On the Trail

So, there I was, walking down the W&OD Trail, minding my own business, when I saw this coming at me:

It would just be Tuesday pretty much anywhere in California, but a bit unusual for The People’s Republic.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Civic duty

Yesterday I cast my early vote in the April special election here in the Old Dominion. The only thing on the ballot is a measure to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The new lines leave Republicans with only one “safe” seat, a strip along the south-western border of the state.

This is largely in response to Texas redrawing its districts last year to dilute Democratic votes to send more RWNJs to the House.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Rs are real het up about this—they went to court to cancel the election but a judge ruled it can go ahead. (They did the same when California redrew its districts so that Republican safe zones lie largely in the eastern desert and east-of-the-Sierras, along with lizards and wood rot.)

Here’s a sample:

Opposing voices:

But I say they can piss up a rope. They fucked around; every time they do that they forget about the second part of that expression. 

Here’s the find out.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Yay, capitalism

A couple of weeks ago, there was a power outage in my part of the People’s Republic. It knocked out electricity through at least my cluster, as well as the empty corporate HQ next door. That was on a Monday.

Evidently the outage triggered the backup generator at the building and no one—security guards, electricians, whoever—could figure out how to turn it off. (One story was the manufacturer was out of business and no technicians knew how to get it to shut down.)

I didn’t hear the generator from my house, but one of my neighbors informed me that they were going day and night. I’d stopped walking through the corporate campus when the developers started doing prep work for building 82 three- and four-story townhouses in about two acres, but on the Saturday (six days after it started) I swung by to see what was going on. Here’s what I found:

You could smell the fumes before you could hear the generator, which was actually pretty loud. This frankly looked like a caricature of a 19^th Century Midlands England industrial site.

I noodled around the internet and found two agencies I thought should be informed of this, Fairfax County’s Division of Environmental Health and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Former was an email, with one of these videos attached; latter was a website that wouldn’t allow me to upload files.

On the Tuesday, I got a call from Sean at Fairfax County to inform me that they don’t handle pollution; that would be the state. Sean said that the state agency would investigate, but so far (a full week later) I’ve heard exactly bupkis from them, which is pretty much what I expected from this lame-ass Confederate-mentality crowd.

Actually, I checked their portal yesterday and discovered that they've closed the case. Because by the time they apparently showed up, "no pollution observed."

Oh—the developers finally figured out how to turn off the generator. Or maybe it ran out of fuel. But at least it’s stopped spewing carcinogens into my back yard.

For now.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Civic duty

I voted yesterday in the Virginia state and local election.

On my way in, the local Democrats handed me a “sample ballot”, on blue paper, with their list of whom to check off in each category, from soil and water conservation board to Delegate and State Senator. The volunteer could have got less up my nose if he hadn’t mansplained the blindingly obvious as though I’d driven up on a turnip truck on my way to a matinée of Barbie, but that’s the Old Dominion for you.

(The Republicans were there, too, but since I was wearing my Force for Science tee shirt from the 2017 March for Science, they might have judged me not worth the effort. Interestingly, their “sample ballot” was also printed on blue paper.)

What I find interesting about the process is that the sidewalk to the polling place is chockablock with campaign signs; multiple signs for each candidate. 

This makes me wonder—does anyone coming to vote in an election find themselves deciding on the candidate for them based on one of those signs? Like, “I was really unclear about whom to pick for Sheriff, but now that I’ve seen his signs, I am totally behind Foghorn P. Leghorn. Yep—he’s the man for the job!”

Well—that’s the Old Dominion for you.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Spring glories

Dogwood is one of the most glorious things about Spring in the Old Dominion. So guess what I’m grateful for today?

Civic duty

At time of writing, we in the Commonwealth of Virginia are waiting to hear whether the next governor will take us back to the time of cavaliers and cotton fields and make Richmond once again the capital of Confederate ignorance, outrage and terror (theirs; man, these people are terrified of Blacks, women, immigrants, books, Catholics...pretty much everything), or whether we have another shot at the 21^st Century.

I cast my vote about three weeks ago at the Fairfax County north government facility and I did not encounter any christofascist “observers”; I understand they have been out in force for the past few days, trying to intimidate anyone who looks like they wouldn’t vote “right”, if you catch my drift. The battle cry this time around is "parents' rights" instead of "states' rights", but the goal is exactly the same: white supremacy.

(Before the polls opened, I returned a book to the library across the street, and did my civic duty by calling to staff’s attention that someone had taped a Glenn Younkin flyer to the library’s front door. Like anyone using the library is likely to vote for him.)

Anyhow, on my way into the building I took a photo of this notice board.

It’s exactly the sort of thing that drives the Younkin crowd bonkers, and I am totally here for it.

UPDATE: damn.

 

 

Neighborhood watch

So, this is weird. I think.

A couple of months ago, I was walking out of the ‘hood when I noticed an owl fly to a tree. I stopped, pulled out my mobile and aimed. Because: owl.

A woman was standing in front of her house across the parking lot, talking with another woman; she interrupted her conversation to shout pointedly at me, “Can I help you?”

Now, I was coming from the interior of the cluster, not from the street, but she was challenging my right to be there. Or perhaps my right to shoot photos. I pointed toward the owl.

“Tree,” she said, with astonishing brilliance.

“Bird,” I replied.

The noise disturbed the owl, which flew off, and I went on my walk.

Naturally, every time since, when I walk past her house, I mutter, “Asshole” at it. (I refrain from using the word “bitch” because it kind of connotes that a female asshole is somehow different from a male one.)

Well, yesterday I was headed out when I caught another bird in my peripheral vision, in the general vicinity of her house, followed by a raucous squawking. I stopped to try to see what kind of bird it was. And who should approach, from the street, but Mrs. Biddy Officious. She said she always listens to birds, too. I made some brief response and continued my walk.

Well, blow me if she didn’t pull a 180 and follow me into the corporate campus next door to ask me if I live in that cluster. Like—whiskey tango foxtrot?

I replied in the affirmative and kept on walking. Eventually she branched off my path, like that’s what she’d intended to do all along, and I went over to watch the arborists grinding up the big tree that fell over last week.

Here’s the thing, dear readers—I’m White; like probably 97% of the cluster residents. Like Biddy. (And I recognize that if I were not, she'd probably have called the cops on me, given her bolshie approach to a perceived interloper.) I’m probably in her age range. I’m walking on the sidewalk, not peering into people’s windows or rattling their doors. I'm a little scruffy looking after 14 months of lockdown, but I certainly don't look any more suspicious than the other residents who walk around the property several times a day. And while the cluster does have signs warning that this is private property, where in the almighty fuck does Biddy get the unmitigated nerve to challenge my right to put one foot in front of the other?

She can kiss my California ass. I’m pretty sure I can take her in any fair fight.

 

 

NOT at the library

<sigh> During the first phase of 2020 lockdown, Fairfax County Public Library—like many others across the country—completely shut down. Then, maybe early summer, they allowed patrons to place holds on materials; when they were ready the library staff delivered via curbside checkout. Towards fall, they opened up the facilities, but were limiting people to 30 minutes inside.

About a week or so ago, they announced we’re back to curbside pickup.

This troubles me because it cuts off a certain percentage of the population who don’t have either Internet or mobile phones (both necessary for the process). Public libraries are there to serve the public, to open the world to people without great means. This is another example of COVID-19 exacerbating the wealth divide, and it sucks.

 

 

Alea iacta est

I really do not like waiting in line. Back when China sent two pandas to Los Angeles to celebrate the ’84 Olympics, a friend and I went to the zoo specifically to see pandas. But when we got there the line was past a marker that said, “At this point you are 4 hours to pandas”. I turned to my friend and said, “I would not wait four hours for the second coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

So I’ve been really stressing over voting. Fairfax County’s “satellite” early voting stations only are open from 1300-1900, which is not a schedule I appreciate. But not voting in this election is simply not an option.

So yesterday I pulled up my big-girl pants and went over to the station in the People’s Republic, getting there at 1230. The line was not terrifically long—maybe about 80-100 people. I was fully kitted out: voter registration card, passport, utility bill (remember—courtesy of Virginia DMV, I still do not have a local driver’s license), umbrella, book, water; it was like I was going camping.

In the end, it only took me about 40 minutes after the polls opened. I cast my vote(s) and my ballot has been processed. I’d have waited longer—whatever it takes—although, in retrospect, not having put on sun block (it’s been a while since I’ve spent any time outside in mid-day) may have been a mistake. Still worth it, though.

 

 

 

Real bargain

So, Fairfax County Public Library has a thing going now. When I checked out the latest Donna Leon (for which I waited months), the screen informed me of this: 

Well, I take their point. But I had to think about it, because, well—I don’t think about what it would have cost me if I bought every book I checked out of the library.

But now that I am thinking about it, imagine—what a bargain it is to have a tax-supported institution that gives me free (except—unlike certain elected officials—I do pay taxes) access to an entire world of knowledge, entertainment and some degree of crap.

(The downside is that I really wish they'd zero out what I've checked out once it's returned. This running total means they're keeping a record of what I read, and I'm sure I checked off the box on my library card application that said "don't do that". I may need to have a word with them.)

What would your annual savings look like?

 

 

Bureaucratic polka

Welp, I was hoping that by the time you read this, I’d be street legal, but that Virginia DMV has up its butt is truly wide and deep. Seems that it’s not enough that the name on my California driver’s license and my passport and my Social Security Card should match; the name on my utility bills have to match as well. 

So here’s my yesterday:

Drive a bazillion miles to Shirlington (including paying frickin’ tolls), get in front of a DMV employee and be told that if I want to go home, find some other utility bills that match within an hour, they’ll graciously condescend to allow me back into their appointment-only facility.

(I looked at her and said, “You want me to get Comcast to change my name in their bill in an hour?” All my bills, my mortgage, everything is under the name I’ve been using—and paying taxes under in seven states—for bleedin’ ever.)

Drive a bazillion miles home, realize that I left my tote bag at the counter. My tote bag with my mobile phone. And a book on (wait for it) mindfulness.

Drive a bazilion miles back, get the bag, drive a bazillion miles home and hop on a standup call where I learn that every single time ENG “fix” a problem with the product, they break something else.

Scour the Virginia DMV site for next available appointments and discover that the earliest out there are late December. Across seven or eight DMV locations, which I had to search separately.

(TBF, tho, the DMV both rang me and emailed me to tell me they’d found my bag. Of course, there’s no number for any DMV office where you can ring them. Just that one never-answered number in Richmond.)

So, I’ve got nearly three more months of having to look over my shoulder every time I go two miles over the speed limit. And I have go to the county election place next week to register to vote. That was my whole rationale for getting the license here at all. I am not going through this election without voting.

 

Getting around

My 19-year-old car passed both mechanical and emissions inspection yesterday. Which means I can renew registration here in the Old Dominion.

That’s because I can do that online. Getting a driver’s license, now—that’s a whole other thing. I have to get one because my California license expires at month’s end. (Turns out that California has automatically extended licenses for anyone due for expiration until the end of the year, but I have no confidence that local LEOs will listen to that if I’m stopped for anything.)

With no indication at all on their website, the Virginia DMV has moved to an appointment-only system. And you have to check each of the [open—because at least half the ones in Northern Virginia have been closed] offices for availability. You can’t just search for openings across the site; you have to do each one. Individually. And let me assure you that most of them have no availability until November.

Also—the one, single non-tollfree number for the entire state is basically answered by a recording stating that they’re too busy to talk with you. Last Monday I finally got through and talked with a chick called Emily, who could only give me information about how the appointment system worked; she couldn’t tell me anything about documentation required or even verify an appointment. She did put me on hold to check with a supervisor about my expiring California license.

According to Emily’s supervisor, the Old Dominion will view any out-of-state license as valid for one year after expiration “during these challenging times”.

Well, I’m going with that, then.

I have an appointment for 28 September, in Arlington. If you don’t hear from me after that, check the news for “incidents” in the environs.

White privilege

The other morning on my #homework walk, I noticed a Fairfax County cop car parked at the far end of a church parking lot. The car had its lights on, which is why I twigged to it, but it didn’t move during the time I was there. I reckoned its occupant was eating breakfast, or maybe having a kip.

But I also considered how different I might have reacted if I weren’t a middle-aged white woman viewing it. I also considered what the cop might have done were I not a middle-aged white woman.

So I did some bolshie photo-taking of some of the rose bushes at the edge of the lot, taking my sweet time about it:

I finished off by ostentatiously taking a shot of the car, too.

Because I just felt pissed off about the state of our country.

2A

It’s been a while since I posted a vanity place, so here’s one from someone in the ‘hood.

Aspirational, really.

Pommes de guerre

There’s an old army censorship joke that probably first featured a Roman legionary as one of the correspondents.

The soldier’s wife (or, sometimes, his father) writes: “Now that you’re way the hell off in gods-forsaken Phrygia/Vicksburg/Gallipoli/Okinawa, what am I supposed to do about the potato patch? We can’t plant without you here to dig the ground. We’re going to starve here.”

The soldier writes back: “Whatever you do, don’t dig between the road and the back fence. That’s where the spears/guns/secret weapon plans are buried!”

The next letter from home reads: “What the hell? Some government guys showed up and just ripped up the whole place, from the road to the back fence. What the hell have you done?”

And the soldier replies: “Now plant the potatoes.”

Well, yesterday’s instance of White House Follies reminded me of that. Cadet Bonespurs was bloviating at representatives of farmers, ranchers and the food supply chain. Of course he could not let an opportunity to mouth off pass him by; the cameras were on, yo.

Among the horny-handed sons of the soil was apparently someone from the Old Dominion, where the Democratic governor and finally Democratic-majority legislature passed some mild gun control laws last month. The thought “Virginia” triggered some spark in the Kleptocrat’s reptilian brain, and he blurted out, apropos of nothing (as is his custom):

“We're going after Virginia, with your crazy governor, we're going after Virginia. They want to take your Second Amendment away. You'll have nobody guarding your potatoes."

#PresidentPlump clearly felt he was on a roll, and found that at the end of his sentence he needed to come up with some agricultural-related product, and was probably thinking about extra fries with his lunch that was overdue, so out came potatoes. Which is not a crop that Virginia produces in any particular quantity, and which—as far as I know—is not something that’s subject to a lot of thievery in any event.

I swear to you I am not making this up; there’s video. It's obvious that not having played golf since 8 March is really weighing on him.

Recycling news

A few months ago, Fairfax County announced that they were no longer accepting glass as part of their recycling pickup. If you really wanted to have your glass added to some sort of non-landfill destination, you had to take it to specified collection points, where you fed it through portals one bottle at a time. There’s one—just one—in the People’s Republic, so you know they weren’t serious about it.

Well, a few weeks ago, I went to drop off two bags representing my consumption since some time in December. Here’s what I found:

They’d removed the one collection point, allegedly because of the pandemic. And, in fact, they listed three in the county where you could take your glass.

Well, obviously, people were not amused:

But last Saturday I swung by, and the County had blocked off entry to the entire parking lot and stuck that poxy sign right there.

I seriously despise this excuse for government.

First world problems

Well, this year March kind of gamboled in like a lamb, and is stalking out like an enraged lion with mange.

I’m not talking about the weather, which of course has been mucked about by climate change. I’m talking about life in a global pandemic, during which the US government has shown all the leadership of a banana republic run by a carnival barking clown.

Here in the Old Dominion, we are under stay-at-home orders until 10 June. Instead of sipping limoncello in Sorrento, I’m tapping a bottle of Costco prosecco. Yay.

Also, I’ve realized that all the olive bars in all the grocery stores have been shut down, and I don’t have enough pitted Kalamatas to see me through the next two-and-a-half months. I’ve already started rationing how many go onto my pizza bianca insalata and my Greek salads. Tough times ahead, man.

Still—I would give all the olives and all the limoncello to keep our healthcare workers and their patients safe, around the world and in my neighborhood. I'm not an empathy-deficient carnival barking clown.

Rewriting history

Back in the dim dark past, February used to have two federal holidays: the 12^th, honoring Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and the 22^nd, honoring George Washington’s. At some point, the feds rolled the two of them into the third Monday of the month and called it Presidents’ Day.

This year, that was yesterday, and I’m really grateful that we got the day off. I needed it. (I honored the two titans in the traditional way: I went to Costco, to stock up on butter and laundry detergent.)

Well, except apparently in the state that touts itself as the Mother of Presidents. At the end of last month I had occasion to visit the local branch of the Fairfax County (home to Washington, as it happens) Public Library, and noticed that they marked it thusly:

They even cut off Lincoln from Rushmore.

Sore losers.

Neighborhood walk

I was killing some time before a doctor’s appointment yesterday and took a walk around what I suppose passes for beautiful downtown McLean. A couple of observations:

The 7-Eleven in question is smack next to a Starbucks. I expect it’s at least a regional promotion, this dollar coffee, but I did wonder how effective it is against the juggernaut next door's attractions.

Also, this was interesting: “$1 coffee; all sizes”. The last time I recall getting coffee from a 7-Eleven was about 16 years ago, on my way to Lancaster, Penn., so my memory is hazy as to whether it was any good. But who’s going to pay a buck for a small coffee when that same dollar will buy you an extra-large bucket-o-caffeine?

Also—I don’t care how much coffee you can get for whatever bargain price: I’m not downloading another scrape-my-data app onto my mobile. End of.

 The other objet trouvé was this pair of sandals, very neatly placed next to the parking lot of the doctor’s building:

What’s the story behind that, I wonder?

Interest statement

Some time ago I came across this pair of vehicles parked at some retail establishment:

Here’s why I found the juxtaposition worthy of shooting:

It’s the history and ethos of Northern Virginia in one spot.