Month: December 2010

Cream cheese and the heartbreak hotel

Whenever I travel, I get the feeling that I’ve left the little bubble in which I normally live and entered a bigger, more chaotic world. (Well, no kidding—that’s kind of the definition of travel.) In many ways, this is exciting and mind-opening and fun. In terms of green living, though, it’s mostly just disconcerting.

Our recent trip to Florida was like that. It involved more plastic cups, takeout containers, and bottled O.J. than I’d like to admit—the predictable detritus of life on the road. We saw billboards reminding Floridians not to water their lawns so damn much, and we drove past giant landfills that were only hills in sight.

We also stayed in hotels two nights. The hospitality industry is not known for its greenness, though it’s making some nominal efforts in that direction. One place had posted a sign about how to be a greener guest—using your towel more than once, etc.

Meanwhile, down in the lobby, the continental breakfast consisted of a zillion little packets of creamer, Froot Loops and Cheerios, styrofoam plates, etc. I noticed on the packets of cream cheese the following message was printed: "Made with renewable energy! Find out how at creamcheese.com."

It does appear, upon reading said website, that some of the cream cheese factory’s power comes from renewable sources. Great! And ironic, to be pointed to such information via a single-use packet containing a bit more cream cheese than anyone could ever fit on one bagel.

Anyway, it’s all part of the fun of the trip. Anyone else have a green dilemma while traveling this Thanksgiving?

Maurice Jones named Charlottesville City Manager

Who could take one more hour of the suspense, anyways? Certainly not Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner. An hour before Mayor Dave Norris was slated to make an announcement at City Hall, Werner released an e-mail announcing the official appointment of Maurice Jones as Charlottesville’s new city manager.

According to Werner, Norris met with city staff this morning to share the news. Details after the photo:

Norris named Jones (left) Charlottesville’s new city manager this morning at City Hall

Werner called Jones a "huge team-builder." "He’s patient, objective, and he listens," Werner told C-VILLE. "I think he tries to take all the accounts in order, and tries to take appropriate actions based on all feedback."

Following the resignation of previous manager Gary O’Connell, Jones—then assistant city manager—was appointed interim manager while the city formalized its search process for the position. Charlottesville awarded Richmond-based Springsted Incorporated a $16,000 contract to assist with the search, which yielded dozens of candidates.

The pool recently narrowed to three this week, then dropped to two when Columbia, Missouri’s assistant city manager said she was not in salary negotiations with Charlottesville. The office of East Providence, Rhode Island City Manager Richard Brown, the last candidate vying against Jones for the job, said Brown was on vacation this week.

City officials recently announced they had selected a new manager, but remained mum on the individual while salary and benefits were negotiated. The position was advertised with a salary of $165,000 to $190,000. O’Connell retired at an annual salary of $175,000.

Jones served the last two years as assistant city manager. Prior to that position, he worked as a director of development at the Miller Center for three years, served as the city’s director of communications and was a sportscaster for NBC29.

Asked about the difference between knowing the position and knowing the city itself, Werner (who served on a panel that interviewed the top three candidates for the job) said there "wasn’t much difference between persons who had a lot of experience at the position and Maurice."

"At the end of the day Maurice knows the ground," said Werner. "And he can hit the ground running."

 

 

Turf field on the way for Charlottesville High School

It looks like Charlottesville High School is finally on its way to getting turf fields, just as soon as the school division raises the money. The Daily Progress reports that, after a year of silence, the school board has recommitted to going forward with the project.

An anonymous donor has pledged $300,000—about half of the projected cost for the field. The donor has told the school that if it can raise $150,000, the pledged amount could be increased. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board has also recommended for City Council to put aside $100,000 in the Capital Improvement Program for 2012.

Monticello High School was the first school to have turf installed. Western Albemarle and Albemarle high schools are raising funds and are potentially slated to have the artificial grass installed in January.

Click here to read about the local debate over the safety of artificial fields.
 

Maurice Jones will make $170,000 as Charlottesville city manager

After plans for a noon announcement of Charlottesville’s new city manager were scrapped, city officials dispersed from City Hall and reporters returned to their desks to await a call from the new city manager, Maurice Jones. The man himself was a few blocks away at The Nook, where he was finishing a chicken club wrap—"one of my favorites," he told C-VILLE Weekly shortly after.

In addition to sharing his excitement and enthusiasm for a new post—one that will start him at an annual salary of $170,000—Jones talked about his edge in the job search, and how his family will celebrate the news. More after the photo.

Maurice Jones says he did not anticipate a gig as city manager when he left City Hall and his former job as communications director years ago.

Jones, who beat out more than 80 applicants for the gig (including a few other city managers), said being a local gave him an advantage over other candidates.

“I know this town, I know the people in this town, I know the folks within our city organization," Jones told C-VILLE. "I’ve been around long enough to know what the issues are and how to tackle the issues."

Starting with the budget, predicted to face an increase in expenditures that barely outpaces an increase in tax revenues. "The No. 1 issue will be the budget," said Jones, who mentioned the city’s capital needs, as well as the outstanding demand for a community water supply plan. Jones serves on the board of the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, as does former city manager Gary O’Connell, now director of the Albemarle County Service Authority. Jones said he had not yet heard from O’Connell regarding his new job, but the announcement was made "only a few hours ago."

In a prepared statement, Mayor Dave Norris said Jones is known "as being fair and personally involved in any challenge, not only in city hall but also throughout the community."

"I expect that will be what this Council and future councils appreciate about his leadership style and what the community will come to admire," said Norris.

As for his plans to celebrate his new gig? Jones, a father of three, said he plans to take his family to dinner at the Brick Oven restaurant.

What’s going on this weekend?

There’s a killer local double-bill tonight at the Jefferson Theater. Central Virginia’s leading ecorockers Trees on Fire headline with sustainable, tightly-hemmed jams and socially conscious lyrics. Openers are Garage curator Sam Bush’s consistently great indie rock squad, The Hill and Wood.

 The Hill and Wood’s Sam Bush sings for you on a rooftop and in a church.

Saturday: Charlottesville is on the list of many cities hosting Help-Portrait, where, in the spirit of the holidays, generous local photographers offer their time, expertise and equipment to produce quality portraits for the less fortunate. The event’s four goals are as follows: Find someone in need; take their portrait; print their portrait and deliver their portrait. That’s tomorrow from 9am to 9pm at The Haven. Nice idea!

Read more about Help-Portrait here.

Not only is today a special day for art because it’s the first Friday of December, but the city announced a campaign today called Buy Art, Give Art. Some local galleries will be handing out buttons emblazoned with the campaign’s logo when you purchase a piece of local art—all in an attempt to raise awareness about purchasing art. Check out the campaign’s website here. Another nice idea!

The power of art compels you!

Tomorrow night at the luxe recording shop known as The Sound Studios, on Grady Avenue, some of the region’s best tunesmiths join forces for Songwriters in the Round. Sarah White, Rob Cheatham, Adam Long and Pat Marrah play. Doors at 7:30, music at 8pm. And if you can’t make it, here’s some good news: You can tune into 106.1 The Corner for a live broadcast.

 Check out the vintage graphics at the beginning of this Sarah White session.

What else is up this weekend?

Categories
Living

Winter 2010: Using her words

 On a rainy Tuesday morning, a group of five students—one man and four women, all of varying ages—stand on pieces of paper littered across the floor of Speak! Language Center’s main classroom. The papers signify different locales, like la discoteca, la stazione and il bar, and the students are meant to hop from one to the other, describing their journey. Their instructor, Christina Ball, looks on. Dressed in jeans, a sil-ver sparkly twin set and 3" heels with a fur ball at the peep toe, she looks more like their peer than their teacher. And, that’s part of her approach. 

For Ball, the joy of language is tied deeply to the comforts of home and family. 

“My earliest memory,” she says, “is of hearing my grandmother speak in Italian, tomatoes cooking and my grandfather playing guitar.” It was that mix of music, food and language that prompted a college trip to Rome, where she fell more deeply in love with the culture and decided to pursue a degree in Italian language and literature. 

From there, Ball spent the next six years teaching at Yale and Wake Forest. When she began working at UVA, she realized Charlottesville could benefit from a full-service cul-ture center. In 2004, she launched Ecco Italy in the Main Street Market. Five years later, the business went from a one-woman, one-language operation to an 18-instructor, 10-language culture center. She “repotted”—as she calls it—the business in the Glass Building Downtown and renamed it Speak! Language Center, to include the languages she’d eventually add. 

It was a gutsy move, taking a business model that, these days, is typically found online, and bringing it back to the classroom. But Ball fancies herself somewhat of a rebel, especially considering that most people with a Ph.D. use their degree to write or research for a living.

“I’ve always been one to think outside the box,” she says. “I just can’t give in to the Rosetta Stone approach.”

 

Buford Middle School garden project gets $25,000

On October 22, before a unanimous vote to merge Walker Upper Elementary and Buford Middle, the Charlottesville School Board sipped hibiscus lemonade and snacked on bruschetta. Ingredients for the meal were nurtured by the students who tend the City Schoolyard Garden at Buford, launched last year.

Next year, the board may have more to munch on. Today, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF) named the City Schoolyard Garden recipient of a $25,000 Prana award. The grant, according to a press release from CACF, will help expand the school’s "outdoor organic garden classroom."

"In addition to teaching the benefits of growing one’s own food, the garden provides an opportunity for classroom-to-garden instruction for ESL, English, Math, Science and Art classes," says the release.

The Prana Fund was established by Tom and Karyn Dingledine, who also created an endowed scholarship at James Madison University and an art scholarship at Wake Forest University.

 

Categories
Living

Winter 2010: Far afield

Julia Thomas wears a yellow and black plaid coat from Glad Rags ($56, 1923 Commonwealth Dr., 979-1816); a Rag + Bone Somerset dress from Elsie Garden ($408, 109 S. First St., 979-2888); black tights from Gap ($12.50, Fashion Square Mall, 973-5026); black rhinestone earrings from Bittersweet ($24, 106 E. Main St., 977-5977) and Pink Studio Cassandra heels from Duo ($99, 101 Elliewood Ave., 979-1212).

 

 

 

 

 

SOFTEN THE EDGES

Pascale Torres wears a Knitted Dove ruffled plaid coat from Bittersweet ($144), a Trina Turk Hansel vest from Duo ($188); a black and gold Lewis Cho top from Spring Street ($189; 107 W. Main St., 975-1200); two nikki-b beaded necklaces from Elsie Garden ($82 and $96); a yellow gold and sterling ring with black jade and a diamond by Lee Marraccini from Angelo ($1,000, 220 E. Main St., 971-9256); Inhabit leggings ($290) and Pour La Victoire Deon boots from Scarpa ($330, 2114 Barracks Rd., 296-0040). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUILD ON THE BASICS

Lille Smallwood wears a Tulle coat from Finch ($92, 1501 University Ave., 244-0050); a Theme embellished tunic dress from Duo ($74, 101 Elliewood Ave., 979-1212); navy blue tights from Gap ($12.50) and Biviel studded ankle boots from Scarpa ($190).

 

 

Categories
Living

Winter 2010: From Here to Maternity

 One of the biggest decisions to make before getting pregnant is how and whether you’ll continue to work and at what intensity. Maybe this is an easy, all-or-nothing answer for you (or maybe you don’t have a choice), and you’ll either continue to work full time or you’ll stay at home full time. 

If it’s the former, your professional life will be rocked quite considerably. One, you won’t be bringing your A game to the office for quite a while—it’s impossible to do so when you’re getting two to four hours of sleep at a stretch. Secondly, you just won’t be as enthralled as you were pre-baby with spreadsheets or sales calls. You just won’t, at least for while. You’ll be thinking about the baby, worrying about the baby, cooing about the baby and perhaps pumping breast milk for the baby when you used to take afternoon coffee with your coworkers. 

Having a newborn means major professional upheaval in either case. You need to prepare logistically and emotionally for this huge life change before you decide on being a working mommy or a stay-at-home one.

If your work choices are more flexible—you can cut back to part time or work from home, and these scenarios are attractive to you—hooray! Working a few hours a day or a few days a week, or simply cozying up to your own com-puter and not having to shower and schlep to a cubicle every-day, can be effective ways of finding more work and baby balance in your life. 

But don’t think that because you work from home you aren’t going to need some childcare.

 

The work from home folk tale

 

Maybe you’ve heard of one of these mythical moms who is able to keep the professional fires burning remotely from home while bouncing a happy baby on her hip. She takes conference calls while breastfeeding and pushes out tons of e-mails and paperwork in her cashmere robe while baby sleeps peacefully nearby. Or she spends a blissful day with baby and then happily jumps on her computer in the evening to get a good six hours of productive work done after baby goes down easily for the night.  

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this person doesn’t exist. Or if she does—if you actually know someone like this and you’ve seen her in person and she doesn’t sport zombie eyes and suffer from narcolepsy—she’s an anomaly, at best. 

Here’s the proof and it involves some math: Newborn babies need to eat about every two hours. If you’re breastfeeding, it can take up to 45 minutes for baby to slurp it all down. Then you have to burp the baby, change the baby and lull the baby back to sleep. Occasionally, you’ll also want to spend some time nuzzling and playing with the baby. This leaves you, at most, a little less than an hour to brush your own teeth, pee and get your own abbreviated shut-eye before the next feeding cycle starts. And remember, this routine goes on 24 hours a day. 

Oh eventually, after a few months, your baby will start going longer between feedings—four and then five and then six hours—but you’ll want those stretches to come at night, so you can sleep! If baby is napping reliably a few hours at a time during the day, that means he’s not sleeping reliably a few hours at a time at night, so if you’re expecting to work during long afternoon naps, think again. They either won’t happen predictably or, if they do, it will be because you’ve been up half the night and often won’t be able to spell your own name the next day let alone intelligently run a webcast conference call from your home office.  

Working from home can be a great option, but you’d better line up some childcare assistance in that case, too. Or be a superhero. 

Katherine Ludwig is a lawyer turned freelance writer and mother of two who thinks passing the Bar was cake next to breastfeeding and potty training.

 

Categories
Living

Winter 2010: Like Sisters

 Recently, I overheard one woman ask a friend to help her recruit volunteers for the list of duties at her daughter’s swim club. 

“You need to make this a Google document.” 

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“I’ll help you.”

They sat on the same side of the table and the one friend who was good with e-mail and documents helped the one who was not. It was lovely. Indeed, it’s beautiful when you know what you need, and you know when you’re needed. When I was young, I knew Lisa was the best girl to go biking with. She wouldn’t be afraid of the bumpy trail that ran behind the school. On life’s buffet, Lisa is the granola, crumbled up and full of stuff that’s good for you. She’s over by the frozen yogurt machine. 

Permit me to put your friends on the buffet and group them—just as you might put all the desserts on the card table off to one side, so that when it’s time for dessert, your guests won’t miss the full array of choices from chocolate chips to coconut cake. Get yourself a clean plate and dig into your intuitive hunger for a variety of friends. 

Talents: These people have skills and expertise. You find their abilities uncommonly attractive. You mean it when you find yourself saying, “You’re amazing!” Not only do these friends have a little booth at the farmer’s market to showcase gourmet cupcakes, they also have major UVA donors in their cell phone. If “cool” was an elective in high school, these people would place out. It’s O.K. to ask their advice or their help. Let them dream with you about your next big idea because they can go there. They dream, too. They don’t invite you to concerts; they invite you to their concerts. They tend to have a strong sense of self, and they’re, you know, doing “their thing.” It’s inspirational. They are the salsa with the real roasted corn and the fresh cilantro and garlic and the homemade tortilla chips. So hip, so tasty!

Tenderness: You will cry with this person even when you think you’re not a crier. This is your crockpot maca-roni and cheese. This is not the back-slapping, marathon-running lady-warrior (no offense, roasted turkey). You can be vulnerable—totally—with this person. She’s got sticking power. I called my mac-n-cheese when my brother died. I was wailing, and her tenderness with me extended far back into the years. Because she had also grown up with my brother, I had nothing to explain. 

Time: Oh, blessed are the companions who will go on long walks with you. Do you remember who watched Beaches with you? This is your friend who will go all over the mall with you to find an outfit or a costume or for no particular reason at all. Time will fly with this person, but it’s O.K., and it’s easy, and you’ll make easy plans for next week with this, your cherry yum yum. Yes, she’s a throwback to church potlucks, and she’s going to be a great old lady, and she’ll have time to spend with you then, too. 

Truth: Wasn’t that an insightful question? No one has asked you that before. Beware—your truth crusader is going to give you “the look” when you speak aloud the delusions you’ve been playing on your mental iPod. She’ll let you trash someone, but she won’t let you go on and on. She might even say something like, “Open your eyes!” What a gift she is. She’s your plate of pickles, a little vinegar for proper digestion. Pickles are not for everyone, but then, the truth isn’t either, is it? You’ll find yourself calling her when you need a proper judge or critic or compass. 

Is it possible that you’ve got friends that are talented, tender, available and honest, all rolled into one delicious flavor? Of course. However, having an assortment of dishes gives you sweet and savory, great opportunities for connection and strength, humor and wisdom. That’s your network, your tapestry, your phone tree, your posse, your Sunday dinner. Call it what you will, but keep it strong and updated, fresh and tasty, and never forget what you signed up to bring!

Denise Stewart is a local writer, actor and business lady who loves her screenwriting group and drinks with twists.