Bleeding heart, a native spring wildflower, as illustrated by Lara Call Gastinger for the Flora of Virginia. Image: Lara Call Gastinger
Ever since she was a child, Lara Call Gastinger has found ways to combine science and art.
“My parents would take us to these National Wildlife Federation Summits where I started keeping a field journal, like this one,” she said, pointing to the notebook of illustrations on a desk in the sunny studio in her North Downtown home. Over the last 11 years, similar sketches have allowed her to illustrate Flora of Virginia, the massive tome published by a coalition of experts last year that, for the first time, offers an index of nearly every plant species in the Commonwealth. “I remember having that realization, that I could draw plants that people could identify,” she said. “It was sort of a great moment.”
Gastinger studied biology and architecture at UVA, and pursued landscape architecture before deciding she wanted to do more field work. She went back to school, this time to Virginia Tech for a master’s degree in plant ecology. It was there she learned about the nonprofit Flora of Virginia Project, formally created in 2001 by botanical experts from the Department of Conservation and Recreation and numerous partnering organizations, who came together to build the first comprehensive plant guide since Flora Virginica—published in 1743 and written entirely in Latin, it was more a relic than a relevant tool.
She contacted Chris Ludwig, one of the primary authors, who ultimately hired her to illustrate the book. That kicked off a relationship with the project and the team that has defined her career for more than a decade.
And because she moved back to the area not long after she began working on the book, Albemarle County has left its own special, if invisible, stamp on the book. Gastinger draws and paints largely from live specimens, and her rambles through the nearby Piedmont and Blue Ridge with expert botanists provided many of those specimens.
Not every entry is graced with one of Gastinger’s simple black-and-white drawings. That would have been impossible, she said, as it details 3,154 species.
“We mainly focused on ones that amateurs will see,” she said.
Now that the collaboration has borne fruit, Gastinger is focusing on other work, including large-scale watercolors, a collection of which won her a gold medal at the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual exhibition in 2007. She works on commission, creating custom sketchbooks and paintings for people who want to document their properties and immortalize favorite plants, and teaches watercolor workshops, one of which is coming up November 9.
“There’s definitely still sometimes an ‘I can’t believe I did this,’ moment,” she said of the project—understandable when you realize the collaboration yielded a book that’s 1,500 pages long and weighs seven pounds.
Her own copy of the Flora sits on her desk, and it’s usually open. It’s gone from her main job to an important reference point for new projects. “Toward the end, things were going so fast I couldn’t really learn the plants’ names,” she said. “Now it’s great to actually be using it and keying them out.”
More images of Gastinger’s work and details on her upcoming workshop are at laracallgastinger.com.—G.B.
How much would you pay to save someone you love? Everything? How much, then, to save something you love from being lost forever? Depends on the value of the thing in question, right? Yet another magic mushrooming of the Internet spore is our obsession with price points. Forget coupon clipping, from E*Trade to eBay, you can play Alan Greenspan and split pennies buying diapers. When a shop fire in Bangladesh kills hundreds, you wonder about the cost of the wicking weave on your back and then buy it anyway along with a pair of brightly colored, featherweight kicks. No sweat, you’ve got to be fast to stay ahead in this dirty old rat race.
Then there’s the stuff that’s priceless. Not your kid’s first smile, maybe, but a Kickstarter campaign for a documentary you believe in or maybe keeping the doors open at your favorite local newspaper. How much is that worth? The bots want you to be impulsive. They know what you like. Buy it now with one click. They’ll take a billion pennies no one else wants and build another factory.
This week’s feature examines a forward-looking conservation program that Albemarle County started a few years back to save parcels of land with rare biological value. It’s exactly the type of initiative that got cut when the real estate bubble burst. How do you, as a taxpayer, value a steep shady grove where the trillium flower grows if you’ll never be able to see it? Isn’t the law of nature to let evolution run its course?
In that spirit I’m writing to let you know that we’re discontinuing The Rant, a staple in the paper for just over a decade. You’ve got one more week to rant to your heart’s content. In the meantime we’ll be asking you some questions and hoping you have the answers.
Lonnie Murray, chair of the Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee, points out rare species. Photo: Ian Nichols
It’s a warm, early fall day, and Lonnie Murray and I are preparing for a scramble.
We’re in a remote hollow in far southwest Albemarle County at the invitation of the landowner to explore a granite outcrop that nearly a decade ago was listed as one of the county’s top biodiversity hotspots.
“The Natural Heritage Committee will not be held responsible for your injury or death,” Murray says. He’s the group’s chair, an advisory body created by the Board of Supervisors in 2005 to help assess and advocate the importance of sites exactly like this.
He’s joking about the liability, but it’s pretty steep. We switchback our way up the slope, trying not to roll an ankle or dislodge the leaf litter and loam. A few hundred feet above the road, the mountain levels out, and we’re standing on bare granite.
“You don’t think of us having deserts here,” said Murray. But in a way, that’s what we’re in. The southern exposure means the outcrop bakes in the sun daily. The only water comes from above, and there’s next to no soil. It is, in short, a rough place to be a plant.
Unless you’re rock selaginella or grimmia moss, which can lie shrivelled and dormant until rain resurrects them into bright cushions of green. Or fameflower, one of Virginia’s few native succulents, a hardy cactus-like plant with hot-pink blooms. Or fragrant orange grass, mountain mint, and pennyroyal.
All of them are here. Some of them are, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, nowhere else in Albemarle County. Murray stoops again and again to point out rarities and beauties, slipping seeds into a small envelope as he goes: a native dayflower, with a few remnants of brilliant blue blooms still visible; a low-growing minuartia. “When this was in bloom, it was a cloud of white flowers,” he says. “In spring, this is really amazing.”
Even without Murray’s enthusiastic expertise, it would be clear we’re in a special spot. The forest pauses here. The chestnut oak and ash trees that march along the ridgelines and the black cohosh and mayapples of the cool understory are nowhere. Neither are the legions of singing insects, their chorus growing a little thin as September barrels to a close. The species on the rock have a fierce, survivalist beauty, from the Carolina roses growing bonsai-like from cracks and seams to the green-eyed praying mantis that snatches up and devours part of a juvenile eastern fence lizard right in front of our photographer’s lens.
And then there’s the view from up here. To the south, there isn’t a single sign of human habitation—just a dry, lonely hollow and undulating hills that fade to blue.
“Why in the world would we not want to work harder to get this protected?” Murray asks.
Since the late 1990s, Albemarle County has acknowledged the need to protect areas of great natural importance, but it’s done little to make good on the goal. A 2000 program to use public funds to buy development rights on private land aimed to put 10,000 acres in conservation in 10 years. It fell short—the total is up to 7,500 acres—and some of the area’s most remarkable sites have slipped through the cracks. Murray thinks even open-space conservation easements don’t do enough to protect the rare plant life in spots like the one we visited. He says the county needs more options, more funds, and more political will if it’s going to save them.
Life in a remote, rocky outcrop can be harsh—and not just for the plants. Photo: Ian Nichols
Rare resources
We had made the half-hour drive down Route 29 to the outcrop site in Murray’s Toyota sedan, me navigating, him driving and explaining where county policy falls short on land conservation.
“We just don’t have enough tools to work with,” he said.
Albemarle could allow smaller plots of land to qualify for the tax breaks that come with open space land use valuation, he says—currently, the minimum is 20 acres. It could increase the number of years’ worth of back taxes people have to pay if they change their land use to allow for development. It could allow anyone with a property deemed ecologically sensitive to jump the line, so to speak, and get special consideration for participation in its Acquisition of Conservations Easements (ACE) program, which uses hotel tax revenues to buy up development rights on forest and farmland.
“The Board of Supervisors could enact that at the next meeting, and it would be done,” he said. “But there’s just not a will.”
But the most important step in his mind, and the one least likely to win favor from an elected body that leans hard in favor of private property rights, would be tying any such measures to a requirement that the landowner commit to good stewardship and work with staff to protect biodiversity.
It’s not just about preserving pretty specimens, Murray explained. Many of Albemarle’s hotspots lie in the somewhat confusingly named Southwest Mountains, the little sister range just to the east of the Blue Ridge that serves as the source for much of the area’s drinking water. The health of the land, the soil, and thus the water supply is closely connected to the health of the ecosystem as a whole, and the sites on the Natural Heritage Committee’s list are crown jewels. These small pockets of biodiversity represent the few surviving areas where our particular native ecosystem remain intact, like little living seed banks for the future. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
As Murray pointed out, there are more immediate practical reasons to preserve them, too. Take the rock outcrop community: Plants that can thrive in such hot, arid conditions and poor soil could be perfect candidates for green roofs and parking lot plantings, and the more we know about what they like and how they interact, the better. Why bring in exotic turf species and wage war against crabgrass when you could grow hardy native sedges, ferns, mosses, and wildflowers instead?
The county needs to make conservation and care of the land work for the landowners, he said as the Toyota tried and almost failed to gain a last hill, its wheels spinning in gravel. “What else do we have to offer them?”
Ann Mallek, who represents Crozet on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, said the county has the opportunity to make its ACE program both bigger and better. Officials are finalizing the latest update to its Comprehensive Plan, and once it’s finalized in 2014, it will be five more years before the county will get the chance to make major changes to its land use rules.
“It’s the perfect time to really force ourselves in the Rural Area chapter to have a discussion on this,” said Mallek, who has pushed in vain for full funding of ACE in recent years. “Once we have the confidence to actually have a budget for the ACE program, then we get along to the next challenge, which is making the program better by increasing the level of stewardship required.”
She was a middle-aged miniature poodle with spectacular dental disease. Most teeth were no longer visible, having been sealed away for years inside thick tombs of dental tartar. The bleeding gums had retreated to expose the roots of several teeth, many of which were swiveling loose in their sockets. I know, I know. They should have sent a poet. I’ll spare you further details, but it suffices to say that she was in dire need of some extractions, and would feel immeasurably better once they were performed.
I could see the fear spreading across my client’s face. He wanted to do the right thing, but he was paralyzed by the need for anesthesia. He was worried that his dog was too old and too small.
“I don’t blame you for being concerned,” I explained, “ but the risk really is very, very low. She’s in good health, and shouldn’t be in any more danger than any other patient undergoing the same procedure.”
“O.K.,” he started, pausing to think for a moment. “I know that she’s suffering with this. As long as you think there’s an 80 percent chance she’ll make it, I think we should go ahead.”
Eighty percent! I reeled at the suggestion. I’d be surprised if it was any less than 99 percent, and that’s rounding down. Anesthesia is incredibly safe. Could anybody really think that I’m routinely recommending procedures that come with a one-in-five chance of death? Am I seen as just a convoluted mechanism for Russian roulette? In that moment, I was given a powerful reminder of the disconnect between the perception of medical risk and the reality of it.
It is hard to strike the proper balance between informing people and terrifying them. Every medication has a list of possible side effects. Every procedure has a list of potential complications. But these lists are often presented in an inelegant pile, with absolutely no sense of proportion or scale. Temporary nausea and lethargy are listed right alongside liver failure and death, and in no particular order. Do these things happen to one in a million or one in four? And what about all the tragic stories you read online? Those must count for something, right? With this chaotic mess of context-less information, you’re left to decide what chances are worth taking.
There’s no way I can allay all those fears in one fell swoop. It wouldn’t even be responsible to do so, because some risks are well worth considering. But I do hope I can grant some perspective. On the whole, medical risk is extraordinarily low. The most common risks are also the most minor—upset stomachs and the like—and even those are reasonably infrequent. Serious risks are rare, and usually encountered only when treating serious illness. None of that means that tragedies can’t happen, and parsing the odds is of no comfort to the unfortunate few who have already experienced them. But fear of remote possibilities shouldn’t lead us to sacrifice our pets’ health and well-being. Let’s face it, you can’t go for a walk outside without taking on some amount of risk, but we don’t spend our lives cowering on the couch. If you have a veterinarian that you trust, you should feel comfortable asking him or her to help you understand these risks before taking them. You’re likely to find that the medication or procedure isn’t nearly as dangerous as you thought.
Even with math overwhelmingly in your favor, risk can still be unsettling. There’s a difference between intellectually understanding that something is safe and being emotionally comfortable with it. Even miniscule risks can seem mountainous when they have the potential to affect you or someone you love (pets quite obviously included). That’s completely normal. It is a measure of how dearly you care for your pet, and not of how irrational you are. I get it. I have pets, too. It doesn’t matter that I’ve safely anesthetized many hundreds of animals—my stomach ties in knots when it’s mine. But those knots are my problem, not theirs.
Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital.He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.
The contentious 2010 water supply plan included building the Ragged Mountain Dam and dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, but officials are reconsidering whether the dredging project is necessary. Photo: Jack Looney
It’s been three years since the Charlottesville City Council and Albemarle County Service Authority agreed on a plan to build the Ragged Mountain Dam and dredge the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Construction of the dam is well underway, but a scrapped contract has stalled the dredging project, and officials now say it may be time to reevaluate whether dredging is still a good idea.
The water supply plan was a hugely contentious issue for years, and opponents of the dam, led by City Councilor Dede Smith, pushed a design that would only include dredging. The 2010 agreement between the city, county, and Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority revealed a multistage plan for dam construction and $3.5 million in capital improvement funds set aside to dredge the reservoir; at the time of the agreement, some people wondered why both were necessary.
Smith, a vocal opponent of the Ragged Mountain Dam who began a pro-dredging campaign in 2007, said she doesn’t understand why the dredging project would move forward now that the dam construction is underway.
“South Fork just doesn’t contribute much to the water storage,” she said. “Why would Rivanna pay at all for dredging if it’s not needed for the water supply?”
Three companies submitted conceptual proposals to the RWSA in 2012, and Texas-based Orion Marine Group was selected to pursue a contract for the dredging project. The RWSA’s request for proposal required contractors to negotiate with local landowners and find a property suited for processing and disposal of the dredged material, and Orion’s original plan was to use land at Albemarle County’s Panorama Farms. The RWSA budgeted $3.5 million of ratepayer money for the project, but Orion’s negotiation with landowners revealed that paying for the land alone would cost upwards of $3.1 million, which wouldn’t leave enough money for the dredging itself. An August 12 letter to the RWSA announced that Orion “must decline the invitation” to pursue the project.
Without a proposal on the table, the sewer authority is back to the drawing board, and some politicians and members of the public say it’s time to pull the plug on the project.
At the last City Council meeting in September, Councilor Dave Norris suggested that the money intended for dredging be redirected to another long-discussed sewer authority issue: mitigating the odor that wafts from the wastewater treatment plant to the Woolen Mills neighborhood. Councilors agreed to allow for public comment before making a recommendation to the RWSA board.
Albemarle County Supervisor and RWSA board member Ken Boyd agrees that dredging the reservoir would be a waste of money, but he’s not in favor of putting the $3.5 million toward a project that benefits city residents only.
“If we’re going to decide that dredging is not necessary, we ought to put the money into other capital projects,” Boyd said, adding that half of that $3.5 million would technically come out of county ratepayers’ pockets.
Boyd said he never understood why the project was approved in the first place.
“I personally never thought the dredging was an important aspect of our water supply plan,” he said. “If we do any dredging, it’s going to be for recreational and aesthetic purposes.”
UVA rowing coach Kevin Sauer disagrees. As someone who’s lived in the county for 25 years and spent nearly every day on the water, Sauer’s been a dredging advocate since the discussion began years ago. The water level has dropped at least three feet since he began running practices at the reservoir, he said, and overgrown islands resulting from years of silt buildup make it difficult for the team’s boats to get through the area. All that aside, Sauer said he’s concerned that the inevitable silting will continue to accumulate to the point where it will be difficult to pump water into the Ragged Mountain Reservoir.
“I don’t understand why we would allow this tremendous resource to completely silt in just because it’s not the primary water source,” he said.
RWSA director Tom Frederick said he empathizes with recreational users, and private funding from local stakeholders like rowers or fishermen could change the game.
Meanwhile, Frederick said the RWSA board is awaiting the results of an appeal filed by Blue Ridge Sand, a southwest Virginia company whose dredging proposal was rejected last year due to missing information. Frederick said the results of the pending appeal will be factored into the board’s decision about the project, and right now, all options are on the table.
At last week’s RWSA board of directors meeting, members agreed to let the public and local governing bodies weigh in before abandoning the dredging plan. Frederick said dredging the reservoir would still have “multiple potential benefits,” especially for recreational purposes, but whether or not those benefits outweigh the costs to city and county ratepayers is still up in the air.
“Are those benefits appropriate for the public to continue to support through taxes and rates? Or do the costs outweigh the benefits?” Frederick said.
Have you heard all the chatter about cloud computing, but you’re still a little foggy when it comes to understanding what it means? Simone Alley, market development manager for CenturyLink in Virginia can clear it up for you. “Cloud computing refers to storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet or a private connection instead of from your computer’s hard drive” said Simone. “Data isn’t actually stored in a cloud.”
Businesses of all sizes are using cloud computing to host their websites, email programs, databases, testing and development functions, backup files and more. Email programs hosted in the cloud provide full-featured email capabilities—the same ones you have in the office—whether you’re home, on the road or anywhere in the world. You can log in with just an Internet connection. The features you depend on, like your calendar and directories, are always available to you.
According to Simone, there are some simple benefits that almost every business can realize. First and foremost is disaster preparedness. Storing company records, files, and other important data on an off-site server is critical if you’re going to keep your business going after a disaster like a storm, fire, or flood. Using a cloud service to back up your data allows you to access it from remote computers or even mobile devices, should the worst ever happen. It’s no longer necessary to buy expensive storage devices like servers nor install, configure or maintain that hardware. In the cloud, your service provider already invested in the equipment, which is maintained as part of your service.
Security is another primary reason to use cloud. Spam, viruses and security breaches scare every business owner because the consequences of downtime or losing customers’ data are grave. Cloud-based service providers like CenturyLink offer access to security experts and strong security features.
File-sharing programs made possible with cloud computing improve communication among employees and customers. More businesses are relying on collaborative efforts with secure document-sharing, instant messaging and video conferencing. Buying these services in the cloud eliminates purchasing licenses and installing or updating complex software.
What’s the best way to get to the Cloud? Having a reliable, secure connection through your private or public network is absolutely critical if your business is going to explore Cloud computing solutions. Your data and software applications can only benefit your company if you can access them!
For more information regarding cloud computing or to discuss your specific business needs, please contact Brian Watson, business sales manager at CenturyLink at 434-971-2376 or stop by the CenturyLink Experience Center at 1240 Seminole Trail in Charlottesville.
Albemarle Circuit Court Clerk Debra M. Shipp. Photo: Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Check c-ville.com daily and pick up a copy of the paper Wednesday for the latest Charlottesville and Albemarle news.
Auditors find errors in Circuit Court Clerks’ offices
State officials are again reporting costly internal errors in the Albemarle County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, according to a report in The Daily Progress.
A state audit reveals that between January 2012 and March 2013, Clerk Debra M. Shipp’s office held hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of potential unclaimed property and passed on more than $2,000 in tax refunds, among other problems. Out of 53 sample cases, 14 showed errors, according to the audit.
Despite having a clean audit last year, Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk Llezelle Dugger’s office was also found to have held on to more than $100,000 in possible unclaimed property and had errors in 25 of 41 sample cases.
Dugger told The Daily Progress her staff had been stretched thin by efforts to digitize records, but that all errors had been corrected. Shipp, whose office has been cited for serious errors for four straight years since she became clerk five years ago, said chronic understaffing has led to nearly impossible workloads for county court employees.
Shipp, who is paid $138,743 a year, and Dugger, who receives a $110,832 annual salary, hold constitutional offices that go to a vote every eight years.
Partial federal shutdown hits close to home for some
Now that the federal game of chicken has come to a head, everyone’s thinking the same thing: How will this affect me?
“Essential” government services will remain in operation. That means mail delivery will continue and air traffic controllers at the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport are still on the job. But traveling will be a challenge for many, as visa applications to visit the U.S. are put on hold, passport applications are frozen, and national parks like Shenandoah will close and ask lodgers to go elsewhere. According to The Daily Progress, the National Ground Intelligence Center and Defense Intelligence Agency will still operate, but civilian employees could face furloughs.
Criminal investigations and federal court trials will continue, according to local reports, but courthouse employees not associated with the criminal division will be furloughed.
Governor Bob McDonnell has said as many as one-third of Virginia’s federal workers will be forced to stay home without pay, according to local reports. That would mean fewer tax dollars flowing into state coffers.
County declines gift of land for park
Albermarle county recently declined a 410-acre gift of land along Route 29 in Red Hill, but officials have indicated they may say yes to another parcel adjacent to the nearby Ragged Mountain Natural Area.
According to Charlottesville Tomorrow, staff and supervisors said the county didn’t have the resources to maintain the land offered by owners Montgomery “Bird” Woods and Jose V. Lambert. The plot is home to an unusual rock outcrop plant habitat that staff say represents an important area of biodiversity within the county.
Meanwhile, the Nature Conservancy told CT it hopes to transfer 356 acres along the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to the county before the end of the year. Supervisor Ann Mallek called the land “very valuable,” in part because it connects to an existing trail network and is readily accessible.
Buford science labs up and running
Buford Middle School held a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony last week for its newly renovated, $1.4 million science labs. According to Charlottesville Tomorrow, Buford is the first public school in Virginia to become a part of the Commonwealth Engineering Design Academies, a partnership with the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Curry School of Education.
The labs feature giant touch-screen monitors, three-dimensional printers, and movable lab tables, which students have been learning to use over the last two weeks. The multi-site lab school will eventually expand to include Charlottesville and Albemarle high schools, and Jack Jouett Middle School.
“Portrait of Lloyd Patterson” was found in an antique store in 1992, prompting curiosity about the African-American expat’s family story.
In 1932, a group of 21 African-American artists and intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, traveled from Harlem to the Soviet Union. The trip was part of an outreach effort by the Meschrabom-Film studio, which hoped to produce a propagandistic feature film, Black and White, criticizing segregation and racism in the U.S. The intention was to forge solidarity between the stars of the Harlem renaissance and the international Communist cause. Unfortunately, the Soviets proved woefully unfamiliar with the realities of race relations in the U.S., and the project collapsed before film production began.
Given the Stalin regime’s history of brutality and oppression, the attempts to paint the Soviet Union as a harmonious utopia now seem foolhardy in retrospect, but at least one of the visiting Americans found happiness on the trip. Actor Lloyd Patterson remained in Moscow and married a Ukranian designer, Vera Aralova. They had three children, including the acclaimed poet James Patterson.
Despite the failure of Black and White, a film on the topic of race was eventually produced, called Tsirk (Circus), a 1936 drama comedy musical directed by Sergei Eisenstein protégée Grigori Aleksandrov. The narrative loosely parallels the lives of the Pattersons—a white American circus performer faces discrimination in America because of her half-black infant son, but finds acceptance among the people of the USSR, who surround them in the film’s climactic scene and sing a welcoming lullaby to the child, played by a 2-year-old James Patterson.
The story of the Pattersons is an intriguing one, embodying an unlikely meeting between two largely disparate yet contemporaneous cultural and artistic movements. It’s a largely unknown story, and the Fralin Museum’s current exhibition, “In the Shadow of Stalin: The Patterson Family in Painting and Film,” promises an enlightening view of the Pattersons. Unfortunately, the exhibit just scratches the surface of the story, with only a few materials on display.
The original material in the exhibition consists of a photograph of Friends of the Soviet Union’s Harlem chapter en route to Russia, two Soviet realist propaganda lithographs (unrelated to the Pattersons, but provided for context), and a painting of Lloyd Patterson. The portrait—painted by an unknown artist, and discovered rolled up in the back of a Moscow store some years ago—is excellent. The striking elder Patterson’s handsome young features are sharply captured, and on its own it is worth a trip to the Fralin.
The exhibition is supplemented by three explanatory placards, two exceptionally grainy photos of the family, two reproductions of promotional posters for Circus, and a flat screen that plays the climactic lullaby scene from the film—all on display in the small foyer area on the museum’s ground floor. The exhibit comes as something of a surprise, piquing visitors’ interest but failing to satisfy their curiosity, and attendees will inevitably depart with more questions about the Pattersons than they arrived with.
The museum’s excellent upstairs exhibit, a full retrospective of work by painter Émilie Charmy (read the full review here), is a comparatively comprehensive look at an artist and a life outside of the standard art history canon, and the Patterson show could have benefitted from the same thoroughness and rigor. Hopefully, the October 26 symposium on African American Artists and Intellectuals in Soviet Russia, a free event held in Campbell Hall, will answer some of the questions raised by the intriguing but unfulfilling Patterson exhibit (which is on display through December 22).
Smog effect
When Bill Callahan first began releasing music under the name Smog in the early ’90s, the efforts seemed deliberately halfhearted. His non-committal song ideas were defensively shielded in a dense layer of home-recorded hiss and grit. But eventually, small buds of coherence began to blossom. Callahan’s lyrics grew into cryptic, captivating narratives, and more professional recordings gave them space to be heard, fleshed out with drums, backup singers, and cello. The mid-’90s Smog albums were overwhelmingly melancholy, scattered with driving dirges that dealt with topics like depression, disappointment, and addiction in ways that were poetic, mysterious, and darkly funny. A few songs, like the career highlight “Bathysphere,” were instant classics. Callahan became something of an indie-rock darling, dating Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and collaborating with Jim O’Rourke and Royal Trux’s Neil Hagerty.
But guarded, caustic wit and insurmountable melancholy are tough traits to maintain over an extended career, and some time around the turn of the century, Callahan’s mood lightened, his voice deepened, and his music took on a folk-country tinge. He allowed a laid back charm to seep into his music, and though his darkly funny outlook still took center stage, it was often leavened with a sad romanticism and sly humor, exemplified in songs like “Dress Sexy at My Funeral.” Over the past decade, Callahan dropped the Smog pseudonym and used his own name, experiencing something of an artistic renaissance that earned him critical reassessment and a new generation of fans. Today, he’s rightfully viewed as one of indie rock’s best songwriters, alongside peers like Will “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” Oldham and David Berman of The Silver Jews.
Bill Callahan’s most recent album, the fine and admirable Dream River, was released in September on the Drag City label. He will appear at The Jefferson Theater on Tuesday, October 1. The opening acts are the genteel Ned Oldham (brother of Will, member of the local group Old Calf, formerly of Palace Brothers and The Anomoanon), and New Bums—a newly-minted duo consisting of Ben Chasny from Six Organs of Admittance, and Donovan Quinn of the Skygreen Leopards.
Share your thoughts on indie rock’s best songwriters in the comments section below.
Cakes are making their debut on the menu at Bodo's. Photo: Courtesy Bodo's Bagels
Just when you thought a Caesar salad was enough to satisfy your lunch craving, Bodo’s Bagels adds another treat to the menu—literally. Cakes (that’s what they’re called) are coming out of the Preston Avenue location’s oven as of last week and, for $1.25 you get a chocolatey, brownie-esque followup to your bagel and schmear.
“Food is good.” That’s the tagline from new Corner restaurant, fig—and we believe it! The restaurant, which has its grand opening Thursday, October 3, is the latest venture for Jozo Andelic and Anja Cetic, whose names you may recognize from another West Main restaurant, the now-shuttered Balkan Bistro. Though it closed earlier this year, Balkan had a big influence on the offerings at fig, which will serve a lunch and dinner menu with plenty of house-made ingredients like sausage, pork kielbasa, baklava, and bread. We’d venture a guess it wasn’t the food that caused Balkan to close—it was the location. Fig is located in the former Café Europa spot, which bodes well for its longevity.
The best way to end hunger? By drinking! …We joke, of course, but hunger is certainly no laughing matter and to do its part, Fifth Season Gardening Co. will host the Homebrew for Hunger Festival on Saturday, November 9 from 5-8pm. The festival features local craft breweries and homebrewers alike, with proceeds benefitting the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. More than 20 local brews will be available for tasting. Last year’s event in Chapel Hill, North Carolina raised $15,000, but surely Charlottesville can top that. A donation of (up to three) canned goods at the door enters you in the raffle to win prizes from homebrew manufacturers. Tickets cost $20 in advance and $25 at the door, if any are left, and can be purchased at homebrewforhunger.com.
Dan Catalano’s political opinion column, Odd Dominion, runs every other week in C-Ville. Sometimes that means he has to write ahead of the news cycle, as was the case with this week’s column. A few days ago, it was anyone’s guess what the stroke of midnight last night would bring. Sorry, Dan—the news ain’t good.
As has been oft-noted here at Odd Dominion HQ, we sure do envy you future readers. You know all sorts of stuff—stuff that is not available to us poor wretches on the other side of the deadline divide. For instance, you know at this very moment—as you read this!—whether or not the government is still fully funded and functioning. We do not. You know the exact level of lunacy that transpired in the U.S. House of Representatives as the debate over meeting the United States’ financial obligations entered its final hours. We can only sit here and imagine the fun.
Now usually we’d just make a prediction and be done with it, but this is a rare situation in which we truly have no idea how the whole thing is going to shake out. If we had to bet on it, we’d guess that Speaker of the House John Boehner cobbled together a face-saving compromise at the last minute and passed a budget-sustaining continuing resolution with a majority of Democratic votes. But that is in no way a given. As ex-Ohio Representative Steve LaTourette colorfully put it on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” trying to manage the current House Republican conference is like trying to steer a “wheelbarrow of frogs”—no matter what you do, somebody’s going to jump out.
As you may or may not know, one of the people responsible for corralling those votes is Virginia’s own Eric Cantor, the lantern-jawed Representative of Virginia’s 7th district, and the current House Majority Leader. As Boehner’s ostensible right-hand man and former House Minority Whip (where his entire job involved counting votes), you’d think that Cantor would have some control over this situation. But—as has become readily apparent over the past few weeks—he most certainly does not.
The current problem arose out of Cantor’s awkward and transparently phony bid to be the voice of the Tea Party caucus after the 2010 congressional elections, which swept a huge wave of anti-government conservatives into the House. His overtures to the Tea Party were never reciprocated, but Cantor continues to champion the House anarchists in the vain hope (we imagine) that he might actually get elected speaker if Boehner falls.
But a close reading of Cantor’s smug-yet-grim smile as he exited the recent House vote on the budget (which stripped funding for Obamacare, a strategy that has zero chance of succeeding) seemed to reveal a man who has lost control of the wheelbarrow altogether, and is now trying desperately to avoid the dozens of amphibians wriggling at his feet.
This is why we imagine that, in the end, Boehner gave up on the crazy caucus (and, by extension, Eric Cantor) and cut a deal with Democrats to keep the lights on in the capital. But you know what? We don’t know! And it’s killing us!
For all we know, you are currently reading this by candlelight, listening to the muffled cacophony of a complete societal breakdown raging on the other side of your locked basement door. And somewhere out there, Eric Cantor is currently warming his hands over a bonfire of burning Obamacare amendments, celebrating his new status as king of the congressional lunatics’ asylum.
