Richmond CoHousing: Building a Gingerbread Community

Laurel Street neighbor Caroline Cox has written a column in support of the Richmond CoHousing group for their website. It describes a family-oriented promotional program at the Richmond Public Library.

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Caroline is a long time resident of Oregon Hill, vegan cheesemaker, and gingerbread planner extraordinaire. She is also one of the founding members of Richmond Cohousing – if you’d like to hear about how our group came to be, she’s a great one to ask!

“What Doesn’t Burn.”

Harry Kollatz Jr’s most recent column informs of new attention to Grace Arents’ legacy from local librarian and writer Wendy DeGroat. A New Jersey transplant, DeGroat was inspired by a previous 2009 Kollatz feature on Grace Arents called The Invisible Philanthropist.

Kollatz excerpt:

Segue to 2015, and DeGroat is composing a group of 20 to 30 “documentary poems” under the title “What Doesn’t Burn.” The title is imbued with meanings: DeGroat like researchers before her, is left with scant material about Arents who, like her wealthy uncle Lewis Ginter and others of their time, ordered the destruction of her personal papers. What somehow didn’t burn were a commonplace book and two travel journals. In constructing the poems, to give herself Arents’ voice, DeGroat charted the frequency and choice of words and broke them into their proper categories, whether noun, verb and so forth. To frame the poems, she created letters that Grace could have written to her younger sister, Minnie, in New York City.

But, DeGroat points out, what also doesn’t burn is what one gives away, whether energy or material. It is a particular poignant observation, giving that the William Byrd Community House, a direct portion of Arents’ legacy – which withstood economic depressions and many variations of the monetary climate – closed this year.

She’s found in Arents not a schoolteacher spinster, as she’s perceived, but an independent woman who at age 49, through inheritance of the Ginter fortune, became a person of means, too. Arents chose to exercise her will by making her part of the world a better place and doing so in a way that didn’t attract undue attention to herself. Arents’ humble nature seems to have come through either example or genetics of her Uncle Lewis. The tobacco magnate who bankrolled the construction of the Jefferson Hotel ordered that his name not be seen anywhere in the building. This kind modesty isn’t exemplified by latter-day tycoons.

Trash/Recycling Pickup Tomorrow

This Wednesday is a red Wednesday, which means trash and recycling pickup.

Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.

If you have not done so already, don’t forget to sign up for your Recycling Perks.

In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling. There was a recent Richmond.com column on local recycling.

In Virginia recycling news, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services reports one of its programs has kept thousands of pounds of plastic pesticide containers out of state landfills.

New Book On Tredegar Iron Works

Well, I apologize for failing to give prior notice on this, but local historian Nathan Madison just gave a great talk this very afternoon on the subject of his new book, Tredegar Iron Works: Richmond’s Foundry on the James, at…Tredegar Iron Works, of course (or as the Welsh pronounce it, “Treediger” Iron Works).

Richmond Magazine recently profiled Madison and his new book.

A fundamental portion of the overarching story are the families whose associations to Tredegar went on, in some cases, for generations, almost from beginning to end. “What I kept seeing in the employee ledgers were the same names, Anderson, Archer, Delaney, Glasgow, Harris, Krengel, Osterbind, for years and years, on and on. And it’s not just the management level, but the men of the shop whose kids marry Tredegar kids, and so it was quite like a big family.”

The endurance and resilience of the company against man-made and natural disasters impressed Madison. “How they kept operating, using hydro-power and not fully ever converting to electricity, and on antiquated equipment, is kind of amazing.” The company’s men worked hard and sometimes suffered and died from industrial accidents. But their families persevered. Tredegar survived, but not quite long enough to become what in today’s view would be a “niche” manufacturer. But until the very end, what made money for Tredegar was rail spikes and clamps.

At his presentation today, Madison covered the plant history very well and included many good profiles of the figures involved with it (despite multiple interruptions by the automated museum videos). Afterwards, Madison graciously answered questions and shared some of his research insights.

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(With all of the Tredegar connections to the Oregon Hill, it is absolutely imperative that the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council sponsor a talk and book-signing in the neighborhood in the new year!)

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