Month: September 2006

The age of Innocence: “One thing this book taught me,” John Grisham said of his upcoming work of nonfiction, “there are a lot of innocent people in prison.”

Like a defense attorney well practiced at making a closing argument, John Grisham promised to speak with “no notes” when, last Thursday, he addressed several hundred UVA law students on the sorry matter of the death penalty. To be specific, he was talking about his latest book, The Innocent Man, due out next month. Though it is his 19th book, it is his first work of nonfiction. The Innocent Man concerns the tragic case of Ronald Williamson, a onetime professional baseball player from small-town Oklahoma who was innocently jailed and condemned to death in a capital murder and rape case until DNA evidence exonerated him. Despite his reprieve, Williamson died a heartbreaking death at the age of 51. The cause was cirrhosis of the liver. The boozing, womanizing life on the road had caught up with him, it seems, accelerated by the trauma of two decades on death row and a lifetime of severe mental illness.
    Grisham practiced law for 10 years in Mississippi before the success of his second novel, The Firm, freed him financially from his law practice. But it was clear from his talk that the courtroom is still very much alive in him. “Ron was a dead man,” he said. “My hope for this book: people read it and realize this [death penalty] system we have is too unfair to continue.”
    Summarizing Willliamson’s story, Grisham recounted all the usual Grishamian elements—a disabled defendant; a past-his-prime defense attorney, who, proving that truth is stranger than fiction, happens to be blind; a couple of jailhouse snitches; and a suspect who is left unquestioned because of his illicit ties to local police.
    Thanks to the heroics of a federal judge, Williamson was exonerated and the real killer was put behind bars. In the course of his research, Grisham met that man. And what was he like to meet, wondered one student during the question period following Grisham’s presentation. Not that different from the rest of us, Grisham revealed, at least in one respect: The killer requested that the famous author have a picture taken with him. Though it meant posing with a plane of Plexiglas between them, Grisham assented. The killer, apparently, keeps the photo in his death row cell, a reminder of his brief brush with celebrity.

The City Planning Commission found them-selves spokesmen for the trees of Charlottesville at their September 13 meeting. First they expressed anger at a developer, David Turner, who cut down a 150-year-old beech tree he was supposed to preserve at 3 University Ave. “In my mind, this is an illegal act,” said Commissioner Craig Barton. Then the commission deferred a Habitat for Humanity project so that Habitat could alter their site plan in the interest of preserving several poplars on the property.
    Those actions reminded C-VILLE of another tree advocate: The Lorax. So with apologies to Theodore Geisel, we’ve chosen to tell the tale in Seuss-ian fashion.

We, the Commission, we speak for the trees.
We’re tired and sick of developer’s disease
That causes the loss of too many a trunk
Of great big old beeches that fall, go kerplunk
When you cut to make way for parking garages.
Don’t bring us your site plan in dark camouflages
To disguise your designs on our harmless old poplars.
Please come back again, don’t make us go “Stop-lars,”
And prevent you from building affordable housing.
Just move back those units, don’t give us no grousing.
Keep canopies stretching ’cross Hanover Street
Providing shady cool spots for teenagers to meet
And old folks to greet.

We’re mad at that guy
Who promised to save (in the end just a lie)
A sacred old tree at University Ave
One hundred fifty years that Beech we
had had.
But no more! Alas! He cut it in haste.
For now, his construction is halted in waste.
Board of Zoning Appeals for now
must decide
If developer appeal is approved or denied.
Legal action we’d take if we knew that
we could
Though no court in this land that tree can make good.

Lost forever it is—but in the future no more!
Good hardwoods will stay, not turn
into floors.
We know that the City of C’ville will grow,
But don’t cut down that tree if it must not be so.

City Planning Commissioners are sad, much like this Lorax, over the disappearance of historic city trees.

This design study, a view from the Belmont Bridge, shows what a new nine-storey “green” luxury condo building at 201 Avon St. might look like—if it can win City approval.

A nine-storey luxury condo project at 201 Avon St., just south of the Downtown Mall, was deferred by the City Planning Commission at their September 13 meeting despite a “green” design and staff recommendation for approval.
    The development appeared before the Planning Commission not because of the nine storeys—zoning allows for that—but because developers want to increase density, to 116 residential units from the 50 units the code allows without special permit.
    Architect Randolph Croxton, whose firm is based in New York City, presented plans for a “mixed-use” structure that would wrap around the Beck-Cohen building and include a spa-slash-health club. He highlighted the “green” components to the structure, which would include sky gardens to filter storm water and energy efficient materials and design.
    Additionally, he talked of the improvements to the current site. “We are really out there in the frontier,” said Croxton of the location. “This is a brown field. This site has to be cleaned up. There’s a negative here that’s removed.” Croxton said that without the increased density, the developer, Washington D.C.-based Ideal Ventures, couldn’t afford to build.
“For a variety of reasons, this is an important project to support,” said Commissioner Bill Lucy, who liked the location and much of the design.
    Several commissioners, while impressed by the environmental aspects, attacked the project’s lack of “affordable” housing. But their decision hinged on fears that not enough of the development is “mixed-use.” The commissioners found the project’s designation of what was commercial and what was residential misleading, determining it fell far short of providing 25 percent of square footage to commercial use.
    “This sets a terrible example in terms of mixed-use,” said Barton. “I’m looking at Walker Square and I’m thinking it was a horrible mistake.” Many planning commissioners are still upset about Walker Square, an apartment-turned-condo development between Cherry Avenue and Main Street, which won approval as mixed-use, but instead provided only a private gym restricted to residents.
    Croxton tried to reassure the commission that he wasn’t trying to fool them. “If we need to do less residential, we’ll do it.”
    The project will be back before the commission at their October 10 meeting.

The Charlottesville Planning Commission might not have liked everything about the upcoming South Lawn Project as presented at the September 13 meeting, but they had no power to do anything but voice complaints, and some praise, to UVA officials.
    The Planning Commission used their only official opportunity to examine the project to level criticism large and small. The “three-party agreement” among City, County and University allows the City to review, but not alter, UVA’s plans.
    “At a moment in which we as a city are asking developers to think creatively about mixing uses in buildings,” said Commissioner Craig Barton, also a UVA architecture professor, “I’m disappointed this is a monoculture in some ways… It misses an opportunity to essentially take on the challenges the University has, which is to marry tradition and innovation and provide a model for development.” Barton, like many commissioners, also complained that the pedestrian network didn’t link adequately.
    The South Lawn Project takes a 350-car parking lot and turns it into a 110,000 square foot building to address what Dean of Arts and Sciences Ed Ayers calls a 300,000 square foot deficit of office and classroom space at UVA. To connect to the main campus, UVA will construct a bridge across Jefferson Park Avenue (JPA), covered with a second “Lawn” that will stretch from New Cabell Hall to the new structure.
    Commission Chair Karen Firehock requested that the design make sure to minimize the “tunnel feeling” of the JPA overpass. And commissioners asked that UVA help complete the JPA sidewalk from Emmet Street up to the project’s western edge. The cost of retaining walls needed to put in a sidewalk make the price too exorbitant for UVA to bear alone, says David Neuman, architect for the University. (UVA is, however, in the midst of a $3 billion capital campaign and has already raised $1 billion.)
    Other City officials, notably Mayor David Brown, picked up on a public comment that asked UVA to increase bridge height to 19′ in case Charlottesville ever gets a streetcar. Current plans have the bridge at the regulation height of 17’6".
    The project earned praise from some commissioners, particularly for UVA’s willingness to work with the Jefferson Park Avenue neighborhood, as well as for its goal to win Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the building, ensuring it is energy efficient and otherwise “green.”
    City Councilor Kendra Hamilton lauded the inclusion of a monument to the Catherine “Kitty” Foster family home site and nearby burial ground, which will be the first tribute solely to African Americans on UVA’s campus. Kitty Foster was a free black woman who purchased the land in 1833, her home part of the 19th century community called “Canada.”
    According to Neuman, this phase of the South Lawn Project is on budget and ahead of schedule. Plans call for the start of construction early next year, with the hopes of completion by fall 2010.

Managing attorney for the Virginia Justice Center Tim Freilich debates his opponent’s tough-on-immigrants stance at the Northside Library Wednesday, September 13.

“I agree with you on one thing,” Tim Freilich, managing attorney with the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers, a statewide project of the Legal Aid Justice Center said. “Our immigration system is broken.” Beyond that, Freilich and Dale McGlothlin, chief of operations for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, could agree on little else at a debate sponsored by the Senior Statesmen on Wednesday, September 13. The topic was immigration.
    With one in 10 Virginians born outside the United States, and an Hispanic population of 3,000 in Albemarle County, the national immigration debate could well have implications here. Local supporters for illegal immigrants rallied at the Albemarle County Office Building earlier this month, and last Wednesday’s debate at Northside Library was the latest installment on the national topic. At issue were things like a national fence on the country’s southern border, amnesty and guest worker programs and whether to criminalize undocumented status.
    McGlothlin, whose Washington, D.C.-based organization lobbies for sweeping immigration reform, took the hard line. “There are no jobs Americans won’t do,” he said, asserting that if immigrants didn’t occupy low-wage positions, Americans would work in labor sectors for fair treatment and good pay.
    Freilich countered, “There are some bad jobs out there.” His organization takes legal action against employers who treat immigrant workers unfairly. Freilich mentioned some of his cases, like the boss who wrote “VOID” in the memo line of a paycheck given to workers who didn’t speak English.
    Freilich also stressed the difficulty in determining a worker’s illegal status. “You can’t tell if someone’s undocumented just by looking at them,” he said.
    “It’s important for all Virginians to demand that Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform that recognizes the contributions of Virginia’s hardworking immigrants. …We all benefit mightily from their contributions to our economy,” Freilich says.
    It has been estimated there are about 200,000 to 250,000 undocumented immigrants in Virginia; Freilich says there are about 40,000 immigrant farm workers who contribute to Virginia’s economy.

    When Dave Matthews finally telephones from the West Coast, he’s 30 minutes late. And full of apologies. “On the rare occasion that I can say it had nothing to do with me I will claim complete innocence,” he says, placing guilt elsewhere. “I hate being late. It makes me sick.”
    Generally speaking, timing has not been a big problem for Matthews and his four bandmates in the Dave Matthews Band. For the past 15 years, like clockwork, they’ve gotten their act together and taken it on the road. As their fame grows, and record sales climb (over 30 million sold to date), their summer festival gigs and charity concerts have become a summer mainstay. It’s a long way from the dinky surroundings of Trax, the erstwhile Charlottesville nightclub where they played every Tuesday night at the start of the ’90s.
    In fact, so high has the demand been across the country for some DM  time that it’s been more than five years since the band played live in Charlottesville (their influence is felt in other ways, notably the local philanthropy of Bama Works, their charity fund). That changes on Friday and Saturday, September 22 and 23, when they close out this summer’s tour with performances at UVA’s John Paul Jones Arena. This conversation with Dave Matthews took place a couple of weeks prior to the show.

Cathy Harding: From what I understand, today is LeRoi’s birthday.
Dave Matthews: Yes it is, I haven’t seen him yet… I’ve only been awake for a couple of hours.

Are you going to give him something?
I probably will say happy birthday.

Sing the song, maybe?
I don’t know if I’m going to sing the song. I think he’s probably heard that before.

Is it hard to be on tour and have those kinds of personal events take place? Birthdays, wedding anniversaries or whatever.
It’s not an unusual life or situation for us to be on the road. I wouldn’t know what an anniversary is like other than on the road, and I wouldn’t know what my children’s birthdays are like other than at least close to on the road. I haven’t had a birthday in, you know, 16 years that hasn’t been close to being on the road or on the road.
    I think we are very fortunate to have a remarkable group of people that travel with us that sort of hovers around 50. It’s unusual because it’s such a superb collection of people that I can’t imagine that every touring organization could have this or else the world would be named “Shangri La.” I’m sure I get treated a little bit more sweetly than some of the people on my crew, but overall I think we’ve got a pretty exceptional group of characters out here, and I can certainly think of worse places to spend my birthday—alone in a stinky apartment in Queens might be more depressing—than out on the road with a traveling circus.

Dave Matthews Band is playing two nights here for the first time in more than five years, and I’m interested in your perspective on how the city has changed in that time, let alone since the time when the band was playing Trax every Tuesday night. Your thoughts on that?
Someone connected the timeline between the success of the band and the changing face of Charlottesville, but I think that it may have been “Good Morning America” and USA Today saying it’s the nicest place to live and raise a family in America. I think that may have had something to do with it too. What happens is people find gems and in this day and age of information moving at the speed of light or the speed of our fingertips—the speed of thought—it’s hard to keep a secret. It’s very difficult to keep a place like Charlottesville a secret. I think the best we can do is try and make the evolution of community, you know, specifically Charlottesville, make it as bearable as possible, because to stop things is impossible.
    I remember when they were putting the road across the Downtown Mall years ago, wasn’t that many years ago, but I remember someone saying to me, “Sign this petition to stop the road from going across the Downtown Mall.” Now I know there are people that are sentimental about things, but I thought—and I’d worked there at Miller’s for years before that and the Downtown Mall was sleepy at best, at very best. You know, it was a place where people who’d recently gotten a sabbatical from Western State and a couple of people who were looking for a drink could go and walk and everyone else couldn’t have anything to do with it. It was a shadowy spot.
    And so the idea of a road that would at least alert somebody, some passersby, that there was in fact a place there to go and walk I think was not a bad idea.
    And then we should also remember that in the ’70s, before they paved that with brick, that was sort of the center of the black community in Charlottesville and then they changed it. I guess the town thought it was better to turn it into a community center and really did a quite environmental relocation of a very central part of Charlottesville’s community. So I think there’s been a lot of changes in the last 30 years, 40 years in Charlottesville that we could talk about.
    We always miss what’s gone, but to see the Downtown Mall bustling, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  I think it’s kind of a good thing to see it being a place where you can go out and see a lot of people. One of the things that’s being lost in a lot of the American landscape is the pedestrian walkway, so when you drive around the Corner and you see all the students or you go Downtown and you see the amount of people that are walking around, there is a sense of this beautiful evolution—at least something alive. When things change there’s an uncertainty about it, so I think the best we can do is try and make it as a—keep it as sort of beautiful as possible, those changes.

On the subject of change, you and the band were involved in the Vote for Change concerts and have been outspoken politically. You did the ad for The Nation recently, you’re on the board with Farm Aid. Do you expect to get involved in the midterm elections that are coming up?
You know, I’m hopeful for the next election, though I think it’s remarkable, in general across the country, how poorly the Democratic Party has squandered an opportunity. To call it a political party at this point, in the national landscape, is sort of almost comical to me. I think there are some very strong characters in both parties but they’re sort of overshadowed by just a shambles on both sides of the aisle.
    But I haven’t even for the midterm elections or for the next elections thought of anyone that I would have thrown myself behind. I have a few ideas—I just hope that they’ll become a little more clear and I think there is a little bit of time. I know where my political allegiances lie, at least philosophically, and I’ll see how much I can compromise as little as possible before I throw my name behind anybody else.
    On a political level in this country I think we’re in a deep crisis. Maybe the façade has to shatter completely before people will get off their asses and actually realize that there is a responsibility to democracy besides just having a flag on your front lawn.
    The lack of debate in the state and federal government is just, it’s just, I can’t even, I don’t even know how to talk about it. It just amazes me that nobody raises their hand and says, “Wait a second.” Not only are we doing nothing for our own people, but we’re doing nothing for the world. I was watching this wonderful documentary on Paul Wellstone and thinking whether you’re Left or Right, to see somebody with such remarkable character stand so clearly on what they believe without flaw and without political ambition, it’s almost unheard of nowadays.

Well, to change gears a little bit and talk about changes in another area, specifically the music industry…with increased consolidation of businesses, vertical integration, declining record sales, it seems like the barriers to entry are so much higher now for young bands than they were even 15 years ago when you guys started out. Would you agree?
Well, maybe but I also think that it’s changing: I don’t think that the record industry has got 10 years.

The band is doing this Live Trax series, which seems to be in part about different distribution channels than a record label, for instance.
We have to, contractually and otherwise, I guess at this point it’s almost “pay our respects to the record industry,” because maybe there are going to be some areas that it will survive. It will still have a purpose but to a large degree I think it’s going to be obsolete. So for us it’s just sort of trying to think of ways to stay viable in new stages, which I think are much more small and efficient musical productions. I’m glad the music that I’m interested in playing after I write it is live. I like to play in front of an audience so that one element is the one thing that we’ve always sort of had control of and that we can keep control of.
    It is a very different environment but everything goes in waves. Music is obviously not going to vanish and requires new bands. There has to be music coming out of young people all of the time; that’s one of the essential parts of being a person, or being people, is that we create songs. There’s no stopping that. It may be a challenge but I think the people most fit for the job are young musicians. So I think they’re going to, and they won’t have a problem with it: “Make a video and we can put it online, we can make a song and put it online.” In a way it’s like a dream come true for young musicians, it may not have a big payment up front, get some giant record deal but in a way if you want to play music in front of people it’s a pretty good and efficient way of advertising yourself.
    There may be some growing pains but I think it’s just a revolution.

The whole DMB catalog is on iTunes now. Do you have an iPod?
Yeah, but, you know, I’m incredibly boring. I don’t listen to a lot of music.
    I’d rather listen to the silence.

So do you have a lot of silence on your iPod?
I have a lot of silence in my head.
    I think the iPod’s amazing. There are a lot of critics on it but I haven’t taken a position on any of that stuff. I think it’s phenomenal to be able to take my CDs and pour them onto my computer. Then I go through phases, “oh I’ve got a spare hour” and I’m just sitting throwing money into my, into iTunes just because I can. It’s pretty amazing.

What do your daughters like to listen to?
I try and play them good music. They like The Beatles a lot. That’s, I guess, a standard thing.
    They like Bob Marley a lot, which I think is pretty good. They like Led Zeppelin. I’ve been playing a lot of Led Zeppelin for them. They’re 5 years old they’re not at a point where they’re going to the record store by themselves. Got a Kool and the Gang Greatest Hits that they’re listening to a lot, too.

On the subject of records, will you be going back into the studio with Mark Batson after the band finishes the tour?
Yeah, I think so because we were hanging out with him in the studio before we went on tour and he’s a good friend. We’ve been playing some new music on the road and we hung out a little bit in Los Angeles when we were playing down there and he heard some new stuff. So yeah, our plan is to get together with him. The last record we made we all had a great time, but, you know, it was really fast. It was a really new experience, it was refreshing, but it was really quick. So this time looking forward to being able to stretch a little more with him in the studio and combine the writing and the playing a little more than we had the opportunity to last time because there’s no deadline. I think the last thing on earth that RCA wants us to do is to come up with a new record.

You mean right after the “greatest hits” comes out?
Yeah, whatever, and that’s another thing. That’s just something in our contract. In this time of music flying digitally around the world, record companies begin in some ways, at least for us, to represent a ball and chain as much as they do…  Needless to say there’s no deadline to make a record. So we’ll take our sweet time, but probably come up with one faster than they want us to.

So what’s it been like playing on the road and having Robert Randolph sitting in?
We’ve known him for a good while. It’s fun to have someone that shares a love of playing live that we do. We’re all different characters but from the school of, if there is one, a school of music just that being truthful and playing what you mean as best as you can. It’s great to find people that believe that and that live that way.

Last question. As a much younger man, Mick Jagger famously said he didn’t want to sing “Satisfaction” when he was 40. Are there any songs that you think you would shelve as you get to be that age?
But wait, he’s still singing it.
    But maybe he didn’t sing it when he was 40, you know.

He just skipped it that one year.
I’m not sure that there’s any songs that I plan to shelve before next year, specifically because of the decade but I hope that I can for as long as possible write music that somebody will like to listen to. If they want to listen to music that I wrote 15 years ago I don’t mind that. I just hope that I’m not empty of imagination to the point that I can’t come up with anything that people want to listen to now.