Short takes from (Commencement+1) weekend and this past week

[damont]

As noted in earlier posts, I was at W&M a week ago. The weekend after commencement is also the weekend before the one where summer students move in, and the campus is almost deserted. It's rather eerie to be there on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and to have the campus almost entirely to oneself. The only signs of serious activity were coming from the construction area (which is NOT the dorm that had the fire earlier this month!), and from the small music festival going on in the Sunken Garden. Despite knowing that some of the dorms were being used to house people doing something (but I don't know what), the dorms in use were remarkably quiet, even on Saturday night. In the evenings we were able to cross Richmond Road near the delis, *against* the light, and not see a car coming in any direction for as far as we could see.

Other things I noted...

• Dorms in Botetourt Complex have been renamed since the language houses moved across the street. French/German House is now Gooch; Creative Arts House aka Units 7+8 is now Nicholson; Spanish House is now Dinwiddie. In Randolph Complex, they built two new edifices after we left the 'Burg: Nicholas Apartments attached to Pleasants Hall, and Preston (this is the one whose third floor and attic were gutted in the fire) attached to Giles (smoke and water damage). The language houses each got one floor in Giles or Preston but the dorms retained their old names.
• Speaking of fires, my freshman dorm was Jefferson, which was the site of the last big fire on campus (1983). The window to my freshman room was partially (1/4 to 1/3) obscured by a bush, which survived both the fire and the efforts to keep the fire under control. That bush now almost completely blocks the window.
• My senior class gift was the all-night reading lounge at Swem Library. When it first opened it was the first door on the RIGHT as you were headed into the library. Now it's off to the LEFT instead, where the computer lab used to be. ("Current WSWM forecast is a high of 85 degrees, with a 90 per cent chance of PC failure...")
• Speaking of computer labs, the original labs in Jones have been closed for ten years, but the other major labs opened in the 1980s are still there: Chan (in Tyler Hall), Morton, and Barrett. To think that folks predicted that we'd close them all by 2000, and we'd all be using our own PC's in our rooms...
• The sundial garden was very pretty, with white, cornflower blue, and orange flowers all in bloom.
• Progress: parking garage is under construction between Adair Gym and the Common Glory parking lot. The construction area, of course, sucks up a dozen or more parking spaces itself until it's done.
• Regress: my senior-year dorm, the old Italian House at 234 Jamestown Road, is empty and locked. I hope they intend to renovate it; tearing it down would not be happy-making. (And replacing it with anything other than a 1920s-style house would just look STUPID on that block.)
• Ed and Louise may still be Looking Out The Picture Window, but you can't tell. The longest running artwork on display in the Andrews Gallery was a 2x2-inch sketch by a friend of mine, which she placed in an old thermostat box, and left there on purpose when her exhibition was ended. It was still there the spring before they put up new exhibit walls. The new display walls were placed several inches out from the original walls, and I don't think the old thermostat boxen were taken down, but they are now completely covered; even the space between the walls is completely filled in around the entire perimeter of the new display area.

In other news:

• Gordon Lightfoot is on tour this summer. But his concert at Wolf Trap is right in the middle of Pennsic - arrrgh... and all three dates in PA follow right behind, *still* during the War.
• RIP Thurl Ravenscroft, voice of Tony the Tiger and singer of "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" (among other showbiz roles).

Comments

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

The "Matoaka Hilton" was actually the name given to the place during my freshman year, and was applied to the non-Creative Arts House side while the C.A.H. was a going concern. I'd honestly not registered when they applied the Nicholson sobriquet to that dorm but thought it was after I'd left town.