What Will We Find?

This is a meme I don't do much. You can find it here.

I thought these were interesting questions.

1. What will we find on top of your refrigerator?

A. My husband, who is 6' tall, uses the top of the refrigerator as a storage place for his hat, his belt, and his suspenders when he comes in from his day. There is also a fly swatter up there and probably a lot of dust. I am 5' 1" tall and I can't reach the top of the fridge to clean it without climbing on a stool.

2. What will we find on your nightstand?

A. On my nightstand, you will find a box of tissues, medication, several small bottles of water, and a personal humidifier.

3. What is in your purse or handbag?

A. My pocketbook (that's what I call it, maybe it's a southern thing) contains tissues, my asthma inhaler, credit card, driver's license, Chapstick, and a pack of gum.

4. What will we find on your coffee table or side tables? How about your kitchen or dining table?

A. On my coffee table, you will find a wooden bowl made by my good friend Willie from the wild cherry tree we had in the back yard. I fill it with candy during Christmas but mostly it stays empty, although I noticed there is a single tiny little Mr. Goodbar in it. On the kitchen table, you will find place mats that have sunflowers on them, medication, cloth napkins, and the local newspaper.

Carvins Cove: A Lost Community Beneath the Water

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

Carvins Cove is being talked about a lot these days because a Google data center is locating at The Botetourt Center at Greenfield. This is an industrial park the county created in the 1990s and its purpose has changed several times over the last 30 years.

The data center is supposed to use up to 8 million gallons of water a day when the entire thing is built out.

We recently visited the Cove. As you can see in the photos below, the lake is down considerably, as indicated by the dirt at what should be the water line at full pond. We've been in a drought situation for over a year now.

However, there is more to the story of Carvins Cove than water usage. Right now, it's a water reservoir with a conservation forest area that locals treat as both landmark and backdrop. 

But beneath that calm surface lies the memory of an entire community: farms, a school, a church, a resort hotel, even an amusement park. All of it now rests under the water that supplies much of the Roanoke Valley.

This is the story of how that happened.

Before the Water: A Frontier Settlement

Carvins Cove began as a small early‑19th‑century settlement built around a grist mill on Carvins Creek. Its namesake, William Carvin, was one of the first settlers in the Hollins area and held a 150‑acre land grant along the creek.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Cove had grown into a modest but lively rural community. Before its destruction, it included:

• Rocky Branch School

• Cove Alum Baptist Church

• Cove Alum Springs resort hotel

• Tuck‑Away Park, a small amusement park

• At least 60 homes

It was a place where Botetourt and Roanoke families lived, farmed, worshipped, and gathered. It was a quiet valley.

The First Rumblings of Change (1920s)

The community’s fate shifted in the early 1920s when the Virginia Water Company announced plans to build a dam to impound water in the area. By 1926, the company publicly confirmed the dam would be constructed at the falls of Carvins Creek.

An 80‑foot abutment was completed by 1928, but the reservoir itself remained unrealized for nearly two decades. The valley continued its daily life, even as the shadow of the future lake grew longer.

The Final Years of the Community (1940–1946)

Everything changed when the City of Roanoke acquired the Roanoke Water Company in 1942. With municipal backing, the reservoir project accelerated:

• The city began purchasing and condemning land throughout the Cove.

• On February 14, 1944, the last structures were auctioned off.

• In total, Roanoke acquired over 12,000 acres for about $1 million.

• In 1945, German POWs were brought in to help clear timber.

By May 1946, the reservoir filled and overtopped the dam, sealing the valley’s fate. The official dedication followed in March 1947.

What Lies Beneath

During drought years, the waterline drops enough that stone foundations and remnants of the old community reappear, ghostlike, along the shoreline.

Even when the water is high, hikers and riders sometimes notice old chimneys, walls, or roadbeds tucked into the woods. They are quiet reminders of what used to be there.

Carvins Cove Today: Water, Wilderness, and Memory

Today, Carvins Cove is:

• The primary water source for roughly 130,000 customers in the Roanoke Valley.

• One of the largest municipal parks in the United States (ranked between 2nd and 9th depending on the source).

• A major recreation area offering hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, paddling, and fishing.

It’s also fed in part by the Tinker Creek tunnel, opened in 1966, which diverts Botetourt water under Tinker Mountain into the reservoir.

Carvins Cove is no longer a village, but it is very much alive.

Why Carvins Cove Still Matters

Carvins Cove is a rare place where natural beauty, local history, and regional infrastructure intersect. For Botetourt County, it’s a reminder of:

• The early frontier families who shaped the region

• The sacrifices made for public water access

• The way landscapes hold memory, even when transformed

Standing on the shoreline today, it’s easy to forget that a community once lived beneath your feet. But the past is still there in the foundations that surface during drought, in the old photographs preserved by local families, and in the name “Carvin,” which still echoes across the valley.

Sources include the Western Virginia Water Authority; the City of Roanoke archives; the Roanoke Times historical coverage of the Carvins Cove project; the Botetourt County and Roanoke County historical societies; the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; and regional histories documenting the Cove Alum Springs resort, the early Carvin land grants, and the 1940s reservoir construction.

Sunday Stealing

Random Revelations

1. Is your phone Apple or Android? What about your laptop?

A. I have an iPhone. My laptop is a Dell, though not a very good one.

2. Can you say "thank you" in more than one language?

A. Gracias. 

3. What do you draw when you doodle?

A. I draw lines, doodles, loops, sometimes little people.

4. Which do you enjoy more, Scrabble or bowling?

A. Scrabble. I haven't been bowling in at least 35 years.

5. Can you juggle?

A. I cannot juggle, unless you are talking about multitasking. In that case, I juggle the laundry, a phone call, and a word processing program all at once sometimes.

6. Have you ever worn pajamas in public?

A. I do not recall ever wearing pajamas in public, except at the hospital when I had to walk up and down hallways with my little IV thing attached to me.

7. Was your best subject in school the one you enjoyed the most?

A. My best subject was always English, followed by history, and I enjoyed them both.

8. When you're offered the senior discount before you ask for it, are you offended or grateful?

A. I would love to have every senior discount available, but I am seldom offered them.

9. Do you agree that with age comes wisdom?

A. No, because I know some older folks who obviously never learned a thing.

10. Do you consider Sunday the first day of the week or the last day of the weekend? 

A. This is a good question. It has always puzzled me that Sunday is the first day of the week on the calendar but it's the day everyone goes to church, which is supposed to be the Sabbath. Monday always seemed like it should be the first day of the week to me.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

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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: Indian Lake

Saturday 9: Indian Lake (1968)

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

1) In this song, a family gets on a bus and heads off on vacation. Think about the last trip you took. Did you travel by car, bus, train, boat, or plane?

A. The last trip I took was by car.

2) Once they get to Indian Lake, they swim, have a picnic and go canoeing. Are you looking forward to any of these activities this summer?

A. I am not looking forward to any of those activities this summer. 

3) "Indian Lake" became familiar to TV audiences because it was used in commercials for the Dodge Charger. In the 1960s, most households didn't have remote controls to enable viewers to mute or skip commercials. Today, we do. When a commercial comes on, do you watch or do you turn down the sound or, if possible, fast forward past it?

A. I thought commercials were the signal to get up and go to the ladies room. And some shows won't let you fast forward through commercials anymore when you're streaming.

4) The Cowsills were a family singing group who had four Top 10 hits between 1967 and 1969. The brothers were self-taught musicians who enjoyed playing at church and school events. When their father, Bud Cowsill, became their manager, he insisted his wife Barbara and their youngest, Susan, join the band. He wanted the Cowsills to become "a latter-day Von Trapp family." Without looking it up, do you know who the Von Trapps were?

A. The Von Trapps were the Austrian family immortalized in the movie The Sound of Music.

5) The Cowsills were the inspiration for the sitcom The Partridge Family. It ran for four seasons and the fictional Partridges had three Top 10 hits, were nominated for a Grammy and made David Cassidy a star. Are you familiar with The Partridge Family?

A. I am quite familiar with The Partridge Family. I thought David Cassidy was quite handsome, and I wished I were as subtly beautiful as Susan Dey.

6) The Cowsills starred in an advertising campaign for the American Dairy Association. On TV and in magazine ads they proclaimed that "Milk is the lift that lasts." Decades later, oldest brother Bill recalled that he seldom drank milk. How about you? Do you often drink milk?

A. I am allergic to milk, so I do not drink it.

7) While Bud Cowsill engineered the family band's success, he also contributed to their demise. The Cowsills were scheduled to appear 10 times on the influential Ed Sullivan Show but were fired after the second because Bud was too confrontational backstage. He also had a reputation for being abrasive with record company executives and concert promoters, and this affected the band's ability to find work. Do you have a hard time biting your tongue or controlling your temper?

A. I can have a temper sometimes. I try not to but am not always successful.

8) In 1968, when this song was popular, Leonard Bernstein released his award-winning recording of Mahler: Symphony No. 8. Do you enjoy classical music?

A. I like to listen to classical music sometimes.

9) Random question – Here we are in March. If you made any New Year's resolutions, have you kept them?

A. I did not make any New Year's resolutions.

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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. 

When the Reporters Are Gone: What We Missed About the Data Center

I’ve been watching the conversation about the proposed Google Data Center at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield, and I want to offer a perspective that comes from 40 years of covering local government in Botetourt County.

A lot of people are angry at the Board of Supervisors right now. I understand why. Nobody likes feeling blindsided. But the truth is more complicated, and it points to a deeper problem we don’t talk about enough.

1. The Board didn’t hide anything. The zoning change happened in November 2024. The county advertised a public hearing to amend the RAM zoning district to include data centers as a permitted use. That was the moment when this project became possible. It was public. It was legal. It was properly noticed.

I remember seeing the ad and thinking, “They’re preparing for a data center.” Anyone who understands zoning would have recognized it.

But most people don’t read legal ads, and most people don’t follow zoning language closely. Most people don't even read a newspaper anymore. That’s not a criticism. It’s just reality.

2. The public didn’t react because the public didn’t know what the change meant. And this is where the real issue comes in.

When I was still writing, I would have explained what a RAM district is, broken down what “permitted use” means, connected the dots between the amendment and the likely project, interviewed county staff about the RAM use change, and written the kind of article that helps people understand what’s coming before it arrives.

That’s what local journalism is supposed to do. That's what I used to do.

3. But we don’t have that kind of local journalism anymore. The paper today prints very little that could be called “news.” They avoid controversy. They don’t have the staff, the time, or the institutional memory to cover land use, budgets, or long‑range planning.

It’s not the media's fault entirely.  People stopped buying papers, stopped advertising, and the economics collapsed. I stopped working because I was ill, and the paper never replaced my position.

But the result is the same: the county lost its watchdog, its explainer, its translator, because no one stepped up to take on that role.

4. So now people feel blindsided. The Board did not hide anything, (though they could have been a bit more forthcoming). But the information ecosystem failed. Not just the local paper, but also the TV media, and the daily paper. The Botetourt Bee ceased publication in the summer of 2024, before this public hearing happened. And it ceased publication because some members of this county acted inappropriately.

But this data center is what happens when a community loses its reporters. Important decisions go unnoticed, legal ads become the only form of outreach, people don’t understand the process, outrage arrives months or years too late.

The data center isn’t just a land‑use story. It’s a story about what happens when local news disappears.

5. I live half a mile from the site. I raise cattle. I have my own concerns. I’m sensitive to low‑frequency noise, and I’m paying close attention to what this means for me, my land, and my herd. I’m not dismissing anyone’s worries.

But I also know how the process works, and I know this didn’t come out of nowhere.

6. If we want better outcomes in the future, we need better information, not more anger. Communities can’t make informed decisions if they don’t have access to informed reporting. That’s the real loss here, and it’s one we’re all feeling now.

Watch the news. Buy the local paper, the weekly and the daily. Support local journalism if you want to be informed.

Communities need their watchdogs.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Reasons Physical Therapy Can Be Helpful

1. It teaches you how your body actually works. It's a marvelous miracle, full of mechanics and patterns, and there are habits you didn’t know you had that affect many things.

2. It builds strength in the places that quietly hold everything together, not just the obvious muscles.

3. It helps restore movement you didn’t realize you’d lost. Small changes in range of motion can make a big difference and make daily life easier.

4. It gives you tools to manage discomfort, not just endure it.

5. It helps you relearn trust in the part of your body that’s been hurting, which is its own kind of healing.

6. It breaks big problems into small, doable steps. Being able to do something with a body part that wasn't working properly can be a relief when reaching for the peanut butter feels overwhelming.

7. It encourages consistency over intensity, a rhythm that often fits real life better.

8. It helps correct imbalances that build up over years, the ones you only notice when something finally complains.

9. It supports recovery after injuries or surgeries by guiding movement safely and gradually.

10. It improves stability and balance, which can give you confidence to do everyday tasks.

11. It helps prevent future issues by strengthening weak spots before they become problems.

12. It offers a structured space to pay attention to your body, something most of us rarely do.

13. It reminds you that healing is active, not passive. It is something you participate in, not wait for.

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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 952nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.