No we didn’t make another list (that I’m aware of), but this weekend my family went to a town in another state for my older daughter’s soccer tournament.

The contrasts between that town and ours are remarkable – ours is green, vibrant, thriving, with contrasts between city, country, mountains and flat land. Theirs is none of those. It’s interesting here, the topography, the culture, the things to do …

On the days where I read about a story about the stunning ineptitude of our politicians systems bureaucracy, the perspective of going to a place that is desolate, boring, depressed and uninteresting is immensely valuable.

For all of Charlottesville’s* faults and shortcomings (I’ll identify a few in a forthcoming story), we live in a pretty nice place and I count myself as damn lucky to live here.

Spend a few minutes browsing James Marshall’s photo stream on Flickr and tell me that Charlottesville’s not an awesome place to live. Seriously.

* Charlottesville = Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Nelson and sometimes Louisa