Month: October 2017

Categories
Opinion

Some assembly required: UN warns of state efforts to limit protest

Many protesters at the July KKK rally covered their faces after police used tear gas. photo Eze Amos

How did Richard Stuart, trustee of the Westmoreland County Volunteer Fire Department since 1999, father of three, and 2014 Virginia chapter winner of the American Academy of Pediatrics Child Advocate Award earn the attention of two United Nations Special Rapporteurs concerned with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly? As Virginia state senator for the 28th District, the Republican introduced a bill during the 2017 legislative session that was “incompatible with human rights laws and would unduly restrict the possibility for individuals to freely exercise their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, and peaceful assembly.”

Yes, Virginia, the august body of the UN itself is worried about your right to assemble —and the rights of citizens in 17 additional states where restrictions on free speech or assembly were either proposed or passed. Stuart’s bill, which was defeated 14-26 with not a single Democrat supporting it, in the words of last spring’s UN report would have “dramatically increased penalties for protesters engaged in assemblies considered ‘unlawful.’”

Specifically, failure to disperse after an assembly is declared unlawful would have moved up to a Class 1 misdemeanor from Class 3 under Stuart’s bill. About SB1055 the UN rapporteurs concluded, “any law that would chill protesting also threatens the right to freedom of expression.”

That means the two protesters arrested after Charlottesville’s July 8 KKK rally and the August 12 Unite the Right convergence would be facing up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 rather than the current maximum $500 fine with no jail time.

Addressed to the United States’ permanent mission to the UN, the report asks what measures the federal government intends to ensure state legislation accords with international standards of free expression and assembly. If that wasn’t a rhetorical question six months ago when the report was filed, it surely is now.

Ask Jemele Hill or Colin Kaepernick about the Trump administration’s position on free expression. Or, closer to home, recall the lies uttered by the president himself to discredit the August 12 counterprotesters. What’s the Department of Justice going to do to uphold freedom of expression and assembly at the state level, UN? I’ll bet very little.

Which means you’ve got to fend for yourself, Old Dominion. Don’t wait for Jeff Sessions to stand up for your rights and don’t expect a UN intervention. Richmond’s new legislative session begins on January 10, 2018, with committee meetings scheduled between now and then. Pay attention to what’s being drafted and passed through those committees using the General Assembly website. Respond, resist, and get a permit before you protest.

**

Speaking of the mirthless U.S. attorney general, the Code Pink activist whose conviction for laughing during Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January was overturned, will be back in court next month.

Desiree Fairooz, of Loudoun County, refused a plea deal and is scheduled for retrial on November 13, according to her Twitter feed. (“I still cannot believe the government refuses to drop this,” she tweeted. “Vindictive!”)

It’s quaint, if nothing else, to think of the UN raising the question of how free speech and free assembly will be protected on the federal level, while the government goes out of its way to punish a 61-year-old activist for chortling. Quaint, maybe even ironic, but it’s definitely not a laughing matter.

 

Categories
Living

Blue Moon pop-ups feed the community

Laura Galgano, owner of Blue Moon Diner, hopes to have brunch pop-ups in the Snowing in Space Lab on West Main Street about every other month. Photo by Eze Amos

Although Blue Moon Diner is closed during construction of 600 West Main, the six-story mixed-use building going up behind the restaurant, that hasn’t stopped owner Laura Galgano from serving her customers.

“I am a social being, and quite simply, [I] want to know what folks are up to, how their lives are and what new and fun things they’ve gotten to try,” Galgano says. It’s a reason why, in August and September, she and a few other Blue Moon staffers hosted Blue Moon pop-up brunches in Snowing In Space Coffee’s Space Lab at 705 W. Main St., serving a limited menu of biscuits and sausage gravy, pancakes and a variation on a grits bowl.

At the first pop-up on August 19, just a week after the deadly August 12 white supremacist rally, Galgano realized how much she missed her regulars. That day, there was “lots of hugging, and ‘Where were you?,’ ‘So glad you’re safe,’ etc.,” says Galgano. “Blue Moon has always been more than just a diner, and using the pop-ups as a way to check in with each other, and keep that notion of community at the fore, is very important to us.”

During one of the September pop-ups, Galgano saw four orders of pancakes for two people, and she stuck her head out of the kitchen to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake. But when she did, she saw two Charlottesville Derby Dames, Blue Moon regulars who’d come in to load up on the beloved diner staple after a training workout. “One of the skaters was housesitting for two other skaters, and planned to leave them each their own serving of pancakes to enjoy on their return,” says Galgano.

It’s been a treat for the Snowing In Space folks, too. “We are huge fans of Blue Moon Diner ourselves,” says the coffee spot’s manager Julia Minnerly, “and being able to offer such a community favorite was a big hit.”

Galgano says that more Blue Moon pop-up brunches will happen soon; the details haven’t been hammered out quite yet, but she hopes to have one every other month or so.

“I like that we’re just down the street, in the same neighborhood, and partnering with a newer business,” Galgano says. “These kinds of collaborations help to continue the sense of community that Blue Moon so values: We all succeed together.”

Lunch spot haven

On Wednesday, September 20, The Haven hosted its first weekly home-cooked lunch for members of the Charlottesville community, serving a meal that included a cheese plate or spinach salad, meatloaf or vegetarian lentil loaf, roasted herb potatoes, broccoli with lemon-butter sauce, homemade peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.

About 26 people showed up for the inaugural meal, says Diana Boeke, The Haven’s director of community engagement, who notes they can accommodate up to 40 people for each lunch. Home cooks and regular shelter guests, who prepared and served the meals to customers, “were very excited and making sure they made everyone feel at home,” Boeke says, noting that for many attendees, it was their first time in the day shelter. “The big round tables that seat up to eight mean that you’ll meet new people, so even people that came alone became part of the community there.”

The menu will change each week (the September 27 lunch included salad, chili, cornbread and a strawberries and cream dessert), and Boeke says The Haven hopes to find a few other home cooks—perhaps people from other countries who could share specialty dishes—to help with the public lunches. The kitchen managers already plan and prepare breakfasts for more than 60 people, 365 days a year.

The home-cooked lunches are served from noon to 1:30pm every Wednesday and give members of the Charlottesville community, including guests of the day shelter (who are not asked to pay the $10 donation for the meal), the chance to get to know one another.

Do the Cheffle

Frank Paris III, who closed his downtown ramen and donut shop Miso Sweet in August, is now executive chef at Heirloom, the rooftop restaurant and bar at the Graduate Charlottesville hotel at 1309 W. Main St. on the UVA Corner. He’s currently working on a new menu.

C-VILLE’s At the Table columnist C. Simon Davidson reports on his Charlottesville 29 blog that after a yearlong stint cooking at the Michelin-starred Inn at Little Washington, chef Jose de Brito is back in town as chef de cuisine of Fleurie, located at 108 Third St. NE, and consultant to the Downtown Mall’s Petit Pois. The former Alley Light head chef and former chef-owner of Ciboulette, which inhabited a space in the Main Street Market building years ago, told Davidson he’s ready to cook French food again, which he says is his specialty.

Categories
News

Meme-able Magill: August icon recovers, keeps fighting back

UVA library systems employee Tyler Magill is one of 11 plaintiffs suing white nationalists and ne--Nazis who came to Charlottesville. Photo by Eze Amos

During the August weekend that scarred Charlottesville, one man was in the thick of the major events, and became both a casualty and a meme of resistance to hate.

That man was Tyler Magill: a UVA alum, longtime WTJU DJ once known as the Velvet Facilitator and a local fixture in the community.

Before hundreds of white supremacists wielding tiki torches marched across UVA Grounds August 11, Magill, a UVA library system employee with access to Alderman, went there to observe the events—and became way more involved than he planned.

When the alt-righters, in town a day early for the Unite the Right rally, began encircling about 30 counterprotesters at the university’s Thomas Jefferson statue on that Friday evening, Magill says he joined the minority, mostly made up of young people, though he didn’t know any of them.

“Shell-shocked, not thinking, I ran down to join them, only hoping to be a witness, and hoping that even if [the white supremacists] were prepared to hurt, to kill 30 people, perhaps they wouldn’t kill 31,” he wrote in a widely read letter to university President Teresa Sullivan, who has been criticized for her handling of the neo-Nazi rally.

As the counterprotesters were surrounded by white-polo-shirted men with fash haircuts, Magill says they were doused with a liquid, and at some point, he was whacked in the neck with a tiki torch.

Four days later, he became thick-tongued, his reflexes slowed and he lost about half of the vision in his right eye—signs he was having a stroke, believed to be the result of blunt force trauma to his carotid artery. Though he still has a small blind spot and little energy from the August 15 health crisis, he says he’s grateful to be recovering as quickly as he has.

“I have no right to be alive, certainly not to be ambulatory in full possession of all of my faculties,” says Magill on a recent afternoon in which he had just returned from getting a CAT scan and was resting in bed. “But I’m coming out of this relatively unscathed,” he adds.

Doctors haven’t recommended when he should return to work, he says, but the university allows him six months of short-term disability leave, and he’s used six weeks so far. He says his job at the library is fairly physical, and he can only do about an hour of light activity right now before he requires rest.

A GoFundMe page has raised about $130,000 for his expenses, but Magill says he has good insurance through UVA and knows of other victims from that deadly weekend who need more help than he does.

That’s why, in his letter to Sullivan, he called for the university to pay off those victims’ bills in full.

“These people’s lives are in shambles because the University failed to take action on Friday night,” he wrote in his letter. “The University emboldened the fascists with [its] lack of action, and set the stage for the 12th. The University must acknowledge its complicity and make amends.”

Sullivan asked Magill to sit in the president’s box at Scott Stadium for the September 24 Concert for Charlottesville, championed by the Dave Matthews Band. That’s where he passed her the letter, which he says is set to be published soon in the Washington Post.

“You will be leaving and that is for the best,” he wrote. He says he hasn’t received a response—and isn’t expecting to.

While lying in bed, Magill says, “As much as I can, I sympathize with the problems that a modern university president has—so much of their job isn’t the classic university president job, so much of it is just raising money,” he says. Despite her own personal beliefs, she has to cater her statements to “a fairly conservative, if not reactionary, donor base,” he adds.

UVA president-elect James Ryan will take her place next year. “I would just hope that Mr. Ryan would weigh things a little bit more carefully,” Magill says.

An iconic photo from the weekend of the Unite the Right rally shows Magill rushing event organizer Jason Kessler with his hands in the air at Kessler’s August 13 attempted press conference.

Laughing, Magill says the photo shows him “being really big,” but in reality, he knew there was a sniper atop a building overlooking Kessler’s conference, and he wanted to approach the white nationalist while showing he wasn’t armed.

The library worker calls himself a “tourist” in the mess of alt-right protesters and counterprotesters, and says he doesn’t belong to any activist group.

He’s not a “shining example,” of how to confront white supremacy, but he tries to be, he says.

“We all need to try every day and not expect to get any reward for it,” he says. “The reward is in the doing.”

And for plenty of people, the terror of that weekend isn’t over. Magill says he’s been in “therapy up to [his] eyeballs.”

“Now I’m another middle-aged white person wearing sweat pants just walking down the street not doing much,” he says. “There’s plenty of people out there who still feel like it’s August 12 all the time.”

Categories
Arts

Joan Shelley masters the art of fret finger work

Joan Shelley teamed up with producer Jeff Tweedy to release her self-titled album about love, life and horses. She performs at The Southern Café and Music Hall on Saturday. Publicity photo

Singer-songwriter Joan Shelley describes her latest self-titled album as being like an oil painting with minimal brush strokes. “I think of it as doing the most with the least,” says Shelley. “It’s trying to do something subtly, but by being able to see the gestures. I don’t like to overwork it.”

The album, released in May, is a follow-up to 2015’s Over and Even. It is also an exploration of new musical terrain for Shelley, who performs at the Southern on October 7.

Following a 2014 tour with the quirky folk singer Michael Hurley, and after many listens to the song “Hog of the Forsaken” from his Long Journey album, Shelley decided to pick up the fiddle. She wanted her voice to cling to the fiddle the way Hurley’s does. The alternative to her usual guitar medium required her to take a week’s worth of fiddle classes. But in the end, Shelley went back to her comfort zone.

Joan Shelley
October 7
The Southern Cafe and Music Hall

“I had to perform a few times with the fiddle and it was so new and so hard. Also, the more nervous you are, the worse it is,” she says.- “When I picked up the guitar again it was a huge liberation just to be familiar with it again.”

To shake things up, Shelley pushed herself to tinker with new tuning techniques, and continued to pursue complementary elements between her voice and the guitar.

She and longtime collaborator/guitarist Nathan Salsburg approached Jeff Tweedy, frontman for Wilco, to see if he’d be interested in producing the album. Along with guitarist James Elkington, they headed to The Loft, Wilco’s studio in Chicago, to begin recording in December of last year.

During that time, Tweedy’s son, Spencer, was introduced to the group and offered to play drums on some of the songs. All of the songs on the album that contain drums, with the exception of “Pull Me Up One More Time,” were recorded on the first take—partly due to limited time and partly due to luck.

“The first take where everyone was a little bit unfamiliar was the most magical because everyone was on the edge of their seat,” says Shelley, who was both captivated and challenged while working with a producer for the first time.

Studio guru

Jeff Tweedy, best known as Wilco’s frontman and the co-founder of Uncle Tupelo, has put his studio expertise behind several successful acts including Mavis Staples, Richard Thompson, White Denim and Bob Dylan. Tweedy won a Best Americana Grammy for You Are Not Alone, his 2010 collaboration with Staples.

“I’m used to working with an immediate circle of friends, but for this I was in a new city and a new environment, working with new professionals,” says Shelley, admitting she had to face her vulnerabilities. “Sometimes it felt like a pop quiz and I didn’t want to mess up.”

The album opens with “We’d Be Home,” a solemn track that sets the scene with subtle acoustics that glisten on the folk canvas. Much of the album addresses love, relationships and expectations.

“It’s about new love and watching yourself in that moment when you feel like you can change everything about yourself, but suddenly being self-aware of that chemical dose of love.” Shelley says.

But there’s a different influence on the album’s final track, “Isn’t That Enough.” For this song, Shelley, who grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a mother who cared for several horses, looked to her childhood backyard. She sings “I’ve watched the foal roll in clover and steam in cold.”

“[That line] is about seeing an animal come into life and leave,” says Shelley. “It’s a blessing for me being raised that way because it helps you understand the world. We only get one shot at it. Horses are so beautiful and such noble creatures.”

On the same song she also addresses the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby. “Getting ready is more intense and more about identity and presentation,” says Shelley. “The meaning comes in getting ready for this thing because the actual race is 60 seconds or whatever and then it’s finished.” Shelley, by contrast, is just getting started.

Categories
Arts

Movie review: Battle of the Sexes serves up an ace

Emma Stone and Steve Carell take sides in Battle of the Sexes, a comedic accounting of the famous tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Courtesy Fox Searchlight

Directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris continue their streak of slyly subversive, yet totally engaging, films with Battle of the Sexes, an insightful, exciting and unexpectedly hilarious recounting of the famous 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

Like all Dayton-Faris outings, it breathes new life into familiar tropes while cleverly dismantling them: the family road trip comedy of Little Miss Sunshine that’s full of people who will never reach their full potential. The dream-girl fantasy of Ruby Sparks, where magical powers are creepy, not hilarious. And now, the historical sports movie where neither athleticism nor social progress is a metaphor for the other, but is valued in its own right.

Battle of the Sexes
PG-13, 121 minutes
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Violet Crown Cinema

Battle of the Sexes tells the story of how the famed match came to be. We meet King (Emma Stone) as she confronts representatives of the United States Lawn Tennis Association over pay inequality between men and women, despite equal ticket sales. King and publisher and sponsor Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) launch their own tour featuring the shining stars of women’s tennis. Meanwhile, Riggs (Steve Carell) is a 55-year-old former world champion whose talent is only outshined by his insatiable need to hustle, gamble and find the edge in any potential competition. Riggs and his cigar-chomping chauvinist buddies take notice of the up-and-coming women’s tournament, and see dollar signs. Riggs then pulls every string—and lures every potential sponsor—with a massive spectacle: men versus women, who is better on the court?

Tennis is the battleground in the struggle for women’s liberation in this story, but Battle of the Sexes does not fall into the trap of putting the stakes aside for an exciting conclusion. Many sports films with social dimensions coax you into confusing a victory on the court/field with a world victory, leaving many threads dangling as you bask in the afterglow of seeing the bigots eat dirt, but Battle of the Sexes is much more intelligent than that. King’s sexuality is a key component of the narrative—though married to a man, she begins dating her hairdresser who joins them on tour—and it’s something she can never go public with. The tennis match is about gender equality, and the film ends with an acknowledgment that there are many more struggles to come, though that does not diminish this one.

In addition to the film’s look, intelligence and nailing the tricky tone, the cast of Battle of the Sexes is truly excellent. Stone, already on a hot streak of great performances, delivers a layered, thoughtful portrayal of King, filled with emotion, ambition and good humor. Carell’s take on Riggs, interestingly, is not that of a fiery, explicitly hateful misogynist, though he certainly feels comfortable in their presence. He is a clown, a larger-than-life personality who never passes up a chance to profit on a hot gambling tip or a social trend, and women’s liberation happens to be his ticket. Everyone may be cheering for King the whole time, but he is more than a heel for the audience to hate.

The message of Battle of the Sexes-—beyond celebrating a key moment in the struggle for sexual equality at a time when its advocates could still unironically be called “libbers”—is the intersection of material and symbolic victories. Far better than it had to be, in making an effort to connect to today’s audience without diminishing the period atmosphere, complete with an absolutely riveting conclusion, Battle of the Sexes is an utter triumph.

Playing this week 

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

American Assassin, American Made, IT, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Lego Ninjago Movie, Mother!, Xanadu: The Glow-along

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

American Assassin, American Made, A Question of Faith, Dunkirk, Flatliners, Friend Request, Home Again, IT, Kingsman: The Golden Circle,The Lego Ninjago Movie, Mother!, Spider-man: Homecoming, Stronger 

Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

American Made, Brad’s Status, Columbus, IT, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The Lego Ninjago Movie, Mother!, Stronger, Wind River

Categories
News

In brief: New digs, conflicting accounts and an alleged face-puncher

Courtesy of 5th Street Place

Because no one can afford a house in this town

Over the summer, we wrote about 15 housing and hotel projects on our radar, but in the blur of bulldozers and Tyvek coverings surrounding Fifth Street, we missed one. Almost directly across from the Albemarle County Office Building (and the police station—yikes!), 5th Street Place is now leasing one- and two-bedroom apartments. Looks like the sleepier side of town is starting to wake up.

Here’s the word:

  • Prices range from $1,240 to $1,725 for 13 available floor plans ranging from 740 to 1,210 square feet
  • Clubhouse with pool, shuffleboard and, most importantly,
    life-size Scrabble
  • Resort-style pool, gym and yoga studio
  • Outdoor lounge with fireplace, grilling stations and al fresco dining areas
  • Apartment amenities include “chef-inspired” kitchens available in two finishes, classic subway tile backsplashes, granite countertops, walk-in showers and closets, private balconies, plank flooring, front door “valet” trash and recycling services and full-size washers and dryers
  • About a 10-minute drive to the Downtown Mall and a “short walk” to 5th Street Station, though there’s no sidewalk leading to the massive shopping center

Conflicting accounts

Otto Warmbier

Fred and Cindy Warmbier, parents of the UVA student who was detained in North Korea, medevaced to America a year later and died shortly after, said on CNN September 26 that their son, Otto, showed clear signs of torture, and that it looked like pliers had been used on his bottom teeth. But a Hamilton County, Ohio, coroner said there were no obvious signs of torture and his teeth showed no trauma.

Dubious top 5

Of the 4.2 million Americans whose driver’s licenses are suspended because of unpaid court debt, Virginia comes in third behind Texas and North Carolina, with 977,000 of its citizens who can’t get a license because of what Legal Aid Justice Center, which has filed a federal suit, calls a “vicious court debt cycle.”

Kenneth Jackson. Staff photo

Quote of the Week:

I’m afraid to even go to a council meeting, and I’ve been going to them since
I was 15 years old. I’ve never been so disgusted, and there’s no excuse for it.

—Candidate Kenneth Jackson on recent City Council disorder at a September 27 forum

Alleged face-puncher arrested

Dennis Mothersbaugh, the bald and bearded Indiana man seen socking a man in the side of the head and striking a woman in the face in a cellphone video of the Unite the Right rally, was charged with assault and battery, arrested September 28 and extradited to Virginia. He has been charged at least twice before for threatening black men, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Pam Moran retires

Pam Moran. Photo by Amy Jackson

The Albemarle County Public Schools superintendent since 2006, and the second-longest serving in the division’s history, will retire this June with accomplishments that include being Virginia’s superintendent of the year in 2015. Deputy superintendent Matthew Haas will succeed her.

Real expensive

Ian Dillard. Courtesy of the Scout Guide

The Scout Guide, the high-end, fancy catalog dedicated to “a beautiful, simple, well-curated life” by shopping at its upscale local advertisers, has named Ian Dillard its new editor. The guide, started here in 2010, now has more than 60 guide franchises across the country.

Marketing cool

Darden prof Lalin Anik did a case study on creating cool and defines the three essential traits to coolness: autonomy, authenticity and attitude. She cites the perennial personification of it—James Bond—and why that worked for a switch from martinis to Heineken.

Act of solidarity

 

“We need solidarity—not just unity—in the wake of August 12,” says Schyler Cunningham, one of three event organizers who met during the March Against White Supremacy last month, when a group of activists walked from Charlottesville to the nation’s capital. Back home, their first efforts to memorialize African-Americans were erased from the Free Speech wall, so Cunningham and about a dozen volunteers covered what they renamed the Solidarity Wall September 28 with the names of 1,500 black men and women killed in the United States by acts of police brutality since 2013. The event ended with a quiet reading of each name.

UVA rapes, stalking, hate crimes increase

In its recently published Fire Safety and Security Report, UVA offered no commentary on its uptick in several categories of incidents, including the six times as many hate crimes reported in 2016 as in the previous year.

 

Categories
Arts

Kathryn Erskine empowers young readers through two new books

Kathryn Erskine will discuss her new books at Over the Moon Bookstore in Crozet on October 22.

Kathryn Erskine has lived in the Netherlands, Israel, South Africa, Scotland and Newfoundland, but she has called Charlottesville home for the last 14 years. This month marks the release of Erskine’s first picture book, Mama Africa! How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song, and her sixth middle-grade novel, The Incredible Magic of Being. Though written in two different genres and originating on two different continents, the books manifest a unifying intention: to empower young people.

Erskine first learned of singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba, the subject of Mama Africa!, a picture book biography, while living in South Africa as the daughter of an American diplomat. “That’s the first country I remember as being home,” Erskine says of her 5-year-old self. When she began school, she thought all of the native South African children must be sick because she only saw white children attending her school. “That’s when my mom had to explain apartheid to me,” she recalls. “I knew my mother didn’t like it but that she was powerless. And that was a really scary thought because at that age you expect parents to be able to fix everything.”

One thing her mother could do was play the banned music of Miriam Makeba. Erskine says, “It was just a great sense of empowerment that as a girl or a woman you had a voice even when people said you didn’t.” Erskine purposefully chose a picture book format to chronicle Makeba’s life of combatting injustice because, she says, “I really wanted to make it approachable to kids. I wanted young kids to feel empowered—sort of like I did as a kid—that you do have a voice and that your voice and your song is important and powerful.”

In The Incredible Magic of Being, Erskine strives to connect young readers to own their distinct voice. In the case of 9-year-old protagonist Julian, that voice may be a nerdy one, and that’s just fine. The novel follows Julian and his family as they move from Washington, D.C., to Maine, and Julian thrills at the idea of exploring the universe through his telescope without the interference of light pollution. “I think kids are smart and curious and I want them to know that’s okay,” Erskine says. “It’s a great thing to be curious, even if people make fun of you. Just keep going because there will be people who appreciate that and you will get so much out of life if you live it the way you want and find out as much as you can.”

An inquisitive child herself, Erskine says she often didn’t verbalize her questions “because I thought people would think I was too weird.” But now she says, “It’s okay to just come right out and talk about parallel universes and how you might have a separate family in another universe, or you might have friends that cross over that barrier.”

These are the kinds of questions she allows herself to ask through the voice of Julian. Something he considers in the novel is the possibility that, as he was being born and his grandfather was dying, they passed each other in the cosmos and his grandfather communicated with him. The jacket of the book, which features a marshmallow aflame in a starlit sky, references one of the things his grandfather told him: “Don’t burn your marshmallows!”

But there’s another reason for the marshmallow. “I’ve learned to put in food that I like so that when I go visit some place and they want to put out the food in the book, it’s something I like to eat,” Erskine laughs. “I learned that with Mockingbird,” she says of her 2010 National Book Award winner. “I really don’t like gummy worms.” And that’s okay, too.

Mama Africa

An opponent of Apartheid, singer Miriam Makeba was exiled from her native South Africa in 1960 when her passport was revoked. With the help of Harry Belafonte she came to the United States and continued her career. She won a Grammy in 1965, traveled with Paul Simon’s Graceland tour in the ’80s and starred in Sarafina! with Whoopi Goldberg in the ’90s. Through the years she resided in France, Guinea and Belgium, and finally returned to Johannesburg in 1990.

Categories
Living

Charlottesville breweries are full of fall beer options

Brasserie Saison is celebrating the season with German beers that eschew the traditional less-than-desirable Oktoberfest offerings from Munich, instead pouring dark, heavy American lagers that taste “far better than the real thing.” Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

What makes for a good fall beer? Extra body? Darker malt? Pumpkin spice? Every brewer and brewery in Charlottesville has their own ideas about this. So I grabbed a friend and visited five local breweries to see what their takes on fall beers are—and whether they shied away from the polarizing pumpkin beer.

At Reason Brewery up Route 29, I ordered a pumpkin beer. “We don’t have one,” responded Mark Fulton, one of Reason’s founders.

Good. I think pumpkin beer is usually terrible. And what Reason is offering for fall is a black lager, with a heft perfect for cooler weather. It’s on tap at the brewery and they intend to begin distributing it by the end of October. Hopped like a pale ale, the malt is dark but the ABV is still only around 5 percent.

“I personally am a dark beer fan,” Fulton said. “I think a lot of people sort of relate a darker beer with the cooler weather.”

Reason Brewery co-founder Mark Fulton says most people relate darker beer with cooler weather. The brewery currently has a black lager on tap that is hopped like a pale ale but has a rich flavor thanks to dark malt. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

Our next stop was Champion to taste its annual pumpkin beer called Kicking and Screaming—so named because the brewers had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making a pumpkin beer. But this year, they apparently kicked their way out of it, because the pumpkin beer has now been deep-sixed.

Good.

Sean Chandler, our bartender, presented us with three samples of proposed fall beers from Champion.  Biere de Garde, Fruit Casket (a double IPA) and Pacecar Porter.

The Biere de Garde was an instant winner: dark, spicy, richly blanketing the entire palate.

“My war is on pumpkin spice, not on spice or pumpkins,” says Jeff Diehm, whom I once again dragooned (he also helped determine the best grocery store bar in “Store credit: What’s the best grocery store bar in town?, August 2-8, 2017) into tasting beer with me. “I’d call it a very good after-dinner beer. It’s pretty spicy, and I think I would slip into something darker to close my evening.”

Champion’s Fruit Casket was a surprise. A double IPA brewed with agave that comes across neither as an IPA nor as gimmicky as it sounds. Big, full, less hoppy than you’d expect. This is what you want to sit around a bonfire with.

The Pacecar Porter is simultaneously dark and bright tasting. An unusual sharpness to the hops on top of a classic moderate porter.

Moving along to Three Notch’d Brewing’s new location at the IX Art Park, the first thing we noticed was that this place is pretty different from Three Notch’d’s first tasting location on Grady Avenue. The new place has a full-service kitchen, and executive chef Patrick Carroll focuses on local, sustainable ingredients and uses Three Notch’d’s craft beers and sodas in the food whenever possible.

The brewery’s Apple Crumb Amber Ale will be released soon, but it wasn’t available yet for us to taste. One of our bartenders made a face at the mention of pumpkin beer and didn’t even want to discuss it. What was available in an autumn mode was a Blue Toad Harvest Cider. It screamed cinnamon, but in a good way. You could put it on the table for Thanksgiving dinner and pair it with turkey and stuffing. We drank it alongside a shared platter of poutine, which featured fork-tender beef and fried cheese curds with onions and gravy covering a plate of fries. The perfect food to turn to halfway through a five-stop brewery crawl.

At Brasserie Saison, the Belgian restaurant and brewery on the Downtown Mall, a curious map of Europe was suggested by Munich-themed Oktoberfest banners and seasonal German beers offered alongside the classic Belgian offerings of steamed mussels and saison.

Manager Wil Smith served us tastes of the Oktoberfest beer and wouldn’t be baited into talking trash about pumpkin beers (which, fortunately, they aren’t making).

Traditional Oktoberfest beers in Munich are kind of crappy. In fact, that’s the whole point of them. Oktoberfest is a sloppy, drunken, week-long booze fest where a celebration of the palate isn’t exactly the point. American Oktoberfest beers, including Brasserie Saison’s, are often dark, heavy lagers that taste far better than the real thing.

Hardywood Pilot Brewery & Taproom’s Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale is a delightful departure from the pumpkin spice-laden beers typical of the genre. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen

Taking the free trolley up West Main Street, we visited Hardywood’s new-ish outpost near the Corner.

Lora Gess, our bartender, poured us tastes of Hardywood’s Farmhouse Pumpkin Ale. Diehm and I gleefully prepared to hate it as much as we each hate all things pumpkin spice.

“A lot of people have really misconstrued pumpkin-flavored everything because of what it is,” explains Gess in defense of her employer’s pumpkin ale. “It’s a pumpkin-spice-latte-kind-of-society these days. But [this beer is] fresh, it’s mild. You get a pumpkin flavor but not a fake pumpkin flavor.”

And she was right. Somehow, Hardywood made a pumpkin beer that wasn’t awful. In fact, it was great.

It starts life as a traditional farmhouse saison to which Hardywood adds fresh pumpkin—not canned, not frozen—fresh. Instead of an insipid blend of pie-inspired spices, the notes of spice come from the flavor profile of the malts and esters produced by the yeast. Hardywood has brewed a masterful pumpkin beer that took us by surprise and almost made us stop talking trash about pumpkin beer.

Almost.

As the sun went down, we wound up back downtown at South Street Brewery. Finally, we found the holy grail we’d been looking for all day: Twisted Gourd, described by our bartender as a pumpkin chai beer.

“This is a pumpkin spice beer,” Diehm observes with his first sip. “I think if someone was looking for a pumpkin beer, this is where to go get it. It’s South Street, so it’s always a good solid beer. And it’s got pumpkin, so I hate it. But if this is what you are looking for, it’s a solid pumpkin beer. It’s the most honest pumpkin beer I’ve had.”

“This is cloying,” I respond as I taste it. “It’s terrible. But it’s so true to what it is.”

If you like pumpkin spice lattes, you’re gonna love this beer. But if you don’t, South Street has you covered with several other fine autumn beers, including Soft-Serv (tastes like chocolate soft-serve ice cream) and a barrel-aged version of their classic Satan’s Pony.

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News

Not partners: Heaphy promises ‘arm’s length’ investigation

Tim Heaphy vowed an objective assessment of the city’s handling of white supremacists over the summer, and acknowledged there are doubters of his ability to be unbiased. Eze Amos

When City Manager Maurice Jones introduced the man hired to investigate the events of Charlottesville’s summer of hate, he listed former U.S. attorney Tim Heaphy’s “critical eye,” his experience with law enforcement and investigations, and then he described the city as “partnering” with Heaphy.

Heaphy immediately took some trouble to distance himself from the perception that he’s a partner working in the city’s pocket to sweep under the rug missteps that led to a fatality and multiple injuries at the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

“I don’t think that’s a fair characterization,” he said. “I think we were hired to look critically at the city.” The investigation, which will include the city’s handling of the July 8 KKK rally and the first assembly of tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists May 12, will not be a “whitewash to affirm decisions that were made or meant to point a finger at any individual,” he said.

Instead, he promised an “arm’s length investigation” that would “objectively assess” what happened. “I don’t really see the city as a partner,” he said.

The decision to hire Heaphy and his $545-an-hour firm, Hunton & Williams, has brought some criticism, including from several speakers during public comment.

“It’s been 51 days since a murder here,” said Don Gathers, who chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces. “It’s been 51 days since the hounds from hell marched on our city.” If necessary, he said, the people would call on its own review board.

Gathers also urged the city to do away with the Pledge of Allegiance that begins every City Council meeting. “Please no longer ask us to start these proceedings with a Pledge of Allegiance to a flag or a country that shows no allegiance to us.” He ended his comments with a drop to both knees with both fists raised.

Heaphy stressed that he was not the sole investigator, and said he was leading a team of four lawyers, other professionals and a separate group of law enforcement consultants. “It’s not me doing this, it’s me supervising a team,” he said.

The investigation is not just looking at law enforcement and police response, and it will also examine the permitting process, interagency coordination, internal and external communications and the relationship between council and staff, he said.

That became an issue when Mayor Mike Signer was not allowed into the command center August 12, and on Facebook and in a leaked memo, he pointed the finger at Jones and police Chief Al Thomas. Jones responded that Signer threatened to fire both him and Thomas during the height of the crisis. Signer was subsequently reprimanded by his colleagues on City Council, who reminded him in the city’s form of government, the mayor is one among five equals and the city manager is the CEO.

The investigation is “not strictly did police do a good job,” said Heaphy. “It’s much broader than that.”

Investigators are poring over thousands of documents, photos and videos, have established a tip line (charlottesvilleindependentreview.com, 877-448-6866) and have conducted 60 interviews so far, said Heaphy. “We’re trying our best to get a comprehensive report.”

He also acknowledged the lack of “universal acceptance” because of his own background and the “skepticism” of city government. “We’ve worked hard to disabuse people of that perception,” he said.

Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy asked the big questions that remain unanswered at this point: Why was Fourth Street, where Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of other injured when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, open? Was there a stand-down order for police, and why were protesters allowed to carry shields and weapons?

Those are “not simple answers,” said Heaphy, and he said he preferred to give a full narrative based on verifiable facts, which he anticipates could come by Thanksgiving or December.

He said there would be no legal prohibition preventing the release of the information.

Councilor Kathy Galvin urged a speedy release of the report. “I think the public is so hungry for news, it would be incumbent upon us to share it as quickly as possible,” she said, and not hold it for even “a single day.”

Honor code

photo eze amos

Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, came to City Council to thank it for the “honor” of naming a portion of Fourth Street between Market and Water streets for her daughter, who died there August 12.

“I also wanted to point out it was my idea not to put a park associated with her name for a number of reasons,” said Bro, “and absolutely no statues.” Bro said she thought that “was a little bit much and Heather, frankly, hated statues for a number of reasons.”

Bro, who is not a Charlottesville resident, urged the city to consider naming more streets for African-American leaders who have made an impact, including Laura Robinson, who taught before and during segregation and who died earlier this year at 103.

Categories
Arts

Ten Things I Love About Tom Petty

Tom Petty co-headlined the Lockn' Music Festival in 2014. Image: MaryEllen Matthews

(To honor the passing of Tom Petty, we are reposting this excerpt from a cover story in September 2014.)

Lockn’ co-headliner Tom Petty has been forging original rock with his band the Heartbreakers for more than 38 years. The Florida native recently talked about the influence of his friendship with George Harrison in an NPR interview: “It was like having an older brother that had a lot of experience in the music business, someone who I could go to with my troubles and questions,” he said.

Now a mentor in his own right, as he approaches his fifth decade as a frontman, Petty finds himself atop the throne of rock ‘n’ roll with a new TPHB album at the top of the charts.

Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood tells a great story. His vivid lyrics about the underbelly of the modern South often detail shady characters or rural economic plight — delivered through the force of the band’s distorted guitar attack. While enduring many personnel changes in his group’s 18 years, Hood and main songwriting foil Mike Cooley remain bonded constants — sounding as vital as ever on the spring-released album English Oceans.

Ten things I love about Tom Petty

by PATTERSON HOOD of Drive-By Truckers

Limiting it to 10 things is hard on Tom Petty, as I’ve loved The Heartbreakers and Tom since I first heard “Breakdown” in that terrible movie FM (he even had a cameo) in the eighth grade.

Here goes the first 10 things that come to mind in no particular order:

1. The Heartbreakers! I could list them all separately and that’d be fine, but collectively, including Tom, they are easily one of the top five greatest bands of all time. Taken on their own they are easily one of the top two or three greatest backing bands of all time. Individually they include one of my top two favorite living guitarists, a top five keyboardist (of all time), two of my favorite drummers (I love Steve Ferrone and I loved Stan Lynch). Loved both bass players too. Love Scott Thurston. A simply unbelievably incredible band.

2. No matter how big they became, they remained underrated.

3. Southern accents. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers always utilized their southernness without ever being bogged down by it or letting it use them.

4. “Southern Accents.” If he’d never written another song “Southern Accents” would be enough to make him one of the world’s finest songwriters. Fortunately for all of us he did write another song or two.

5. Stubbornness. Tom Petty can hold his own with anyone when it comes to sticking to his guns, no matter what. Part of his continued success is he always stuck to it and never backed down. Hell I think he wrote a song about that too.

6. He fought for what he thought was right. Always. Guess that sometimes fell under stubbornness, but deserved its own number. He fought for his independence in ’79 and they bankrupted him. He won anyway. He followed that up with “Refugee.” He fought against the raising of list price in ’81 and won. Then they raised them anyway. And burned his fucking house down. He wrote some great songs about that too. (Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough is one of his two great underrated albums). They told him that his first solo album wasn’t commercial enough. It had fucking “Free Fallin’” on it.

7. He wrote “Free Fallin.’” They were already telling him he was past his prime. That was 1989. If he’d never written another great song after that—he did. Hundreds more great songs, but “Free Fallin’” is truly one of the great songs of all time.

8. He’s made consistently good to great albums in five decades now. Who else has ever done that? Some have been more successful than others, but there has never been a bad one. Not even a truly mediocre one.

Echo, which he says he can’t even listen to, has some amazing songs and some of The Heartbreakers best playing on it. “Swinging” and “Billy the Kid” deserve to be considered all time TPHB classics. Everyone who was big in the ’70s, sucked in the ’80s. Tom Petty was bigger and better than ever. Everyone who was big in the ’80s sucked in the ’90s. Tom Petty was cooler than ever in the ’90s. This year he had a No. 1 album and is still a huge touring draw. Tom Petty rules!

9. There’s never been a bad Tom Petty show. I challenge anyone to show me otherwise. Sure, some are better than others. I’m sure he’s been sick and there’s been issues and blah blah blah, but has anyone ever actually seen a bad one? When we toured with them, Mike Campbell collapsed from the 100-plus degree heat, on stage, during the set. They literally carried him off (with the guitar still clutched in his hand). They came back on a little while later and finished the set. They were fantastic.

10. He fired The Replacements on stage in Nashville, Tennessee. I was there. The Replacements were my favorite band at the time (still one of my all time faves). They deserved it. TPHB then went out and played extra songs (‘Because We Care!”) and blew everyone out there away. It was an unbelievably amazing show. Then Tom Petty wrote a song about a burned out wasted pop star and used one of The Replacements lines in it (The “Rebel without a clue” line in “Into the Great Wide Open”). It was kind of an asshole move, but very rock ‘n’ roll and very appropriate considering that The Replacements used to cover “Breakdown” drunkenly during TPHB’s opening slot and considering that they had played that last show wearing Tom Petty’s wife’s dresses that they had stolen off of Tom Petty’s bus that afternoon.

I could go on, but won’t. I would also use No. 10 if I was making this list about The Replacements. Nothing is better than a great story.

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