Meet your streets
Act like a tourist for a day and hit the bricks with a walking tour—you won’t look at your hometown the same way again. Grab a few friends and schedule an outing with the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (admin@albemarlehistory.org, 296-1492; $5 per person). A guide will show you shades of the past in Court Square, give you a new lens on the Downtown Mall or walk you through one of three 19th century cemeteries in the city.
Come September, keep an eye out for The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative’s neighborhood walks. The casual meetups started as part of the nonprofit’s MapLab project in 2013, and offer the chance to slow down and look more closely at your urban native habitat (thebridgepai.org/calendar).
Lend a hand
Determined to carry the giving spirit into the new year? Whether you’ve got a lot of time to devote or a little, volunteer opportunities abound. We’ve got a few ideas to whet your appetite, with contact info to get you started.
Sign up to be an usher—no experience or long training sessions necessary—for one of the 100 or so concerts put on by the UVA Department of Music or a Drama Department performance (music.virginia.edu; 924-3376 for the Culbreth box office).
Prep and dish up hearty breakfasts, tend the garden or play board games with clients at The Haven, the city’s day shelter, which relies on locals who provide nearly 1,000 volunteer hours a month (volunteer@thehaven.org).
Want to get outside? The Virginia Outdoor Foundation, which protects farms and forests with conservation easements, has volunteers join staff on site visits of properties to help collect data and take photos (jmcgarvey@vofonline.org).
Be a friend to a newly resettled refugee by signing up as a family mentor with Charlottesville’s office of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which provides housing and support in the city for people from conflict areas around the world (katie.bercegeay@rescue.org, 979-7772 ext. 114).
Give the gift of language by becoming a tutor with the Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville/Albemarle, which offers instruction in basic literacy and ESL to hundreds of people each year (info@literacyforall.org, 977-3838).
Make a massive difference in the life of the community’s most vulnerable by becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate, which pairs trained citizens with children who need someone to look out for their best interests in court—including victims of abuse and neglect (pcasa.org/volunteer.php, 971-7515, volunteer@pcasa.org).
None of that move you? Don’t worry, there’s something out there that will. Remember that it’s not all about full-day-in-the-field time commitments; plenty of organizations would be happy to have a few hours of office help. Scroll through other opportunities and get inspired at cvillevolunteer.org or volunteermatch.org.
Get outta the house
Is your inner hermit dominating your life, telling you to stay in and watch just one more episode of “Peaky Blinders” on Netflix? Ignore it. Get out there and mingle! Need some tips on how to do it or where to go? A visit to meetup.com will help you find your type of peeps in and around Charlottesville. Here’s just a sampling of the dozens of groups getting together to do everything from photography and playing games to cooking and building robots.
Tinkersmiths Makers: This group focuses on “sharing knowledge, collaborating and growing a local maker community with no minimum skill level required.” In addition to old-school trades like woodworking and fabrication, this group has a special interest in emerging technologies, too: 3D printing, robotics and Arduino. (If you know what that last thing is, these might be your people.)
The Charlottesville Gaming group: “Intended to be a meeting place for anybody in the Charlottesville-Staunton-Harrisonburg area who enjoys card games, board games, miniatures games, role-playing games or war games. Everybody is welcome.”
Good Reads and Good Eats: This group meets at 7pm on the first Tuesday of each month to discuss a monthly book selection (chosen through a poll on the website).
Start saving
Financially tapped out from all of your holiday obligations? While you piece together plans for ramen-based meals and purchase store brand toilet tissue, it’s also a good time to get ahead of next year’s budget crash by doing a self-check on spending habits.
“Saving money is really just the result of spending less,” said David Posner, a wealth management consultant and the expert on 106.1 The Corner’s “Money Mondays” hosted by Brad Savage. Posner thinks we need to adjust our views in order to keep our Benjamins in the bank.
“In my opinion, there is a major flaw in how we talk about money,” he said. “We always talk about ‘saving money’ when we should really be talking about spending less money.”
Talking to yourself about spending habits is also recommended. “Ask the hard question,” said Posner. “‘Where in your life can you spend less?’ This is a question I ask myself all of the time, and in order to spend less, I buy the store brands, or the generic stuff, or sometimes don’t buy the thing at all.”
The hard work in Posner’s simple spend less approach truly comes through self-discipline. “Often we really don’t need whatever it is we are buying, and every dollar not spent is a dollar saved,” he said. So buckle down and avoid buying all those things you didn’t get for Christmas.
Express yourself
Let’s face it. We’re not all budding Picassos or Chagalls, and some of us are lucky if we remember to give our stick figures four limbs. That doesn’t mean making art can’t be fun, and art skills can always improve, especially with expert instruction. McGuffey Art Center has classes in various mediums and for a range of experience levels, including one recent class titled “Drawing for Chickens.”
If drawing on paper’s not your thing, McGuffey offers a slew of other courses from screen printing T-shirts to abstract oil paintings. Cold weather at the start of the New Year makes it a great time to hone your art skills indoors.
Check out the full list of classes and workshops at mcguffeyartcenter.com or call 295-7973.