Ad Astra stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut who searches space for his missing father in order to piece together a deceptive past. Moviegoers looking for grim desolation in the great cosmic vacuum or a grand space adventure will find, instead, vulnerable confessions of grief and regret. Image courtesy 20th Century Fox
Meditative, introspective, and gorgeously executed, Ad Astra is an art film in a blockbuster’s clothing. Behind the hard science fiction, the predictions of how the next generation of space travel will look and operate, and even moon shootouts and space chimp battles are deep ruminations on anger, masculinity, and transference of toxicity from one generation to the next. When humanity does eventually build bases on the moon and Mars, the science will have advanced but society won’t: We will still seize upon every opportunity for crass commercialism and military supremacy. And when our previously held beliefs about heroism are challenged, preventable death in the line of duty will feel empty, not valorous.
Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is a soldier in complete control of his emotions—at least that’s what he says during his regular psych eval. His heart rate under stress is a point of pride, and his mental acuity on the battlefield is second to none. When a series of mysterious electrical anomalies begin to threaten the stability of the solar system, he learns that his father—Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a hero and inspiration to a generation of astronauts—may still be alive orbiting Neptune, and even responsible for the devastation. Roy must now challenge what he thought he knew about his dad, and by extension, himself.
Ad Astra blends the alienation and vastness of space from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris with the wandering introspection of Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups and the journey into one’s own psyche of Apocalypse Now. These are famously unforgiving movies, but co-writer-director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) is interested in more than self-expression. The themes of the film are plainly stated in Roy’s psych evals; the longer he is on this mission, the deeper into space he travels, the more he realizes his beliefs are based on lies and misconceptions that have driven him away from his wife (Liv Tyler) and anything resembling an engaged life. He is not in control of his emotions; rather, he has severed a crucial part of himself, confusing cold distance with discipline. He is a prisoner of inherited self-deception, at one point pondering “the sins of the father.”
Ad Astra is not for all audiences, but it is a resounding success in that it accomplishes its goals with style and honesty. Moviegoers looking for grim desolation in the great cosmic vacuum or a grand space adventure will find, instead, vulnerable confessions of grief and regret. The action scenes are not meant to be exciting but tragic, as lifelong soldier Roy now considers what it means to be responsible for another’s death in a philosophical sense.
With Ad Astra, Pitt continues his journey of dissecting the masculine idols of yesteryear, that he began in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There are no heroes with clean hands, and those we often look to for guidance are an illusion with the unsavory parts hidden from view. If these are not ideas you are willing to wrestle with, you may not fully enjoy the experience of Ad Astra. But if you can, try to appreciate that one of our biggest movie stars, the manliest of men, is using his platform to encourage others to look inside themselves and consider the consequences that their actions have on others.
Macabre folk duo Charming Disaster plays the Blue Moon Diner September 26. Publicity photo
Truly madly creepy: Charming Disaster’s storytelling songs have been described as macabre folk, but there’s light in the darkness for this Brooklyn duo. Racing through themes of love, death, crime, mythology, and the occult, Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris enchant listeners with a combination of folk harmonies, smart lyrics, ukulele, guitar, and a sly sense of humor. CD’s low-key fame blew up when their song “Ghost Story” was used in the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale,” and earned them new fans around the globe. They launch the reopening of Blue Moon Diner on a tour stop for their third album, SPELLS + RITUALS.
Thursday, September 26. No cover, 8pm. Blue Moon Diner, 512 W. Main St.
The stairs that led to the top of the coal tower have been removed, but the base and surrounding dirt area are easily accessible. (Photo: Matt Weyrich)
Charlottesville’s C&O train station closed its doors in 1986, but that hasn’t kept the building and its adjacent coal tower out of headlines in the three decades since.
The site of both a double homicide and an apparent suicide, the abandoned tower became a popular hangout spot for drug users and the homeless in the early 2000s. Despite the structure’s checkered history, the land surrounding it on East Water Street was bought out and developed into C&O Row, a string of pricey townhomes that some residents have already moved into while construction for the rest of the buildings is underway.
While the luxury residences are being sold around $1 million apiece, conditions at the coal tower itself have deteriorated; graffiti and overgrown vines line the exterior walls of the base, and a hole on the side of the tower opens up to a crawl space littered with dirt, garbage, and chunks of concrete. A small construction fence separates the tower from the sidewalk, but it’s only a few feet tall and doesn’t wrap around the entire structure.
A proposal to turn the area underneath and around the tower into a pocket park complete with a covered patio, bocce court, and dog park was approved by the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review on August 21, 2018, but construction on that project—and the rehabilitation of the tower in general—has yet to begin, and no one seems to know why.
“The maintenance, improvements at the structure, they could’ve been doing those whenever,” says Jeff Werner, a city planner with Neighborhood Development Services. “As far as the [park], I don’t think you need a building permit for a bocce court.”
There was a holdup on the project in July 2018, when the BAR postponed the proposal over some original 1940s metal the developers wanted to remove. They came up with a resolution a month later, meaning the only thing standing in the way of property owner Choco-Cruz LLC, a Richmond-based company operated by local developer Alan Taylor, moving forward with the project is an application for building permits.
“The other elements like the vent stacks, the pulley on one side, those things that date from the original coal tower will be retained,” says Joseph “Jody” Lahendro, a historic preservation architect on the BAR.
Taylor, the president of Riverbend Development in Charlottesville, didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Riverbend’s Vice President Ashley Davies admits she isn’t up to speed on the project. She says it’s being overseen by project manager Joe Simpson, who Davies says recently celebrated the birth of his child (Simpson also didn’t respond to a request for comment).
Over at City Hall, urban designer Carrie Rainey says Choco-Cruz still needs approval for a light fixture design and historical landmark sign, but Werner insists that shouldn’t be holding up any progress on the rehabilitation of the coal tower. There were questions surrounding the design for a retaining wall and stormwater drainage as well, but those have since been resolved.
Werner has reached out to city building inspectors and asked that they examine the structure’s conditions to determine whether there are any safety hazards. He says there’s confusion among C&O Row residents over who’s responsible for the coal tower’s upkeep, and one has already contacted him to complain about the state of the structure.
For now, there’s no indication as to what the timeline will be for both the rehabilitation and park projects, but the Certificate of Appropriateness that allows for Choco-Cruz to apply for the building permits required for construction expires by March 2020. The company could request an extension if needed, but would have to appear before the BAR again in order to do so.
One Charlottesville High School senior estimates about 25 percent of his classmates vape. Photo: Myles Clark
Bathrooms. Locker rooms. Cars. Check any of these places on a typical school day, and you’re likely to find students taking part in the latest teen trend: vaping.
“It’s pretty common around my crowd,” says one Charlottesville High School senior, who estimates about 25 percent of his classmates vape. “Kids will duck out of class every once in a while [to go vape.]”
Teen vaping, declared an “epidemic” by the U.S. surgeon general last December, has been a growing source of concern for parents and public health officials for a couple years, leading Virginia to join several other states and more than 400 municipalities in raising the age to buy tobacco and vape products to 21. A mysterious new vaping-related illness has only increased the alarm. But has the new law had any effect?
At St. Anne’s-Belfield, the law has made it “a little more difficult” for students to vape, says one senior. “But it’s not like students are going to stop or have stopped because of that.”
“Everyone knows who the people are that you get all the vaping supplies from, who’s going to buy [them],” he says. “It’s just generally kind of accepted.”
Since the law went into effect in July, students have used fake IDs and their “connections with retail locations” to purchase vaping products, says the CHS senior.
According to a 2018 Monitoring the Future survey, more than 37 percent of high school seniors, 33 percent of sophomores, and 18 percent of eighth graders reported vaping within the past year—a dramatic increase from 2017. Experts say many teens vape because they’re not aware of its dangers.
Sally Goodquist, Virginia Department of Health’s Tobacco Control Coordinator for the Northwest Region, finds that many teens believe e-cigarettes just contain water vapor.
“Young people are only educated on cigarettes,” says Goodquist. “They see vaping … as a safe alternative to smoking.”
Even after learning about the dangers of nicotine, some St. Anne’s students simply switched over to using vapes containing THC, a chemical commonly found in marijuana, believing that it was healthier than nicotine, says the St. Anne’s senior.
And at CHS, says the senior at the school, most students think there is little chance vaping will harm them.
Virginia’s new law “typically carries a punishment by a civil penalty or fine,” for those who are caught vaping under age, according to a statement from the Charlottesville Police Department. But it hasn’t led to more teen vapers being charged.
“We have not requested enhanced enforcement, and I’m not aware that we have seen any increase in the number of charges [since July],” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania.
But the recent outbreak of vaping-related illness—and a ban on flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods that’s been proposed in response—could be a bigger deterrent for teens.
Since August 24, 535 cases of vaping-related lung illness have been identified across the country, and seven people have died.
In the Virginia Department of Health’s northwest region, which encompasses Charlottesville, there have been three confirmed cases and one probable case.
Many have blamed “kid-friendly” flavors of nicotine products for the growth of teen vaping, and in response to the latest health scare, the Trump administration announced September 11 that it would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods, excluding tobacco flavors.
“Nobody wants to use a tobacco Juul. Getting rid of those [flavors] will take away the appeal because now it’s just as gross as smoking a cigarette,” says the senior at St. Anne’s, who stopped vaping after he learned about the vaping-related illness.
It is also possible the ban could backfire.
“People don’t really care what [the vape] tastes like,” says the senior at CHS.
If there is a ban on most flavors, some teens may turn to the online black market, use tobacco-flavored vapes, or even switch to smoking regular cigarettes.
“I know people that have already switched to [cigarettes] because of the stories about vaping,” added the CHS senior.
It’s unclear when—or if—a nationwide ban on flavored e-cigarettes will be enforced. For now, the CDC has advised people to avoid using e-cigarettes and never buy them on the street. It has also warned against modifying e-cigarettes or adding any substances to them that aren’t intended by the manufacturer.
Democratic General Assembly candidates Jennifer Kitchen, Elizabeth Alcorn, and Tim Hickey are sharing resources to help make inroads with rural voters. Photo: courtesy of subjects
Ten Dems running in solidly red General Assembly districts—like the ones that dissect Albemarle County—are doing what rural folk have always done: banding together to help each other out.
They’ve formed a coalition called Rural Groundgame, hired a few staffers, and are sharing resources on how to reach the voters who face the same rural issues.
“We were shocked to learn something like this didn’t already exist,” says Jennifer Kitchen, a community organizer who is challenging Republican Chris Runion in the 25th District, which includes Crozet and western Albemarle. The seat, long held by Steve Landes, is up for grabs this year because Landes decided to run for Augusta clerk of court.
Kitchen got involved in the coalition when she realized her race was not going to get money from state Democrats, who are going to be feeding cash into races they believe are more competitive and can flip the General Assembly.
The 58th District, firmly held by incumbent Rob Bell since 2002, is not one of those.
Elizabeth Alcorn decided to challenge Bell because she felt it was important to protect the democratic process and not have uncontested races. The way politics work in Virginia, she says, if a candidate is not in a targeted race, they don’t get the resources from the Democratic Party of Virginia and the Democratic House Caucus.
“They got a little surprise in 2017 when some unsupported candidates won anyway,” Alcorn points out. That year, Dems came close to controlling the House of Delegates when they picked up an unexpected 15 seats.
The 58th District includes Greene and parts of Albemarle, Fluvanna, and Rockingham counties. With the rural/urban divide that’s going on across the nation, she says, “It’s more important for Democrats to step up and get their message out in rural areas.”
Rural Groundgame is not a PAC, says Kitchen. The group has an ActBlue page where donations will be split evenly between the 10 candidates.
By sharing resources, the coalition was able to hire a consultant to develop and coordinate their field programs.
“It’s a very grassroots collaboration that arose among a number of us running for the House of Delegates,” says Tim Hickey, an educator who lives in southern Albemarle. He’s running for the 59th District seat, a district that stretches down to Rustburg, where incumbent Matt Farris lives.
“I don’t view these districts as red or blue,” he says. According to the candidates, the issues throughout the rural districts are the same: underfunded schools, health care affordability, and access. “Access to broadband is an issue we all see,” says Hickey.
The Dem candidates are going up againstsome sizable war chests—Bell was sitting on nearly $370,000 at the last filing—and they say that major corporations and utilities number among their opponents’ donors.
“One of the first things I’m going to do as a delegate is ban corporate political donations,” says Hickey. “We spend hours fundraising from individuals and then a candidate gets thousands from Dominion. I don’t think it’s right to take money from the corporations you regulate.”
The rural Dems are knocking on thousands of doors, some of which haven’t seen a candidate from either party in years. “They felt forgotten by Richmond,” says Kitchen. “They’re so glad to see someone.”
Kyle Kondik at UVA’s Center for Politics points out that the three districts around Charlottesville were carried by Donald Trump in 2016 by double digits, and Democrats are prioritizing more competitive districts as they try to win a House majority.
“So Democrats running in these districts need to be creative in how they try to score upsets, and banding together in such a way may be such a creative way to tackle this problem,” he says. “But their odds remain long.”
The Rural Groundgame Dems are undeterred. “We’re all in passionate agreement this is how we win rural America back,” says Alcorn. “Maybe not this year, but in 2021. Focusing on the needs of your district was extremely effective in 2017.” She points to Danica Roem, who ousted longtime incumbent Bob Marshall in northern Virginia. “Danica Roem focused on traffic,” she says.
Says Kitchen, “Our larger goal is to create a blueprint for the re-prioritization of rural America that can be used in any community, so they understand they have not been forgotten.”
Correction September 26: the RGG hired a consultant to develop and coordinate its field programs, not a field coordinator as originally reported.
Peppa Pig and her friends bring their live action adventure to the Paramount Theater Wednesday, September 25. Publicity photo
Mudslinging fun: Back in July, animated anthropomorphic British icon Peppa Pig got into a friendly Twitter takedown with rapper/model Iggy Azalea. When Peppa announced that she’d be dropping My First Album on the same release date as Azalea’s latest, the Aussie singer at-replied, “It’s over for me now.” The Peppa Pig account responded with “Peppa’s so fancy, you already know,” and an image of the pig in a crown. Azalea hit back with a quote-tweet: “Collab with me now or you’ll end up a breakfast special Peppa.” But in the end, no sausage was made, and Peppa’s popularity soared. She’s currently touring the live stage production, Peppa Pig’s Adventure, featuring the show’s characters in life-size costumes—let’s see if Peppa is really 7 feet tall!
Wednesday, September 25. $40.50-150.50, 6pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.
The number of refugees granted admission to the United States has dropped dramatically since Donald Trump took office. Photo: Lachen Parks
My name is Abebi. I am a 12-year-old girl and I live in Nigeria. One day while I was at school, a group of men with guns burst in and kidnapped my entire class. The men were from the jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram, which means “no Western education.” They want to establish Sharia, or Islamic law, in my country, and are known for their brutality toward women and girls.
After months of captivity—during which I was forced to cook and clean for the men, and to serve as a decoy that allowed them to lure and attack other men—I was able to escape. But now I don’t know where to go. I don’t know if my village or my home even exists, nor whether my family is alive. It is clear that I cannot stay in Nigeria and risk recapture. I have heard that there is someone who can take me to Ghana, where I can stay in a refugee camp and apply for resettlement in the United States.
My hope is that I can one day go to school again, and feel safe, and remember who I am—the person I want to be.
I am not actually Abebi, but I assumed her identity for a role-play simulation called “Walk 6,000 Miles in My Shoes: A Refugee Resettlement Simulation Experience.” The Charlottesville Office of Human Rights hosted the event Monday at Northside Library as part of Welcoming Week, a national movement that seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of having immigrants live in our communities.
The simulation was developed in 2015 by a former Office of Human Rights employee, Paola Salas, in consultation with faculty and students from UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and staff from the International Rescue Committee. It dramatizes the many hurdles refugees face on the road to resettlement—an exercise that seems especially important now, as the United States, once a world leader in refugee resettlement, has become increasingly hostile to immigrants and refugees.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump temporarily froze refugee admissions—and then cut the limit to half of what it had been. In the current fiscal year the administration has capped admissions at 30,000, down from 85,000 in 2016. Trump is reportedly considering a further reduction in the fiscal year that begins October 1.
In the event, part of the Charlottesville Office of Human Rights Welcoming Week, 20 people played the role of refugees seeking resettlement in the U.S. Photo: Lachen Parks
The clock is ticking
After I and 19 other participants filed into the library meeting room, we faced a maze of tables and crowd-control stanchions. Around the perimeter were nine stations, each representing a government agency or aid organization and staffed by trained volunteers playing the roles of bureaucrats, medical personnel, and security officers. These people would lead us—the refugees—through the steps of the resettlement application process. In the middle of the room was “Camp Hope,” which represented the various refugee camps where our characters, who were all from different countries of origin, would live once we reached our asylum countries.
High above everything in the room, projected prominently on the wall, was a blue screen with a graphic that measured the five-year span of the simulation. Every minute represented a month, each 12 minutes a year. As I learned, it was extremely important to keep an eye on that clock, because just about every document I received came with an expiration date—identification, vaccinations, paperwork approvals, food and water supply vouchers. “This isn’t a game, it’s a simulation” said Todd Niemeier of the Office of Human Rights. “This is a visceral experience. It’s going to be frustrating at times. It’s going to be confusing at times.”
Our first task was to get across the border from our countries of origin into our asylum countries. This was easier for those whose profiles included resources like passports, money, or family members who could help pay a smuggler. My character, Abebi, had none of these advantages. It took five months just for me to arrange passage to Ghana.
Upon arrival there, I checked in at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees station. I was given a voucher for shelter at Camp Hope and told I would need to get vaccinations at the medical station. Because I had arrived so late in the year (it was already June at this point), the UNHCR had run out of vouchers for food and water supplies. They told me I could ask about getting these supplies at the medical station.
I got in line at the medical station—and waited two months to be seen.
With proof of vaccinations in hand, I returned to UNHCR to apply for my identification card. But I was told there was a backlog, and I’d have to come back in a few months to apply—after which it would probably take six months to process. This was an enormous setback. Without identification, I could not begin the resettlement application process. It was almost November of Year 1, and I would be stuck at Camp Hope until June of Year 2.
Frustrated and desperate to get further along, I would have made easy prey for the agitators milling about Camp Hope, trying to recruit new members for terrorist groups by convincing refugees the whole resettlement process was corrupt. The agitators give you anything you need—IDs, documents, supply vouchers—in exchange for your pledge. Problem is, all the documents are fake and when you try to use them, you could lose eligibility for resettlement. Luckily, I was never approached.
When June of Year 2 arrived, I moved quickly from picking up my ID at UNHCR to getting a referral to a resettlement support center to finally start the application process. I momentarily felt a sense of triumph. Then I remembered I was really just at the beginning of another process. So, it was time to get back in line.
In August, I had my intake interview at the RSC. They asked a lot of questions about my history, such as “Were you persecuted for your ethnicity in your country of origin?” My answers were given numerical ratings. How those numbers added up determined whether I could even be considered for resettlement.
This is where the journey ends for a lot of real-life refugees whose situations aren’t considered high priority. However, the dangerous situation with Boko Haram in Nigeria earned me medium priority. But before I could proceed to my pre-USCIS security screening, a bit of simulation business: I had to roll a single dice. If I got a one or a six, I would have to choose a random Crisis Card that could introduce anything from temporary bureaucratic setbacks to a natural disaster that destroys my shelter to a terrorist bombing that takes my life.
A powerful tool
A roll of the dice is just one metaphor for the many vicissitudes a refugee can face when seeking resettlement in the United States. The hardship, the repeated dashing of hope, the threats of violence or death (often realized, unfortunately), the lack of security, the bureaucratic roadblocks—all of these things, many of which I experienced by simulation, compose the soul-crushing reality that countless people across the world face in real life.
According to Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville, there are approximately 68 million displaced people in the world. About 26 million of those are classified as refugees—people who have fled their country of origin and sought asylum in another, under the auspices of the U.N. Of those 26 million people, Kuhr says, fewer than 1 percent will have the opportunity to resettle in another country.
“I think the simulation is a powerful learning tool for people to just get a tiny window into that experience,” says Kuhr. “It helps people understand all of the bureaucratic and administrative hurdles that refugees have to go through. And how some people make it and some people don’t—and it’s hard to even understand why. You get the impact of that even in that short period of time.”
On Monday night, when the clock ran out on the simulation, only one of the refugees had made it through the process. A 10-year-old girl from Ukraine whose parents had both died in the conflict there, she arrived in Charlottesville and was awaiting placement in foster care. Other participants had died. But most were stuck in bureaucratic limbo.
My name is Abebi. I am 17 years old. Five years ago, after I escaped my terrorist captors in Nigeria, I fled to Ghana, where I was granted asylum and have lived in a refugee camp ever since. I am still in the midst of applying for resettlement in the United States. Last year, I was robbed, and my food vouchers were taken. That setback cost me months of progress. Despite my frustration, I remain hopeful that I will one day realize my dream of a new life in a country where, as a young woman, I can safely pursue an education and become the person I want to be.
Jeremy Hoffman, an earth scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, says climate change is altering the timing of seasonal transitions. Photo: Courtesy Piedmont Master Gardeners
Have you heard the news? The planet is getting hotter and it’s a real problem. That was the simple but important takeaway from a recent event at The Paramount Theater, hosted by Piedmont Master Gardeners and Virginia Cooperative Extension. Hundreds of attendees learned about the impact of climate change in the natural spaces around them, and what’s yet to come as temperatures steadily rise.
Even for the most conscientious Charlottesville resident, acknowledging and planning for climate change can feel overwhelming. But activists at the Paramount event warned that it’s imperative to know what lies ahead for our region—and our planet—in the face of global warming, and take action.
One simple option is to plant more trees to sequester increasing carbon dioxide emissions. You could not only help the Earth but also naturally cool your home by planting deciduous trees on its east and west sides. “We probably can’t stop climate change rapidly enough, so we’re going to have to learn to live with it,” said Francis Reilly, Jr., of Washington, D.C., the emcee and a master gardener with more than 35 years of experience as an advisor on environmental policy.
Reilly also suggested mitigating the effects of global warming by creating landscapes with woody, carbon dioxide-absorbing plants, and in a way that minimizes mowable grass. (Most mowers still use fossil fuels, in addition to the other environmental issues, like water and pesticide use, associated with lawns.)
According to Reilly, warmer winters mean garden pests like pine bark beetles and corn earworms will thrive. That’s bad. And less snow equals a drier spring. That’s also bad. An increase in frost-free days will make crops more vulnerable to colder temperatures, so that’s also not good—unless you’re growing sweet potatoes, which prefer a hot, dry environment (and which you probably aren’t growing).
Another speaker at the event, Jeremy Hoffman, a climate and earth scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, said we’re now seeing earlier springs and summers at the expense of falls and winters. In Charlottesville, he said, the average last-freeze date each spring has moved up a week—from April 8 to April 1—over the past 120 years. While this technically extends the growing season, it’s still problematic, because if farmers decide to get a head start on planting, their crops can be killed by a surprise frost. Despite climate change, a crop-destroying freeze is still possible, because of the Earth’s tilt, and this raises the probability of food shortages, Hoffman said.
Hoffman also brought up another climate-change fact: Because of warmer weather, the local mosquito season is now 20 days longer than it was in 1970. It also means folks with seasonal allergies are reaching for their Zyrtec earlier than ever. In 2017, Hoffman said, tree-allergy season in Richmond peaked on April 15, about eight days earlier than 30 years ago.
As the evidence mounts, more people have come to understand that climate change is real. Seventy percent of Virginians—and 80 percent of Charlottesville residents—agree that global warming is happening, according to a study by Utah State University, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Yale. Also statewide, 80 percent of people agree that global warming should be regulated as a pollutant. Curiously, only 42 percent think it will harm them personally, and only 21 percent say they became aware of global warming through the media.
Those statistics would suggest that we have a long way to go, even when it comes to awareness of the global rise in temperatures. Hoffman admitted that it can be a hard topic to discuss. To help start those conversations, he gave his audience some easy talking points: It’s real, it’s caused by humans, and there’s hope. Echoing other experts, he ensured that we haven’t yet lost the battle against climate change: “There’s a lot we can do about it.”
Samantha Baars, a former C-VILLE Weekly staff writer, now works for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which was a sponsor of the Paramount event.
Be a steward
Talking about climate change isn’t usually inspiring, but experts at the Paramount event repeatedly stressed how everyone has the power to help mitigate it. The nonprofit group Piedmont Master Gardeners says small decisions you make while landscaping can make a big difference for environmental health. Here are some tips:
• Plant native species in your garden and remove invasive species, because natives save water and provide food and habitat for wild-
life, while invasives can out-compete them and reduce biodiversity.
• Reduce or eliminate your use of toxic chemicals for landscaping.
• Prevent soil loss due to erosion by covering bare soil with ground covers, shrubs, grasses, and trees.
• Grow your own food and support area food producers by going to farmers markets and spots that use local ingredients.
• Conserve water by collecting it in a rain barrel or cistern and using it to hydrate your plants.
For more resources, visit piedmontmastergardeners.org
Tavern & Grocery owner Ashley Sieg has rebooted the West Main Street restaurant with three new events spaces. Photo: Kristi Ellis
Tavern & Grocery is offering $100 toward a meal by chef Joe Wolfson and his team to the C-VILLE Weekly reader who suggests the best name for a newly refurbished room in the 1820 Federal-style brick building on West Main Street. Accessible through the restaurant as well as its own entrance marked by a lantern and a glass door, the room seats up to 40 people and is one of three renovated dining and event spaces at T&G. “We have been working tirelessly on them over the past six months,” owner Ashley Sieg says. “We’ve stripped them back to the original brick and horsehair plaster, redone the floors, and more.”
Another event space, The Marseilles Room, is named for the French city. It connects with the downstairs bar, Lost Saint, and seats up to 70 people. Upstairs, the Booker Room—so called because Booker T. Washington stayed in the historic building at the invitation of the owner, Charles Inge, a local teacher, grocer, and freed slave—accommodates 35 diners. It has a wood-burning fireplace, antique tables and chairs, and finishes including reclaimed barn siding.
Sieg wants the name of the third room to reflect the building’s rich past. Among the older structures in Charlottesville, it has served as a tavern, foundry, and grocery store specializing in fish, beef, and locally grown produce. “The grocery was opened by Mr. Inge in 1891 and was actually one of the first African American-owned businesses in town,” Sieg says. “Inge’s family continued to operate it as a grocery until 1979.” It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
For a chance at that $100 prize, email a proposed name to info@tavernandgrocery.com with “win100” in the subject line. The winner will be chosen on Oct. 15, and announced via Instagram @tavernandgrocery and @eatdrinkcville.
Maximum foodie
The mother of all food festivals is upon us. The 13th annual HeritageHarvest Festival at Monticello brings together national and local culinary luminaries for a day of food education, demonstrations, garden tours, and more grub than you could shake a kebab stick at. A marquee event features Will Richey of Charlottesville’s Ten Course Hospitality and Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters, the doyen of contemporary farm-to-table cuisine. We’ve also got our eyes on a session about food justice, at which Richard Morris of the local Urban Agriculture Collective will lead a discussion with Karen Washington, recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and Jovan Sage, director of Slow Food USA and chair of the nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange. You will not find a better informed convention of food experts anywhere else in the world. $15.95 adults, $10 kids 5-10; 10am-5pm, 931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy., heritageharvestfestival.com
Nibbles
With an impressively equipped new test kitchen, The Happy Cook in the Barracks Road Shopping Center is rolling out an expanded series of cooking classes. Hone your knife skills, master cast-iron cookery, learn to make South Indian food, and more. Sessions run $25 to $55 and are limited to 10 to 20 participants. thehappycook.com • Corner Juice—the health-conscious smoothie and sandwich shop—has added a second location at 200 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall, directly opposite its nutritional antithesis, Citizen Burger Bar. (Chew on that one for a minute.) cornerjuice.com • Grit Coffee is about to give Pantops a caffeine jolt, moving toward completion of a sleek new space in the Riverside Village development on Stony Point Road. gritcoffee.com • Ivy-based Square One Organic Spirits, founded by UVA grad and Crozet resident Allison Evanow, has launched a line of vegan and gluten-free, low-sugar cocktail and mocktail mixers with tantalizing flavors like Lively Lemon, Luscious Lime, and Pink Daisy. They’re available for $10-$12 per 750ml bottle at shops including The Spice Diva, Market St. Market, and Foods of All Nations, and served at bars in Brasserie Saison, Orzo, Monsoon Siam, and The Fitzroy. Hell, the mixers are even in UVA sports hospitality suites at football, basketball, and baseball games. squareoneorganicmixers.com • Mark your calendar, bivalve gluttons! The Early Mountain Oyster Festival is set for 12-6pm, October 20, at Early Mountain Vineyards in Madison. Fifteen bucks will get you in to enjoy executive chef Tim Moore’s menu of crab cakes, fried oysters, clam chowder, and—mais oui!—Eastern Shore oysters on the half shell. The Currys will provide a rootsy soundtrack. Busy that day? Aw, shucks—more for us. earlymountain.com • King Family Vineyards has landed an accolade almost as prestigious as Best Winery in the 2019 Best of C-VILLE awards. USA Today has named the Crozet eonophile’s dream to its top 10 Best Winery Tours list, joining California establishments including Cline, Jordan, and Benziger. This is the big time, people! kingfamily vineyards.com • Fireflyis celebrating its fifth year in business this weekend, September 21-22, with a $5 food-and-drink menu and much more. Saturday is the big blowout, with a plant sale outside by Edgewood Gardens, as well as music by Mojo Pie (2pm), Jay Seals and the Shara Tones (9pm), and DJ Rum Cove (10pm).
Jennifer Mowad’s shop, Cocoa & Spice, opens in York Place on the Downtown Mall in October. Photo: Eze Amos
Jennifer Mowad’s nickname, Cocoa, suits her well. After all, the owner and chocolatier behind Charlottesville chocolate shop Cocoa & Spice has always had a sweet tooth. There’s even a family video to prove it: Mowad, at age 3, so excited to find her candy-filled Easter basket that she literally falls over with joy, hitting her head on the basket on her way down.
In high school, she got the idea that she might someday run her own business, but she wasn’t thinking it would involve her love for sweets. Her passion reemerged when she started making peanut butter cups for friends and family while in graduate school for instructional technology—but in the ensuing years chocolate remained just a hobby.
In 2010, just after she turned 27, Mowad’s view of the world—and her place in it—changed drastically. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that originates in the body’s immune system, she underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment for six months, which was followed by a time of “figuring herself out” again.
As a part of that process, Mowad went out on a Colorado-based adventure program for young adult cancer survivors called First Descents, where she has served as a volunteer and participant several times since. “The whole point of the program is life after cancer, pushing yourself to do things you didn’t think were possible,” Mowad says. “The trip inspired me to pursue what my dream had been, to say, ‘Now is the time—I think I should I do it.’”
After that, she focused intently on sharing her love of chocolate with others. After completing an apprenticeship at East Van Roasters in Vancouver and online studies via the Ecole Chocolate Professional School of Chocolate Arts, she launched Cocoa & Spice out of her home kitchen in 2015, selling from a food cart on the Downtown Mall. Two years later, she moved production to a commercial kitchen on Stewart Street.
In late August, Mowad—who has shown no sign of her cancer recurring—brought Cocoa & Spice back to where it all began, relocating to York Place on the mall. She did it with a little help—nearly $4,000—from an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. The new space will allow for classes, private events, and custom favors in a more customer-facing environment, with treats including peanut butter cups, drinking chocolate, and bark available for purchase.
Brand new for the York Place location of Cocoa & Spice is a chocolate library, which will highlight bean-to-bar makers from across the U.S. and show off the many different flavor profiles of chocolate. Mowad was inspired to start the library after seeing one during a visit to another chocolate shop in her travels.
“That’s what I really like about this field,” Mowad says. “People are really willing to share, whether it’s ideas or recipes. It’s very collaborative and giving.”
For Mowad, the best is yet to come: Following a soft opening on September 15, the new Cocoa & Spice will officially open its doors the first weekend in October.
