A property at 902 Forest St. in Rose Hill (above) was put up for auction in 2003, and eventually demolished. It’s now one of 18 vacant lots in the neighborhood. PC: Staff Photo
Back in 2013, Julie (who asked that we not use her last name) bought a house in Rose Hill, a small, historically African American neighborhood roughly bordered by Preston Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Harris Street. The house had gone into foreclosure during the housing market crash, and had been neglected for a while.
After determining that bringing the house up to code would be too expensive, Julie considered demolishing it and turning it into a small brewery. But the property was zoned B-3, a type of intensive commercial zoning that would require her to provide more parking than seemed feasible for the mostly residential neighborhood, along with other requirements like making retail sales and staying open till 1am.
While a majority of Rose Hill is zoned for single-family residences, and parcels along Preston Avenue are zoned for mixed-use, others are still zoned B-3 for major commercial uses—what planning commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates calls “our worst zoning.”
Business zoning “is the least efficient…and least useful for the city,” says Solla-Yates. “It’s been thought for a long time that mixed-use is the better way to do cities. If you have housing above and businesses below, that’s more pedestrian-friendly, welcoming, [and] prettier. And it gives you housing in areas where you need housing.”
That was the intention of another owner in the neighborhood, Julie says, who originally submitted a site plan for an office space below, and residential above. “But his site was not zoned for that,” she says, “so he went back to [Neighborhood Development Services] with an office space.”
Julie ultimately decided to submit a site plan for a small warehouse, but after learning from a neighbor that the site planning process could take months to complete, she called it quits.
Lately, she’s noticed more and more houses like hers being demolished in Rose Hill—“and the lot just sits there.” There are currently 18 vacant lots in the neighborhood, six of which are zoned B3.
“I’ve attended a couple of [site plan reviews],” she says, “and it just seems like they don’t go forward.”
Some projects run into issues with sewer and property lines, Julie says, but others, like hers, have faced restrictions with zoning.
Since the ’90s, the city has gotten rid of “almost all of its B zoning,” Solla-Yates says. He guesses that it kept B zoning in Rose Hill because “it was small.”
He adds that the city “hasn’t given a lot of love and attention to Rose Hill.” Like 10th and Page and Fifeville, two other historically African American neighborhoods, “there’s some pretty serious social justice issues with [Rose Hill] not getting infrastructure and services at the same level as the rest of the city for decades,” Solla-Yates says. “Which is also part of why we’re a little bit slow to think about [its zoning] seriously.”
The city’s upcoming zoning overhaul will get rid of business zoning, as well as other out-of-date zoning practices, Solla-Yates says, and will have an “integrated look at zoning and housing.” While consultants are still in the process of reviewing the zoning, he predicts that business zoning will be replaced with mixed-use.
“Business-only zoning doesn’t have a future in Charlottesville,” Solla-Yates says. “We are not fine-tuning the existing zoning. We are replacing the zoning. We want something better, and we’ve waited long enough.”
Read Brodhead, a zoning administrator with Neighborhood Development Services, agrees that mixed-use zoning is generally more practical, but doesn’t think the city should get rid of business zoning entirely, as “there’s traditionally been a lot of commercial uses of it.” He points out, for example, that MarieBette Café & Bakery, on Rose Hill Drive, is zoned B-3, and that the four vacant parcels across the street from it (also zoned B-3) could also be used for a business “that’s significant for the neighborhood.”
But until any type of new zoning is approved, Julie remains concerned about the future of Rose Hill. Every week, she receives phone calls and postcards from developers wanting to buy her property, and is ultimately concerned that a large developer will come in and buy up all of the vacant lots and create a large commercial business, since a developer would have “the time and resources to go through the whole approval process.”
“That would just be out of scale with the neighborhood,” she says.
And as for the other property owners with deteriorating houses or vacant lots, “they are sitting there and wondering what other people are going to do,” she says.
A representative from a local congregation puts up signs at the IMPACT rally. Photo: Zach Wajsgras
Making an IMPACT
“It has been almost four years since the father of my kids was deported to Mexico due to his stay in the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail,” said Fanny Smedlie, reading a statement from her friend Karla Lopez.
Smedlie, a member of the Executive Committee of the Church of the Incarnation, addressed a large gathering of people of faith from all over Charlottesville at a March 5 rally for IMPACT, an interfaith community service coalition. Ending the ACRJ’s practice of voluntarily notifying ICE when undocumented immigrants are detained is one of the causes that IMPACT has adopted this year.
After a year in jail, Lopez’s husband was deported on the day he was supposed to be released. Lopez was waiting outside the jail with her children. “They had prepared balloons and a banner that said welcome home Dad. When we got back home, they destroyed it,” read Smedlie.
As well as lobbying the jail board to end ICE notifications, IMPACT also hopes to continue advocating for greater investment in affordable housing, a cause they worked on last year.
The rally this week was a warm up for the group’s larger annual event, which will be held March 31 at Charlottesville High School. The leaders at the rally revealed IMPACT’s guiding theory of change-making: “We need our people power to make all this happen,” said Greta Dershimer of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church. IMPACT hopes to turn out 1,300 people for that event.
Reverend Will Peyton of St. Paul’s Memorial Church emphasized that the diverse crowd of people gathered before him on Thursday all represented one community, and that working towards divine justice meant fighting for each other.
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you,” Peyton said.
“It is not about individuals. It’s about the whole community.”
Suspicious minds
A Charlottesville Police detective who assembled a dossier on anti-fascist groups in the months before the Unite the Right rally approvingly quoted right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and described antifascists as “using words to cloak reality,” according to newly surfaced city government documents. Cops also compiled research on Black Lives Matter (in addition to the white nationalist groups that organized the deadly rally), and two detectives even turned up covertly at the downtown library for a June 2017 meeting of Showing Up for Racial Justice, or SURJ.
“The meeting started with the group”—40 to 50 people, mostly women— “chanting the names of individuals who had suffered ‘police’ brutality,” one of them wrote. “A female spoke for approximately 30 minutes on the history of the Monacan nation.”
The detectives witnessed the handover of a racial justice yard sign and T-shirt before being forced to abort their mission. “I left early,” one wrote, “as I was concerned that I would be made during a group activity where all were forced to participate.”
________________
Quote of the Week
“I know they are here, my ancestors. The people that found the town called Winneba are here with me and I think they are so proud.”
—Nana Akyeampong-Ghartey, president of the Charlottesville-Winneba Foundation, on the honorary designation of 6 1/2 Street SW as Winneba Way
________________
In Brief
Hot under the collar
City Manager Tarron Richardson and local firefighter’s union leader Greg Wright exchanged fiery emails last week, after Richardson declined to grant the fire department’s request for 12 new staff. Wright said Richardson was “willfully ignorant” about the department; Richardson shot back that “Your educational achievements…will never be a match to any of my qualifications or credentials,” in emails procured by The Daily Progress.
Be ready
Like everyone else, city and county school systems are preparing for the possibility of a local outbreak of coronavirus. ACPS released a detailed plan that includes implementing social distancing in schools, advising parents to secure long-term childcare, and the potential cancellation of assemblies, athletic events, and field trips if a case of COVID-19 is identified in the region.
Crime ring?
Albemarle County Police Department has announced that it’s joining more than 400 police departments nationwide in partnering with Ring, Amazon’s video doorbell home security system. That means county cops will be able to access video footage from outside (and sometimes inside) people’s homes, which is also stored on Amazon’s servers. New York Mag calls the system “dystopian;” The Intercept notes its “dismal privacy practices;” and Vice says Ring is essentially “de facto beta testing” for facial recognition software. What could go wrong?
Charlottesville's Confederate statues continue to attract nighttime activity.
On March 7, Virginia’s legislature passed the Conference Substitute to House Bill No. 1537, which will allow localities to control the placement of their war memorials. In other words, our city will soon be allowed to remove the statues of Confederate generals from our parks.
After the violence of Unite the Right in August 2017, cities like Durham and Baltimore took down Confederate statues almost immediately. But because of Virginia’s war memorials rule, Charlottesville has had to wait.
Don’t bust out the blow torches just yet, though. The bill lays out a few provisions for the removal of these monuments. Here are the steps the city will have to take:
1. Publish a notice in a local newspaper advertising the city’s desire to “remove, relocate, contextualize, or cover the monument.”
2. Hold a public hearing, at least 30 days after the newspaper advertisement, where “interested persons may present their views.”
3. Upon completion of that public hearing, at least three of five city councilors will have to vote to move the monument.
4. After the vote, the city will have to offer the monument to a “museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield” for 30 days.
5. Finally, the City Council will have “sole authority to determine the final disposition of the monument or memorial.”
A Senate version of the bill would have forced localities to jump through a number of additional hoops, but many of those requirements, like a historical review led by a state agency, were removed in the final version, which passed the House 52-43. In the Senate, Republicans Bryce Reeves (who represents parts of Charlottesville and Albemarle County) and Emmett Hanger joined the body’s 21 Democrats in voting in favor.
Governor Ralph Northam has expressed support for the bill. If he signs it, the new law will go into effect July 1, and the above process can begin. Market Street Park could look very different as soon as this fall.
That doesn’t mean we’ll be celebrating in the streets. On Saturday, members of the Blue Ribbon Commission, the group that produced a 2016 report highlighting the problems with the statues, convened at a Central Library panel to discuss next steps.
“In my opinion, it would be prudent to not schedule” the statue’s removal ahead of time, said Don Gathers, former chair of the commission. Gathers said he expects blowback, and thinks it would be safest to quietly take the statue down in the middle of the night, so that “when folks wake up in the morning, it’s a new skyline to the city.” (Baltimore and New Orleans successfully used this strategy in removing Confederate statues in 2017.)
UVA history professor John Mason, another commission member, said it’s important to consider where the statues go. “We don’t want these statues to become pilgrimage sites somewhere else,” he noted.
Delegate Sally Hudson joined the panel on a video call, and Gathers praised her efforts to push the bill along in Richmond. “We love you, and we thank you for all your hard work, and as a community we’re truly blessed to have you,” Gathers said.
Hudson, in turn, reminded the room of the commission’s work. “We all owe them so much,” she said.
“It is a, dare I say, monumental moment,” Gathers said. “It’s really important that we understand it doesn’t stop here.”
Sex, drugs, and voter ID laws
Statues aside, Virginia’s legislature passed dozens of transformative bills during this session, which wrapped up on March 8. The following selection of new laws will help the Old Dominion lurch into the present.
Virginians will once again be allowed to purchase only one handgun gun per month, a prohibition that was repealed in 2012. That’s just one of many new basic gun safety measures, such as mandatory background checks, which passed. (An assault weapons ban was defeated after four Senate Democrats, including local representative Creigh Deeds, broke ranks to block the bill from advancing out of committee.)
Insurance companies will be forced to charge patients no more than $50 per month for insulin, which people with Type 1 diabetes rely on to survive and which can cost as much as $1,200 per month. Virginia is the third state to pass such legislation, and the new price cap is the lowest in the country.
Sports gambling will soon be legal, and five cities, including Richmond, were given a green light to hold referendums on whether or not to build casinos. Betting on Virginia college sports teams will still be illegal.
Those convicted of a drug-related felony will become eligible to receive food stamps. Current law requires those with drug felonies to pass drug screenings in order to receive benefits.
Marijuana will be decriminalized, meaning possession of the drug will be treated like a traffic ticket, and result in a $25 fine, rather than an arrest.
The minimum wage will gradually increase, jumping from $7.25 to $9.50 an hour on January 1, and eventually reaching $12 an hour by 2023. The slow increase falls short of the $15 an hour that many advocacy groups have called for.
Virginians will no longer be required to show photo ID to vote, a restriction that was implemented in 2013. Any government document with the voter’s name and address will once again be sufficient identification.
The legislature also repealed old laws banning swearing and fornication that had long remained on the books, despite rarely being enforced. Fuck yeah!
David Reid, known for offering hugs on the Downtown Mall, will be taking a hiatus to avoid being an unwitting vector for the coronavirus. Photo: Eze Amos
To the community:
Due to the approach of the coronavirus, the hug-man will be suspending hugs on the mall until further notice. Because of what I do, I cannot take precautions between each hug to prevent spreading or catching the virus, and it is an ideal way to spread it. And I don’t want to do that to any of you.
What the Trump administration—suppressing information and clearly more concerned with their stock prices than public safety—isn’t telling you is this: Like the flu, this virus has an incubation period during which it can be spread before you know you have it. This may be as long as two weeks, according to health experts.
This means that all of us should already be taking precautions. Here are some tips from the WHO.
It is up to us all to take care of ourselves and each other. Simple, basic hygiene and constant awareness of what we are doing will go a long way toward this. I believe the Trump administration and the medical insurance industry care not a whit if we live or die. My concern is with people, like the ones I hug blindfold on the downtown mall, so I am writing this, for all of us.
I hope I will get to hug you on the other side. Love and blessings to all of you. Be well, and be kind.
A week ago, federal health officials warned that the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. was inevitable, and that Americans should prepare for the possible shutdown of schools and other institutions. President Trump then contradicted those warnings, saying the virus was “very well under control in our country.” A few days later, he cast concern about the virus as a political ploy by Democrats, calling it “their new hoax.”
Since then, identified cases in the U.S. have risen from 57 to more than 200 in 18 states, and 12 people have died.* Most of the deaths were in Washington state, where the virus appears to have been circulating locally for weeks undetected. The confirmed case of a Florida man who had not traveled to or had contact with anyone from the hardest-hit countries indicates that COVID-19 may also be spreading locally in that state, and Florida officials declared a public health emergency.
At press time, there were no known cases of COVID-19 in Virginia, and health officials in Charlottesville say long-standing preparations for other flu pandemics have well positioned them to handle any potential outbreak. At the moment, the biggest local impact may be felt in the form of cancelled travel plans: UVA has asked its students studying abroad in Italy to return home and WorldStrides has relocated planned programs in some affected countries.
Meanwhile, as Virginia primary voters head to the polls, it’s a good time to see painter Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” exhibit, now on view at several sites around town.
“So much depends on an individual who refuses to give in,” says Shetterly, who has painted nearly 250 portraits of truth-tellers, and recently added local residents Zyahna Bryant, John Hunter, and David Swanson to the series.
Perhaps Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has steered the country through numerous disease outbreaks, should be next on Shetterly’s list.
“You don’t want to go to war with a president,” Fauci told news website POLITICO on Friday, explaining his refusal to downplay the potential impact of coronavirus. “But you got to walk the fine balance of making sure you continue to tell the truth.”
*Updated 3/5 to reflect the rapidly increasing number of identified cases and deaths; live updates here.
Painter Robert Shetterly's portrait series "Americans Who Tell the Truth" is on view all over town—and includes three local residents. Zyahna Bryant (pictured) is the latest addition to this series. Image courtesy Robert Shetterly/Americans Who Tell the Truth
Unless you’ve been living off the grid (or in denial) you know the story: In spring 2016, Zyahna Bryant wrote an open letter to City Council, calling for the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue and the renaming of the downtown public park bearing Lee’s name.
“When I think of Robert E. Lee, I instantly think of someone fighting in favor of slavery,” she began her letter. “Thoughts of physical harm, cruelty, and disenfranchisement flood my mind.”
Bryant wrote that she was disgusted with the “selective display of history” in the city. “There is more to Charlottesville than just the memories of Confederate fighters. There is more to this city that makes it great. …I struggle with the fact that meaningful things that are unique to Charlottesville are constantly overlooked. I believe that we should celebrate the things that have been done in this great city to uplift and bring people together, rather than trying to divide them.”
Bryant was just 15, a student at Charlottesville High School, at the time.
This week, Bryant herself was celebrated for her work: On March 1, at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Bryant’s image became part of the “Americans Who Tell the Truth” portrait series by contemporary American painter Robert Shetterly.
Among other things, Bryant’s letter sparked support throughout the Charlottesville community and precipitated the formation of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces. In 2017, after considering the commission’s report and recommendations, Charlottesville City Council voted to remove not just the Robert E. Lee statue, but the Stonewall Jackson statue from another nearby public park.
A lawsuit citing state law protecting war memorials blocked the city’s plans to remove the statues, but the Virginia General Assembly is working on legislation that, if passed, would give localities control over what to do with the statues.
Shetterly, an artist who lives and works in Maine, heard about Bryant’s work via his son and daughter-in-law, who both live in Charlottesville. Struck by Bryant’s clarity andpersistence (now a first-year student at UVA, she’s continued her local activism), he decided to include her portrait in “Americans Who Tell the Truth.”
Painter Robert Shetterly (left) converses with Zyahna Bryant (right), a local activist and UVA student who is the latest addition to Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” portrait series. Bryant’s portrait is now on view at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center through April 18. Photo by Eze Amos
“So much depends on an individual who refuses to give in,” says Shetterly, a career illustrator who began this portrait series in 2001. He intended to paint 50 such individuals, to bring their truths closer to his own ears and to those of his audience.
In the nearly two decades since, he’s painted nearly 250 portraits, and he has no plans toslow down. “It got so interesting,” says Shetterly, who believes that “we are all made up of stories. And if we only tell the stories that make us feel good, we’re in real danger of not having any idea who we really are.”
“I [am] learning so much from doing it,” he adds. “I [keep] hearing more stories about more people, and thinking, ‘oh, I have to include that person in this story.’”
It’s difficult to exhibit all of the portraits together, and so they travel in different groups to different places around the country (one gets the sense that the same combination of portraits is rarely shown twice). Currently, portraits of about 60 truth-telling Americans are on view in various locations around Charlottesville (see sidebar), and each show has a different theme, among them civil rights leaders, African American women, and youth activism.
Some of Shetterly’s subjects are contemporary figures, people he’s had the opportunity to meet and get to know (as he has with Bryant); others are long deceased, and so he relies on other portraits and photographs, as well as historical documents, for information. Shetterly paints each subject against a plain and usually colorful background and uses a key to etch a quote from the subject into the canvas, words related to the truth they’re telling. Other than the quote, each portrait is free from embellishment, thereby emphasizing the individuals and the ideals for which they stand.
It’s a “wonderful way to honor people,” says David Swanson, a Charlottesville-based author and peace activist who is one of three locals whose portrait appears in the series. Certainly better than “giant equestrian statues,” he adds. The portraits are personal; taking the time to look at a painting and read the quote is more or less like having a one-on-one conversation with the person in the portrait. And so, “when we hear all about apathy and ‘nobody’s doing anything,’ and ‘we have no leaders,’ and ‘we have nobody who’s getting active,’ just point them towards these portraits of people,” says Swanson.
When Shetterly asked to paint Bryant’s portrait, Bryant considered carefully. She wondered how she might be perceived, not just by viewers of the portrait, but by her community. “Will people think I’m essentially doing this for clout?” she asked herself. She consulted close friends, her mother, and her grandmother, and then looked to see who Shetterly had included in the series so far.
Among the portraits, Bryant saw many black women she admired: Alicia Garza, who, along with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, founded the Black Lives Matter movement; Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; Ella Baker, who worked behind the scenes in the American civil rights movement for more than 50 years and often does not get the credit she deserves; Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement; and politician Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress, who fought for the rights of women, children, minorities, and the poor. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table,” Chisholm once said, “bring a folding chair.”
Bryant was pleased to see that these women, who are often left out of conversations and historical narratives about the very movements they helped spark, and sometimes even ignored by their own communities, were included in the series. She saw people “who do the work as a means of survival…not because they are looking to become someone’s idols, or searching for fame, but literally because if they don’t do the work, people are going to die.”
She thought, too, about how Charlottesville is often cited as a hashtag, an event rather than a place where people live. For those who do not live here (and even for some who do), “there’s no depth in people’s understanding of this place and what happened here,” says Bryant. She hoped that if another Charlottesville resident was added to the series, it would be a person of color.
“So I thought, ‘Who else would be better for this?’ And because I’m so young, and because the work that I did has been erased in certain ways, and it has been miscredited to other people who did not do what I did, I just really think that now it’s important for young black women to take control of our own narratives. That was one of the pushing factors for me to choose to be there [in the series],” she says.
For all of these reasons, Bryant wanted in on “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” and she agreed in part because she gets the sense that Shetterly “puts a lot of care into his work.” She appreciates the artist’s goal of “not just painting portraits, but traveling with these pieces of art and starting conversations in different spaces about who these people are,” she says. “I thought that was really dope.”
With each portrait, Shetterly includes a quote from the subject. Bryant’s brings the viewer to the beginning of the movement she sparked: “In the spring of 2016, I did something that scared me, but something that I knew needed to be done. I wrote the petition, a letter to the editor and City Council, calling for the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue and the renaming of the park, formerly known as Robert E. Lee Park. I was 15.” Image courtesy Robert Shetterly and Americans Who Tell the Truth
Bryant’s portrait—either photographed or illustrated—has appeared in many places, including on the side of the Violet Crown Theater on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, in a wheat paste mural with more than 100 other local activists; inside and outside the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond; in Teen Vogue magazine, where she was named one of “21 Under 21” in 2019; and on poster board projects created by local middle school students (Bryant herself was in middle school when, at age 12, she organized her first protest, a rally for Trayvon Martin). And while she says it’s always an honor (and still a surprise) to have her portrait anywhere, having her image included in a traveling art exhibition is something else entirely.
“Oftentimes the platforms that I have access to are traditional articles, or written pieces, so, to then be able to extend into a different medium, or have my story be told and shared with other people in that way, that’s really cool,” says Bryant, who insists that her daily life (college classes, work, friends, family, community organizing) is “pretty average.” She particularly likes that Shetterly includes a quote from each subject, right there in the painting, to add some context. And context can sometimes be lacking in portraiture that’s aiming to relay a specific message.
When asked about the truth she tells, Bryant says that among other things, it’s one “about how people of color have been silently marginalized, silently killed, by this kind of war on our memories, this war on narrative. [My truth] is a truth about our need to reconsider, and reckon with, our past, thinking about how we haven’t done right by certain people—indigenous people, black people, Latinx people—and how we’ve basically continued to build on top of, and cover up, these narratives of displacement, and violence, instead of actually working to do the groundwork and make structural change.”
Those sorts of changes require showing up, and being present, over and over again. And now that Bryant—a young black woman from Charlottesville who braved public scrutiny to catalyze a change she believes in—is included in the “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series, her truth, as well as that of those who work alongside her, will be present in new ways, present in more spaces both physically and intellectually. Says Bryant, “it’s given me a different outlook on how I see art as a means to convey certain messages, to start certain conversations.”
Charlottesville’s truth tellers
Images courtesy of Robert Shetterly and Americans Who Tell the Truth
Bryant is the third Charlottesville resident to be included in Shetterly’s series. The other two are John Hunter, schoolteacher and founder of the World Peace Game (left); and David Swanson, journalist and peace activist (right).
Hunter, who taught at Venable and Agnor-Hurt elementary schools, says that his work—his truth—is about “teaching children the work of peace so that they can increase compassion in the world and decrease suffering in the world.”
The World Peace Game is now taught in 37 countries, by more than 1,000 specially trained educators, and its mission is really about legacy, says Hunter. “The results of the work that we do…will be decades in coming to fruition.”
In 2011, Swanson, a longtime anti-war activist and author of several books, including War is a Lie, learned that then-vice president Dick Cheney was planning a visit to Charlottesville. He emailed local law enforcement requesting that they arrest Cheney for conspiracy to commit torture, and shortly after that, Cheney canceled his visit. “The encouraging thing about these portraits is that there are so many…and [Shetterly] can’t keep up!” says Swanson, who thinks that there are even more people in Charlottesville who should be included in the series.
Where to see it
More than 60 of Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” portraits are on view at various spots around town. The “Truth to Climate Change” exhibit at CitySpace has already closed, but here’s where you can find the others:
“A Place Fit for Women”
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Through April 18
Featuring 14 paintings of African American women and commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Youth Speaking Truth”
The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative
Through March 31
Featuring 120 portraits made by Charlottesville High School students, alongside eight of Shetterly’s.
“Portraits of Change”
The UVA McIntire School of
Commerce
Through April 10
Highlighting leadership in business and commerce.
“Americans Who Tell the Truth @ Charlottesville”
Washington Hall, Hotel B, UVA
Through April 10
Featuring portraits of eight civil rights activists.
“Created Equal: Portraits of Civil Rights Heroes”
Monticello
Through March 31
Featuring portraits of three iconic civil rights activists.
Fresh perspectives: Student playwrights, screenwriters, choreographers, musicians, and more get their chance to have the fruits of their creative labors appreciated in UVA’s TheNew Works Festival. This year’s plays feature ruminations on the risks of first dates; a fantasy written from a child’s perspective; a therapizing Uber driver; and a quest for workers’ solidarity. Dave Dalton and Doug Grissom guide UVA’s up-and-coming creators through productions that are innovative and surprising.
Sex is A Funny Word co-author Cory Silverberg joins Lisa Speidel and Micah Jones in the panel discussion Left Out: The Importance of Inclusion in Sex Education on March 25 at 6pm at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative.
By Lisa Speidel
What is the right way to talk about human sexuality? This debate is as timely and fiercely contentious as ever. Whether sex education is coming from parents or schools, many disagree on what is appropriate content.
In the United States, each state mandates what is acceptable for sex education curricula, which means there is no consistency in the programming across the country. Federal funds mostly finance abstinence-only programs, truly comprehensive sex education is limited, and those who are teaching may not be qualified. This can often lead to fear-based approaches that are medically inaccurate, and the perpetuation of stereotypes based on gender, sexual, and racial identities.
As someone who teaches human sexualities, I see many students confused, ashamed, and lacking in general knowledge about practicing healthy sexuality. I didn’t realize the extent to which this was happening when I started teaching this course. In all honesty, I was terrified of the 60 20-somethings in front of me because I assumed they knew everything. After all, they had access to Google, an option I didn’t have while I was growing up; however, searching online did not mean they necessarily knew what to look up. Many students confess in their writing that they thought they knew everything, but in actuality, they know very little.
In my courses, I use multiple tools designed to involve students in the discussion, but one of my favorites is Sex is a Funny Word: A Book About Bodies, Feelings and You by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth.
You might wonder what a book created for parents to use with 7- to 12-year-old children is doing in a college course. I ask students to write a summary of the book, to analyze its main messages, and think about what their reactions are. What would they have thought if they had read it as a child? Would they use it with children they may know in the future?
Sex is A Funny Word is nothing short of revolutionary. It’s 165 pages of colorful, comic book images containing diverse characters introducing four main concepts around sexuality: respect, trust, joy, and justice. The book challenges us to destigmatize sex as taboo and uses gender-neutral language with such statements as “some bodies have a vulva, and some bodies don’t.”As Silverberg describes it to me, “It’s a queer book, which means that it’s about showing the beauty and complexity in all bodies and experiences, especially those which are denied and erased in mainstream sex education. …It throws out the idea that sex education is about getting answers from experts, and instead works to create a space where everyone’s experience and knowledge isn’t just valued but is prioritized.”
Originally, the goal of assigning the book was to inspire conversations about sex education, but to my surprise, many students also learned new information. “The book is full of information that both children and adults can learn from,” says a 22-year-old student. “I imagine that many adults would learn the difference between the vulva and vagina and more specifics about vulvar anatomy than they currently know.” Another student adds, “I figured with a book gauged for 7- to 12-year-olds, I would know pretty much everything in the book, but I was wrong. …I think them having access to this book is the perfect way to introduce the topic in a mild way.”
For the past three years, my (now) 9-year-old daughter and I have read this book together. Every few months she asks if we can read it again, which is often a catalyst for other conversations related to gender and sexuality. When I asked her why she liked the book, she answered, “It is such a great book in general, not just because it is fun, but because a lot of kids don’t have the proper education…a lot of people at my school and a lot of my friends are embarrassed or feel that it is weird to talk about the subject of sex. The book gives out the proper sex education for any kid that were to read it because it has good messages and is able to tell kids to be confident about that subject because it is a very important subject to learn.”Clearly, we all have a lot to learn.
Lisa Speidel is an assistant professor in the Women, Gender & Sexuality Department at the University of Virginia. She is an AASECT certified sexuality educator and co-author of the book The Edge of Sex: Navigating a Sexually Confusing Culture From the Margins.
Building a bluebird box is a good project for a hobbyist woodworker, but most people don’t tackle quite as many boxes at once as Clark Walter. At certain times of the year, Walter’s woodworking shop in Ivy is packed nearly to the rafters with the parts and pieces that make up his bluebird box assembly line. Since 2012, he’s supplied homemade boxes to a growing contingent of naturalists and bird enthusiasts in central Virginia and well beyond.
It started when Walter took the Virginia Master Naturalist course. Based at Virginia Tech and sponsored by a raft of state agencies, the VMN program is well-known for training citizen scientists in 40-hour courses that cover everything from ecology to geology to native flora and fauna. “It’s much like taking a couple of college courses,” says Walter.
The idea is to train volunteers who can then take on projects around the state, doing conservation, education, and so on. A master naturalist must log at least 40 volunteer hours per year to remain certified, so as he went through the course, Walter was considering how to spend those hours.
A presentation by Ann Dunn, of the Virginia Bluebird Society, caught his attention. He had a background with birds: Before retiring, he’d worked with various nonprofits that did endangered- species conservation, including programs to reintroduce birds to their native habitats. “In the state of Ohio,” he says, “we built a collaboration to reintroduce trumpeter swans…that was very exciting and has shown great results.”
Bluebirds, as it happens, are a species with a fraught ecological history, having suffered a heavy blow to their population after the arrival of Europeans in North America. The introduction of invasive starlings and house sparrows means stiff competition for nesting spots; like bluebirds, they’re cavity nesters and raise young in openings like you’d find in a standing dead tree.
Meanwhile, the number of available nesting sites has declined. “As we develop more areas across Virginia, and it becomes an increasingly urbanized state, we don’t tend to leave standing dead trees in our yards,” says Michelle Prysby, director of the VMN program. Indeed, bird populations in the U.S. and Canada are suffering huge declines due to habitat loss: They’re down 29 percent since 1970.
For decades now, a coordinated conservation effort has tried to counteract these forces for bluebirds (and, along the way, their fellow native cavity nesters like chickadees and tree swallows) by providing artificial nesting sites. A relatively simple wooden box, affixed to a pole or tree in the right spot—bluebirds prefer open land to forest—can make a big difference to a nesting pair and their offspring.
Over time, thanks to individuals who put up boxes in their backyards, as well as organizations like the Bluebird Society that establish clusters of nest boxes (called “trails”) and assign volunteers to monitor what happens there, the population of bluebirds has made a real comeback.
For VMN volunteers, says Prysby, “Bluebird projects are really popular across all of our 30 chapters, because people really enjoy going to monitor the boxes, and they feel like they’re getting a tangible result when they see that a bluebird or a chickadee is using it.”
It doesn’t hurt that, as Dunn says, “Bluebirds are very attractive.”
That first year after completing the VMN course, Walter built 10 bluebird boxes for a trail he and Dunn established on the short street where he lives in Ivy. He placed them in backyards and fields, bringing his neighbors on board. “We’ve gotten a great response,” he says, “and the population density in our area seems to be growing.”
Simple enough. But that was only the beginning. “I mentioned the project to the class and took orders for another 25,” Walter says. When he delivered those, more students, and instructors, placed another 40 orders.
Clark Walter has built over 2,000 bluebird houses.
Fortunately, Walter has a woodshop and a genetic advantage: His grandfather was an inventor and industrial engineer—“a brilliant guy,” Walter says. “I sort of have his organizational thing behind me.” He figured out how to streamline the box-building process, cutting all the pieces at once, then assembling. That was a good move, because the number of orders is still blowing up.
Bird clubs and conservation groups in Charlottesville lined up to buy. Then groups in nearby counties. “A year later, VMN and the VBS were promoting it statewide, so within three years people were driving from Blacksburg and all corners of the state to pick up their orders.” Word spread to other states, from New York to Kentucky. The year the magazine of the North American Bluebird Society ran an article about Walter, he ended up building almost 700 boxes. “It got a little out of control,” he says modestly.
How did he become the go-to guy? For one thing, he sells all the boxes at cost: $35-39, including the mounting pole. For another thing, he builds the boxes to official specs—the opening just the right size to admit bluebirds but keep out starlings, plus a predator baffle to keep snakes from eating hatchlings.
“You know you’re getting a product that meets the right specs for providing a good habitat,” says Prysby. “You don’t want to be attracting animals to something that’s not a safe artificial habitat for them.”
“He’s a remarkable guy,” says Dunn. “He’s made a very big difference to the VBS.”
Having built more than 2,000 boxes, Walter has, it’s fair to say, made a difference to the bluebird population well beyond Virginia. He rattles off some stats: “Last year there were 41 official VBS trails in Albemarle and Fluvanna counties, and we had a total of 470 some nest boxes on those trails. They produced over 1,600 bluebird babies that successfully fledged and another 1,000 of other species.”
And one more number: Per year, he spends about 400 hours building boxes. No worries about staying certified with VMN: “I’ve got my quota.”
Rolling in dough: Get your hands on some dough under the guidance of executive chef Ian Rynecki as he teaches the art of pierogi making. The traditional Eastern European dumpling can be stuffed with savory or sweet filling, and you’ll get a couple drink tickets to accompany the rolling. Participants are invited to sit down and eat family style following the class.
Wednesday3/4. $90, 6pm. Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards, 5022 Plank Rd., North Garden. 202-8063.
