Month: May 2013

Categories
News

Green happenings: Charlottesville environmental news and events

The Rivanna River. Photo: Stacey Evans

Each week, C-VILLE’s Green Scene page takes a look at local environmental news. The section’s bulletin board has information on local green events and keeps you up to date on statewide happenings. Got an event or a tip you’d like to see here and in the paper? Write us at news@c-ville.com. 

Fun in the sun: Ever wondered how a solar oven works? Check out Transition Charlottesville’s solar cookout this weekend, a fossil fuel free feast at Washington Park. Don’t forget to bring your own plates, cups, and utensils, and a potluck dish—preferably one that’s been prepared with little or no fossil fuels—to share with the group. The picnic starts at 1pm on Monday, May 9, and is free to everybody.

Happy trails: During construction of the new Ragged Mountain Dam, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department is leading an effort to restore and replace the trails in the adjacent natural area. Saturday, June 1 is National Trails Day, and starting at 8am, city staff will work with volunteers to create new trail links. If you’re interested in helping out, contact Chris Gensic at (434)-970-3656 or gensic@charlottesville.org.

Up a creek: As of last week, the Nature Conservancy and the City of Charlottesville have completed the year-long project to restore two miles of Meadow Creek. The project, funded by the Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund, involved removal of invasive vegetation and improved creek stability, erosion control, and wildlife habitats. It also added 40 acres of new city parkland, and a conservation easement is now protecting the 70-acre project area.

Talkin’ green: Want to hear what this year’s City Council candidates have to say about the environment and keeping Charlottesville green? Join them in City Hall chambers at 7pm on Wednesday, May 29, for a forum hosted by the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club. For more information contact Jessica at ja5sa@virginia.edu.  

Categories
Living

The great Divide: The making of Continental’s perfect tuna tostada

Secret's in the sauce: A menu favorite, the tuna tostada at Continental Divide is topped with a special vinegar-sugar glaze. Photo: Elli Williams

This started out as a nachos survey, with me sampling some platters from a few establishments around the village perimeter, plus one on the Downtown Mall, just to establish a baseline. But I knew all along where it was going, where I would end up directing my sunshiny prose. I wanted to be in a spot with an ambrosial margarita, where the nachos, although a proper stand-in for supper fare, are abused as an excuse to order one more to wash it all down.

But this isn’t a drinking story. Not yet anyway.

Continental Divide is usually mad busy, which is why I have never made it past the point of giving my name to the hostess and then “waiting” at the bar with only appetizers and cocktails to keep me company until I’m full. I always end up figuring I’ll try back later. Finally, that later date came.

The menu and the daily specials at this UVA haunt on West Main are flush with southwestern delectables: Santa Fe enchiladas, catfish tacos, and salmon quesadillas with asparagus, tomato, and goat cheese. I zeroed in on the tuna tostada, a menu regular, and pestered chef Amber Cohen, who agreed to tell me how it’s made.

Cohen is a Lexington, Virginia native, and the daughter of a professional caterer. One of her first real gigs was at The Blue Heron, a vegetarian restaurant in Lexington, where the spice jars in the kitchen were left unlabeled. “You had to learn them just by the smell of them,” she said. She then apprenticed at several Charlottesville standards, including Bizou, Escafe, and Hamiltons’.

I followed her into the Continental’s impossibly tight kitchen and she took a sushi-grade yellowfin tuna steak, an inch and a half thick, and tossed it on the grill. She got some flour tostada crisps, which had been deep fried, and plated them. The tuna popped and sizzled over the flame. Cohen turned it once. She ladled black bean puree onto the lightly browned, puffy-crisp tortillas and spread a thin layer of roasted red pepper coulis over top.

“We do our beans from dry here,” she said. “Flavored lightly, with pretty much just cumin and onion.” She sprinkled crumbled goat cheese over the beans. After it had been grilling for only a few minutes, she took the seared tuna, sliced it in two, exposing the lovely pink, thick middle and laid it on the beans. Then came the kicker.

“It’s all about the glaze,” Cohen said. “You’re heating up rice wine vinegar, one of my favorite vinegars. Very versatile. It doesn’t have a heavy flavor and it’s a little bit sweet. It’s good to use in a similar fashion that you would use citrus, because it’s got that tart, sweet thing. So you heat the vinegar, you add sugar to it, dissolve the sugar, then you let it cool down and you add in your peppers, diced raw peppers, and you let it sit for a couple hours. And that’s what makes it special, gives it the awesome flavor.”

Cohen delicately spread the glaze over the stack of fish, beans, cheese, and flour crisps. And she was right: awesome. The tuna tostada is a crazy assemblage of textures and flavors. The bean puree and crisps have a little melding party. Within the tuna itself, the contrast of the seared outer skin against the pink pure middle is just right, and deserves to be enjoyed without distraction. But anyone can grill sushi grade tuna at home. The glaze is what makes people crave this thing, dream of it during the week. It gives the whole thing an Asian tinge, a complex sweet and sour essence.

When she one day has her own place, Cohen reckons, she may lay off the meat.

“I’m not vegetarian but I love cooking vegetarian food. I think being a meat eater in the long run makes me a better vegetarian chef because when you get used to the way things taste, you just dull your palate a little bit,” she told me. “I feel like I’m tasting what’s missing and a lot of times vegetarian food is too often flat and depends too much on cheese. Not that cheese isn’t delicious, it is. But often, things aren’t spiced properly or are missing certain elements for making a whole flavor. So, that’s really what I would want to do is vegetarian comfort food.”

I’ll be there when it opens.

By the way, I happened to stop back by the bar on my way out to inquire about the mysteries behind the Divide’s signature margaritas. They have a page-long list of tequila options, plus you can customize your drink by choosing Cointreau or Grand Marnier over the rail triple sec. Actually, bartender Matt McCaskill says you can just ask for yours “smoky or crisp, or citrusy or smooth.” And he will try to comply. I asked for mine to taste like tequila, more sour than sweet. He started with a dash of Cointreau over a full glass of ice. Then came a heaping helping of Jose Cuervo Platino. He added a splash of the housemade sour mix, which, McCaskill said, he couldn’t tell me anything about. Fresh lime juice came next. He cupped the glass with a stainless steel shaker, gave it a couple hearty jolts, popped the rim of my glass into a pile of chunky salt, poured the concoction back into the glass and garnished it with a lime wedge. If there’s a better margarita in town than this one, I definitely don’t need to know about it.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Picks: Charlottesville SOUP

Charlottesville SOUP nurtures the soul of the creative community and gives one audience-selected artist a boost through crowd funding. Photo courtesy of Charlottesville SOUP.

Dig in to tasty, homemade fare, mingle with influential thinkers and makers from the local art scene, and help launch a new creative community project. Based on the successful Detroit Soup micro-granting dinner party model that was created by The Garage co-founder Kate Daughdrill, the first Charlottesville SOUP raised over $1,000 for the Textile Cooperative and turned away 200 hopeful guests. The spring edition moves to an expanded venue, and your donation still gets you locally prepared soup, cob oven-baked bread, salad, pie, and a vote for your favorite pitch.

Monday 5/27  $10, 6:30pm. Charlottesville Day School, 320 10th St. NE. www.charlottesvillesoup.com.

 

Listen to the SOUP theme song, composed by Matt Wyatt.

Categories
Arts

First Annual Day of Dance makes moves on Saturday

The free speech wall advertises the first annual Day of Dance Festival. The downtown mall will come alive with a full day of dance and music and games for families on Saturday, May 25.

The streets will sound with tapping and twirling, leaping and jigging this Saturday, May 25, as the first annual Charlottesville Day of Dance takes over the Downtown Mall. This family-friendly event features an international array of dance forms and fitness practices, from Ireland to India, ballet to Nia.

Megan Hilary, the festival’s founder, says the event will be “the most comprehensive spread of the city’s dance offerings” to date, and that the event was created to raise awareness of the richness of dance traditions practiced in Charlottesville, as well as the artistic expression and health benefits available to those who get moving.

The full day of dance will feature troupes from the Charlottesville Ballet, Phoenix Dance Studio, PVCC Dance, Wilson School of Dance, Fire in the Belly belly dancers, and Nia and BodyGroove instructors. There will be opportunities for children to choreograph their own dances with members of the Charlottesville Ballet, facepainting, henna art, a massage tent, and the chance to discover a dance form your never knew existed.

The kinetic spectacles will take place on indoor and outdoor stages on the Mall from noon until late into the night. Catch performances of Tahitian dance by local Karine Morgan, Mukta Dance with Amanda Evans, drawn from the wisdom of yoga, and salsa, merengue, reggaeton, and bachata demos by Lilli Ross. And those of age can give the acrobatic silks and pole dancing a try with help from members of the Phoenix Dance Studio.

After the sun goes down, fire dancers and beats by DJ Elipss will close the festival down with a heart-pounding community outdoor dance party.

For a complete list of the scheduled events, visit www.cvillefest.wix.com/cvilledayofdance or email charlottesvilledayofdance@gmail.com. All events are free and open to the public, even to those with two left feet.

Categories
News

Red dirt roundup: Road projects to watch out for in Charlottesville-Albemarle

The Route 250 Bypass interchange from above. Photo: Jack Looney.

The latest developments in the Western Bypass planning process may be getting the lion’s share of the road-related ink lately, but what about other local road construction? Here’s an update on pending and ongoing city and state projects worth noting as we barrel toward summer.

Route 250 Bypass/McIntire interchange 

The City of Charlottesville expects construction of the new intersection at the U.S. 250 Bypass and McIntire Road to be complete by July 2, 2015, two and a half years after the project went to bid. Priced at $20 million, the diamond-shaped, at-grade interchange will include sidewalks and bike lanes. Much of the initial work is taking place outside the current roadway, but drivers can expect occasional lane closures and lane shifts next spring.

McIntire Road extended/Meadowcreek Parkway

Key Construction Co. Inc., from Clarksville, Virginia, began construction on the new half-mile stretch of road connecting Melbourne Road with the intersection of McIntire and the 250 Bypass—a.k.a. the final piece of the Meadowcreek Parkway —in August 2011. A 10′-wide pedestrian trail will run parallel along its entire length, and the $3.4 million, two-lane road should be open to traffic by the end of the summer, linking McIntire to the existing portion of the Parkway.

Soil removal on I-6 at Afton

The Virginia Department of Transportation’s (VDOT) emergency project to remove unstable soil from Afton Mountain —delayed multiple times by heavy rains—wraps up Thursday, May 23. Through the end of the day today, expect intermittent closures starting at 8:30am for 30-45 minutes at a time. Construction should run no later than 8:30pm. The project will affect traffic from Exit 107 (Route 250/ Rockfish Gap Turnpike) at Crozet to Exit 96 (Route 624/5, Delphine Avenue) at Waynesboro.

 I-64 interchange at Route 15 

Next month, Corman Construction Inc. from Colonial Heights, Virginia will begin construction on a diverging diamond interchange on Route 15 at Zion Crossroads, Exit 136. VDOT says one lane of traffic will remain open on Route 15 throughout, but traffic patterns will go through a number of shifts. The state estimates the $6.9 million project will wrap up in April 2014.

McCormick Road bridge closure  

On Monday, May 20, VDOT closed the McCormick Road bridge over Route 29 Business (Emmet Street) at the University of Virginia for construction. Corman Construction Inc. is replacing the aging bridge, and the demolition phase will require the closure of Emmet Street on the nights of May 21 and 22 from 9pm-6am each night. Another two-night closure will occur in mid-June, and VDOT expects the bridge to reopen in late July. In the meantime, car and pedestrian traffic will be rerouted. Check virginiadot.org for updates and detour maps.

Bypass update 

Want to weigh in on the Western Bypass? VDOT is hosting a citizen information meeting on Thursday, May 23—that’s today—at 7:30pm at the Holiday Inn Charlottesville. The public can view and comment on three design concepts for the southern interchange of the bypass, or submit written comments to 29bypassinterchange@vdot.virginia.gov.

The long-discussed 250 Bypass and McIntire interchange is under construction, and VDOT expects to finish the project in July 2015.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Picks: The Steel Wheels at The Southern

The Steel Wheels’ Americana tour de force makes a stop at The Southern on Saturday. Ruby Sky Photography.

Entertaining audiences across the country with a heavy brew of original music, The Steel Wheels roll strong with influences from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and old-time musical weaving of four-part harmonies, upright bass, fiddle, and mandolin. Saturday’s show opens with a set by Ana Egge and serves as a sneak preview of the upcoming Red Wing Roots Music Festival, curated by the Wheels in July.

Saturday 5/25  $15-25, 7pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St., Downtown Mall. 977-5590.

 

Categories
Arts

Warm welcome: Group show at McGuffey invites colorful observations

Versatility is apparent in Karen Blair’s “Goldenrod,” oil on canvas, currently on exhibit in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery at McGuffey Art Center. Image: Courtesy of the artist

If you’re in need of an instant mood-elevator, I suggest you head straight over to the McGuffey Art Center where dazzling light and vibrant color (and some pretty nifty painting) is on full display at a group show featuring the work of Karen Blair, Jessie Coles, Priscilla Long Whitlock, and Krista Townsend. Still lifes, landscape, animals, and urban scenes are all represented in this appealing show.

In her work, Coles describes a domestic life that is warm, rich and inviting. Just looking at her paintings, I know I’d like to spend time at her house. But above and beyond the pleasing vision her work presents, Coles’ paintings also have potency. “Energy and movement are the real subject of my work,” she says. She develops her paintings over repeated sessions, wherein scale may change, relationships alter, and “unexpected colors knock against each other creating an energy and excitement I never could have predicted.” These works are composites of repeated observations, not frozen moments in time. Coles’ rich impasto reminds me of Wayne Thiebaud and I’m not saying that just because of the cake. Seriously, you almost want to take a spoon and run it along the surface, scooping it up to eat. They’re that yummy.

I love Karen Blair’s riotous flower paintings that seem to explode with vernal energy. In “Poppies and Queen Anne’s Lace” she achieves an interesting, almost cut out effect, as if the flowers had been appliquéd on top of the turquoise background. There’s a more somber woodland creek and an autumnal scene of goldenrods that show Blair’s versatility. Don’t miss the exuberant “Poppies and Garden Hose” hanging around the corner in the McGuffey shop. I almost did. Big, colorful, showy, it’s a picture that captures the sensations of being in a garden buzzing with life: warm sun, moist earth, loamy smells. An admirer of Fairfield Porter, Blair seeks to balance abstraction and realism in the same way, “always asking how little information I can give and still convey the image.”

Almost abstract, Whitlock’s paintings provide ample opportunity for her to show off her dynamic brushwork, which varies from expressive little daubs to dramatic slashes of pigment. “My interest is the challenge of interpreting landscape into painted marks, shapes, and color,” said Whitlock. A plein air painter, she spends time “standing in the field, marsh or woods.” Yet she isn’t dogmatic about recording exactly what she sees, choosing to use a highly keyed palette of pinks, greens, lavenders, and yellows, exaggerating the hues found in nature. Her paintings are certainly pretty, but they also have a heft to them thanks to her audacious application of paint. I particularly liked how Whitlock moves from light to shadow and foreground to distance using color in “Plank Road Field,” and also the lively brushwork in the areas of shadow. Two of her pieces on view, including this one, are triptychs. Breaking up the work into panels objectifies it, further removing it from the realm of traditional landscape painting. The effect is accentuated by Whitlock, who paints the edges of the canvas using a single bright color to provide a visual break between the individual panels. With the exception of Coles, whose works are framed, the other artists also paint the edges of the canvas, in effect, “framing” the work.

Krista Townsend’s paintings range from the very small (6″ x 6″) to the very large (75″ x 36″) and from farm animals to urban scenes. She employs a bold palette with splashes of orange and expanses of hyacinth. An intense, almost bluish light floods her work giving it a freshly scrubbed look as if it had just rained. The effect reminded me a bit of the work of Icelandic American painter, Louisa Matthiasdottir. There’s also a hint of Hopper in these empty streets. (To me, her “Chinatown” seemed like an animated, updated rift on Hopper’s “Early Sunday Morning.”) It’s interesting seeing views of Charlottesville and the surrounding countryside, well-recorded fodder of other local artists (Richard Crozier and Edward Thomas, specifically) treated in a completely different way. Townsend works professionally as a medical illustrator, an occupation that demands exacting verisimilitude, so it’s notable that she is able to let go of this in favor of expression. Her training still stands her in good stead in composing her works, and in a painting like the extraordinary prepossessing cat by the steps, amber eyes glinting in the sun. Townsend has perfectly captured feline essence in this charming painting.

All of these women paint from nature, but they’re after something more than just an accurate rendering of reality. It’s “more about the physicality and energy of the paint and less about landscape as ‘scenery’” is how Whitlock puts it. Certainly, they all know how to produce widely appealing work, but these artists also know “from” paint. You get the sense that they revel in their medium. There is joy there with the end result being works that lure you in with their charm and hold your interest with each singular approach.

 

Categories
News

Toan Nguyen’s C’ville Central gives small business owners a leg up

Steven Ally (right) has been doing home repair work including remodeling, additions, and painting for 13 years. He recently graduated from the Community Investment Collaborative, and said he was excited to tap into a new market through C’ville Central. Photo: Elli Williams

The movement to buy local is growing beyond homemade jam and freshly picked tomatoes at the City Market. It could be the key to solving the city’s growing poverty problem. The goal of fledgling corporation C’ville Central, the latest brainchild of C’ville Coffee owner Toan Nguyen, is to connect local business owners with the area’s anchor institutions like UVA that regularly give contracts to larger out-of-town firms. The goal is simple: Connect people who need jobs with those who need their services, keep the money circulating within the local economy, and help overlooked entrepreneurs get on their feet.

A recent Darden study on the local contracting business estimated Charlottesville-Albemarle’s market to be over $1 billion, Nguyen said.

“And all that is not going to the local businesses at all, which is a crying shame,” Nguyen said. “How do you harness that and channel it to small micro-businesses?”

Nguyen, a UVA Architecture and Darden graduate, has had an itch for years to address Charlottesville’s economic problems of disparate growth and concentrated poverty, and C’ville Central is his most recent effort on the front. Two years after founding the Community Investment Collaborative (CIC), a nonprofit that offers education, mentoring, and loans for low-income entrepreneurs, he decided to take it a step further. After the release of the Orange Dot Report, a 2011 study that showed 20 percent of Charlottesville families make enough to be considered above the poverty level but not self-sufficient, Nguyen spearheaded Green Dot, a collaborative nonprofit aimed at steering jobs to the low-income community. But he said he ultimately realized a benefit corporation, which he describes as a “non-profit and for-profit hybrid,” would be a more efficient model.

He launched C’ville Central in April 2013. The business serves as a liaison between customers in the area who need jobs done, and small local businesses that don’t yet have the resources to market themselves or bid on multiple contracts. It’s a central resource that handles the day-to-day ins and outs of running a business that are tough for one-person operations to juggle. In return for a 10 percent commission on each contract, C’ville Central offers small business owners—particularly women and minorities—access to widespread marketing and new clients.

Homeowners and institutions of all sizes will go through the umbrella corporation, which will be responsible for invoicing, customer service, and project oversight. Eventually, Nguyen hopes the area’s largest institutions like the University of Virginia, Martha Jefferson, and Piedmont Virginia Community College will start contracting jobs through C’ville Central rather than outsourcing to larger companies.

“If you’re a small business, a one or two person shop, you’re not going to be bidding on UVA. You’re too small,” Nguyen said.

Terry Lee Jones, a CIC graduate and one of C’ville Central’s original service providers, started painting houses at age 10, when he helped his parents cover his childhood home with a fresh coat. He started a part-time painting business after graduating high school, and said he can’t imagine doing anything else, but started struggling financially in 2005. With the realization that running a successful business required more than precision and a love for the craft, Jones signed up for CIC last year and joined C’ville Central after graduating.

Jones said he came away from CIC with a new understanding of bookkeeping and other business skills, and was eager to get on board with C’ville Central to improve his service and revenue flow.

“If you ain’t really got your ducks in a row, it’s hard to survive out there,” he said.

And it’s paying off already. Last year, Jones brought in about $17,000 in revenue with his painting business. During his first month contracting through C’ville Central, he’s earned $8,000.

Local resident and homeowner John Whitlow used to hire landscapers or repair workers based on Internet reviews, and after using C’ville Central’s services twice already, described it as a “win-win situation.”

In addition to creating economic opportunity for those who may have fallen through the cracks, he said, the corporation gave him the quality assurance he wanted. Nguyen performs thorough background checks on each of his contractors and examines the worksites before and after each project.

“The advantage of it is there’s always a point person,” Whitlow said. “So if I do have any concerns, I can contact them immediately.”

C’ville Central’s entrepreneurs have already brought in more than $10,000 in the month it’s been up and running. In two years Nguyen expects to have enough business to need a full-time staff that will function as backup workers when contractors are unavailable, and by 2017 he hopes to move the corporation into the IX building, the former industrial warehouse on Second Street Southwest.

In the meantime, he said he’s always looking for new service providers and customers, and he wants to see the community embrace the idea of local contractors. Charlottesville is full of people who want to contribute, he said, who are inclined to reach out to those who are willing to help themselves.

“There are a lot of rich people in this town who want to help,” Nguyen said. “And they’d rather provide work than give charity.”

Categories
News

Vote for the earth: A grandmother’s letter to Virginia Senator Mark Warner

At the time of this writing, I stand in the center of a miracle as I witness my 60th Virginia spring and the sixth month of my grandson’s unfolding life. As the steward of a homestead in central Virginia, I witness and participate daily in the mysteries of seed, sun, soil, and water.

As a grandparent, each time I gaze into the glowing mirror of our baby’s face, I am reminded deeply and urgently of the essential need for clean food, water, and air. These are the elements that are essential to my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. These are the elements directly threatened by your recent vote and two petitions to the President and the Secretary of State in favor of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Mr. Warner, you’re killing me with this.

Tar sands mined in Canada—owned by a Canadian corporation (TransCanada), piped through the Midwest, refined in Texas, and then largely shipped overseas for burning—threaten my ability and especially my baby grandson’s ability to life itself in Charlottesville, Virginia. How can this be?

Keystone XL supports the mining, piping, refining and burning of the single dirtiest energy source on the planet. Tar sands are up to 19 percent more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional crude oil and are significantly more dangerous and difficult to clean up during inevitable spills. To use tar sands is to scrape the bottom of the energy barrel.

Keystone XL would benefit a Canadian company, continue to give a foreign corporation inappropriate use of eminent domain over the land of American citizens, increase pipeline spills akin to the recent tragedy in Arkansas, threaten our country’s largest and perhaps most important water aquifer, and make it impossible for us to achieve our pledged national and global carbon reduction goals.

In return, Keystone provides 35 permanent jobs, increases support for our fossil fuel industry’s government subsidized, sky rocketing profits, and tightens the fossil fuel lobby’s stranglehold over our electoral process. At least 60 percent of the fuel brought to the United States by the pipeline would be exported. No increase in energy independence for the United States would be achieved.

This pipeline proposal is before us at a moment in our global history when our international scientific, governmental, and economic communities largely agree on a few things:

• To preserve human life on this planet, we must not allow the global temperature to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius and even this rise will represent certain and uncertain calamities.

• 565 gigatons is how much carbon we can pour into the atmosphere and “maybe” not go above a 2 degree rise. At current rates, we have 15 years for business as usual.

• The fossil fuel industry already owns, has license to, and plans to burn 2,795 gigatons of carbon.

• Current inflationary investment in these unusable fossil fuel reserves threatens the global economy with a collapsible bubble that will make the housing bubble look like a toy.

• 350 parts per million of carbon in our earth’s atmosphere is the maximum that will allow life as we know it to be sustained on earth.

• On May 9, 2013 we reached a daily average of 400 parts carbon per million.

So the Keystone Pipeline decision represents a real crossroads. One might think we could count on help from two Democratic senators. Well, no. One of our senators, the Honorable Tim Kaine, has voted and spoken against Keystone. You, Mr. Warner support Keystone XL.

Supporters of the Keystone pipeline have gotten very busy branding it as a job creator and as an essential step toward energy independence. Both these claims are lies.

I get, Mr. Warner, how these lies are particularly seductive to you, since the best work you have done as a governor and senator has been in service to common sense economic planning and fiscal responsibility. I myself have been a long term supporter of you and this work.

What I cannot accept is your refusal to reevaluate the equations you are using and the flawed data they rely on and to respond thoughtfully to the many Virginians who have attempted to engage you in this needed reassessment, especially in these last two months.

Please Mr. Warner, get your head out of the tar sands. They are very bad for you.  And every Virginian.

I would also warn you and President Obama that it is unwise for the Democratic Party to take Virginia environmentalists for granted and assume that under the threat of far right opposing candidates, we will continue our support and wait indefinitely and without result for real leadership on climate change. Do not assume that we will fiddle and fundraise while earth burns.

So yes, Mr. Warner, I stand in the center of a delicate miracle here in this odd, erratic Charlottesville spring. I await the suddenness of the peonies, the sweetness of the lilacs, and I regret the absence of environmental leadership and the necessity for revolution. You stand here, too. —Kay Leigh Ferguson

Categories
Arts

ARTS Picks: George Melvin Tribute at Fellini’s #9

Photo Fellini's #9

It’s been four years since we lost George Melvin, but the mark he made on the local jazz scene remains indelible. An accomplished touring musician, bandleader, and all around entertainer, Melvin delighted audiences for over 40 years. Matty Metcalfe kicks off the George Melvin Tribute, followed by performances from Sammy Horn, Skip Haga and the Bees 3, Betty Jo Dominick and Friends, Art Wheeler, Robert Jospé and Butch Taylor, along with the requisite appearance of Miss Lucy, the Hammond B3 organ on which Melvin made his memorable magic.

Saturday 5/25  $5, 5pm. Fellini’s #9, 200 W. Market St., 979-4279.