Month: July 2010

One of the biggest, baddest pests we’ve had in our garden is the tomato hornworm. Gardeners, you likely know them: They’re as big as your thumb and perfectly camouflaged—exactly the color of tomato plants, with markings that imitate the veins on tomato leaves, their favorite food. I tend to spot them indirectly, first noticing the tremendous damage they’ve inflicted on one of my plants and then finding the culprit nearby, fat and happy and evil. They’ll strip a plant of leaves in one terrible afternoon, growing bigger all the while.

When you try to pull one off a plant, it has the nerve to hang on tightly with amazingly strong little legs, and then to try chewing on your hand. It’s this kind of creature that makes me understand where the urge to invent pesticides must have come from.

Of course, in our small organic garden, spraying isn’t an option. We pick the hornworms off by hand. Two years ago we had tons of them, and I got into a routine of checking the plants every day after work, pulling off the worms, and stepping on them—an altogether unpleasant task. (During this time, my husband did some research in online gardening forums and got a recommendation we’d never follow: dousing the hornworms in gasoline and setting them on fire!)

Last year, it seems we got lucky: almost no worms. I spotted one near the end of the season, but it was covered in parasitic larvae, which I believe are laid by wasps. Perhaps not coincidentally—and I’d love for someone to fill me in on the ecology here—we had a big wasp nest on the side of the house that faces the garden.

This year, the worms are back, but a different sort of symbiosis is in effect. When we pull off a worm, we take it right over to the chickens, who practically lose their minds with excitement. Whichever bird grabs the worm has to immediately take off running, because the other two will follow her and try to steal it until she manages to get it down the hatch. This is a million times more fun than the old way of killing worms.

What’s your method of hornworm control?
 

The UVA Center for Politics, founded by prolific UVA pundit Larry Sabato, received a $90,000 grant from The Comcast Foundation for the Center’s Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI), according to a press release from the center. YLI develops free educational resources to promote interest among K-12 students in American politics and currently reaches approximately 50,000 teachers worldwide.

With the new grant, YLI will host teacher workshops throughout West Virginia over the next three years, according to the release.

About 200 volunteers and supporters gathered last night for a much-anticipated town hall meeting to discuss the future of WTJU, UVA’s community radio station. The meeting seemed to bring to a close a contentious period between some members of the 53-year-old station’s volunteer staff and university administrators, who shelved plans that DJs feared would put an end to the station’s “free from” format.

“My plan is off the table,” said Burr Beard, the station’s general manager, who said that had been hired in April to implement changes at the station. “I’ve operated very much in private,” he said. “Please let me join you.” Plans to make the station "consistent and reliable" were at first postponed, and by Monday seemed to be on indefinite hold.

A former volunteer named Aaron Margosis said that a group of about 70 alumni had raised $20,000 in a weekend. The donation is “contingent upon the soul of WTJU being preserved.”

Some volunteers asked that administrators reach out to DJs who had quit when changes were originally announced.

At 7,500 weekly listeners, rarely more than 500 at any time, WTJU has the lowest of any noncommercial station in Charlottesville. While Beard emphasized that the station is “not in danger of going belly up,” he said that its future success depends upon increasing underwriter contributions and listener donations. UVA also hopes to increase student involvement at the station.

“We’ve taken a lot of criticism, and you know what? We deserved it,” said Carol Wood, of UVA’s Department of Public Affairs. “And if we don’t learn from it, shame on us.” Wood also noted that the ongoing controversy has gone a long way to make WTJU the household name that, perhaps for the lack of advertising, it hasn’t been in a long time.

One highlight from the public comment section: John Parker, an associate professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at the university, said that in his profession, “I know a little something about feeble revenue streams," and that "Nobody has ever asked me to change what I teach.”

But nothing compared to this T. Boone Pickens-style harebrained scheme: a man named Adam Silverman stood at the podium to read a legalese statement he claimed on the behalf of an anonymous donor, who was prepared to purchase station to preserve its integrity. “The individual I represent is bona fide serious, and ready to purchase a local frequency,” he read. “Consider this a guarantee of intent.”

It was perhaps the wrong message for a roiled group that included Tim Snider, host of the Sunday Opera Matinee. "It concerned us that WTJU’s programming could be considered a commodity," he said of Beard’s original plans for the station.

“WTJU is not for sale,” Wood responded to cheers. “It will never be for sale…Seeing all of these people in the room, we’re going for it.”

Read past C-VILLE coverage here.

At the end of the second quarter, Fifth District Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello raised $660,000 in funds, according to Talking Points Media LLC’s blog, TPM. However, However, Republican candidate and state Senator Robert Hurt is putting up a fight for the Fifth District seat, with a bit of help from a former governor and Vice Presidential candidate.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave $3,500 to Hurt’s campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission’s Itemized Disbursements List. Palin’s donations this quarter total $87,500. On his way to clinching the GOP nomination for the Fifth District race, Hurt clobbered six other candidates in fundraising.

Happy Monday. A couple of notes upon emerging from the haze of World Cup excitement:

WTJU DJs concerned over plans for the station looked to have scored a victory late last week. General manager Burr Beard wrote that his plan, which would effectively rein in free form programming, would be put on the back shelf. "I am looking forward to working with you on our new group proposal," Beard wrote in an e-mail to volunteers. "Please understand that the process has opened my mind, and heart." Station administrators will host a long-awaited public forum at 5:30 this evening at UVA’s Zehmer Hall. See past C-VILLE coverage and a good deal of community input here.

One standout among new local releases is Pantherburner Phillip St. Ours‘ The Bear, a great set of gauzy, off-kilter pop tracks, which I’ve been spinning since his release show Saturday at Blue Moon Diner. (Also in attendance there: Mr. Baby, Paul Curreri and D.B.B. Plays Cups.) Internet searches led me pretty quickly to this music video for the understated "So This is Heaven," directed by Johnny St. Ours, which features a worn-out, vampirish Phillip wandering through a supermarket, perhaps looking for Tru Blood.

So This Is Heaven from Johnny St.Ours on Vimeo.

What else is up this week?

The UVA School of Medicine recently launched Memory Commons, a new website focused on research, diagnosis and patient management for people affected by Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia.

Memory Commons will add to other resources devoted to Alzheimer’s research by UVA, with educational tools such as tutorials, cases and blogs, among others. The site, according to a UVA release, will open during the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Honolulu.

Steven DeKosky, dean of the School of Medicine, is a leading scholar in Alzheimer’s research. C-VILLE recognized him in the 2010 Fame Yearbook as a star in his field.  
 

Charlottesville resident William A. Zampini III allegedly cracked the code for gaming machines at two local truck stops, and now faces charges of grand larceny, trespassing and two counts of destruction of property, reports NVDaily.com.

Zampini was reportedly first caught tampering with machines in 2006 and received a trespassing notice at the time. This time, Zampini stands accused of substantially damaging the machines and stealing over $1,200 worth of items from Love’s and Wilco Travel Plaza. He will appear in Shenandoah County General District Court on July 23.

A Louisa couple, Ronald Jewell, 48, and his wife, Laura Jewell, 49, has been charged with torturing their 8-year-old granddaughter.

According to Culpeper’s Star Exponent, a neighbor called 911 to report the alleged abuse. Louisa sheriff’s Maj. Donald Lowe says that the girl had bruises all over her body. One of her feet was broken and some of her hair had been pulled out. “Her ear had been partially torn. She had blood on her,” he said.

The young girl lived with her grandparents with one sister and two brothers, but they did not seem to have been hurt, said Lowe.  
 

This fall, the 78-year-old Jefferson Park Avenue (JPA) Bridge—long overdue for an overhaul—will finally receive more than lip service.

The renovation of the railroad bridge near Wayside Chicken on the south side of town is slated to start as early as October, so long as the project’s bidding schedule proceeds as planned, according to VDOT spokesman Lou Hatter.

VDOT had pinned Spring 2010 as the start date for construction, but Norfolk-Southern Railroad asked the department to allow for more clearance for its trains, prompting VDOT to revise its blueprints and push back the start, Hatter said.

It wasn’t the first time the JPA Bridge project has been delayed. The project has been on the city’s radar for years, and despite receiving one of the lowest federal sufficiency ratings in the state, the bridge has been repeatedly pushed down the priority list until this year.

It was last inspected by the state in September 2009 and scored a 2 out of 100 on its sufficiency rating, which factors in structural issues and “the level of service provided to the public,” according to VDOT.

Despite the snail’s pace of the project, Peter Hedlund, president of the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association, told C-VILLE that he was satisfied with how both VDOT and city officials have allowed residents a say in the planning process.

“The original plans had been worked out so long ago,” Hedlund said, “that when they went back to it two or three years ago, none of the neighbors who had been involved in the previous plan still lived there, so initially there was this tension over involving the neighborhood. But they have been very accommodating.”

The revamped bridge will be 67’ wide and have sidewalks and bike lanes on both sides. The initial plan featured a bridge width of 78’—similar to the size of the Amtrak bridge on West Main Street—but Fry’s Spring residents worried that such a size would encourage nonresidents to use their neighborhood as a shortcut to Fifth Street.

“It seemed like it could lead to the possibility of the widening of the entire road,” Hedlund said. VDOT, city officials and residents reached a compromise on width in September 2008.

The bridge’s construction is expected to last 16 months and cost an estimated $10.5 million. That figure is about $2.5 million more than what the state projected two years ago, and Hatter attributed the uptick to “a significant increase in the cost of materials,” among other factors.

“It’s possible that when construction comes to bid, it may not come in so high,” he said.

During those 16 months of bridgework, a temporary passageway will be created for pedestrians and bicyclists, which will allow for access to Jefferson Park Avenue Extended during football Saturdays.

A detour will also redirect vehicles, and the goal of the alternative routes is to keep non-local traffic from I-64 out of the neighborhoods and on the main roads, Hatter said.

According to city spokesman Ric Barrick, detours will be mapped out for nonlocals on I-64 and Route 29. Meanwhile, local traffic will be re-routed within nearby neighborhoods. In fact, Barrick said part of the reason that a traffic light was installed at Jefferson Park Avenue and Shamrock Road was to prepare for the 16 months that the JPA Bridge will be out of service.

Today at the Peninsula All-Star camp at Christopher Newport University, Hampton signal caller, and honor-student David Watford become the 20th high school football player to commit to UVA for the 2011 season. Watford chose the Hoos over in-state nemesis Virginia Tech, and the West Virginia Mountaineers.

Watford, who is former UVA star Marques Hagans’ cousin, is the 12th in-state football player to commit to new coach Mike London’s Hoos. Many folks around the state, including me, thought that the Hampton Crabber quarterback would follow former Crabber, and current Hokie starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor to Blacksburg.

David is the first Hampton High player to join the Hoos since Hagans signed in 2001. Both Hagans and Tyrod Taylor were on hand for the announcement Saturday.

February 2, 2011 is the first day that kids can actually sign their letter of intent to play college football at a Division-I school, and at this time their commitment is just really their word. But, since all of these 20 commits have yet to play their senior season in high school, I expect there to be some attrition from this current list of commits.

A lot can happen between now and the National Signing Day.

The dual-threat quarterback is 6-2, 180 pounds and currently has a 3.8 GPA at Hampton.

Go Hoos and welcome aboard David. Beat the Hokies!