We decided that Sunday was a good time for a fieldtrip into town… Ashland is feeling a little small, so Scott and I went downtown with Kathy and Vance to see some new sites.  We did the canal walk, which is a long meandering trail through downtown Richmond along the Haxall Canal and the James River.  I held us up with my camera as I took about 150 pictures, to end up with a couple that I liked, including the one that I turned into the new banner above.

Near the end of the Canal Walk, we came upon the Civil War museum, and near there, a foot bridge over the river that had quotes from the three days in 1865 when Richmond fell to the Union Army.  It’s an interesting place to observe the tensions of commemoration in the South (a topic on which Kathy is much more of an expert).  The quotes included those of Confederate leaders and freed slaves, as though the city is still not sure how it feels about its own history.

Or, to quote Drive By Truckers, “Such is the duality of the Southern thing.”