This is it. On Friday, December 21, we’re all going to die. Our Christmas gifts, 401(k)s, and unexpressed love will go unclaimed. It’d be highly irresponsible for me to advise liquidating your bank accounts, but I can suggest liquidating a pearl or two from your wine cellar (or sock drawer) to enjoy with loved ones—and as many carbs as you can manage—on Doomsday. Even if we wake to utter normalcy on Saturday, you’ll have made a memory and can restock the cellar in time for the next apocalyptic prophecy. Here’s what some of our area’s winos plan to go down drinking.
Dean Andrews, Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards: “A cocktail we call The Kiss Royale—Pippin Hill Sparkling Blanc de Blanc, pomegranate liqueur and pomegranate seeds.”
Jake Busching, Grace Estates Winery: “A 2005 vintage of 12-year Glenlivet Single Malt that I received as a gift and still haven’t opened.”
Bill Curtis, Tastings of Charlottesville: “To quote Eliot—some say the world will end in fire, some say ice. If it’s fire, then I’ll need to cool down with Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Auslese 1999. If it’s ice, then Domaine Romanée-Conti 1990 ought to keep me warm just a couple of seconds more.”
Scott Elliff, DuCard Vineyards: “DuCard Vineyards Petit Verdot 2009—it’s long been sold out but I have a few remaining in my personal cellar, er, underground bunker. And since we’re not exactly sure what time it’s all supposed to end, guess I’ll have it for breakfast.”
Matthieu Finot, King Family Vineyards: “I’d overnight my bottle of Domaine Jean Jacques Confuron Romanée-Saint-Vivant 1998 (I worked there that vintage) from my cellar in France.”
Richard Hewitt, Keswick Hall: “I plan on breaking into Bill Curtis’ private cellar and drinking the first bottle I can get my hands on! ‘The Mayans made me do it’ has never been used in an affirmative defense.”
Christine Iezzi, The Country Vintner: “Several bottles of Billecart-Salmon Rosé Champagne.”
John Kiers, Ox-Eye Vineyards: “I will be in the smokehouse at Wheatlands sipping expensive champagne and eating oysters, of course!”
Dave Kostelnik, Feast!: “When I go out, it will be with a bottle of aged Virginia wine —a very big bottle—the magnum of Barboursville Octagon 2004 we received for our wedding.”
Richard Leahy, author of Beyond Jefferson’s Vines: “Götterdämmerung (twilight of the gods), a Cabernet Franc-dominant Meritage blend by Valhalla Vineyards. It’s forward, plush, and hedonistic. The back label reads: ‘When you hear that enemy missiles will impact in 20 minutes, this is the wine you will want to be drinking.’”
Pamela Margaux, Margaux & Company: “Champagne, champagne, and—just in case the world ends—more champagne.”
Nicolas Mestre, Williams Corner Wine: “Ulysse Collin Champagne Extra Brut Blanc de Noirs 2008 from the Second degorgement [see Winespeak 101]. I could easily die with a glass of that in my hand.”
Luca Paschina, Barboursville Vineyards: “Believe it or not, it is both my daughter’s and my birthday, therefore I have a lot to celebrate—Marchesi di Barolo 1961 Barolo.”
Emily Pelton, Veritas Vineyard and Winery: “A bottle of Didier Dagueneau Pouilly-Fumé Silex. I don’t have it in my cellar, but my Dad has it in his—and we will happily sit and share this wine together, I am sure.”
Kay Pfaltz, Basic Necessities: “I’ll be taking a candlelit Solstice walk with a few pagan friends and a bottle of Château Musar 1972 from my cellar.”
Andy Reagan, Jefferson Vineyards: “36-year-old Cardhu Single Malt would make a good lifecap.”
Elizabeth and Tony Smith, Afton Mountain Vineyards: “We’re gonna be drinking Champion beer at the grand opening! Once we are headed for the fallout shelter, we’ll choose Pierre Gonon Saint-Joseph 2008—one of our favorites from our hiking trip through the Rhône.”
Rachel Stinson, Stinson Vineyards: “Cardinal Point 2012 Green (a blend of Chardonnay and Petit Manseng)—I’ve been really into Vinho Verde this winter.”
WINESPEAK 101 Disgorgement (n.): The process of removing the lees (deposits of yeasts and other materials) from champagne (or sparkling wine made in the champagne method) by freezing a small amount of the liquid in the bottle’s neck and then removing the plug of ice that contains the lees.
Local governments are repositories for vast amounts of useful information that often never see the light of day. The City of Charlottesville’s new Geographic Information System web viewer changes that.
Remember the first time you Google mapped your own house? The city’s GIS viewer works a bit like that. Users can search properties by street address, owner’s name, zoning ID, or by a parcel’s sale date or price. The results are easy to navigate, a clean and simple map with additional layers to choose from like demographics, hydrography, economic development, and transportation. GIS maps emerged years ago, often as complex layered display interfaces designed for professional use.
Jamie White, a real estate agent with Montague, Miller & Co. who specializes in helping first-time buyers, praised the tool for streamlining complex information.
“Users can get a great visual of things like Charlottesville’s school zones, fire stations, city limits, flood zones, trails and topography,” White said. “The site is easy to navigate and saves a lot of time by consolidating all this information in one spot.”
According to Chris Gensic, a city park and trail planner, Geographic Information Systems have been improving efficiencies across the board for decades.
“There are so many industries in which GIS is completely changing everything,” Gensic said. “We have data on hard drives, but the real power lies in the computer’s ability to analyze and mix data sets.”
Layers of data are a key component of the city’s GIS web viewer, which draws on a vast number of public records scattered across city offices. Led by a cross-departmental team and supported by Worldview Solutions, a Richmond-based GIS consulting firm, development of the application took nine months to complete, at a cost of just under $30,000. It went live in the spring and can be accessed through the Charlottesville website homepage.
“The GIS web viewer opens a wealth of knowledge to people who don’t interpret maps all day,” Gensic said. “Now you don’t need software or a special skill set. More staff in each department can pull up the information.”
For example, he said, a Public Works employee can now pull up a map of the city and find a sewer pipe without having to wait or sift through other layers of irrelevant information. GIS will also allow fire and rescue, police, and other emergency service providers to reach people in need more efficiently by pinpointing properties, water lines, and access roads.
In addition to improving government efficiency, the tool allows citizens to gain new understanding of public and private properties.
White said she encourages potential homeowners to use the tool to check tax assessment values before purchasing. It’s also attractive to homebuyers, she said, because they can clearly see a property’s proximity to services they value like schools, hospitals, and walking trails.
“Looking at aerial maps really gives you a good idea of the area where you want to buy,” she said.
Gensic said house hunters aren’t the only ones who can benefit from the map viewer. When local development concerns come up, he said, residents can use GIS to “do some homework” and research the details on their own.
“When a piece of wooded land turns into a subdivision, people fear that a park has been destroyed,” he said. “Now users can turn on a map and check to see who the property owner is—whether an area is public parkland or simply a wooded area on private property. They can check for themselves before going to City Hall.”
In a town where citizens take an active role in the wellbeing of their community, universal access to local information—especially property and planning data—can improve the dialogue between public and private groups tremendously.
“It’s the difference between perception and reality,” Gensic said. “Everyone has access to the same knowledge, and that’s empowerment.”—Elizabeth Derby
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first film in writer-director Peter Jackson’s three-part Hobbit series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book. That means each film—and this one is just shy of three hours—tells about 100 pages of story, provided each film sticks to the events contained within those pages. Before we get any more meta, I’ll be straight: I didn’t like The Hobbit as a book. I did, however, enjoy The Fellowship of the Ring when I read it, and that film is my favorite in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series. His first Hobbit film, on the other hand, is just irritating.
Right off the bat, The Hobbit suffers from a serious case of “the cutes.” Sure, the book is considered a children’s story, but—maybe because of the out-and-out seriousness of Lord of the Rings—I didn’t expect the cutes. Gimli the dwarf and goofy hobbits Pippin and Merry from LOTR have more weight than any character in this screen version of The Hobbit.
Even the elves are cute. Hugo Weaving, the master of the straight face, again shows up as Elrond, and the first thing we see on his mug is a big, dumb smirk. Then there are the logic gaps in The Hobbit that seem more egregious than any logic gap in the other stories. For example, there’s a moment when Gandalf the wizard (a fine Ian McKellen), 13 dwarves and our hobbit hero, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), are literally up a tree to hide from orcs out to kill them. Gandalf sends word, via butterfly, to some giant eagles that they need help. The eagles swoop in, gather up our heroes, kill some orcs, and save the day.
So why not have giant eagles pick everyone up at the story’s start, take the group to Rivendell (where the elves live) to have a map translated (a plot point), and then pick them up and fly them to the Lonely Mountain (another plot point)? Because then the movie would be 20 minutes long, and we can’t have that.
An Unexpected Journey, unlike Lord of the Rings, feels like an exercise in technology more than it does a story we’re supposed to enjoy. The story is straightforward: The dwarves have been burned out of their home by Smaug the dragon. Thirteen of them, along with Bilbo and Gandalf, set out to win their home back. Along the way, Bilbo finds a ring.
About that technology. By now stories of Jackson’s use of High Frame Rate 3D are widespread. In short, it looks terrible. Those grand images you see on your HDTV at home? In a theater through 3D glasses it looks like a BBC sci-fi series shot on video from the late 1970s combined with a Sony Bravia TV’s Motion Flow technology. It’s unnatural and distracting.
There are people out there who will find this review nitpicky and stupid. Fair enough. Enjoy The Hobbit for the next three Christmases. But when a movie gives me this much to think about as I’m watching, it just doesn’t work.
Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) leads a dragonslaying quest in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of three films based on the
fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Neighbors of the new Shops at Stonefield, including landlords and business owners, are concerned about the area’s new traffic patterns. A concrete median prevents left-hand turns onto Swanson Drive off Hydraulic Road, making it difficult to access Nuckols Insurance and other small businesses. Photo: Jack Looney
Most shoppers and movie-goers in town are thrilled to have easy access to Trader Joe’s and the Regal Stadium 14. But new traffic patterns around the massive shopping center—which still hasn’t opened entirely—are causing backups and accidents. Residents and business owners who frequent the area for reasons besides a jar of sunflower seed butter or an IMAX movie are less than pleased with Stonefield’s impacts.
Lethia Nuckols of Nuckols Insurance said she had no idea the development would have such a negative impact on her business. She said she expected Stonefield employees and customers to take advantage of the company’s convenient location during their lunch hours, and was anticipating a boom in sales. Instead, Nuckols is losing clients, who are saying it’s now too difficult to access the building.
“Strangers come to Stonefield off Route 29 and they give them access,” she said. “But I’ve been here for 25 years and they threaten my livelihood? What were they thinking?”
Local Virginia Department of Transportation officials who oversee Stonefield and its surrounding roads did not respond to inquiries by press time, but spokesperson Lou Hatter said VDOT is aware of recent crashes and other concerns.
“We are working with the Albemarle County Police Department and other interested parties to address them,” Hatter said.
During the construction process, developers and VDOT reconfigured the intersection of Hydraulic Road and Swanson Drive, and added a long concrete median that now blocks left-hand turns onto Swanson.
According to the Albemarle County Police Department, five traffic accidents have occurred in the area since the opening of the Shops at Stonefield in November. None were recorded in October.
Russell Harlow grew up in Charlottesville, but chose not to return as an adult, he said, because of the traffic. He now lives in Lexington, but visits frequently to help his elderly parents, who own property on Swanson.
Harlow said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the increased number of accidents off Hydraulic Road, and he worries that his parents and their tenants no longer have safe, easy access to where they need to go every day.
“We’re small potatoes compared to what’s going on across the street,” Harlow said. “So we understand that’s where the traffic is going, and where the taxes are being spent. But it does make it more difficult.”
The landlords and business owners off Swanson had no idea the construction would include the concrete median, and Harlow said the meetings hosted by VDOT should have been more effectively advertised to the public.
“The responsibility lies with VDOT to publicize these meetings and make sure everyone knows what’s going on,” he said. “I’m sure they did everything legally, but it’s one of those things—unless you know it’s going to directly affect you, you’re probably not too concerned about it and aren’t going to go to those meetings. But if we had known, we would have been a lot more in tune to it.”
Sugar (Sarah White, above right) and Cookie (Sian Richards) Acorn return with Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees in the ninth annual Country Christmas show. A night of peace, love, harmony and dry humor, opening with Sally Rose. Photo: Will May
One of Charlottesville’s finest traditions is Country Christmas, an annual concert thrown by two of the city’s finest country music acts, Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees and The(All New) Acorn Sisters, with a rotating cast of guest stars and openers. Their upcoming ninth annual event is back at the Southern Café and Music Hall, with Sally Rose as the opening act.
“People shouldn’t miss it.” said Jim Waive. “It’s awesome. I look forward to it every year.” Waive—a monumentally talented performer somehow capable of infusing both sorrowful ballads and lighthearted party songs with a somber, understated integrity —is a natural choice to share the bill with The (All New) Acorn Sisters duo of Sarah White and Sian Richards, who often make guest appearances singing back-up vocals during others’ sets. In addition to their musical talents, the three share a dry sense of humor and biting wit, tempered by genuine holiday cheer and charm.
“It’s about bringing people together to share warmth,” White said. “Not all this running around, thinking about what you’re going to get, but being thankful for the things that you already have. I’m not real religious, but for me it’s an end-of-the-year type thing, a celebration.”
“Sarah and Sian really put themselves into making it a very special evening,” said Andy Gems, manager of the Southern. “They do a lot of decorating, and so much organizing and planning.”
“What’s so fun about it is all the decorations,” White said. “Everyone’s dressed to the nines, people are looking absolutely their finest…and I wish the audience would do the same!” she joked.
White and Richards began playing music together in 2004, along with several other local musicians, under the name Spilt Milk. “We recorded a CD for a friend who was moving to Philly,” said White. “The album was called No More Cryin.” They ended up performing several winter-themed songs together during the first Country Christmas in 2004.
“The first year was kind of a big group hug,” Richards said. Eventually pared down to just a duo, they called themselves the Manger Babies before eventually settling on the Acorn Sisters.
“The first proper Acorn Sisters show was that Harvest Moon event with Bobby St. Ours,” White said. “Originally it was going to be a seasonal thing, we’d do songs about autumn, then songs about winter…”
“We need to get back into that,” added Richards.
In addition to occasional shows during the year, The (All-New) Acorn Sisters reunite every December for the Country Christmas event. “I actually hate Christmas songs,” White said. “I mean, I do like a couple of them. ‘Christmas Time’s A-Comin’,’ we do that one. I learned it from the Reno and Smiley version, which I love.”
The usual Acorns set draws extensively from the Carter Family catalog, older gospel numbers, and classic country cuts, occasionally tempered with goofier fare, like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream.” “We’ve lost and gained a lot of good covers over the years,” said White. “I think Sian kind of resented having to sing the Kenny Rogers part. There’s currently a lot of debate about what’s going in the set list this year.”
Despite annual rearranging, their set includes a show-stopping rendition of the Carter Family’s “Poor Orphan Child” and a tune entitled “The Dog,” a heartbreaking tale of a widower, written by White’s father.
“It’s a fun show, but we do like the sad songs.” said Richards. “Christmas can be sad for people. There’s all this false promise about Christmas, that everything’s gonna be alright, that when you wake up on the morning of the 25th everything will suddenly be fine. There’s a melancholy aspect to the holidays.”
As in past years, a portion of the proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, and canned food will be collected at the door to help those in need during the holidays. “We used to just collect the cans,” said White. “But because of the nature of the Food Bank, giving money is actually better.”
“It’s not actually a one-to-one thing,” said Richards, “every dollar you give them buys $4 of food. So it’s much more effective to just make a cash donation.”
“I still like the cans,” White said. “It’s always me with my car full of cans, driving them over. I remember the last year we did it at the Tea House, we had so many people bring in so much food, and I had to haul all those bags of cans down those stairs and around the block out to my car. But I don’t mind doing it, it’s a charity thing. I grew up eating government cheese, people do need it.”
The charitable aspect of the event, the communal nature of the holidays, and the fine musical performances all make Country Christmas the act to catch every December. “It’s a great crowd,” Richards said. “It’s kind of like old-time Charlottesville. I mean, everyone’s each got their definitive idea of C’ville, there’s like 9 million versions of what ‘old Charlottesville’ was like. But to me it feels like a real ’90s Charlottesville time.”
“It’s always been such a nice evening for young and old alike,” Gems said. “We see a lot of the folks you’d expect to see at a show like this, plus a lot of families. It’s really just a nice cross section of C’ville at large.”
Country Christmas begins at 8pm on Saturday at The Southern Café and Music Hall. Tickets are $14 at the door, or $12 in advance.
The University of Virginia. Photo: Dan Addison/UVA Public Affairs
Nearly six months after UVA’s Board of Visitors caused an uproar among students and faculty for ousting President Teresa Sullivan, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has issued a warning to the University about its governing practices. The UVA community and its accrediting organization agree that, despite the Board’s decision to retract Sullivan’s forced resignation, its secretive governing tactics were a breach of trust and a direct violation of SACSCOC’s principles.
Sullivan has spent most of the time since her ouster and subsequent reinstatement forging a new status quo, and in the meantime SACSCOC has been reviewing governance issues at UVA since the summer. According to SACSCOC President Belle Wheelan, the organization will send a visiting team to Grounds in early 2013.
According to a letter sent last Tuesday from Provost John Simon to the University community, the SACSCOC Board of Trustees determined that UVA was not in compliance with a core requirement and comprehensive standard regarding board governance and faculty roles. Simon’s letter reminded the University that the Board of Visitors recently adopted revisions to its manual to clarify procedures for electing and removing presidents, and plans to include faculty more directly in future board deliberations.
But SACSCOC conceded the compliance warning is not a substantial threat to UVA’s accreditation.
“They’ve developed a process they said they’ll use from now on. But they haven’t used it yet. Until they do, they’re still out of compliance,” Wheelan said. “But I don’t expect UVA to lose their accreditation.”
UVA initiated a strategic planning process, which is designed to examine its current state and imagine a new future. The plan will assess strengths and weaknesses in every corner of the University, and according to a letter from Sullivan posted on the strategic planning website, it should be inclusive and continuous.
The process will include a number of open forums, available to students, faculty, staff, and community members, and will cover topics like faculty recruitment and community involvement with the University.
Last week’s forum was scheduled ahead of time and was not in response to the warning, but some in attendance certainly had the events and aftermath of this summer in mind during the discussion, and emphasized the importance of faculty and staff seats on the Board of Visitors. McIntire School of Commerce Dean Carl Zeithaml, who was selected in June as interim president after Sullivan’s removal from the position, led the forum, and asked participants to consider what UVA should look like in 2019, its bicentennial. Following 30 minutes of small group discussion and brainstorming, several University and community leaders stood up to share their thoughts on how far UVA has come and where it ought to go
Among discussion topics at Wednesday’s meeting was the concern that UVA governs itself too much like a business, and not enough like a community.
“Why do we use the term ‘stakeholder’ instead of ‘community member?’” said psychology graduate student Anup Gampa. “We need to get rid of the business language.”
American Association of Education President Molly Broad said that’s a legitimate concern.
“Perhaps the governance system that has served this country so well for centuries is under stress, in part because of the pace that change is occurring, and in part as a result of what appears to be an intrusion into academia with political or individual agendas,” she said.
Broad said colleges and universities are governed “in a very different way than probably any other kind of organization,” and that it’s really a balancing act. She said a university that loses its accreditation would not qualify for federal financial aid, and the loss could negatively impact the caliber of faculty willing to accept positions. But she agrees with SACSCOC’s Wheelan that UVA will likely not only retain its accreditation, but will quickly move forward.
“There are some really positive things that have come from this,” Broad said, like the faculty’s vocal support for Sullivan and the University’s overall determination to come up with a strategic plan.
“Given the steps that have been taken at UVA, this will certainly disappear from UVA’s agenda in a very short period of time,” she added.
Faculty and students agree that the University has made tangible steps toward recovery, but history professor Brian Owensby questioned whether or not UVA can move forward from the summer’s events with the current rector—Helen Dragas, the driving force behind Sullivan’s ouster—still in her position.
“The reputational damage to the University is profound,” Owensby said. “I traveled in Europe this summer, and I had people at European universities saying ‘What’s going on at UVA?’”
Even months later, he said colleagues and potential graduate students at conferences ask him about the University’s status.
“There is genuine concern over whether the University is being properly governed,” he said. “And the SAC’s warning—if there were any doubts left, there aren’t any more.”
Corporal Michael Joseph "Dutch" Dutcher, killed in action September 15, 2011 in Helman Province, Afghanistan. Photo: Elliott Woods
As we make final preparations for the holidays, 68,000 U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan. On Christmas Day, some might get a decent meal and a little booze at a base where they can Facebook relatives; others will be stuck in inhospitable outposts littering the remote countryside. They’ll wake up, in the morning or evening, sore and tired, and arm themselves to the teeth before walking patrol through arid landscapes where nothing happens, except when it does, which is when they are liable to lose a leg or an arm with such frequency that it’s something they joke about.
Every month, between 200 and 500 Afghan civilians die, too, mostly at the hands of indiscriminate Taliban attacks, but always because of the war. When the civilians are dying, our troops are often the ones on hand to pick up the pieces. As our medics hold the tourniquets, American young men and women stand around watching the perimeter, staying stoic, trying not to hate, but hating all the same. According to the year-end report released by the Pentagon, the war has moved to the hinterlands, which may be why most people have forgotten about it.
The idea of demand-based media is pretty repugnant, but it’s a reality. Coverage of the Afghan War is at 2 percent, even though if you measured story-value by body count it would still be on the front page a lot of days. The new media cycle—as I’ve felt more and more watching my real-time analytics window obsessively —is aggregator-fueled, moves at breathtaking speed, and obeys the laws of the bots. Within an hour of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, there were lots of false identifications of the shooter and his connection to Sandy Hook Elementary School, hundreds of reporters strafing Facebook for personal information, pages and pages of search results, even official statements from the governor and senator-elect of Virginia in my inbox. Why? Because everyone was trying to keep America’s children safe? Or because traffic was spiking?
I figured I’d end this week reflecting on the experience of my dad, who like Elliott Woods, the subject of our feature, was an educated soldier in a foggy war and wasn’t exactly in the shit but learned what it was like to watch his comrades die in fairly ignominious circumstances and then come back to a country where none of it mattered, or maybe, even worse, where his participation was seen as a sign that he lacked intelligence. But the more I’ve thought about the story we’re telling and the one from Connecticut that’s commanding the nation’s attention, I’ve found myself reflecting on violence. Killing is cultural. It’s accepted in some instances and not in others. The thing that connects the indiscriminate type that we can never explain to the highly planned type that comes with a rationale is the survivors, who live with it every day.
Kandahar, Afghanistan: An Afghan woman explains to the American soldiers that there are no Taliban fighters in her village. She complains that the soldiers ruined the grape crop by trampling it on the rooftops and asks for money for compensation. Photo: Elliott D. Woods 2012
Elliott Woods
Elliott Woods grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the son of a Navy doctor. He attended a prestigious Catholic boys’ school in Bethesda, a Washington, D.C. suburb dotted with exclusive country clubs and peopled by physicians, lawyers, and deal makers. A self-described “rambunctious kid who had some disciplinary problems,” Woods was forced to withdraw from high school during his senior year, and finished his secondary education at a military academy in Pennsylvania, before running into another party-induced dead-end during his first year of college. In his parents’ doghouse, he wound up living in Richmond with his mother, working two jobs, trying to figure out a way to go back to school.
On his way home from a job one day in July 2001, Woods found a Virginia National Guard recruiting flyer on his windshield, which advertised full tuition benefits at any in-state public university and a living assistance stipend in return for one weekend of service per month and two weeks of service in the summer.
“I thought, ‘Well that sounds pretty good,’” he said. “I had already been to military school and I knew I could succeed in that environment, so I signed up right there.”
Like many guardsmen from the pre-9/11 “Be All You Can Be” era, Woods signed up for service without seriously considering the possibility of going to war.
“The National Guard and Reserves hadn’t deployed to a major war in large numbers since the Second World War and it looked like our country was going to continue on the track it had been on for two decades, serving occasionally in minor conflicts like Bosnia and Somalia, but avoiding large scale wars,” he said.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks in September, a brief moment of national security focus on Afghanistan, and, finally, the shift of emphasis towards Iraq. By the winter of 2002, Woods had begun to realize that the Pentagon’s plan for an invasion of Iraq would involve the National Guard, and that he wasn’t getting out.
“That was pretty shocking to me, because I joined, truly, in a different era,” he said.
For an 11-month period in 2004-05, Woods served as an E-4 combat engineer in Charlie Company, 276th Engineer Battalion in northern Iraq, near Mosul.
His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) made him responsible for route clearance, placing and removing obstacles, and other engineering work, but like many National Guardsmen, Woods ended up doing different jobs more common to infantry and Military Police duties, running convoy missions and providing base security.
Baghdad, Iraq: A woman walks a group of young girls to school while a fire rages following a large explosion on the morning of December 22 in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad. At least one person died in the attack, and many more were wounded. The Karada bombing one of a dozen coordinated attacks on December 22 targeting shops, schools, and government office that killed at least sixty people and wounded over a hundred. Photo: Elliott D. Woods 2012
As the various rationales for the invasion of Iraq—dismantling Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, avenging the Kurdish genocide, spreading democracy—slowly unraveled, Woods found himself in a small minority of soldiers who were already beginning to question what they were doing there.“It was this huge global event that was on the news every day and we felt important,” Woods said. “We felt we were doing something out of the ordinary and exceptional and that’s a hard feeling to replace back home and certainly not a feeling most of us had felt before.”
“A lot of the guys in my unit joined before September 11 or as a consequence of September 11, so they were there for reasons of service and not for large bonuses or anything like that,” Woods said. “And all of them were from Virginia. They were Southerners and generally pretty conservative and they supported the Bush administration, so I didn’t hear a lot of people questioning things over there except for my own little group of friends and me.”
The area around Mosul, the frontier between Kurdish and Sunni Arab-controlled regions, would become one of the most dangerous in the country by 2007, but Woods’ deployment was relatively free from hazard until a suicide bomber infiltrated base security and blew himself up inside a Mosul chow hall, killing two members of Woods’ unit along with 20 others.
The event affected Woods deeply and left him with a haunting glimpse of what the war in Iraq would become. His unit returned home in 2005, and Woods enrolled at UVA with a very different outlook on life and school.
“It was a totally different experience. I came back and went back to school really as a professional student and I looked at it as a full time job,” he said. “The most difficult part about it was looking around the classroom and seeing versions of my former self who took it all for granted and didn’t seem to have a care in the world other than Greek life and their social calendar.”
Wardak, Afghanistan: American and Afghan soldiers conducted a joint operation in the Jalrez Valley of Wardak Province. Photo: Elliott D. Woods 2012
Like many returning combat veterans, Woods felt distance from his peers, which he understood, but his blood boiled as he listened to “college Republican types rant and rail about the necessity of the Iraq invasion.”
“I felt like saying back to them, ‘If you think that all of this is so great, then I can put you in touch with a recruiter. Because you’re young, and able-bodied and smart and you should be over there if you think it’s so important,’” Woods said. “When I would say that to people, they would say, ‘That’s not the life I was chosen for’ or something like that, and it would reveal that they didn’t see Iraq as an existential threat and they didn’t see the war as an important thing.”
The seeds of Woods’ reporting career were sown during his deployment. He’d spent three semesters at VCU between basic training and going overseas, and he kept in touch with his professors throughout the course of his tour in Iraq, reading voraciously. At UVA, he earned his way into the distinguished majors program in the English department, completing a thesis on American war literature written by combat veterans like Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, William March, and James Jones, authors who were “able to write from the insider perspective of a veteran, and especially a returning veteran.”
Woods’ unit had re-deployed, this time to Baghdad at the height of the 2007 “surge,” and he was itching to find a way to tell their story. A couple of graduate classes in the English department convinced him he wasn’t cut out for a career as an academic. However, during his last semester at UVA, he found his way to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the magazine launched his journalistic career.
“The editor there, Ted Genoways, suggested I write down some of my experiences from Iraq and publish them in the magazine,” Woods said. “He actually gave me my first nonfiction assignment, which involved visiting with the families of the two young men from my unit who were killed and a couple of the other guys who were wounded, and writing about my own experience in a long form narrative. I never looked back from there.”
In the spring of 2008—just before his graduation and while he was working on his VQR story—he bought “a pretty nice camera and started carrying it around,” shooting whatever subjects he ran across. One of his pictures, of women shopping at Charlottesville’s City Market, received an honorable mention in C-VILLE Weekly’s annual photo contest.
After graduation, Woods moved to Egypt and took Arabic classes, supporting himself as a professional journalist by taking regular freelance work in the arts and culture sections of the English-language Daily News Egypt. He linked up with photographer Asim Rafiqui, who was working on a grant proposal to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to cover the emerging humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The brief war between Hamas and Israel broke suddenly. With support from the Pulitzer Center and another assignment from VQR, Woods went to Gaza in January 2009 to cover the final stages of the war. He wrote newspaper stories for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Times, and others, spending the better part of three months recording the experiences of a small group of Palestinian youth connected directly and indirectly to the fighting.
Sergeant Jarick Fry, 24, of Irwin, Pennsylvania, pictured in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Photo: Elliott D. Woods 2012
“That’s when I discovered the way that I like to report stories,” Woods said. “Which is to use the lives of individual subjects, to get really up close and personal with a few individuals who populate the stage of this bigger crisis.”
Woods got permission for his first embed assignment with U.S. troops during the spring of 2009 and spent the month of October in Afghanistan, photographing and interviewing Marine and Army personnel in different parts of the country. Since then, Woods has returned to Afghanistan to complete four more embed assignments, including the portrait series on Third Squad, which was published by VQR this summer.
In 2011, Woods took on a nonfiction project for Granta during which he drove over 10,000 miles crisscrossing the country and interviewing regular Americans and fellow veterans about how the country had changed over a decade of war.
A devotee of Studs Terkel’s work interviewing veterans and civilians from the World War II era, Woods explains his mission as “using empathy and compassion alongside investigative journalism to tell really important stories that change our understanding of history and where our country is going in the future.”
He lives in Charlottesville with his dog Artemisia.
Sagittarius
(November 22-December 21): In 2013, I pledge to conspire with you to achieve more mixtures, connections, accords, and unifications than you ever thought possible. I will furthermore be a fount of suggestions about how you can live well in two worlds. I will coach you to create a peace treaty with your evil twin and your nemesis, and I will help you develop a knack for steering clear of other people’s bad ideas and sour moods. I can’t of course guarantee that you will never again experience a broken heart, but I swear I will do everything I can do to heal the broken part of your heart that you’ve been suffering from.
Capricorn
(December 22-January 19): When he was 21, the Capricorn writer Jack London set off to prospect for gold in the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. He had a rough time there. Malnourished, he suffered from scurvy and leg pain. To make matters worse, he didn’t find much gold, and returned home broke. On the other hand, he met scores of adventure seekers who told him stories of their travels. These tales served as rich raw material for his novel The Call of the Wild, published in 1903. It made him famous and is generally regarded as his masterpiece. I’m guessing you will begin a similar trajectory in 2013, Capricorn. Events that may at first seem less than successful will ultimately breed a big breakthrough.
Aquarius
(January 20-February 18): I can’t force you to seek more pleasure in 2013. I won’t nag you to play harder and explore the frontiers of feeling really good. However, I will say this: If you don’t plan to put yourself into at least partial alignment with the cosmic mandate to have maximum fun, you may not get the best use out of the advice I’ll be offering through my horoscopes in the coming year. Please consider the possibility of ramping up your capacity for pure enjoyment.
Pisces
(February 19-March 20): The study of ancient Mayan civilization owes a lot to the fact that Americans started buying lots of chewing gum in the late 19th century. Huh? Here’s the connection: For a long time, chicle was one of the prime ingredients in Chiclets, Juicy Fruit, Bazooka bubble gum, and many other brands of chewing gum. Chicle is obtained from the sap of sapodilla trees, which grow in abundance in Central America and Mexico. Over the decades, workers harvesting the chicle accidentally found many Mayan ruins covered in overgrown vegetation, then told archaeologists about their discoveries. I foresee a metaphorically comparable sequence happening in your life during 2013. In unexpected ways, you will be put back in touch with and benefit from lost, forgotten, or unexplored parts of the past.
Aries
(March 21-April 19): Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the most influential scientists in history. But the time he spent as a member of the English Parliament was undistinguished. The only public comment he ever made while serving there was a request to close the window because he was cold. Basketball star Michael Jordan had a similar schism. In the prime of his outstanding career, he took a year off to try playing baseball, which he did poorly. After analyzing 2013’s astrological aspects, Aries, I’m guessing that you should cultivate a firm intention to avoid doing what Newton and Jordan did. Keep playing to your strengths and emphasizing what you love. Don’t get sidetracked by peripheral concerns.
Taurus
(April 20-May 20): In 2013, I’d like to help you cultivate an even more reliable relationship with your intuitions and hunches than you already have. You may not need much guidance from me, since the astrological omens indicate this will happen quite naturally. There’s another kind of inspiration I hope to offer you in the coming months: clues about how to be “bad” in ways that will give your goodness more vigor. And when I say “bad,” I’m not referring to nastiness or insensitivity, but rather to wildness and playfulness and experimentation. Here’s one further service I want to provide, Taurus: helping you build a greater capacity to receive gifts, blessings, and support.
Gemini
(May 21-June 20): In the year 1900, few people believed that human beings would ever fly through the sky in machines. Most scientists thought that such a feat was impossible. For years, the Wright Brothers had a hard time convincing anyone to believe their flights were actually taking place, even though they had photos and witness reports as documentation. Although the leap you’ll be capable of in 2013 isn’t quite as monumental as the Wright Brothers’, it could be pretty important in the history of your own life. You may also have to deal with skepticism akin to what they had to face. Be true to your vision, Gemini!
Cancer
(June 21-July 22): In 2013, I predict you will see why it’s wise to phase out an influence you have loved to hate for far too long. Uncoincidentally, you will also have a talent for purging emotional burdens and psychic debris that you’ve been holding on to since the bad old days. No later than your birthday, if all goes well, you will be free from a subtle curse you’ve been casting on yourself; you will finally be attending to one of your long-neglected needs; and you will have turned some rather gawky, half-assed wizardry into a smooth and silky magic.
Leo
(July 23-August 22): In 2013, I pledge to help you raise your lovability. It’s not that you are unlovable now, of course, but there’s always room for improvement, right? And if people become even more attracted to you than they already are, then you’re likely to get a lot of collaborative and cooperative work done. You will thrive as you and your allies work on projects that make your corner of the world a better and more interesting place. So what are the first three actions you could take to raise your lovability?
Virgo
(August 23-September 22): First question: Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m afraid I will never achieve my noblest dreams or live according to my highest ideas”? Answer: There’s a very good chance that in the coming year you will banish that fear from the sacred temple of your imagination. Second question: Have you ever wondered if maybe you unconsciously undermine the efforts of people who are trying to assist you? Answer: In the coming months you should discover exactly what to do to prevent such a thing from happening. Third question: Do you know the single most important question you should be asking in 2013? Answer: I predict you will figure that out sometime in the next three weeks.
Libra
(September 23-October 22): In 2013, I will be encouraging you to journey into the frontiers and experiment with the unknown. I will seek to inspire you to go in search of teachings you’ve needed for a long time. Are you ready for this expansion, Libra? Are you feeling a natural urge to explore forbidden zones and discover missing secrets and mess with your outmoded taboos? As you might imagine, doing this work would motivate you to develop a healthier relationship with your fears. To bolster your courage, I suggest you find some new freedom songs to sing.
Scorpio
(October 23-November 21): In 2013, I will do what I can to ensure that your fiscal biorhythms are in close alignment with the universal cash flow. You should have pretty good instincts about this worthy project yourself, Scorpio. And so there’s an excellent chance that your wealth will increase. The upgrade will be especially dramatic if you are constantly scheming about how you can share your riches and benefit other people with your generosity. I think there will also be an interesting fringe benefit if you maintain maximum integrity as you enhance your access to valuable resources: You will develop a more useful relationship with your obsessive tendencies.
Whisky’d away
Just in time for holiday shopping, Virginia Highland Malt whisky, from the Virginia Distillery Company, arrived in 80 Virginia ABC stores earlier this month. Grab a bottle of this local offering, which the press release notes has “a lovely acacia honey and ginger flavor from the Scottish whisky with the added notes of dark chocolate, tobacco, and raspberry from the Virginia port-style wine barrels.” For more information about the project to produce Scotch whiskey in Nelson County, visit vadistillery.com.
The last supper
It’s a wonder why chefs enjoy playing the oddly morose game of selecting their final meal with one another, but their efforts may have paid off, as Brookville Restaurant will host a seven-course tasting menu in preparation (and celebration?) of the end of the Mayan calendar on Thursday, December 20. Chef Harrison Keevil has prompted the Charlottesville community for suggestions in choosing the menu, and will be “taking orders” on Facebook (@ Brookville Restaurant) through December 18. The menu will depend on seasonality and will draw six of the courses from entries, with the final decision being Keevil’s personal last meal choice, posted on December 19. $60 gains you entry to this once-in-a-lifetime meal. Make reservations online at brookvillerestaurant.com or by calling 202-2791.
Going down swilling
If the world really is set to end on Friday, December 21, we might as well go out with a bang. Glass House Winery will throw an “End-of-the-World Costume Party” from 5-10pm on Friday, December 21, with live music from Yankee Dixie. It will be a (somewhat) festive affair, where attendees are asked to dress in their costume of choice. The options are Mayan (pre-apocalypse), Zombie (post-apocalypse), or a Bright and Brave new beginning (imagination required). Since it’s an informal potluck, guests may bring their own picnic food to the event, but are also asked to bring snacks or finger food to contribute to the community food table for others to enjoy. For more information, call 975-0094.
