A look at Lakeside dining past…
June 23, 2022, 12:56 PM
While I was rounding up all of the material for the photo set about Zane Showker Hall, I dug through a lot of old photos of JMU in order to make sure that I had captured all of the relevant material. Generally speaking, whenever I’m doing a photo set for Life and Times that requires rounding up historical photos or otherwise tells a story that is not in chronological, such as Staunton Mall, which included photos taken over multiple days and also a hefty dose of new material, presented in a very different order than it was originally shot, after I gather it all into a work folder, I sort it all out by subject and place the subjects in the order that I intend to present them. In the case of a smaller, non-chronological set like Showker or Staunton Mall, I will usually write and place photos at the same time. Compare to a travelogue photo set like Toronto or North Carolina, where I will do all of the writing first, and then add photos only after the entire narrative has been written. Regardless of how it’s assembled, though, after I complete the first draft, I will typically start cutting things out, as I tend to load things on pretty heavily in my first draft. Sometimes, I’m cutting things out that are extraneous to the story. Other times, I’m trimming the number of photos down to a more manageable amount.
When I was doing the Showker photo set, I originally planned to include photos of some of the dining attractions that were around the building, and actually did a decent amount of writing related to them. One thing that I planned to include was a little bit about Mrs. Green’s, which was a dining operation in nearby Chandler Hall. I also planned to include some discussion of a small food truck that JMU operated in the mornings in front of Showker that I called the Chuckwagon. I ended up cutting both of those, but for different reasons. As far as Mrs. Green’s went, I originally opted to include it because it was in Chandler Hall, which was demolished to make way for Hartman Hall – thus it was something of a “before” for Hartman Hall. However, considering that I only spent about fifteen minutes in Hartman Hall, tops, it came off as extraneous. So I cut it, which created a tighter photo set. For the bit about the Chuckwagon, I realized that I was devoting a large chunk of space to what was essentially a failed test concept, and it had very little to do with the subject other than its being parked in front of Showker. Ultimately, it took the discussion off on a pretty long tangent, and so in order to keep it on subject, it was removed. And for a photo set that was primarily about architecture, anything not about architecture just didn’t fit.
Continue reading…Categories: JMU, Schumin Web meta
I may be off my hinges, but something seems odd about this…
June 18, 2022, 2:25 PM
A very close friend of mine is currently looking for a new job in order to further their career, and a recent experience of theirs while job hunting struck me as odd. It bothered me because, in the end, all that this company really did was waste my friend’s time. And when someone that I am very close to gets treated poorly, whether through actual malice or simply through indifference, I get upset, because I don’t want to see them be hurt.
For some background information, my friend is currently employed, and as far as I am aware, their current employment relationship is stable. Their situation is not like when I was at Food & Water Watch, where they were actively trying to push me out, and thus a sense of urgency with the job search in order to get out before the hammer ultimately fell. There is no time crunch with my friend. They can afford to be choosy about who they want to work for, and choose the right job rather than a “right now” job. That is a very enviable situation to be in, and it gives them more power than they might otherwise have, because they can choose to wait for better offers.
As part of their job searching strategy, my friend listed their resume on Indeed.com, which is a site where companies recruit candidates via job postings and resume searches. I have mixed feelings about making one’s resume public. When I made my resume public when I was looking for a new job in 2013, I got lots of contacts based on it, mostly by phone, but from all of the wrong kinds of people. I was not interested in working for some shady insurance company or whatever else tried to reach out to me. I quickly got the impression that only shysters used the public resume search functions and that reputable companies don’t because they have plenty of applicants who are seeking them out and thus don’t need to recruit like that, and as such, I pulled my resume. That stopped those sorts of contacts immediately. However, considering the number of sites today that tell people that they should make their resume public, I suspect one of two things about my experience: either my experience was atypical, or a lot has improved in the last nine years to prevent the shysters from locking onto people’s resumes so easily. Either way, it’s left me a bit wary about public resume postings, and as such, I am more guarded about who gets to see my resume, i.e. only people that I want to have it ever get it.
Staunton Mall demolition update…
June 10, 2022, 3:15 PM
This past weekend, while Elyse and I were on a trip down to Staunton, we visited Staunton Mall in order to check up on it to see how its redevelopment was going. You may recall that Staunton Mall had been on a long, slow decline before finally closing in December 2020. I published a photo set about the mall based on my final visit, documenting as much about the mall as I could so that it could be remembered, and including older photos from years past. My last update was from July, and covered the fencing off of the mall building (sans Belk, which remains open), and asbestos abatement in some of the anchor spaces.
Now, demolition has begun in earnest, and a little more than half of the mall is gone. Interestingly enough, the mall is being demolished from the inside out, as the interior walls and roof have, in large part, been demolished, but the exterior walls, as well as the spaces closest to those exterior walls, are mostly still intact and recognizable. I have no idea why they’re doing it this way. I would have expected the exterior walls to come down along with the rest of everything, as they’re clearly working from south to north. The JCPenney end of the mall is mostly gone except for the exterior walls, while the section between the food court and Wards is only partly demolished, and the 1980s expansion is, for the most part, still intact. And, of course, Belk remains open for business.
We visited the mall twice: once for Elyse, and once for me. In Elyse’s case, she was going for something very specific: the panel in the elevator at the JCPenney store. For those not familiar, Staunton Mall was a one-level facility, however, the JCPenney store had a very small upper level on the west side of the building, which housed the store’s administrative offices. It’s why the front side of the store was so much taller than the rest. Elyse rode this elevator for the first time in 2016, and again in 2020 just before the store closed.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall
I wonder if someone could have pulled this off…
June 1, 2022, 7:12 PM
Referring back to how being on the train is like being in the shower at times, I started thinking about an event from third grade that happened towards the end of the year, and wondered how the purpose of certain elements about it might have been defeated. The event was a bazaar, and kids could buy and sell items to each other during the event. Some kids made arts and crafts specifically to sell at the event, while some kids sold items brought from home. I was one of the kids who sold items from home, as I used it as an opportunity to get rid of some toys that I didn’t play with anymore. I don’t remember doing much beyond selling during the event, other than taking a quick look around at what the other kids were doing in all three classrooms before going back to my station. I don’t remember my buying anything of note from the bazaar. I think that I may have bought some candy, but that would have been about it. I just remember unloading some of my junk on the other kids. All in all, it was a fun event.
The event used its own special currency, issued by the teachers, and was distributed based on student behavior for a few weeks leading up to the bazaar. They came in three versions: Johnson dollars, Jordan dollars, and Swanson dollars. Good behavior earned you dollars, either individually, or collectively as a class (i.e. everyone in the class got the same amount of money at once) and the teachers would fine students for bad behavior (fines were only levied individually). All three types were named for the issuing teacher, and they all were valued at par with each other (i.e. one Jordan dollar was equal to one Swanson dollar, etc.), and were otherwise considered equal in every way, i.e. despite different designs, it was one accounting system. After all, it was a program to reward good behavior, and not a macroeconomics lesson, though it could have been a fun math activity as well if, say, one Jordan dollar was worth three Swanson dollars, and one Johnson dollar was worth two Jordan dollars. After all, we did learn multiplication and division that year, and it could have been some good real-world practice in navigating currency exchange rates, though it would probably be too complicated for third-graders – especially when there were no cents in this currency to make things more granular.
Whether or not this concept worked as an incentive for good behavior, I don’t know, because in elementary school, I tended to stay in trouble for one reason or another, but I did my best fo play nice in order to maximize my “wealth”, even though I ultimately didn’t buy much (I was Mr. Krabs before he was a thing, I suppose). I imagine that people could discuss the merits or drawbacks of a plan like this to incentivize good behavior among students, which essentially paid them in company scrip to be spent at an event as a reward for good behavior. I imagine that some people would swear by it, while others would call it bribery.
Categories: Elementary school