Month: January 2011

Categories
The Editor's Desk

Readers respond to previous issues

Big box, big impact
Erika Howsare: I appreciated your “mea culpa” in the “Green Living” column of December 28, about the US29 North corridor.

The US29 North Corridor is in fact our region’s main commercial boulevard, all pluses and minuses aside. Shopping local is indeed a great idea as many of our local area businesses are home-grown and family-run and they offer a whole different menu and feel for consumers. The big national stores are also very important—as along with the known commodities they offer they provide thousands of jobs to our neighbors. Walmart, the biggest of them all, employs more than 1,500 of our neighbors in our region. They are, in fact, the largest business employer in Greater Charlottesville and besides sustaining employment and generating substantial local and state tax revenues, they contribute mightily to many area charities and initiatives.

But back to US29 north in particular. “Workplace 29,” a comprehensive report done in 2007 for the North Charlottesville Business Council of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce by the Free Enterprise Forum, described an astounding economic and fiscal impact of the US29 North Corridor, in Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville. Among the “Workplace 29” report findings are; the US29 corridor:
• supports 20,000 jobs that provide more than $800 million in salaries alone each year;
• generates 45 percent of Albemarle County’s total annual local tax revenue, at an annual $24,700 per acre rate, more than 70 times greater than the county-wide average rate of $355 per acre; and,
• receives less than $1 million annually from Albemarle County in non-school capital improvements.

Our Chamber tracks retail activity, in and near our region, on an ongoing basis. Here’s another number: Retail activity, not including auto sales, amounts to more than $2 billion a year in Albemarle and Charlottesville. That’s a strong foundation for a lot of jobs, thousands, and built by private investment.

I trust you have had a happy holiday season. We did in our city home. We bought a few things online (LL Bean, Amazon, etc.) but overwhelmingly bought our gifts from small, medium and large stores, family-owned, national chain businesses, all of whom employ our neighbors and add vitality to our community, in Downtown, Barracks Road, up US29, here in Greater Charlottesville—all Chamber members of course!

Tim Hulbert
CEO, Charlottesville Regional Chamber
of Commerce

Deer done right
My husband is an avid hunter and believes in only killing animals that he intends to eat. Our family, my husband, myself and our 8-year-old daughter love venison [“Oh deer, now what?” Green Living, December 7]. It is one of the leanest meats you will ever eat. I have found that adding a touch of vinegar (red wine, cider or balsamic) to any recipe using venison improves the taste and removes some of the “game-y” flavor that often disturbs people. This is one of our absolute favorite venison recipes!

Cider Venison Stew over White Cheddar Mashed Potatoes
2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
3 tbs. butter
2 pounds venison (cut into cubes)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 cups frozen peas
6 tbs. flour
2 cups good quality apple cider
1/2 cup organic low sodium beef stock
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
3 pounds red potatoes, chopped
1/2 cup milk
4 tbsp. butter
2 cups shredded white cheddar cheese

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Place a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add olive oil and butter. Season the venison with salt and pepper and add to pot. Brown on all sides, about 6-8 minutes. Add onions, carrots, and cook for 4-5 minutes. Add flour, stir to combine and coat. Add the apple cider, beef stock and vinegar, stir to combine. Add frozen peas. Bring to a boil. Remove from top of stove, cover and place in the oven for 1-1 1/2 hours.

About 45 minutes after placing the venison in the oven, place potatoes in a large saucepot, cover with water by at least 1-2 inches and place over high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, add some salt and cook potatoes until tender, about 15 minutes.

Once the potatoes are tender, drain and return to the pot. Add the milk, butter, and the cheese. Smash with a potato masher to desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and reserve until you are ready to serve.

When the beef is done, remove from the oven. To serve, place a spoonful of potatoes in a wide serving bowl. Make a well in the middle of the potatoes and spoon the beef into the center.

Nickie Schoolcraft
Charlottesville

What the frack?
In response to “Hydrofracking causes forest fracas” in the November 9 issue, first of all, Virginia’s George Washington National Forest is a treasure worth all the protection it can get. One million acres sounds like a lot, but it is a small but very important part of the state. If the U.S. Forest Service is to live up to its name, then it must serve what is best for the overall health and protection of our National Forest. If the natural resources of the GWNF are not cared for and nurtured properly, there will be lasting negative effects for not only the plants and animals that live there but for much of the state itself. Probably the largest continuous forest in the state, GWNF provides many benefits. Providing clean water is the obvious one, but there are others as well. Recreation, scientific studies on plants and animals and just sheer beauty of the land do not sound all that important but it would be hard to imagine visiting the National Forest only to see commercial development. I visited there a few years ago and witnessed some logging going on and it was very disappointing to see the destruction it causes. I realize the trees will regenerate, but something in the land will be lost permanently. As Sarah Francisco and David Hannah alluded to, extensive logging, which requires more roads, will damage the ecosystem of the Forest and will not be a pleasant sight for visitors who visit the Forest for recreation and nature. More logging, drilling and hydrofracking will put undue strain on probably the only quantity of forest left in the Southeast. As Hannah stated, hydrofracking uses a tremendous amount of water, and unknown chemicals are used in the water in the drilling process, which creates potential harm to the drinking water. The GWNF is a great watershed that supplied drinking water to about 250,000. If the Forest Service allows industries to have their way and purge the GWNF, it will be doing the GWNF, citizens, plants and animals a great disservice.

I see the great disruption and destruction of the ecosystem on our beautiful forest due to overuse mentioned in the article as the greatest threat facing our GWNF. It is definitely a treasure worth preserving as pristine as possible. If the U.S. Forest Service really cares about our forest, then they should be willing to support the health of the forest so it will flourish intact for generations to come.

Do Virginians want a place to enjoy nature, camping and viewing wildlife or for viewing commercial energy corporations throughout the forest? It is my hope and for our grndchildren that Virginians choose nature.

Donna Malvin
Williamsburg, Virginia
 

Bob Dylan arrived in New York 50 years ago yesterday. Was something in the water?

Amid all the rumors and untruths that obscure the true story of Bob Dylan, experts and Dylan himself agree agree that the young, curly-haired songwriter born Bob Zimmerman first came to New York on January 24, 1961—which is, as the Village Voice notes, exactly 50 years ago today. (All week at the Sound of the City blog they’ll post a trove of Bob-related materials.) That winter was apparently the coldest in decades, but it wasn’t enough to faze the recent University of Minnesota dropout, who quickly made his way to the Café Wha? and secured a spot playing harmonica with Fred Neil.

The Voice’s blog has a picture of Dylan performing, a couple of weeks after getting to town, with a heartbreaking young banjo player and blues singer named Karen Dalton, and Neil, whose hit "Everybody’s Talkin’" Harry Nilsson would later make eternally famous. And so the story goes, after applying some elbow grease and fine-tuning his Guthrie-indebted backwater affectation, Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan. With all of these fame-bound folks around, something, it seems, was in the water.

The Bob Dylan story—the whole Greenwich Village in the 1960s thing—has done much to convince young artists of today that moving to a big city (and for Charlottesvillians, that city in particular) is an essential step toward greatness. For networking, perhaps. No New York probably would’ve meant no Albert Grossman for Dylan; and the Brill Building sure ain’t in Charlottesville. But when thinking about the "scenes" of yore, from whence many a famous person came, I often return to a book that doesn’t have much to do with art per se: Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy, a great book about what small communities can do.

McKibben notes that historically, that those communities that breed greatness—for lack of a better word—were cut "closer to the human measure." The Florence of Boticelli and Michelangelo had a bite-sized population (by today’s standards) of 40,000. It was when Boston and New York had populations of about 18,000 and 33,000, respectively, that they produced "Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Franklin roughly at the same time." (Read more here.)

He also notes that communities take many different shapes and sizes. The Greenwich Village of the early 1960s took one shape and one size, perhaps a small group in a huge sampling, and housed the brightest minds of a generation. The brightest of those may be Dylan’s. But as the Village Voice celebrates one of its city’s success stories, it’s worth asking: Would lightning have struck Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, Minnesota (today’s pop. 85,000), had he stayed there?

New York or bust?

Bob Dylan, "Talkin’ New York" Gerde’s Folk City, New York, April 1962

Karen Dalton’s "Something on Your Mind"

Morgan Harrington’s parents mark anniversary of daughter’s discovery in Albemarle farm

January 26 marks one year since the body of Morgan Harrington was discovered on a 750-acre Albemarle County farm. To commemorate the occasion, Dan and Gil Harrington, parents of the slain 20-year-old Virginia Tech student, will meet tomorrow with reporters at various significant sites—from the Copeley Road bridge, where she was last reportedly seen alive, to a remote corner of Anchorage Farm, where her body was found more than three months after she disappeared.

"This will be the first time Dan and I have been allowed on the site," writes Gil Harrington in an e-mail, "and we are grateful for the opportunity." Temperatures tomorrow may reach 50 degrees, a marked difference compared to last year’s chilly temperatures and light snowfall on-site. Read C-VILLE’s coverage of Harrington’s disappearance and death here.

George Allen launches “American comeback” with Senate reelection bid

"You know what we’ve been getting from Washington?" a familiar voice asks over images of the U.S. Capitol. "Overspending, finger-pointing, and government mandates." In a two-and-a-half-minute YouTube announcement, Republican George Allen—the former governor and senator who lost a reelection bid to Democrat Jim Webb by 9,000 votes and one "macaca" remark too many—announced his 2012 reelection bid.

In the video, Allen declares it "time for an American comeback," and reads a list of qualifications for the Senate seat occupied by Webb—the repeal and replacement of a "government-mandated health care experiment," as well as a line-item veto and a "balanced budget amendment." Allen previously incorporated both the line-tem veto and budget amendment as platforms in his 2006 campaign; he mentioned both in a February 2006 presentation to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

"Hire me on for six years," finishes Allen, "and I pledge to work hard restoring freedom, personal responsibility and opportunity for all." Watch Allen’s video below:

At RedState.com, Erick Erickson said the Republican party needs "fresh faces." Erickson also mentioned that Allen and Tea Party activists might not see eye-to-eye, given Allen’s ties (via his campaign consultant) to a Republican consulting firm that lobbied to annihilate a bill by Senator Chuck Hagel to regulate federal mortgage finance corporation Freddie Mac.

At FoxNews.com, however, a few readers chimed in support for Allen’s reelection bid.

"Now that Virginia has flipped back from being a dubious purple state to red again, I think that Virginians are ready to reelect George Allen," writes PatriotFromCT. "Sound Conservative principles and leadership are in vogue again."

Read C-VILLE’s previous George Allen coverage here, then chime in below: Do you think Virginia needs another six years of George Allen?

Local food in the doldrums

Around now, when we wake daily to a pale and chilly world, it’s tough to stay connected to our eat-local ideals. There’s nothing to speak of in the garden (see: disappointing cold-frame crops). There’s no CSA and no farmer’s market. And the local stuff at even the most local-farmer-friendly stores is really limited.

This is when an industrious summer and fall food preserver is feeling pretty good about herself: selecting jars of tomatoes or green beans from her basement shelf; cracking open jams and jellies from the heady days of June; pulling out squash and potatoes from a root cellar. I didn’t do much preserving in 2010, and it’s now that I feel the pain. No salsa! No pepper jam! And it looks like I gave away all the pickles.

We’ve been way into Indian cooking the last couple of years, and one of its advantages is that it can be very appropriate for wintertime eating–all those lentil-based dishes, with most of the flavor coming from ground spices. Recipes often call for hot peppers, which we have in the freezer, or not-too-out-of-season carrots and cauliflower.

The book that can make a locavore buy tomatoes in January.

The newest cuisine craze around here, though, is Mexican. I got a couple of Diana Kennedy’s cookbooks for my birthday and lordy, are these recipes good! And, well, full of summer produce. We found ourselves buying fresh tomatoes and jalapenos last week to make a bean soup; you couldn’t get more out of season than that. Perhaps we’ll have to build a greenhouse.

Otherwise, we’ve been making potato soups, pizza (with sauce from canned tomatoes), cabbage dishes, roasted turnips and yams…stuff like that. And we’re still getting one or two eggs a day from our chickens.

How are you making it through the winter eating season?

Categories
Living

Street, meet gallery

Reko Rennie’s (pictured) graffiti installation opens at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection this week. Rennie and Native American Artist Frank Buffalo Hyde will also collaborate on a mural, which will be unveiled at The Bridge/PAI in February.

High drama was in the air at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection last week when I went to preview an installation by the Aboriginal artist Reko Rennie. Rennie had never worked with the spray paints the museum had provided for him, and the colors weren’t rich enough to cover a black base. Incidentally, Rennie had already covered one of the Kluge-Ruhe’s gallery spaces in a claustrophobic black and hung the walls with diamond-shaped stencils.

O.K., so “high drama” is a bit of an overstatement. But if you’ve been on the Downtown Mall in recent weeks and checked out the two big, pink kangaroos plastered to the inside of an empty storefront window—a bit of mystery marketing for the show, courtesy of CommonPlace Arts—you already know that Rennie’s work is pretty damn dramatic. More dramatic than Rennie, at least, who seemed happy to wait another couple of days for the right spray paint to arrive.

Stephen Gilchrist, an Australian curator studying in New York who is collaborating with Rennie for the project, said that the the Kluge-Ruhe had been looking for a young, urban artist (not a photographer) who reflected the concerns of aboriginals living in Australian cities. Rennie grew up in the suburbs west of Melbourne, where an early interest in graffiti—which fit in with other interests like hip hop and break dancing—put him at odds with cops. “As a teenager, it’s important to express your identity,” says Rennie, whose father is also an artist.

It just turns out that the identity that he was trying to express was particularly complicated. “A lot of people have the idea of Aboriginals walking around with the lap-lap”—like a loin cloth—“and a spear. Whatever. There’s a real diversity among Aboriginal people. I identify as an Aboriginal dude,” he says, but more so, “I identify as an artist who incorporates my background and expresses it in my work.”

Rennie, who is 36, became a full-time artist in 2009 after spending years as a journalist, many with Melbourne’s The Age. Since then, he’s won an Australian Council of the Arts residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. To have started as a graffiti artist, to have no formal training, and now to be painting (with spray paint, no less) around the crown molding inside a property owned by a noted American institution, says Rennie, “is big.” “I have so much more of a voice with art than I ever did with journalism.”

“That’s the world we live in now,” says Gilchrist, the curator. Where once, only the work of old masters was worthy of museum exhibition, “All cultural production is valued for its own intrinsic worth. That’s a positive of globalization.”

The installation at Kluge-Ruhe (presuming the suitable paints ever got there) combines the mass-produced neons of Andy Warhol and the bold, imperfect patterns of traditional Aboriginal art known to regular Kluge-Ruhe visitors. Gilchrist calls it post-graffiti art, which in recent years has gone from the street to the gallery, and whose central concerns include disaffected youth and cultural invisibility. The dizzying diamond patterns beneath the kangaroo that dominate the installation refer to one of four male symbols in the Kamilaroi language group.

Those patterns, as well as the “patter” of national discourse surrounding the native peoples of America and Australia, inform the installation’s title, “Patternation.” As part of Rennie’s residency, he will collaborate with Frank Buffalo Hyde, a Native American (Nez Perce/Onondaga) artist living in Pittsburgh, who similarly combines traditional craft with modern forms in fresh expressions of modern native identity.

Rennie, Hyde and UVA’s Dean Dass speak at a symposium called “Beyond Walls,” in room 153 of UVA’s Campbell Hall at 9:30am on Friday, January 28. “Patternation” opens with a reception on January 28 at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, from 5:30-7:30pm.

Now the Dave Matthews Band is not taking off 2011, after all

Before starting an extended run that would end with two nights at the John Paul Jones Arena, the Dave Matthews Band announced that it’d take the year off from touring in 2011. "We wanted to let everyone know that after twenty years of consecutive touring, Dave Matthews Band will be taking 2011 off," read the release. "We feel lucky that our tours are a part of so many people’s lives, and wanted to give everyone as much notice as possible."

But it turns out this sentimental sendoff was but a puff of hot air—or kind of, at least. Details are yet to come, but the band posted a message on its website late last week that read, "2011 is our 20th anniversary as a band and we want to celebrate by playing music together." In lieu of touring, the top-grossing act of the milennium’s first decade will plan "four multi-day, multi-artist music events that will take place this summer." Save-the-dates will go to fans first.

Read more here.

To tour or not to tour?

NEW C-VILLE COVER STORY: 2010 Health Annual

Charlottesville’s a community that, on some levels, takes great care of itself. But that’s not the end of the story, as we hope to point out in this, our 2011 Health Annual. Our community—like every community—also encompasses illness, lack of medical coverage, and the ongoing hard work of caring for each other, whether that means the search for a high-tech cure or the compassion to help a stranger get in shape. We’ve tried to find some of the more fascinating corners of the local health scene, and in the spirit of the new year, we also offer some advice on eating well, exercising and a few other healthful topics. Here’s to wholeness; here’s to healing. Now it’s up to you to make the connections. Read the cover story here, and don’t forget to leave comments.

Virginia Looks to Avoid Fourth Straight Loss Saturday Against Georgia Tech

Virginia returns to the friendly confines of the John Paul Jones Arena Saturday to play ACC foe Georgia Tech at Noon. Georgia Tech is 0-5 on the road this season, and Tech is 11-18 all-time in Charlottesville.

Georgia Tech has won 19 of the last 27 games against Virginia in the series. The Rambling Wreck is 11-6 against the Wahoos under embattled coach Paul Hewitt.

Glen Rice, Jr. has seven straight games in double figures, and in the last two games he is averaging 22.5 ppg. Rice has shot an incredible 72.7% from the field in those last two contests. Tech’s leading scorer is Iman Shumpert, and he has six games this season where he has scored more than 20 points including a 30 point game against the Tar Heels.

Virginia has lost three straight games, and comes into the contest with a 10-8 record, and they are 1-3 in ACC play.

Seven of Virginia’s 13 players are first years, and the young guns on Tony Bennett’s roster have struggled in ACC play. K.T. Harrell is shooting over 50% from the field, and he is averaging 10.2 ppg.

Prediction? Hoos 67 Rambling Wreck 77. Go Hoos! 

3-Game Losing Steak Over! Hoos Win 72-64 Over Georgia Tech

The three-game losing streak is finished! Virginia did not play perfectly, but the Hoos shot the ball much better, and played excellent defense while defeating Georgia Tech 72-64 Saturday afternoon at the John Paul Jones Arena.

Mustapha Farrakhan played a splendid game for Virginia as he finished 6/10 from the field, and 9/11 at the charity-stripe. Farrakhan scored 23 points, and was a force out there on defense for the Hoos as well. Freshman K.T. Harrell chipped in 17 points, and Joe Harris added 11 in 32 minutes .

Virginia (11-8, 2-3) had 10 turnovers to Georgia Tech’s 11, and the Hoos played with a great deal of composure on both ends of the court.

Georgia Tech was led by Illinois native Iman Shumpert who scored 19 points on 5/12 shooting. The Yellow Jackets only went to the line 15 times making 10, as the Hoos were there much more often finishing 22/32 for 67%.

The Rambling Wreck had won two straight ACC games including a 35 point victory over Wake Forest this past Wednesday. Tech falls to 9-9 on the season, and 0-6 on the road. I think that this will be the last season for embattled Tech coach Paul Hewitt in Atlanta if Tech does not make the NCAA Tournament.

Virginia returns to the hardwood Thursday as rival Maryland comes to town for a seven o’clock contest. Go Hoos!