Virginia's 250th Anniversary - Santillane

Santillane is the grand ol’ dame of Fincastle.

The pre-civil war estate was once home to Judith Hancock Clark, wife of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

It was restored in 2008. Much of the decorative trim turned out to be plaster instead of painted wood as originally thought. There was wallpaper to remove – even on the ceilings - and cobwebs to sweep. Original chandeliers lay stored in boxes and vintage clothes hung in wardrobes far too large to ever be removed from the home.

The house has 14 rooms, counting foyers and bathrooms. All have been restored.

The house boasts extremely high ceilings, a staircase that looks like something out of Gone with the Wind, a pewter chandelier with a date of 1726 etched into it, hardwood floors, original wallpaper in the living room, original glass in the windows, and elegant touches around the ceilings.

Legend holds the original Santillane burned and was rebuilt. However, signatures on the plaster, which has held up remarkably well, date back to the very early 1800s.

Santillane is on the National Register of Historic Places. A marker on US 220 calls it “one of Botetourt County’s most distinguished properties. The Greek Revival house sits on a tract of land originally owned by Colonel George Hancock, a member of the United States Congress from 1793-1797. 

In 1808 Hancock's daughter, Judith, married General William Clark. Clark served from 1803 to 1806 as a leader of Thomas Jefferson's famous Lewis and Clark expedition which was instrumental in opening the West for American settlement.”

Colonel George Hancock

George Hancock’s first appearance in Botetourt is in 1781 when he married Margaret Strother of Fincastle. He appeared again in 1782 when he obtained a license to practice law in the county. In 1785,

Hancock was appointed a colonel in the county militia; he also served as Botetourt County’s Commonwealth Attorney. He was the first citizen of Botetourt County to serve in the Congress of the United States. He later moved from Fincastle to Fotheringay in Montgomery County, where he died in 1820.

Hancock’s daughter Julia, known also as Judith, was born to Hancock and his wife Margaret on November 21, 1791, in Fincastle. She wed William Clark, the famous explorer, in January 1808. Clark reportedly named the Judith River in Montana after the young girl he left in Fincastle while he sought a route to the Pacific.

Sunday Stealing

Survey Asks . . . 

1. Did you/will you have coffee or some other form of caffeine today?

A. I do not drink coffee or colas. Unless there is caffeine in chocolate, and I think there is maybe a smidge, I don't get caffeine. 

2. Who did you last have a text conversation with and what was it about? 

A. My last conversation was with an old friend, and she was telling me about a visit from her sister.

3. Are there regular trains in and out of your town/city? 

A. My county has trains that go through it regularly, but no stops.

4. Have you ever been hospitalized due to dehydration?

A. No, but I have been hospitalized for other health issues.

5. Someone texts/IMs you just as you’re about to go to sleep. Do you reply? 

A. Not unless it is an emergency.

6. Do you grind your teeth?

A. I do grind my teeth, yes.

7. When you listen to music with headphones, do you keep the volume low enough to hear surrounding noise, or do you blast it?

A. I try not to listen to music with headphones. I don't like them.

8. Are you wearing nail polish?

A. I do not wear nail polish. I am allergic to it.

9. Do you have an ice maker in your refrigerator door?

A. I have an ice maker in the upper freezer of the refrigerator, but not in the door.

10. Do you have a friend named James?

A. I have a husband by that name.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Farewell Amanda

Saturday 9: Farewell, Amanda (1949)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here. 

 

1) The record begins with a long instrumental interlude, and when the lyrics kick in at about the 1:00 mark, they bid Amanda "farewell, adios, addio, adieu." Of course, you recognize "farewell" as English. Without looking it up, can you identify the other languages? 

A. Spanish, Italian, and French.

 

2) Can you say "goodbye" in a language not represented in question #1?

A. Nyet.

3) The lyrics reference a night full of stars. When did you last take a moment to check out the night sky?

A. It hasn't been that long ago. I like looking at the night sky. 

 

4) This song was written for Adam's Rib, a comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The movie is about husband-and-wife lawyers who square off against one another in court. Have you ever served on a jury?

A. I have been called to serve, but once the lawyers found out I was a journalist, I was immediately sent on my way. Apparently, they don't want writers on juries.

 

5) "Farewell, Amanda" was composed by Noel Coward. Though best known as a playwright, he also wrote more than a thousand songs and was a director and an actor. His epitaph reads, "A talent to amuse." How would you like to be remembered?

A. I don't think I will be remembered at all, but perhaps something along the line of "She did her best."

 

6) There's even a book of Noel Coward paintings. It was published after his death, in part because Coward considered himself only an amateur painter. When did you last pick up a paintbrush?

A. I can't remember when I picked up a paintbrush to paint a picture, but we last painted the interior of the house about 10 years ago.

 

7) In 1949, when audiences first heard "Farewell, Amanda," Americans began playing Clue. What's the last board game you played?

A. Scrabble.

 

8) The best-selling novel of 1949 was Point of No Return by John P. Marquand. Tell us about the last book you finished.

A. The last book I finished was The Medici Manuscript, by C. J. Arthur. I think it is characterized as a romantasy. It is set in post-WWI England and is about an assistant librarian who may or may not be a "magician," as this book calls people with specific special powers. It's very literary, focusing on mysteries that involve books, so far. This is the second in a series. 

 

9) Random question: Growing up, did you share a bedroom?

A. Not that I recall, no.

_______________

I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however. 

Thursday Thirteen

Some things in the world show us that resilience is everywhere, even in people, and that no matter how hard, mean, dirty, or disgusting the world can be, life and love endure.

1. Moss on stone grows where it shouldn’t, softening the hard edges of the world one green inch at a time.

2. A Tree with a lightning scar has a visible wound, but the trunk and the leaves keep lifting toward the light.

3. River can find new paths when blocked. The water doesn't argue, it simply curves, deepens, or widens until it can move again.

4. A candle flame that stays steady in a draft is a small, stubborn brightness that refuses to be talked out of existing.

5. A worn footpath shows a route that isn't carved in a day but instead shaped by return and consistency, that quiet insistence of coming back.

6. A spiderweb after rain hangs heavy with droplets, maybe it sags a little, but it still holding its pattern, still catches the light.

7. A seedling pushing through asphalt is a reminder that life doesn’t always wait for permission.

8. A mountain ridge shows the long patience of standing still, maintaining your stance, being strong and unyielding in the face of the whims of weather. 

9. Birds that return to the same branch or nest each year show a small act of faithfulness to place, repeated without fanfare.

10. A well‑mended quilt shows that repairs don’t hide the past; they make the whole thing stronger, stitch by stitch.

11. A lighthouse in fog is doing its work whether anyone sees it or not, steady in its purpose.

12. The tide always comes back. It retreats as part of its rhythm, but that's not the end, it's a part of the movement of change.

13. The first green shoot after winter is a quiet declaration that the season has turned, even if the air hasn’t caught up yet.

_________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 948th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

*An AI tool helped me put this list together.*

Drawing a Dragon - An AI Conversation

AI Creation

 

Smaug from The Hobbit movies

I asked ChatGPT to draw me a picture of a dragon. It gave me the first one above. I initially thought, aha, I have caught you plagiarizing, because the image reminded me immediately of Smaug the dragon in The Hobbit movies.

But upon looking at pictures of Smaug online, as you can see, the AI did not plagiarize. That is not the dragon from the movies. Besides, the dragon in The Hobbit movies would have been made with computer generated stuff, CGI, and apparently the animators drew inspiration from bats, alligators, and lizards for different features.

And a dragon is a dragon. It's sort of like drawing a human and expecting it to look like, well, a dragon. Obviously when I said, "draw me a dragon," ChatGPT was going to come up with some kind of dragon looking thing.

The fair use - or not - of art and literature in the LLM AIs is a complex and interesting topic. What happens when machines begin to read, remix, or even generate creative work?

People who support AI - and I suppose I would be one of them, because I see it as a tool - think the use widens the creative field. In other words, it gives a writer or an artist a bigger scope. I may not have read War and Peace, but maybe there are drips of it that I could have, or should have, used in my own work, some syntax or rhythm, maybe an idea or offshoot. And the truth is, no one can read every book or see every work of art. AI can sift through vast bodies of literature or art history, revealing patterns and influences that would take humans years to uncover.

Given that, AI can create new forms of expression: algorithms can generate images, stories, or music that I might never think to create, offering fresh textures and unexpected combinations.

For people who don’t consider themselves artists, AI can act as a collaborator—helping them sketch, draft, or experiment without the pressure of perfection.

If you look at it like this, AI isn’t replacing creativity; it’s expanding the toolkit.

However, AI is trained on existing works. It doesn't come from nothing. And it's not trained only on existing works that are out of copyright. If it were, it would all sound like Henry James or Charles Dickens. AI is trained on everything from The New York Times to the latest James Patterson novel.

And if that's the case, is the output really original? What does "original" mean if the work being spit out has its basis in Shakespeare and Nora Roberts?

Many artists worry their work is being used without consent, compensation, or even acknowledgment. That's valid. It takes a long time to write a book, to draw a picture, to engineer something.

It didn't take long for me to recognize a ChatGPT piece online. Especially in earlier models, the pattern of language was something I quickly caught. The way it used commas, or em dashes - which I never use, I just use a dash because em dashes take an extra step and I forget what it is - led to a lot of little essays that basically all read the same.

Newer models are not quite so predictable, but the methodology is still there if you look for it. Those cute little stories on Facebook that have some little "awww" moment or heart-jerking end-line? All the same thing.

We’re in a transitional moment with AI. Look again at the two pictures. They both were created with computers, but one, the one from the movie, was created with real people doing an awful lot of work to make up a realistic looking dragon. And ChatGPT in about a minute, maybe less, coughed up this lovely little dragon picture that immediately made me think "movie" and then look to see if that were indeed the case. 

What do we value in art? Is it the final product, or the methodology? Imperfections, the lived experience, the point of view - all of this matters in a piece of creation when humans are behind the effort.

I'm not so sure that has any effect on the things an AI spits out.

The conversation isn’t about choosing sides so much as deciding what kind of creative ecosystem we want to build. 

Like most things in art, the tension itself might be part of the story.

Grocery Shopping

Tuesday 4

This is a meme I don't normally do, but I liked the questions today.

1. Where do you like to buy your groceries and do you buy by the day, week or month?

A. I buy most of my groceries at Food Lion and I usually go once a week.

2. What foods would we always find in your kitchen?

A. A rotisserie chicken, Minute Rice, Honey Nut Cheerios, broccoli, peas, fish, ham, bread, granola bars, trail mix, etc.

3. Do you buy anything online and if so what kinds of things are you most likely to buy there?

A. I do not purchase food online except as gifts at Christmas.

4. Do you shop with a list on paper, on your phone or do you just shop without a list and maybe come home with things you never planned to buy?

A. I shop with a list on paper and still sometimes come home with things I hadn't planned to buy.