Forget about Stonehenge. This past Friday morning, August 1, the place to be for cosmic alignment was Rosslyn.
According to official government documents, on August 1, 1860,
William Henry Ross purchased the land that became Rosslyn. Ross apparently lost his land after the Civil War.
Rosslyn then became a place "known primarily for its gambling halls, pawnshops, saloons, brothels and unsavory inhabitants."
That all means nothing in the grand span of cosmic time.
Every August 1, at 9:32am, at the
indescribable intersection of Fairfax Dr., Fort Myer Dr., N. Lynn St., and N. Meade St., the shadows cast by the world-famous
Dark Star Park land-art installation align with metal forms in the ground.
I didn't see it because I had to get to work. Would Arlington County please dig up Dark Star Park and re-align it for some more convenient time, say 7:30am?
The deep truth is imageless. A man from Alexandria, who appeared for the cosmic event, told me the deep significance of
August 1 and
Dark Star Park. I promised not to reveal the secret. You can always rely on the Ode Street Tribune, your best local news source.
Correction: Judith B., who is William Henry Ross's great great granddaughter, has written in from Australia to tell me that the William Henry Ross who purchased the land that is Rosslyn isn't W H H Ross from Delaware. It's another William Henry Ross, a Scot who worked in London and Liverpool and who owned a shipping line. He fled Rosslyn during the Civil War and returned to England. The land that became Rosslyn was deeded to Caroline Ross, William Henry Ross's wife. She inherited the land from her father, John Lambden, who owned a sugar plantation in Cuba.
