Month: August 2016

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Pete’s Dragon is much-needed summer movie magic

A re-imagining of Disney's cherished family film, PETE'S DRAGON is the story of Pete and his best friend Elliot, who just happens to be a dragon.

From amid the anger over uninspired sequels and reboots this summer emerges Pete’s Dragon, a delightful family movie that’s firm on its own foundation and follows its own creative vision while using its source material as a platform to reach new heights. Ostensibly remaking Disney’s 1977 live-action-with-animation fantasy that is goofy and endearing, but—let’s be honest—not exactly classic material, writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) uses the characters’ names (Pete, Elliott the dragon) and very loosely reimagines plot points to create an entirely fresh vision that works on its own terms.

We first meet a 5-year-old Pete in the late 1970s on a drive with his parents somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, when the father swerves to avoid a deer, causing a devastating accident from which Pete is the only survivor. After being chased by wolves through the forest, Pete is rescued by an enormous winged beast that is covered in green fur and has intelligent eyes and an alternately empathetic and playful face. The two disappear into the woods together, and for six years are inseparable best friends, until Pete is discovered by the residents of a small logging town where a local patriarch, Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford), has been spinning tall tales of having seen a dragon in the woods.

The technical marvel of the film in both audio and visual design would be worth the cost of entry alone, but Pete’s Dragon uses its special effects not as a crutch but as an essential component to the artistry of the film. Elliott—named after a character in a book Pete kept as the sole reminder of his life before the accident—is not a bumbling, adorable monster as in the original, but a symbolic amalgamation of elements from mythology, the natural world and even domesticated animals. Voiced by John Kassir (famous as the Crypt Keeper), he is not Pete’s imaginary friend or escapist wish fulfillment, but a manifestation of the things we cherish as children yet take for granted as adults: nature, the magic of imagination and discovery and the value of companionship.

Lowery uses the relatively straightforward narrative to let the rich emotion, the relationships between the characters and sophistication of its underlying themes do the heavy lifting in his film. Pete’s Dragon is partly a meditation on family and community; Pete, an orphan, is discovered by Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), an adoptive mother to the daughter of her partner, Jack (Wes Bentley). The chief villain of the film, Jack’s brother Gavin (Karl Urban), does not fill that role because he’s greedy or dastardly, but his exposure to Elliott was not the same as his family’s. He saw a monster, and, recalling the exaggerated tales of Mr. Meacham, considers it a threat. Lowery is keen on the importance of perspective and allowing yourself to be open to the possibility that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there, a theme that applies to not only literal dragons but also emotions and personal connections.

Cute, touching, sophisticated yet straightforward, visually and sonically stunning with great performances by kids and adults alike, there really aren’t enough good things to say about Pete’s Dragon. It’s a breath of fresh air in a summer where updates to franchises intended for children and teenagers are all glum, ironic, violent, self-aggrandizing and ultimately hollow. The film is great family entertainment, but no children are necessary to enjoy its beauty and wonder.

Playing this week z Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213 z Bad Moms, Florence Foster Jenkins, Ghostbusters, Ice Age: Collision Course, Jason Bourne, Lights Out, Nine Lives, The Secret Life of Pets, Sausage Party, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad z Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000 z Bad Moms, Café Society, The Fits, Florence Foster Jenkins, Gleason, Indignation, Jason Bourne, Sausage Party, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad

Pete’s Dragon
PG, 95 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema and
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Ellis Paul

Accomplished singer-songwriter Ellis Paul built a career in Boston’s folk circles, but comes home to Charlottesville on Friday. Publicity photo

Singer-songwriter Ellis Paul is equal parts folk artist and storyteller. His most recent album, Chasing Beauty, is characteristically ballad-centric and tells stories of real people and places that reflect larger truths about the human experience. In the style of  Woody Guthrie, the 15-time Boston Music Award-winner leans on his musical roots for an unfailingly genuine delivery and authentic feel. Australian-born, locally raised folk-pop artist Mariana Bell opens.

Friday, 8/19. $18-20, 8pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 First St. S. 977-5590.

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Arts Uncategorized

Anna Tucker illustrates the fun side of planning

For all its utility in tracking our planetary revolutions, earthly seasons and our personal development from one sunrise to the next, time may be the human construct that inspires the most anxiety. If you find conventional planners too rigid, digital calendars too ethereal, if you seem incapable of committing to a routine of tracking your time or if you’ve noticed that self-proclaimed mindfulness adult coloring books actually make you mindless as they distract you from your problems, Anna Tucker has the planner for you.

The 2016 University of Virginia graduate with a degree in media studies and English just completed her Kickstarter campaign last month, raising more than $6,000 to fund her Nevermindful 2017 Weekly Planner + Journal + Coloring Book. On the Kickstarter page, she describes it as “a Swiss army personal planner for space cadets and loony bins who like to fixate, for those of us who get driver amnesia, ask questions to be repeated and doodle in the margins.”

Tucker argues that most adult coloring books advertise themselves as mindful but are actually the opposite, encouraging consumers to zone out. In an e-mail, she writes, “I find it very sad to see industries capitalizing off public anxiety and an individual’s willingness to make changes by providing them with flimsy and temporary solutions to escape or treat symptoms rather than examine the root of the problem. Nevermindful is first and foremost a satirical self-help guide and intro to mindful thinking, but it will also hopefully be a way for people to empower themselves by taking the practice of sustainable stress relief into their own hands.”

The Nevermindful planner sprang from a perfect storm of ideas. As a transfer student from the University of Georgia, Tucker says she came upon mindfulness at the right time. She was adjusting to difficult classes at UVA and enjoyed being intellectually challenged but needed something to prevent burnout. She took a class on mindfulness at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center. Meanwhile, in her own planners, calendars and class notes, she was always drawing.

“I’ve always illustrated while writing because it helps me remember,” says Tucker. “I’m a visual person that way. People have always commented on [my illustrations], but I never thought about it until my job this summer.”

As the project coordinator for the vice provost for the arts at UVA, she makes calendars and to-do lists, as well as marketing and promotion materials.

“I kept getting compliments,” she says. “I never realized they could be helpful for someone else until I received positive feedback on them.”

And since graduating, she has had more time on her hands. For the Nevermindful project she commissioned 11 different artists to contribute their art to one month of the year. (Tucker is illustrating April.)

“I asked each person to capture their personality in a way through their art that could be enlightening to people to respond to,” she says. “I told them to try to be like a funny self-help book, what you would tell your best friends if you had a unique insight or mantra that would help people reconsider or reject something.”

She explains that while the planner is illustrated, it allows for coloring and includes games, riddles and tasks, with room for people to add to it in their own way. “It’s a more satirical way to point out that mindfulness and mediation are about confronting things in the present moment,” she says. “We’re trying to combine a calendar and timeline of living with fun things, creative prompts to keep us thinking.”

And Tucker purposefully instilled Nevermindful with a self-consciousness that most planners lack.

“We didn’t want to have a lot of straight lines,” she says. “It’s supposed to capture the idea that we think we can control the future by planning things. But we might as well have fun with it.”

For Tucker, it’s meaningful to have a physical plan and a record of how she spent her time that she can hold in her hands, rather than access digitally.

“It’s more personal to record things in your own handwriting,” Tucker says. “You can learn from yourself in the future and see how far you’ve come. And part of the idea of the book is that planning is stressful, but writing it out makes you feel better to have it outside of your body.”

Tucker has sold 200 copies through Kickstarter, with 10 percent of sales to fund mental health resources for students and community members at the Contemplative Sciences Center. She hopes to have the first batch printed in September. More information is available at never-mindful.com.

Anna Tucker’s Nevermindful planner combines task lists with whimsy, but don’t call it mindfulness. “By taking on the smaller, arguably harmless, target of adult coloring books, we are hoping this test case will give consumers a BS detector for this kind of advertisement in other areas of their life,” she says.

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News

Let the 5th District debates begin

Jane Dittmar and Tom Garrett answered questions moderator Bob Gibson chose from the audience. Photo Eze Amos

Congressional candidates Jane Dittmar and Tom Garrett met August 10 for the first of four forums, and the two agreed on several issues—and disagreed on many more. Around 200 people crammed into the Senior Center for the event sponsored by the Senior Statesmen of Virginia (no relation to the center).

Democrat Dittmar, a mediator, is the former chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, and Republican Garrett is a former prosecutor serving his second term in the state Senate. Both touted their credentials for working across the aisle.

Both opposed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the route of which runs through Nelson County, and both said they’d defy their party’s whips and vote for the interests of the district in Congress.

Dittmar said she was “appalled” at what GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said about the Khans, a Charlottesville Gold Star family whose son died in Iraq.

“I think Donald Trump is a smart man who sometimes picks dumb words,” said Garrett of his party’s standard bearer.

Garrett used the word “shameful” to describe the Affordable Care Act, the Veterans Administration and the rhetoric on gun safety. “You’re four times more likely to be killed by a knife,” he said. “The problem is not guns, it’s violence.”

Dittmar said that she supported the Second Amendment and universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, those prone to violence and terrorists.

When asked what specific project they would take to Washington, Dittmar’s No. 1 issue is Internet service in rural areas. “I’m like a dog after a bone on that one,” she said.

Garrett said he’d work on economic development for the 5th District. And he used several opportunities to bring up Deschutes Brewery, which wanted to locate in Albemarle but the county, under Dittmar’s watch, refused to rezone as much land as the Oregon company needed.

He noted several times the lack of cell phone coverage on Route 20 south, which is in Dittmar’s Scottsville district. “It strikes me as brazen to say that we can have Internet service when we can’t get cell service on 20 south and in North Garden,” he said.

Garrett drew groans from the audience when he expressed doubt that climate change is caused by fossil fuels. “I believe climate change is real,” he said. “I believe as long as there has been a climate it’s been changing.” That response got applause, while protests came when he said, “There is debate about whether it’s man-caused.”

And on the national debt, he proposed that young people be given the opportunity to defer receiving Social Security benefits in return for forgiveness of student loan debt.

Dittmar said it was essential to send different people to Washington. “We sent these warriors to Washington and they don’t know how to govern.”

The candidates will meet three more times before November, and two of those—September 28 and October 10—will be in the Charlottesville area.

tom garrett- eze amos
Republican state Senator Tom Garrett at the Senior Statesmen debate August 10. Photo Eze Amos
jane dittmar-amos
Jane Dittmar seeks the 5th District seat that hasn’t been held by a Democrat since Tom Perriello won it in 2008. Photo Eze Amos
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Arts

UVA alum Sasheer Zamata gets serious on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Sasheer Zamata returns to Charlottesville on August 22 to perform stand-up comedy at the Jefferson Theater. Photo by Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC

Comedian Sasheer Zamata was a teenager when she realized that she wanted to make people laugh. All it took was a joke about a janky elevator.

“When I was in high school [in Indiana], I did a government camp where students ran the government; we had to elect our officials and run for office,” says Zamata. “We stayed in a dorm with an elevator that would kind of shake when you were in it.” Zamata ran for lieutenant governor of her party and won, and when it came time for her to make a speech before the big election, she told her fellow campers—all 800 of them—“You better vote for me before you die in this elevator!”

“People just lost their minds,” says Zamata, laughing as she remembers the satisfying moment. “It was the easiest joke ever, and people were just loving it!”

“People told me afterwards, ‘You should do something where you speak in front of people and make them laugh,’” she says. “But no one knew to say ‘stand-up comedian,’ because we didn’t think of that as a plausible job.”

While a student at UVA, Zamata majored in drama, founded the long-form improv student comedy troupe Amuse Bouche—and ate a Bodo’s bagel for breakfast most mornings—before graduating in 2008. But it wasn’t until she moved to New York City, began creating her own online comedy videos and performing sketch comedy with Upright Citizens Brigade that she realized comedy was, in fact, a plausible job.

And that she was pretty darn good at it.

She filmed zany impersonations of celebrities and posted the videos to her online comedy channel. She donned wigs and costumes to impersonate Michelle Obama reading a version of Go the Fuck to Sleep, Beyoncé singing “Love on Top” as a lullaby to a Blue Ivy baby doll while a framed mugshot of Jay Z hangs over the sofa, and Nicki Minaj reading Green Eggs and Ham.

Zamata’s Bodo’s order: Bacon, egg and cheese on a cinnamon raisin bagel. “That was my favorite go-to breakfast bagel,” she says. “It’s a really good combination of savory and sweet.”

She’s continued to impersonate these celebrities—and many others, including Eartha Kitt and Lenny Kravitz—as a cast member on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

Zamata (now 30) joined the “SNL” cast midway through the show’s 39th season; her hiring ended a months-long talent search focused on minority women prompted by criticism of the show’s lack of on-camera diversity. Zamata was the first black woman to join the show’s company since Maya Rudolph departed in 2007, and just the fifth black female cast member in the show’s history (Leslie Jones, hired in 2014, is the sixth). “As a result, she faced unusual levels of scrutiny” during her first “SNL” appearance on January 18, 2014, the New Yorker’s Culture Desk column noted, “but her debut went without a hitch.”

She sees the show as yet another platform where she can “talk about things in culture or society that may be glossed over,” says Zamata, explaining that her job as a comedian is to analyze and critique under the guise of humor and make the sometimes painful truth “easier to swallow.”

During an “SNL” Weekend Update segment in December 2014, Zamata explained to co-host Colin Jost how she’d learned to convey black experiences via text through a whitewashed set of emojis. She pointed out to Jost, who is white, that of the 800 emojis available on Apple’s iOS at the time (they became more diverse in April 2015), “not one of them is of a black person.” If she wanted to refer to herself with an emoji, she used the dark moon emoji—but “it looks like…a baby Charles Barkley,” she quipped while looking directly at the camera, her expression telling the viewer, “It’s cool to laugh, but look at your phone; you know I’m right about all of this.”

She continued, “Unico, the company that creates emojis, thought that instead of one black person, we needed two different kinds of dragons, nine different cat faces, three generations of a white family and all the hands are white, too. Even the black power fist is white,” she said, making a point. “But on the plus side, they do have a KKK member that got punched in the face,” she said as the ghost emoji popped up on the screen.

In the recurring Vlog sketch, Zamata plays Janelle, a 15-year-old girl who films YouTube dance tutorials in her bedroom. Janelle doesn’t realize that her body has developed into that of a woman, and as she dances—naively, suggestively—YouTube creeps leave inappropriate comments that send Janelle’s dad (played by Chris Rock) into a hilarious panic.

“It’s about that moment where you are a girl turning into a woman, and you’re not really interested in boys, but your body is saying something different,” says Zamata. “And then there’s the way society views” a woman’s body as a sexual object. “It’s such an interesting moment that I want to talk about,” she says.

Joking about uncomfortable topics like racism, adolescent sexuality and Internet trolls is “a way to make us all laugh at the same thing and feel like we’re all together in this,” she says.

Zamata learned early on from that rickety elevator at government camp that nothing is funnier than the truth. It’s why she draws from her own experiences as a young black woman living in America to form her comedy. “I talk about things that I see and things that anger me or confuse me, and I sort of hash it out on stage until I have a fully formed thought on how I feel about it,” says Zamata. She’s joked about double standards, failed attempts to ditch a guy mid-date and her black hair.

By making serious points with a punch line, she says, perhaps people are more willing to listen.

Comedy can open your mind to new perspectives, but Zamata is quick to point out that it’s also an escape. A good comedy show can change you in so many ways, but in the moment that you’re watching, she says, “Just laugh out loud. Laughing feels so good.”

Sasheer Zamata

August 22

The Jefferson Theater

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Arts

Q&A with Gleason director Clay Tweel

Gleason tells the story of NFL player Steve Gleason's diagnosis of ALS, and the journey of his family: wife, Michel, and son, Rivers. Courtesy Cinetic Media

Director of new documentary Gleason, Clay Tweel returned to his hometown of Charlottesville last week to debut his new film. Tweel, hailing from the Greenbrier neighborhood, currently lives in Los Angeles and has worked on two other major motion pictures, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) and Print the Legend (2014). Both films, like Gleason, are documentaries focused on unique subjects.

C-VILLE: Why did you become a director?

Tweel: For me, what I’ve come to realize is that, it sounds really cliche, but I do truly believe that everybody has a story. And for me, [directing] a lot of documentary films and working primarily in that space,  I love to try to get to the core of why people do what they do. The more that you can understand human nature in other people, I think it helps you connect to the rest of the world. That’s, as a director, what I like to try to achieve with my films and that just makes me want to do more. There’s lots of different types of people on this Earth and it’s about exploring all different types of people.

What made this story idea to stand out to you?

There are two personal things that connect me to the story. The moment that I saw some footage about Steve and his wife, Michel, it made me think of a couple things. One is, my oldest sister has MS, and neurological disorders are something I am now more aware of than in the past. Then my dad had been Muhammad Ali’s lawyer for the last 30 years. They are my personal heroes. I loved Muhammad and I love his wife, Lonnie. I saw very strong connections between what they went through with what Steve and Michel were going through. I wanted to be able to bring the experience I had in being around the Alis to telling Steve and Michel’s story.

What was it like to work with Steve Gleason and his family?

It’s certainly a harrowing experience to work on a film like this. You see, when you are around somebody who is trapped in their own body, it’s emotionally very taxing in a certain regard. But then you get to juxtapose that with what he was like. He was a physical specimen, he was in peak human condition and then to now see him where he is. It’s hard emotionally for everyone around him and for Steve himself. But on the flip side of that, I think that both Michel and Steve keep a very fun-loving, positive attitude, finding the silver linings to life. That allows them to be people that draw people in, they have this charm, they have this magnetism to them. Being around them can be difficult and thrilling at the same time.

What was the biggest challenge you faced while making this movie?

One of the biggest challenges was trying to figure out exactly what the narrative through line would be. There was so much footage—there was about 1,300 hours when all was said and done. It was filmed over five years, so that’s a lot to wrap your brain around, “How are you going to condense that into a two-hour movie?” Finding what those core themes and core ideas that you can hang the narrative on throughout the course of the film, that was one of the hardest things to find.

What message do you want this movie to convey to its audience?

I’d like for the movie to convey a sense of hope and a sense of triumph of the human spirit. I think that a lot of the human experience is a mixture of happiness and suffering and that you have to be able to deal with both the highs and lows. I think that these particular people, like I said, Steve and Michel have such an amazing outlook and have such an amazing sense of determination and resiliency that I hope people walk away feeling that despite whatever horrible tragedy is going to pop up in your life, that you are going to find a way through it.

How has Charlottesville impacted your career?

I’ve lived out in L.A. for the last 13 years now, and there’s a core group of about six or seven guys that I know from Charlottesville that all live out in L.A. I am very grateful for my core group of friends that I’ve grown up with and that I can still stay connected to out there. But also the arts education that I got growing up in this city was invaluable. Being able to have music classes, I was in the band at CHS and I loved that experience and arts and drawing classes throughout my childhood. I think that the arts community here in Charlottesville is super special and super important and I don’t think any of us would be out in L.A. if we didn’t have that.

What is your favorite part of Charlottesville?

I would be remiss not to say that I love the food here. I think for a smaller town it has amazing restaurants. My brother-in-law owns one, Maya, on Main Street, so I have to plug that—that is my favorite restaurant. In terms of areas of town, it’s hard not to love the area you grew up in. Just being able to walk by the Greenbrier creek, that’s the childhood that I grew up in, I love that neighborhood.

What is your order at Bodo’s?

I would get roast beef, cheddar and lettuce on a plain bagel and a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese every time.

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News

Gene Washington’s lawyers want grand jury records

Capital defender Jennifer Stanton wants to check out the makeup of the grand jury that indicted Gene Washington. Staff photo

Attorneys for the man charged with the capital murders of a beloved teacher and her daughter in 2014 asked a judge for the grand jury records for the past four years in Charlottesville Circuit Court today.

The slayings of Robin Aldridge, 58, a special education teacher with Albemarle County, and 17-year-old Mani, a junior at Charlottesville High, shocked the area after neighbors reported their Rugby Avenue home ablaze December 5, 2014, and their bodies later discovered in the smoldering ruins.

Three days later, police arrested Gene Everett Washington, 31, after Robin Aldridge’s Toyota was found in the parking lot of his Barracks West apartment complex and bloody clothing, a knife and Aldridge’s new iPhone 6 was found in the dumpster there.

Washington sat in court for the brief hearing during which his capital attorneys from Norfolk sought the records. “The defense does not have to make a showing there’s been a deficit in the grand jury process,” said lawyer Jennifer Stanton.

“They need to show some reason,” argued prosecutor Libby Killeen. She cited the confidentiality that’s given to grand jurors and asked if there was a concern with the demographics of the jury that indicted Washington.

“Your sole point in getting this information is to look at the racial disparity?” asked Judge Rick Moore.

“To help determine if there’s a pattern,” replied Stanton.

Moore noted that the grand jury lists he sees generally only provide names, addresses and phone numbers. He agreed to allow the defense to see the list of jurors who indicted Washington in June 2015, and said there would be a protective order to keep the names from being shared with anyone other than Washington’s defense, which was not permitted to contact the jurors.

Five to seven jurors are called each month to serve on the grand jury from a pool of 120, and at least one is usually African-American, said Moore.

Legal expert Dave Heilberg said, “As far as makeup and selection, that’s something that can be examined. Obviously in a capital case with that much at stake, you’ve got to look at that. They could find something they could leverage.”

After the hearing, Stanton said, “In other jurisdictions, the grand jury process has been found to be hugely deficit.” And she said such a request for grand jury information was standard in a capital case.

 

 

 

 

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Magazines Village

C-VILLE Family, er, Village is on stands now!

Photo: Caleb Davis and Abe Granger

Naming your kid is a pretty big deal. If, as they grow up, you look at them and think, “Well, you’re not a D’Artagnan at all,” it’s fairly difficult to about-face. Publishing, on the other hand, isn’t like that. So when, as we were putting together this issue, we stumbled upon a moniker that communicated our message (nobody parents in a vacuum) even more effectively, we threw the baby out with the bathwater (so to speak). Let me explain.

With our summer issue, we made the change to C-VILLE Family because we wanted the name to better reflect the content than our previous title, C-VILLE Kids, had—we weren’t only writing about children (though we do plenty of that, too!). We were writing about the experience of raising children in our area. No one does it alone, and while the word family did the job just fine, it was a little too obvious.

Welcome to Village. Like the two iterations before it, this magazine celebrates everything that’s great about being a parent in Charlottesville. It’ll continue introducing you to the coolest, most industrious kids in the area, keeping you up-to-date on health and wellness news and showering you with ideas for kid- and family-friendly activities in each season. Because, after all, what’s in a name? When you really think about it, it’s what’s inside that counts.

Speaking of which, here’s what you’ll find inside this issue:

And, below, read the magazine cover to cover.

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Magazines Village

Screen time: Should your kid have a cell phone?

David Shames' family held out until he was 14 to give him a cell phone, but he started lobbying for one at age 9. Photo: Ryan jones

Whether you’ve allowed your kids to have their own mobile device or you’re still deciding if you should, they’ve probably already asked for one. At least that’s what Allyson Shames says her oldest son, David, started doing before she finally caved.

“He was making us Keynote presentations, justifying why he felt he needed one by the time he was 9 or 10,” she says. “There was a new presentation every couple of months.”

Shames, a mother of three, says she held out until David was 13 before giving him a cell phone for his birthday, but he, “a very tech-y kid,” had started using technology at an early age. Shames remembers him programming the VCR as a 2-year-old and sneaking out of bed six years later to use the family computer.

“When he was 8, he got up when the rest of us were asleep and tried to log into the family computer,” she says. “When he couldn’t get beyond the password screen, he restarted the machine and hacked in via the boot drive, reset the password and got in.”

Millennials are known as the first generation to grow up with technology, and maybe that’s what makes them so eager to use it. But Shames is happy with the advancements technology has provided for her family.

Before using a cell phone, David also used an iPad mini for about a year. This purchase, Shames says, was a product of her son’s interest in recording music. He practiced the drums, guitar and keyboard and used the tablet to record himself playing at home. David would then bring the recording into his teacher’s studio, where he was also able to record lessons and take them home with him.

Shames, whose two other children are ages 8 and 11, says technology has helped her family stay organized, too. David, who is part of the ski club with his brother, can text her from Wintergreen if they’re running late or returning early, and Shames says she’s able to keep other parents updated this way. David also has access to the shared family calendar and can collaborate on grocery lists from his cell phone.

“One of the biggest advantages has been in social relationships,” Shames says. “For so many kids, the nighttime Instagram posts and texts and chats are equivalent to the notes we passed in math class 25 years ago. They’re building connections.” She adds that the kids without devices are unintentionally excluded from those opportunities.

Some parents would prefer to hold out a little longer, like local mom Elvira Hoskins.

Hoskins’ cell phone policy is the same as Shames’—her 13-year-old has one and her other two children will also get cell phones when they become teenagers. She says the technology does come in handy now that her daughter is more independent, but she may have been wrong for assuming that a cell phone would enhance her daughter’s safety.

“It is also a false sense of security,” she says, remembering a time her daughter’s phone died after a concert and she wasn’t able to reach her. And she calls it heartbreaking that her daughter “used to be an avid reader, and now she mostly spends her downtime looking at her phone or computer.”

With the growing presence of technology in schools, parents say it can be difficult to determine when their child is using their tablet or computer for schoolwork or for their own entertainment.

Laurel Henneman, mother of 13- and 15-year-old boys, says only her oldest son has a cell phone, which he received when he entered high school. While she doesn’t identify as being pro- or anti-technology, she says providing kids with technology has plenty of positives and negatives you’ll want to consider “before you let the genie out of the bottle.”

Tech tips

The area moms we spoke to have some great advice for parents whose kids are craving a smartphone. Take it from them.

Have the talk. Hoskins advises initiating conversations about social media, “from predators to hurting a friend’s feelings to how you would handle feeling hurt or in awe of someone’s highlights they post to social media compared to in real life.”

Keep an eye out. Shames says, “Follow your kids on Instagram so you get a window into what’s going on with the social circle beyond your child, or beyond what they may talk about when they get to the age where every question is met with a grunt.”

Set limits. Across the board, parents say it’s important to limit a kid’s screen time and prohibit them from taking their phone or tablet to bed with them. Several parents, like Henneman, send their kids to a technology-free sleepaway camp over the summer.—S.B.

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Magazines Village

In tune: Young musicians hit the right notes with YOCVA

YOCVA members can be heard at venues such as Old Cabell Hall and at a variety of community events. Photo: Caleb Davis and Abe Granger

Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival founders, Juilliard School graduates, members of Dave Matthews Band…scroll down the list of local musicians who have played in the Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia, and you won’t doubt the almost-40-year-old organization’s claim: “Music begins with us.”

“We’re the only opportunity in the community for young people who play winds and strings to play on the same stage,” says Carolyn Fitzpatrick, president of YOCVA’s board. Composed of two full symphony orchestras, a junior strings program, and flute and clarinet ensembles, YOCVA is open to musicians ages 10 to 18 who live in Charlottesville, Albemarle and neighboring counties.

“We have a group of very dedicated conductors and the program is a step stool that allows our musicians to go from one level to the next, from, say, junior strings in elementary or middle school, to the Evans Orchestra and finally the Youth Symphony,” Fitzpatrick says. Auditions typically happen in the spring and late summer, after which “the conductors get together and build their symphonies,” she says. “Don Brubaker [director of the Rita M. Evans Orchestra] says his job is to empty his orchestra every year, meaning he hopes all his musicians move up [to the Youth Symphony].”

Fitzpatrick’s daughter, Mary, did exactly that: She started out playing in YOCVA’s Flute Ensemble, made the Evans Orchestra as an eighth-grader and eventually earned a spot as the principal flute in the Youth Symphony, in which she played for three years.

“The orchestra is different from private lessons and school bands becauses it’s an orchestra, and it’s a voluntary activity where our entire focus is on playing and how to communicate that to an audience,” says Mary Fitzpatrick, now a freshman at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, where she’s studying music therapy. “[The orchestras] helped me learn to work with all kinds of people—homeschoolers, private school students—not just people from my school,” adds the Albemarle High grad, who says she met two of her best friends, one from Monticello High and the other from Western Albemarle, during her time in YOCVA.

In addition to performing at venues such as Old Cabell Hall three times a year, members of the orchestras can also be heard at a variety of community events, including Monticello’s holiday house
tours and its annual naturalization ceremony and First Night Virginia. They’ve also begun a musical collaboration with Computers4Kids, an area organization that brings technology to children who don’t have access to it at home.

And while playing in YOCVA isn’t cheap (it costs between $295 and $400, annually), Fitzpatrick says, “Our mission is no barrier to talent. If you have the talent, we will make sure it’s possible for you to play in our orchestras.”