Month: January 2005

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The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Guilty is guilty

Recently you printed a letter written by Huan-Tai Hsu, an employee of Sanjiv Bhatia, the man convicted of “gay-bashing” a local citizen on the Downtown Mall [Mailbag, December 28]. This letter makes claims concerning Bhatia’s moral character and inability to have committed the assault and battery/misdemeanor charges brought against him.

   In what proves to be an exercise in poor logic, the argument is made that because Bhatia himself is an ethnic minority and has felt the sting of discrimination, he therefore would not discriminate against others. Wrong. Having endured discrimination does not prevent Bhatia from “contribut[ing] to another feeling such humiliating degradation,” but it certainly gives him no excuse.

   Hsu expresses frustration with C-VILLE for reporting Bhatia’s conviction, citing an appeal in process. While I am no law student, I seem to recall that we are required by law to presume innocence until guilt may be determined. Bhatia has been found guilty; he was convicted of a crime. That is no fallacy.

   Additionally Hsu’s letter cites the potential damage that Bhatia’s three young daughters might suffer as a result of
C-VILLE’s allegedly fallacious reporting. Perhaps Bhatia might take advantage of this excellent opportunity to have a good long talk with his daughters about the dangers of bigotry in all its forms.

   Thank you, C-VILLE, for your coverage. You continue to be a refreshing voice that I enjoy every Tuesday.

 

Ben Hines

Albemarle County

 

Government mules

 I was sorry to see C-VILLE reinforce the flawed notion that the perceived unresponsiveness of Charlottesville government can be explained by charting officials’ origins on a geographic grid [“Democracy inaction,” The Week, January 11]. And the fact that you did that charting over the last 44 years was particularly unhelpful. The Charlottesville of 1960 was very different from the Charlottesville of today. For instance, the Charlottesville of 1960 featured an array of institutions racially segregated by still-standing law and/or long-standing custom.

   Please note that for the eight years ending in July 2004, two of City Council’s five members lived on the supposedly unrepresented south side of town. Further, for the last four of those years, one of those City southerners, a Tonsler Park voter, was mayor, while the other, a Jefferson Park Avenue voter, was vice-mayor. And, of course, one of those two was female while the other was black—which is to say, they personally embodied diversity. Nevertheless, during recent public hearings, a pair of Tonsler voters were among the most earnest pleaders for a ward system as cure-all for the profound neglect they feel.

   The fact that so many Charlottesville citizens feel as though their government is unresponsive to their needs has nothing to do with where representatives live or how their election was organized. It has to do with the agendas they take to Council or adopt once they arrive. If there’s a trend worth charting over the last 44 years, it’s the continental drift away from local representatives who took as their first priority the practical matters that make daily city life livable—practical matters of which an adequate system of maintained sidewalks is by far the item most often cited by those who complain of neglect—and toward representatives more and more focused on grand schemes and personal “visions” that profit nonresident developers and potential residents rather than those whose lives are already invested here now.

 

Antoinette W. Roades

Charlottesville

 

CORRECTION

In last week’s Get Out Now calendar we printed the incorrect date for the New Green Mountain Church’s Martin Luther King Day Commemoration. The correct date was Sunday, January 16.

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News in review

Tuesday, January 18
Kilgore to step down

One week after Democratic foe Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine got a $5 million valentine from the national party in his gubernatorial run, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore announced today that he will leave his post at month’s end to campaign full-time for Richmond’s top job. Signaling the “aw, shucks” tone to come, Kilgore said in remarks to staff that when he starts criss-crossing the Commonwealth he will “miss having a Wendy’s within walking distance” of his office. The late Dave Thomas was unavailable for comment.

 

Wednesday, January 19
Emergency at CHO

The Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport announced today that passengers increased by nearly 13 percent in 2004, for a total of 366,092 travelers last year. But the mere existence of the airport, never mind its record-setting utility, was good news tonight for the 20 shaken US Airways passengers on their way to Pittsburgh who stumbled into the CHO terminal after an emergency landing. Forced to divert to Charlottesville with just one engine, the plane reportedly skidded off the runway into the grass as it landed. On December 16 another US Airways flight made an emergency landing here after a disgruntled customer made a bomb threat.

 

Thursday, January 20
Growth is good, dam it!

Neil Williamson, director of the staunchly pro-business Free Enterprise Forum, and City Republican leader Bob Hodous were among those who showed up at Monticello High School tonight to hear the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority describe the pros and cons of raising the dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir. The hearing was the fourth held by the RWSA to discuss options for expanding the water supply to meet projected demand for 2055. Williamson says some people want the RWSA to do nothing as a means to slow sprawl in Albemarle. Pro-growth types should raise their voices, too, he says: “There’s an undercurrent at these meetings where a portion of the public doesn’t want to provide the water we need for growth.”

 

Friday, January 21
They think his tractor’s sexy

This morning Kenny Chesney fans flocked to Starr Hill’s website for tickets to a January 27 tsunami fundraiser by the popular country musician. The show, announced only one day before, sold out within 15 minutes. “That element of surprise is what he was going for,” said Starr Hill promotions head Robert Tucker.

 

Cell-wielding teens left on hold?

Today Virginia drivers under 18 can start counting the days before they have to hang up on Buffy if she calls while they’re driving Mom’s Explorer. Yesterday the General Assembly’s Senate Transportation Committee unanimously endorsed a bill— sponsored by some NoVa Senators— that would prohibit drivers under 18 from using the phone while driving. If passed, the law would kick in July 1. In targeting young drivers, the legislators reason that teens, while good at multitasking, have trouble prioritizing. Northern Virginia and other D.C. suburban areas suffered a rash of teen car deaths at the end of last year.

 

Saturday, January 22
’Hoos erase their Zero

With temperatures hovering in the 20s all day, Charlottesville froze over thanks to the year’s first significant snowfall and so apparently did Hell as Pete Gillen’s Cavaliers pulled out an ACC win—their first in six league contests. Facing those other ACC weaklings, Clemson, who were 1-4 going into tonight’s game, the UVA men’s team squeaked out an 81-79 victory at U-Hall. Next up for the ’Hoos as they take the Save-Gillen’s-Job Tour on the road: A matchup against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on Thursday.

 

Sunday, January 23
Keep the plows running

Though the need for snow removal might be foremost on people’s minds after 2.5 inches fell yesterday, the City of Charlottesville’s online budget forum remains quiet today on the question of which City services should be reduced for FY 2005-06. Writing one week ago, one poster answered comprehensively: “Redevelopment Authority, Office of Economic Development, Science and Technology, Industrial Development Authority, Art In Place, Neighborhood Development Services, City Link.” City Council seeks online feedback to new budget proposals at www.charlottesville.org before passing a final budget on April 12. Ninety-six forum users were registered as of today.

 

Monday, January 24
County real estate tops $11B

After Albemarle County sent reassessment notices to property owners last week, the Real Estate Division of its Finance Department can expect the phones to start ringing off the hook this morning with appeals. New assessments, which are conducted every two years, reflect an annual average increase of 13.6 percent. The biggest increases were in the Rivanna and White Hall districts, each exceeding 14 percent annually. The County suggests that “the best initial step in appealing a reassessment is to talk directly to the assessor who created the valuation”—lucky fellow! Call 296-5851 to complain.

 

Written by Cathy Harding from news sources and staff reports.

 

Whine and fees
Council gets earful on rising real estate taxes and spending

As City Council prepares its annual budget, and as Charlottesville homeowners brace for another year of double-digit assessment leaps, critics are pressing Council about exactly where all that money is going.

   “Has a three-fold increase in Neighborhood Development led to improvements in your neighborhood?” asked John Pfaltz, who came to Tuesday’s City Council meeting armed with charts and graphs on City spending from 1995 to 2003.

   “Has the 50 percent increase in social services made significant inroads in the problems affecting our less affluent citizens?” said Pfaltz on January 18. “How have the 42 additions to Public Works, even as it has outsourced weekly trash collection, made our lives better?”

   The ire of Pfaltz and others has been sparked by a recent report from the conservative-funded Free Enterprise Forum, showing that Charlottesville’s operating expenditures increased at an average rate of 3.2 percent since 1988, despite decreases in population and school enrollment since then.

   Between 1990 and 1997, City spending increases were closely tied to cost of living increases; beginning in 1998, however, City budgets started radically outpacing CPI, according to the Free Enterprise Forum. Pfaltz showed that since 1995,
the City has added 152 new employees, with the biggest increases coming in Neighborhood Development (18 people), Social Services (33 people) and Public Works (42 people).

   Pfaltz argues that Council should tie City budget increases to the consumer price index. Councilors say it’s not that simple. They say that State budget cuts to local jails, schools and social services have forced the City to make up that money locally.

 

Dude, where’s my parking spot?

While Council isn’t likely to radically change the way it spends money, Downtown business owner Joan Fenton says there are a few simple things the City can do to help Mall entrepreneurs.

   Shoppers who find the Market Street parking garage full have no idea how to get to the Water Street garage, says Fenton. “There needs to be a Mall opening or signs to show people how to get to parking,” says Fenton, outgoing chair of the Board of Architectural Review.

   Fenton also suggested that since the Charlottesville-Albemarle Visitors Center has moved from Second Street SE to Fifth Street NE, the City might consider taking down the Visitors Center signs that are still hanging outside the old address.

 

Glad it’s not our job

Also on Tuesday, Council met Paul A. Chedda, who took over as executive director of the Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment Authority in August. Chedda, a former attorney, steps into one of the toughest jobs in City government.

   The colorful cast of Chedda’s predecessors includes:

A.E. “Gene” Arrington, the City’s first housing director. He often spent his mornings parked surreptitiously at public housing sites, trying to catch boyfriends who were illegally shacking up.

Earl Pullen. Under his watch, the CHRA ranked 25th out of 27 public housing sites in Virginia. Residents owed the CHRA nearly $45,000 in back rent. Pullen lost his job after being charged with driving under the influence and allegedly brandishing a loaded gun at a teenager. The charges were ultimately dropped.

Del Harvey. Resigned in May 2003, after a 2001 survey of public housing residents and staff claimed that her overbearing management style contributed to significant staff turnover.

   Assistant City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney had filled in as CHRA director since Harvey resigned. “There have been big troubles at the Authority,” Councilor Kendra Hamilton said on Monday. “The building maintenance services seemed to cease functioning at some point.”

   Chedda’s first big job will be figuring out where to get the $10 million needed to fix up the dilapidated Westhaven public housing site. “There needs to be partnerships, not just with the City, but with private companies,” Chedda told Council.

 

CDF: “Dead but not buried”

You didn’t think the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation would just vanish quietly, did you?

   Now it seems some CDF members wonder whether the nonprofit’s board violated its own bylaws when it voted to go out of business in November.

   “I don’t want to imply that anything was done incorrectly,” says Bob Stroh, president of Charlottesville Parking Center and CDF member. “I just want to know.

   “As a member [of CDF] from Day One, I’d like to find out how it happened and who voted,” says Stroh. “I don’t have any of that information. I haven’t seen the articles and bylaws.”

   Stroh says he’s trying to get the bylaws.

   “He hasn’t been trying hard enough, because he hasn’t come to me,” says Tony LaBua, owner of Chap’s Ice Cream, longtime CDF board member and keeper of the CDF bylaws. “[Stroh] has never asked me for the bylaws.”

   LaBua says the CDF board has not violated its bylaws, but he declined to provide a copy of them to C-VILLE.

   “We’re trying to resolve some other issues. We’re trying to work with other organizations,” LaBua says.

   LaBua says that although CDF did indeed vote to relinquish the “Fridays After 5” concert series to Charlottesville Pavilion—Coran Capshaw’s company that will run the new Downtown amphitheater—he clarifies that the CDF board is not dissolving its 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

   “Fridays After 5 is a branded product,” LaBua says. “We’re looking to sell or lease that name, to continue to raise money for other nonprofit groups.”

   So is CDF out of business or not? CDF is definitely no longer involved with Friday afternoon concerts, but it seems as though at least some members of the group hope to evolve and live on. “Even though we’re dead, we’re not buried,” LaBua says.

   Stay tuned.—John Borgmeyer

 

Conversion problems
Evangelism part of local tsunami relief effort

When the tsunami killed more than 150,000 people and destroyed parts of Southeast Asia on December 26, Advancing Native Missions sprang into action. Like countless other groups, the Crozet-based organization began raising funds and sending supplies to devastated survivors. As of last week they had collected more than $100,000 for relief efforts. But a January 13 article in The Washington Post detailed the activities of the local group and several of its faith-based brethren from around the state. In addition to sending food and supplies to the people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and southern India, many religious groups—including ANM, according to the Post—are also trying to convert the mostly Muslim and Buddhist natives to Christianity.

   According to its own website, ANM is an evangelical organization: “Advancing Native Missions has been called to seek out, evaluate and support native missions groups who have a clear and defined evangelical statement of faith…who are working among unreached people groups” to “advance…God’s Kingdom.”

   The group was founded in 1992 by Charlottesville residents Carl Gordon, C.V. Johns and Benjamin Barredo. Staff currently numbers 30 full- and part-time employees who work with approximately 240 indigenous Christian groups totaling more than 3,500 native missionaries in 80 countries. It reported revenue of $5.2 million in 2003.

   ANM’s heft might be what grabbed the attention of Post reporter Alan Cooperman, who in the article reported that ANM workers regularly hand out Bibles along with food, water and cooking utensils. And he quotes ANM spokesman Oliver Asher as saying, “It’s easy to be an atheist when you have no crisis in your life. But have a 50-foot tidal wave sweep your family and village away, it makes you ponder the big questions in life.”

   Asher takes umbrage with the Post’s selection of quotes. “What I’ve learned is that when you’re talking to the media, you can tell them the story and they’lll use one sentence,” he says. “We definitely are not happy that [the tsunami] happened. We’re very saddened; we’ve cried tears with everybody else, shed tears with everyone else.”

   But Asher doesn’t deny that the missionaries who work through ANM—all of whom are natives to the countries, he says—try to spread “the love of Jesus Christ.”

   “I hate to say we’re taking advantage of the opportunity but we are certainly taking this opportunity, yes, to show the love of Jesus Christ,” he says. “But we don’t make any stipulations. Anything we give, we give freely. I know there’s been some talk about missionary organizations exploiting the tsunami victims, but that’s not the business we’re in.”

   The conversion aspect doesn’t sit well with David Vandeveer, a local performance artist who founded the secular Mission Tsunami last month to help the victims. So far he’s raised $10,000 through one local fundraiser (two more are scheduled this week) that he plans to personally deliver to southern India next month to buy supplies.

   He’s happy that anyone’s helping out and “[evangelical groups] do wonderful things a lot of the time,” he says. However, “people go and in the name of Jesus they’re helping a person, but to go to someone who’s been a Buddhist for 40 years and is so deeply involved in their religion and then to try to convert them…that just seems silly to me.”—Eric Rezsnyak

 

HOW TO: Learn English as a second language

You’ve certainly landed in the right place if you’re interested in mastering the mother tongue—Southern accent optional. Charlottesville and Albemarle County are home to at least five organizations with full schedules of day and evening classes in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL).

   At the Charlottesville Adult Learning Center, new students are required to participate in a two-hour English ability assessment, which is held weekly at the Virginia Employment Commission, 400 Preston Ave. The cost for CALC’s 14-week language courses is $75-85.

   Albemarle County Adult Education also administers ESOL classes, and the County’s Regional Migrant Education Program offers several programs, including ESOL Family Literacy, a home-based eight-week class that matches a teacher with a family to plan needs-specific plan curriculum. Through Literacy Volunteers of America—Charlottesville/Albemarle, non-English speakers can participate in free, one-on-one tutoring sessions, which are scheduled to accommodate students’ schedules.

   For more information, class schedules and fees, contact these organizations: Albemarle County Adult Education, 907 Henry Ave., 296-3872; Blue Ridge ESL Council, 214 Rugby Rd., 977-7988; Charlottesville Adult Education, 1000 Preston Ave., Suite D, 245-2817; Literacy Volunteers of America—Charlottesville/ Albemarle, 418 7th St. NE, 977-3838; Piedmont Virginia Community College, 501 College Dr., 961-5380.

 

 

Signs of intelligent life
Online publisher InteLex allows scholars to search the Western canon in five seconds flat

“Hey, Justin do you have a favorite letter?” Brad Lamb yells across the small office.

   From his spot at his computer, Justin Cober-Lake mumbles something about searching for Eliot under Yeats. Moments later, in his second-floor office overlooking the Downtown Mall, Lamb receives an
e-mail from Cober-Lake, subject heading, “Yeats on Eliot.”

   Lamb clicks on the link and a letter written in the late summer of 1886 by famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats appears on the computer screen.

   “My dear Gregg,” the letter opens. “I have only read four books of George Eliot’s… I don’t mean to read a fifth.” Yeats then proceeds to enumerate his reasons for scorning the great novelist, a woman who wrote under a male pen name, concluding with an eloquent, words-to-live-by zinger.

   “Seventhly. She is too reasonable. I hate reasonable people. The activity of their brains sucks up all the blood out of their hearts. I was once afraid of turning out reasonable myself. The only buisness [sic] of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart. Yours sincerely, W B Yeats.” Damn.

   Lamb is president of InteLex, a small online publishing company that, as part of their Past Masters series, publishes the largest collection of full-text electronic editions in philosophy in the world. Working in conjunction with academic presses like Oxford University Press and Pickering & Chatto, InteLex takes the best critical editions of scholarly works from the Western canon, digitizes them, and then puts them into a collection with a search engine, which then can be burned onto CD-ROMs. That means scholars can search an author’s entire oeuvre word by word—or can find, in five seconds, that one letter where Yeats bemoans Eliot.

   Each CD holds a half-million pages of text, or 2,000 250-page books. Want the works of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza all rolled up onto a single CD-ROM? No problem, InteLex’s “Continental Rationalists” title has that covered, along with 117 other titles that include letters, reviews, plays, diaries, etcetera by everyone from Aristotle to Wordsworth. Individuals can pick and choose à la carte from the catalogue when creating their CD-ROM libraries and universities have the option of buying into InteLex’s server so that entire student bodies can have access to titles.

   Now situated above Blue Light Grill, the company began in founder Tucker Rooks’ home in 1989. Rooks earned his Ph.D. in philosophy before working in a computer lab where he realized that the marriage between his two areas of expertise represented an unexplored niche market. Lamb joined Rooks and InteLex in 1991 to take charge of sales and the company took off, moving into the current space in 1996.

   Grad students, university faculty and research libraries worldwide, are that special niche market that InteLex is freeing up to “spend a lot less time trying to find what they’re looking for and more time thinking about what they want to write about,” says Lamb. And InteLex must be doing something right—they have now sold “millions” of dollars worth of titles to a bunch of people who hardly, one can assume, have millions of dollars to spare.—Nell Boeschenstein

As Told To: Conversations with Old-School Business Owners

Mincer’s UVA Imprinted Sportwear’s Mark Mincer
Interview by Barbara Rich

For nearly 60 years, Mincer’s, a Corner stalwart on University Avenue, has serviced the UVA community with logo sweatshirts, decals, beer cozies—and a heck of a lot of school spirit. Students bring their parents by Mark Mincer’s place for the essential tour of campus life, but few can match him for his consistent support of the Cavalier tradition. No kidding—next time you stop in, just look at his feet.

My grandfather, Robert W. Mincer, started this business on July 19, 1948, and my father, Bobby Mincer, took it over in 1972, when his father retired. My father retired in 2000, and I took over then, but I’ve worked here since 1980— part-time when I was in high school.

   My grandfather got the idea for the store when he was the foreman of a pipe factory on Long Island, New York. When the factory closed down, he wanted to open a pipe shop in a college town because he thought that college kids could afford to smoke a pipe.

   He thought about opening a store in Dartmouth, but then decided that place would be too cold. So it became a choice between Charlottesville and Lexington, and he decided to come here.

   It opened as Mincer’s Humidor in 1948. What was here before? I know it was a drug store—can’t remember the name.

   We get the most parents coming in on Parents Weekend, which is usually, but not always, in October. More parents in the fall than on graduation, and when the dorms open up in August. There’s such a lot going on then—like buying books—and parents don’t have too much time for shopping.

   How have the kids changed over the years? A lot! First of all, UVA is now co-ed. No, it’s hard to tell how they feel politically, but one of the changes is the use of cell phones and e-mail. Kids today don’t write many letters. And we used to deal with bank accounts, but they don’t write a lot of checks now either. Now it’s debit and credit cards and the ATM. One of our changes is that Mincer’s now has a website. As for our biggest seller, it’s sweatshirts.

   Well, being around kids kept me young more 10 years ago than it does now. I’m 42 now, married, with four children. Yes, my dad does drop by occasionally. He misses the store—misses seeing people from all over the country. He always enjoyed that a lot, seeing and talking to the different people coming in, and so do I.

   I would have to say that the best thing about Mincer’s is its location. We are very fortunate to have this location. Also, all the choices in merchandise we have. Sometimes I think we have too many choices! But I think that this is also one of our strengths. That, and experience. I have learned so much from both my grandfather and my father.

   About carrying on with someone in the family after I retire: I have a son and three daughters. My son, who is 8 years old, says now that he would like to take over the business. When I ask him, he says, “Yes!” But he’s only 8.

   My dad paid me 25 cents an hour, when I was 10 years old, to refill the soda machine. We used to have a soda machine in the store.

   I know my grandfather didn’t envision that the business would last this long. I think he would be very proud to know that it has.

   My orange socks? I wear orange socks every day. Must have about 40 pairs of them. Well, at least 30.

Categories
News

Practice round

The laws of pop music are beginning to resemble the laws of reproduction. Thousands of spermatozoa swim desperately to an egg to fulfill their destiny, but only one will get in. This kind of evolutionary pattern has ruined a number of rock ’n’ rollers: Alex Chilton, Phil Ochs, Johnny Thunders. Dreaming of the glory of playing big stages with thousands of fans supporting their music, they find themselves washed up on the rocky shore of pop music eventuality. Dreams dashed by A&R men with MBAs, fickle audiences or simply tough luck, some of these guys may go on to be the greatest wedding musicians you have ever heard, eating barbecue and fielding requests for “Mustang Sally.”

   But Nashville-based rock band Blue Merle is feeling resilient. And right now they are probably as close to the prize as they can be without drooling on it. They are signed to a major label, aligned with a great management organization, and getting the kind of radio play that most bands will only dream of. They have opened for Badly Drawn Boy and Jem and played Bonnaroo and Farm Aid. They are young, but they give off a sort of humble optimism, two qualities that don’t always co-exist easily. Their first record, Burning in the Sun, is due out in February, and right now they are holed up in a beautiful house in Ivy, courtesy of Red Light Management, rehearsing and writing. The refrigerator is full of beer, Coke and Gatorade. Guitars are lined up around the practice area. An upright bass stands in the corner. All of the members of the band seem excited about what is coming next. They are playing two more Wednesday nights to round out their three-week “residency” at Starr Hill, January 26 and February 2, with a break to play the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

   The band is using the time to get fine-tuned for a winter stint on the road, first as openers for Donavon Frankenreiter and Graham Colton Band, and then to support their debut.

   The four musicians got together in Nashville in October 2001. Guitarist and songwriter Lucas Reynolds moved there from Vermont to try to be a utility player, but when he hooked up with bassist Jason Oettel, he knew that they were on to something bigger. “When I met Jason, I remember calling home and talking to my folks, which I always do on special occasions,” Reynolds says. They were soon joined by Reynolds’ former bandmate Beau Stapleton on mandolin and William Ellis on drums. The members of Blue Merle are in their mid 20s to early 30s and, except for Oettel, they have been playing music since they were kids. While they began their current band as an acoustic group, they felt their best approach would be to focus on great songs, good musicianship and raw energy. Almost immediately, they were asked to record by a Sony studio engineer and approached by four or five A&R guys, the talent scouts in the music business, and several publishers who were after the rights to their tunes.

   They were patient, though, and decided not sign the first offer that crossed the table. There were a couple of lean years when the band was booking and promoting themselves. When Def Jam/Island came calling in the summer of 2003, the band got the feeling that they would be able to do things on their own terms. They describe the label deal as “a sigh of relief.” At the same time, Ivy-based Red Light, Coran Capshaw’s management group that also handles Dave Matthews Band, Trey Anastasio and Camper Van Beethoven, among others, offered the band a management deal. Red Light’s Chris Tetzeli had been looking at them for almost two years, and his offer came right on time. Reynolds says that the band knew about Red Light, but Tetzeli really sold them by riding around Nashville in Reynolds’ old clunker listening to demos that the group had been working up. Reynolds describes Tetz as “bulletproof”, and they got the sense that things were really possible.

   Red Light offered Blue Merle DMB’s Haunted Hollow Studio for recording, but they decided instead on Crystalphonic, a brand new state of the art studio in the Monticello Dairy Building on Preston Avenue. In December 2003, the band began recording with British producer Stephen Harris, whose resumé includes U2, Dave Matthews, Ben Kweller and metal mongers Fear Factory. Band members said that they wanted to work with a producer who was coming up, and they say with a straight face that Harris is “a sound dude.” They recorded on and off for the next six months, paying real attention to the sound of the entire band. The musicians were open to string parts, and Harris knew a good arranger. The record was then sent to legendary Abbey Road Studios in London where strings were added to a number of songs (they are featured prominently on the CD).

The band gets more than a few comparisons to Coldplay, owing both to Reynolds’ vocal style and pop leanings. While they certainly sound like Coldplay at times, the band comes close to DMB (listen to “If I Could” with its electric violin solo), recent David Gray and even U2 (on the Merle’s song “Lucky to Know You”).

   I asked the band how much of their sound on the record came from the producer. They agreed that Harris’ input was huge, but they also state unapologetically that their sound is their own, and that bands coming up at the same time can share influences. Blue Merle may benefit from that sound getting them play on the radio, which still seems crucial to breaking a band into the big time. Their first single, “Burning in the Sun,” is currently at No. 18 on the AAA radio chart and is expected to crack the Top 10. Stapleton says, “Radio picked up on the song on their own. We are a band that wants to make great records, play great live shows, and not rely so much on radio play. But, because two stations in Baltimore were playing the song, we were able to sell out our first show in town.” Band members also predict that five records from now it’s very likely no one will hear similarities between Blue Merle and Coldplay.

   The band’s show at Starr Hill last Wednesday night brought their music into a lot clearer focus for me. The strings augmented Reynolds’ songs really nicely. And it became clear how the Abbey Road arrangements sprang from the bass and violin parts that the band was already playing. Ellis’ drumming is great. Reynolds has a charismatic stage presence, and he wins you over when he flirts with the girls in the front row. Judging from the one show, I think the band will have to be very deliberate with their sound, turning their acoustic instruments into a big pop sound. On the whole, I’d say the band has the best of both worlds: a radio-friendly CD and an interesting and strong live show.

   Many of the songs on Burning in the Sun grew on me with repeated listening. It is now up to the band to continue writing good tunes. After talking with Reynolds and his bandmates, I’d say they are raring to go. “We make a conscious effort to recognize our influences and build on them,” he says. “We go through a song 20 different ways until it is special. We are just going to push the hell out of it and find out what that next sound is. We are working our asses off. We know that there is a lot of luck involved and we are really grateful to be where we are.”

   I asked the band if, given all the support from the various Capshaw enterprises (Starr Hill Music Hall is his, too) and from their record label, they felt like a band being set up to “make it,” but they dispute that they are playing the industry game. “Definitely not,” Stapleton says. “Some industry types wanted us to get rid of the upright bass and mandolin. They wanted to make us into a Counting Crows type of thing. But we got good advice and we didn’t sign the first deal that came our way.”

   Oettel says that one Nashville exec wanted to turn them into “Nickel Creek with balls.” But it was Island’s hands-off approach that convinced the band to go with the label.

The band seems to love their hometown Nashville music scene: the songwriting and the picking parties. They like that people get together there and share musical experiences, and the fact that people are real about their jobs. They take weekends off and hang out with their families. It’s a very healthy scene. But they also recognize that Nashville comes with a flip side. “Keith Urban cut us off the other day in his brand new black Hummer,” Reynolds says. “He was on his cell phone.”

   Being the record nerd that I am, I asked them the usual:

 

Your influences?

Reynolds: Sting and Paul Simon. My parents had all The Police records. I’m sure it shows up in my songwriting.

Stapleton: Neil Young and Sonic Youth. When I was first drawn into the mandolin it was Americana and Appalachian old-time music.

Ellis: The music of Miles Davis in the 1960s and ’70s. Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette. And now Vinnie Colaiuta and Stewart Copeland.

Oettel: Hendrix and The Beatles. When I got to college I was studying jazz, so Miles Davis and then classical and Edgar Meyer.

 

Your recent faves?

Reynolds: Ray LaMontagne, Trouble. That’s a really good record.

Stapleton: I bought my cousin my three favorites for Christmas—Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream. Wilco, A Ghost is Born. And the new Old Crow Medicine Show.

Oettel: Gillian Welch, Soul Journey and Rufus Wainwright, Poses.

Ellis: I liked Herbie Hancock’s Future to Future.

 

Guilty pleasures?

Our road manager just bought The Definitive Lionel Richie, and we’re wearing that out. Whenever “Easy Like Sunday Morning” comes on, we are all singing.

 

Memorable gigs?

The Ryman Theater in Nashville. That was a life goal. Hank Williams, Sr. played there and that’s where Johnny Cash kicked out the lights. We played there with Train. And Farm Aid was a goal that came five years early. And Bonnaroo on a hot Saturday afternoon right before the rains came.

Categories
News

Stumped at the pump

Q: Hey Ace hole, I have an auto with a diesel engine and all’s been lovely ’til recently. Diesel has always been cheaper than gasoline, or about the same as regular. However, lately gasoline has dropped to as low as $1.64 per gallon while diesel is still over $2 at most stations. What gives? Has someone forgotten to set the pumps back?—Donald Pump

A: Come on, Donald, we’re not talking Daylight Savings Time here. But always intrigued by a question involving money and fancy distressed jeans, the intrepid Ace set out to solve this case the only way he knows how: By jumping into the Acemobile and hot-rodding all over Charlottesville in search of tell-all gas station signage.

   Now, like Ace, the Acemobile is relatively uncomplicated. Feed it gas and it’ll go. Thus, unaccustomed to seeking out the rare diesel fuel watering hole around town, the search in the Acemobile proved quite an odyssey. However, at long last, Ace pulled into the parking lot of Coastal Goco Oil Company on Harris Street. The sign said it all: $1.73 for regular unleaded, $1.83 for unleaded plus, $1.93 for super unleaded and a whopping, bank-breaking $1.99 for diesel.

   Hot on the story’s trail, Ace stormed Goco’s office. There, Ace encountered, like a human holy grail, one Harry Montague, President of Goco Oil Co. Montague had all the simple answers to this question that Ace had feared would be too number-addled for Ace’s creative-type brain.

   Montague’s answer, delightfully, was straight out of Adam Smith: Supply and demand, baby, supply and demand. He explained that during the summertime, diesel inventory usually builds up because people aren’t using it as much. So much for “usually.” Last summer, diesel consumption reached a record high (Montague couldn’t cite numbers) and, as a result, there was no surplus of diesel left over for folks to dip into during the long winter months.

   “It’s the first time I remember fuel and diesel prices not going down in the summer at all,” he said, also citing fuel sent overseas and a record harvest in the Midwest (which means more diesel consumption) as factors in the case of the disappearing diesel.

   As for whether he sees prices going down anytime soon, Montague is not optimistic. He mentioned how OPEC is talking about decreasing production, which is clearly not going to help the situation. All diesel drivers can pray for is that Punxsutawney Phil will grant an early spring and with the warm weather will get people out of their cars, bringing a reprieve in the diesel pricing game.

   “It’s been a yo-yo all year,” says Montague. “They change prices on us once a day, sometimes twice a day if the market’s wild. It’s been a roller coaster.” Ace just wonders whether we’re on our way up or on our way down.

Categories
News

Charlottesville’s Internet tendency

Q: Dear Ace, I went to the City’s website the other day and clicked on a new little icon that sent me to this page that had advertisements on it, but also informational tourist videos about Charlottesville. Whaaaa? Is it an advertisement or is it something relating to City government and tourism?—Trava Ling-Willberry

A: Your confusion is warranted, Ms. Ling-Willberry. Concerned for your concern, Ace took a gander at the City’s website. He clicked on the icon and was soon watching a video of scenic Charlottesville paired with a jazzy soundtrack of piano and electronic strings.

   A main menu pops up announcing “Charlottesville, Virginia Online” in the hippest and most tasteful of graphics. The lucky Internet explorer can then choose from a variety of options to learn more about “the best place to live in America,” from “Health Care and Senior Living” to “Real Estate and Relocation” to “Arts and Entertainment.” Click on the “Welcome” icon, for example, and a creepily digital monotone male voiceover will say:

   “Charlottesville, in Central Virginia, welcomes you to an autonomous city blah, blah, blah…” as yet another video of scenic Charlottesville plays on the screen.

   Around the perimeter are icons that provide links to local businesses and organizations such as Oyster House Antiques, Four Seasons Realty and the Virginia Athletics Foundation. In a word: advertisers.

   Luckily, Charlottesville’s Director of Communications, Maurice Jones, is back from his honeymoon (congrats from Ace & Co., MoJo, and for the record we are so glad to have you back!) and ready to explain everything.

   The site is courtesy of a company based in Rochester, New York, called eLocal Link. The dealy-o is that they make promotional videos for city governments. The cities in turn post a link to the eLocal Link site for visitors to view the promotional videos. Jones assures Ace that there is no cost to the city and that the eLocal folks earn their money through advertisements, which run from $700 to $5,000.

   “We consider it a service to the citizens of Charlottesville and to folks who are visiting Charlottesville’s website,” is Jones’ official word, while stressing that the eLocal Link Charlottesville page is entirely separate from the City’s homepage.

   As for the prickly issue of running advertising on a government-related page, Glass-Half-Full Jones says, “Another way of looking at it is that even if a business doesn’t have the financial means to advertise on eLocal Link, they still reap the benefits of a tourist who decides to visit Charlottesville as a result of what they see online.”

   While Ace is skeptical of eLocal Link’s ability to draw people to Charlottesville, Ace will let Jones off easy on this one. Charlottesville, a.k.a. “One of the Top 10 Digital Cities in America,” has a reputation to maintain.

Categories
News

Making light of herself

   It’s another busy morning in the Casey household on Rugby Road. John Casey, a celebrated local novelist and UVA creative writing professor, is already out back in his writing shed. Meanwhile, his wife, McGuffey Art Center President Rosamond Casey, has done T’ai Chi, made breakfast and lunch for their youngest daughter, Julia, a student at Charlottesville High School, and corresponded with art dealers in Boston and Washington, D.C., about reproducing her 40-page calligraphic manuscript, Wood Notes Wild: Notations of Bird Music. She communes by the woodstove with her “sacred cup of coffee”and peruses the New York Times. Soon she’ll be off to the studio, where she might have an impromptu meeting with the McGuffey Executive Council, then work on a commissioned calligraphic design or begin planning for her upcoming class, “Mapping the Dark: A Course in Conceiving Art,” an eight-week session in “exploring mixed media with the goal of matching an inner state with an external form.” If Casey is lucky, she’ll have time to work on her next project, “Men in Suits,” which she says has languished for two months, before it’s time to drive Julia to violin lessons. Who said being an artist was easy?

   Among the book-cluttered shelves in the Caseys’ house, Ros Casey’s creative side emerges in everything from the carpentry in the kitchen to the landscaping in the back yard. In the living room hang photographs of a young Julia and two cousins, which Casey took at her family’s Pennsylvania estate. She set the pictures alongside a poem by former UVA student George Bradley, which she turned into a book, The Blue Cage, and which was featured in an exhibition at the National Museum of Women. In an upper hallway, watercolor sketches depict scenes from a year spent in Rome, when John Casey was a fellow at the American Academy.

   Surprisingly, the Caseys say they share little of their unfinished projects with each other. “It used to be that I would come running up out of my shed and try and read something to her while she was cooking supper,” says John Casey. “It didn’t work very well because I tried to explain, ‘Well, here’s what happened in the first hundred pages…’ You really do have to keep your own counsel.” That’s been the case more than ever since Rosamond Casey became McGuffey chief. As the partially City-subsidized collective, located in the former McGuffey Elementary School off Second Street, enters its third decade, facing what some consider to be an uncertain future, Casey, 53, has stepped up to become one of its greatest assets.

 

Portrait of the artist

  In 1976, following her graduation from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, Rosamond Pittman began working in Washington, D.C., in the graphics department of ABC News, a fast-paced job that earned her respect in Beltway circles but left her unfulfilled: “People were discouragingly impressed by my news credentials, when it was a job I had negative impressions about, if any at all.”

   She also pursued her art, working with The Smithsonian Institute and with the Fillmore Arts Center, a K-8 program in the D.C. public school system, where she began developing a curriculum based on “signs, symbols and alphabets.” Letters were one of her passions. “There is something internal driving humankind to make some kind of scratch in the earth,” she says. While in D.C., she met John Casey, whom she married in 1981. And soon the new Rosamond Casey settled into life in Charlottesville, helping raise two daughters, Maud and Nell, from John Casey’s previous marriage, and eventually bringing two more, Clare and Julia, into the family.

   It didn’t take long upon arriving for Casey to become involved with McGuffey, principally teaching calligraphy and working by commission. In 1995 she branched out by establishing Treehouse Book Arts, which was “like a school for fairly archaic crafts” including papermaking and bookbinding. Though the classes have since gotten more conceptual, Casey continues to teach a Treehouse summer program for kids at her home. In May 2003, Casey accepted a one-year term as McGuffey president, a position some artists regard as thankless and time consuming, and broke with tradition last May by taking on a second term. “Anybody can be it, just nobody wants to,” says Casey. “I enjoy being at the center of things—it’s a safer place to be than on the edges.”

   The tasks of McGuffey president include anything from managing administrative issues to coordinating events to settling private concerns between members, which can be a particularly daunting task, says McGuffey artist Fleming Lunsford. “McGuffey is a funny place because you’ve got this group of artists who are all essentially working independently and doing our own thing in many ways, so you’d think that it’s difficult to come up with a leader. Ros is a very thoughtful leader. She takes everyone’s opinions into consideration and she sees the larger picture that McGuffey has and should be playing in the community.”

 

City limits

  Rosamond Casey’s family traces its political pedigree at least two centuries back, and with it, a reputation for dubious political decisions. Her ancestors were French Protestants who supported Napoleon. They arrived a day late to Waterloo only to find the emperor vanquished, says John Casey. “If they’d arrived on time, they’d be killed and [Ros] wouldn’t be here.”

   The family then fled to Milford, Pennsylvania, where they established strong ties to Theodore Roosevelt and helped him establish the Bull Moose Party, a progressive faction of the Republican party which, during the 1912 presidential election, drew enough votes away from Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, to win Democrat Woodrow Wilson the presidency. When Casey assumed her second term as McGuffey president in May, amid heated conversations with Charlottesville’s City Council over increasing the center’s rent, it seemed as if history might repeat itself.

   Concerned by the impending departure of arts-friendly Councilors Maurice Cox and Meredith Richards, on April 27 McGuffey artists sent an open letter to the center’s mailing list that criticized incumbent Democratic candidate Kevin Lynch’s lack of support for the center during budgeting sessions and for a 2002 vote against renewing the McGuffey lease. “Basically we were trying to really fulfill the stated mission of being a community art center,” says Russell Richards, a McGuffey artist and Meredith Richards’ son, who advocated the letter. “It’s important that people be aware of the rather precarious political situation.”

   Fearing the McGuffey voting bloc, along with a write-in campaign for Meredith Richards, might have a real impact on the election, and cost city Democrats one or more Council seats, party leaders brusquely responded. When Mayor Cox showed up at an emergency meeting of McGuffey’s five-member Executive Council, Casey gave him the floor. “He lectured us as if we were children,” she says. McGuffey sent another postcard, which, though not a retraction of the earlier one, clarified that “the letter was in no way intended to be a partisan position.”

   Lynch says clarifying his position early on with the artists would have spared the ill will. Currently, he says, the City budgets about $28,000, or the cost of building utilities, for the center, most of which is offset by the artists’ rent. Though he would like to see McGuffey’s funding on equal footing with other arts organizations like Live Arts and other City-supported spaces like the mostly unused Jefferson School, he has no intention of closing it down, he says. “We’ve had enough discussion now between City Council and the artists,” he says, “that they know that if their rent goes up, it’s not because the City doesn’t appreciate McGuffey or is trying to move the artists out, it’s because we’re fiscally constrained and there are other arts organizations that are deserving.”

   Though Casey says different camps exist within the McGuffey building, she says McGuffey should not have exerted its political influence. “We got ourselves a little more involved in the public arena in that we pissed off some people we shouldn’t have. So there had to be some deft maneuvering to get ourselves back out of that jam.” However, Casey does see more public outreach and awareness as integral to preserving the center.

   “We’re in a position to persuade by our work,” she says. “I think we have a unique role. [McGuffey does] something that no other institution in Charlottesville does… meets the public, allows questions to be asked and detailed answers to be given.” Though one of the requirements of McGuffey’s charter with the City is that members open their studios to the public for at least 17 1/2 hours per week, Casey leads the charge for opening the center up even more to special events. In March 2004, McGuffey hosted Tibetan monks for a series of workshops that included a sand mandala display. And hoping to capitalize on a newly available space in McGuffey, which formerly housed the Second Street Gallery, Casey has aided the development of a monthly Spotlight Series, in which a panel of artists, writers or performers would have “an opportunity to raise questions and try to answer them,” she says.

 

Digging for treasure

  Rosamond Casey pulls out a finely crafted box, 12.25" x 9" x 3.5", and gently sets it on the island at her space in McGuffey’s Studio No. 16. The work is “Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders.” Inside the box, 10 booklets fold out, revealing the lives of fictitious characters through psychological profiles: A woman worried by her weight clips bar codes from the food she eats. An older man, going deaf, begins meticulously bottling noises. Another man with amnesia tries to reconstruct his previous life based on a single photograph.

   “Mapping the Dark,” which debuted in March 2003 as a McGuffey installation piece, marked a turning point of sorts for Casey. Brushing off the safety net of titles like “calligrapher” and “bookmaker,” she deliberately entered the realm of “mixed media” for the first time, using a variety of materials and techniques, from found objects to carved stones, even training herself to paint with her feet for a character who comes to terms with a phobia of losing her hands. “Those tools become the medium through which to express the character’s plight,” says Casey.

   The box, one of 45 in existence according to the website of her dealer, Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc., is delicately stitched in brown leather, Japanese silk, cloth and fiber. All the “lives” are color-coded and organized by hand-punched, numeric dot patterns. “It’s very professionally done,” says Neil Turtell, executive librarian for the National Gallery of Art. “Unlike most artists’ books, which look like books, hers was sort of a treasure chest.” Last year Turtell purchased one of the boxes, going at $1,750 each, for the illustrious D.C. gallery’s permanent collection. “Obviously you can tell I think very highly of [Casey’s] work and I don’t do that lightly.”

   Nor is Turtell alone in his thinking. The Library of Congress also picked up “Mapping the Dark” for its illustrated book collection. And Wood Notes Wild: Notations of Bird Music, which incorporated bird songs with painted designs, made its way into an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts before being purchased for $8,000 by the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Melbert B. Cary Graphic Arts Collection. All of this puts Casey into a comfortable spot straddling the line between creative and profitable. For husband, John, the potential was always there. “She finally got around to thinking, ‘Geez, I’ve been doing 20 years, maybe I should try and sell some,’ and then bingo, the popcorn popped,” he says.

   Rosamond Casey is now in the position to pursue her deeper calling, not as a working artist, but as an artist artist. “I don’t make art anymore for hanging on walls,” she says. “I’m much more of an installation artist or conceptual artist—I mean, I think about art.” And she teaches it. With “Mapping the Dark: A Course in Conceiving Art,” Casey shows other people how to live and think artistically and to unlock their own passions. “The role of a teacher is to gently open the hand of an artist and let them visualize—help the thing that is most important to them emerge.”

 

Casey’s class

  Rosamond Casey’s work has inspired art lovers for years. She unlocked her own creativity through her project “Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders,” and since 2003 she’s developed a class to help artists and non-artists tap into their abilities with “Mapping the Dark: A Course in Conceiving Art.” The third session of the class begins Tuesday, January 25.

   The eight-week course covers all aspects of creating a work of art, from developing your thoughts to choosing your medium to offering a final display that an audience will connect with. “What I’m teaching is language…a translation for how to turn an idea into something that has form,” says Casey.

   As a new member to McGuffey, photographer Fleming Lunsford was also one of Casey’s students. “She definitely has a presence,” says Lunsford. “From that class, I pulled a lot of personal, very dark work…I can’t say if I’d just been toodling along in my studio I would have probed in such a way.”

   In one exercise, students bring in objects, which are combined to create something new. “That’s really all art is—taking one object and putting it in new relation to something else, finding a different meaning,” Casey says.

   Teacher and artist Isabel McLean took the techniques she’d learned from Casey’s class into creating an exhibit, “Detritus: A Mixed Media Memoir” at the Renaissance School in October. “The class is so individual, because I knew exactly what I wanted and she allowed me, and facilitated my getting there. It was different from what other people in the class wanted.” McLean says she still uses the journal she kept in the class.—B.S.

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Civics class

Your “Cheap Shots ’04” issue [December 28] gave the Tempest in a Teapot Award to the parents
of Charlottesville schoolchildren
for objecting to the actions of Superintendent Scottie Griffin and the School Board. You particularly questioned the “overheated” tone, and the premature nature of the objections.

   I enjoy a little year-end humor, but as a parent of four city school kids I have to tell you that what is going on is no laughing matter. I would encourage you to follow up this “cheap shot” with a more serious journalistic investigation of the situation. Indeed, your readers, especially school parents, might want to conduct their own investigation. I’ll even suggest a few people to interview and some questions.

   Ask any city school teacher—one who knows you well enough to speak frankly in a private, off-the-record conversation—if they are being fairly or unfairly blamed by the new administration for their students’ test scores. Ask

any one of the leaders of our award-winning arts organizations—orchestra, chorus, band or art class—if they feel good about the prospects for their organization under the new administration. Ask a principal or an administrator at one of our schools if it’s true that they are considering leaving the city school system because of the hostile work environment. And ask them if they’re comfortable with the way money is being spent and budget priorities established for their schools. Ask someone who works at the school district office about the staff morale there. Or ask someone who volunteers in the schools, such as a “book buddy” or classroom volunteer, what their observations are.

   In other words, don’t take my word for it, or the “hyperbolic” opinions of other parents. Do a little investigating of your own, and you can find out for yourself if this is all just a tempest in a teapot, or something considerably more serious.

Paul Wagner

Charlottesville

 

 

MLK is O.K.

I thought you might be interested in some background to your comment about the newly christened Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center [“Cheap Shots ’04”]. A new MLK memorial has more significance for our community than first appears. The arrival of MLK at Cabell Hall may have sparked the first public race controversy on UVA campus in 1963. Members of the college faculty and students argued both sides of the question, i.e. whether or not he should be allowed to speak. MLK supporters prevailed, of course, and the speech galvanized some of the more open-minded UVA faculty to fight racism over the long term, a long, hard battle since UVA has suffered more serious charges of elitism-racism than other “public Ivys.”

   There hadn’t been as much outcry over the first admission of a black student to the college because it was done practically sub rosa, with the administration deciding to avoid controversy altogether if possible. The MLK debate was a critical first engagement in a long war against the University as a “bastion of privilege.” Nevertheless, at later pro-civil rights protests, UVA students used to stage their demos in full gentlemanly regalia of coat and tie!

   A UVA professor’s wife offered this story of MLK’s speech wistfully, proudly—much the way my generation talks about the peace marches of the early ’70s. The MLK debate didn’t rock the world, but it created a timely question—in this instance, will he speak or won’t he?—around which energetic commitment emerged. Some were further inspired to drive from the sweet, sleepy backwater of Charlottesville of the ’60s to join in the March on Washington.

   I know there are a million MLK memorials, but perhaps it’s for the same reason that there are a million memorials to TJ—they had original and far-reaching minds. We don’t get many of these people anymore. Sure wish we did.

Susanna Nicholson

Charlottesville

 

 

Yum rum chugger

Re: “‘Nog heaven” [Acquired Tastes, December 21], a more healthful and economical drink is the “secret” formula from Cottage Club at Princeton for milk punch:

5 gallons of milk

16 pints of whiskey

2 scoops of sugar

Ice cream and rum to taste

It is rumored that this could be produced in smaller quantities, if any use can be found for such reduced increments.

William W. Stevenson

Charlottesville

 

 

Lynch pin

In response to your December 9 news in review item “Gay basher gets time” [7 Days, December 14], Dr. Sanjiv Bhatia was here in San Francisco for a business meeting last October. We had several breakfasts and dinners together during his visit. My partner of 15 years joined us. Dr. Bhatia was extremely understanding of my lifestyle. My partner and I had a real nice time and visit with him.

   The man I know is not a gay basher. It appears that the gay community in Charlottesville is making him into a whipping boy to stir up sympathies. It is unfortunate that we gays talk about tolerance yet feel no compunction in engaging in a lynching of another individual, especially one of foreign origin who himself has surely endured discrimination because of his ethnic background. If our community is to engage in a constructive dialogue with the other side we need to stop this kind of mindless lynching and destroying reputations of people that are actually sympathetic of our cause as Dr.Bhatia is.

Rich Brambier

San Francisco, California

 

 

Dollars and sense

I, too, like Claire Colette Coppin, read the article “Living the Poverty Diet” by Mitch Van Yahres [The Week, November 23]. Being an EBT recipient myself, I was impressed that Delegate Van Yahres is so concerned by issues that affect his constituents. The whole point to the article was that it is very difficult to make $71 last an entire month. Apparently, Coppin missed the point [Mailbag, December 7]. Because C’Ville Market doesn’t accept EBT cards, Van Yahres would never have thought to shop there.

Christine Jenkins

Charlottesville

Categories
Uncategorized

News in review

Tuesday, January 11
DNC gives Kaine a $5M kiss

National Democratic Party chair Terry McAuliffe today announced that the DNC would contribute an unprecedented $5 million to Lt. Governor Tim Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign. Calling Kaine “the future of this party,” McAuliffe said, “he’s a pro-business Democrat, a man of strong faith and values and is committed to fiscal responsibility. He is dedicated to carrying on Mark Warner’s tradition of leadership, bringing people together across party lines,” according to a DNC news release. Kaine will
run against Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.

 

Rape near Belmont Park

At about 7:30 tonight, a suspect whom police describe as an African-American male of medium build in his 20s raped a 46-year-old woman. She entered her Belmont Park-area home to discover him inside, where she was assaulted. While Chief Tim Longo later said in a news release that it would be premature to link this attack to the serial rapist who has struck at least seven times since 1997, “there are similarities that are being examined.”

 

Wednesday, January 12
Even Tech has an ACC win, for Pete’s sake!

That low moan rising across Charlottesville tonight was the sound of UVA men’s basketball fans facing the inevitable: The Hoos’ only path out of the ACC cellar is via Coach Gillen’s ouster. Following tonight’s loss at U-Hall to ACC newcomer Miami, which leaves the Cavs 0-3 in the league, C-VILLE officially calls a halt to all men’s basketball coverage until the team posts an ACC win. Check this space next year.

 

Former Supe Humphris gets a park

The County Board of Supervisors today renamed Whitewood Park, a property in Albemarle’s urban ring, for onetime Supervisor Charlotte Y. Humphris who died last year. A champion of that very park, Humphris once declared to her fellow Supes, “A city or county is known for its parks, not by its paved areas.”

 

Thursday, January 13
City schools heat up

Previewing what will be a highly charged budget session next Wednesday when Superintendent Scottie Griffin presents her recommendations, tonight three-dozen white parents and teachers faced a couple of Charlottesville School Board members at Walker Upper Elementary to respond to the curriculum audit conducted in November by Phi Delta Kappa, a national education group. The strident audit depicts a two-tier, racially based educational system. As parents railed against the factual and mathematical errors in the audit, Board members Ned Michie and Peggy Van Yahres strained to simultaneously disavow the report’s negative tone yet support its recommendations.

 

Friday, January 14
Chainsaw massacre ends

The Charlottesville Parks and Recreation department today wrapped up its weeklong project of pruning the shade trees on the Downtown Mall. Crews worked their way east day by day, blocking sections of the Mall with their equipment and irritating retailers and passers-by with the incessant buzzing. But it was overdue, says Parks and Rec Director Mike Svetz, and the trimming would protect pedestrians from random falling deadwood.

 

Saturday, January 15
Fornicators rejoice!

Following a ruling yesterday by the Virginia Supreme Courts, skanks, hos and those greasy guys who mack on every woman at Blue Light are free to pursue nonmatrimonial sex. Taking its lead from the 2003 Texas court that struck down that state’s anti-sodomy laws, the Commonwealth’s highest court said the 19th-century law that criminalized fornication “improperly abridge[s] a personal relationship that
is within the liberty interest of persons
to choose.” The court’s opinion did apply to Virginia’s anti-sodomy law.

 

Sunday, January 16
Grisham brokers another mega-hit

Jonathan Yardley, eminence gris of The Washington Post Book Review, today blesses the latest novel—the 18th—by gajillionnaire author and Albemarle resident John Grisham. Titled The Broker and featuring a—what else?—lawyer who joined the dark side and faces a chance to redeem himself years later, the novel unfolds against an Italian backdrop. Formulaic? Yes. Fun to read? Yes, again, says Yardley. But the critic advises Grisham to slow down. “My entirely unsolicited opinion is that Grisham has been writing at Mach 10 for too long,” he writes. “He should give it a rest for a couple of years…. Now it would be interesting to see just how good he really can be, and that, it says here, takes time.”

 

Monday, January 17
Martin Luther King, Jr. remembered

Though Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 76th birthday was two days ago, today marks the federal holiday in his honor, shuttering schools, government offices, the postal service and Wall Street. Locally, those wanting to join the annual King Birthday celebration, always an uplifting event that fills Charlottesville’s performing arts center, will have to wait until Sunday when State Delegate Mary T. Christian will give an address. The Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School was previously booked for today.

 

Written by Cathy Harding from news sources and staff reports.

 

 

Raising the roof
New homeless shelter already at capacity

“I’m not planning to make this a lifetime thing,” says B.J. “Right now I just need a place a to lay my head.”

   Simple enough, but not always easy to come by in America’s No. 1 place to live. B.J. is middle-aged, working on a construction crew and homeless. On recent nights B.J. has been laying his head on a cot provided by PACEM (which stands for People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry), the name that a group of concerned religious congregations adopted for their homeless shelter effort, first reported in C-VILLE on August 31, 2004 [“Shelter skelter”].

   About seven congregations take turns setting up cots for the “guests” (only men, but PACEM will help others find shelter elsewhere), and about 30 congregations support PACEM with donations and volunteers. So far the group has raised about $40,000, including grants from the Bama Works Foundation and the Junior League.

   Even though this winter has been unusually balmy, the need for PACEM is all too evident.

   “We’ve been hovering around our capacity for the last few weeks,” says Dave Norris, PACEM’s executive director.

   PACEM provides 35 cots, based on a January 2004 survey by the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless (TJACH) that found 33 out of 156 homeless people in the area regularly spent nights without shelter. PACEM’s board of directors is considering adding as many as seven more cots. PACEM will close around the end of March, and Norris says he will spend the coming year trying to raise about $120,000 so that PACEM can stay open all year in 2006.

   “I’m surprised that this many churches opened up,” says B.J., forking through a dinner provided in First Presbyterian’s cafeteria just off Park Street. He came to PACEM after serving time in the Dillwyn Correctional Center. After staying at a transitional shelter called Piedmont House, B.J. took an apartment with a friend. “But he went back to his wife, and I couldn’t handle the rent on my own,” he says.

   He stayed at the Salvation Army for a while. He doesn’t say why he was kicked out from there, but like many local homeless people B.J. says the rules there are strict and sometimes arbitrarily enforced. Norris says PACEM fills a void between the Salvation Army, which has a zero-tolerance policy toward drugs and alcohol, and Region Ten’s Mohr Center, which provides a few beds for the dangerously inebriated.

   “Our philosophy is if you put people in a positive environment, they respond accordingly,” says Norris. And it’s paid off—there has been no violence, and no churches have reported missing items.

   Indeed, a night at PACEM feels a little like summer camp. After dinner, B.J. goes to an adjoining building full of cots, where volunteer Anne Brown points new arrivals to the shower sign-up list, and takes data on new guests. (PACEM has adopted the term “guest” because “so often people who are sleeping out in the street are treated as human refuse,” says Norris. “These are human beings with amazing stories who deserve our love and support.”)

   “The churches are getting a real eye-opener on how easy it is to be homeless,” says Brown. “It’s not what they expected. People who have been working consistently can’t afford to keep a home and a car.” According to PACEM stats, about 60 people have spent at least one night there, and about half have some kind of job.

   While B.J. checks on his laundry, volunteer Pat Inglis is learning how to play UNO from Dexter, a young man in tight cornrows. Nearby, others watch The Chronicles of Riddick. Walt, a 60-year-old suffering from Crohn’s Disease, munches a brownie and tells stories of traversing the East Coast in search of clinical trials at hospitals—the only way he can get drugs to treat Crohn’s. He’s slept with friends, in churches and woods from New York to Florida.

   “I see something different in Charlottesville,” he says. “A genuine concern.”—John Borgmeyer

 

Come out, come out, wherever you are
Gay rights advocates hit Richmond in droves, but their cause looks lost this year

“If there has ever been a time for our community to come out and be heard, this is it,” says Dyana Mason, director of Equality Virginia, a Commonwealth gay rights organization. “There’s so much at stake.”

   Swirling around her in the lobby of the Commonwealth Park Suites Hotel in Richmond were more than 200 gay rights activists from across the state, warming up for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Lobby Day on Thursday, January 13.

   The amateur lobbyists face an uphill climb in the General Assembly, to put it mildly. Legislators will consider at least five anti-gay bills this year [see chart]. All 100 members of the House of Delegates face re-election in November, and it’s unlikely that many pols will risk casting themselves as supporters of gay marriage by putting up too much of a fight.

   “The emphasis will be to get out of here with as few waves as possible and get back to the campaign trail,” said Charlottesville Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat running for his party’s nomination for Attorney General. Some kind of anti-gay amendment to Virginia’s constitution is “a done deal,” driven by the conservative atmosphere in the House, Deeds told a group of lobbyists from Charlottesville.

   Equality Virginia has at least one champion this year. Del. Mitch Van Yahres (D-Charlottesville) is sponsoring a bill that would repeal the Affirmation of Marriage Act, the 2004 law prohibiting the Commonwealth from recognizing civil unions performed in other states. Van Yahres argues that churches may refuse to perform gay marriage as a religious ceremony, but the government cannot deny gay people the health care benefits and contract rights that straight couples enjoy.

   He says “just a few Democratic friends” have signed on to support his bill so far.

   But as they coursed through the Statehouse last week, Equality Virginia lobbyists met few advocates, being greeted instead with polite but firm rebuffs. The afternoon’s climax came when 12 members of Equality Virginia met for the first time with Virginia’s leading anti-gay crusader and sponsor of the Affirmation of Marriage Act, Del. Bob Marshall (R-Manassas).

   Marshall—who apparently follows gay culture more closely than might be expected from a conservative Catholic—says his measures “protect marriage” but do not discriminate against gays.

   “I can’t find one famous homosexual in history who says they felt they should have been married, or that they were second-class citizens,” Marshall told the lobbyists.

   Ellen Bass, an engineering professor at UVA, said that whether gay relationships are called marriage or something else, “we’re going to have relationships and families, and we want to feel our families are protected.” Bass encouraged Marshall and other delegates to support an amendment to UVA’s charter bill that would allow the university to extend health benefits to spouses of its gay employees.

   Marshall, as expected, remained unmoved, but he did agree to have his
picture taken with a gay couple. “This better not show up in The Blade,” said Marshall, referring to the Washington, D.C., gay newspaper.

   Marshall deserves some credit for spending 20 minutes debating 12 of his staunchest opponents; the same can’t be said for fellow religious conservative Richard Black (R-Louden). He left his aide, Herb Lux, to answer questions, appearing only to peek out of his office. A few minutes later, he burst out and sped down the hallway.

   Despite Black’s snub, Equality Virginia got a boost of star power later Thursday evening, when Governor Mark Warner breezed through a reception for lobbyists and legislators.

   “I don’t support gay marriage, but I have a problem when [anti-gay bills] affect contract rights,” says Warner.

   In an election year in a conservative state, that’s about the strongest support Equality Virginia could hope for.
—John Borgmeyer

H.B. 1633—Sponsored by

Del. Mitch Van Yahres

Repeals the statute that voids any civil union or contract between members of the same sex in Virginia.

 

S.J. 337—Sponsored by

Sen. Stephen Newman

Constitutional Amendment providing that “only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage” in Virginia.

 

H.J. 528—Sponsored by

Del. John Cosgrove

Constitutional Amendment providing that marriage is between a man and a woman and that nothing in the Constitution shall be interpreted to recognize or permit same-sex marriages.

H.J. 584—Sponsored by Del. Bob Marshall/Del. Richard Black

Constitutional Amendment similar to H.J. 528 that also prohibits the creation, recognition or enforcement of “imitations of marriage.” Nonetheless, the bill also says that rights of marriage may be conferred on an unmarried person by statute.

 

H.J. 586—Sponsored by

Del. John Cosgrove

Similar to H.J. 584, but without the clause allowing the rights of marriage to be conferred upon an unmarried person.

 

H.B. 1660—Sponsored by

Del. Scott Ligamfelter

Authorizes a special license plate to read “Traditional Marriage,” with two golden bands interlocked over a red heart.

 

 

HOW TO: Justify Britney Spears

With the sad ending to the storybook marriage of Jennifer and Brad, we turn for solace to Britney. It’s good to still have her with us. A couple of gumdrops in a sausage casing, rushing on Red Bull and probably not wearing underwear, Britney restores our faith in the real. She is so authentically shallow, spoiled, and sexually demanding that she could not possibly disappoint. Hers is genuinely insouciant petulance. People like Jen and Brad, on the other hand—they’re practically Olympians. They coo, they bill, they don’t wear advice t-shirts or punch out the paparazzi. They don’t lip synch. So, inevitably, when they succumb to human weaknesses and their lives come apart a little bit, they let us down. But Mrs. Kevin Federline has already become a barefoot housewife. Where is there for her to go? When she strays at a nightclub with a former WWE “star” or a porn producer, it will not surprise. When we learn that her pill-popping has gotten out of control…we’ll say “told you so.” With apologies to Paul Simon, every generation throws a ho up the pop charts. Britney is ours.

 

 

Spanish lessons
Nuevas Raìces joins community newspaper market

As the state’s Hispanic population has grown, the press has changed with it. Nuevas Raìces, a Spanish-language weekly from the Shenandoah Valley, is distributed in Charlottesville now, too.

   “Nuevas raìces” means “new roots,” which the paper’s staff thinks aptly describes a goal of Central Virginia’s Hispanic community: to cultivate a new beginning. As Carlos Terán, who represents the paper in Charlottesville for both the business and content sides, says, “We immigrants left our countries and came to Virginia, and we left our roots at home. We want to grow new roots here.”

   The newspaper dates to July 2001 as the brainchild of Gerardo Pandolfi, the owner-editor. Originally from Uruguay, Pandolfi moved to Harrisonburg and found his new community without Spanish-language media. In short order, he collaborated with Terán. Nuevas Raices began with a circulation of 2,500 copies in the Valley.

   Now circulation is up to 12,000 issues per week. The paper comes out every Thursday and is distributed through stores like Food Lion and Kroger. In Charlottesville, restaurants likePapusa Crazy, Mamma Mìa and Café Cubano also carry Nuevas Raìces.

   The stories tend to focus in some fashion on integration issues for Latinos new to Virginia and the United States. Most leading news focuses on American politics as they relate to the Latino community. Roberto Gonzalez’s nomination as U.S. Attorney General was a front-pager on November 18, for instance.

   Other articles have instructed readers on how to fill out income tax returns and how to help reduce the chance of breast cancer in women. There’s job news too, and listings for such resources as the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Refugee Resettlement and Employment Office in Norfolk.

   Inside, there are regional columns dedicated to news in Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and Winchester, along with local Hispanic success stories, news about the Mexican Football Federation and an Aztec horoscope.

   Nuevas Raìces is further indication that Virginia is becoming a top destination for many Spanish speakers. According to the U.S. Census, the number of Hispanics in Virginia grew by a whopping 112 percent between 1990 and 2000, increasing to 329,540 from 155,353 .

   Five percent of Virginians are now Hispanic. Demographic trends strongly suggest that the upswing in the Latino population will continue—the U.S. Census Bureau expects Hispanics in the state to double in the decade to come. Carlos Terán figures the circulation of Nuevas Raìces will follow the trend. “There are two types of immigrants that come to Charlottesville,” he says, “people who are looking for a new way of life and migrant workers. Both groups need a newspaper to read.”—Kelly Quinley

 

As Told To
Conversations with Old-School Business Owners

We opened at the Meadowbrook Shopping Center on August 1, 1962. The same time the Center opened. And we remained there for 38 years until we moved here in April of 2000.

   Why did we move? Well, we had always rented the space, and then the owner died, and a real estate person took it over. The rent was increased: we just couldn’t negotiate a new lease.

   But that wasn’t the only reason—the lease. We were told that tractor-trailers couldn’t be parked there, and so it wasn’t possible for us to get our supplies. And there were also a lot of other things…

   Yes, this is a good location. As for what kind of people come into the store, I’d have to say all kinds. We get locals and also people from all the surrounding counties. Farmers, contractors, working people. We also get professionals, like doctors and lawyers. Our customers are a mixed group. I would have to say that people shop here, rather than in the big stores, because we help people when they need it. We specialize, for example, in paint. In mixing and matching colors for our customers. And in hardware, our staff is knowledgeable. They know where everything is.

   I’ve had two employees for 30 years, and also have longtime office help. We hang onto our people. For example, Bobby Irving, in the paint department. He’s been here for 25, 28 years. Yes, I am proud of my help, and I’m good to my help, but it works both ways. I’m good to them, and they are good to me.

   As for what you can find here that you can’t find anywhere else, I’d say small hardware. Those big stores specialize in big items. Also important is the fact that our customers get personal service and personal attention here. That’s why people keep coming back—they feel at home here.

   Altogether, I have 10 employees. No, none of them is family. And no, I didn’t always want to own a hardware store. But I always knew that I wanted to have a business of my own. Didn’t want to work for anyone else.

   Am I local? You can’t get any more local than I am. I was born here, and went to Venable, then Lane and the University. I majored in education at UVA, but no, I never wanted to teach.

   I am proud to say that our customers have moved with us. They are very loyal. And so is my help—they have stayed with me through the move. But back to paint: We know what the customers want. All they have to do is tell us what they want, and we get it for them.

   No, I don’t have anyone in the family to take over the business, but this kind of store is important. If it should close, there is nothing to replace it but the big stores where employees don’t know the customers the way you do in a small store like this one is.

   We do have more space here, which means we can stock more things.

   The place is larger, but our service is still the same—still personal.

   You see, everyone in the store is local, and we know each other and our clientele. I guess this sounds strange, but it’s like a marriage.

Categories
News

Take your time

No doubt about it, the next few years will not be easy ones for American progressives. The Republican Party’s perceived “mandate” is likely to produce increased international belligerence and militarism, further attacks on the social safety net, increasing inequality and sharply weakened environmental protection. With so many fronts to fight back on, it will be tempting to concentrate on stopping the bleeding.

But while necessary, such reactive “tourniquet” politics are not sufficient to begin turning America around. It’s high time that progressives find ways to inspire moderates. This doesn’t mean “moving to the center;” it means listening to what matters to Americans and offering new, imaginative solutions—proactive, “strategic initiatives,” as George Lakoff calls them in his new, thought-provoking best seller, Don’t Think of an Elephant!

   So, where to begin? What kinds of things that matter most to Americans have progressives failed to listen and respond to? In my view, “time poverty” ranks near the top.

   Luntz has identified an issue that could be dynamite. Most Americans, not only mothers, feel increasingly time-crunched. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Americans are working 20 percent longer today than in 1970, while work-time has declined in other industrial countries. A recent poll released by the Center for a New American Dream found 88 percent of Americans agreeing that “working too many hours results in not having enough time to spend with families.” Half say they’re willing to sacrifice some pay for more time.

   Another poll commissioned by Hilton Hotels found that only 23 percent of Americans come to work refreshed on Mondays. Our vacations are disappearing—a recent Harris survey found that 37 percent of women earning less than $40,000 a year (and 28 percent of all working women) receive no paid vacation at all. On average, Americans work nearly nine weeks (350 hours) more each year than western Europeans.

   American public policies protecting our family and personal time fall far short of those in other countries. A study released in last June by the Harvard School of Public Health, covering 168 of the world’s nations concluded that “the United States lags dramatically behind all high-income countries, as well as many middle- and low-income countries when it comes to public policies designed to guarantee adequate working conditions for families.” The study found that:

—   163 of 168 countries guarantee paid leave for mothers in connection with childbirth. Forty-five countries offer such leave to fathers. The United States does neither.

—   139 countries guarantee paid sick leave. The United States does not.

—   96 countries guarantee paid annual (vacation) leave. The United States does not.

—   84 countries have laws that fix a maximum limit on the workweek. The United States does not.

—   37 countries guarantee parents paid time off when children are sick. The United States does not.

In a new study, the National Association of Working Women documents what happens to workers without paid sick days. Some report losing a job when a child breaks an arm, or being forced to serve food while sick with the flu. Half of all American workers and three out of four low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. Only one in six part-timers has any paid sick leave.

   Is it any wonder that stress and burnout is rampant in America, and that workingwomen with children feel as Luntz says they do? Time is a family value. Marriage, friendship, children, community involvement, environmental stewardship and civic participation all suffer from our lack of free time. But what can be done about this burning issue? “Right now,” Luntz says, “no one has created an agenda, what I would call the Free Time Agenda. So it’s up for grabs.”

   Neither American political party has addressed the issue in any serious way. In campaign speeches, President Bush said he’d “help American families keep more of something they never have enough of—time: time to play with their children; time to go to Little League games or Girl Scout meetings; time to care for elderly parents; time to go to class to improve their lives.”

   But what Bush has actually proposed—replacing overtime pay with “comp” time—leaves the decision regarding when workers must put in hours to their employers, and is likely to encourage, not discourage, more employer demands for overtime work. On the other hand, until now progressives haven’t offered any “Free Time Agenda” at all, thus conceding an essential issue to their opponents.

   So what might a real agenda for free time look like? A new “It’s About Time” coalition including the organizations Take Back Your Time, Work to Live, and Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights, has proposed a six-point “Time to Care” public policy initiative that would:

—   Guarantee paid childbirth leave for all parents. Today, only 40 percent of Americans are able to take advantage of the 12 weeks of unpaid leave provided by the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.

—   Guarantee at least one week of paid sick leave for all workers.

—   Guarantee at least three weeks of paid annual vacation leave for all workers.

—   Place a limit on the amount of compulsory overtime work that an employer can impose, with the goal being to give employees the right to accept or refuse overtime work.

—   Make it easier for Americans to choose part-time work by enacting hourly wage parity and protection of promotions and pro-rated benefits for part-time workers.

—   Make Election Day a holiday, with the understanding that Americans need time for civic and political participation.

Each of these legislative points, if adopted, would only bring the United States closer to standards already in place in most other industrial countries, and in many poor countries. But they would be a great start in the right direction, the beginning of a true “time to care” agenda.

   “Time to Care” is, I believe, a clear example of the kind of proactive “strategic initiative” that George Lakoff suggests is central to revitalizing the progressive movement in America. In Don’t Think of an Elephant! Lakoff describes a strategic initiative as “a plan in which a change in one carefully chosen issue area has automatic effects over many, many, many other issue areas.”

   “Unlike the Right,” Lakoff writes, “the Left does not think strategically. We think issue by issue. We generally do not try to figure out what minimal change we can enact that will have effects across many issues.” He suggests initiatives like the “New Apollo” alternative energy plan that would create jobs, improve health, clean up the environment and make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.

   But while New Apollo is a terrific idea, energy is not nearly as deeply felt a concern for Middle America as time poverty. A bold campaign for “Time to Care” would be:

—   A family and children’s issue: Time is a family value.

—   A community building and civic participation issue

—   An environmental issue: Studies show overworked Americans are less likely to recycle, more likely to use throwaways, etc.

—   A health issue: Lack of time for exercise and proper diets leads to obesity, while workplace stress now costs the economy more than $300 billion a year.

—   A women’s issue: More and more mothers now feel they have to choose between children and career.

—   A religious and spiritual issue: Fewer of us have time for reflection and spirituality, and, while not explicitly endorsing the “Time to Care Agenda,” the Massachusetts Council of Churches has made time a priority concern.

—   A justice issue: Poor and minority Americans are least likely to have paid leave and other protections on their time.

—   A quality of life issue: Giving Americans a real chance to choose simpler, less materialistic lifestyles.

—   A jobs issue: Reducing overwork for many Americans could result in more work for others who need it.

And so on…

This initiative has the power to connect progressives with many Americans—including family values conservatives—to whom they seldom talk. It also has positive implications for the economy. Shortening work time and providing more time for leisure will mean happier, healthier and more efficient workers. Reducing the stress of overwork would also mean lower health care costs for all Americans.

   Moreover, the struggle against time poverty would open new discussions of such issues as living wages (for those who must work excessive hours just to meet the most basic needs), and universal health care (many workers are afraid that if they ask for shorter hours they will lose health care benefits, while our current employer-based health system encourages businesses to hire fewer workers and make them work longer hours).

   Once, led by organized labor and enlightened church leaders, American progressives were champions for more time. When thousands of women textile workers walked out of the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts during the great strike of 1912, they carried signs that read, “We Want Bread, and Roses Too.”

   Bread and roses, symbols of the two important sides of life: bread, the money to live, and roses, the time to enjoy life—higher wages and shorter hours. But somewhere along the line, we got “bread and butter” unionism focused solely on wages. The roses were left to wilt.

   Yet Americans need roses now more than ever. They are telling us they’re tired and want time to live. We should speak boldly, and in clear moral language, for their right to time, for their right to roses. We could live better as Americans by working less, and finding more time for the things that matter most—family, friends, community, and health—instead of being obsessed with material products and economic growth.

   It’s all a matter of values.

John de Graaf is the editor of Take Back Your Time, and national coordinator of the Take Back Your Time campaign, which describes itself as “a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.” More information about Take Back Your Time can be found at www.timeday.org.

No time to spare

You may know you work too much, but without the evidence to support it, your speaking out falls on deaf ears. Use these links to learn more about the growing case for better paid-leave policies.—Ben Sellers

www.globalworkingfamilies.org

The Harvard-based Project on Global Working Families calls itself  “the first program devoted to understanding and improving the relationship between working conditions and family health.” Available on their web page, a 60-page study documents lags in U.S. employee conditions in areas like guaranteed paid maternity/paternity leave, based on the “Work, Family and Equity Index,” a cross-cultural measure of public policies towards working families.

www.9to5.org

9 to 5, National Association of Working Women deals with issues from sexual harassment to closing the gender gap in wages. It also offers eye-opening anecdotal cases from its members in “10 Things that Could Happen to you If You Didn’t Have Paid Sick Days,” which reaches past obvious need for sick days to implications for the families of low-wage workers and the entire community.

 

Precious moments
If you had more time, what would you do with it?

Interviews by Nell Boeschenstein

Bob Anderson, 60
Architect and artist

“That’s kind of a relative question because I could be hit by lightning tomorrow… I’ve been thinking about time and I’ve decided I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail even though I can’t afford it…”

Barbara Frost, 30
Bartender, masseuse and real estate assistant

“I’m still aspiring to have enough time to play with it.”

Alysia Boswinkel-Magrum, 36
Pediatric physical therapist

“Spend more time with my kids and be able to work more than half-time. Which is an impossibility.”

Ayesha Chatman, 17
Student

“Oh jeez… All I can say is I’d probably have fun. Chill. Do whatever I want… Go shopping. Make more money.”

Mike Williams, 52
Cable splicer for Sprint

“Paint. Make art. And bike ride. What? Should I be doing something more constructive to improve the community?”

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Mailbag

Taking down Downtown

I am writing this letter in response to a glaring oversight in what you have chosen to cover. Namely, the unsung heroes of Downtown Charlottesville, the vigilant, selfless and tireless workers of the Bureau of Commerce Prevention. Often overshadowed by the more publicly known and attention-seeking City Council, whose bidding the BCP often does, these are the true heroes, the ones without whom City Council would be nothing but a formal exercise in policy-making, a wellspring of well-intentioned but strictly hypothetical ideas, an ivory tower of idealism.

   The little-known BCP has been hard at work in Charlottesville, focusing much of its energy on the un-development of Charlottesville’s Historical Downtown. As many of us know, “historical” here is a misnomer: The Downtown remains, to this day, vital, modern, a center of culture, commerce, and social activity. Indeed, the task of making Downtown Charlottesville “history” is a daunting one. But the fearless men and women of the BCP face it unflinchingly. Here are just a few of their recent victories:

   1) Parking prevention. Downtown Charlottesville is a “modern” city superimposed on an older gridwork, one that pre-dates the ascendancy of the automobile as the transportation mode of choice in America. This being the case, parking Downtown is inherently very difficult, and no one would think that would be enough for most drivers to eschew downtown altogether. But no; wily, would-be consumers continued to locate parking spots, or else (note the depravity here) began traveling by alternate modes of transportation, such as bicycles! Some even walked from as far away as Belmont. I sometimes secretly admire the determination and creativeness of these drivers, shoppers and employees, were their goal so antithetical to a peaceful and depressed way of life. Thankfully, the BCP has been unrelenting in eliminating parking wherever possible, ticketing shoppers and workers alike, raising fines and parking prices [“Some parking rates go up,” 7 Days, January 4] and taking a stance against the “rolling menace,” bicycles and skateboards. As we speak, the BCP is working closely with local police to combat pedestrianism by empowering the law enforcement agents to stop those walking the familiar routes to downtown for questioning. The message is clear: The BCP means business!

   2) Combating the café threat. As we know, one of the great dangers to society is outdoor dining. Yet frighteningly, this trend has been increasing in our community, with much of the activity centered Downtown. Last spring, I was walking with my 7-year-old son when I looked up and saw a man sitting outside, drinking a latte right out in the open. Ignoring my son’s queries, I rushed him to my car (which, reassuringly, had a $35 parking ticket on its windshield) and drove straight to a proper mall with recognizable retail franchises. My son was quickly distracted by the healthy array of video games and cheap plastic toys produced by Asian sweatshop labor, but the image of that man drinking a latte haunted me for days. In light of this traumatic experience, I was glad to see that the BCP had all outdoor furniture removed from the Downtown Mall this year, taking a strong stance against those who hope to make Charlottesville some sort of haven for businesses and residents. I was even more reassured when unseasonably warm weather arrived and a few restaurants put out a table or two to accommodate those decadent customers who wanted to indulge their filthy outdoor dining habit. They were immediately chastised, and the tables removed posthaste.

   Really, the efforts of the BCP are too numerous for me to detail here, which is why I believe a cover story on these guardians of justice is merited. Need I remind you that only a year ago, Charlottesville was publicly disgraced by being named No. 1 city to live in the United States? Have we already forgotten those dark days? It seems we have, for we fail to appreciate and support the efforts of those who would help make this city more like every other city in America, keeping culture at bay and tourists away. I, for one, salute these brave men and women, and believe that they are the ones who will help downtown become history again.

 

Michael Rodi

Charlottesville