No mail published this week.
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Month: November 2004
Categories
Sleeping with the enemy
Anise Labrum was 20 years old and living in Los Angeles not long before the 2000 presidential election. She had been seeing her boyfriend for about a year. Back then, Labrum, a fashion stylist, loosely considered herself a Democrat. Her sweetheart, on the other hand, was a Republican. They knew they differed on politics, but it never seemed to get in the way. Then they moved to New York City, land of Democrats.
“All of a sudden he became all, ‘O.K., woman, this is how to think, and if you don’t think this way, you’re less of a person,’“ she says. “The day of the 2000 election, we were standing in line waiting for our turns in the voting booths. He was talking loudly about how Bush was great and Gore was screwed, making sure everyone could hear him. It was so overbearing.”
Soon after, she kicked him to the curb. “Our political differences set the grounds for anything else we tried to communicate about and eventually we never could,” she says. “I would never date a Republican, especially now.”
With the country deeply divided over the results of the recent presidential race—with Republican George Bush narrowly defeating Democrat Senator John Kerry and many voters in a blind rage over their guy—political affiliation has ascended to the top of requirement lists for potential mates. It now sits conspicuously next to “earning potential” and “full head of hair.”
They’re even divided over who’s having more fun in bed. In a recent live and unscientific poll, ABC News reported that Republicans are happier with their committed relationships and sex lives than their Democratic counterparts. The poll also revealed that 72 percent of Republicans had worn something sexy to enhance their sex lives, as compared with 62 percent of Democrats. Similarly, fewer Republicans claimed to have ever faked an orgasm. Fake or not, Republican orgasms are increasingly being had with other Republicans.
Charles Finney, a Republican, has dated a wide range of people, including liberal Democrats, and he says conservatives are among the best lovers because of their political ideology.
“You can have sex with a beautiful woman, but you have better sex with a smart woman. The mind is the ultimate sexual organ,” he says. “Conservatives think for themselves. They are more about the individual and are more about personal truth. The nakedness of the individual and his own truth is a lot more intimate than the posh flamboyant exterior of a liberal facade.”
The GOP=HOT formula works less well for Seth Weinburger, who lives in the swing state of Michigan, and considers himself liberal-minded and a Democrat, for the most part. In his late teens and early 20s, he dated numerous Republicans and didn’t think much about it. He figured they just always had differences of opinion, and he wrote the arguments off. Then at 21, late in the Clinton years, he was dating Christie, his fifth Republican girlfriend, and he started to re-examine his choices.
“It came down to ideological difference,” says the social worker, who back then was living in New York. “With Christie, either we’d argue all the time or we’d avoid political discussions altogether. At some point, I realized she was planning on changing me and I was never going to be as forceful about my views as she was with me.
“I decided that I needed to be careful about who I’m dating. I would never seriously date a Republican ever again,” he continues. “I’m more certain about it now with the tension surrounding the election. The fact that I don’t date Republicans doesn’t even have to do with who they are as a person—it’s to do with the huge chasm between us ideologically. I know it won’t work out so I just won’t try—even if they’re a nice person.”
Inevitably, the bedroom battles have spilled into Internet dating. White Buffalo Ventures owns dozens of dating websites organized by interest groups, from tattoos and poetry to sign language. Sensing the moment, in June the company added democratsingles.com and
conservativedates.com. Since the launch, several thousand members have registered with each.
Executive Director Brad Armstrong says White Buffalo doesn’t have a political agenda; it just follows a business template. “People get extremely passionate about politics around election time,” says Brad. “We’re just tapping into an expected area of interest.”
Other dating sites have popped up online. White Buffalo isn’t alone. Singlerepublican.com greets visitors with: “Conservative American singles, are you frustrated with huge mainstream dating sites? Tired of sifting through thousands of profiles only to find liberals that don’t really share your viewpoints on important issues? Well you’ve come to the right place! We are dedicated to helping conservatives like yourself meet their perfect soul mate.”
And singleliberal.com, we’re assured, is “coming soon,” according to its stand-in Web page.
One hopeful Republican Romeo on conservativedates.com headlines his personal ad with “Save me from Liberals” and prompts potential dates to start conversations with him by asking about his liberal ex-girlfriend.
Similarly, a democratsingles.com member explains first and foremost: “I can’t stand it anymore. Need someone who understands just how incompetent ‘W’ is, and how much harm he has done to U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Lets get together, talk politics and see what else we might have in common.”
Professor Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington and a relationship adviser on perfectmatch.com, thinks people are distinctly less able to tolerate political difference nowadays.
“You could have been a Rockefeller Republican and gotten along with a Kennedy Democrat without too much trouble, and now it is a lot less possible,” Schwartz says. “Politics now tends to be one of those litmus tests when you’re dating. People no longer ignore it. If you find out about someone’s views and you disagree, you feel that this is not your soul mate—how could they feel that way, what kind of person are they?”
But is political affiliation really the bastard to blame when it comes to relationship failure? Isn’t it possible that the relationship was doomed and politics were simply the catalyst? Power couple Mary Matalin and James Carville—she a GOP activist, he a Democratic one—have thrived for years. Their opposing viewpoints make for good copy, and it’s almost erotic to watch them argue on television.
Political difference also proved to be an aphrodisiac during this year’s Republican National Convention in New York City, as craigslist.org featured countless personal ads from Democrats searching for fiery sex with a much resented Republican. In this case, the political divide seemed to heighten the S & M appeal of the arrogant Republican ass.
Whether politics can be a distraction from or indicative of other, more subconscious factors, it seems inescapable. Relationship guru Amy Alkon, author of the syndicated advice column, “Ask the Advice Goddess,” began to notice that political tension was seeping into romance not long after Bush took office.
“I never got letters about politics before Bush was president,” she says. “In the first letter I got about politics, a person used the word liberal when describing their partner, and they really meant turd. When you refer to your partner as a turd, the relationship is bound to crumble.”
It would be easy to assume the romantic tension ended with the end of the election suspense. But Professor Schwartz predicts that things will get worse after the election, not better.
“The fire will eventually go out, but not completely,” she says. “It won’t take much to get people’s anger burning very, very fiercely.”
Reprinted with the permission of The Village Voice and www.villagevoice.com.
Categories
For unlawful cable knowledge
—Mother Ducker
A: Well, Mother Ducker, first and foremost: Comcast cable? Excuse Ace’s ignorance, but Ace thought Adelphia was King Cable in Charlottesville. Confused, Ace poked around the business listings in the phone book and the “coms” went as follows: Comair, Comberg, Combs, Comdial.
Ace then made some inquiries at Adelphia. No Comcast competition ‘round here, said they. This leads Ace to believe that you, Mother, were misled and that the friendly local cable provider to which you mean to refer is Adelphia. Ace will henceforth operate under that assumption.
Aside from the Comcast confusion, Adelphia’s Nancy Murphy, vice president of law and public policy for the central regional office (including Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky), did anything but poo-poo Ace’s question about where to complain about dirty language on basic cable.
If someone has a problem with the content on basic cable, Murphy suggests he writes to his local cable office to the attention of the general manager. In the case of Charlottesville, that would be Lon Carruth. But frankly, since the cable offices have no editorial control over the content of the channels to which they contract out, it’s unlikely that anything would come of such a lodged complaint.
“I would think,” however, qualifies Murphy, “that the more direct route would be to lodge a complaint with the programmer.” In other words, if you don’t like the nonsense spewing from Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s pretty little mouth, mail or phone in your complaints directly to FX.
But may Ace digress, get sentimental for a moment and offer a suggestion based on experience? You see Ace, too, has a mother. Mama Atkins also worried about keeping Baby Ace’s vocabulary as innocent as possible for as long as possible. Hence, rules were instituted in the Atkins’ household—like PBS ONLY, BITCH—and Baby Ace was forced to break for the love of Bill Cosby.
So lay down the law, Mother Ducker, and see if that keeps the kiddies away from those bad, bad channels. Until your babies are old enough to know how to break them, rules work splendidly. And once they reach that rebellion age, your kids will be cursing anyway—learning it in school, no less—and you’ll just have to get used to it.
Categories
News in review
Tuesday, November 2
Albemarle gets blue shading
Voters came to the polls in droves in both Charlottesville and Albemarle County today, with voter turnout topping that of the 2000 elections. In Albemarle, a whopping 75 percent of registered voters came to the polls to vote in the presidential race, as did 66 percent of Charlottesville’s registered voters. The Kerry/Edwards ticket landed a 72 percent share of Charlottesville’s votes (hardly a surprise), but Albemarle’s voters also leaned toward Kerry. The slim 888 vote margin by which Kerry topped Bush in Albemarle is a shift, as Albemarle went for Bush over Gore in 2000, and even for Dole over Clinton in 1996. The Kerry triumph in this area did not result in any electoral points, however, as Virginia went to Bush/Cheney by a 54 to 45 percent vote margin.
Wednesday, November 3
Tax hikes for roads?
The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors today discussed forming a regional transportation district that would include both the county and the city of Charlottesville. A joint approach would give local officials more muscle in developing and building road projects—such as an interchange for the Meadowcreek Parkway. But the transportation district would need money to have any power, so the Supes began discussing different means to raise the cash. One option is a gasoline tax, which, at a 2 percent rate, could generate $3 million per year. The other ideas County officials have suggested involve rate increases in property taxes.
Thursday, November 4
Seniors denounce road
About 50 people showed up at the Senior Center on Pepsi Place to hear City and County planners present plans for four alignments of the proposed Hillsdale Drive Extended, a road that would connect Greenbrier Drive and Hydraulic Road. The project is part of a City-County strategy to ease traffic on 29N by building parallel roads, instead of a bypass. Many people who spoke at today’s public hearing—most of them senior citizens who live in the apartments, condominiums and nursing homes in the Hillsdale corridor—denounced the road as unsafe and unnecessary. “We do not want the noise, dirt and volume of traffic passing so close to our communities,” said Robert Metzger, president of the Brookmill Neighborhood Association, to loud applause.
Friday, November 5
Looking back at “Left Behind”
At a summit held at UVA 15 years ago, then-President George H.W. Bush and the nation’s 50 governors came together at UVA to talk about education. That conference began the push for accountability standards in schools, which eventually resulted in the No ChildLeft Behind Act. The success of that policy, passed by the current Bush Administration, has been hotly contested nationally and locally. To mark the anniversary of the 1989 summit and to re-evaluate No Child Left Behind, Gov. Mark R. Warner joined U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and other national education experts at a forum at UVA this week. At the event, Paige said No Child Left Behind is “our nation’s guarantee that all children will receive a good education,” reports Bob Gibson in today’s Daily Progress.
Saturday, November 6
UVA rolls again
Scott Stadium was a packed house today. The crowd of 63,072 was the biggest ever in the 73-year-old stadium’s history. UVA fans were treated to a big win as the Cavs used smothering defense and a solid ground game to grind-out a dominating 16-0 win over Maryland. With the win, the race for the ACC crown is solidly in Virginia, as UVA and Virginia Tech now stand together at the top of the rankings with 4-1 conference records. UVA, ranked No. 10 in the AP poll, controls its own destiny as it hosts the slumping Miami Hurricanes next week, then travels to Georgia Tech and finishes with a huge game at Virginia Tech to close out the regular season.
Sunday, November 7
Rough homecoming for Schaub
The Atlanta Falcons had no game today, so Falcons’ backup quarterback and former UVA standout Matt Schaub spent some of his bye week in Charlottesville. Accordingto an AP report, Schaub was allegedly involved in a fight outside of a Corner restaurant early Saturday morning. Schaub surrendered to Charlottesville police, and was charged with assault and battery before being released on his own recognizance.
Monday, November 8
NAACP takes a vote
The Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) holds its election of officers today, with votes being taken at the Quality Community Council offices on W. Main Street. The national organization of the NAACP is currently under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, which is considering yanking the civil rights organization’s tax free status for alleged politicking against President Bush during the election season.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports.
Gay like us
City Council puts out the welcome mat for same-sex unions
Time and again, Charlottesville has proved itself a liberal’s blue oasis in Virginia’s otherwise flaming red political landscape. Now City Council is telling its gay citizens that while Virginia may be for haters as far as they are concerned, Charlottesville is still for lovers of all persuasions.
On Monday, November 1, Council approved a legislative package by 4-1 (with Republican Rob Schilling dissenting, as usual) that, among other things, will ask the General Assembly to repeal the controversial H.B. 751, which bans civil unions between persons of the same sex.
The request comes as part of the City’s annual “legislative program,” a list of 18 policy statements and requests for action from Council to the General Assembly. The request to repeal H.B. 751 (which became state law in July) came from Councilor Blake Caravati. He says gay and straight constituents have encouraged him to officially oppose the controversial law that not only nullifies civil unions performed in other states, but also a variety of other contracts and agreements between people of the same sex.
“Everything you do in the civil realm is threatened if you’re gay,” Caravati tellsC-VILLE. “There’s quite a few ideologues out there that are out to get homosexual people, ignoring the fact that we live in Virginia, the seat of revolutionary freedom.”
Freedom seems none too popular, however—on November 2, 11 states, following Virginia’s lead, resoundingly supported bans on same-sex marriage. Virginia’s Republican-dominated legislature isn’t likely to take Charlottesville’s proposal seriously (“Maybe I should combine it with a Ten Commandments display,” Caravati quips), but gay rights activists say the symbolism in Council’s gesture nonetheless is appreciated.
“The message they’re trying to send to Richmond,” says UVA Pride activist Claire Kaplan, “is the institution of heterosexual marriage is not harmed by encouraging strong families elsewhere.”
But even around Charlottesville, not everyone sees it that way. Marnie Deaton, who runs the Central Virginia Family Forum, says via e-mail that her group believes civil unions are “dangerous” because they are available to both gay and straight couples.
“Civil unions would basically create a second-class union,” Deaton says, “that would be easily dissolved, leaving deserted spouses without any avenue for alimony or legal claim to repair the union.”
In the past, Council has also passed resolutions to oppose the Iraq invasion and the PATRIOT Act. Conservatives say these kinds of actions take away from regular Council business—which conservatives often don’t much care for, either.
“If you just want something cheeky,” Deaton continues, assessing the possible upside to Council’s proclivity for symbolic gestures, “time that the Council spends on such resolutions is time not spent finding creative ways to spend tax dollars that conservatives consider outside the legitimate purposes of government.”
The RWSA gets serious
On Monday, Council also heard an update on the water supply plan from Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority Chairman Thomas Frederick.
“Our goal is to get a federal permit and actually do a project this time,” Frederick said.
That’s a relief. The RWSA has been trying to expand the water supply for about 20 years now, but to no avail. First, federal regulators shot down plans for a new reservoir on Buck Mountain Creek. In February, a consultant’s miscalculation forced the RWSA to scrap a plan to expand the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.
The two most promising options, according to Frederick’s report, are now expanding capacity at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir or building a pipeline to the James River. Strangely, despite past failures to build on Buck Mountain, several Councilors said they favored that project over other proposals.
“This is pretty permissive environmental regime right now,” said Councilor Kevin Lynch. “I’m not sure I agree with all that, but at the same time, this involves the safety and welfare of our citizens.”
Frederick responded that State and federal regulators would not support a new reservoir. “My impression is that there would be considerable opposition from several regulatory agencies if we pursue that.”—John Borgmeyer
Prosecution forces Alston to face his alleged handiwork
Accused murderer loses his cool during coroner’s testimony
The temperature in the room rose when Dr. Marcella Fierro, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, took the stand in Charlottesville Circuit Court as a witness in the trial of Andrew Alston, a former UVA student accused of murdering Free Union resident and volunteer firefighter Walker Sisk one year ago. Before Fierro began her testimony, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney John Zug warned he was about to exhibit disturbing evidence, prompting the quiet exit of Sisk’s mother and other family members.
Up until that point, Alston, the 22-year-old defendant, had listened impassively to eyewitness accounts of the early-morning altercation that occurred on the Corner on November 8, 2003. Numerous witnesses gave detailed testimony about the encounter, which began with two groups of young men exchanging insults across 14th Street and ended with Sisk’s murder near the intersection of 14th and Wertland streets. However, Alston’s demeanor changed during Fierro’s testimony.
While Fierro began describing Sisk’s injuries, a courtroom television monitor displayed a mug shot of Sisk’s face as he appeared on the coroner’s table.
“When I observed him, he had 20 stab wounds,” Fierro said, enumerating the length and depth of each of Sisk’s wounds in a relentless drone. “Exhibit number 11 is the lower back and buttocks of the deceased…”
As this went on, Alston removed his wire-rimmed glasses, laid them on the table and began to wipe his eyes. His robust, high-powered Alexandria attorney, John Zwerling, offered him tissues.
Moments later, Alston was bent over, sobbing, shaking and creating such a disturbance that Fierro had to temporarily suspend her testimony. Zwerling, his arm around Alston, led his client from the room. When the court returned to session, Alston had waived his right to appear for Fierro’s testimony.
In the late afternoon of November 3, the day before Alston’s meltdown, Zwerling and Zug laid out their opening arguments to the bow-tied Judge Edward Hogshire and to the jury. Many members of the 12-person jury were selected based at least partly on their unfamiliarity with media coverage of Sisk’s murder, some of which included accounts of Alston’s juvenile assault convictions and acquittal for an earlier 2003 assault charge. Alston now stands accused of second-degree murder for which he could face up to 40 years in prison.
In his arguments, Zug described Alston’s loss of control as he attacked Sisk with a knife. The one lethal wound, Zug said, was a cut that penetrated the heart. According to Zug, Sisk then doubled over as Alston continued to repeatedly stab him in the back, shoulders and buttocks.
In her opening arguments in Alston’s defense, Zwerling’s co-council, Andrea Moseley, described how Alston acted in self-defense.
“There is little doubt that when Walker Sisk was sober, he was a very fine person,” Moseley said, in her customary barely-audible monotone. “But when he was drunk, his personality changed.”
She described how Alston had been a peacekeeper for most of the verbal altercation, and painted Sisk as Alston’s aggressor, describing the victim as 40-pounds heavier than Alston, tattooed, drunk, and wearing a t-shirt with a Confederate insignia.
Investigators never recovered the murder weapon. Moreover, despite Alston’s ex-girlfriend testifying to his propensity for carrying knives “pretty regularly,” and Alston’s neighbor testifying to having seen him show off a knife “big enough that it made me uncomfortable” earlier on the night of the murder, none of the eyewitnesses could confirm having seen a knife in Alston’s hands as he “punched” Sisk, as eyewitnesses described it. Thus, Zug’s task was to explain what happened to the knife.
Zug reasoned that Alston’s brother, Ken, who was with Alston at the scene of the murder, disposed of the knife using Alston’s Jeep Cherokee. Blood samples found in the Jeep matched Andrew Alston’s DNA profile and Zug contended that this blood came from an injury to his right hand, incurred while he stabbed Sisk.
To prove that Ken Alston ditched the murder weapon, Zug interrogated Officer Mark Frazier of the Charlottesville Police Department. The prosecutor showed Frazier an evidence envelope containing Andrew Alston’s bloodstained car keys, which Frazier discovered in Ken Alston’s pants pocket a few hours after the murder. The blood on the keys belonged to Andrew Alston.
Throughout the first four days of the trial, Zug’s red-faced, fiery courtroom style was countered by Zwerling’s relentless cool. After asking a witness a particularly difficult question, Zwerling would pause for effect and flip through a thick notebook bursting with Post-it notes. Occasionally, he would rub his be-ringed fingers through his gray beard.
Frazier, who helped arrest Alston, testified that when police found Alston in a bedroom at a friend’s residence farther up 14th Street, Alston refused to show his right hand, first hiding it under the covers, then under a pillow.
To treat the cut on Alston’s hand, Frazier took him to the UVA Hospital Emergency Room. There, lying on a hospital bed with his hands cuffed across his chest, “on several occasions, [Alston] fell asleep and started to snore,” Frazier testified.
The prosecution had not concluded its case by press time, and the defense was scheduled to then begin Andrew Alston’s case for self-defense on the morning of Monday, November 8. The trial should conclude by the end of the week.—Nell Boeschenstein, with additional reporting by Paul Fain
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HOW TO: Stage a legal protest There are so many reasons to be disgruntled, don’t you think? Election results, zoning appeals, election results. What you need is a good old-fashioned protest or rally to soothe your frustrations. What you don’t need is to get arrested for protesting illegally, so follow these steps to voice your concerns the right way. The City of Charlottesville doesn’t require a permit for such activism, but be sure when you’re exercising your First Amendment rights that you don’t obstruct fire lanes, or vehicular or pedestrian traffic. Also be sure you’re staging your event on public property. (Example: the Albemarle County Building). As a courtesy, give the City Police Department a heads up at 977-9041. Got other legal questions? Call the City Attorney’s Office at 970-3131. For UVA students making noise on Grounds, they’ll have to contact the Dean of Students office at 924-7133. Depending on where you want to hold the protest, the dean will connect you with the proper administrator to make sure your protest doesn’t conflict with another event on campus. In the case you want to use loudspeakers and music, you’ll need to obtain an Amplified Music permit. Call the UVA Police at 924-7166 in advance to keep them apprised of your planned activities. Need to know how to do something? E-mail your questions to howto@c-ville.com. |
Sweet home Alabama
Legal Aid attorneys working on Hispanic issues head south
Charlottesville’s Legal Aid is losing another attorney who specializes in issues affecting local Hispanics. Yet Legal Aid director Alex Gulotta says the move won’t permanently sideline the group’s efforts to help the growing number of immigrants living and working in Central Virginia.
Last month, Legal Aid attorney Mary Bauer left Charlottesville for Montgomery, Alabama, to join the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, Legal Aid attorney Andrew Turner will soon be joining Bauer in her effort to create the SPLC’s first migrant-worker justice center.
“We’re losing a couple of great advocates,” says Gulotta. “We’ll hire two new great advocates. I’m fully confident we’ll find good people, but it will take time.”
Bauer started working for Legal Aid in 1991. Her litigation against seafood processing plants on Virginia’s eastern shore helped establish Charlottesville’s Legal Aid as a powerful force in the struggle for fair working conditions for Hispanic immigrants. Bauer left Legal Aid last spring to stay home with her kids.
“The SPLC called out of the blue in April,” says Bauer. “I wasn’t really looking for a job, but I came down for a visit and got really excited about the project and the opportunity to start something from scratch.”
Bauer will lead the SPLC’s first Immigrant Justice Project, which will join similar projects in Florida and Virginia that serve Hispanic migrant workers. Founded in 1971, the SPLC became one of the country’s premier civil rights firms by defending death row inmates and suing to desegregate all-white institutions. Bauer’s new job is a big one—she will create and oversee a program that will serve migrant workers in nine southeastern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas.
Little is known about the Hispanic workforce in this region, says Bauer, except for the fact that it’s growing. “Our first project is to go out in the field and talk to people over this huge expanse, and figure out where we should concentrate our energies,” says Bauer.
To help her out, Bauer says the SPLC snagged Turner, who started working for Legal Aid in 2002 fresh from law school at New York University. “I think he’ll enjoy traveling around, learning about the players and the industry,” says Bauer.
Turner says the local Hispanic population has become more stationary in recent years. Instead of following agriculture jobs around the southeast, more immigrants are settling in Charlottesville and taking permanent jobs with construction crews, hotels and local restaurants.
While Turner says he’ll miss the quality of life Charlottesville affords, he says there’s a “belly of the beast” appeal to working in the deep South.
Judy Bartlett, a Latino outreach coordinator with a local group called Rural Health Outreach, says Bauer and Turner have had a discernable effect on working conditions for Hispanic workers.
“People know about Legal Aid because they’ve done a lot of outreach,” Bartlett says. Bad-guy employers know about Legal Aid, too, she says. “Most people are now well behaved since Mary’s been there.”
Still, there’s work to be done. A common problem is that some restaurants only pay their immigrant workers tips, and that’s illegal; and Legal Aid gets more requests for help with immigration issues, Gulotta says. For now, Legal Aid attorney Doug Ford will help fill Turner’s shoes.
Gulotta, Turner and Bauer all say they’re glad to see the SPLC embrace immigrant justice, and that there are only good vibes about the transition.
Gulotta says it shouldn’t be toohard to recruit Turner’s replacement. “Charlottesville’s a pretty attractive place,” he says.—John Borgmeyer
Decision Day
November 2, 2004
The day was glorious—the balmy temperatures and crisp colors of Indian Summer inviting optimism as record numbers of registered voters took to the polls in Charlottesville and Albemarle. By day’s end, we had cast 31,841 votes for Fifth District challenger Al Weed and 25,883 for Right-wing incumbent Virgil Goode. We gave an even more decisive margin to John Kerry over George W. Bush—33,160 to 25,356. But victory would follow another course by nightfall as shortly after 9 o’clock at Downtown’s Gravity Lounge, a tired-seeming and genuinely appreciative Weed addressed a couple-hundred Democratic supporters, conceding the election to Goode. The four-term Republican vigorously outflanked Weed in the final days of the campaign and ultimately captured 64 percent of the district’s votes. Asked later what he might have done differently, Weed said, “I don’t speak in sound bites.”
Despite the sound drubbing, Weed said, “I’m not embarrassed” of his energetic, almost two-year campaign across the sprawling Fifth District. And though Weed wouldn’t say if he’d run again, he confirmed, “I’m not out of politics.”
Meanwhile, over at Wolfie’s on Rio Road, traditional gathering spot for Albemarle Republicans, the mood grew progressively upbeat as the returns started coming in. The standing-room-only crowd spilled out onto the patio, swelling to about twice its expected size, said Delegate Rob Bell, who circled among loyal supporters, reporters and casual spectators. “This is not the usual volunteers who show up for everything,” he said. Though few were focused on the inaudible punditry of TV’s talking heads, applause and cheers of “four more years” erupted as red state by red state appeared on the screen, and word of Goode’s victory spread. As 10 o’clock rolled around, the crowd dwindled, but the party was still going strong. “We’re gonna keep going, so long as an apparent resolution is in sight, even if it’s 1 in the morning,” Bell said.
But the sun would rise on one more perfect autumn day before the presidential outcome would be decided. As 2pm approached on Wednesday, dozens gathered outside the C-VILLE office, where the Mall-facing TV is always tuned to CNN, to watch as a somewhat combative John Edwards introduced the man who won Charlottesville but not enough of everywhere else. Someone in the crowd muttered something about theocracy. Someone else suggested Kerry had a good long nap coming to him. The crowd grew denser, Kerry gave his thanks, and then the passers-by dispersed, perhaps unaware that the next day they really would awaken to a cold, heavy rain.—C-VILLE editorial staff
Categories
Mailbag
News bulletin
You performed a valuable service in printing Project Censored’s Top 10 stories of 2003-2004 in your September 28 issue [“All the news that’s fit to gag”]. Unfortunately, the public seems unable to absorb and to respond even to the uncensored information that is freely circulating in the press, such as:
-Iraq possessing no weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein posing no threat to the United States.
-The Bush Administration’s pattern of ignoring intelligence warning of Bin Laden’s determination to strike in the United States; its failure to bring together various intelligence agencies despite Richard Clarke’s urgings; and its original opposition to an independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks.
-The statement “outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade” in the February 10, 2004, Economic Report of the President to Congress.
-Dick Cheney’s retaining $8 million in stocks and getting paid $1 million per year by his former company, Halliburton, which is being awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq.
Etc., etc., etc.
Vanthi Nguyen
Charlottesville
Clear difference
This is in response to Doug Knox’s letter [“Radio waves,” Mailbag, October 26]. It is also a purely personal account of my experiences with WCHV-AM, the local Clear Channel affiliate, which is often the target for those who joust in the ongoing battle between small (local) and huge (corporate).
As someone who has never, and who will never, be greeted by a Wal-Mart greeter, I much prefer dealing with hometown/homegrown businesses. When I lost my theater-reviewing outlet due to The Observer’s folding, I thought I’d put my vocal cords to use as well as my typing fingers. The first station I contacted was WCHV, where the operations manager, Regan Keith, could not have been more courteous. He said it was an interesting concept—reviewing plays on-air—and he would get back to me.
I am a Luddite who, nevertheless, expects instant messages. So I waited a couple of weeks, and then called the manager of the soon-to-be-local “other” station. Intrigued? Yes, he was. However, there were conditions: I had to listen to the morning show, and resume my call-ins which, for a variety of reasons, I’d quit doing last year. “Sure,” I told him, knowing my reservations for this kind of trade-off would win out.
Lo and behold, a couple of days later, I received a call from Tony Boothy, WCHV’s morning guy, asking me to come in for an interview. The result: a cordial relationship with Booth, who chats with me before and after my reviews, and my delight at having found a congenial outlet for my theater-obsessed self.
WCHV, and Clear Channel, are involved in many good causes—both national and local. Big doesn’t always mean bad. I am happy with my minimal association with the station, and wish—as does Knox—that it would receive the appreciation and respect it deserves for its participation in the life of the community.
Barbara Rich
Charlottesville
Categories
The green scene
Here in Charlottesville, where architects seemingly outnumber traffic lights, the concept of building “green”—or environmentally friendly—homes, schools and city buildings is an idea whose time has come.
Whether you chalk it up to rising electricity prices or greater public awareness of the toxic chemicals in traditional building materials, there’s no denying that the trend of green building is on the rise. Just this year alone, the City of Charlottesville, UVA, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Habitat for Humanity, the Charlottesville Waldorf School Foundation and countless local architects, designers and home builders are unveiling plans to offer Charlottesville an eco-friendly makeover.
So, what’s this trend all about? Experienced green designers like Greg Jackson, principal of TOPIA Design, says green building “really tries to work with natural systems and be more in harmony with them.”
This sounds simple enough, but as with any new idea, there are challenges and critics. After all, green building sounds like something only committed environmentalists or wealthy eccentrics would try. Can you really cut your electricity usage (and bills!) in half by making your home energy efficient? Can you improve the learning ability of schoolchildren if their classroom is made from nontoxic materials and filled with sunlight? And, in the booming real estate market in Charlottesville, can “green” homes be affordable?
The architects, builders, thinkers, city officials and residents below offer an enthusiastic “yes” in response to these questions and more. Read on for a glimpse at the green side of Charlottesville.
Good for the earth, good for the wallet
Making affordable housing environmentally friendly at 10th and Page
To some, the grassy vacant lots at the intersection of 10th and Page streets are signs of a neighborhood in decline. To Katie Swenson, the lots are rife with possibility. In a move that will transform the intersection, Swenson, the executive director of the Charlottesville Community Design Center, has plans to build eight new affordable homes at 10th and Page with the Piedmont Housing Alliance.
“We’ve worked as a team to upgrade our homes so that they’re affordable over the long term,” explains Mark Watson, PHA’s director of project development. Together, Swenson and Watson have turned the notion of building “affordable” housing with inexpensive, poor quality materials on its head by constructing affordable homes that are high quality, environmentally friendly and energy efficient.
All of PHA’s new homes in the 10th and Page neighborhood will meet the federal Energy Star standards for energy efficiency and make use of “green” building materials both in the exterior and interior.
The first wave of PHA homes were completed in February. Jesse and Ronica Turner snapped one up and moved in shortly thereafter. Jesse, who grew up around the corner from his new home on Anderson Street, has seen the neighborhood go through many changes. “This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city,” Turner explains. “In the ’30s and ’40s, this neighborhood was populated by professional blacks. For my wife and I to be here, I think it sends a positive message that there are people who care and are proud to have homes in our neighborhood.”
The Turners had no idea they would be living in an energy-saving, environmentally friendly home when they first began house-hunting, but their decision is already paying off. “When I compare to bills we’ve had in the past, I’ve found that it’s incredibly efficient,” says Jesse. “During the summer months, with the AC on all day, our electric bill has only been about $100 to $110 a month, and that’s for a three-storey house.”
New windows, careful duct work and extra insulation add up to big savings for the Turners and make it easier to balance their monthly budget. “It’s a comfortable feeling knowing what your bills will be month to month,” he says.
“There’s a lot of pride in home ownership,” adds Ronica Turner, who paid $185,000 for her home. But in the 10th and Page neighborhood, 72 percent of residents are renters. To encourage home ownership, PHA has three homes under construction and 13 more on the way.
In addition to being energy efficient, the PHA homes have several environmentally friendly features, such as cellulose insulation made from recycled newspapers, bamboo flooring, nontoxic lumber and eco-friendly siding.
“In the framing of the house, we use as little lumber as possible,” says Charlottesville Community Design Center’s Swenson. “And we use as little dimensional lumber as possible.” This building method saves trees and has the added benefit of helping to cut down on construction costs.
John Meggs of NatureNeutral, a local green building supply store, explains some of the environmental benefits of using rapidly renewable resources, like bamboo flooring. “Bamboo regenerates in six years, whereas a tree takes 40 to 60 years before it is ready to be a premium hardwood flooring product.”
PHA will also avoid using lumber treated with Chromated Copper Arsenate (CCA), a common chemical mixture of pesticides including copper and arsenic, and instead have chosen nonarsenic pressure treated wood. This non-toxic choice “doesn’t have the heavy metals in it,” says Meggs, and is also “very price-competitive” when compared to traditional lumber.
The new homes are also designed to reduce long-term maintenance costs, ultimately making the house more affordable. “Most of the low-income clients we serve don’t have the disposable income 10 or 15 years down the line to replace the system,” explains Watson. “We want to put in materials that last a long time.”
But it’s not always easy building green, and as Swenson and Watson inspect the construction progress of a new home at the corner of 11th and Page streets, they see a number of errors, such as open crevices that should be sealed for better insulation. “There’s a tendency for contractors who have built a million homes to build them the way they always have,” says Watson. But he remains unruffled by the need to keep a close eye on the progress of each home.
“We hope this has a ripple effect,” says Watson of PHA’s new eco-friendly homes. “If the builders do it once, they realize it’s not that difficult.”
“It’s an extreme blessing to be in this neighborhood,” says Ronica Turner. “Luck is great, but blessings are awesome, and we are truly blessed.”
Making the global grade
Charlottesville Waldorf becomes the “Greenest School in America”
Get ready, Charlottesville: The “Greenest School in America” is about to be unveiled. The Charlottesville Waldorf School will feature straw bale construction, geothermal heating and cooling, a “living roof” comprised of plants and be constructed entirely from nontoxic building materials.
The new Waldorf School, situated on a 13-acre property on Rio Road, will accommodate 250 students and be the largest and most ambitious green building project in both the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
“The ‘greenest school’ is a really high bar that we love being challenged by,” explains Sarah Tremaine, co-chair of the Charlottesville Waldorf School Foundation. “But we are committed to educating other schools. We really want to be surpassed.”
The new Waldorf School will take advantage of the natural world—everything from the ground temperature to the seasonal angle of the sun—to be the most energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable school in the country.
The visionary design team, led by local architect Ted Jones, has focused on making the environmentally sustainable school fit Waldorf’s educational philosophy in both principle and practice. Just as Waldorf schools view the natural stages of a child’s development holistically, Ted Jones and his team have looked at every facet of the site design, taking into account everything from rainfall to CO2 emissions.
“Not only is it a great idea given the health and environmental benefits,” explains Tremaine, “but there is already an emphasis in the curriculum on the natural world, it’s really in the fabric of the education.”
A driving force behind the Waldorf School Foundation’s commitment to eco-friendly construction is the link between the quality of a classroom environment and a student’s academic performance.
In 2001, the Heschong Mahone group studied classroom quality and standardized test scores from thousands of students. The study found that students with the most natural daylight in their classrooms progressed 20 percent faster in math and 26 percent faster in reading over the course of the school year than students with the least daylight. In subsequent studies, the Heschong Mahone group found that indoor air quality could also benefit the health of students, teachers and school administrators.
Raising the money to make the school a reality is the next challenge for the Charlottesville Waldorf School Foundation. “We’re on a tight budget,” says Tremaine. “We’re just in the beginning phase of the capital campaign.”
The Waldorf School Foundation has set a $6 million fundraising goal in order to break ground on the new school in 2005. The costs associated with building the “Greenest School in America” are formidable, but Rob Weary, a board member of the Charlottesville Waldorf School Foundation, is confident that an eco-friendly school is worth the expense.
“Charlottesville is a great place to demonstrate that the cost premium is only 2 percent, much less than most people think. But the payoff down the line is much greater,” says Weary. The payoff for the Waldorf School Foundation will be low energy and maintenance costs, much lower over the long term than a conventional building of similar size.
Sitting in his Downtown office, architect Ted Jones and Greg Jackson, a designer and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) champion for the Waldorf School, discuss how they were able to integrate health and environmental concerns into the school’s design. “Our first priority in green design is a responsibility to the site,” explains Jones. The finest aspects of the property have been preserved in the architectural design, including the oldest trees on the property, an open meadow and a grassy knoll for students to play on or plant the vegetable gardens that are part of the school’s unique curriculum.
Jackson explains the intention behind the eco-friendly design: “We want to do something that brings health and well-being to people and the environment.”
The enterprising design team has also included large windows in every classroom for sunlight and has designed the building to be as south-facing as possible. From the very beginning, the design team searched for ways to improve the school’s eco-friendly design, Jones says. “Green building is not simply about fixing problems but bringing possibility into our world.”
The home front
Local developers create eco-friendly guidelines for the booming building market
What makes a “green” house green? This is a question the Blue Ridge Home Builders have been working hard to answer.
“We formed a Green Building committee about a year ago and we have been meeting monthly to come up with guidelines and specifications for green building,” says Katie Hayes, executive vice president of the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association.
The fruits of their labor will be a set of new standards to govern green home building in Charlottesville. The new requirements are based on the Earthcraft green home building program in Atlanta and cover everything from energy efficiency to environmental sustainability. “Our hope is that this will become a Virginia state green building program,” says Hayes.
By July 2005, the Blue Ridge Home Builders expect to showcase several eco-friendly demonstration homes. “Several of us want to build demonstration houses that would be certified under the committee’s new rules,” says Linda Lloyd, a member of the Green Building Committee and developer of the Quarries LLC, an eco-friendly development in Schuyler. “I’m trying to do it for under $200,000,” says Lloyd, “to show that yes, you can build something that is green and affordable that has some design interest.”
“I’ve been gradually increasing the green-built portion of the houses we’re building,” says Doug Kingma, a member of the Green Building Committee and owner of Kingma Developers, Inc., which builds a handful of custom homes each year. Many eco-friendly features that once seemed avant-garde now come standard in his homes, such as blowing in extra insulation to increase energy savings.
When asked if he has witnessed an increase in customer interest in green building over the past 13 years, Kingma answers quickly. “Absolutely,” he says, adding, “the key is to spend a few dollars now to save even more later.”
Kingma built a solar-powered eco-friendly house earlier this year for Steve and Carolyn Brown on Overlook Drive in Sherwood Farms. The house is a “zero-energy house with a geothermal heating loop,” says Kingma. “It is very conventional looking from the outside, but it’s radical on the inside.”
“Our electric meter actually runs backwards during the day,” says Steve Brown of his solar home. “Over a 12-month period, the goal is to have a net zero electricity bill.” Brown, who recently moved back to Charlottesville, says, “We knew we wanted to build a home and have it be as sustainable as possible.”
To that end, the Browns have invested in solar panels for their roof, compact florescent lighting fixtures that use 25 percent of the energy of regular incandescent light bulbs, super-efficient Energy Star-rated appliances, and a geothermal heat pump that uses the earth’s temperature to help heat and cool their home.
“I think this is one of the first solar net metered homes in the area,” says Brown. Being one of the first to take the solar plunge comes with special challenges; one of them is that the State of Virginia provides little financial incentive for solar homes to give power back to the grid.
But at the end of the day, the savings on energy bills have made Brown happy with his investment. “We use 50 percent less energy than other homes of the same size,” says Brown of his 2,100 sq. ft. home.
Making the transfer
New Downtown Transit Center incorporates green alternatives
The new Transit Center currently under construction on the east end of the Downtown Mall will be more than a stylish place to catch the bus. It will also be the City of Charlottesville’s first green building certified under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program of the U.S. Green Building Council.
“We are taking a common sense ‘green’ approach,” says Muscoe Martin, speaking from the Philadelphia office of Wallace, Roberts & Todd, the architectural firm behind the Transit Center design. To provide a glimpse of the green innovations to come, Martin, a LEED-accredited professional for the Transit Center, describes some of the center’s green features. “We’re using a geothermal heating and cooling system,” explains Martin. “We’re looking at all the plumbing fixtures as ultralow-flow fixtures. We’re also looking for local building materials, within a 500-mile radius, and using recycled building materials wherever they’re appropriate.”
When complete, the 12,000-square-foot-large Transit Center will be the new hub for bus travel Downtown and house the Charlottesville/Albemarle Visitor’s Bureau, a coffee shop, and small newsstand and concession businesses. It will also provide amenities like bike racks, bike lockers and showers. Eco-friendly interior details, such as the use of natural light, nontoxic paints and nontoxic carpeting, will improve the indoor air quality for visitors and employees.
To date, the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) has invested $3.5 million to build Charlottesville’s new Transit Center, and more federal funds are expected to be on the way. “FTA sees this as a flagship project,” says Bill Letteri, chief of facilities for the City of Charlottesville, “not just because of the innovative design but also the LEED certification.”
In addition to having a low environmental impact, the Transit Center’s green design also has the potential to save the city big bucks on long-term operating and maintenance costs. These savings will be sure to please both thrifty taxpayers and local environmentalists.
The location of the Transit Center at the east end of the Downtown Mall and its creative reuse of existing property is what makes the project particularly sustainable. “We think the greenest aspect may be its location,” says Martin. “It’s assisting with the reurbanization of the Downtown Mall.”
The Transit Center may be the City’s first “green” building, but if all goes well, it won’t be the last. “The whole green building concept is something that is a very high priority to the City, “ says Letteri, adding, “and something we hope to incorporate into future projects.”
On the Edge
The city’s first eco-friendly housing development sets up shop in Woolen Mills
Charlottesville’s first eco-friendly housing development, at the northeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Chesapeake Street in the Woolen Mills neighborhood, is being designed by the Rivanna Collaborative, LLC, a group of architects and designers who plan to break ground on the first of their homes next spring.
The 10-home eco-community, called RiverEdge, includes two houses that will be built and sold by Habitat for Humanity as affordable housing. All of the structures will be designed as sustainable homes by Rivanna Collaborative and could utilize locally sourced materials, responsibly harvested wood products, low-flow water fixtures and passive solar strategies.
The two Habitat for Humanity homes will make the RiverEdge development a mixed-income community, and Habitat bought the two lots from the Collaborative for $13,000 each, a small fraction of their value. The bargain is “very unusual” to Overton McGehee, of Habitat for Humanity. “A lot of developers have been resistant to having Habitat homes in their neighborhood,” he says.
“We’re interested in looking at an energy system for the entire complex,” says Collaborative member Alison Ewing, such as a geothermal system that all 10 homes could utilize. Other plans include creating a common space for all new residents to share that will run along the edge of Riverview Park, a new path to the park and eco-friendly landscaping with native plants to cleanse rainwater and runoff before it flows into the Rivanna River.
Two of the Collaborative members, Alison Ewing and Chris Hays, live across the street from the property and were inspired to build an eco-friendly community after building their own eco-friendly house just a few years earlier on Chesapeake Street. “We were very interested in making sure that this property was developed in a way that would be consistent with our own design aspirations,” says Ewing
At first glance, the narrow, sloping swath of property seems an unlikely place for the Rivanna Collaborative to build eco-friendly homes with a starting price of $350,000. The property is adjacent to the Riverview Park parking lot, a police-patrolled low-income housing complex, and down the street from a suburban development comprised of dozens of closely knit, nearly identical homes whose value is nowhere close to RiverEdge’s asking price.
Yet the serious design minds of Rivanna Collaborative are determined to give the Woolen Mills neighborhood a green makeover. Construction on the first of the RiverEdge homes will begin as early as next spring. “This is an opportunity for us to be expressive as designers,” says Ewing.
Satellite waves
The local Blue Moon Fund sees a green future
It comes as no surprise that in the forward-thinking, design-minded town of Charlottesville, even philanthropists are interested in green building. The Blue Moon Fund, a local foundation located on Park Street, has made the support of both local and national green and affordable housing projects a top priority.
At the national level, the Blue Moon Fund is supporting a new “Green Communities” initiative, spearheaded by the Enterprise Foundation, an affordable housing advocacy organization that has secured $550 million to build more than 8,500 environmentally friendly affordable homes over a five-year period. Of the 30 percent of its giving that the Blue Moon Fund devotes to urban issues, about 20 percent is a grant to the Enterprise Green Housing Initiative. The Fund sees the initiative as having the potential to “transform the affordable housing industry,” says Kristen Suokko, strategic program advisor for the Blue Moon Fund.
Blue Moon Fund-supported projects may also transform the affordable housing community locally. “We have a special commitment to the local community,” says Suokko. For example, Suokko cites a recent grant to Charlottesville’s Habitat for Humanity, explaining, “We have assisted in their [Habitat for Humanity’s] purchase of Sunrise Trailer Park in Belmont, to be developed into mixed-income affordable housing.” None of the current residents in Sunrise Trailer Park will be displaced; instead, they will be beneficiaries what Suokko hopes will be “a model of green design.”
The Sunrise Trailer Park will be developed into 60 to 80 units of townhouses, condos and apartments, sold both on the open market and to buyers who qualify for assistance from Habitat for Humanity. “We intend to offer everyone who lives at Sunrise an affordable home ownership opportunity,” says Overton McGehee of Habitat for Humanity. “We’ll develop it in stages so no one has to leave.” The project is still being planned, but construction could start as early as next spring.
The most eco-friendly aspect of the Sunrise Trailer Park development may be its convenient location to the city and to public transportation. “One of our frustrations is that two-thirds of our homes have been 15 miles or more from Charlottesville,” says McGehee, “It’s not sustainable for a low-income family to commute 20 miles.”
To put the importance of a city location near public transportation in perspective, McGehee says, “The challenges of green building are less daunting than finding land that is close to town and to jobs.”
Habitat for Humanity is seeking to raise the $1.7 million necessary for the land and site development and has secured $650,000 in pledges and donations. Three other foundations, in addition to the Blue Moon Fund, are supporting the redevelopment of Sunrise Trailer Park,
The Habitat homes built at Sunrise Trailer Park will feature Hardiplank siding, a green alternative to wood and vinyl, extra wall insulation for energy efficiency and even carpet made out of recycled milk jugs.
“The beauty of a lot of these things is that they pay for themselves in energy savings,” says McGehee of Habitat’s sustainability aspirations.
“Green building is largely perceived as a luxury or an expensive exception to the rule, when it actually can be affordable and have significant economic benefit,” says Suokko. “You can’t just look at the surface and say it’s too expensive.”
Categories
News in review
Tuesday, October 26
A detestable act
Today The Daily Progress announced it would adopt a new advertising policy, after some readers protested the newspaper’s decision to run an anonymous ad decrying homosexuality as “A Detestable Act… Wickedness… Gross sin!” The quarter-page ad, which contained no identification of its sponsor, appeared in the DP on Monday, October 25. John Kimbel of the DP today posted a message on George Loper’s website (http://loper.org/~george). “Some of our readers… told us they expected us to identify the organization placing the ad,” Kimbel wrote. Consequently, he said, the organization must identify itself if the ad runs again, and future advocacy ads will no longer be anonymous.
Wednesday, October 27
To unseal or not to unseal?
A federal court has ordered Virginia State Police to unseal documents relating to the arrest of former death row inmate Earl Washington Jr., according to news reports today. Washington was days away from execution before DNA testing earned him a pardon for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lynn Williams, a 19-year-old Culpeper woman. Even after his pardon in 2000, Washington was still regarded by authorities as a suspect in the murder. In an effort to finally clear Washington’s name, Charlottesville attorney Steven Rosenfield, one of Washington’s attorneys, wants the state police to open their files on Washington. Though the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Attorney General Jerry Kilgore to open the files, Kilgore will likely appeal to the Supreme Court. “This Attorney General likes to spend the taxpayers’ money using bad judgment,” Rosenfield said in an interview with C-VILLE Weekly.
Thursday, October 28
Eure sale price is $22 million
In an earnings call today, Saga Communications, the Michigan-based broadcasting company that recently announced a plan to buy three local radio stations, said that the deal is for “approximately $22 million.” Saga CFO Sam Bush said the radio stations—Eure Communications’ WINA, WWWV and WQMZ—will “add approximately $4.0 million in net revenue and $1.5 million in station operating income,” each year for Saga.
Friday, October 29
NAACP busted for Bush bashing?
A speech by Julian Bond, a UVA history professor and chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has resulted in an IRS investigation of the venerable civil rights group, NAACP officials today announced. A letter from the IRS to the NAACP says Bond’s keynote address at the July NAACP convention, which “condemned the administration polices of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq,” may have broken rules that keep nonprofit groups from “intervening in a political campaign.” During a press conference call today, NAACP officials questioned the “suspicious timing” of the investigation, hinting that it might be aimed at blocking the NAACP’s get-out-the-vote efforts. “So far as I know, this has never happened in the United States before,” Bond said of the investigation.
Saturday,October 30
John Warner, NASCAR dad
Taking time out from Election Weekend GOP duties, Sen. John Warner stopped by UVA Grounds to lend support to his documentary filmmaker son John Warner, Jr., who showed two-thirds of his NASCAR trilogy at this weekend’s Virginia Film Festival. The Senator, who narrates all three of Junior’s NASCAR movies, joked that he “didn’t even get a ham sandwich” for his voice-over efforts. “You ham it up enough,” replied the younger Warner, a 1986 UVA grad and onetime racecar driver.
Sunday, October 31
Back in the hunt
An off-week was just what the UVA football team needed. With huge upsets yesterday of ACC foes Florida State and Miami, the 6-1 Cavs shot up to the top of conference rankings and are again in the running for a big bowl game. UVA, which also rose to No. 12 in the AP rankings released today, controls its own fate with looming games against No. 11 Miami and No. 18 Virginia Tech.
Monday, November 1
Two cousins—two police shootings
This year, both the Charlottesville and Albemarle County police departments have been involved in police shootings. According to Reed Williams of The Daily Progress, the two men shot by local police this year are actually cousins, and share a violent past. Robert Cooke, 30, who is scheduled to appear in Albemarle General District Court today, allegedly shot an Albemarle police dog while fleeing a burglary scene on Sunday, October 24. An Albemarle cop then shot Cooke twice. Cooke’s cousin, Kerry Cook (who spells his last name differently) was shot by a city police officer during a violent confrontation at Friendship Court in August. The DP reports that the two cousins were tried as juveniles for a 1988 Charlottesville robbery in which an elderly female store clerk was brutally beaten.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports.
Exile on W. Main Street
Sidewalk-sign crackdown handicaps businesses
In early September, Cal Glattfelder looked out the window of his record store on Water Street and saw someone absconding with his sign.
“I just happened to be looking out the window,” he says. “I see this guy picking up the sign and carting it down the sidewalk.”
Glattfelder, who runs Sidetracks record store, confronted the would-be thief. He turned out to be Reed Brodhead, a City zoning inspector.
“What’s going on?” Glattfelder asked.
“Didn’t you get the letter?” Brodhead replied.
In late August, Brodhead sent Glattfelder’s landlord, Oliver Kuttner, a letter warning that freestanding signs—such as the one Glattfelder had leaning against a telephone pole outside his store—were prohibited by the City’s zoning ordinance.
Glattfelder, however, hadn’t seen the letter and didn’t know about the law until he caught Brodhead taking his sign. Glattfelder took control of the record store across from the Ice Park a year and a half ago, and he says the sign on the sidewalk “has an impact” on business. Glattfelder says he needs some way to let passers-by know where the store is, but the City is so far determined to crack down on illegal signage.
Similar confrontations have occurred along W. Main Street.
It all started in early summer, when a group of blind people came to a City Council meeting. They claimed that temporary signs and sandwich boards made walking dangerous for them, especially along the narrow sidewalks of W. Main. According to the City’s zoning code, such signs are permitted on the Downtown Mall and the Corner, but not on Water Street or W. Main, a commercial dead zone that the City would like to redevelop into a pedestrian thoroughfare, and where a few new businesses are trying to take root.
The City’s zoning department started cracking down in August, sending out letters that threatened to “initiate legal proceedings, which may include civil or criminal penalties,” according to a letter mailed to Gabe Silverman, who owns the purple Main Street Market on W. Main. Hayley Peppard relied on a sandwich board to bring customers into her flower store, Hedge, inside the Market. The City confiscated her sign before she saw the letter, however.
“It’s a problem for me, because I don’t have a storefront,” says Peppard. On the Mall and on the Corner, people have time to relax, move slowly and look at all the shops. Drivers on W. Main don’t, she says, so she considers the ordinance “not fair.”
The harsh wording of the City’s letter surprised Patrick McClure, who owns West Main—A Virginian Restaurant, as well as the original Virignian, which is on the Corner. “The last line was almost funny,” he says. After threatening to prosecute the business owners, the letter concluded with the sentence. “Thank you for helping make Charlottesville a world class city.”
On Monday, October 18, a group of W. Main business owners appeared at City Council’s regular meeting to ask for help. “My sign has been out there for 32 years,” said Lois Mundie, who owns the Shear Power hair salon on W. Main. “The sign is responsible for 30 new clients a week at my store,” she says.
Mundie says the group plans to band together and hire an attorney to fight the crackdown, but McClure hopes the matter can be settled without a legal standoff.
“This is not a ‘burning torches’ issue,” McClure says. “It’s a fly on the shoulder of City Council. We’d like them to knock it off.” He says many of the affected business owners plan to write letters to Mayor David Brown this week.
So far, Neighborhood Development Director Jim Tolbert says enforcement will continue. He says he wants to meet with the offending shopkeepers to discuss other types of signs they could use.
“I’m not going to recommend allowing sandwich boards on the sidewalk,” says Tolbert. “Our sidewalks are far too narrow as it is. And I don’t think a sandwich board, when it’s behind parked cars, is the best advertising in the world.”
For now, the only sidewalk sign permitted on W. Main is one at L’Etoile Restaurant. Owner Mark Gresge paid about $50 for a permit for his sign, he says. But it may not last. City zoning administrator Ashley Cooper says the permit may have been issued in error, and that her office is reviewing its validity.
So it looks like Council will have to step in. Peppard says she’s already talked to City Councilors, and they’ve been “real helpful.”
“I feel like they’re going to take care of it,” she says. “Until then, it’s a pain in the ass.”—John Borgmeyer
Mountain flop
Traffic complaints dominate Pantops master plan meeting
The bulldozers have been busy of late on Pantops, Thomas Jefferson’s former farmland that was given its name by T.J. himself in deference to the sweet views it commands from a certain hilltop location just east of Charlottesville. And, as one of Albemarle County’s designated growth areas, more development is on the way. To better plan for Pantops’ growth, County officials and residents began work in October on a “master plan” for the area—a process that was recently completed for Crozet.
Before they could begin master planning, however, residents needed to be brought up to speed on development in Pantops.
To that end, County planners held a public meeting at the Montessori Community School on Monday evening, October 25. During the meeting, which was attended by about 30 people, planners ran down a list of proposed and ongoing development projects and gave a tutorial on the County’s planning policies.
But attendees weren’t particularly interested in discussing zoning rules or even the specifics on the many residential and commercial developments.
“How much longer are we going to go without talking about traffic congestion?” asked Pantops resident Ron Dimberg, as soon as the County planners had finished their presentation.
A litany of likeminded comments followed, including worries about bottleneck traffic on the Free Bridge and about new developments bringing more cars to neighborhood cut-throughs. Though the meeting’s facilitator, Becky Clay Christensen, tried to steer the discussion back to the County’s zoning policies, traffic ruled the rest of the night.
“Until you have roads that move traffic, what we’re talking about here doesn’t matter,” said Lynwood Bell, who says he moved to Pantops to avoid the road hassles on Route 29N. “I don’t need to talk about this, I need to know what my elected officials are going to do about it.”
Two of those elected officials, County Supervisor Ken Boyd, who represents Pantops, and Kevin Lynch, Charlottesville’s vice-mayor who also sits on a regional transportation board, were on-hand to address residents’ complaints.
“The problem is money,” Boyd said of the County’s traffic conundrum. With little funds coming from Richmond to build new roads, Boyd said, the County couldn’t possibly make all of its desired road fixes.
“If you start adding up all these [road projects], it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Boyd says.
Lynch drew applause when he stressed the need for a framework of roads and public transportation to support development in Pantops. But later, he shifted some of the responsibility for the region’s traffic problems back on residents, asking if the meetings’ attendees would support a 4-cent hike in the gas tax to pay for road projects.
Though County planners didn’t engage in the traffic question during the meeting, suggesting that the topic would be better addressed in upcoming discussion groups, they made a compelling case for the need for a master plan. Though they acknowledged that the neighborhood is already an “urbanizing neighborhood,” its future is not sealed.
Senior Planner Tarpley Gillespie drove this point home by pointing to a map of Pantops that was speckled with many “areas of indecision,” all of which are likely sites of future development. Among several current proposals Gillespie mentioned is the Cascadia project, which features 384 housing units and 10,000 square feet of commercial space on the east side of Route 20N. By having a master plan in place, County planners say they can help steer that neighborhood, for instance, to be better interconnected while also determining what sort of public facilities—such as roads, parks and schools—are needed to support growth.
Longtime resident Dimberg was hopeful after the meeting, but not because he was optimistic about a better model for growth.
“I am encouraged about what I sense is a rising tide of opposition [to development],” Dimberg said, adding “these meetings are 10 years too late.”—Paul Fain
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HOW TO: Lose five pounds in a hurry Did you Snickers and candy corn yourself into a new pants size last weekend? Need to drop the roll by the end of the week? These easy tips are neither safe nor medically endorsed, but they definitely work. In the immortal words of Fernando, it’s not how you feel, it’s how you look. And you look a little bloated right now, sweetheart. Start with black coffee for breakfast, followed by broth at lunchtime, and a small bunch of seedless grapes for dinner. Supplement at snack time with Diet Coke and Camel Lights. Should dizziness and cramping beset you, classic signs of dehydration, load up on more coffee or water, if health is a concern. Visit the Stairmaster twice daily for a couple of 50-minute workouts. Other fun ways to burn calories include snacking on celery and cucumbers, which provide negative energy to your body once you’re done chewing them. Fiber is important to any weight-loss plan, of course. Chew through this issue of C-VILLE once you’ve finished reading it. Also consider Metamucil or aloe vera supplements. Don’t forget appetite suppressants. Among the most effective are Fox News and NBC reality weight-loss show “The Biggest Loser.”
Need to know how to do something? E-mail your questions to howto@c-ville.com. |
Walker Sisk Murder 101
High-profile trial of suspect Andrew Alston finally begins
Former UVA student Andrew Alston’s trial for second-degree murder begins on November 3, and is scheduled to conclude on November 8—one year to the day after Alston, 22, allegedly killed Walker Sisk, a 22-year-old volunteer firefighter and Free Union resident during an early-morning verbal confrontation on the Corner.
Alston’s legal team has been busy in the yearlong runup to the trial. His revolving crew of at least six lawyers has filed several pre-trial motions and also successfully pushed back the trial date, which had been scheduled for August 30.
John K. Zwerling, a prominent Alexandria defense attorney who is cited regularly in The Washington Post and on CNN, is leading the defense for Alston, a suburban Philadelphia native whose father is a corporate lawyer and an elected township supervisor. Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward L. Hogshire has granted Zwerling’s request to suppress Alston’s prior felony and misdemeanor assault convictions for a Halloween evening attack in 1998, when Alston was a juvenile. That previous incident may not be introduced during the trial, but could be used during sentencing, if Alston is convicted.
However, Judge Hogshire denied a defense motion that would have prevented speculation about Alston’s propensity to carry or collect knives. Sisk was stabbed and cut 20 times, with the lethal injury coming from a wound to the chest and heart, according to an autopsy report.
The evening leading to Sisk’s murder began with two groups of young men out for a Saturday night of barhopping on the Corner. When Alston, his brother Kenneth and two friends encountered Sisk and fellow firefighter James Schwab later that night, there was plenty of jawing, but no violence until Alston attacked Sisk, according to January testimony from both sides of the encounter.
“I didn’t see any hitting going on at all,” testified Jeffrey Cabrera, who was with Alston’s group when they met Sisk and Schwab near the corner of 14th and Wertland streets. “Just the usual swearing going back and forth between each other.”
At some point, two witnesses said, Alston began striking Sisk.
“It was a strange-looking punch,” Cabrera said, adding that it looked like Alston may have been holding keys in the hand with which he was hitting Sisk. Neither Cabrera nor Schwab said they saw a knife.
“He wasn’t fighting back, at any point,” Schwab said of Sisk’s role in the altercation.
Schwab said he heard his friend cry out in pain a couple times. Sisk eventually slumped to the ground, lying face-first, according to witnesses. Schwab testified that when he rolled Sisk over, “he was blood from neck to waist.”
Sisk later died from the wounds. Charlottesville police followed a track of blood to a nearby house on 14th Street, where they arrested Andrew Alston. Investigators never found a murder weapon.
In Alston’s car, which was parked near the scene of the murder, investigators found blood from Alston, whose hand was allegedly cut during the incident. The defense has sought to exclude this evidence, claiming that the blood came from a previous injury. The bloodstain could be used to argue that Alston’s brother Kenneth transferred some of Alston’s blood to the car during, perhaps, an effort to dispose of the murder weapon.
The pre-trial maneuvering is not the first time Alston has battled a charge of violence in a local court. Just weeks after his arrest last November, Alston beat the rap for a misdemeanor assault stemming from a September 2003 argument he had with his girlfriend, a fellow UVA student. During that trial, the girlfriend testified that Alston’s parents pressured her to sign a written statement denying Alston’s culpability in the assault, according to an account by Liesel Nowak of The Daily Progress. Alston was acquitted of that charge, and taken from the trial back to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where ever since he has been held without bond.—Paul Fain
Categories
Electoral knowledge
—Donald Bumsfelt
A: Well, Mr. Bumsfelt, Ace, like you, has developed a true fondness over the past year of Campaign Reeject Bush for the project’s 38-year-old mastermind, who was first profiled in the pages of C-VILLE in the beginning of May. But sadly, after November 2, Schrader decamps from campaign headquarters (a table outside of Oyster House Antiques) and jets off to Polynesia.
That’s right, folks. He has braved the snow, rain and sleet to hawk (at no profit to himself) bumper stickers, t-shirts and baseball hats that say “Reeject Bush.” But, mission complete, Schrader—like every smart man—will waste no time in heading for the finest beaches this world has to offer. While he declines to say which island, Schrader assures Ace there will be plenty of surfing and fun in the sun penciled into his date book.
Tanned and with cocktail still in hand, Schrader will then board a plane and head back to where all those fruitcake liberals belong: Europe. Wavre, Belgium, just south of Brussels, to be more specific. That’s where Schrader lives and manages a nursing home when there’s not a higher calling—like grassroots political activism—directing him home to the United States.
Back in Belgium, Schrader says that he will also be debating the pros and cons of maintaining his Charlottesville abode that has served as his U.S. base of operations for two years due to the small detail that Schrader is not a Belgian citizen. But that’s about to change. Since same-sex marriages are not recognized by the U.S. government but are legally sanctioned in Belgium, Schrader is “in the process of becoming a Belgian citizen” so that he can marry his Belgian partner. “I have no political motivations behind getting out of the United States,” clarifies Schrader.
But, having logged approximately five hours a day on the Mall for 500 days, and having sold approximately 2,000 Reeject Bush bumper stickers, 1,000 t-shirts and 50 baseball hats, Schrader has left his mark on this town regardless of whether he keeps a house here. Total proceeds are in excess of $19,000, all of which have been donated to the Kerry campaign or used to make more Reeject Bush products. The leftover goods will no doubt become collector’s items. So save up, because he is considering selling them on eBay.
For Ace, Schrader’s departure will rank among the teariest of farewells—right up there with the “Friends” finale. And, catching glimpses of the “Reeject Bush” slogan in the coming months just might choke Ace up a bit. “Those were the days,” Ace will say. “Good times, good times.”