#schoolfield

[k12academics]

Neglecting aeration? Say hello to compacted soil, poor drainage, and unhappy grass. Don't let your playing field suffer!

https://sweep-all.com/

[yourcomet]

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. — Suli Proverb #scenery #photography #schoolfield #field https://www.instagram.com/p/CCxK9SEpCTb/?igshid=10mq1ugnwxv1

[adyemusicology-blog]

Public history is all around us! On Saturday I drove to Milton, NC, to attend the Milton Street Fair and see “A Day in Thomas Day’s Workshop,” a short vignette about the free black woodsmith who lived and worked in Milton. The table in front is a Thomas Day original! You can tell by the strong curves in the feet…Thomas Day pieces tend to have bold, declarative curved lines in rich dark mahogany. The woman in the AMAZING hoop skirt is playing Day’s wife Aquila, who was a slave in Virginia. State slave laws prohibited slaves to cross state lines, so the wealthy white people of the Milton area wrote a successful petition for her to come to North Carolina to be Day’s wife. People like to tell this story as one of the goodness of humanity, but my cynical side also suspects that the rich white people of Milton might have been afraid that Thomas Day would choose to leave North Carolina for Virginia, taking his furniture (MAJOR status symbol pieces) with him. As a musicologist, I was excited to see that the play included a lot of music, too! A tenor sang a beautiful rendition of “Summertime,” and Day and his workers did juba, a rhyhmically-complex hand clapping and patting dance originally done by African American slaves. It was my first time seeing “pattin’ juba” live! I have really been taken by how much music and art can tell history; the juba performance was a nice way to highlight the artistic culture of enslaved African Americans, and portrayed Day as being connected to African American culture even while he enjoyed freedom in the antebellum South. The quilt in my second picture is also a striking example of artistic renderings of history. This quilt is in the Schoolfield Museum in Danville, and shows an artistically-rendered map of Danville’s textile mills, using fabrics from Dan River Mills. The quilt was created recently, in the last decade or so, but the artistic practice of quilt-making goes way back, and would have been something that mill workers in the early 20th century would have appreciated and identified with. In that respect, this quilt tells a history both through its subject matter and its form. Plus, it’s visually stunning! Like the juba dance, this quilt and other artistic tellings of history have a way of cutting straight to the heart of the matter, giving you a *feeling* of a time and place while also teaching you historical facts. I have about three weeks left in Danville before I have to go back to Charlottesville to work a second summer job and do the writing portion of the internship. I’ll be sad to go…and I’m scheming up projects that’ll help me get back to Danville…..mill village string band folk festival, anyone?

[iph2017]

Public history is all around us! On Saturday I drove to Milton, NC, to attend the Milton Street Fair and see “A Day in Thomas Day’s Workshop,” a short vignette about the free black woodsmith who lived and worked in Milton. The table in front is a Thomas Day original! You can tell by the strong curves in the feet...Thomas Day pieces tend to have bold, declarative curved lines in rich dark mahogany. The woman in the AMAZING hoop skirt is playing Day’s wife Aquila, who was a slave in Virginia. State slave laws prohibited slaves to cross state lines, so the wealthy white people of the Milton area wrote a successful petition for her to come to North Carolina to be Day’s wife. People like to tell this story as one of the goodness of humanity, but my cynical side also suspects that the rich white people of Milton might have been afraid that Thomas Day would choose to leave North Carolina for Virginia, taking his furniture (MAJOR status symbol pieces) with him. As a musicologist, I was excited to see that the play included a lot of music, too! A tenor sang a beautiful rendition of “Summertime,” and Day and his workers did juba, a rhyhmically-complex hand clapping and patting dance originally done by African American slaves. It was my first time seeing “pattin’ juba” live! I have really been taken by how much music and art can tell history; the juba performance was a nice way to highlight the artistic culture of enslaved African Americans, and portrayed Day as being connected to African American culture even while he enjoyed freedom in the antebellum South. The quilt in my second picture is also a striking example of artistic renderings of history. This quilt is in the Schoolfield Museum in Danville, and shows an artistically-rendered map of Danville’s textile mills, using fabrics from Dan River Mills. The quilt was created recently, in the last decade or so, but the artistic practice of quilt-making goes way back, and would have been something that mill workers in the early 20th century would have appreciated and identified with. In that respect, this quilt tells a history both through its subject matter and its form. Plus, it’s visually stunning! Like the juba dance, this quilt and other artistic tellings of history have a way of cutting straight to the heart of the matter, giving you a *feeling* of a time and place while also teaching you historical facts. I have about three weeks left in Danville before I have to go back to Charlottesville to work a second summer job and do the writing portion of the internship. I’ll be sad to go...and I’m scheming up projects that’ll help me get back to Danville.....mill village string band folk festival, anyone?

xoxo, Aldona

[adyemusicology-blog]

The Blue Ridge Highballers are a string band from Schoolfield, the neighborhood in Danville built for mill workers. 

[adyemusicology-blog]

Today, a few of the DRF (Danville Regional Foundation) interns and I got to take a tour of the “White Mill” with Encyclopedia Virginia. Built in 1920 (or 1921?), the 650,000 sq. ft. mill was one of a few large textile mills in Danville. Dan River Mills was bought by an Indian chemical firm in 2006 after declaring bankruptcy in 2004, and the white mill has been empty ever since. There are some revitalization efforts that are trying to repurpose the mill, but its large size means there will need to be a substantial investment if any of the proposals are going to work! Still, the large mill is an impressive structure, and the view from the roof is incredible! The second picture is the Dan River, seen from the roof of the mill, in which you can see the footbridge with which mill workers travelled to get to work.

From a historic perspective, the Danville mills are incredible; even though working conditions and pay were terrible, many residents are nostalgic for the days when the textile industry was at the heart of the Danville economy. Parts of the town were built specifically to accommodate mill workers. For example, the Schoolfield neighborhood was designed to be a fully-functional autonomous town populated by workers at the Schoolfield Mill (pictured at bottom). The Schoolfield Museum in Danville has an impressive collection of materials documenting Schoolfield’s history; hopefully I will connect with them and get a chance to explore Danville’s mill history further in the coming weeks.

Ta ta for now! Aldona

[den-lowe]

Going after the ball... A typical day in school... #ngeeannsec #ballgames #schoolfield #students (at Singapore)

[bry-nie-blog]

My school field is actually kinda beautiful