The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) Commissioner David Ekern requesting that VDOT continue funding the Hatton Ferry in Scottsville.
Last month, in an effort to meet its budget shortfall, VDOT recommended the closure of the service. The Board’s letter asks VDOT to fund the 140-year-old ferry for the first quarter starting on July 1, the same day the Board will meet to discuss appropriation of funds for the operation.
With an upcoming CD release party and the promise of success, we wanted to know this about Sons of Bill: Who are these boys and where did they come from? That’s the question Brendan Fitzgerald answers in this week’s cover story. Don’t forget to leave comments, and check out an exclusive Feedback Session: Sam and James Wilson perform three songs live in the C-VILLE office!
Perfect. The staff writers could use a break.
C-VILLE is looking for submissions for our annual photo contest. We are seeking high quality prints featuring local scenes. Preference may be given to vertical compositions.
Winners will be published in the July 27 issue of C-VILLE
with prizes to be awarded at a later date.
Deadline: July 15, 2010.
Entries must have photographer’s name, address and phone number securely attached TO EACH PRINT. (Prints only.)
Prizes:
$500 gift certificate from Pro Camera
$200 custom framing from Fast Frame
$100 gift certificate
to ZoCaLo.
Mail or hand deliver to:
C-VILLE PHOTO CONTEST
308 E. Main St., Charlottesville, VA 22902.
Prints will not be returned.
Please address any questions to: artdirector@c-ville.com
Welcome to the end of a busy week, friends. Between your Photo Fest activities and ecstatic remembrances of the David Byrne show, you may not have a lot of time on your hands. But if you do, here’s what to read.
From the Charlottesville-based blog Locallectual, a mouthwatering description of a local spring dinner, luxe-style. By now, strawberries and asparagus are pretty much done, but the larger point—eating in high style with local ingredients—remains.
My colleague Chiara Canzi’s account of how CTS will be adding hybrid trolleys to its fleet. Roll along, hybrids.
In the Post, what I thought was a weirdly disconnected story about the newly appointed kitchen for the Italian ambassador’s wife. Since she probably does some major entertaining, she may actually need "warming tops on the counters to keep plates toasty, four dishwashers and an indoor herb garden lit by LED lights," but most of us don’t. I wish the Post had glorified a different kind of kitchen instead.
…something more along these lines: a "waterpod" barge on which several New York artists hope to live in sustainable self-sufficiency. The Times reporter seems to think these people are nuts, but I say the vision and tenacity they’ve already shown, and will have to keep on showing to make this project work, are inspiring.
Speaking of inspiration, I found a bunch in this story about growing wheat at home—dude! Sounds odd, but once you read this you’ll be itching to plant your own "pancake patch." At my house, we’ve already decided to do it this winter.
And finally, a bit about how the new solar panels at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology up there in NoVa. What I love about this is that it seems the whole thing was a student-led project. Let it be known that Green Scene would officially think it was awesome if high school students did this locally.
That’s all for now. Add your own links!
Trader Joe’s fans, rejoice. The California-based grocery chain is coming to Charlottesville.
According to a public notice in today’s Daily Progress, the store is applying for a liquor license with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The ABC has confirmed that the application was received on May 21 and is currently undergoing due process.
The store will be located on the stretch of land between Hydraulic Road and Greenbrier Drive.
Calls to Trader Joe’s corporate offices, where it’s still early morning, were not immediately returned.
Know your lines:
Hold your applause:
Enjoy your weekend:
UVA President John Casteen has just announced that he will step down on August 1, 2010, at the end of his 20th year.
During his tenure, Casteen has led two fundraising campaigns. He intends to remainan active participant in the University’s Capital campaign.
Casteen, 65, is one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation. He became Admissions Dean in 1975, having taught English both at UVA and at UC-Berkeley.
"It has been our privilege as a family to live in and watch our children grow and reach adulthood in what I have come to see as the grandest and happiest of American homes in the most exciting and inspirational of all American villages- this one conceived as America’s center for learning. Relationships with women and men who believe in and sustain our students and their University have been at the center of my and our lives. And the greatest of all these privileges has been planning and building what I believe is one of the world’s great universities, a university that was in its beginning and is now one of our Republic’s cornerstones," writes Casteen in a statement.
The Board of Visitors will begin a search for the new president in late July.
UVA President John Casteen has announced that he will step down in August 2010 after 20 years on the job.
This ain’t no Mud Club or CBGB’s, this is the Charlottesville Pavilion, and, ladies and gentlemen, as a member of the Talking Heads Class of ’77, I’m here to tell you that heaven is a place where David Byrne happens. O.K.? At least, for 113 minutes, which is how long he and his five musicians, three singers, and three dancers filled that magnificent big top, and which, if you were asking me to program it, would be restricted to artists, like Byrne and The Flaming Lips, who can truly bring the circus to town.
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Burning down the Pavilion: David Byrne tore through nearly two hours of Talking Heads and Brian Eno material with his crew of white-decked dancers. |
Taking the stage at 7:33, Byrne modestly approached the lead microphone, a vision in white from his shock of hair to his crisp jeans and guitar, commenting about his afternoon that apparently included a trip to the Rivanna and a meal at Jinx’s. (“Is it a creek or a river down that way?” he asked the assembling crowd, which is funny because who can imagine a hit single titled “Take Me to the Creek?”)
In fact, everybody was in white and this is important to note because it signified, in its completeness and simplicity, Byrne’s lifelong commitment to artistic coherence. This is not a guy who plays guitar against a backdrop. He is, as is mentioned in every review including this one, at heart an art student and from his first days with Talking Heads back when they were called the Autistics at the Rhode Island School of Design he has included music in a total stage vision that is deceptively simple.
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He looks like a geek, remarkably fit I grant you at 50-plus-something, and he got his polyrhythmic thing going early in his career, but when you listen to those lyrics, it’s hard to deny the anxiety and strain, even if it is dressed in optimism: “ All I want is to breathe;” “In these troubled times, I still can see;” “I think I waited too long;” and of course, “How did I get here?”
And really, what artist worth his salt doesn’t serve anxiety in the main course? The craft comes in putting together the side dishes and condiments. That’s where Byrne’s dancers came in. Setting the trio free across the stage to corkscrew and scarecrow and gyrate and leapfrog (over the back of the headliner, thank you very much), Byrne made a quiet mockery of hip-hoppers and others who restrict their chorines to a cage or the side of the stage like so many hood ornaments. This is life during wartime, baby, so you might as well spiral across the burning house. How else do you expect to feel the air?
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Byrne collaborated with God’s Greatest Living Female Choreographer (emphasis mine), Twyla Tharp, in the ’80s on a groundbreaking piece called The Catherine Wheel. So he knows from modern dance, legit-like. The piece that his dancers performed to “My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)” from that work was not in fact made by Tharp, but by Annie B. Parsons, who Byrne name-checked, reaffirming his downtown cred and elevating her to a stature many contemporary choreographers can’t reach.
The show was organized around another of Byrne’s collaborations, namely the body of work he has made with Brian Eno, whom he referred to at the opening as a “British producer.” Describing the structure to come, he carefully avoided naming the Heads and said, “That’s the program, with appropriate wines. I’ll be your waiter. My name is David.”
The guy is definitely funny, even if he’s tense and nervous and he can’t relax. It took until the eleventh song, “Crosseyed and Painless” to get the full crowd relaxed enough to rise from their seats as one and start dancing.
Meanwhile, the stage was a harmonic fusion of arm gestures and little feet shuffles and dancing singers and singing dancers. A favorite moment: Second encore, when the dancers “played” unplugged electric guitars in a half-circle behind Byrne on the song “Air.” Get it?
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Nearly two hours and three encores after he started, a beaming Byrne joined his stagemates, everyone now dressed in white tutus over their pants and dresses, to thunderous applause from the ecstatic Pavilion crowd, who walked into the humid night knowing indeed, it had been a party, it had been a disco, and truly, there had been lots of wonderful fooling around.
“I’m still a candidate, just a write-in candidate,” said 22-year-old Independent City Council candidate Andrew Williams yesterday in front of City Hall, after his petition to be on the November 3 ballot fell short of the minimum number of signatures required from registered voters.
Williams explained that he heard about several unregistered signatures less than 24 hours before the deadline and was unable to find the 25 signatures he needed.
“Now I will just have to reorganize my marketing strategy and my whole campaign,” he said, noting that he still believes he can contribute to the city.
Williams said he wanted to focus on improving safety and education in Charlottesville as well as to revisit council’s allocation of government funds. He says he does not have exact plans for these issues yet, but that he will “rely on the perspectives of all the Charlottesville residents [he] can talk to.”
As Williams develops his own ideas on the issues, he said he recognizes people may be skeptical of him because of his youth. Williams, though, emphasized that his age could bring a new perspective to City Council.
“It’s time for the young people to bring up the mantle and let older people retire,” he told C-VILLE.
“I do recognize it is an uphill battle…but I’m still happy and still optimistic,” he said.
Williams will be running against Democratic candidates Kristin Szakos and current Mayor Dave Norris as well as Independents Paul Long and Bob Fenwick.
We are a town of locavores. Not even a torrential downpour on treacherously winding Route 20 could keep a crowd of 110 from venturing out to Palladio Restaurant at Barboursville Vineyards last night to celebrate and enjoy our local wine and foodstuffs at the second annual “Meet the Farmer Dinner.”
A fundraiser and outreach program for the Piedmont Environmental Council’s Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign, the event featured a five-course meal prepared by Palladio Executive Chef Melissa Close and guest chef Jonathan Hayward, formerly of the Toliver House and now of the Gordonsville Deli, paired with wines from Barboursville.
In addressing the diners prior to the meal, Chef Close explained that over 80 percent of the ingredients—from the vegetables and meats for the main courses to the eggs, milk and flour for the bread in the bread basket—came within 70 miles of the restaurant.
Melissa Wiley started the Buy Fresh Buy Local program, which now includes a website, a printed guide and a network for local farmers and businesses. Last night’s dinner at Palladio benefitted that program.
Even the table centerpieces came from flowers grown locally by Roundabout Farms. Among the crowded dining room of PEC supporters were a few of the producers themselves, including Michael Clark, whose Planet Earth Diversified supplied the microgreens for the herb salad that accompanied a colorful plate of roasted red and yellow beets from Roundabout Farm topped with a sweet and creamy chevre from Caromont Farm.
Other local bounty in the meal included Green Fence Farm rabbit and quail, Everona Dairy pecorino, Wade’s Mill grits and Perfect Flavor vanilla ice-cream. Melissa Wiley, who spearheads the Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaign for the PEC, said the dinner raised about $8,000 for the program.
