The comfy fireplace furniture creates an intimate feel in Veritas Vineyard’s tasting room. Photo: Stephen Barling
Whether it’s bitterly cold or just damp and dreary, one of the best places to wait out winter is beside a roaring fire (preferably with a glass of wine). Luckily, plenty of area wineries fit the bill, with cozy couches and toasty fireplaces to sit beside while you sip.
“We go for a living-room kind of feel in our tasting room,” says Paul Summers, owner of Knight’s Gambit Vineyard. “It’s homey and comfortable, and the fireplace no doubt adds to that.” So does the resident hound, Fig, who often lounges on a sofa near the fire.
The tasting room at Septenary Winery also feels like a living room, with four chairs by the hearth. A two-sided fireplace warms up the cavernous public room at Barboursville Vineyards, cranking out heat for visitors seated at tables on one side and patrons at the tasting bar on the other. At Veritas Vineyard & Winery, the most coveted tasting room seats are the overstuffed leather sofa and chairs near the fireplace.
At King Family Vineyards, a big fieldstone hearth anchors the winery’s Pavilion—and draws a crowd. When the oak logs are crackling, fragrant smoke fills the air and a beer-hall vibe prevails, with patrons engaged in animated conversation at the Pavilion’s long wood tables. “It’s very relaxing and warm, like sitting in someone’s great room,” says King Family’s events coordinator, Kelly Bauer. —J.B.
More kudos for BBQ Exchange
Recently recognized by the Food Network for one of the best BBQ pork sandwiches in America, The Barbeque Exchange, in Gordonsville, has been nominated by the USA Today 10Best for Best Brunswick Stew in Virginia. An expert panel selected the nominees, and readers will choose a winner (to be announced March 8) by voting on the 10Best website. —Simon Davidson
Greens (and more) cook-off
Calling all cooks and fans of good home cooking: The African American Heritage Center’s fifth annual Greens Cook Off takes place from 3-5pm February 9 at the Jefferson School. Greens, macaroni and cheese, and pound cake will be judged; visitors can graze on the entries and vote for their favorites. Learn more at jeffschoolheritagecenter.org. —S.D.
Cheese, chocolate, and champagne for lovers
On Valentine’s Day, the holy trinity of cheese, chocolate, and champagne will converge at Oakhart Social. Righteous Cheese’s Carolyn Stromberg Leasure and cheesemonger Sara Adduci, formerly of Feast!, will open four rare-producer champagnes and give instruction on pairing bubbly with cheese. A spread of local chocolates will also be available, because…Valentine’s Day! For tickets and info search Chocolate, Cheese & Baller Bubbly at eventbrite.com —S.D.
Ladies get their Galentine’s on
It started with Leslie Knope, Amy Pohler’s character on the TV sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” but craft distiller Vitae Spirits is carrying on the tradition of Galentine’s Day with its second annual party, at 5pm February 7. As Leslie said, it’s all about “ladies celebrating ladies.” Vitae’s version will feature a pop-up shop—along with booze, of course—with products from women-owned businesses. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Sexual Assault Resource Agency. —Jenny Gardiner
Super cidery
Potter’s Craft Cider—with a little help from Virginia’s taxpayers—is growing. Potter’s will invest $1.68 million to quadruple its production and refurbish Neve Hall, a former church built in 1924, as a tasting room. The project gets a boost from a $50,000 grant from the commonwealth’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund, and matching funds from Albemarle County. —J.B.
Duner’s chef to become owner
Duner’s executive chef Laura Fonner has announced she’ll be acquiring the upscale Ivy restaurant from current owner Bob Caldwell after his retirement next year. “It’s a natural move for me,” says Fonner, who has worked at Duner’s for 15 years. —J.G.
Charlene Green, a multicultural educator who directed the city’s first Dialogue on Race, says she tries to “connect the dots” between Charlottesville’s black history and the issues the city faces today.
Photo: Eze Amos
In 2010, Charlene Green, now head of Charlottesville’s Office of Human Rights, was directing the city’s first Dialogue on Race, an initiative to engage residents in an ongoing discussion of race, racism, and diversity.
“As I was having discussions with people around the community on these issues, I began to wonder: ‘Who knows all this stuff?’” Green recalls. “Not just school desegregation and the Martin Luther King era, but the anecdotes—the individuals’ stories.”
In response, Green created a PowerPoint on Charlottesville’s African American history, which she currently presents about twice a month (she even has a bus tour version). It highlights people like John West, who was born a slave but became a successful real estate entrepreneur and one of the city’s “first 400,” as the wealthiest African Americans in town were known in the late 19th century. And it adds context to stories that are only half-known.
For instance, “A lot of folks don’t know what all was involved in destroying Vinegar Hill,” she says, referring to the African American neighborhood that was infamously razed in the 1960s. “Like the fact that the Voting Rights Act wasn’t in place when the referendum occurred to keep Vinegar Hill or have the city take it.” Many residents couldn’t vote on the fate of their neighborhood because of a poll tax.
Talking about the city’s African American past, Green says, “got me into talking about history as a part of race and ethnicity.” Why did events that African Americans remembered very well disappear from the city’s narrative? How are the racist attitudes and laws of 100 years ago still affecting residents today?
“When I tell the story of Charlottesville’s history, I try to connect those dots,” she says. “You may think that what happened only affects someone else, but it affects you. If you don’t understand that, you don’t learn the lesson.”
The white supremacist rallies of 2017 cast a sudden and glaring spotlight on Charlottesville’s troubled racial history. From the national media perspective, #Charlottesville was a statue debate and one horrific weekend. But these events were part of a much larger story. Beginning well before the Lee statue became a lightning rod for controversy, a wide range of people have been working to recover Charlottesville’s African American history, and to help the city tell the full story of its past.
In this 19th-century engraving, an enslaved woman holds the child of a white professor on one of UVA’s pavilion balconies. Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Honoring African American culture
The hub of efforts to support and celebrate Charlottesville’s black history is the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The school itself was built in 1926, as the first high school for African American students in Jim Crow-era Charlottesville. (Before that, the only school black students were allowed to attend ended at eighth grade. Families who wanted their children to earn a high school diploma had to send them away from home, at their own expense.) The building’s 2006 listing on the National Register of Historic Places helped spur the city to redevelop it as a community center, anchored by Carver Recreation Center and the African American Heritage Center. The building reopened as the Jefferson School City Center in 2013.
During the Heritage Center’s development, says Executive Director Andrea Douglas, market research showed Charlottesville’s white population was satisfied with the city’s cultural offerings—but the black population wasn’t. African Americans were willing to travel as far as North Carolina to see their experience reflected on stage or in visual arts. That insight helped shape the center’s mission as both a cultural institution and community rallying place.
The center’s programming focuses on black history and culture from 1965 on. It holds four annual events; Douglas calls them “touchstones for the black community”—Juneteenth (which commemorates the end of slavery), Kwanzaa, Veteran’s Day, and the Greens Cook-off—as well as exhibitions and live performances. And it also houses a local history center that includes access to more than 60 oral histories from students who attended the Jefferson School.
The Heritage Center acts as convener and leader for initiatives ranging from last year’s pilgrimage to include Charlottesville lynching victim John Henry James in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to helping revive the historically black Charlottesville Players Guild and stage all the plays of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson.
“Our mission says we celebrate the cultural history of African Americans, and that’s not just for black people,” says Douglas.
“There’s a broad range of social and cultural disparity here, and a lot of history that people who live here or come here don’t see,” she adds. The Center’s ongoing programs are a significant step toward filling that void.
What story do we tell?
One of the biggest ways the city tells the story of its history is through its public memorials and monuments. For decades, these were defined by the now-infamous Confederate statues along Market Street, as well as the statues of white explorers Lewis and Clark and George Rodgers Clark, all of which (except for the Johnny Reb statue outside the courthouse) were commissioned by Paul Goodloe McIntire.
But in recent years, new ideas about who we should memorialize have emerged.
After the initial calls to consider moving the city’s Confederate statues, City Council formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces to address the issue. In its December 2016 report, the commission recommended either “transforming” the Lee and Jackson statues by providing new context, or relocating them to McIntire Park. (City Council voted 3-2 to move the Lee statue, and was promptly sued.) But the report also called for city support to preserve and interpret African American historical sites.
The recommendations included creating a more appropriate and visible marker for the former slave auction block in Court Square, as well as a memorial at or near the site. It asked the city to support the rehabilitation and preservation of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, established in 1873 and the resting place of some of the most prominent members of Charlottesville’s African American community. And it recommended that council provide funds to complete the proposed Vinegar Hill Park, a commemorative area in the walkway between the Omni hotel and the ice rink at the west end of the Downtown Mall, next to the site of the original neighborhood.
By early 2017, the city’s Historic Resources Committee had finalized plans to revise all the markers in Court Square. But after the rallies that summer, according to Jeff Werner, the city’s historic preservation and design planner, the committee decided to revisit the plan, and it’s still under discussion. Vinegar Hill Park is also stalled while the ice rink is being converted into Jaffray Woodriff’s Center of Developing Entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the Jefferson School is leading an effort to erect a monument to Vinegar Hill on its grounds, with a statue by noted black sculptor Melvin Edwards. The city contributed money to the design phase, but the project is waiting on more private investment.
Despite these delays, the city’s second Dialogue on Race, held in fall 2017, revealed a renewed sense of urgency. “The concerns from the first Dialogue process had been education, employment, social needs,” Green recalls. “This time, the number one action item was for the city to support the telling of all its history.”
Anne Evans, coordinator of world studies for Charlottesville City Schools, says the state’s revision of its social studies standards offered educators an opportunity to include more perspectives on local history. Photo: Eze Amos
Educating the next generation
Schools teach the “official” version of history, and in Virginia, as in most of the South, that version was one that embraced the Lost Cause myth, which presented the Civil War as a battle over states’ rights rather than slavery, and glorified Confederate war heroes while minimizing the contributions of African Americans, Native Americans, and women.
That narrative began to change in the 1990s, when Virginia implemented statewide Standards of Learning (SOLs). In the most recent review of social studies SOLs, in 2015, state educators made a conscious effort to expand the curriculum’s Eurocentric focus to include other groups’ histories, says Anne Evans, coordinator of world studies for Charlottesville City Schools. As a veteran classroom teacher used to incorporating local history, Evans says she saw this as “an opportunity to change our local curriculum.”
Evans convened a group of her colleagues to restructure the curriculum, starting in kindergarten, to include a broader range of perspectives. The group pulled in expertise from throughout the community, includingUVA, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, and local historical sites.
“Our students’ parents who grew up in the city and county schools had a very different curriculum,” she says. Now, not only have state textbooks become more inclusive, but teachers can use the textbooks as just one of many resources. Evans’ group is creating a collection of digital resources—oral histories, photos, maps, and original documents like letters and newspaper stories—that teachers can use to tell a fuller story.
They’ve also helped facilitate community connections. That includes bringing in “witnesses to history” like Charles Alexander, one of the Charlottesville 12 who integrated the city’s schools almost 50 years ago. He speaks with students about the experience of being one of the first black children in all-white Venable Elementary school.
In December, CCS partnered with the Jefferson School for a program with Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, a bestselling YA novel about a black girl from a poor family who attends a wealthy, mostly white prep school. “We’re pulling these strands through in other areas, from English classes to the libraries’ speakers’ program,” says Evans.
CCS is also one of six school systems statewide involved in Changing the Narrative, a Virginia Humanities initiative funded by a Kellogg Foundation grant. This two-year effort tackles racism from a range of angles, from bringing resources that explore black history and culture into schoolrooms to encouraging young people of color to explore and highlight their heritage. It also taps Virginia Humanities’ digital resources (like its history podcasts “Backstory” and “With Good Reason,” and web-based Encyclopedia Virginia) to enable students to research events and sites around the state and produce their own history stories.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers broke ground in December, helped in part by $2.5 million in matching funds from UVA. Rendering: Howeler + Yoon Architecture
The world of the university
UVA has been a huge part of Charlottesville’s identity since the school’s founding in 1819. So what has the University been doing to acknowledge its own history?
In 2007, taking a lead from the Virginia General Assembly’s resolution expressing “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery, UVA adopted its own resolution and installed its version of a slavery memorial—a floor marker in the Rotunda’s underground passage honoring the workers who “realized Thomas Jefferson’s design.” UVA students, faculty, alumni, and staff made it clear that the plaque was inadequate at best, and in 2010 a student-led group began lobbying for a real memorial. Soon, other student groups were creating a brochure and campus map about slave history, conducting black history campus tours, and recovering an African American burial site on campus.
The groundswell of activity —student projects, the UVA IDEA Fund (an alumni group supporting diversity and inclusion), and the University and Community Action for Racial Equality—led to the 2013 formation of the President’s Commission on Slavery at the University. The Commission was co-chaired by Dr. Marcus L. Martin, University vice president and head of the Office of Diversity and Equity, and Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and professor of history. Martin describes the commission’s work as restorative justice. “We haveto tell the full story of the past, so we can move ahead and become more inclusive,” he says.
The commission released its final recommendations in July 2018; in the meantime, however, the push for UVA to reckon with its past has accelerated. Von Daacke says the Slavery and its Legacies course he co-teaches is full every semester. The Cornerstone Summer Institute, launched in 2016, enables students interested in history, archeology, and community engagement to examine UVA’s past and the modern legacies of slavery. And the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers broke ground in December, helped in part by $2.5 million in matching funds from UVA.
Last spring, the President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation was formed to examine UVA’s role during racial segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s headed by von Daacke and the Heritage Center’s Douglas, and some wonder if dealing with Jim Crow, white supremacy, and segregation’s legacy will be harder than looking at slavery. “What we know about healing is that we have to acknowledge and atone…to achieve repair,” says von Daacke. “We’ve examined our past; what comes after that is the hard part.”
UVA associate professor Jalane Schmidt, who leads walking tours of downtown monuments, sees her public history work as “amplifying the footnotes”—sharing stories that the majority white city narrative has left out. Photo: Eze Amos
So where are we?
In these ongoing efforts, some concerns came up repeatedly: How do we make sure all this history stays visible and accessible to the entire community? How do we make sure this history is not just acknowledged, but incorporated into a new narrative?And how do we as a community face and work through the legacy of years of deliberate forgetting?
Jalane Schmidt, an activist and UVA professor of religious studies, sees her avocation as a public historian to be “amplifying the footnotes”—the people and incidents the majority white city narrative has omitted. One way she does that is through the downtown walking tours she began conducting last year, often co-led with Douglas, which give context to the Confederate monuments in the Court Square area. She points out, for instance, that the Jackson statue was erected in the same year the local KKK was founded, on the site of a largely black neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the statue and a whites-only park.
Schmidt has also called attention to inaccuracies in the way the city presents its Civil War history. On March 3, 1865, Union soldiers “occupied” Charlottesville in the final weeks of the Civil War in Virginia. But at that time, the majority (52 percent) of the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were African Americans, almost all of them enslaved. To the majority, then, the Union troops weren’t invaders riding roughshod over the Lost Cause—they were allies bringing freedom and self-determination.
Schmidt says, “People say history is written by the winner, but in this case it wasn’t: The only monument [to this liberation] is the little plaque downtown.” She and other activists wore 52 Percent T-shirts to the Blue Ribbon Commission meetings, to force that historical fact into the deliberations about who and what the city should memorialize. As a result, the Commission recommended that City Council begin marking Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, citing the persuasive case made by Schmidt and historical researcher and Commission member Jane Smith (who was instrumental in finding the likely site of John Henry James’ 1898 lynching). The city’s first Liberation Day event was held in 2017 at the UVA Chapel—on the site where Union soldiers first met with city leaders 152 years earlier.
Schmidt and others involved in recovering these stories agreed that the 2017 summer of hate has sparked greater interest in Charlottesville’s African American history, more discussion, and more community self-examination. She says the commemoration held at James’ lynching site, and the subsequent pilgrimage to Montgomery, drew more people than could be accommodated. Attendance on her black history walking tours is rising steadily—68 people participated in the last one. Discrimination-related issues like zoning, affordable housing, policing tactics, and incarceration are more visible.
And more organizations want to be part of the city’s third celebration of Liberation and Freedom Day. This year’s events will roll out over three days, which is how long the Union troops were actually here. Participants have expanded from City Council, the Heritage Center, and UVA’s Office of Diversity and Equity to include Virginia Humanities, Monticello, Charlottesville City Schools, and the Jefferson Theater.
Schmidt (and others) hope this momentum will continue, and will mean support not only for uncovering the past, but also for facing its legacy. As Charlene Green says: “Making invisible history visible is just a start. If there is sincerity about creating an equitable society, our policies and the way we do business has to change—or we’re just putting lipstick on a pig.”
Charlene Green, a multicultural educator who directed the city’s first Dialogue on Race, says she tries to “connect the dots” between Charlottesville’s black history and the issues the city faces today.
Recovering black history
Efforts to uncover and promote our African American history have picked up steam in recent years. Here are some of the steps the city, schools, and university have taken since 2007.
2007
Virginia General Assembly passes a resolution expressing regret for slavery.
UVA passes a similar resolution.
Montpelier’s descendants community challenges the site to recover and interpret the Madisons’ South Yard slave quarters.
2009
City launches first Dialogue on Race.
2010
UVA students begin effort to fund and build a Memorial to Enslaved Laborers
on Grounds.
2012
At a Virginia Festival of the Book event, Councilor Kristin Szakos raises the question of whether the city’s Confederate monuments should be removed, causing an uproar.
First Dialogue on Race releases report.
2013
Jefferson School City Center opens.
UVA launches President’s Commission on Slavery and the University.
2016
CCS rolls out revised K-3 social studies curriculum.
Press conference calling for removal of statues.
City convenes Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces, which releases its report in December asking City Council to either recontextualize or relocate the Lee and Jackson statues.
Highland begins formation of a Monroe slave descendant community.
2017
City Council votes to relocate Lee statue and redesign Lee and Jackson parks.
City’s Historic Resources Committee drafts plan to revise signage in Court Square.
White supremacists (led by UVA alum Richard Spencer) hold torch-lit rally at Lee Park.
Montpelier opens “The Mere Distinction of Colour” exhibit on slavery.
City Council renames Lee and Jackson Parks.
UVA Board of Visitors approves Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
KKK holds rally in then-Jackson Park.
White supremacists march through UVA and hold Unite the Right rally.
City holds second Dialogue on Race and releases report.
2018
CCS unveils new Virginia Studies curriculum.
UVA forms President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation.
Monticello opens exhibit on Sally Hemings.
UVA Commission on Slavery releases final report.
UVA breaks ground on the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
London's TOY hits the sweet spot on new album Happy in the Hollow. Publicity image.
DAWN
New Breed (Young Action)
Danity Kane veteran Dawn Richard has forged a reputation as an R&B iconoclast, collaborating with Dirty Projectors and working on Adult Swim. Here she puts forth her NOLA roots with wizened old- people’s voices at the start of several songs—though New Breed doesn’t sound particularly rooted in New Orleans, or anywhere. Richard’s a bold and compelling presence as she explores volatile relationships from a number of angles, but the material’s wildly uneven; there’s catchy stuff (“shades”), bombastic stuff (the title track and “spaces”), and a lot of funky wallpaper. ***
On Unseen, Gunn continues to file down his edges; unobjectionable and tasteful to a fault, the nine songs here all feel padded out in length, and while there are some majestic, swirling codas (props to second guitarist James Elkington), there’s also a lot of tepid meandering. Gunn’s vocals, constrained in range and mood, can’t help but add to the sense of stasis, and while I’m not a lyrics person and have no particular beef with his vague poesy, yeah, there’s also that. ***
Twenty years and 10 albums in, Japan’s Mono is still exploring epic, mostly instrumental, occasionally metallic rawk. And folks who find Nowhere Now Here to be a profound album title might also dig these turgid, relentless “compositions” that clearly aim for the awe-inspiring. The amazing part is that Nowhere Now Here can simultaneously be so overbearing and so insipid. *1/2
For her third album as Sneaks, D.C.’s Eva Moolchan enlisted producers to flesh out her skeletal grooves, but Highway Hypnosis still pretty much sounds like demos in the real world. Moolchan’s no- wavey bass is still underpinned by retro drum machines and topped by retro synths, and her detached chanting is still in full effect—there’s just slightly more sonic punch and window dressing. Highway Hypnosis isn’t as effortlessly tuneful as It’s a Myth or as frisky as Gymnastics, but it’s still cool, and at times (“Beliefs” and “Money Don’t Grow On Trees”) Sneaks finds a groggy version of her magic. ***1/2
With the first two White Fence albums in 2010-11, Tim Presley became my lo-fi hero. Presley had explored jangly and countrified rock in Darker My Love, but White Fence offered divinely stony psych-pop. This is the first White Fence album in five years, and the first since a pair of patchy albums by Drinks, Presley’s thorny collaboration with Cate Le Bon. Hawk gets off to an annoying start with a dissonant, water-torture guitar chime on the title track, and although Presley does play nicer the rest of the way, most of Hawk sounds like first drafts from the drug den—which isn’t to say it doesn’t have highlights, like the Roxy Music sketch “Neighborhood Light” and the Orbison-meets-Barrett “I Can Dream You.” ***
London’s TOY comes real close to the sweet spot between experimental indie and radio rock on this fourth album. The band is capable of whipping up a krautrock groove fed by wiry guitars (“Energy,” “Mechanism”) and taking wistful if not woozy turns (“The Willo,” “You Make Me Forget Myself”). It all swings pretty well, tied together by pulsing synthesizers and Tom Dougall’s dreamy incantations, and even if there aren’t any sure-fire hooks, Happy in the Hollow doesn’t flag or wear out its welcome. ***1/2
Stars shine during the day at JMU’s planetarium. Photo: JMU Marketing & Communications
Some day trips have a singular purpose (i.e., “We’re going to the zoo!”), while others consist of a medley of experiences in the same general location. My family’s recent Saturday in Harrisonburg was one of the gumbo type. My husband and I and our girls, ages 5 and 8, saw a planetarium show, then visited a couple other universes while we were in town.
We had previously been to The John C. Wells Planetarium at James Madison University on organized field trips, but after I found out that families can visit for free most Saturdays, we packed up and headed west. On its dome-shaped screen, the university shows astronomically themed films—such as, A Teenager’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Did an Asteroid Really Kill the Dinosaurs?—followed by student-led star talks.
Inside a nondescript concrete classroom building, we entered the planetarium and settled into our stadium-style seats. The lights went down and a 20-minute film began—a cartoon version of the ancient Greek story of Perseus and Andromeda, the couple immortalized as constellations. My children were well entertained, craning their necks to follow the story unfolding overhead.
After the film ended, a cool-looking device—like a short, fat robot bristling with lenses and lights—emerged from the middle of the floor. Turns out it’s a projector that creates an image on the dome of what we’d see in the night sky from this very spot. The projector operators can manipulate the starry vision—spin it around, whoosh it forward or backward in time, or overlay the outlines of constellations, for example.
The two students leading the post-film talk were full of interesting facts. Did you know the Big Dipper isn’t really a constellation? It’s an asterism—a smaller collection of stars. It was fun to observe college students—closer to my kids’ age than my own—commanding the room and showing off their knowledge (and also their bad jokes, such as, calling Orion’s belt a “waist of space.”)
After the movie, star show, and talk—all of which filled an hour—we needed a bite, and a short drive delivered us to Taj of India, in downtown Harrisonburg. To a soundtrack of Indian pop music, we gorged on the lunch buffet, a feast replete with hot fresh naan, savory kormas and dahls, fiery tandoori dishes, and sweet rice pudding. The tab came to $35, a great deal for four people.
Did I mention this was a day of odd juxtapositions? Uh-huh. Next stop was a dairy barn.
At Mt. Crawford Creamery, 15 minutes south of Harrisonburg, we tromped through the muddy barnyard, then slipped through a small door into the milking parlor. Ten cows were slotted into two narrow lanes, like cars lined up in a parking lot. Standing on a lowered floor, which put them at roughly eye level with the cows’ udders, were farmer Kenneth Will and two helpers.
They welcomed us in but didn’t miss a beat in their work: cleaning the udders carefully before hooking up the milking machines, keeping an eye on the milk as it rushed through tubing and sprayed into large glass tanks in the center of the room, and then driving one group of cows out and the next group in.
The farm milks 60 to 80 cows in this parlor, twice a day, and it was fascinating to witness. How often do you get to take a really close look at a cow’s muddy hooves, jutting hipbones, and big wet muzzle? The animals gazed back at us with large, soft eyes, while a super-mellow farm dog licked up stray drops of milk from the concrete floor. I was glad for my girls to absorb this experience—the earthy smells of the room and the truth they pointed to, that milk and all the rest of our food comes from real plants and animals.
After we left, we joked about what else we could add to the day to round out the agenda. Go to the circus? Tour the White House? Maybe another time. We’d traveled far enough for one day, right there in Harrisonburg.
If you go
The John C. Wells Planetarium at JMU offers free public film showings on Saturdays at 11am, 1pm, 2:15pm, and 3:30pm. It’s located in Miller Hall on East Grace Street, in Harrisonburg. See jmu.edu/planetarium for details.
Taj of India, at 34 S. Main St., serves a lunch buffetfrom 11am-2:30pm daily. Call (540) 615-5888.
Mt. Crawford Creamery, at 795 Old Bridgewater Rd. in Mount Crawford,
is open to visitors M-F 10am-6pm and Saturday 9am-5pm. You can observe cows being fed around 3pm and milked a half hour later. There’s also a shop on-site where you can buy the dairy’s milk products, plus
an ice cream parlor. See mtcrawford creamery.com
David Bromberg Quintet brings a set full of blues and more to the Jefferson on Sunday. Publicity image.
Based in blues:Musically prolific multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg has gigged with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Jerry Garcia, but he owes his eclecticism to blues and gospel singer Reverend Gary Davis. Bromberg studied under Davis in the ’60s, and developed
the unique style of fingerpicking that led to more than 20 albums of his own, plus liner-note credits on albums by Tom Rush, Carly Simon, Link Wray, and Edie Brickell, to name a few. He gets extra props for co-inventing the genre newgrass.
Sunday 2/10. $35-65, 7:30pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.
Get in on the improv at the Paramount on Sunday. Publicity image.
Keeping it real:Big smiles all around with Whose Live Anyway?, a tour event starring actors from the Emmy-nominated improv comedy show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?.” Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Jeff B. Davis, and Joel Murray want the audience’s ideas, encouraging suggestions for on-the-spot skits and songs that elicit stomach-clutching laughter.
Sunday 2/10. $40.50-60.50, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.
Dawes expanded its sound for the new album Passwords, but remains true to its musical
roots. “We never really sat down and said, ‘Let’s make a record that sounds like The Band,’
but whatever you listen to as a kid is just kind of knocking around your head and forms your intuitions as a musician and a songwriter,” says bassist Wylie Gelber (second from right).
Magdalena Wosinska
The age of social media is rife with oversharing; dominated by a virtual playground where foodstagrams and political Facebook fights abound—and any semblance of privacy is tenuously maintained by CAPTCHAs and digital passwords.
Los Angeles band Dawes explores this concept on its latest album, Passwords, by examining how the sociopolitical climate and our personal relationships are filtered through social media. “It’s the battle of the passwords, it’s the trumpets on the hill, it’s that constant paranoia, it’s the final fire drill / And if you won’t sing the anthem, they’ll go find someone else who will,” lead singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith delivers in the opening track, “Living In The Future.” “Telescope” details the perspective of a politically disenfranchised trailer park resident through an empathetic lens, and “Feed the Fire” laments the duplicity of a public life when coping with fame.
Bassist Wylie Gelber met Goldsmith in high school when he auditioned for, and ultimately joined, Goldmith’s band, Simon Dawes. After that group disbanded, Gelber and Goldsmith moved forward with a new iteration—Dawes—and recruited Goldsmith’s younger brother, Griffin, to play the drums. Keyboardist Lee Pardini rounds out the band’s current lineup. Upon the release of its 2009 debut, North Hills, Dawes became synonymous with the sound revival of laid-back California rock, yielding comparisons to their self-proclaimed heroes Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
“We obviously all grew up with music that we love and some of that was like, The Band, or Jackson Browne, and all that stuff that we often get compared to, but we also grew up listening to Motown and James Brown and Steely Dan and other stuff that isn’t necessarily California-sounding,” Gelber says. “We were all raised on that kind of music, so it informed the type of musicians that we became.”
While Dawes may not have been able to escape the SoCal label in its early days, the latter half of the group’s output finds them waving goodbye to Laurel Canyon in the rearview. That’s not to say Dawes has lost its essence. Passwords may brim with electronic touches and saxophone runs, but it still places Goldsmith’s signature heart-on-your-sleeve lyricism front and center. “Crack the Case” is a piano-driven meditation on miscommunication: “I wanna call off the calvary, declare no winners or losers and forgive our shared mistakes / You can pick the time and place, maybe that will crack the case.”
Goldsmith writes all of the band’s lyrics, but once the other band members get ahold of the acoustic version and lyrics, they work together to flesh out each piece.
“There’s no sense of what the tempo or what the feel of the song is going to be when he writes it, necessarily, and then when he brings it to us, we all write our own parts for it, which then, in turn, shapes what the song will become,” says Gelber.
As a songwriter, Goldsmith has been know to draw on individual experiences—from heartbreak to professional aspirations—but on Passwords, he inhabits characters and tackles political divides.
“Our [philosophy] has always been that we just have to have trust. …So, for Griffin, you’ve got to trust that he’s gonna know what the good drum part’s gonna be and similarly for Taylor, if that’s the song he wrote, we’ll do our best to make that sentiment known in the song and be okay with it,” says Gelber. “We’ve never really had any songs that he’s brought to us where we’re like, ‘Whoa, man, I don’t think we can relate to that.’ We’re all on the same page. If that’s the song Taylor has in mind, we’re down to go there.”
When recording Passwords, Dawes reunited with musician/producer Jonathan Wilson, who produced the band’s first two albums. During those earlier sessions, Gelber bonded with Wilson over another shared interest: instrument building. Gelber grew up tinkering with tools and building furniture with his dad, and he started building his own bass around the time he met Wilson.
“Any time you see me playing with Dawes, I’ll be playing a bass that I built, for sure, and then a lot of the guitars that Taylor plays are ones I made as well,” says Gelber. “I try to build as much gear for everyone in the band as I can. Everything on stage is generally built by me or modified out; I endlessly tweak everyone’s stuff and try to build things specific to us.”
By teaming up with Wilson for its sixth album, Dawes has come full circle. But that doesn’t mean the guys will stop branching out any time soon.
“The more records we do, we just go in and we’re not afraid to get weirder or stray from the things that people would think that we would do on a record,” Gelber muses. “If we don’t change our own aesthetic, then it’ll get stale for us, and in turn get stale for everyone else. We always try to look at it as the life-long catalog, and if every record sounded like North Hills, I don’t think anyone would listen past record number three.”
In Destroyer, Nicole Kidman stars as a burned-out detective who’s spurred into action by the revival of a cold case.
ANNAPURNA Pictures
Director Karyn Kusama is one of the most interesting directors working today who is not a household name. Her most well-known movies—the groundbreaking Girlfight, the misunderstood Jennifer’s Body and the underseen The Invitation—are very-different-but-terrific showcases for her as a technician. With an ability to extract exciting performances from established movie stars, and a mastery of the balance between tone and narrative, her success rate is on par with male directors who are constantly making features. She ought to be working at this level more often—so please, Hollywood, don’t take negative feedback about Destroyer as a reason not to hire Kusama. The reason the movie is watchable is because of her direction and the committed cast, who work from a script beyond repair.
Destroyer introduces us to Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman in heavy prosthetics), a detective who is burned out on her life, job, family—basically everything—when a cryptic package containing evidence from a long-cold undercover case and its connection to a murder scene tells her that her former target, Silas (Toby Kebbell), is back and possibly more dangerous than ever. Her solo investigation—done off the books and without oversight—finds her tracking down Silas’ former gang. Meanwhile, a rebellious daughter dating an older man further agitates the last person you want to cross: a killer cop with nothing to lose.
The skill and attention that went into making Destroyer compares to putting demi-glace on a Hot Pocket—it can only taste so good. Neither narrative nor atmosphere can carry the full weight of the film alone, especially when the two are not working in tandem. Atmosphere is the lifeblood of any noir or noir-adjacent genre, but it can’t make a bad story engaging. The interrogations of former gang members become redundant and tedious—save for one bank robbery scene—and while Erin’s family troubles are linked thematically to the ticking clock on her mental and physical endurance, they are a chore to endure and totally disconnected from the rest of the story.
Kidman is everything you’ve heard in the role of Erin. The normally glamorous movie star is hardened, and carries the weight of her past and the pressure of her future in her demeanor. The makeup and prosthetics can be distracting, and she appears more like an uncanny valley rendering of herself than another person entirely, but she finds a way to shine through. The supporting performances are all solid, particularly Tatiana Maslany as Petra in the film’s best sequence. Then there’s Bradley Whitford in a fine but utterly inconsequential scene.
The biggest drag on Destroyer is the villain, Silas. Again, Kebbell does what he’s able with the material, but the most we see from this supposedly unstoppable psychopath is a bad temper, a sick sense of humor, and a strange haircut. He did take something very important from Erin, so her rage is understandable, but her fear lacks motivation until some key reveals near the end (including a very fun twist).
On the whole, the film isevidence that as a director, Kusama can do a lot with very little. Destroyer may miss the mark, but in a fair world, it would be a stepping stone to her becoming a regular fixture in genre filmmaking.
Destroyer
R, 123 minutes, Violet Crown Cinema
See it again: Dr. Zhivago
PG-13, 200 minutes, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, February 10
American Shakespeare Center’s Henry IV, Part 1 follows King Henry Bolingbroke’s (David Anthony Lewis) mounting tensions with a rebel alliance and an estranged heir.
Lindsey Walters
To a lay audience member who hasn’t been involved in a theater production since fifth grade, directors seem as essential to any play’s success as a script. They’re the boss of the show. If the director goes into a coma at the start of the first rehearsal or has a crisis and runs off with the box office manager, what sharp-eyed, astute-eared taskmaster keeps everyone and everything in line?
During the annual Actors’ Renaissance winter season at Staunton’s American Shakespeare Center, it’s completely up to the players to get their proverbial acts together.
It’s no small challenge. Roughly 13 actors are responsible for 79 roles through the course of four plays: darkly hilarious Early Modern true crime bonanza Arden of Faversham; Amy E. Witting’s new piece Anne Page Hates Fun; Shakespeare’s domestic sitcom The Merry Wives of Windsor; and the revered second installment of his historical tetralogy, Henry IV, Part 1.
On the well-lit stage of the enchanting Blackfriars Playhouse last month, the acting company previewed their work on Henry IV, Part 1. The January 24 debut performance revealed completely actor-made choices on staging—down to the costume design, music, props, and the minutiae that would otherwise fall under a director’s purview. And on top of that, the actors had learned their lines in under 10 days.
Why suffer so? According to the ASC, the yearly test aims to empower the players by giving them the “unique blend of scholarship and practice” necessary for undertaking the “deepest dive into the Elizabethan era.” And despite the potential for chaos, it syncs perfectly with the ASC’s respectful and historically guided approach.
The result of leaving the direction of Henry IV, Part 1 to those performing in it is not unlike the best kind of self-released punk rock record: rolling on a steady current of gross humor, powered by blasts of lusty rage, true to the intent of those involved, and peppered with thrilling, unexpected turns. Performances hit the pinnacle of emotive perfection or, in some cases, sail just beyond the well-intentioned grasp of those outsized by their desire to execute.
The script follows King Henry Bolingbroke’s mounting tensions with a rebel alliance fueled by hotheaded Hotspur, and tackles the monarch’s estranged relationship with his heir, Hal the Prince of Wales. After Hal grows out of his frivolous London tavern lifestyle—and tomfoolery with his scene-stealing, boozehound buddy Sir John Falstaff—the young noble assumes his rightful place at his father’s side. Together, Hal and King Henry lead an army that puts down the upstarts seeking to overthrow the crown.
While the play is named after the highest rung on the hierarchy, it could easily bear the name of any of the aforementioned key roles, as each has more to say than the titular character. Yet in reenacting this embattled royal, David Anthony Lewis commands the performance with resonant authority and manly poise. Instinctive, unstudied, and wholly convincing, he seems more comfortable with Shakespeare’s words than anyone else in the play. If some of the production’s choices skirt the border of questionable interpretation, there is zero doubt in Lewis’ Henry.
Henry’s problematic princely son is played with a cautious focus by Brandon Carter, who became more at ease as his character grew fully self-aware in the play’s latter half. It’s possible that Carter’s smooth-voiced delivery is marked by tentative restraint since he’s sharing many scenes with the comedic bulldozer and big-bellied bravado of John Harrell’s Falstaff. The latter’s costume choices paint Sir John as a ’90s grunge wash-up, complete with bandana, Nirvana tee, combat boots, and requisite plaid shirt—tucked over a fat-suit paunch. Despite being a bit young and thin in the limbs for the lovable drunk liar, Harrell is appropriately slurry, sloppy, cowardly, and as hysterical as anyone could hope.
Another of the King’s major headaches, rebel leader Hotspur, is set afire with an irrepressible rage by KP Powell. Cocksure and indignant, the charismatic Powell only relents from boiling over when he’s in the lap of coquettish Lady Percy; as played by Abbi Hawk, she charmingly presents Hotspur’s wife as sultry and impossibly headstrong. Powell and Hawk display authentic chemistry during the play’s few romantic moments.
But as Henry IV, Part 1 is built on barroom banter and war, zingers and vengeful aggression frame Prince Hal’s journey from loaf to promising successor; ultimately, the Actors’ Renaissance finds its best staging choices in the slapstick of the tavern and botched vaudevillian thieveries. Putting the full Blackfriar’s space to excellent use, the actors hurdle the seats, scramble up the aisles to escape the stage, and Hal even chugs from a beer bong hanging off of the second-floor balcony. And though the too- careful, slo-mo choreography of the final act’s sword fighting could use tightening up, the group prevailed thanks to its nimble humor, righteous ire, and genuinely poignant performances.
Local Goodwill stores have seen a nearly 20 percent increase in donations compared to this time last year, says District Manager Lisa Sexton, and she’s attributing it to the new Netflix show “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.” Photo by Sanjay Suchak
Local Goodwill stores collected 13,800 donations in the month of January —an 18.5 percent increase from those gathered this time last year. And they’re attributing it to a Netflix special about a now world-famous Japanese decluttering expert named Marie Kondo.
Perhaps you’ve heard of her. Before starring in “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo,” she made a name for herself with a bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, in 2011. She has perfected what she calls the KonMari method, which encourages tidiers to only keep items that “spark joy,” after sorting through all of their possessions in five categories: clothing, books, papers, komono (miscellaneous things), and sentimental items.
“She’s clearly having an effect on donations,” says Lisa Sexton, the district manager of the five Goodwill thrift stores in the Charlottesville area, which includes Lake Monticello and Ruckersville.
On the show, Kondo teaches a unique way of folding clothing, including tucking shirts and pants into neat, tight rectangles that stand upright, and Sexton says some recent Goodwill donations have come in folded like that.
And people mostly seem to be ditching their old wardrobe and household items, she adds.
Says Sexton, “I guess a lot of clothes don’t spark joy.”
That’s the exact conclusion Sarah D’Louhy reached as she started decluttering her home. She competed in a local Facebook competition hosted by Goodwill, which encouraged folks to post a picture of their post-tidying donations for a chance to win a $25 gift card to the thrift store. Entries closed last week, and the winner will be announced February 7.
D’Louhy donated seven 13-gallon trash bags—mostly full of clothes—and says she also took two bags of nicer clothing to a consignment store.
“I never realized how much was in the closet until we took it all out,” she says. “There were things we hadn’t touched in two or three years.”
She and her husband actually forced themselves to keep some of their wardrobe. “It might not spark joy, but we’re running out of options,” says D’Louhy. “I can’t be naked!”
Lauren Jaminet, who read Kondo’s book in 2016 as she was preparing to move to Charlottesville, and who started watching the Netflix special when it debuted on New Year’s Day, describes that moment of calm after decluttering and re-organizing.
“It’s the moment I look at the new space, step back, and take a deep breath,” she says. “It feels like turning a page in my life. Like I’ve made space for new things to happen.”
She says the show inspired her to empty out items she had been avoiding, which led to redecorating her bedroom.
Over the past two years, Jaminet guesses that she’s purged at least three carloads of stuff, often donating her miscellaneous and sentimental items to a thrift shop or her local Buy Nothing Facebook group, where city and county residents share and receive free items, and where people enjoy making a connection with the recipient of their old stuff.
“I’m very happy to give items out on Buy Nothing in hopes of them finding a happy home,” she says. “You never know who has a shared experience and might treasure an item that I no longer need.”
Rebecca Coleman, who participates in Jaminet’s Buy Nothing community, actually hired a KonMari-certified consultant to help her family ditch their excess belongings.
“We have a toddler, two careers, and a house that had filled up with stuff that had no real place to live,” she says. “Our to-do list was growing and we couldn’t get it under control.”
Consultant and “stuff therapist” Jeannine Woods, whose website features a portrait of herself with Kondo, helped Coleman tidy her entire living space—including every closet and drawer—in five four-hour sessions, which Woods’ website prices around $1,400. A kickstart package that includes a consultation and one session is $350.
“I know that there is a lot of privilege in being able to declutter, and even more in being able to hire a consultant to help you do it,” Coleman says. “For us, this has been an investment in our mental health, and it is paying off.”
Coleman says it has made her family feel more competent and relaxed.
“Our counters aren’t covered with mail and preschool artwork anymore—there’s a place for those to go,” she adds. “My necklaces aren’t all tangled anymore, they have specified pockets in a hanging organizer. We even have an empty shelf in our linen closet. How is that a thing?”
She’s listed some of her items on Buy Nothing, consigned some, donated or recycled others, and threw the rest in the trash, though she says they’re not keen on the landfill effects of the KonMari method.
Goodwill’s Sexton ensures that none of their donations go to waste.
“Just about everything we can’t sell in the stores, we have a place to be able to recycle,” she says, noting varying after-markets in which clothes are sold by the pound, then sent to third-world countries. Recycled books can be made into new paper, and recycled shoes can be ground up into shingles. So don’t let it deter you from giving, she says.
Adds Sexton, “We need all donations. We are willing to take just about anything.”
