 7th Street SW.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Apr 23

I saw one on my front sidewalk today. Could they be what this article calls “stragglers”? www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

Photo of cicada exoskeleton on brick sidewalk.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Apr 16

I can’t find the full lyrics of Razaf’s original version. I wish I could say that I was shocked by the way the first verse was altered in the ubiquitous Phil Harris version, but sadly, I’m not. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27...

Screen shot from Wikipedia:
There seem to be two versions of this song, with different music. One by Andy Razaf and the other by Phil Harris. Here are the lyrics of the first verse as written by Andy Razaf (copyright 1944):
“Fried chicken, nice and sweet,
Cornpone and possum meat,
Mince pie that can’t be beat;
That’s what I like ‘bout the South.” (Note the word “‘bout.”)
Here are the lyrics of the first verse as sung by Phil Harris, which first appeared in the movie, I Love a Bandleader (1945):
“Won't you come with me to Alabamy
Let's go see my dear old mammy
She's frying eggs and broilin' hammy
That's what I like about the South.” (Note the word “about.”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_What_I_Like_About_the_South

Jane Smith@mustelina· Apr 10

Also an accident on 64 west about an hour ago still causing major backups.

NBC 29 traffic alert from Facebook says accident on I 64 westbound on Afton Mountain is causing backups

Jane Smith@mustelina· Feb 17

Jesse Jackson spoke at my college when I was a sophomore, exactly 56 years ago today. Everybody’s talking about the black man’s problem, he said. He flashed that beautiful, charismatic smile and said no, it’s the white man’s problem. He opened my eyes and changed my life.

Clippings from the Leader-Telegram (Eau Claire, Wisconsin), February 17, 1970, including three quotes from his speech and a photo of Rev. Jesse Jackson surrounded by female students.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Feb 7

Mood. #Caturday

Elderly orange tomcat staring off into space as he lies on a bed with his head resting on a pillowy white blanket.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jan 29

Thank you! You have made my day by sharing this beautiful photograph of one of my favorite birds and by reminding me of a favorite poem . . . poets.org/poem/hermit-...

Screen shot of the last lines of "A Hermit Thrush," a poem by Amy Clampitt:

we drop everything to listen as a
hermit thrush distills its fragmentary,
hesitant, in the end

unbroken music. From what source (beyond us, or
the wells within?) such links perceived arrive--
diminished sequences so uninsistingly
not even human--there's

hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain
as we are of so much in this existence, this
botched, cumbersome, much-mended,
not unsatisfactory thing.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jan 1

Oh dear, you think you’ve got trouble . . . 😳

Jane Smith@mustelina· Dec 31

2025 has been a nightmare. May the new year wake us up.

A picture of a party hat and streamers, with this poem:

The Music Crept By Us

I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance

—Leonard Cohen

Jane Smith@mustelina· Nov 12

If your spirits could use a lift, watch the rousing speech Representative Adelita S. Grijalva just gave at her long overdue 4pm swearing-in ceremony. www.c-span.org/event/public...

Photo of Representative Adelita S. Grijalva speaking at her long overdue 4pm swearing-in ceremony.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jul 3

Martin Hardware is a local treasure. We had a leaky kitchen faucet Saturday and could find no brand name or id# on it. We took the old broken faucet cartridge to MH. The man took one look at it, nodded, walked over to an entire wall of cartridges, and plucked out the exact right one. Awesome!

Photo of grungy old broken cartridge in kitchen faucet. (We cleaned it up before we took it to Martin Hardware.)

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 21

Richard Green’s daughter Marian and her husband Andrew Jackson Payne also worked at the Treasury Department. But there’s a photograph of Andrew on his Find a Grave page and I don’t believe he looks much like the man in the newspaper photograph with Lincoln Andrews. www.findagrave.com/memorial/264...

Clipping from EVENING STAR (Washington, District of Columbia) Friday October 31, 1902, Page 17 “Marriage of Colored Couple Attended by Treasury Officials”

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 21

Sorry, looks like something about the format of that first article made it too small to read. Hopefully this will work better.

Clipping from THE AFRO-AMERICAN (Baltimore, Maryland) Saturday December 15, 1934, Page 10 “Man Employed by Government 50 Years Dies”

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 21

Fool that I am, I went looking. No luck. But I did find a number of interesting articles about his distinguished predecessor, Mr. Richard Green.

Clipping from THE CHICAGO DEFENDER (Chicago, Illinois) Saturday February 2, 1924, Page 8 “Many Richard Greens”

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 4

I was downtown last night so I visited the tree! You are right—its blooms are almost finished so, like you, I didn’t pick up any scent. But the bees certainly did, and they were very busy scouting out the blooms that are still fresh.

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 3

Is the Basswood (aka American Linden) in bloom right now? Poet Amy Clampitt wrote an extraordinary description of the fragrance— “. . . aromas so intensely subtle, strollers passing under looked up confused, as though they'd just heard voices, or inhaled the ghost of derelict splendor . . .”

Image of the text of “Lindenbloom,” a poem by Amy Clampitt:

LINDENBLOOM

Before midsummer density
opaques with shade the checker-
tables underneath, in daylight
unleafing lindens burn
green-gold a day or two,
no more, with intimations
of an essence I saw once,
in what had been the pleasure-
garden of the popes
at Avignon, dishevel

into half (or possibly three-
quarters of) a million
hanging, intricately
tactile, blond bell-pulls
of bloom, the in-mid-air
resort of honeybees'
hirsute cotillion
teasing by the milligram
out of those necklaced
nectaries, aromas

so intensely subtle,
strollers passing under
looked up confused,
as though they'd just
heard voices, or
inhaled the ghost
of derelict splendor
and/or of seraphs shaken
into pollen dust
no transubstantiating
pope or antipope could sift
or quite precisely ponder.

© 1987 Amy Clampitt

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 2

Newspaper Clipping:
Hill & Irving Funeral Home’s Display Ad inviting public to the formal opening and dedication of their new funeral home at First and Market on October 7th–10th. 1936
The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Virginia)
Tuesday Oct 6, 1936
Page 5

Jane Smith@mustelina· Jun 2

I just realized that the planting of the Basswood in 1924 would probably have been witnessed by inhabitants of the Home for the Aged, which then stood at 201 First Street where Hill and Wood now stands.

Newspaper Clipping:
“Campaign For Home For Aged: Remodeled House Will Also Accommodate Men.”
“The Home for the Aged was donated by C. H. Walker on May 10, 1916, to be used by the aged of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. It was largely through the influence of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Gooch, that the gift was made. . . .”
PHOTO on page 3
Daily Progress, Friday April 22, 1927, pages 1 and 3

Jane Smith@mustelina· May 29

He was singing his little heart out tonight. I just got the app recently. It’s wonderful!

Screen shot of Merlin app showing that it was recording songs of Wood Thrush, Cardinal, and Titmouse in a Charlottesville yard tonight.

Jane Smith@mustelina· May 25

Tomorrow at 2 pm the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery will honor the ancestors with laying of flowers on their annual Decoration Day at Charlottesville’s historic African American cemetery located at the corner of Oak and First Street South. daughtersofzioncemetery.org/our-history/

Photograph of three red roses lying atop a gravestone at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.

Jane Smith@mustelina· May 23

Yes, it’s only one block but it’s on a hill so I wouldn’t want to try it in a wheelchair. And could you navigate that block in a wheelchair at all if you’re starting out from the side of Elliot that has no sidewalk?