Walt Heinecke is one of the Faculty Senate members who opposes the Board of Visitors' decision to choose its own faculty representative. Photo by Eze Amos
By Jonathan Haynes
The University of Virginia Board of Visitors riled the Faculty Senate last June when it decided to extend the term of incumbent faculty representative Mimi Riley for another year without consulting the senate.
The faculty rep is a non-voting member who sits in on closed-door meetings and presents faculty perspectives to board members. The position was established in 2015 in the wake of the attempted ouster of then-UVA president Teresa Sullivan.
The BOV amended its rules in September 2017 to require the senate to elect its representative rather than send the immediate past chair. However, the senate’s executive council did not hold an election or establish electoral procedures—and none of the faculty interviewed knew about the rule change until Riley’s reappointment.
Rector Rusty Conner felt Riley would benefit from a second year on the BOV. “She’s been a great member and did an awful lot,” Conner says. “We recognize the position has a steep learning curve and we’re considering making it a two-year term.”
Without consulting the Faculty Senate, he appointed Riley to a second term at the BOV’s May meeting.
Meanwhile, senate members were expecting immediate past-chair Alf Weaver to take over for Riley. Weaver informed the executive council in late May that he wasn’t, and said the BOV wasn’t calling it a request, but its decision, which enraged some members of the Faculty Senate.
“A significant fraction of the executive council didn’t feel they should just accept this because then the Board of Visitors would be picking the representative,” says Kevin Lehmann. “What they were doing was in violation of state law, which says the Board of Visitors must have a faculty representative”—one elected by the Faculty Senate.
Conner says he sought counsel from his legal team, which assured him the move was legal.
Some have been more sympathetic to the BOV. “While I don’t agree with what the BOV did, the Faculty Senate didn’t do their job, which was nominate a slate of candidates in April or May—so the board had to go in and make a selection,” says Aaron Bloomfield, professor of computer science.
The BOV then proposed that for next year, the senate elect five people for board members to choose from. “We want more flexibility than just picking the former Faculty Senate chair,” says Conner, who notes that students don’t elect their representative on the board and the BOV decides who that will be.
In the first few meetings of this academic year, disputes between people who wanted to force an election and people who just wanted to craft new rules for the next year reached a fever pitch.
When the Faculty Senate convened in a narrow room beneath the Rotunda for its monthly meeting November 15, a vote was scheduled to select two of three candidates that the senate would send in hopes the BOV would select one of them to replace Riley.
But attendance was low because of inclement weather, and the senate didn’t have a quorum. Senate chair Peter Brunjes used Robert’s Rules of Order to quash a motion to vote, further angering faculty members.
For many faculty, Brunjes’ actions epitomized the concerns that sparked the controversy. “If the BOV had come to Faculty Senate and given their reasoning, I strongly suspect that it would have been approved,” Lehmann says.
Still, Conner says he has no regrets about not informing the Faculty Senate before making the decision. “The board had pretty well concluded what it wanted to do.”
Tony will soon be cruising the streets of Crozet.
Courtesy Albemarle County
Tony the self-driving shuttle
Perrone Robotics cranked up the driverless vehicle heat last week with the awkwardly acronymed Tony—TO Navigate You—which will soon be autonomously tooling around Crozet.
In a partnership with Albemarle County and JAUNT—Jefferson Area UNited Transportation, another awkward acronym—Perrone will test drive the shuttle near its facility in Crozet before it begins an official route in March, and JAUNT will lend its transit expertise.
Albemarle is ponying up $238,000 for the vehicle, Perrone $271,000 and JAUNT $108,000 for insurance and a trained operator, who will be onboard as an “ambassador,” but be prepared to step in if the six-seater needs a real driver.
The fixed route in Crozet has not yet been determined. May we suggest a pub crawl route from Starr Hill Brewery to Crozet Pizza to Pro Re Nata?
Quote of the week
“Quite honestly, if people don’t want a successful governor and a good representative of his constituents to come to speak at the University of Virginia, I don’t give a damn.”—Robert Andrews, chair of UVA’s College Republicans, on hosting George Allen, whose past racial insensitivity—including the infamous 2006 “macaca” moment—drew concern from minority student leadership, the Cav Daily reports
In brief
Councilors want raise
Mayor Nikuyah Walker wants to ask the General Assembly to allow City Council to change its charter and determine its own salaries. Currently councilors make $18,000, and the mayor gets $20,000, which limits who can afford to serve. Council will hold a public hearing at its December 3 meeting.
Toscano not Pelosi-ing
Delegate David Toscano, the Virginia House minority leader, says he’ll resign the leadership position after the 2019 session because it takes too much time. Toscano, 68, has led the Dems since 2011, and says he’ll still seek reelection to the 57th District.
Uninviting Johnny Reb
After a petition to remove another local Confederate monument from Court Square—one that this time falls on county property and is dubbed Johnny Reb—the Albemarle Board of Supervisors has asked for legislation that would allow it to move the statue.
Uninviting Mike Signer
Members of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission want City Councilor Mike Signer off its board after they say he missed their past four meetings. In an email to the Daily Progress, Signer said his 4-year-old twins and other family members have kept him busy, and that councilors frequently miss their engagements. Wrote Signer, “Mayor Walker, for instance, has missed several council meetings this year.”
More Bigfoot jokes
“Saturday Night Live” actor Mikey Day threw on a taupe jacket and colored his hair gray November 17 as he took on the persona of 5th District Representative Denver Riggleman, who’s gotten plenty of national attention for being an alleged “devotee to Bigfoot erotica.” Said Day as Riggleman, “As I’ve said 500 times before, that picture was a joke between buds, and I’m not into that stuff.”
Caregiver con
Former caretaker Tia Daniels will serve three years in jail for stealing over $12,000 worth of heirloom jewelry and money from 98-year-old Albemarle woman Evelyn Goodman. Daniels also duped the elderly woman’s daughter into giving her money for a Habitat for Humanity house by creating fake correspondence with the charity, according to Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci.
Deadly Thanksgiving
The Charlottesville Fire Department is hoping to keep holiday cooks across the city from burning their houses down while preparing their turkey and pumpkin pies.
“Thanksgiving is the peak day for home cooking fires,” when nearly four times as many occur than on any other day, according to a press release sent by Battalion Chief Joe Phillips.
Fire crews across the nation respond to an estimated 172,100 cooking-related fires per year, for an average of 471 per day. These easily avoided incinerations have caused an average number of 530 deaths, 5,270 injuries, and $1 billion in property damage each year, according to Phillips.
City firefighters encouraging holiday cooks to keep flammable items like oven mitts and towels away from the stovetop, wear short sleeves or roll up their sleeves while in the kitchen, always have a properly fitting lid nearby to smother flames coming from a pot or pan, and, in the case of an oven fire, turn the heat off and keep the oven door closed so flames don’t spread.
And deep-fried turkeys can be deadly as well. The National Fire Protection Safety Association discourages the use of the hot-oil devices, which it says kills five people, injures 60, and destroys 900 homes a year.
Elizabeth Wydra (center), president of D.C.’s Constitutional Accountability Center, says defendants can’t hide behind the First Amendment when alleging bogus conspiracy theories about her client, local man Brennan Gilmore (right), to a national audience. Staff photo
Infowars founder Alex Jones has made a career out of broadcasting anti-government and right-wing conspiracy theories on his website and various radio shows. Last year, he put local man Brennan Gilmore in his crosshairs, alleging that the Charlottesville musician is a deep state operative on George Soros’ personal payroll who helped orchestrate the August 12, 2017, car attack. But Gilmore is fighting back with a federal defamation lawsuit, which he filed last spring.
Attorneys for Jones and multiple other defendants were in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia on November 13 to argue motions to dismiss the lawsuit. They say Gilmore’s crew filed the lawsuit in the wrong court, and moreover, that their clients’ actions were protected by the First Amendment.
If Gilmore’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s taken on several roles across town, including playing guitar in Wild Common, being Tom Perriello’s chief of staff during the Democrat’s gubernatorial run, and filming a video that immediately went viral of a Dodge Challenger ramming into a group of counterprotesters at the August 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally.
It’s that video that has made him a target for right-wing conspiracy theories allegedly created by Jones and other defendants, who are listed as Lee Stranahan, Lee Ann McAdoo, Scott Creighton, James Hoft, Derrick Wilburn, former Florida Republican congressman Allen B. West, and Free Speech Systems, LLC.
Defense attorney Andrew Grossman drew specific attention to an August 15 interview of former Breitbart News employee Stranahan by Infowars reporter McAdoo, in which they suggest that Gilmore’s involvement in the car attack was intended to stage a coup to overthrow the president.
Grossman, who came from Washington, D.C., called it “the kind of exaggerated rhetoric that can not be taken literally,” and suggested that such hyperbole is often used in the news.
But the plaintiffs don’t agree, and allege that Jones’ claims of thorough fact-checking can’t be true.
“Fact-based journalism is essential to our democracy, because it provides citizens with objective, reality-based information on issues of public concern,” says their lawsuit. “Defendants are not fact-based journalists. Defendants spread lies to construct false narratives that terrify a gullible audience, all in a desperate attempt to generate revenue and momentum for a hateful agenda.”
Grossman said plaintiffs were drawing their own conclusions about what Jones meant by some of his statements. “That’s not how defamation works,” the attorney said. “You can’t sue someone over an alleged interpretation.”
He also said that because Gilmore is a public figure, the judge must find that defendants committed actual malice to classify their statements as defamatory.
But Elizabeth Wydra, who is the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center in D.C. and one of several attorneys representing Gilmore, said it was the defendants who made Gilmore a public figure by their outrageous claims against him.
Outside the courthouse, she said, “We shouldn’t have everyday citizens dragged through the mud—dragged into the spotlight—simply because they happened to witness something that is of public interest.”
She said folks like Jones and other defendants shouldn’t be able to hide behind the First Amendment when they publish “terrible claims,” such as the one connecting her client to the murder of Heather Heyer.
“The law does not protect that,” says Wydra. “There are consequences when you speak and act in a way that creates harm to a person like Mr. Gilmore, who suffered threats. He’s suffered harassment, he’s suffered harm to his reputation.”
Added Gilmore, “I just want to ensure that the next person who finds himself in that position, they don’t have to suffer the same injury. That’s why we’re here today.”
Manassas-based defense attorney Aaron Walker, who represents about half a dozen of the defendants, told reporters that a ruling in favor of Gilmore could be the beginning of the “death of the freedom of the press.”
“This is a dangerous case, to be blunt,” said Walker, and taking a dig at the plaintiffs’ stance on his clients, he said, “They just don’t like their opinions.”
To be fair, neither does he. On the topic of Jones, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has called “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in America,” he said, “I dislike him, personally.”
Judge Norman Moon has not yet ruled on whether the lawsuit will proceed. Jones, meanwhile, is embroiled in multiple other defamation lawsuits filed by relatives of children killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, after Jones falsely claimed that the shooting was staged by the government and that the parents of the murdered children were “crisis actors.”
Caption
Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Angela Ciolfi wants a judge to order the DMV to stop automatically suspending driver’s licenses because of unpaid fines and court costs.
Staff photo
It’s a tough argument to make: That a woman with three children who makes around $9 an hour, who can’t buy enough groceries to meet minimum nutritional needs, and who shares a bedroom with two kids in an apartment with another family, has plenty of money left over to pay $100 a month to get her suspended driver’s license back.
Yet that was the case the Commonwealth of Virginia made at a November 15 hearing. The state suggested that if the woman gave up her cellphone, she’d have the $100 a month and that losing access to communication would in no way would cause her “irreparable harm.”
The case is Stinnie v. Holcomb, and it was filed in 2016 by the Legal Aid Justice Center, which claims the state’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court fines and fees that often have nothing to do with actual driving infractions, is unconstitutional because it happens with no notice of the suspension, no consideration of the person’s ability to pay, and falls disproportionately upon the poor.
At a four-and-a-half-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Judge Norman Moon for a preliminary injunction to immediately stop the automatic suspensions.
This time, Moon asked a lot more questions about how indigent people were supposed to pay staggering court costs—and then the additional $145 the DMV charges to reinstate a license. At times he called a driver’s license a “property right,” veering from the state’s assertion that a license is a privilege.
“We’re seeking an order declaring the statute unconstitutional,” said Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Angela Ciolfi. That’s a possibility Moon had considered last year in his decision dismissing the case, because people get no notice or hearing about the license suspension—in effect no due process.
Adrianne Johnson, 34, is one of the plaintiffs. The native Charlottesvillian has three children and worked as a certified nursing assistant until she was convicted of a drug charge in Brunswick County. She didn’t get jail time, but had court costs of $865. She was paying $100 a month until she lost her job. Unaware that her license had been suspended for the unpaid fines, she was then charged with driving with a suspended license. After a second suspension, she stopped driving because a third conviction carries jail time.
Not having a license has affected her job opportunities, she testified. Though she managed to find another job, the lack of a driver’s license is preventing her from being promoted to manager, she said, because that position requires driving to make daily bank deposits.
“It’s very stressful, very inconvenient to me and my children,” she said. Her daughter has medical issues and her son plays sports. “I can’t take him or go to any of his games.”
With a license, she said, “I would be able to have a better paying job. I could pay the court costs and fines.”
Assistant Attorney General Margaret O’Shea asked Johnson if she’d gone to the Brunswick court to ask for community service.
“No, I didn’t know about that,” said Johnson. “And how am I going to get to Brunswick? I don’t have a license.”
O’Shea suggested that with Johnson’s $200/month rent for a room she shares with two of her children, she should have plenty of money left over to pay her fines.
“I have nothing left over after I pay my expenses,” said Johnson. “It just leaves me with nothing. Nothing at all.”
The plaintiffs called Diana Pearce, a University of Washington professor who created the self-sufficiency standard, which determines that amount of income needed to meet basic needs.
Pearce looked at Johnson’s income and expenses, and said, “She’s not able to meet her basic needs based on her income.”
O’Shea asked if the numbers meant Johnson had $400 a month left over, and that with the $200 rent, “she had a roof over her head.”
The money is not extra income, maintained Pearce. Johnson is “not spending enough on housing and nutritional needs,” and sharing a room with two kids was not meeting basic needs, she added.
Steven Peterson is a microeconomist who testified that the loss of a driver’s license for unpaid fines “disproportionately affected poor people,” with 40 to 45 percent losing their jobs. If they found another job, he said, 88 percent had lower incomes.
Using numbers from the DMV, he said in 2017, 977,891 people had their licenses suspended, and 647,517 of those were suspended only as a result of not paying fines and court costs.
McGuireWoods attorney Jonathan Blank asked the judge to declare the suspensions unconstitutional. “You cannot punish a person who lacks the resources to pay a debt,” he said. “We’re here because this is a modern-day debtors prison.”
Moon seemed skeptical of the commonwealth’s arguments that the costs on indigent people caused no “irreparable harm,” and said, “They shouldn’t be punished if they cannot pay.”
But with an eye toward the weather, Moon recessed the court without ruling and said he had to get to Lynchburg.
“I feel very heartened by the judge’s questions,” said Ciolfi. “He clearly gets the unfairness” and the “devastation” to people’s lives.
Victor Taylor woke up in the middle of the night, with “pancake-sized hives.”
Author John Grisham’s ears were “really, really itching.”
“We got in the car,” Grisham told Allergic Living magazine, “and I was so desperate I stripped down, took off all my clothes but my boxer shorts, and I had all the air blowing on me, and you could just see the welts.”
The cause of these mysterious reactions?
Red meat.
UVA physician Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills discovered alpha-gal allergy, commonly known as the “meat allergy,” in 2002. One of the more perplexing human allergies, it occurs when sufferers become sensitized to alpha-gal, a type of sugar present in red meat. Alpha-gal causes a delayed reaction—an affected person may eat meat, then break out in hives hours later, or even have trouble breathing. And because the allergy is believed to be triggered by a tick bite, you can develop it as an adult, even if you’ve been eating meat all your life. While it’s often associated with beef, other meats like pork, lamb, or goat can cause the reactions.
“People think it’s just red meat, but it’s all mammals,” Platts-Mills informed a patient at the UVA Allergy Clinic this fall, in his patrician British accent. “Anything with titties and hair.”
The patient, Greene county resident Frank Morris, had been diagnosed with alpha-gal allergy about a year ago, after a pork barbecue sandwich sent him to the emergency room with a rapidly swelling throat. “It was a really scary thing that night,” he says. “I usually don’t like to go to the doctor…but I couldn’t breathe, I was fighting for air.”
Platts-Mills and his team took him off beef and pork, and Morris says he was doing well. But he was back in the clinic that day after starting to have more allergic reactions, this time to dairy products. Recently, a few sips of a milkshake had made his lips swell up.
“You’re lucky,” Platts-Mills tells him. He says that with alpha-gal, most people don’t get the immediate mouth swelling that provides a heads-up that they are eating something potentially dangerous.
Sure enough, the allergy test confirmed Morris’ new sensitivity to milk, and pricks for beef and pork still produced tell-tale itchy red bumps. He was also tested for chicken, turkey, andfish, all of which came up negative. “You don’t even like fish,” his girlfriend Margie observed. But she was happy the couple at least knew the cause of his symptoms—before his trip to the ER, Morris had spent about six months getting various other diagnoses and medications from his primary care doctor.
That lack of awareness may be starting to change. “It seems like everyone either has it or knows someone who has it,” she says.
Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, a UVA physician, discovered alpha-gal allergy, commonly known as the “meat allergy,” in 2002. One of the more baffling human allergies, it occurs when sufferers become sensitized to alpha-gal, a type of sugar present in red meat. Photo: Amy Jackson Smith
Discovering the allergy
Platts-Mills, the son of a barrister and a British member of Parliament, is the head of the Division of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology at UVA. His discovery began more than a decade ago, when he was asked to look into severe allergic reactions to a cancer drug, cetuximab. With a team of researchers, he found they were allergic to a particular ingredient in the drug—alpha-gal. Patients had developed antibodies to the sugar.
At the same time, reports of a similar allergy were arising in Platts-Mills’ clinic, independent of the cancer drug. Doing the cancer-drug allergy work, Platts-Mills helped to develop an allergy test (called an assay) for alpha-gal.
“I think the thing that I did, better than anything else, was to say we need to assay everybody in the clinic, anyone who would stand still,” Platts-Mills says. “We wanted to see what this related to.”
Researchers noticed that patients having alpha-gal reactions lived in the same area as a type of tick-borne disease, and wondered if the allergy might be triggered by ticks. (Platts-Mills says a technician on his team, Jake Hosen, was the first to suggest this connection.)
Pursuing that hunch paid off. The Platts-Mills team was able to find blood samples from people taken before and after tick bites, and to show the rise of antibodies to alpha-gal after they were bitten, ate meat, and had a reaction.
Then, Platts-Mills got the allergy himself.
In summer 2007, while this early research was happening, Platts-Mills recalls going fora hike, and having to remove tiny ticks, called seed ticks, from his legs afterwards. He ate meat rarely, but that November, he ate two lamb chops with two glasses of red wine.
“It was four to six hours later that I was covered in hives,” he says.
Ever the researcher, Platts-Mills tracked his alpha-gal antibody levels over time. He had his blood taken every week and watched the level fall as he avoided red meat and rise again after a different tick-bite incident followed by a meat meal. “I’ve done it a few times,” he says.
In March, 2008, Platts-Mills, along with Hosen and others, published a seminal article on the allergy for the New England Journal of Medicine. It has since been cited more than 1,000 times.
Alpha-gall allergy has a unusual delayed response. With a peanut allergy, Dr. Platts-Mills says, if you were exposed at a restaurant you’d know before you left. Whereas with the alpha-gal response, “you could eat a hamburger, sit for hours chatting with friends, wander out,” and still have no idea that you will have a big reaction later.
Dramatically different
Platts-Mills says alpha-gal is dramatically different from other food allergies. For one thing, unlike most allergies, alpha-gal is not species specific. “You can react to meat from a number of species,” he says, adding that some people even have reactions to eating squirrel or some other kinds of roadkill.
The delayed reaction is also not the usual allergic pattern. With a peanut allergy, Platts-Mills says, if you were exposed at a restaurant you’d know before you left. Whereas with the alpha-gal response, “you could eat a hamburger, sit for hours chatting with friends, wander out,” and still have no idea that you will have a big reaction later.
“We had a patient whose symptom was very low blood pressure, who had eaten meats all life long,” Platts-Mills says. “Just recently the symptoms started after eating meat. Three hours later, serious illness set in. You have the enigma of a person who perhaps has been eating meat for 30 or 40 years who flips into this new state.”
While the most common reaction is hives or intense itching, the allergy can also cause stomach pains, trouble breathing, and in some cases even anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening condition in which the body goes into shock.
Sensitivity to alpha-gal may also affect the circulatory system. An early-stage UVA study of 118 people found that those with sensitivity to alpha-gal, whether they showed allergic symptoms or not, had about 30 percent more plaque build-up in arteries than those who weren’t sensitive. The researchers also found that more of the plaques had features characteristic of unstable plaques, which are the type more likely to lead to heart attacks.
Study leader Coleen McNamara, a cardiologist who also works in UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, says that research calls for further clinical studies.
The lone star tick has a distinctive white spot on its back. File photo.
Putting the bite on
In our area, the alpha-gal effect seems to be primarily caused by the lone star tick, which is found on larger mammals like deer and dogs. The larvae of the lone star tick can also bite us. After feasting on our blood, mother ticks can lay 5,000 eggs, which appear as tiny specks that we call seed ticks, Platts-Mills says.
“Some people, slightly wrongly, call them chiggers,” he says. Tiny black dots you may see on your leg are most likely the larvae of the tick, he explains. They are nearly invisible.
When you get these bites, they strongly itch, which can last for a couple of weeks. If the itching reaction persists, Platts-Mills says, you may be more likely to be sensitized to meat.
“We think it is something definitely happening in response to the injected saliva of the tick, which is a complicated substance,” Platts-Mills says. “The injection into the skin causes the trouble.”
Victor Taylor, who lives in Afton, is a frequent hiker and got tick bites in the woods. He remembers one bite that didn’t heal for two weeks. “Once I removed the tick, it itched terribly,” he says. The area of the bite swelled to about the size of a quarter.
An infrequent beef eater, he had a steak a while after the initial tick bite. He awakened at 2 or 3am, and was very itchy, covered with very large hives. He had never had hives before.
“At first, I tried to take a bath to relieve the itching, but I had no idea what was causing it,” he says. The hives returned on another occasion, after he ate spaghetti with meat sauce, and then a third time after pizza with Canadian bacon on it. That’s when he realized it was a meat problem.
“I hadn’t heard anything about a tick-related allergy,” he says. “This was in 2010.” But he was treated by a nurse who had read a paper about how ticks were causing the allergy to meat and to certain cancer drugs.
In other parts of the world, Platts-Mills says, the same alpha-gal effect is happening with other ticks. He is helping a team in Minnesota to study alpha-gal outbreaks there. “It seems to be more the American dog tick in the Midwest, which is rare in Virginia,” he says.
As an aside, he adds that the tick that carries Lyme disease, often called the deer tick, actually is predominantly a mouse tick, a different species. “The bites that transmit Lyme disease generally do not itch. That species’ larvae can’t or don’t bite humans.” Researchers are “about 99 percent sure” that the tick that causes Lyme disease does not cause alpha-gal, he says.
Alpha-gal allergy and other tick-borne illnesses are a growing problem, because ticks are more prevalent in the spaces where we live. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that cases of tick-borne illnesses doubled between 2004 and 2016, though it does not yet recognize alpha-gal allergy among these).
This is partly due to climate change, which has vastly increased the population of lone star ticks, which thrive in warm, humid weather. The ticks have expanded their range (all the way up to Maine), and warmer winters mean they’ve been able to stay active longer.
Another factor is the overpopulation of white-tailed deer, which carry the ticks. Deer stroll through many a yard and park in Charlottesville and surrounding counties, especially as increased development has pushed houses further into deer habitat. “We’re living too closely to them,” says Platts-Mills. “This simply was not happening in 1950.”
It’s hard to believe, but Virginia’s deer population was almost non-existent in the early part of the 20th century. The Virginia Game Commission began re-introducing deer to the Blue Ridge in the late 1940s or early ’50s, after commercial hunting had nearly wiped out the population. From a statewide low of about 25,000 in 1930, the deer population grew nearly tenfold by 1970, to about 215,000, according to deer project coordinators with the Izaak Walton League, a conservation society.
Today the deer population in Virginia hovers at about a million. That’s worrying, says Platts-Mills,because it is not unusual for a single deer to have 500 mother ticks busy fattening up, and deer have no way to remove the ticks from their bodies.
Treatment, but no cure
To treat a reaction, Platts-Mills says Benadryl generally works if you’re someone who just gets hives.
While the doctor’s own reactions have been “uniformly non-frightening,” he says scientists still don’t know why some people instead have the very disturbing, severe allergic symptoms (anaphylaxis) that mean they must go to the hospital. He says patients with breathing problems or any other life-threatening symptoms need to seek immediate medical attention. Morris, who has had severe reactions, now carries an EpiPen with him at all times.
While Benadryl can treat the symptoms, scientists have yet to discover a way to eliminate the allergy itself. In some people, the allergy appears to go away on its own—years later, they have no detectable antibodies and can eat red meat again without a problem. In others, the condition seems to go on and on.
Taylor, who says he misses red meat at times, has tried “microdosing” by eating only small amounts of meat—but without success.
Cutting out red meat entirely is the only known cure, says Platts-Mills. The doctor has reached a final conclusion: “I am an adult, and I don’t need red meat, so I have stopped eating it.”
That can be a tough prescription. Morris, who was born and raised on a farm, says he used to eat either beef or pork “almost every night for dinner, or for breakfast. I’ve had to change my diet completely.” The other day, even a chicken casserole had him reaching for his EpiPen (it was made with sour cream and cheese).
At the clinic, his arm still dotted with red welts, Morris asked Platts-Mills what he always asks: “When do you think I can go back to eating meat?”
Platts-Mills answered with a question that was essentially rhetorical: When do you think you’ll be completely free of any exposure to ticks?
In Greene County, that won’t be anytime soon. So Morris’ girlfriend, pondering his test results, looked for a bright side. “Maybe salmon steaks?”
Additional reporting by Laura Longhine.
File photo
Deer control
White-tailed deer, the primary hosts for the lone star tick, are among the most adaptable mammals out there. Without predators, a deer population can grown by a third or more in a season, says Bob Duncan, biologist and executive director of the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries.
Charlottesville is taking steps toward deer population control. First, it recently allowed residents to participate in the Virginia Urban Archery Season, which allows deer hunting by bow and arrow or crossbow (with the required permit).
Second, this past winter, after much debate, the city hired Blue Ridge Wildlife and Pest Management, LLC, to take out deer in city parks. Sharpshooters were brought in.
The outcome of that effort was 125 deer culled in nine city-owned parks and properties, reports Brian Wheeler, communications director for the city. Seventy-one deer were killed in Pen Park alone. The program yielded a total of 2,850 pounds of venison, which the city donated to the Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry of Charlottesville.
The City of Charlottesville plans to continue the deer-culling initiative in 2019.
Preventing tick bites
One of the best ways to prevent a tick-borne disease is to avoid getting tick bites in the first place. Here are some tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
• Use insect repellent. Make sure it has at least 20 percent deet (a repellent chemical, also marketed as Deet brand) or use those with picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus, para-menthane-diol, or 2-undecanone.
• Hikers, don’t go off trail. Try to avoid brush, tall grass, or tree limbs.
• Use 0.5% permethrin insecticide on clothing and gear. (Some gear comes pretreated with permethrin, but Consumer Reports found that permethrin-treated shirts were not as effective against bites as an ordinary shirt that was sprayed with deet.)
• Shower soon after coming inside, within two hours.
• Treat pets for ticks, especially dogs. Ask a vet about the most safe, effective prevention products
If you do spot a tick on your body,remove it immediately (see tips below). Kill the tick, keep it, and bring it to your doctor if you can. Remember, alpha-gal symptoms may appear hours after a bite.
Here are the CDC’s tips for how to remove a tick safely:
• Use tweezers to grasp the tick near its head or mouth and remove it carefully.
• Do not twist as you pull the tick out. Pull it straight out of your skin. If any part of the tick is still in your skin, remove it.
• Treat the tick as if it’s contaminated; soak it in rubbing alcohol.
• Clean the bite area with an antiseptic, like alcohol or an iodine scrub, or use soap and water.
• Do not crush a tick with your bare fingers (their juices can leak).
• Check daily for ticks on humans and pets when you go outdoors, especially in the following areas: ears, hairline, underarms, groin, bellybutton, paws.
Commercial real estate in Charlottesville and the Valley (including shops, office buildings, apartment complexes, manufacturing plants, subdivisions and warehouses) continues its impressive growth with more of the same predicted for 2019.
And so long as families continue to visit and move here for the natural beauty, outdoor activities, job opportunities, and mild climate (but with four seasons), agents are optimistic this trend will continue.
The positive forecast is consistent with a recent survey by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services that foresees a bright outlook for commercial real estate worldwide in 2019, and predicts thatinvestment in this market will“continue to rise on the back of steady economic and employment growth in key global markets.”
Widespread commercial growth also relies on consumer confidence, a strong economy and historically low interest rates said Peter Wray, Broker at Triangle REALTORS® in Staunton.
And these same factors support an active residential market, another critical driver of commercial growth that remains strong throughout our area.
Agents Report Robust Market It’s a “great market,” says Robin Amato with Real Estate III Commercial Properties, who is having one of her best years ever.She adds that all geographic areas are doing well.
The market is “really solid,” observes Lisa Jones, President of Pavilion Properties. She is happy to see new tenants signing leases at Peter Jefferson Place, her company’s Pantops-area development featuring Class A office space.The newcomers join an impressive list of existing tenants, many of whom are renewing or expanding their leases.
One example is The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental organization recently relocated from their familiar spot north of town to their brand new Pantops office. They appreciate their new space, which is much more efficient for them, Jones said.
“Overall the market is still good,” says Benton Downer, Owner and Principal Broker at Downer and Associates.He has noticed “a pause” in leasing activity due to interest rate jumps, but says the investor side of the market continues to boom.
The market is doing “real well,” says Bill Howard with Real Estate III Commercial Properties. He recounts the ” amazing number of calls,” his office receives these days with inquiries about all manner of property from close-in to as far away as Zion Crossroads and Greene County.
Mike Pugh with Old Dominion Realty in Harrisonburg calls the Valley market “robust, and very active.”So active, in fact, that many contractors, especially those required for large infrastructure development, are booked through next summer, he says.
Investors Motivated An active part of the commercial market is investors looking for already leased properties. These could include shopping centers, apartments, office buildings, single tenant retail stores, mini-storage places, or gas stations.
Investors range from single individuals (who may be searching for alternatives to the stock market in order to diversify) to larger entities such as REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts).
This particular market is “extremely strong,” Wray says.He has “lots of investors calling,”addingthere is plenty of competition, especially for prime properties.
A related trend is business owners purchasing or building their own space after leasing for a time. Continuing low interest rates are a big reason, Amato says. Withsufficient cash to put down, they can often enjoy mortgage payments that are less than the monthly cost of their lease.
Charlottesville’s Cavalier Produce, recently relocated toZion Crossroads, is just one example. When they moved into their newly built space, they left behind their close-in Carlton Avenue location where they had operated for years.
Part of their former space is now leased to the Champion Brewing Company, reportsEddie Karoliussen, Broker with Four Corners Real Estate Solutions, LLC.He adds that Found. Market Co. where visitors can enjoy coffee, gourmet food, bakery items and gifts, is now also located in the same center.
Outlying Areas Popular The strong commercial market is not confined to just a few parts of town.Sara Schroeder with Hasbrouck Real Estate Corp. explained that in recent years some areas, especially downtown Charlottesville, were very busy.Now, she says, we are seeing activity that is more widespread.
Wray agrees stating:“In general, even with interest rates rising, the commercial market continues to be active and strong throughout Charlottesville, Waynesboro, Staunton and beyond.”
Zion Crossroads Take Zion Crossroads, for example.Trey Durham with Keller Williams Alliance cites the growing commercial market as an important contributor to the local lifestyle.Home buyers living in communities such as Lake Monticello, Spring Creek, Villages of Nahor, and others plus surrounding rural areas all benefit from this expansion.
Both Martha Jefferson and UVA have satellite offices in the area, Durham said, and residents can also shop at Walmart or Lowe’s, and choose from a growing number of restaurants.
In addition, public water and sewer is coming to Zion Crossroads, and that will only accelerate commercial growth, he says.
John O’Reilly, with BHG Real Estate – Basecamp, is also enthusiastic about the area’s commercial activity saying, “it is coming into its own.”
Greene and Madison Both Greene and Madison Counties now enjoy active commercial markets.This is due in part to the low inventory of homes and rising prices in Charlottesville and Albemarle that send homebuyers further out to shop.
One result is the impressive number of calls coming into Roy Wheeler Realty Co.’s Greene area office inquiring about retail and industrial space, says Matthew Woodson, Managing Broker—”more than in the previous five years,” he stated.
He explained that when businesses like these locate in Greene County there is“real added value” for residents making it more convenient to live, work and shop there. He sees commercial expansion continuing stating: “the best days are ahead of us.”
Bill Gentry, Broker and Owner of Jefferson Land and Realty is also pleased with expandingcommercial activity in both Greene and Madison.
In Greene County, Chuck’s Auto Center plans to build on 29 North near Lake Saponi. Having lost their lease, they are working through the zoning and site plan process and expect to be up and running by early 2019, Gentry said.Further north, O’Reilly’s Auto Store has filed a site plan and intends to build their new location in Cornerstone Square near Family Dollar.
If you love looking for thrift store bargains, head out to Another Time Around in Stanardsville in its new location near Great Value, Gentry said, observing that the shopping center there is now fully leased.
Thrift shoppers en route to Greene County will also be able to find bargains at the soon-to-be-open Goodwill store north of town in what was formerly Gander Mountain.“Goodwill has done extremely well in Charlottesville,” Wray says and will be consolidating two other stores into this new 25 thousand square foot facility.
Pantops Closer in, Pantops is a hot spot for both residential and commercial growth.Martha Jefferson Hospital, nearness to Downtown, and plenty of free parking are big draws. Easy access to the Interstate plays a role as does ACAC’s new Pantops location on Martha Jefferson Drive.
Employees at Peter Jefferson Place who prefer to walk or run can take advantage of the nearby outdoor jogging paths and the showers available at their office, Jones said.
While many of Jones’ tenants have businesses that are health related, her clients also include financial firms such as Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and residential mortgage companies.Others include tech companies, attorneys and non-profits.
People who love Pantops amenities, but don’t want to buy a home just yet will be happy to learn about the apartments to be built in Peter Jefferson Place, Jones said.Alternatively they can rent one of the luxury apartments going in above the shops at Riverside Village on the other side of Richmond Road.
The new North Pantops Professional Center on Olympia Circle, the first of three buildings planned for that site, will be ready for occupancy by mid-2019 says Steve Melton, Broker with Virginia Land Company.
Response to ads about the new space has been good, Melton said and he is working with several likely tenants.
Virginia Land’s other Pantops locations are also popular with space recently leased to UVA, Shenandoah Fine Arts and an attorney who walked in and decided on the spot to relocate from Downtown.
Closer to Town Areas closer in are also busy from the Downtown Mall to mixed-use developments on Preston Avenue, McIntire Plaza and elsewhere.
The IX Project is another active spot. Property Manager, Erin Hill described new tenants located there including the North American Sake Brewery (Virginia’s “first and only”) featuring flavor infused varieties such as black cherry, black currant, blackberry and blood orange.While sipping their favorite sake, enthusiasts can also sample Japanese inspired American cuisine.
Sake is brewed onsite and free facility tours are available at 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday.Visitors also look forward to happy hour Monday through Friday from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
IX also welcomes Little Planet, which offers drop-off child care for parents working out, shopping or enjoying the food and drink available there.Parents must be onsite to use this service featuring what Hill calls “organic, wholesome child care” that will soon include time in a yurt.
In another popular spot, local residents appreciate the retail stores, restaurants, theaterand service providers at 5th Street Station.
For example, iFixt offers walk-in, fix-it services for smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other mobile devices.While awaiting their repairs, shoppers can take care of banking,visittheir doctor at Sentara Family Medicine, get a haircut, or consult their favorite physical therapist at Select Medical.
And very soon Starbucks with its drive-through window will open in a center adjacent to 5th Street Station for anyone wanting caffeine or a pleasant place to hang out.Additional office and retail space will be available in the three buildings planned for that same site, Wray says.
Shenandoah Valley Retail is hot in the Valley.
Wray cited the Frontier Center in Staunton where shoppers at the Aldi grocery chain can selectfrom Bojangles’, Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s at lunchtime.
At nearby Staunton Crossing, out of town visitors can choose from one of 200 hotel rooms at the Marriott or Tru by Hilton Hotels that both just opened.
And if your destination is Harrisonburg try the recently opened Madison Hotel near James Madison University, Pugh suggests.
Myers Corner, a mixed-use development on Route 250 in Fishersville is “developing strongly,” Wray says and will soon include a new assisted living facility and professional offices.
Warehouse space, which is in very short supply in the Charlottesville area, is more plentiful in the Valley, Pugh observes.However, he adds that even there, inventory is shrinking, so the time to act is now if securing warehouse space is high on your list.
The commercial real estate market is booming on both sides of Afton Mountain.Agents look forward to a productive 2019 and even more and varied places to work, shop, eat, live and enjoy a night out on the town.
Celeste Smucker is a writer and blogger who lives near Charlottesville.
It’s right there on the calendar. Company’s coming for the holidays. Whether it’s long-time friends, your child’s college roommate or a flock of in-laws, it’s not too early to start prepping. Remember, happy visits don’t just happen. Plan ahead because you (and your guests) will be more relaxed when you are well prepared.
Safety First Be especially aware if your list includes persons with disabilities or allergies or children.
Toxic items and fragile things are the greatest risks for youngsters and visitors with physical, visual or cognitive disabilities, so remove valuable breakables and heavy, tippy objects. Stash away scatter rugs that might trip a guest using a walker or stroller. Reduce the temperature on your water heater if it’s especially hot.
Do you have adequate sleeping space for everyone? Is that old sleeper-sofa only suitable for guests you hope will leave quickly?
If your visitors include youngsters, you can probably put some of them on the floor on air mattresses, but don’t wait until the last minute to rent or borrow rollaways or inflatable beds.
How about bedding down the little ones? One Belmont grandma solved that problem by buying a crib and high chair at a local thrift store. She just stashes them away between visits—when other grandparents aren’t borrowing them for their own visitors, that is.
Speaking of little ones, ensure that medications or poisonous items are stored safely. Program your phones with numbers for medical emergencies including poison control and know the hours of the nearest urgent care facility or emergency department.
Protect visitors from pets. And if necessary, protect pets from visitors.
Ensure your animals have a safe retreat and introduce your guests to your pets in a calm setting. If you have young visitors, remind them how to behave around animals.
If you have pets that might be aggressive or upset by visitors, consider having them stay elsewhere while visitors are there.
The Little Extras If you’re sure there are no allergies, a bouquet of flowers in the guest bedroom is always welcoming. Provide extra blankets and, if possible, a choice of soft or firm pillows for each guest. Include glasses and a water carafe for the bedside.
If you don’t have a folding luggage stand, be sure there are convenient places to set luggage. Have extra hangers in the closet and clear out drawers if guests are staying several days.
Does the guest room lamp work and is it bright enough for visitors who like to read in bed? Provide a clock with numbers that can be seen in the dark. Install nightlights in bedrooms, hallways and bathrooms.
Be particularly sure stairs are well lit, especially if you have visitors with any sort of vision problems. Consider small flashlights for bedside tables.
Add a touch of hospitality by providing toiletries in the bathroom along with clearly identified towels and face clothes. And be sure to have plenty of T.P. that can be easily found right in the bathroom when it’s time to replace a roll.
Plan Activities Make a list of places for good times together such as special holiday programs at the Paramount Theater and other live music venues. Monticello is free (with proof of residency) for one local resident of Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Augusta, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson, Orange and Rockingham with each paying adult visitor. Ashlawn and Montpelier are other nearby significant historical sites.
There’s plenty of free or very-low-cost entertainment as well.
Stroll the Downtown Mall. Attend religious services. Exercise in your neighborhood, on the Rivanna Trail or farther afield in Shenandoah National Park.
If children are coming, find the nearest park or schoolyard with play equipment for them to burn off youthful energy. Invest in a soccer ball, a jump rope, snow saucers (it could happen!), and other equipment for vigorous play.
We Haven’t Eaten in Minutes Check ahead of time for food allergies and preferences so your pantry will be well stocked. Have easy-to-find snacks for middle-of-the-night hunger pangs as well as a breakfast plan for early risers.
Will you do all the food prep, stock up on ready-to-serve items, eat out most meals, have guests pitch in on cooking or all of the above?
These days your company may well range from omnivores to those needing (or simply preferring) items that are gluten-free, vegetarian, kosher, halal, or vegan.
Browse the Internet for likely recipes and test them ahead of time. Most everyone can eat a vegan dish, but that’s not true for all selections.
Plan simple menus and freeze lasagna, soup, and casseroles ahead of time. Save pizza coupons and the menu from your favorite Chinese restaurant and order in.
Have eateries in several price ranges in mind if your guests want to treat you to dinner out.
Bottom Line Above all, don’t let the “shoulds” get you down. You can use paper napkins instead of linen. (Have the kids decorate them with holiday motifs.) You can also use paper plates. You can buy frozen lasagna instead of making it. It’s the holidays—take the easy way and leave yourself free to enjoy every minute.
Above all, recognize that something always goes wrong. Remember also that the jammed garage door, the dead-battery car, and the ants that invade the kitchen will be a lot funnier when you look back on that memory in the future.
Marilyn Pribus and her husband live in Albemarle County near Charlottesville. They’re relaxing this year because they will be neither visiting nor visited.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson wanted to beat a man whom he alleges called his 19-year-old daughter a "whore" at Farmington Country Club.
Gage Skidmore
Farmington feud
Farmington Country Club revoked Juan Manuel Granados’ membership following his spat with Tucker Carlson, who has admitted that his son threw wine in Granados’ face. Granados, represented by celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, is now threatening legal action. It won’t be the first time: Granados reportedly successfully sued the Roanoke Athletic Club for revoking a family membership from him, his partner, and his daughter because it didn’t recognize gay couples with children as a family.
Quote of the week
“It took enormous self-control not to beat this man with a chair, which is what I wanted to do.”—Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a statement on an encounter with a man who allegedly called his daughter a “whore” at Farmington Country Club in October
Knock ’em all down
Rammelkamp Foto
In case you haven’t had enough statue drama, Mayor Nikuyah Walker is now advocating for the removal of the Lewis and Clark monument on West Main Street. It shows the two explorers standing pompously over a cowering Sacagawea, though they actually have the Shoshone woman to thank for showing them the way. A plaque commemorating Sacagawea’s role was added about a decade ago after a previous effort to have the statue removed.
Haters want protection, too
Jason Kessler and white supremacist groups Identity Evropa, National Socialist Movement, and Traditionalist Worker Party are suing the city, former city police chief Al Thomas, and Virginia State Police Sergeant Becky Crannis-Curl for allegedly violating their First and Fourteenth amendment rights by failing to protect them during the first Unite the Right rally.
Human remains found on parkway
The John Warner Parkway trail was closed November 8 after human remains were found. The identity of the body, which is with the medical examiner’s office, is unknown.
Ready or not, here they come
Getty Images
City Council unanimously approved a “dockless mobility” pilot program last week, meaning people on electric scooters will soon be zooming around town. But similar programs haven’t worked out well for surrounding cities.
“Electronic scooters introduce a mode of transportation that address what many refer to as the ‘first mile’ and ‘last mile’ problem,” says Vice-Mayor Heather Hill, for short trips that don’t merit driving, but are beyond a short walk.
Scooter drivers will download an app onto their smartphones and unlock the two-wheeler by scanning its code with their phones. Most companies charge a $1 unlocking fee, and an additional 20 cents per minute, according to the proposal.
The city hasn’t announced which brand it’s contracting with yet, but popular scooter company Bird has already set up shop in Richmond and Harrisonburg.
In the former, the city’s Department of Public Works almost immediately impounded as many scooters as it could because they encroached on the public right of way, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. And in the latter, a student has started a petition to get them banned.
“As the ride-sharing company dumped hundreds of scooters in various locations across our city, they left us to decide where we leave them,” writes petitioner Nathan Childs. “The decent thing to think is, ‘Oh, a bike rack will do just fine,’ or ‘I definitely shouldn’t leave this in the middle of the sidewalk.’ However, these scooters have brought out the worst in us.”
Scooters are required to follow certain parking restrictions, but “they can be knocked over, moved, or just incorrectly parked,” according to the proposal presented to City Council.
Adds Childs, “I have stumbled over several littered Birds, dodged countless oblivious riders, and moved too many scooters out of the way. If anything, we don’t deserve Bird scooters because of how we treat property that anyone can use but for which no one is responsible.”
Says Hill about the new fleet of approximately 200 scooters coming to town this month, “What remains to be seen is if there is a strong enough need in a city of Charlottesville’s size, and the impact dockless scooters and bikes have on the quality of life along our city streets.”
By the numbers
Room for improvement
Nationwide, voter turnout in the 2018 election was the highest in a midterm election in half a century, according to the Associated Press. In Charlottesville and Albemarle, participation shot up by more than 20 points compared to the 2014 midterms. But that still lags behind turnout in a presidential election. In the end, more than 30 percent of voters didn’t cast a ballot for who is going to represent them in Congress.
Hogwaller Farm will include two multi-story residential buildings, with 12 one-bedroom and 18 two-bedroom apartments on Nassau Street, and several acres of farmland and a farm stand. Courtesy of Justin Shimp
A new development proposed in Hogwaller—that fabled southeast corner of the Belmont-Carlton neighborhood—would give residents the opportunity to live and grow their own food on a small urban pasture called Hogwaller Farm.
However, some people have objected to its location. And its name.
Developer Justin Shimp, an engineer, says his idea for the new community comes from his own experience gardening and tending to chickens and goats while growing up in Amherst.
“That opportunity is lost to a lot of people because of how they live and what housing is available,” says Shimp.
He plans to build two multi-story residential buildings with 12 one-bedroom and 18 two-bedroom apartments on his nine-acre Nassau Street site that spans both Charlottesville and Albemarle County. At least two of the units will be dedicated affordable housing, he says, and he’ll save some space for farmland, a greenhouse, and a farmstand.
He says he’s been approached by a group that would like to create a nonprofit, potentially named Hogwaller Community Farm, to run the farm.
“They want to use it as an education space, which I think is a great idea,” says Shimp. “They could have classes there to educate people on how you can be more sustainable in your production and consumption of food.”
As with most developments in town, this one has been met with controversy—mostly centered around building on a floodplain.
Belmont resident Karen Katz says that’s a concern of hers. She also worries about proper stormwater management, and the possibility that the area’s water and soil could already be contaminated by major runoff from the city that flows down to Shimp’s site.
“Imagine the harm and the scandal that would be laid upon us” she says, if the Hogwaller Farm site, where Habitat for Humanity and other developers have built affordable and market-rate housing nearby, “were to be found unsuitable for building.”
Because testing the water and soil isn’t required, Katz says she and a group of concerned citizens have reached an “out of the box” agreement with Shimp to have an independent testing lab examine samples from his site.
And Shimp says he plans to do so before December. The testing will likely be done through the Virginia Cooperative Extension, which uses resources from Virginia Tech and Virginia State University for agricultural research.
The developer specifies that he mostly won’t be building on the floodplain, anyway, because that’s “all farm,” except for a 600-square-foot tractor shed and a “tiny bit” of an apartment building.
Another point of contention has been the project’s use of the word Hogwaller in its name.
“It is clearly offensive to some people who come up from very poor rural backgrounds,” says Katz. “Why insist on a controversial name for your already controversial project?”
She also says it just doesn’t sound good. “Do you want to tell your friends that you live at Hogwaller?”
It has long been believed that this area in Belmont was named after a nearby livestock market, and when Moore’s Creek rises, it creates a muddy pit where the pigs can wallow.
The name has never officially been recognized by the city, but Shimp says he likes its historical significance. “A long time ago, there were literally hogs on the property that I’m going to be farming,” he says.
With an approval already granted from the county, the city’s planning commission will vote on the project in December. If they like it, it’ll go to City Council for final approval early next year.
The developer says there’s a need for this “missing middle housing” all over the city.
Though he hasn’t worked out rental rates yet, Shimp says, “It’s going to be housing that’s new, that’s quality, but that’s not excessively expensive.”
His original application to the county proposed the cultivation of “Hogwaller weed” on the urban farm.
“We thought it would be funny if we proposed a pot farm,” he says. “[But] it was never my intention to do [that].”
It’s illegal to build security fencing on a floodplain, he explains. And, of course, growing recreational marijuana isn’t legal in Virginia.
“Yet,” says Shimp. “I wouldn’t be opposed to it if it could be done.”
It’s tempting to test the dog when a family can’t shake strep throat, but washing your hands proves to be more effective than treating Rover.
It happens at least once a year. Family members taking turns with strep throat, and they bring the dog in to see if he might be the culprit. It’s a completely reasonable concern, although I’m surprised at how often it has been suggested by the family physician or pediatrician. Because the answer is the same every time: No, the dog didn’t give anybody strep throat.
Most of us have probably tangled with strep throat at one point or another, and it’s a notoriously unpleasant experience. Lymph nodes under the jaw become swollen and sore. Horrible pustules line the back of the throat, bringing pain and frustration with them. It quickly responds to a course of antibiotics, but this still requires an inconvenient trip to the doctor and that gag-inducing test where they swab the back of your throat. This test is specifically looking for group A streptococcus—the bacteria that cause all this misery.
The thing about this infection is that it really likes people. We are its victim, but also its source. Many people harboring it have no symptoms at all. There is no vaccine, and the only prevention is good hygiene and a dash of hope. And unlike so many other diseases, recent infection with strep doesn’t prevent you from getting it again, which means that groups of people can continue passing it around indefinitely.
So what about the dog? The simple fact is that there are no clearly documented cases of dogs giving people strep throat. Although the offending bacteria can (rarely) be cultured from dogs, all evidence suggests that they only carry the bacteria temporarily after picking it up from a person. It doesn’t want to live in dogs, and it isn’t there long enough to multiply and become contagious.
You’ve probably noticed that there’s some wiggle room here. If dogs can carry the bacteria even briefly, isn’t it possible—however unlikely—that they might hand it off to a person? Sure. Biology is nothing if not unpredictable. But in these hypothetical cases, the dog would be serving a role no different than a contaminated pillow or a used glass. Testing the dog makes no more sense than testing every other object in the house for the presence of group A strep.
There is a lot of pressure on veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics to dogs when a family is visited by a stubborn round of strep throat. At a glance, what harm can it do? Even if it just makes everybody feel better, isn’t that worth it? Unfortunately, no it isn’t. Among other man-made catastrophes, antibiotic resistance is a threat to every single one of us. Tossing antibiotics at the dog without justification is one more incremental contribution to a global problem.
Strep throat can be frustrating, especially when a family can’t seem to shake it. But there is no need to conjecture about some mysterious culprit when we already know exactly where it’s coming from. It comes from us. Let’s leave the dog out of this.
Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.
