Today was a pretty quiet day. John wanted to go to a meeting, and he found one at St. Paul’s Memorial Church. Because it is located on Grounds — that’s the UVa term for the campus — where parking is nearly impossible, he decided not to take the car. Ellen and I went shopping in downtown Charlottesville. We had no particular problem parking. We found a spot a couple blocks from the downtown mall adjacent to the park with the statue of Stonewall Jackson. Charlottesville has not yet removed its Confederate statues, but it has covered them in tarps. I was certain I had taken a picture of it, but could find it nowhere on my phone. So here is one taken from a newspaper story.
It was much colder when we were there, and the weather was as gray as a CSA uniform.
Ellen explained to me that ever since the riots this summer downtown has been pretty much deserted and businesses are starting to close there. As we walked around, it struck me that the lack of really interesting shops was also part of the problem, too. We did pick up a couple fairly minor gifts there, but after an hour we had seen all the retail offerings that were available. We decided we would have to hit some of the outlying shopping areas. But we figured we would have lunch first.
While we were eating, John called to ask some directions. It was beginning to rain, so Ellen jumped in the car and went off to pick him up. He explained that the meeting been cancelled because of the holiday. But another guy had shown up looking for meeting, and so they had held a small meeting of their own.
John joined us as we went around to the shopping centers at Barracks Road and Stonefield. John slipped off by himself to do some shopping as he had not had a chance to do much before we left Los Angeles.
