Month: November 2017

Categories
Living

The Bageladies zero in on expanded market

Although Janet Dob and Cynthia Viejo are expanding their wholesale Bake’mmm bagel business to more than 400 Kroger and Earth Fare stores, you’ll still be able to satisfy your bagelini cravings at the City Market. Staff photo

Not long after Janet Dob moved from Colorado to Free Union, Virginia, she received an unexpected email: “Are you the woman who made the bagels that my mom fed me every day before school?” it read.

Email was still a relatively novel thing in the late 1990s, and Dob was touched that this college student in Idaho was sitting in his dorm room, thinking about the bagels she had indeed made in her Colorado bakery in the 1980s and ’90s and sold all over the state before the business folded and she moved to Virginia. “This was the kicker,” she says. She knew she had to restart her bagel business.

Around that same time, Dob met and fell in love with Cynthia Viejo, and ever since, the two have built Bake’mmm Bagels into a thriving small business. The Bageladies, as they call themselves, have been a Charlottes-ville City Market favorite for more than a decade, and as of this week, they’re expanding their wholesale bagel operation into more than 370 Kroger stores and approximately 40 Earth Fare stores.

Bread has always been in Dob’s soul. At age 5, she started baking yeast breads with her Gram; by 7, she was making hot cross buns on her own (though her brothers used her inaugural batch as baseballs, she says, laughing). As an adult, she opened her own bakery, and while there started making bagels after coming across a formula in her grandma’s recipe box. There were no instructions, though, so Dob had to decipher the correct rising, boiling and baking method.

After a chatty customer kept her away from a pot of boiling bagels for a bit too long, Dob noticed that this particular batch of bagels was different—in a good way. Turns out, the extra boiling time changes the nature of the wheat starch, to where the bagels have 60 percent fewer sugar and zero wheat starch glucose compared with other bagels. Bake’mmms are also devoid of 13 allergens, including dairy, soy, eggs, tree nuts and peanuts.

Dob and Viejo regularly sell out of their bagelini sandwiches—especially the bacon, egg and cheese—at City Market, where they also sell five-bagel bags of most of their flavors (like the plain Big City Original, onion, cinnamon raisin and cranberry apple) that customers can take home and toast themselves. They know most of their customers by name and welcome new ones with big smiles and warm greetings. Dob works the griddle while Viejo takes orders and payments, handing out $1 coins as change (printing paper money isn’t economical, she’ll tell you) and sending people out into the market with a warm bagelini and a recitation of her mantra: “Enjoy this day! Peace and love.”

The Bageladies Cafe and Bake’mmm bagels is the realization of Dob’s dedication to her dream, Viejo says, adding that this business focused on bread is about love, community and support. And though they’re expanding wholesale into grocery stores all over the East Coast, Dob and Viejo promise more bagelinis for Charlottesville in the future, and not just at the City Market, which wraps up its season this month: There’s a Bageladies food truck in the works.

Order up

Now that Halloween is behind us, talk has already turned to the next sweets-laden holiday: Thanksgiving. We called local bakeries to see what they’re cooking up this year and, most importantly, when the last call will be.

Family Ties and Pies: Family Ties and Pies is offering both pumpkin and apple pies, as well as a special brown sugar pie this season. Thanksgiving orders should be placed by November 20, and pick-up is available at City Market each Saturday. Call 981-6989.

MarieBette Café and Bakery: If you’re after something beyond the traditional offerings, then MarieBette might have what you’re looking for. This Thanksgiving both a poached pear tarte and a sticky toffee pudding are on the menu. Orders should be placed 48 hours in advance. Call 529-6118.

Paradox Pastry: While custom orders should be placed by November 20, Paradox Pastry will offer an assortment of pecan, pumpkin and buttermilk pies till Thanksgiving at its downtown shop. Call 245-2253.

The Pie Chest: Inside The Pie Chest this holiday season will be a brown butter pumpkin pie, bourbon pecan pie, cinnamon apple crumble and more. Thanksgiving orders have already begun to pour in, and they will be taken by email (thepiechest@gmail.com) in the order they are received. Email at least 48 hours in advance.—Sam Padgett

Categories
Arts

VHO’s Sympathy was centuries in the making

Victory Hall Opera’s Sympathy, based on Jean-Philippe Rameau’s La Sympathie, took more than 250 years to come to the stage. L to R: Ted Schmitz (Acante), Rachelle Durkin (Céphise), Sarah Wolfson (Zirphile) and Jorell Williams (Génie) are surrounded by Michael Golez, Valdon Daniel and Ana Lorenza, members of the Forte Dance Crew. Photo by Martyn Kyle

I’ll be honest: I’m not really an opera person.

Until this weekend, I assumed opera consisted of people in fancy outfits belting overwrought, angst-ridden songs in foreign languages before dying on stage. And while I’m terribly impressed by the skill and talent required to fine-tune the operatic “instrument,” I am not the most qualified person to write a review of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Sympathy, the latest production by Victory Hall Opera.

But Charlottesville-based VHO is a company for people who don’t go to the opera. Actually, it’s for newbies and veterans alike, which explains how I wound up having this conversation with a stranger during intermission: “French Baroque shows are very unusual. You rarely see them performed,” said a bespectacled man who stood next to me. “I drove all the way down from Maryland to see this.”

Sympathy
The Haven
November 3

Though it may be lost on certain locals (cough), VHO is an anomaly in the opera world, drawing top talent from across the planet with its distinctive model of ensemble-led “indie opera for the people.” Miriam Gordon-Stewart, the director of Sympathy, is not only a co-founder and artistic director of the opera, but an internationally recognized singer as well.

Sympathy itself is a remarkable show. As Brenda Patterson, VHO’s director of music, writes in the playbill, “we believe these are the first professionally staged performances of [Jean-Philippe Rameau’s La Sympathie] since it was written in 1751.”

Can you imagine? A Baroque opera writer composes a whimsical story to celebrate the birth of a duke…and it pops up in Charlottesville, 266 years later.

“You rarely see this period on stage,” explained my compatriot, “because 18th- century French is difficult. It requires specialized singers. You know, ones who can make the words sound like clouds floating across the sky.”

Though cumulus aesthetic is lost on me, I was aware that the singers are excellent, and the entire show feels relevant, interesting and—dare I say it?—entertaining.

Sympathy tells the story of Céphise, the female half of a picture-perfect couple, who doubles down on her commitment to her partner, Acante, after realizing she’s attracted to their neighbor, Génie. Céphise and Acante seek the help of Zirphile, a celebrity therapist and relationship healer, who casts a spell that causes each to feel the emotions, and echo the movements, of the other. Hilarity, frustration and self-realization ensue.

In VHO’s clever retelling, Céphise and Acante wear matching footie pajamas and trot around town in unison, locked in their devotion to farmers markets, mindful eating and each other. But when Acante isn’t looking, Céphise dives outside for a cigarette. Clearly, she’s stifled and ready for sin. Then her neighbor offers her a handful of potato chips and all bets are off.

The show itself is short, which was a welcome surprise for this impatient viewer. Though plot twists didn’t unfold as quickly as I hoped, the pacing allowed me to slow down and appreciate art constructed for audiences more than 250 years ago.

Gordon-Stewart’s direction uses physical comedy to fill in the blanks between and during songs. Even the translation of Rameau’s lyrics, cast on a projection screen, are brief and quippy. (I doubt that Génie’s prayers literally translate to “I’m a son of God like you, I know how to man up,” but that’s what VHO gives us.)

Clever props, contemporary costumes and colorful murals paint an ultra-modern picture of guru worship, romantic obsession and a Whole Foods-fueled quest for moral purity that strangles authentic happiness.

I especially liked the ensemble—all talented singers in their own right—acting as vocal observers of the central love triangle. Some even wore Acante and Génie shirts. Watching both sides cheer its respective hero, I was reminded of shows like “The Bachelor” and “The Voice,” where the intimate passion of strangers becomes a spectator sport. Hilarious yet disturbing, no?

Rachelle Durkin, who plays Céphise, walks a wonderful line between independent lady and guilt-ridden, empathic lover.

Though I struggled to hear him consistently, Ted Schmitz’s Acante nailed the look and energy of That Well-Meaning Yet Navel-Gazing Boyfriend Who Loves You But Refuses to Ask Directions When You’re Clearly Lost.

Jorell Williams, who plays Génie, has a voice and presence that’s powerful and truly moving. (I was Team Génie, obviously.)

Sarah Wolfson, playing self-aware sexpot-slash-relationship coach Zirphile, relishes her rising fame with polished expectation and enough gusto.

And I really loved the comedic timing of Patterson, who used her few lines as The Grand Priestess to enliven a lagging second act.

Throughout Sympathy, a chorus of hip-hop dancers—the Forte Dance Crew—appear in casual street clothes to underscore emotional turbulence between characters. Not only did Maria Daniel’s choreography expand the storytelling (and my brain), it gave me a chance to soak up the beauty of the music, performed by ensemble-in-residence the Early Music Access Project, and expertly conducted by Christine Brandes.

I walked away from Sympathy feeling a little confused. Not just because the end surprised me, or because I kept wondering what Rameau’s lyrics actually said, but because when you’re a goldfish peering outside the bowl, you become dimly aware that an entire world exists beyond what you can see. I may never become a hardcore opera fan, but VHO has officially opened my eyes—and allowed me to enjoy the experience.

Categories
Arts

First Fridays: November 3

Ann Robertson is one of the artists whose work is featured in the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective show on view this month in the Create Gallery at Indoor Biotechnologies. Photo by Eze Amos

First Fridays: November 3

Ann Robertson made her first art quilt more than 20 years ago, as a way of working through her experience in the Great Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in the wee hours of January 17, 1995.

With no prior quilting experience and only one American quilting book and some Japanese quilting magazines to go by, Robertson developed her own style outside of traditional medallion-style quilts, making wall quilts with silk from old kimonos, and calling attention to the fabric’s woven and painted designs.

For “Sticks and Stones,” one of the pieces on view this month at the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective show at Indoor Biotechnologies, Robertson created a bold, geometric design from 25 squares of red silk, each square randomly slashed with an inserted strip of contrasting silk (the “sticks”). The focal point of the piece, the three “stones,” is in the upper left quadrant, and the density of the “sticks” diminishes as the eye roves toward the outer edges of the quilt, the surface of which is free-stitched with various colored threads and patterns. Like most quilts, this one is sewn together, batted and backed.

Quilting isn’t unlike painting or drawing, Robertson says. Free-stitching creates patterns revealed by light and shadow;
use of different thread can slightly alter perception of the fabric color, and translucent fabrics add shading and dimension. “Sticks and Stones” speaks to the fiber and stitch nature of the quilted art piece, she says, artful but familiar in its appeal to both the eye and the hand.—Erin O’Hare

Gallery exhibits

Annie Gould Gallery 121 B S. Main St., Gordonsville. An exhibition of work by Jane Angelhart, Jenifer Ansardi, Fax Ayres, Hallie Farley, Alex Gould, Jennifer Paxton and Peter Willard.

Art on the Trax 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Verdant Melody,” a show of paintings inspired by artist Nancy Campa’s surroundings. November 11, 4-6pm.

FF The Bridge PAI 2019 Monticello Rd. “People of Charlottesville,” an exhibit of Aaron Farrington’s portraits of Charlottesville residents, created through a 19th-century wet plate collodion process. 5:30-9pm.

FF Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “Color Camp,” featuring perspectives on the interactions of color and form by Ken Horne and Cate West Zahl. 5-8pm.

FF CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. “Birdscapes,” a photography exhibit that gets up close and intimate with birds. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF Create Gallery at Indoor Biotechnologies 700 Harris St. An exhibition of work by the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective, which uses fiber and thread in a variety of ways to create two- and three-dimensional works. 5-7pm.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “My Favorite Time of Year,” featuring autumn landscape photography by Ben Greenberg. November 11, 2pm.

FF C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St. “Celebrate C’ville: 20 Years of Virginia Art,” featuring work in a variety of media by the gallery’s entire membership of artists to honor the gallery’s 20th anniversary. 6-8pm.

FF Dovetail Design + Cabinetry 309 E. Water St. “Gratitude Art,” featuring water colors, acrylic mixed media and oils paintings of landscapes, florals, still life and architecture by Cheryl Fee. 5-7pm.

The Fralin Museum of Art 155 Rugby Rd. “Dealer’s Choice: The Samuel Kootz Gallery 1945-1966,” an exhibition that examines the critical role Kootz played in establishing modern American art as an international force; “Oriforme” by Jean Arp; and in the Joanne B. Robinson Object Study Gallery, a set of objects including Chinese bronzes, ceramics and sculpture, ancient Mediterranean coins, African masks and figures and more.

The Gallery at Ebb & Flow 71 River Rd., Faber. “En Plein Air,” an exhibition of plein air landscape paintings by V-Anne Evans. November 11, 2-5pm.

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “Karma,” featuring work by Lisa Beane that addresses privileged racism.

FF Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Land Patterns,” paintings by Susan McAlister inspired by a love of the land and an admiration for abstract painter Cy Twombly. Through November 12.

FF McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Sarah B. Smith Gallery, “Pipe Works and Other Ramblings,” an exhibit of Frederic A. Crist’s sculpture. In the Lower Hall North Gallery, an exhibition of work by Etta Harmon Levin and Charlene Cross. In the Lower Hall South Gallery, cut paper and digital collage works by Charles Peale. In the Upper Hall Galleries North and South, “Off the Wall,” an exhibition of work by the UVA Sculpture Community. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. An exhibition of watercolor paintings by the Studio E. artists, under the direction of Eloise Gardiner Giles. 5-7pm.

FF Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. “My Body is a Grave,” a selection of large-scale paintings and works on paper by Paul Brainard that explores themes of mortality, virtual reality and consumer culture; “Solve et Coagula,” an exhibit debuting the abstract expressionist-style work of Peter Benedetti; and “Dante’s Inferno,” a mixed media exhibition by Michelle Gagliano. 5:30-7:30pm.

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 26 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. An exhibition of work by acrylic artist Nicholas Martori. November 4, 4-8pm.

FF Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St. “A Study of Morocco,” photography by Alexandra Borden. 6-8pm.

FF Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Bonjour from ___! I hope this card finds you well…” an exhibition of photo-postcards sent by Annie Dunckel. 5-7pm.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church 717 Rugby Rd. “Understanding and Healing,” featuring paintings by GerriAnne Huey. November 5, 12:30pm.

FF VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “Some Landscape Diversions,” a series of Mary Atkinson’s recent landscape paintings that looks at the landscape as respite. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “Sound & Color,” acrylic paintings on canvas by Brittany Fan. 5-7:30pm.

FF The Women’s Initiative 1101 E. High St. A group multimedia exhibit featuring work from Terry Coffey, Julia Kindred and Carol Kirkham Martin of the BozART Fine Art Collective. 1-4pm.

FF First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions.

Categories
Arts

TEDxCharlottesville speakers challenge our way of thinking

Open-dialogue proponent Daryl Davis will speak about his work with the Ku Klux Klan, which has resulted in hundreds of members leaving the KKK. Courtesy of Daryl Davis

Artists, educators and innovators take the stage on Friday at the Paramount’s TEDxCharlottesville event. Among them are blues musician Daryl Davis whose friendship with members of the Ku Klux Klan has caused many of them to question their membership, National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale, who finds connections between cultures, and entrepreneur and cartoonist Chic Thompson, whose dyslexia enables him to see things in an innovative way. C-VILLE spoke with each of them about their life experience and what to expect at TEDx.

Daryl Davis

Davis, currently based in Silver Spring, Maryland, has spent the last 30 years befriending KKK members, about 200 of whom have subsequently left the KKK. How does he begin a conversation with a Klansman? First, he says, “You learn as much as you can about someone on the other side. Even though they may not like me, they respect my knowledge.” This also helps to keep his emotions in check. “If you go in blind, you’re apt to be very angry,” he says.

Davis, who is now 59, lived overseas in early childhood while his parents worked in the U.S. Foreign Service and he met people of all races and backgrounds. “I was used to what we call today diversity or multiculturalism,” he says. When his family returned to the U.S. in 1968, a 10-year-old Davis was one of two black children in the school he attended in a suburb outside of Boston. One day while his Cub Scout pack marched in a parade, white bystanders began throwing rocks and soda cans at him. “I didn’t realize I was the sole target until my den mothers and scout leaders came to protect my body with their bodies,” he says.

After he told his parents what happened, “They told me for the first time in my life what racism was,” Davis says. The concept was so foreign to him, he didn’t believe them. But six weeks later, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. “Then I realized my parents hadn’t lied to me,” he says. “A question formed in my mind: ‘How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?’ I’ve been seeking that answer ever since.”

And who better to ask than a Klansman? “I never set out to convert them,” he says. But after befriending him, many have questioned their beliefs and left the Klan. As a result, Davis has become a proponent of open dialogue and has come to believe, “When two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting,” he says. “It’s when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence.” He further reasons, “Racism is learned behavior. …Dialogue made them this way. Dialogue can undo it as well.”

Ami Vitale. Courtesy subject

Ami Vitale

National Geographic photographer Vitale says she used to be shy, but looking through a camera lens helped her engage with the world. “By putting attention on others, it empowered me,” she says. Her work, in turn, empowers her subjects by making them visible. Photography, she says, “became this incredible tool for creating awareness and understanding across cultures, and countries.”

This concept has become her passion. “There is a universal truth that we have more in common than we often realize,” says Vitale. “And it behooves us as journalists and storytellers to give a broader vision of what the world looks like.” She seeks out “stories of love, courage and those that inspire empathy” to connect us.

Chic Thompson. Courtesy subject

Chic Thompson

Thompson is an entrepreneur whose résumé includes product development at W.L. Gore (maker of Gore-Tex), marketing at Disney, founding his own cartoon company and WAGiLabs, an incubator for kids’ ideas, and teaching creative leadership. Now a Batten Fellow of entrepreneurship at Darden, he says, “The most common question that I get asked is how did you go from dropping out of college to working as a chemist to drawing cartoons to now teaching at schools that would never accept you as a student?”

His answer is simple. “I see in opposites,” he says, a perspective he attributes to “the gift of dyslexia.” It causes him to “take a lot of supposed missteps,” but ones that have led him to success. “I love the magic of opposite thinking, because at first glance opposite ideas sound absurd, contradictory, illogical and fly in the face of all reason.” But on second look, he says, “They can open up possibilities, break through mental blocks and pull the rug out from under false assumptions.”

Categories
News

Proposed court docket would offer treatment programs for incarcerated

Martin Kumer, superintendent of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, says “in Virginia, the largest mental health provided in any community is the jail.” He hopes the new mental health docket will change that. Photo by Eze Amos

Increasingly, jails have become asylums. City and county officials are hoping to change that with a new court docket aimed at diverting people with mental illness from jail by the end of the year.

The therapeutic docket follows 18 months of data gathering by the local Evidence-Based Decision-Making Policy Team, which found that 23.1 percent of inmates—495 people—at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail met the criteria for serious mental illness.

“It gave us confidence that we had the numbers for a mental health docket,” says Pat Smith, the executive director of Offender Aid and Restoration, which handles local probation and re-entry services. “We still don’t know how quickly our docket will populate. We don’t even know that we’ll be approved yet.”

Earlier this year, General District Court Judge Robert Downer applied to the Virginia Supreme Court to form the new docket. Smith says they expect to hear back as soon as November, and could get underway by December. Separately, a $64,504 state grant has funded a docket coordinator position through June, speeding its implementation if it is approved.

Mental health dockets are becoming increasingly popular throughout the country as a type of problem-solving court, similar to the drug court that began in Charlottesville two decades ago. The docket is voluntary and offers people who qualify a chance at reducing or dismissing their misdemeanor criminal charges upon completion of a lengthy regimented treatment program, which lasts anywhere from six to 24 months.

Nearby, the Staunton and Augusta County mental health docket launched three years ago, and has graduated 14 people, with about a dozen others currently enrolled, says Dave Pastors, the director of Blue Ridge Court Services. Graduates have gone back to college, started businesses and reconnected with estranged family, re-establishing their support networks, says Pastors.

Representatives from the commonwealth’s attorney, the public defender, Region Ten and OAR would all help Judge Downer oversee a Charlottesville-area docket—with the commonwealth’s attorney having ultimate veto power over anybody being considered for entry into the program. Officials say that often a mental illness is directly linked to a person’s crime—trespassing, destruction of property, petty larceny.

Martin Kumer, the superintendent of the ACRJ, says the docket is a win-win. “In Virginia, the largest mental health provider in any community is the jail,” says Kumer. “I would much rather have my staff dealing with people who are here for criminal activity, rather than mentally ill people who are here for criminal activity. It’s expensive, and we are not equipped to deal with them.”

Neal Goodloe, the criminal justice planner for the Thomas Jefferson Community Criminal Justice Board, oversaw the collection of the data at the ACRJ and says a docket may help cut down on local recidivism rates too. According to the study, a small number of people—5.6 percent—were incarcerated four or more times. But that group made up 21 percent of the jail’s total bookings, and 33 percent of that group—a higher percentage than the overall population—showed signs of serious mental illness.

Goodloe says the numbers did not reveal any racial disproportionalities among people with serious mental illness, but that untreated mental health issues were more common among women than men. The study did not analyze data based on income level or age.

Categories
News

Wavyleaf menace: A culprit in the ‘rambunctious garden’

Wavyleaf grass has flat leaf blades, about 0.5 to 1 inch wide and 1.5 to 4 inches long—deep green with rippling waves across the grass blades from base to tip, according to a state fact sheet. Photo courtesy of Kevin Heffernan

By Mary Jane Gore

Of all of the invasive plant species in Virginia, a new one has risen to No. 1, according to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation in Richmond.

Wavyleaf grass was introduced in Virginia only in the past 15 years, with its earliest spotting in Shenandoah National Park, says Kevin Heffernan, stewardship biologist with the DCR. This Russian/Eurasian plant “spreads rapidly and covers forest floors in deep shade.”

To date, the plant has been found in more than 60 sites in 17 Virginia counties, including Albemarle and Nelson. According to Heffernan, the yet unopened Williams Woods Natural Preserve in Albemarle has 200 acres covered with wavyleaf grass out of 400 total.

“The wavyleaf grass has outcompeted most other ground-layer species,” Heffernan says.

Robust growth over time could suppress tree and shrub seedlings, he says. “Long term it will alter forest structure.”

If you love trilliums or Virginia beauties, forest floor flower species or herbs, the growth of wavyleaf grass will impact your future viewing. Fewer overstory trees will grow and they will slowly die out. Species that can push through the wavyleaf cover are often invasive species like Tree of Heaven or weedy, common trees like red maple, Heffernan says.

The plant is vigorous and its seeds are highly viable. Professor Vanessa Beauchamp, an associate professor of biological sciences at Towson University in Maryland, ran her dog through a patch of the grass for 30 seconds in an experiment. Students working with her counted 12,000 seeds adhering to the dog’s fur, Heffernan says. The grass gives off a sticky substance that helps seeds adhere to surfaces.

“The U.S. Forest Service is very concerned,” Heffernan says. Agencies and groups that could help “don’t have a lot of money to throw at a suddenly appearing and seemingly high-threat species.”

Heffernan says the DCR is working to generate awareness and action among everyone in the state, and that the solution will involve land managers, but also landowners. Citizens are encouraged to help weed any wavyleaf grass from the “rambunctious garden,” a nickname among botanists and others for the earth.

To get rid of the plant, you may be able to pull it up by the roots if there are only a few. A larger area may need a chemical herbicide, Heffernan says.

Do your part

If you think you have spotted wavyleaf grass or another plant that may be invasive, you can report it at websites such as eddmaps.org. Free registration is required to make a report and use the app, called Mid-Atlantic Early Detection Network. Submit a close-up photo showing the leaf and stem using a form at vainvasivespecies.org/report-sightings. If you can, enable GPS for the exact location data.

“We also appreciate having an estimate of the size of the area that wavyleaf is infesting,” says Kevin Heffernan, stewardship biologist with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Categories
Arts

Local artists perform to benefit Indivisible Charlottesville

Devon Sproule and John D'earth join more than a dozen local artists for Disturbing the Peace: A Benefit Concert for Indivisible Charlottesville at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist on Sunday. Publicity photos

When Scott DeVeaux was growing up in New York in the 1950s, he encountered “a lot” of Civil War specters. Several relatives were named after Confederate generals, displayed Confederate figurines throughout their homes and celebrated memorabilia like trading cards commemorating the centennial of the War Between the States. Though he didn’t know what to make of the nostalgia, DeVeaux became fascinated by that period in American history.

After moving to Charlottesville in 1983 to begin his career as a music professor at UVA, DeVeaux discovered a surprise about his Yankee family tree involving his great-great grandfather Robert Bowles.

“My grandma’s grandfather was actually from Virginia,” DeVeaux says. “I went to Alderman Library to research [Bowles] and after getting debriefed by my grandmother, I found out he was in the 19th Virginia Infantry.” An “ardent Confederate,” Bowles fought and was captured during the Battle of Gettysburg.

“My great-great grandfather was in Pickett’s Charge, and I want the [Emancipation Park’s Robert E. Lee] monument to be taken down,” says DeVeaux. “It’s important for someone in my position to take a stand like this.”

As a member of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church–Unitarian Universalist for three decades, the church’s choral director for the past six and a talented jazz musician, historian and professor, DeVeaux has faith in music as a model for society. He believes elements like rhythm unite diverse audiences and performers in the same “groove,” and that versatile musicians have the power to blur lines of race, class and artistic genre. He’s also a big fan of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which DeVeaux has “watched religiously” since the election, and he’s felt drawn toward her reporting on the Indivisible Movement.

“[Indivisible’s] principle is that you bug your own representatives, rather than senators, because they’re sensitive to their constituents,” says DeVeaux. “As soon as I heard about it, I wanted to join.”

After attending an Indivisible Charlottesville planning meeting at The Haven, DeVeaux says he was ready to do anything to support the organization. With the help of friend and fellow jazz musician John D’earth, DeVeaux coordinated an impressive lineup of artists for Disturbing the Peace: A Benefit Concert for Indivisible Charlottesville, on November 5 at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church–Unitarian Universalist.

The bill includes hip-hop artist A.D. Carson, jazz musicians DeVeaux, D’earth, Pete Spaar and Greg Howard, percussionists Robert Jospé and Kevin Davis, poet Deborah McDowell, and singer-songwriters Devon Sproule, Mariana Bell, Wendy Repass, Peyton Tochterman and Bill Wellington.

“We want people to understand the ecumenical quality of music, to play effectively with each other, to say ‘Wow, I didn’t know that a jazz trumpet player could play behind a folk singer,” says D’earth. Though he doesn’t identify as religious, D’earth’s grandparents were Unitarians and he empathizes with the Unitarian concept of religion as rooted in social justice.

“I hope people will take away the idea that, ‘Yeah, I should do that,” D’earth says. “Let’s do something and say things, not just absorb.”

Carson hopes that the concert highlights other “institutional monuments” of white supremacy, “not just those named after Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson,” he says.

“While it’s not surprising that the events of August 11 and 12 took place, what we find ourselves needing to do is improvise and collaborate to find our way forward,” says Carson. He will perform work from his recent album, Sleepwalking, Vol. 1, including pieces he hasn’t performed live.

Sproule initially struggled with where to put her energy as a musician. The current climate gives her “chronic low-level anxiety,” and she compares the stress to feeling like a child living in a house where she doesn’t feel safe. Sproule will perform “Turn Back to Love” at the concert. It’s a new tune and the culmination of her effort to find an authentic, resonant voice in the face of anger, hate and violence.

“It feels like you can’t do anything, but you definitely can,” Sproule says. “Charlottesville is a place where you can reach out to people and say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m feeling scared by myself, can I go with you to this concert or meeting?’ That’s being indivisible.”

Categories
Arts

Movie review: Suburbicon doesn’t make up for lost time

Despite talent and credibility, nothing goes well in Suburbicon, a Coen brothers screenplay, directed by George Clooney, starring Matt Damon. Courtesy Paramount Pictures

Smart and talented people who are aware of the fact that they are smart and talented sometimes have difficulty separating good ideas from the really, really bad ones. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, one of history’s greatest military minds, assembled the largest army to date to invade Russia, partially to ensure strategic dominance of Europe but in no small part out of spite. Later that year, he fled Moscow with his tail between his legs and half of the troops he’d arrived with—the other half had deserted him or died of starvation and cold. In 1969, guitar legend and studio innovator Jimmy Page took “Heartbreaker,” a solid, swaggering track off of the Led Zeppelin II album that was already in the can, and decided that the thing it was missing was an unaccompanied, aimless, sloppy, tonally uneven noodlefest of a solo dead in the middle.

Suburbicon
R, 105 minutes
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX and Violet Crown Cinema

Now in 2017, award-winning filmmaker George Clooney delivers Suburbicon, an unproduced screenplay from the Coen brothers written in 1986, before they were the masters of the craft they are today. Clooney and creative partner Grant Heslov, intelligent and thoughtful storytellers in their own right, have delivered a half-cocked stylistic aping of the Coens’ famously elastic-looking comedies while expecting to capture the same anarchic magic found in Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy or Burn After Reading. But as much as Clooney appears at home in a Coen production—he delivers pitch-perfect performances in Intolerable Cruelty, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Hail, Caesar!—his cinematic impression of their aesthetic is simply not engaging as entertainment or a civic-minded thinkpiece, nor does it appear to have been particularly fun to make. The whole thing is a waste of everybody’s time and talent.

The eponymous Suburbicon is a picturesque development in the 1950s, which is introduced by way of an exaggerated PSA. We are told of the safety, strong sense of community and diversity of its population—white people from New York, white people from Ohio and white people from Mississippi. Everything is blissful until it is discovered that the new neighbors, the Meyers family, are black. The town rallies, signs petitions and begins a campaign of harassment and terror to drive them out, while televisions and radios broadcast actual interviews from the day demonstrating how brazenly racist those who attempted to defend their civil rights against integration really were. While they go on about the right to live with who they want and how they’re not racist, the n-word is barely two sentences away at any given moment.

That, however, is not the plot. Seriously. The entire narrative centers around the repercussions of a home invasion suffered by Gordon Lodge (Matt Damon) and his family, in which his wife (Julianne Moore) is killed. Before too long, her sister (also Julianne Moore), well, let’s not spoil it here—if you’ve ever seen any other movie in your life, you know what’s coming next. The trailers and official plot summaries try to sell this as a story of a regular man lashing out against the mob, but whoever came up with that must have fallen asleep in the first five minutes of the movie.

The increasing indignities suffered by the Haynes family are meant as juxtaposition for the actual crime next door, which has broken out into violence, conspiracy, murder and fraud. While the residents of Suburbicon cannot abide the presence of peaceful, gainfully employed African- Americans in their midst, they are blind to the real threat. This would be fine, and carries a worthwhile message, except the Meyers family is reduced to plot foils by the predictable nonsense transpiring in the Lodge home.

Clooney has chosen his cast wisely, and everyone commits to his or her role, however big or small. A few scenes show the occasional spark of genuine inspiration, such as the attempts by Gordon’s boss to empathize following his wife’s murder, or the delightful appearance by Oscar Isaac as a suspicious claims investigator. The scene between Isaac and Moore in particular has enough energy to have been its own one-act play. But, that’s about as much positivity that can be mustered for this misfire.

Just don’t see Suburbicon. Nothing about it works. It’s not funny, has no insight into its own subject matter, focuses on the wrong plot, is stylistically vapid and should have been left unmade as it had been for 31 years. The Coens have moved forward with their careers in terms of maturity and sophistication. Clooney should do the same.

Playing this week

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

A Bad Moms Christmas, Blade Runner 2049, Jigsaw

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

A Bad Moms Christmas, American Made, Blade Runner 2049, Boo 2!: A Madea Halloween, The Foreigner, Geostorm, Happy Death Day, Jigsaw, IT, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Marshall, The Mountain Between Us, Only the Brave, Same Kind of Different As Me, The Snowman, Thank You For Your Service

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

Battle of the Sexes, Blade Runner 2049, Breathe, The Foreigner, Goodbye Christopher Robin, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Loving Vincent, Marshall, The Snowman 

Categories
News

In brief: Smear season, Kessler’s farewell and more

John Miska runs as the "Don Quixote" candidate. Courtesy Miska

Big John’s run

Fewer than two weeks before the November 7 election, veterans advocate John Miska launched a write-in campaign for Albemarle supervisor in the Rio District, where Dem Ned Gallaway is uncontested. Miska says he’s running as a conservative because he hates to see just one person on the ballot.

“Call me Don Quixote. I’m just tipping at windmills because people have not looked at the real issues and they have been distracted by identity politics.”—Albemarle supes write-in candidate John Miska

Remove ’em all

City resident Pat Napoleon and Albemarlean Richard Lloyd are gathering petition signatures to recall all current City Council members following the summer of hate. For Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, it’s the second petition calling for his ouster, but the one carried by Jason Kessler earlier this year fell short on signatures.

Don’t remove ’em all

A circuit court judge extended an injunction in the Confederate statues lawsuit prohibiting the city from getting rid of generals Lee and Jackson while the case is active.

Pointing the finger

Charlottesville has refused to turn over documents to the governor’s task force investigating the events of August 12 because the state has stymied city-hired former U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy’s requests for information for his independent review. City spokesperson Miriam Dickler says the city won’t comply until the state does.

Teacher indicted

Former Charlottesville High School environmental science teacher Rick Wellbeloved-Stone was indicted October 25 on three charges of producing and one charge of possessing child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty.

Spate of attempted abductions

Two women were grabbed from behind and had hands clasped over their mouths over the weekend. Around 2am October 27 on Wertland Avenue, the stocky white assailant fled when the woman he’d knocked to the ground screamed. Another woman was accosted around 8pm October 29 on Water Street. That suspect, a short black male in his mid 20s, wearing a black hoodie with maroon sleeves, also ran when the victim screamed.

 

 

Mud bath

The white supremacist or the gang sympathizer? Pick your poison.

This mailer that surfaced last week lists the entire Democratic ballot on the back. Despite its harsh criticism, Ralph Northam’s campaign has stood by it.
An Ed Gillespie campaign commercial links Ralph Northam to local MS-13 gang violence, but the ad allegedly uses stolen photos of non-MS-13 members in an El Salvador prison.

Virginians relying on smear campaigns to inform their opinions on the state’s gubernatorial candidates likely think the deck is stacked against those living in the Old Dominion.

An ad that surfaced last week shows a downright shocking image of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie and President Donald Trump superimposed above a photo of torch-wielding white nationalists. It reads, “On Tuesday, November 7, Virginia gets to stand up to hate.”

We’ve all heard Trump call known white supremacists “some very fine people” in response to the August 12 Unite the Right rally, but Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, denounced them and said, “having a right to spew vile hate does not make it right.”

The mailer hit close to home, and wasn’t received well. Says a Daily Progress editorial, “We don’t need state candidates trying to use our pain to their political advantage.”

It came after a barrage of Gillespie campaign attack ads that tie Democratic candidate and current Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam to MS-13 gang violence.

In one TV commercial, a man wearing a black hoodie and holding a baseball bat appears as the gang’s motto, “Kill, rape, control,” flashes on the screen. A female narrator then chronicles Northam’s casting the deciding vote in favor of sanctuary cities “that let illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13,” she says, not mentioning that Virginia has no sanctuary cities.

Another ad with photos of Northam interspersed with images of alleged members of the gang with tattooed faces has been put on blast by multiple news outlets for using photos stolen from a Central American news site of members of a rival gang photographed inside an El Salvador prison—not MS-13 gang members in Virginia. D’oh.

Kessler on the move

A bearded Jason Kessler, arguably Charlottesville’s least popular resident after organizing this summer’s deadly Unite the Right rally, was given a bond modification in Albemarle Circuit Court October 31 that will allow him to move to Carrollton, Ohio, to take a job with an online marketing company.

Kessler testified that his new boss, who was here for the August 12 events, is flexible and will allow him to return to Charlottesville for court dates, which include a felony perjury charge stemming from filing a bogus assault complaint in January.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci expressed concerns that Optimus Marketing had no physical address in Carrollton.

However, Judge Cheryl Higgins agreed with Kessler’s lawyer that if he came to court to ask permission, he’s likely to come back for his March 20 perjury trial, and she noted that he’s not likely to find work in Charlottesville.

Jason Kessler walks out of court and toward a new life in Ohio, with a parting question to reporters: “Y’all can’t get enough of me, can you?” Staff photo