Who?

I’m Joel Jones, a playwright, fiction writer, storyteller, and improv teacher. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia with my lovely wife Jen and my lovely daughter Ellie. I run a theater company called Big Blue Door.

Where?

Charlottesville is a small city in the Piedmont of Virginia, famous for Thomas Jefferson, the University of Virginia, James Monroe, and proximity to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. Also more recently the location of the Unite the Right protests.

What?

Blame Cannon is a newsletter/blog about Charlottesville and cities of the past, present, and future. I want to break with current habits of arguing over words and identities, and instead tell stories of my experiences, the experiences of the people around me today, and the people of the past.

I share a true personal story about every three weeks, and write other series in cycles in between.

Welcome to Charlottesville

Blame Cannon began with the Welcome to Charlottesville series, which I hoped to turn into a play. Read WTCV in order:

• If you want to read the posts in the original order, alternating between the three story lines, here they are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, and Part 15.

True Personal Stories

Here are the Welcome to Charlottesville true personal stories:

• First Time, Second Time, Third Time, Fourth Time, Fifth Time.

Here are other true personal stories

• Boy’s State

• 3+ Passages of Life and Death in the Arts

• Ray

• Matthew Farrell

• A Lucid Dream

• Egyptian Train

• Guinea Pigs & Gerbils

• Boyfriend Guy

Local & Regional History

Here are the Welcome to Charlottesville posts are Charlottesville area history:

• Monasukapanough, Cville Begins!, Cville Grows & Separates, Cville Drives, Is It the Future Yet?

Here are other local and regional history posts:

• Wilmington Riot

• 3 Biggest Myths of African-American History

Police Stories & Unite the Right

Here are the Welcome to Charlottesville posts about my Police Stories project and the rise and fall of the Alt-Right:

• Police Stories: The Idea, Police Stories: The Launch, Police Stories 3: The Klan, Police Stories: Unite the Right, Police Stories: The Aftermath.

• Police Reform

• The Hate That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Urbanism

Here are posts about cities, towns, and how they work (or don’t!):

• The Difference Between Cities and Towns

• Cities of Forever

• Violence and the Freedom of Cities

• Why Housing is Expensive

• Cities and What’s Left for Democrats

Cultural Change and American Collapse

Observations and opinions about America’s slow slide.

• Waiting for the Next Consensus

• The Hate That Dares Not Speak Its Name

• The Decline of Newspapers

• Welcome to the First Year of the Rest of Your Life

• Not a Complete Unknown

• The Real Problem with the Media

2024 Election and it’s Aftermath

• Why Housing is Expensive

• When the Bubble Bursts

• There’s a 50/50 Chance Nate Silver Is Full of It

• Flunking Out of Electoral College

• What to Expect Tonight (and Tomorrow)

• Anatomy of Revolution

• Violence and the Freedom of Cities

• What to do about the coup: Pt 1: Tax the Rich

• What to do about the coup: Pt 2: Rule of Law

• What to do about the coup: Pt 3: Break up Monopolies

• What to do about the coup: Pt 4: Cut Military Spending

• What to do about the coup: Finale: When Governing Elites Fail

International Events

• Paging Doom

• A Primer of the Ukraine War

• A Primer of the Gaza War

• Flight Plans of Folly

Prehistoric Climate Change

• That Last Two Times the World Warmed, Pt 1

• That Last Two Times the World Warmed, Pt 2: Basic Humans

• That Last Two Times the World Warmed, Pt 3: Finishing Basic Humans

• That Last Two Times the World Warmed, Pt 4: Dogs

• Goodbye Doggerland

• Goodbye Atlantis

Energy

• Coal Pt 1: The Heat in the Kitchen

• Coal Pt 2: How Coal Gave Us the Dinosaurs

• Coal Pt 3: The Train

Miscellaneous

Some of my favorite miscellaneous posts:

• The Gray Tree Problem

• The Hate That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Why?

I began with the hopes that Welcome to Charlottesville series would become the script for a play called… wait for it... Welcome to Charlottesville. Then I kept going due to the way the 2024 election mimicked patterns of decline that came up in the events in Charlottesville.

In 2025 I’ve been sharing true stories of departures, writing about prehistoric climate change, energy, and miscellaneous reactions to the world at large. I also ran a series of five essays on the Trump administration as requested by my first paid subscriber. If you’d like me to work on something let me know!

Comments are welcome but please no profanity, trolling, or personal insults!

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