Month: November 2002

Two years ago, Charlottesville carpenter Louise Finger packed her tool belt and sized up a new project. She put aside her usual routine of building swanky homes for Central Virginia’s well-to-do and embarked on what she says is a more rewarding path: constructing no-frills public structures for communities in need.

Ilove that kind of work, but day after day of building high-end homes for people who already have another home wasn’t very fulfilling,” Finger says. “Building a medical clinic for a community that doesn’t have one is more valuable to me than building something else for lots of money.”

With that attitude in mind, two years ago Finger flew to Fort Liberté, Haiti, and spent 10 days lending her craftsmanship to an ongoing medical clinic project. She worked with more than two dozen Haitian laborers hauling loads of concrete in a bucket brigade, looking for lumber in a fairly desolate land, and bending and reusing nails due to the lack of available resources. She loved it, and in the end felt that she had used her skills to produce something desperately needed. That’s the whole design of Building Goodness.

Officially incorporated in 1999, the Building Goodness Foundation assists community-based construction projects in Third World countries by providing planning and implementation services, as well as on-site expertise. Founded by a group of Charlottesville builders eager to give back, local contractors, craftsmen and surveyors now put their years of experience building high-end houses in neighborhoods like Farmington and Glenmore toward figuring out how to build a hillside school in a remote part of, say, Guatemala. And in addition to five current projects in two different countries, the group has finally started to bring those lessons back home by helping Charlottesville’s needy as well.

The idea for Building Goodness came, in part, from Jack Stoner, a founding partner of construction firm Alexander Nicholson. Stoner was doing well for himself in the late ’90s. His business worked on more than $60 million worth of construction projects in the past 20 years, including such community landmarks as Kegler’s, the massive ACAC facility at Albemarle Square and the new Catholic school on Rio Road. His firm also works on ritzy houses in some of the area’s most elite subdivisions; clients come to Alexander Nicholson with money, they make it happen.

It was lucrative, but it wasn’t enough. “You reach a point in your life where you say, ‘Is this the point of my existence?’” Stoner explains.

But growing dissatisfaction didn’t immediately lead to a new way of life for Stoner. Six years ago, Lawson Drinkard—a former partner in the influential VMDO architectural firm and a one-time director of the Virginia Student Aid Foundation—asked Stoner to join him on a mission trip to Haiti. Stoner initially declined due to a heavy project load at Alexander Nicholson, but once the projects fell through or were put on hold, Stoner was on a plane heading toward perhaps the most desolate country in the Western hemisphere.

Stoner was dumbfounded by what he found. A near total lack of stability and infrastructure was further starving an already famished country. Charities with good intentions and funding struggled to turn the tide amid limited local resources and facilities.

“There aren’t any general contractors in these areas,” Stoner says.

Upon returning to the United States, Stoner was visited by the big idea: Send teams of Charlottesville contractors to Haiti to build a compound in L’Acul for one of these charities, Haiti Fund—a network of churches and private individuals across the United States that sponsored certain communities on the island nation.

Alexander Nicholson was one of the initial firms to sponsor its employees for the project, paying to send a group to the island and maintaining their wages while there. It went so well—and, according to Stoner, built morale and pride among Alexander Nicholson’s crew—that like-minded contractors decided to charter an organization to make further projects a reality. Other contracting firms that participated in individual projects include Ace Contracting, Inc., Greer & Associates, Central Virginia Waterproofing, Safeway Electric and Sugar Hollow Builders.

“Most people seemed to think they got more out of it than they put into it,” Stoner says.

The positive reactions encouraged him to take the idea and turn it into Building Goodness. With a focus on building structures for the general community, the group works with charities that pay for the materials and organize on-site manpower, while Building Goodness and its member firms provide planning, implementation and on-site expertise.

Stoner has been pleasantly surprised by the willingness to get involved by members of the Charlottesville community. There are lessons to be learned from other communities, he says, as well as ideas about community that can be exported abroad.

“There’s a sense of community in Haiti where if you have a bowl of rice, you’re going to share it,” he says. “But there’s not a great sense of community on the political level as far as being able to band together to improve something.”

Stoner banded together with a friend and former religious adviser to improve Building Goodness. He asked Jay Sanderford, an ordained Presbyterian minister and former youth minister at the First Presbyterian Church on Park Street, to come on as executive director of the foundation after he returned to town in 1999.

Now, Sanderford says, “I don’t have a congregation, but I have lots of partners in building an organization from the ground up. So that’s a pretty exciting challenge.” Long-term, the foundation hopes to export its plan and form satellite groups in other communities, although the local chapter is the only one in operation so far.

Sanderford spends most of his time developing the organization by seeking donors and interested and craftsmen for future trips. Area donors like Mountain Lumber, Monarch Concrete and L&D Association Plumbing help to fund the group’s $125,000 budget, while a string of suppliers, like Better Living, Gaston & Wyatt, and H.T. Ferron Concrete Suppliers, that the builders deal with in their regular line of work provide supplies and logistical assistance for work sites.

Sanderford also writes grants for individual projects and helps organize trips. Since its founding, as many as 50 people have participated in one or more of 19 total trips to Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia and Nicaragua; so far the group has concentrated on works in Central and South America and the Caribbean since those areas are more cost-effective and accessible than other global locales. Sanderford estimates that a total of 150 people have been involved in some way or keep in touch with the group’s progress.

Enoch Snyder became heavily involved with the group. Snyder grew up around missionaries in a small town in eastern West Virginia. In high school, he took an exchange trip to Costa Rica. Little surprise, then, when he threw himself headlong into helping to develop Building Goodness shortly after taking a job as a project manager at Alexander Nicholson.

Snyder’s main contribution to the foundation has been advance scouting. So far, the project manager has taken six trips to four countries (Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Bolivia), and plans to lead another trip to Guatemala in January. Unlike many of the craftsmen who travel under the Building Goodness banner, Snyder doesn’t always have a group project on his plate. In Bolivia, for example, Snyder performed consulting work for another group building a hospital for Mission of Hope, Bolivia, a Charlottesville-based religious non-profit..

Scouting projects is a natural extension of his job in Charlottesville, but Snyder says that monitoring the intricate details of stateside projects pales compared to the logistical nightmares of building even simple structures abroad; there are no Allied Concrete trucks backing up to work sites in Haiti, for instance. For that reason, Building Goodness has on occasion turned down solicitations from charities they deem to be disorganized or naive.

“We’ll feel them out by asking things like, ‘What’s your 10-year plan?’” Snyder says.

But while planning out and executing projects can be difficult and time-consuming—combined, Snyder spends a full month a year traveling, meeting, planning and designing just for Building Goodness—he says the reward is great in the human sense.

“Clients around here will thank you, but their expectations are so high that it can be hard to please them,” he says. “Then you can go to Guatemala for a week to work on a school building and be overwhelmed by the peoples’ response.”

Project managers aren’t the only ones who benefit from this interaction; the craftsmen reap the biggest benefits from the exchange.

“Carpentry skills aren’t really valued here. Carpenters are kind of second-class citizens behind doctors and lawyers, for instance,” Snyder says. “But if you go to a Third World country, you’re at the top of the food chain if you can work well with your hands. These craftsmen come back with a whole new perspective on their lives.”

But Building Goodness doesn’t just go to a community to look for what it feels is a problem and then try to fix it. Rather, Snyder says the group typically waits for a community or a charity to come forward with an identified need, one that can be met by a mixing of American expertise and local elbow grease.

“We like to enlist a lot of community labor because of the obvious benefits to the process,” he says.

Sometimes, identified needs can come as a complete surprise to a visiting American. For example, Snyder recalls a project the foundation did in a bayside town in Haiti. The town was built on top of a hill; at the base was its water supply and the home of an elderly woman regarded as a community leader. When the Building Goodness team arrived, the Haitians informed them that they preferred the group construct a set of concrete steps linking the two locales. They put away ideas of grander construction and helped the locals build their vision.

Snyder says his experiences have helped him to not be blind to other cultures. “You are the same person, in better circumstances, than the people you meet over there,” he says.

Carpenter Louise Finger learned that lesson during her time working with Building Goodness in Haiti, and more. For her it was a life-changing experience, she says—not just in some abstract, spiritual sense, but in how she lives her day-to-day life.

After returning from Haiti, Finger revamped her priorities. She no longer does contract work and is only a part-time carpenter. Instead, Finger works part-time for the Department of Forestry in the stream-restoration field.

“I probably do more carpentry work for charity than I do for income,” she says.

While the Haiti experience left her thirsting for more opportunities to use her skills to serve others in need, these days Finger donates her time and expertise to local projects. Whereas Building Goodness’ overseas projects advance slowly and take lots of planning, Finger can organize and get a project going around here with minimal planning and expense. Some of her opportunities have come through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but others stem from Building Goodness’ budding local projects team.

That local program may work to placate skeptics who argue that while Building Goodness’ overseas projects fill a need, there are plenty of people in and around Charlottesville who could use a community center or better medical facilities, too. And while the organization has yet to work on any major public facilities in the area, it is starting to make its presence known through private works.

One such local project in late October led Finger and five other Building Goodness members to a house in North Garden that was in desperate need of attention. The Albemarle Housing Improvement Program (one of the organizations Building Goodness has worked with locally, as well as the Jefferson Area Board on Aging and Christmas in April) had the house in mind for a renovation but couldn’t get the approvals lined up. “We weren’t constrained by their funding limitations,” Finger says.

The result: The local craftsmen ripped off the house’s porch, replaced all 12 windows, and poured and placed a cement stoop to help the older woman who lived there come and go more easily. Not bad for a Saturday.

“We could do a lot around here in one day if we had six to eight people who would dedicate their days,” she says. Sanderford says the group has done three such monthly projects, called craft service days, in which Building Goodness rehabilitates dilapidated private homes referred to them by community agencies. The most recent craft service day occurred on November 23 in the Greenwood community. The local approach will be a growing part of the Building Goodness strategy—thus closing the circle on Stoner’s initial idea with benefits being felt right here in our backyard.

Finger says Charlottesville tends to have an excellent sense of community, but that the area’s residents have to guard against facets of their lifestyle that can tear down that mutual caring.

“All in all, it’s a wealthy area,” she says. “With wealth, I think we tend to let go of the importance of depending on others, or looking out for others. You’re less likely to call out to others for help and support, which in turn can make you less mindful of others’ needs.”

But for Finger anyway, her Haiti experience has created a new community here for her—one of friends from different backgrounds whom she might never have met otherwise.

“I didn’t know a soul, and now I’ve met some of the coolest people,” she says. “I’ve definitely made some great friends.”

Yes, he says finally. That will work.

The first day of shooting ANJLZ begins on a cold mid-November morning, in a large garage located on an estate in Free Union, just west of Charlottesville. A group of people, most still looking sleepy and clutching cups of coffee, are milling about in two small rooms adjacent to the garages main bay. A few move with purposescribbling on clipboards, opening make-up kitsbut most look as if they are waiting for someone.

At 8am sharp that someone arrives. Paul Wagner, the director and co-writer of ANJLZ , is an unassuming presence at first glance, a man of medium height and medium build, with a salt-and-pepper beard and dressed in black jeans and a pullover. His hands are in his pockets, and he looks a little chilly as he makes his way to the coffeemaker in the corner. He says a few hellos.

His relaxed demeanor, however, belies how much is at stake. Wagner, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and a Charlottesville resident, has invested a lot of himself and asked a lot of others to get this project going. With ANJLZ , Wagner hopes to make a dark comedy, or, as he calls it, a metaphysical farce, about a man who makes a deal with the devil and the angels who try to save him. It will be, he hopes, a film that will tackle issues of faith and redemption without taking them too seriously. Its an ambitious step for a man whose career has largely been spent making documentaries, with only one real feature film to his credit.

The director, with coffee now, moves into the make-up room to check how the actors are coming along. He talks with an assistant director, who then motions at some production assistants. People begin to move a little faster. ANJLZ gets rolling.

Wagners name is familiar to anyone who has been consistently involved in local theater and filmmaking during the past several years. He is a founder and board member of LightHouse, a nonprofit media-education center for teenagers, and he regularly teaches and heads workshops on documentary filmmaking for that organization. He is also on the board of Live Arts, the citys premier non-professional theater company. He sat on the search committee that recruited Richard Herskowitz, the current director of the Virginia Film Festival. And despite being involved in the community, he hasnt neglected his own career, taking on projects for public television.

His greatest accomplishment since his move to town in the early 1990s came in 1998, when Wagner directed Windhorse , his first feature, a stirring, thoughtful drama about the struggles of a Tibetan family in the shadow of the Chinese occupation. To make it, Wagner conducted an underground shoot on location, under the nose of the Chinese authorities, with a cast composed largely of native Tibetans who had never acted before.

The film was received well by criticsthe San Francisco Chronicle called it amazing, a searing political drama that rips the veils off Western idealism about Tibetand won audience awards at three film festivals. It won the award for Best U.S. Feature at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, where Wagner was also awarded Best Director.

Now Wagner is taking on perhaps his biggest challenge with ANJLZ , a film that is in most senses an entirely local production. Wagner wrote the script in collaboration with Charlottesville resident and novelist Karl Ackerman; the cast is composed almost entirely of Live Arts veterans and former UVA students; crew were generally drawn from Charlottesville and Richmond; Will Kerner, a founder of Live Arts and a well-known photographer, is producing the film. Local investors have provided most of the money for the production. In addition, virtually the entire 18-day shootmost of the action in ANJLZ takes place in one mansionis at Travigne, the Albemarle home of a former Internet executive.

Every effort is being made to keep ANJLZ a cheap, streamlined production. As he did with Windhorse , Wagner is shooting ANJLZ entirely on digital video, which is considerably cheaper than film. The cast and crew are working, for the moment anyway, on a volunteer basis, having accepted deferred salariesif ANJLZ makes money, they get paid. The budget for the film, including the salaries, will total about $300,000.

The prospects for ANJLZ after it is completed are uncertain, but Kerner and Wagner will try to get the film into festivals, and then secure a cable deal. Cable seems a far likelier scenario than theatrical distribution for a small independent film.

ANJLZ will test the resources Wagner has developed over his career, a career that began in the early 70s when he was a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in behavioral research. In what was pretty much an accident, Wagner took a class in documentary filmmaking taught by Sol Worth, a pioneering anthropologist and a brilliant, difficult guy, with whom, Wagner further says, he had a terrific personal relationship.

The class had a huge impact on Wagner. He knew he wanted to make documentaries. He promptly quit school, hit the library, and watched as many films as possible in an attempt to educate himself about filmmaking. In time, he fell in with a group of folklorists at the Smithsonian Institute, assisting them in research projects and doing films based on the ideas.

Through the class, and then the Smithsonian projects, Wagner developed what he called an anthropological approach to filmmaking that has informed his work ever since.

That was the key thing, he says. That sort of set my direction as a filmmaker, particularly as a documentary filmmaker. And so everything that Ive done I think has been pretty much in that ballpark. Certainly the documentaries, and even Windhorse is very sort of ethnographic, even as a feature film.

In 1984, Wagners career got a significant jump-start. In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Office of Folklife Programs, Wagner, with his friend Marjorie Hunt, made The Stone Carvers, a documentary on a group of Italian-American artisans. The charming 30-minute film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Wagner says he doesnt think The Stone Carvers is necessarily better as a piece of work than other films he has made, but he acknowledges what the Oscar meant for him.

It had two effects. The big one isand its sort of ridiculousbut it gives you this phrase, Academy Award-winning filmmaker. Long after people have forgotten The Stone Carvers , you keep using this phrase relentlessly, he says in his High Street office. And the press picks it up, and it gives you an identity, which whether its earned or not or deserved or not, is just sort of irrelevant. It just has the function of giving you this one phrase that gets attached to you, and you know what? Its great to be able to use that, so I use it.

But in a more personal way, it also sort of legitimized the direction of these ethnographic films, or anthropologically based films, as being something other than an academic exercise, he goes on.

In other words, it didnt have to be a boring documentary in which nothing happens because youre looking at real people in their everyday liveswhich might be some peoples assumption about a film like that. But in fact it proved to me that the possibilities for telling a story in that context were terrific, that they could be moving and exciting and thought-provoking and all sorts of things that films need to be successful, even though the people were unknown, or their stories not important in some ways.

Wagner’s other films in the 1980s and 90s centered on a variety of different topics, though all to some degree displayed Wagners ethnographic sensibilities. There was Miles of Smiles: Years of Struggle , which told the history of the Pullman Porters, who formed the country’s first black labor union. There was a profile of playwright George C. Wolfe; a film about the traveling medicine show, which featured many of the few remaining medicine show performers; and Out of Ireland , which dealt with the history of the Irish emigration to America.

His career took another turn in 1993, when Wagners niece, Julia Elliott, was arrested by the Chinese police while traveling inside Tibet for taking pictures during a protest demonstration. The event inspired Wagner to talk to her, and her Tibetan boyfriend, Thupten Tsering, about helping him with a film about Tibet.

There are and were a number of documentaries about modern-day Tibetlegions of artists have protested the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government since its invasion in 1951and Wagner and company soon decided that this film would be a feature. Even this, however, would be a feature somewhat continuous with the directors earlier work.

They had ideas about what the story could be about, in terms of representing the story for young people specifically, Wagner says. Not just this bigger political story about the Dalai Lama, but rooted in the lives of everyday people, people who are not the Dalai Lama, but who have dramatic stories because their lives were dramatic, and their lives dramatized these broader and cultural forces. So that became the approach, which sort of meshed with the way I had always looked at things.

Windhorse made many people look at Wagner differentlyeven his friends. One of these was novelist Karl Ackerman, who had known Wagner since he moved to town.

Id seen a lot of his documentaries before Windhorse , and I remember one afternoon he came over and [Jennifer, Ackermans wife] and I sat down and watched a rough cut of Windhorse with him, Ackerman says. And I remember beingas well as I knew him at that pointkind of stunned with two things about him as a filmmaker: No. 1, that his movies are really smart; and No. 2, that he is really concerned about story and character.

About one-and-a-half years ago, Ackerman and Wagner began to talk about collaborating on a project. The original idea, they say, was to make a film that could be shot on a single Charlottesville location, with a small cast. Ackerman had been planning a short story about the final day in the life of a wealthy man, and the two discussed ways to make this into a film.

Both men attended parochial schools, and they soon decided to infuse the story with elements from their shared background, what Wagner calls a cultural Catholicism, where youve grown up with these ideas and ways of thinking about these ideas.

In ANJLZ , Sharif and Victor, two angels, travel to the country home of Bobby Buchanan, who they know will die that day, to do his soul crossing. (The title refers to the vanity plate on the back of the angels beat-up van.) What the angels dont know, due to a cosmic mix-up, is that Buchanan long ago made a deal with the devil10 years of wealth and power in return for his soul at the endand that Azazel, the black angel, will soon be arriving on the scene to collect the debt. Victor, over the objections of Sharif, decides to disrupt the process and help save Bobby.

The religious characters in the script, angel or not, are not given an easy treatment in ANJLZ . Sharif is a cynical, hard-boiled pragmatist; and Victor is more crafty than holy. No one is particularly concerned with doing the right thingits following the rules, or getting away with bending them, that concerns them. Nevertheless, the script isn’t wholly cynical, and at the end, to paraphrase the script itself, shit is transformed into love.

The script is clever, but films, such as 1999s Dogma , which mix religion and satire, faith and farce, have a history of backfiring with audiences and sometimes provoking controversy. When youre funny, youre too flip; when youre serious, youre too earnest. Its tough to strike the right note, and thats why such movies are always risky undertakings, particularly by newcomers to feature filmmaking. In other words, theres no guarantee that ANJLZ will work as a film, and quite a lot to suggest it wont.

Whether they have something at stake in the project or not, those who know Wagner well express enormous confidence in his abilities.

Kerner, ANJLZ photographer-producer who also produced Windhorse , has had ample opportunity to observe Wagner work both on and off the set; the two share an office on East High Street.

I think hes a very skilled, patient, thorough, even-keeled personality, Kerner says. I dont think Ive ever seen him on the set lose his temper or anything like that. In a production, whether its Windhorse or ANJLZ , the nature of filmmaking is such that there are so many variables, so many people involved, so many different unforeseen things that can happen, that the attribute he has of being able to stay calm through it all I think is one that is really key to creating a positive work environment.

Richard Herskowitz, who showed Windhorse at the 1998 Virginia Film Festival, calls the director immensely talented.

Hes one of these filmmakers who really fully embraces the project and tackles each job in a fresh way, Herskowitz says. I really think hes one of those people that just loves learning about new things, and so he throws himself into each project without it already having a strong connection to something he already knows.

While Wagner may have the skills to conduct a successful shoot, whether he will be able to turn the script of ANJLZ into a successful movie is a different story. But the director himself does not sound worried about the outcome. For Wagner, the unpredictability, and the risk, is part of the fun.

Thats the nature of this process, and what to me is so exciting about it, that its always redefining itself, he says. Something that seems so important at one point in the process, once you move to the next stage doesnt mean anything. And that to me is sort of liberating, because it means you can make horrible mistakes early on and you dont have to pay for them. On the other hand, you can take extreme risks that might pay fabulous dividends.

And I think thats sort of where we are in our thinking about the script. You look at the page, and you think, to oversimplify: Is it possible to make a joke about death? Particularly after September 11? Can you joke about death?

Well, I dont know. But Im going to find out.

Its mid-morning , a bit later on the first day of the shoot. Wagner and some of the crew are on location at a nearby estate. The property has been chosen as the site for the films few exterior shots primarily because it happens to feature a large gate, which Wagner wants in the film.

Things have been running smoothly all morningseveral of the crew comment how well the first day has goneand Wagner is purposeful but calm, cracking a few jokes. For the most part everyone is smilingfor now.

The director grabs a bagel, and works with the photographer on the angle for the next shot, which will capture the angels as they drive through the opening in the gate in their dilapidated Volkswagen van.

Wagners not entirely happy with the set-up, because the angels are supposed to be speeding and the gate doors dont open as quickly as he would like. However, he knows he can speed up the shot in the editing process.

For a few seconds he looks at the monitor, examining the framing.

Yes, he says finally. That will work.

Charlottesville’s population isn’t getting any younger, and the area’s reputation for a high quality of life is driving not only growth in general but also an influx of people over 60 from across the country. Indeed, 12.5 percent of the Charlottesville-Albemarle population in 2000 was 65 or older, compared to 9.7 percent in 1990.

Ned and Fran Morris, formerly of New Jersey, can describe exactly what propels that growth among senior citizens. When they were looking for a place to retire, Ned says, they knew they wanted to continue to live with four seasons.

"But we didn’t want to have to put up with the New York winters," Ned says. "And we knew we wanted a community with good medical facilities, hopefully with a college or university."

Advertisers know that Charlottesville fulfills the Morrises’ wishes almost perfectly. In the Fall 2002 issue of Virginia magazine, a publication of the UVA Alumni Association, for instance, there’s an ad placed by Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, the retirement community where the Morrises have lived since 1990. The full-page ad beckons senior citizens to move into one of Westminster-Canterbury’s cottages or apartments. One selling point is the security of lifelong care, something every Westminster resident is guaranteed.

Yet the ad’s true focus is something else: the quality of life outside Westminster around Charlottesville itself. The marketing piece highlights opportunities that senior citizens have here for cultural activities and intellectual stimulation, which many other medium-sized towns cannot offer. The region shines in this ad as a mecca of learning, nestled in a spectacular natural setting.

"Charlottesville has become a real destination for retirees," says Kevin O’Halloran, development director at Westminster-Canterbury. The ad in Virginia magazine is just one of many targeting retirees around the country. It drops tantalizing names: summer Shakespeare at Barboursville, UVA football games, and—of course—Monticello.

Retirees coming to Charlottesville may indeed find an enjoyable new home awaiting them. Yet, for many other seniors, there is no guarantee of basic services, much less lifelong learning. A growing population and shrinking economy have people worried about the future of aging in Charlottesville.

Occupying a lofty perch on Pantops Mountain, Westminster-Canterbury’s main building could almost be an upscale hotel. "You think of a nursing home as a grim, sterile place. That isn’t the case here," O’Halloran says. Framed art—original drawings by the daughter of a resident—bedecks a hallway. Gracious common areas include a full-service dining room, complete with linen napkins at each place setting. Outside the building, residents have an eye-level view of Monticello.

Westminster is what’s known as a continuing care facility. Its 300 residents sign contracts guaranteeing them housing, food and medical care for life. Most arrive during what O’Halloran calls the "second phase of retirement." In other words, they’re ready to be done with the responsibilities of home ownership and they’re looking for a secure future. The average age of new residents is 75. At this stage, usually healthy, they live independently in cottages or apartments and drive their own cars. "They want to plan ahead and make sure everything is taken care of so that their children don’t have to," he says.

The Morrises, who moved first to Crozet from New Jersey in 1979 when Ned retired from a marketing career, say their Westminster cottage feels like home.

"The people are great, and it’s beautifully run. You can be busy every minute of the day, there’s so much going on," says Fran.

As residents age and begin to need help with basic activities like dressing and eating, they move into Westminster’s assisted living facility, which has nurses on each floor. Later, they may move again, into full-time nursing care or a specialized Alzheimer’s unit.

With Westminster providing various levels of care at a single site, it can accommodate couples whose needs vary. "We had been here about three years when I found out I had to have my hip operated on," Fran says. "I was over in the health center, and Ned didn’t have to go across town to a nursing home to see me when I was convalescing."

Westminster residents enjoy on-demand transportation around town. They can join bus tours to plays and lectures or take special classes for seniors taught by current and retired UVA faculty at the Jefferson Institute for Lifelong Learning. And their living quarters are hardly cramped: Many have two-bedroom cottages or apartments.

Naturally, all this costs quite a lot. Westminster is a non-profit organization affiliated with the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, and its revenue mostly comes from its residents. To move into an apartment here, a single person would pay an entrance fee of at least $180,000; couples wanting larger cottages shell out considerably more. On top of the entrance charge, monthly maintenance fees range from $2,000 to more than $4,000.

The Westminster Fellowship Fund can cover the entrance or monthly fee for people with limited means, and a few residents receive full assistance. The fund also provides a form of insurance for residents who have unexpected money troubles.

The Morrises have no doubt that for them, the cost has been more than worthwhile, and say that the monthly fee is comparable to the cost of living independently.

"I know it’s staggering to contemplate writing that first check for the entrance fee," Ned says. "But most people, by the time they reach the age to come in here, they own their home, and that money is usually more than is required for whatever unit they want to live in here. It’s upscale, but it’s not expensive."

Kathy Crosier, who handles community relations at the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, agrees that Charlottesville is a good place to grow old. She says the area offers a wealth of resources JABA can tap to help serve the elderly, and that a commitment to volunteerism is what mobilizes these resources. "We’re very fortunate in this area that there’s such an outreach from the community," she says.

She tells the story of a woman in JABA’s adult day care program who spoke only Japanese. "We were able to contact someone at UVA who found people who spoke Japanese, and they came and visited with her once a week," Crosier says. "If you were in an isolated area, you might not be able to tap into that. Even the most unusual thing, we can usually find someone to assist us."

With its broad mission covering a long roster of programs for the elderly, JABA needs to be adept at drawing assistance from whatever sources it can. A mostly publicly funded agency serving Charlottesville plus five surrounding counties (Greene, Louisa, Nelson, Fluvanna and Albemarle), JABA’s constituency includes all elderly people and their caregivers. "We serve people that may have means, and people that don’t," Crosier says. JABA’s mission is simple and far-reaching—to determine the needs of the elderly, and fulfill them.

Among the services JABA offers are health insurance counseling, home safety assistance (installing handrails in the shower, for example), meal delivery and in-home care. There are even volunteers available to help seniors decipher byzantine medical bills. Joyce Gentry, an information specialist at JABA, says "Some people look at a bill, and say ‘I don’t have a clue; it’s five pages long. What do I pay?’ We have someone who can help them look at that and determine, ‘This is what you pay.’ It gives them peace of mind." JABA is so well known as a go-to information source for seniors that, says Crosier, "People call Joyce for directions to the airport."

JABA also operates senior centers in each of the five counties it serves and is working to open adult day care facilities around the region. Walking through the day care center in JABA’s main office north of Charlottesville, Crosier says that in some ways day care is one of JABA’s most important programs.

"It’s all about creating that quality of life and making the elderly feel useful," she says. "You still participate in life, and you still give back and do things, even though you have physical limitations."

Clients in the day care program can become part of a hand bell choir, arrange flowers donated by Whole Foods Market or help make quilts, some of which hang on the walls of the Charlottesville center’s spacious great room. Outside, there’s a pleasant enclosed patio where clients grow vegetables, which they then cook in the center’s kitchen. Crosier greets a group of about 10 clients making cookies; an activities director handles the oven to help ensure safety.

The day care center has been in this location for five years, and the new building was designed to be more effective at meeting clients’ most pressing needs. A two-bed infirmary has exit doors opening directly to the outside.

"That keeps everybody in day care away from the situation, and they don’t all panic and get worried," Crosier says. "This is a state- of-the-art facility, and when they were planning this building, this was the dream thing, to have an infirmary separate."

Back in the great room, the center serves lunch and two snacks each day. They’re substantial enough to provide all the nutrition clients need for the day, says Crosier, which is especially important for those who live alone. "They may go home and just have tea and toast or cereal," she says, "so at least you know they’ve eaten here and had a hot meal served to them."

With an inexpensive hair salon, therapeutic tub room, geriatric physicians and physical therapists on site, the center functions as a mini-town where seniors can access many services at once. This is just as helpful to family members and caregivers as it is to seniors themselves, Crosier says.

"We wanted to do kind of like a one-stop shopping theme, so while that caregiver is taking her respite break or going to work, she can drop Mom or Dad off [at day care], and if they have a doctor’s appointment, the doctor’s nurse will actually take them for their appointment, then call the family member and give them an update."

Though the agency is involved in affordable housing for seniors (Woods Edge, an apartment building for seniors in Charlottesville, and Mountainside Senior Living, an assisted-living facility in Crozet), JABA is primarily committed to giving seniors the services that will allow them to remain at home as long as possible. "That’s where we find people are happiest," says Gentry.

More than 600 volunteers make JABA run smoothly. Many are able to offer more than just their time, bringing useful skills and experience to JABA programs.

"I think the University is one of the plusses in the community," Gentry says. "We do have people of means here, and also we have people who are very knowledgeable about a wide array of information."

Crosier and Gentry are each positive about the success JABA has had in its 27-year history. Yet they acknowledge that there are limitations to what JABA can do. Many of its services are free, and the ones that are fee-based operate on a sliding scale. Day care, for example, costs $50 per day, but many clients pay $5 or nothing at all.

"We serve everyone," Crosier says, "and any profit that is made would be just to balance out these programs for the indigent."

The day care program successfully serves about 75 registered clients and has no waiting list.

Other JABA services operate on shakier ground, with seniors who cannot afford to pay left on waiting lists. With State budget cuts looming, even successful programs like day care are threatened.

"When funding sources are cut, that means the indigent will have a waiting list because there won’t be scholarship funding available, or it might be more limited," Crosier says.

Gentry believes that, with budget cuts, the biggest gap that may open in JABA’s services will be with in-home care.

The uncertain plight of some JABA clients clearly is a far cry from a comfortable life on Pantops Mountain. The cost of health care can be an impossible burden.

"It’s not unusual, if someone has a $500 to $600 per month income, and they have a prescription that costs $200 to fill, they don’t fill the prescription," Crosier says. "That’s very common for us to see."

Even seniors who find a way to pay for assisted-living or nursing home care often encounter serious problems in the quality of care they receive. Angela Johnson is JABA’s ombudsman, in charge of investigating and resolving complaints about long-term care. She says the most common complaint is that a resident’s care plan is not being fulfilled. For example, a care plan may include "pressure ulcer [bedsore] prevention for a person who has been identified to be at risk: turning every two hours, hydration, nutrition and personal hygiene." A turn chart is meant to document how often the resident is turned. Yet visiting family members may repeatedly find the chart empty, or worse, their loved one soaked in urine.

Johnson believes that the root of this problem is the typically low wage paid to nursing home staff. Certified nursing assistants have demanding jobs and notoriously high turnover rates.

"The bottom line seems to boil down to staffing, the availability of staff to turn residents every two hours. If you have three people caring for 30 people in a shift, is it realistic to expect that to truly happen along with the other responsibilities they have in the provision of care?" she asks. "In some of the smaller assisted-living facilities, those people are even responsible for cooking and cleaning, along with resident care."

If JABA faces challenges now, those challenges promise to expand in the future. With baby boomers heading into their retirement years, health care costs rising and Social Security on uncertain ground, the future of aging is of national concern.

"You have all this drain now on the economy because of elderly who need support and services, and it’s only going to increase," Crosier says. "This isn’t a situation that’s just isolated to us, it’s across the nation." Indeed, throughout JABA’s jurisdiction, the Virginia Employment Commission projects a 25 percent increase in the over-65 population by 2010.

JABA’s planners are trying to chart a course for the future that will maintain its current level of service for a burgeoning population. Again, a shortage of nurses and nursing assistants is of critical concern.

"We just have to be as innovative as we know how to meet needs," Gentry says. "It’s not going to go away. We’re either going to meet those needs or we’re going to be in a bad situation."

She worries about elderly people on fixed incomes finding their way through a more austere financial landscape. Those at the lowest income level qualify for Medicaid, the Federal- and State-funded program that provides health insurance to very low-income people, but those with slightly more income are most at risk, according to Gentry. That’s because they can’t get aid, yet can’t afford to pay for services themselves.

"Those are the ones who are vulnerable, because they’re caught, and there’s not very much offered to them," she says.

At Westminster-Canterbury, O’Halloran agrees that aging boomers will cause major shifts in years to come.

"I think we’re seeing the beginning of that now," he says, gesturing to a huge construction project visible through his office window. Westminster is adding a 250-bed addition to its independent-living apartment building, including a new dining room and many other common areas.

"We found there was a very strong desire, and all the apartments were reserved before we broke ground," he says.

Despite that evidence of overwhelming demand, O’Halloran is optimistic about the future.

"We feel the expansion will serve the needs of seniors in this population for the foreseeable future," he says. "I believe we have a great many talented people in the community who are thinking long-term to ensure this continues to be one of the great places to live for all ages, including seniors."

Asked if Charlottesville lacks anything major in their eyes, the Morrises look at each other, laugh, and shake their heads. "Really! I can’t think of a thing," says Ned. Westminster-Canterbury seems to fulfill its promise of high-quality care in a beautiful, well-rounded city. But not everyone is able to claim a piece of this dream.

"I get lots of calls from around the country where people say ‘I’m interested in living in Charlottesville, but I need to know about low-income housing,’" JABA’s Gentry says.

"And I say you’ve come to the wrong place. Our resources are very limited for low-income housing; subsidized housing has waiting lists. There’s not enough of it," she says.

"So if you have a good situation where you’re living, you’d better hold onto it."

"Welcome to our cheese manufacturing facility," Christine Solem says pointedly. She’s standing in her cozy, well-worn kitchen north of Charlottesville, where she and John Coles have run a small goat and vegetable farm since 1973. Outside, their 24 goats wander around a large, partly wooded enclosure.

Solem and Coles, in fact, make goat cheese in this very room; Solem’s arch remark reflects her disdain for regulations proposed by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that would put her kitchen under the same rules as an industrial-scale dairy farm. Right now, her operation is unregulated.

These days, the debate over food safety rages at a fever pitch. The presumed threat of bioterrorism lends even greater seriousness to the business of preventing contamination. Yet infectious disease – frightening as it is – isn’t the greatest danger, according to some. Proponents of small-scale and organic farming say that in the rush to prevent disease, we are risking something even more important: our connections to our food and, in some ways, each other.For Solem and Coles, the debate begins with a practical question right in their kitchen. The new milk regulations from the VDACS would require a slew of changes in their cheesemaking, and the biggest is a requirement to pasteurize the goat milk before making it into cheese.

"That’s unacceptable," Solem says. "That would ruin the cheese we make."

It seems odd to think that pasteurization – the process of heating milk to kill bacteria – would be bad, but it’s only necessary, according to Solem, if you need the milk to stay fresh for a long time. Large dairies, which often ship their products hundreds of miles, and supermarkets, which prefer milk with a long shelf life, rely on pasteurization to prevent contamination with diseases like E. coli and salmonella.

Solem says, however, raw milk contains beneficial bacteria – part of the immune system – that normally out-compete pathogens. Pasteurization kills these beneficial bacteria, too, leaving the milk sterile but "dead" – that is, vulnerable to any new pathogens that come along.

Solem and Coles say that pasteurization isn’t necessary, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. They contend that because they make their cheese in frequent, small batches, it’s safe from contamination.

"It’s always fresh cheese; it’s never stored milk," Coles says. "The chances of things happening to it are so much slimmer."

He believes that pasteurization has been the subject of misleading publicity by the government since the 1940s.

"When you’ve got 60 years of lies, it becomes truth," Coles says.

Solem says that the largest salmonella outbreak in U.S. history, which occurred in Illinois in 1985 and affected at least 16,000 people, was caused by pasteurized milk.

If the regulations proposed by VDACS are implemented, Solem and Coles will have to buy an approved pasteurizer, which they say could cost up to $12,000. They’d also be required to build a new building for milking their goats, pay for testing of their cheeses and modify their kitchen (or build a new one) to comply with other regulations. Altogether, they say this will cost $50,000 – a sum that would effectively put them out of business, given their annual cheese revenues of $5,000-10,000.

John Beers, a VDACS supervisor who’s been involved in writing the proposed regulations, says that the department is just trying to bring Virginialaw in line with federal guidelines for food safety developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. He says that bringing unregulated operations under State oversight would "give people the guidance they need to properly handle milk before they process it." Guidelines covering cleanliness, cooling and storage of milk are "commonsense things you would do anyway," he says. For example, the regulations require producers to separate the various steps of cheese-making ("paraffining cheese, rindless block wrapping, curing cheese, cleaning and preparing bulk cheese and cutting and wrapping cheese") by building separate facilities for each operation, or by conducting them one at a time.

Solem says she doesn’t need VDACS’ guidance, and that she’s been fighting with the department for years for what she believes is her right to produce cheese and sell it directly to consumers. In 1999, agents of VDACS showed up at her farm, without calling ahead, and asked to inspect her facilities. She refused, they came back with a warrant. Virginia’s 16th Judicial Court later ruled the search was unconstitutional.

After taking some pictures and a few samples of goat cheese, VDACS charged Solem with six violations of the Virginia Food Laws. Solem says microscopic inspection of the cheese had revealed a tiny hair and one insect part. Other violations involved the state of her kitchen, which was less than pristine.

Against the charge of uncleanliness, Solem says, "How many people’s houses would look really, really nice if someone came in at any minute and inspected? I had been away all weekend, it was just a really bad time," she says, noting she wasn’t making cheese at the time the inspectors arrived.

Asked how they ensure the safety of their product, Solem and Coles have a disarmingly simple answer: "We just clean up before we make the cheese." Their self-imposed safeguards include sanitizing their equipment, sterilizing the cheesecloth and – most tellingly, they say – tasting every batch of cheese. Coles points out that he has a 20-year history of selling goat cheese, often to repeat customers at the Charlottesville farmers’ market, and has never had a complaint about safety.

The key is that they sell their products directly to the people who will eat them, Coles says. That situation creates a type of personal accountability that larger agricultural operations don’t have.

"Everything that we put out, we have a pride in and, if something happens, the person knows right where they got the food," he says. "It doesn’t go through a middleman, and it doesn’t get shipped to California."

Solem and Coles are members of a new watchdog group that opposes State regulation of small farms and food producers. The Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association is taking on VDACS and other regulatory agencies over what it feels are inappropriate safety regulations. Members recently gathered at Wayne Bolton’s farm in Green Bay to chart a course of action.

Over a meal they’d mostly grown themselves – hamburgers, sliced organic tomatoes, goat cheese – a group of about 15 discussed how to halt the progress of pending regulations through the General Assembly and VDACS. Besides the milk regulations that would affect those with small herds of goats, VICFA is concerned with a broad set of safety rules developed by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which Virginia is considering adopting as State law.

This Food Code aims to ensure the safety of any food sold or given away in Virginia, providing standards for everything from the temperature of delivery trucks to the labeling of wild mushrooms. For example, the Code states "Raw shell eggs shall be received in refrigerated equipment that maintains an ambient air temperature of 7ºC (45ºF) or less." The problem with this, VICFA members say, is that by defining "food establishment" as broadly as it does, the Food Code ends up placing undue restrictions on smaller operations: farmers’ markets, on-farm sales, even church kitchens. "This would eliminate our lunch here today," said Bolton in amazement.

That may be a stretch, but VICFA identifies a real threat to its members’ livelihoods in the prospect of conforming farm kitchens to standards that are scaled to corporate-sized budgets.

Though the tone of the meeting was at times distinctly libertarian (one project involves setting up a hotline for farmers being "harassed by bureaucrats"), the group doesn’t necessarily oppose regulation on principle.

"You need regulations when food is being sold and re-sold," Solem says, referring to supermarkets. She says, too, that she and Coles are required to have their goats certified annually, to make sure they’re free of diseases like tuberculosis. They see this regulation – and the $200 expense that goes along with it – as entirely reasonable.

The key, they say, is to have small farmers recognized as a distinct type of operation, one that fundamentally is less in need of regulation than big agribusiness. For example, they are asking VDACS to include a clause in its proposed milk regulations that would make an exception for small farmers selling cheese directly to consumers, either on their farms or at farmers’ markets.

VDACS’ Beers doesn’t feel this amendment is reasonable. "I’m perfectly willing to be flexible as long as the public’s health and safety aspects are met," he says, "but where a requirement is there because it prevents or reduces a risk, I’m not willing to say the exemption is okay."

He adds that inspections of small farms in the past have revealed contamination in milk products, including insect parts and pathogens.

"I’m quite concerned about what goes on where there is no oversight," he says.

People who run food businesses from their homes are the most likely to feel cramped by state oversight. Lisa McEwan owns Hot Cakes, a Charlottesville catering company. Though her business is small and independent – she has only one location and has run it herself since 1986 – she doesn’t feel unduly restricted by safety regulations.

"This business I run is oriented to deal with regulations from day one, not trying to do it as a home-craft kind of business," she says.

Occasionally, she finds safety regulations annoying. "They drive me crazy sometimes," she admits. "I don’t care if somebody’s hands havebeen on my loaf of French bread. I’m comfortable with food. But I do try and keep an open mind and understand where regulators are coming from."

She says that when she visits other restaurants, she likes knowing the regulations are in place. McEwan has noticed an increase in awareness of food safety issues and believes that the potential for danger actually has increased over the years, mostly in the manufacturing process.

"If we could process our food differently, there would be a far lower risk of E. coli and things like that," McEwan says. "I know that the intense, speed-related, factory way that we do our slaughtering definitely makes beef and poultry more hazardous."

The cramming of many animals into small spaces, a common practice in industrial farms, does increase the risk of bacterial contamination, according to pro-vegetarian organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

VICFA members would agree with McEwan about the risks of so-called factory farming. They are businesspeople looking to preserve their livelihoods by fighting specific political battles, but it’s no accident that VICFA members also share an interest in sustainable agriculture – raising food without pesticides, genetic modification, antibiotics or hormones. Deeper issues about the future of food are at play, they say, in the struggle over regulation.

Joel Salatin, owner of the innovative "beyond organic" Polyface Farm, is VICFA’s president. At the September meeting in Green Bay, he read from a characteristically blunt letter he’d written to new VICFA members: "Under the guise of food security and the war on bioterrorism, government agents are being used as pawns by multinational corporations to regulate alternative food out of the marketplace and eliminate freedom of choice in the food system." The letter also refers to conventionally grown food as "irradiated, genetically altered, and pathogen-laced."

A litany of woes, to be sure. Agriculture is an enormous industry and organic proponents say the large scale of conventional farming is at the root of many evils. The argument often boils down to quantity vs. quality. Solem cites the example of industrial tomato producers. Many use a technique that causes all the tomatoes to ripen at the same time. This is useful in terms of cost and efficiency, but compromises taste, Solem says.

Fabienne Swanson, manager and chef at Veggie Heaven, concurs that the best-tasting tomato is one that ripens naturally.

"We get local organic tomatoes ripened on the vine," she says. "I always prefer them when they’re right out of the garden and ripe."

Rather than cutting costs and pursuing ever-greater yield, Coles adds, "We’re concerned mainly about producing a quality product."

Ironically, efficiency of scale may end up compromising not only quality, but safety, too, Solem believes. In industrial dairies, she says, the sheer amount of equipment that must be sanitized means there are more opportunities for infection. By contrast, she holds up an ordinary saucepan. "Here’s what we have to clean," she says.

Awareness of these issues isn’t limited to the farming community. Heather Karp of Charlottesville approaches the subject as a concerned consumer, a trained chef and a sometime nutrition educator. She’s currently building a private clientele as a "food coach" – a consultant for people trying to make major diet changes. She, too, is suspicious of large-scale agriculture, particularly the practice of planting enormous quantities of a single crop.

"I don’t think that food is about quantity," she says. Clearly, America has no shortage of food, Karp says; in fact, "We have a frightening plague of obesity in this country."

Critics of industrial agriculture say there are plenty of threats to physical health posed by the quest for efficiency. Practices like irradiation (zapping food with radiation to kill pathogens), genetic modification (which is very widely used on two staple crops, corn and soybeans) and treatment of livestock with antibiotics are all fodder for national debate. Yet there is another risk, deeper than physical well-being.

Wayne Bolton hints at it during the VICFA meeting: "When we sat down to the table at breakfast, and I was 4 or 5," he says, "we had a platter of eggs on the table, a bowl of gravy, ham, bacon – all of it came from the farm. I guess this whole group is striving to get back to those old days."

In other words, there are larger social and cultural meanings in our relationship to food. Food has the power to affect our health as whole persons, not just as animals. If all we eat is processed food, shipped to us from factories hundreds of miles away, are we losing an important part of our culture?

Karp stresses the idea of connection to farmers, to those we share meals with, to the food itself.

"I think it’s part of my human nature to have a relationship with the food that I’m buying, eating, preparing, with gratitude," she says. In the joyful acts of cooking and sharing food, she says, there are benefits that are almost spiritual in nature.

Karp likes to buy her food at groceries like Integral Yoga and Whole Foods Market, and she also frequents farmers’ markets, where she values the chance to directly interact with those who produce food. She believes more and more people are becoming interested in buying food from sources besides conventional supermarkets.

Solem and Coles agree: "How can you compete with a farmer who just picked a fresh pepper that morning and takes it right there?" Solem says.

Instead of focusing on unattainable dreams of wiping out conventional agriculture, however, VICFA members say they are simply interested in providing an alternative. "We aren’t saying that agribusiness shouldn’t exist, because how else are you going to supply cities?" Coles asks. Indeed, a total return to the pastoral utopia for which Bolton pines seems unlikely in light of the breakneck pace of growth in Albemarle, which often causes farmland to be parceled into subdivisions. Karp, too, realizes that change happens incrementally, and many people don’t have the luxury of making the same choices she’s made. "I love the smaller scale of things, but I’m not in a huge metropolis with three hungry children working an eight- or nine-hour day."

The issue of choice, finally, may be the crucial question. Coles says that many of his customers at the farmers’ market specifically seek unpasteurized cheese, in part because they prefer its taste.

Sonia Fox of Charlottesville is one such customer: "Their cheese is delicious, and that’s a primary factor. It actually tastes a lot like the fresh cheeses in France," she says, adding "I prefer to use raw [unpasteurized] milk products whenever I can because they’re more easily digestible."

If Coles is no longer permitted to sell his cheese to Fox, he – and VICFA – believe the rights of both parties have been violated. Nationally, the debate over irradiation and genetic modification often focus on choice, too. Critics of the practices say consumers have the right to know – via prominent labeling – exactly what processes their food has gone through.

The exception VICFA wants to insert in the milk regulations would require small farmers to declare their products uncertified and uninspected, so that customers can decide for themselves if they’re willing to risk the purchase. Beers says that, so far, during the public comment period on the proposed milk regulations, the only comments his office has received are from those who oppose regulation.

McEwan, though, is skeptical of exempting small farms, saying there has to be some recourse if health problems do occur. "I think people like buying from that local person and like that intimate relationship, but if they had a serious problem, they would want to feel like they could go to some responsible party."

Solem counters that small farms have already proven themselves to be safer than their industrial counterparts, and says that money, not a concern for public safety, is behind the increase in regulations.

"The real reason is that big business has got a real foothold in VDACS," she says. The lines are still long at conventional groceries, but Solem and Coles believe that the growing interest in alternative food sources is threatening to large-scale producers.

Karp says it’s unfortunate that trends in food, like so much else, ultimately boil down to money, but she’s interested in working within the existing model to effect change.

"Capitalism has given and developed some incredibly wonderful things, but there has to be the balance," she says. "You’re not going to turn the whole country into people who support small farmers and want organic, but I think there has to be room for this variety."