Biting humor: If you’ve been binge-watching TV over the last eight months (and really, who hasn’t?), you probably have a “Fleabag” story. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s clever, outrageous, sex comedy-drama had everyone talking about their own relatable experiences when it jumped from an award-winning one-woman play in London to an Emmy-sweeping Amazon Prime series in 2019. See the original stage show starring Waller-Bridge in National Theatre Live in HD’s rebroadcast.
As the season turns, the Downtown Mall is also seeing some turnover, starting with Champion Hospitality Group’s just-opened culinary venture, Passiflora, which offers Tex-Mex and Baja Mediterranean cuisine. While we are still mourning the loss of Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar, it’s good to see new openings on the mall. “We put our hearts and soul into this restaurant, and we are excited to share it with Charlottesville,” says General Manager Elizabeth Hood.
Expect to find small plates for around $10, local brews, and plenty of vegetarian options. CHG hopes to finish renovations on the rooftop open-air bar in time to catch the last warm nights of the year: “You can absolutely expect to see live bands as part of the experience,” says Hood. Passiflora is open Thursday through Tuesday, and accepts reservations and walk-ins.
Another transition took place on the outer rim of the Downtown Mall—Modern Nosh closed its doors in September. Known for kosher fare and loaded sandwiches, Modern Nosh was established with a mission to give back to the community. Over two years, the restaurant donated hundreds of pounds of bread and benefited non-profit organizations like The Women’s Initiative and the Companion Animal Fund.
“We are so sad to be leaving,” says owner Stephanie Levin. “With the large number of business people not coming back to work downtown, the loss of tourists, and the lack of outside seating, we just couldn’t find a way.” Levin hopes to reinvent Modern Nosh along with its vision of supporting the community sometime next year. “Numerous people have asked me to open a food truck—maybe so,” she says. “If I find a commercial kitchen, perhaps I will stick to catering.”
Otto Turkish Street Food is slated to open in the space on November 1, introducing yet more authentic flavors to Charlottesville. Owners Ali Sevindi and Haldun Turgay worked at The Clifton together for five years before officially partnering up. Now, they are excited to serve fast-casual fare like döner kebabs (seasoned meat stacked in the shape of an inverted cone that cooks slowly on a rotisserie) and homemade sauces at the corner of Southwest Second and Water streets. Specializing in wraps and bowls, Otto Turkish will have two rotisseries to choose from; one chicken and one a mix of beef and lamb.
Dairy Market’s food-and-beverage hall is quickly filling its 18 stalls, adding two more merchants this month. Moo Thru, a favorite ice cream stop for D.C. commuters, is expanding to a fourth location in the heart of Charlottesville. The family-operated creamery behind Moo Thru will supply dairy products to market vendors, including The Milkman’s Bar, the cocktail joint from Ten Course Hospitality. Milkman’s promises to be a ’50s-inspired soda-pop shop straight out of Archie comics—but with a lot more of the hard stuff.
#KingButch
(Concord Jazz)
Butcher Brown has a lot to celebrate. The Richmond quintet was recently tapped by ESPN to record an updated version of Little Richard’s “Rip It Up” as the new theme song for “Monday Night Football.” On the heels of that opportunity, the group made its major label debut on Concord with the release of its eighth studio album, #KingButch. The 13-song collection is an energetic display of the signature jazz/hip-hop/funk fusion that’s made the band a commonwealth mainstay since 2013. Recorded at Butcher Brown’s home base of Jellowstone Studios in Richmond, the album features core members DJ Harrison (deejay, keys), Corey Fonville (drums), Andrew Randazzo (bass), Marcus “Tennishu” Tenney (trumpet, saxophone), and Morgan Burrs (guitar). While #KingButch is brimming with influences from the ’60s and ’70s, the album title’s hashtag demonstrates a cultural awareness that’s prevalent throughout the sonic landscape. With a unique approach (think Southern rap meets Sly and the Family Stone), Butcher Brown has crafted one of the most exciting records of the year (released 9/18).
Ammunition
(AWAL)
From dorm rooms and house shows to studio sessions and indie label signings, Will Marsh has been climbing the musical ranks with his project, Gold Connections, for nearly a decade. Marsh moved to Charlottesville after graduating from the College of William & Mary in 2015, channeling the legacy of two of his musical heroes—David Berman and Stephen Malkmus. With wry lyricism and catchy alt-rock hooks, Gold Connections certainly gives a nod to Pavement and Silver Jews, but with a flare all its own. Marsh’s friend and former bandmate Will Toledo (of Car Seat Headrest fame) shared a producer credit on Gold Connections’ self-titled debut on Fat Possum Records. Backed by the local EggHunt Records, Popular Fiction (2018) and Like a Shadow (2019) soon followed. Gold Connections’ latest EP, Ammunition, is a five-song explosion that harkens back to the ’90s, but lyrical descriptors like “late-Obama-era” place the EP squarely in the present. Marsh took the producer reins on this release, and it shows: Ammunition is his tightest offering to date (coming 11/16).
Let It Leave
(EggHunt Records)
Richmond native Ali Thibodeau has a varied background in performance, taking on roles in theme parks, theaters, cruise ships, festivals, and studios across New York, Idaho, Florida, and Virginia. But her latest iteration—as singer-songwriter Deau Eyes—may be her best yet. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, her debut full-length, Let It Leave, is a passion project that was recorded at Trace Horse Studios in Nashville and took two years to come to fruition. The fact that Thibodeau has spent years honing her skills in performance is evident: Let It Leave glistens with a gusto and grace that’s a refreshing addition to the current spate of indie rock. At once playful and vulnerable, Thibodeau delivers a captivating meditation on love, loss, and womanhood. With tinges of Americana shrouded in pop-punk touchstones, Thibodeau’s buoyant, sinewy vocals are the star of the show (released 5/8).
In a year defined by wild new perspectives—on health, on risk, on human separation and connectedness—images have played a central role. Photos of people in crowds or isolation are newly fraught, and as we gather virtually, the visual appearance of other humans on-screen has become a startling, imperfect social lifeline. Sanjay Suchak’s photography show at the Crozet Artisan Depot isn’t limited to images from this year, but the way it cultivates space for alternate perspectives feels very apropos for 2020.
Take, for example, his shots of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond—an object that stands for so much pain and, graffitied or not, is usually pictured from below. Indeed, it was designed to loom over the viewer, expressing white supremacy and dominance in its presentation of the Confederate general as a towering figure upheld by a permanent-seeming pedestal.
That permanence is less assured these days, even though the statue for the moment stands. Suchak’s take on the monument turns the usual perspective upside down, using a drone camera to position the viewer directly above the statue.
Not only does this offer poetic justice (now who’s being looked down at?), it reminds us that the statue is an object, not a person, and that its power derives from nothing more substantial than convention. Lee and his horse become just frozen metal, their position suddenly awkward, their antique patina belied by the lively quilt of spray-painted color that artist-protesters spontaneously created all around the statue’s base.
Suchak is UVA’s senior photographer and works independently for clients like National Geographic, but he’s exceedingly modest about his presentation of these images at the Depot. “I never really considered the fine art space,” he says. “These are just beautiful photos of the region.” True, there are familiar Virginia icons here, but there’s nearly always a twist: He shows the Rotunda with lightning forking through the sky above it. (“That would be a terrible image for UVA to use,” Suchak acknowledges dryly.)
His view of the Blue Ridge Parkway is a long-exposure image of stars wheeling through the night, a hint of immense time spans and distances that dwarf the human world. And, standing in a 7-11 parking lot off I-64 near Williamsburg, he used a drone to hover above private land where a flock of decommissioned presidential busts, 15 or 20 feet tall, huddle surreally in a field.
Suchak says he got into drone photography “just to have another tool in the toolkit of being a photographer.” He realized, though, that the drone offered not only the possibility of a kind of omniscience—seeing everything—but the chance to show things from angles most people have never considered. “I try to go for simplicity: addition by subtraction,” he says. “All drone cameras are pretty much like your iPhone—very wide. You have to compose your scene simply.”
Suchak doesn’t shy away from the social struggles that have made this year such a searing one in Virginia and elsewhere; many of the images concern the rewriting and removal of Confederate monuments, including the Johnny Reb statue in Charlottesville. “I never thought I would see this in my lifetime. I think it’s the start of a very important conversation,” he says.
Interestingly, there are photos of a Gordonsville rodeo here too: plaid shirts, rippling hides, and all. It’s tempting to make assumptions about how mismatched the nostalgic realm of the rodeo might be with the urban, future-looking world represented by some of Suchak’s other images—say, the one of a young female graduate in cap and gown raising a fist in front of a graffiti-enhanced monument.
But if there’s one thing 2020 asks us to do, it’s to reconsider what we think we know. As Suchak’s collection proves, this is a complex region, state, and world, with room for infinite perspectives.
The trees you see around town are more than just nice to look at. On a hot day, they provide much-needed shade. When it rains, they absorb flood waters. They help filter air and absorb noise pollution, especially when planted near busy streets. And they’ve been linked to reducing stress and anxiety, among other benefits.
But thanks to decades of racist zoning laws and housing covenants, many low-income, formerly redlined neighborhoods in Charlottesville—and around the country—have little to no tree cover.
According to the Tree Commission’s latest tree canopy study, historically Black neighborhoods Starr Hill and 10th and Page have less than 20 percent tree canopy, the lowest in the city. Meanwhile, neighborhoods where racial covenants once prevented Black people from renting or buying homes—like Venable and Locust Grove—have more than 40 percent tree cover, which exceeds the commission’s goal for the city.
“We got here not accidentally, but [by] creating our cities and our policies historically,” says Brian Menard, chair of the Charlottesville Tree Commission. “With the systemic racism that disadvantaged minority communities, we created these [neighborhoods] where trees were either never part of the environment, or increasingly couldn’t be a part of [it] because there was no ability to plant them.”
With few trees to reflect the sun’s rays, the asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks in Charlottesville’s low-canopy neighborhoods absorb and radiate heat, making them up to 30 degrees hotter than their high-canopy counterparts. This is especially dangerous during the summer—heat-related illnesses kill up to 12,000 people in the U.S. per year, and climate change is only causing more intense heat waves.
Higher temperatures also make it harder to breathe, and have been linked to respiratory illnesses like asthma. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, already prevalent in the Black community, are worsened by heat, as are mental health issues.
A sparse tree canopy takes a toll on residents’ pockets as well. With fewer shady places to gather during the summer, people are more likely to stay cooped up inside and run their air conditioners—if their unit includes one—all day, which leads to high energy bills.
At the height of Jim Crow, redlining systemically kept Black people from becoming homeowners in white, typically healthier neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods—regardless of income level—were considered “hazardous” for private and federal loans. Only white families were deemed worthy of investment, allowing them to easily attain mortgages and build generational wealth.
White homeowners could usually plant trees on their own property, or lobby their local government to fill their neighborhoods with parks and other green spaces. Black residents, largely forced into renting, had to rely on their landlords, who often had very little incentive or desire to invest in Black neighborhoods.
To make things worse, “poor communities of all colors in cities were often put where the slaughterhouses, mills, and factories were—places that were already environmentally inequitable,” says Menard. “Now we don’t have that kind of industry in most places….[but residents] are still suffering from the effects years and years later.”
The solution is “way more complicated” than just planting trees, warns Tree Commission member Paul Josey. The city cannot plant trees on private property without permission, and there are lots of places where there’s little room on public land for vegetation.
Additionally, the commission—which is currently all white—does not want to continue the city’s legacy of imposing the will of white people on people of color. Instead, it’s focused on “building long-term relationships and trust” with communities, says Josey, mainly by educating residents about the dangers of too few trees, and helping those who want trees, get them for free.
From 2018 to 2019, the commission knocked on hundreds of doors in Belmont—which had the most available planting area—and asked homeowners if they wanted a free tree in their front yard. With help from the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards, they were able to plant around 45 trees.
“We did a similar effort to bring trees to some of the city’s public housing…Our education and advocacy in several cases led to actual trees going into the ground,” adds Menard. “We’ve already identified some low-canopy neighborhoods we want to start working with, but the pandemic has halted that for now.”
With more trees comes concern about gentrification. Adding green space—along with parks and playgrounds—to low-income neighborhoods could encourage more-affluent people to move in, increasing property values, and forcing the folks in need of the benefits of trees out because they no longer can afford to live there.
Josey says preventing gentrification requires fully addressing the socioeconomic consequences of redlining. The city must work to offer better employment opportunities and increase home ownership among Black residents, in addition to improving its zoning codes and building more affordable housing (with trees).
“The fact that there has been systemic injustice within housing needs to be righted,” he says. And “the key way to build investment within neighborhoods is through home ownership.”
In order to keep climate equity at the forefront, both Josey and Menard emphasize that a diverse array of community groups—from the Public Housing Association of Residents to the Community Climate Collective—must continue to work together to address this multi-faceted issue.
“This can’t be something that we just lead, because we are just volunteers,” says Josey. “It takes a lot of work, and a lot of stakeholders…It’s not just about putting a tree in the ground.”
My children have a library book right now that tells us trees appeared in the middle Devonian Period, over 350 million years ago. The drawings of these early specimens look strange to my eye, not as graceful as the trees out my window, but the proto-trees—Lepidosigillaria and Eospermatopteris—were doing important work. “Deeper roots and more plant matter meant that a significant amount of dirt—more correctly, soil—began to build up for the first time,” says the book.
No soil before this—and the Earth was already nine-tenths of the way through its 4.5-billion-year history! I praise trees firstly because, on a planet made of naked rock, where the vast majority of life was confined to the oceans, they made the soil. In life, their roots broke that rock down and mined its minerals; in death, their decomposing trunks provided organic matter to feed bacteria and fungi. They became the producers of the conditions on which so many other beings depend.
I praise the trees as I weed my garden, with the trees’ new idea—soil—finding its way under my nails. In the spring, the weeds I pull sometimes include tree seedlings. Once in a while we’ll discover a baby walnut tree still attached to a split-open underground walnut, a perfect illustration of tree reproduction, and a reminder of who really owns this land. If we didn’t keep up with our mowing and weeding, the trees would quickly reclaim it.
Actually, they already have. In our 13 years here, an area we used to call “the back field” has become a forest of slender young poplars, perpetually shady in the summer. They don’t flower yet; they’re concentrating their energy on gaining height, making leaves, making sugars. When they’re a bit taller, they’ll turn their attention to producing the orange and yellow cuplike flowers that give them their other name—tulip tree. These poplars are still kids, not yet arrived at adolescence or the necessities of reproduction.
In the front of the house, too, brash young white pines have swiftly grown to block what was once our view. They’re on the neighbor’s land, so we can’t do anything about it; anyway, the smell of their needles when struck by the sun makes up for the vista we lost.
Still, I praise especially the tree elders that dot our land, survivors of the time when our property was logged several decades ago. Big stumps here and there tell me that some sizable specimens must have been cut. But we still have tall, mature poplars; statuesque walnuts; an enchanted grove of Osage orange where the trunks form rainbow arcs my kids love to climb. We have oaks of medium age and young Norway maple. We have redbud, black locust, and a small tree we’d never heard of until a neighbor identified it: hackberry. I praise the hackberry’s warty bark, which I now spot in lots of places, and the little green berries it makes in the summer.
I praise all this variety and this fecundity. Even on scarred land, the trees are growing with a ferocity that gives me hope. Their crowns know how to spread and spread until they find each other, then stop. Their roots hold the soil in place. Their leaves produce oxygen and the haze that makes the Blue Ridge blue. They continue to clean the air, quietly resisting a tide of pollution.
I praise my favorite scent on earth: the pungent black walnuts we sometimes break open with rocks on our lawn, picking out the meat of the nuts with dark-stained fingers. I praise the leaves, more tender than lettuce, that we pluck from sassafras seedlings and munch on while we walk in the woods. I praise their curvaceousness: some having one lobe, some two (like a mitten), some three. I praise the way they turn red and yellow so early in the fall, or even late summer, a teaser for all the bombastic beauty to come.
I could, and do, praise the trees for providing a place for animals to live—screech owls, raccoons, squirrels, tentworms, tree frogs, hornets, ants, wood thrush, and woodpecker. But when I sit in my house, or sit on my deck, shaded by trees, it’s clear that I live in the trees, too. I sleep in a wooden bed; I eat at a wooden table. Wooden frames surround the images I’ve chosen to adorn my wooden walls.
I praise the paper, made from wood pulp, on which this library book is printed. It tells me that most of the time there’s been an Earth, the trees were not yet here. And yet compared with the trees, people are an extremely recent experiment. I praise them for sharing this place with us. I hope we will be worthy of their company.
“The Charlottesville area has a wonderful diversity of trees, and a climate that allows them to grow into old age,” says Robin Hanes, who heads up the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards’ Notable Trees Project. “We have some fine specimens just out right where everybody drives or walks.”
The Tree Stewards, who plant, tend, and advocate for trees all over the area, have identified more than 60 notable trees in town. Twelve of those have earned special recognition as landmark trees.
Landmark trees, marked with a small metal plaque near their trunks, “are the biggest trees that also are in a location where a community is likely to recognize them as important,” says Hanes “They’re noticeable.”
Some of these landmarks are protected under the city’s Tree Conservation Ordinance—once designated, trees can’t be removed or intentionally damaged without the approval of City Council. Seven trees have been officially designated so far, and the city’s Tree Commission is in the process of nominating more.
In the meantime, building a community narrative around the trees offers a different kind of security, says Hanes: “Getting the public to notice them and come to love them—that is the best protection a tree can get.”
American Elm
Albemarle County Courthouse
You’ve seen this tree in photographs before—for decades, the twisting branches have served as the backdrop for the confederate monument that stood outside the courthouse. Last month, the statue came down, and the elm tree quietly stepped in to fill that space. The tree’s slender trunk and winding, gravity-defying branches now welcome visitors to the courthouse, an altogether more appealing monument than old Johnny Reb.
In the 20th century, Dutch elm disease killed 75 percent of America’s elms, but this one survived, and in recent years it has undergone preventative treatment against the disease.
Shumard Oak
Downtown Jefferson-Madison Regional Library
This knobbly, asymmetrical Shumard oak looks old and wise—a perfect match for its location outside the library. On one side, circular scars are visible where branches have been removed over the years. On the other side, the tree’s sturdy limbs reach horizontally for 20 or 30 feet, far enough to keep you dry while you wait at the corner of Market and Third on a rainy day.
Shumard oaks are native to the Atlantic coastal region. This tree was likely planted in the 1940s, though the exact date isn’t known.
White Ash
Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society
The crown of this magnificent ash is visible from all around the block, its powerful branches climbing almost vertically into the sky. To see the trunk, though, you have to enter the historical society’s side garden from High Street. There, you can walk up to the base of the huge tree and run your hand along its thick, grooved, moss-spotted skin.
The tree is more than a century old. Ash trees across the country have been killed in scores by the invasive emerald ash borer, but this tree has been treated for protection.
Southern Red Oak
Venable Elementary
Standing on the steps of Venable Elementary, the grand white columns of the school’s facade fill your view. Take a few steps back, maybe cross the street, and the picture changes. From here, the splendid Southern red oak next to the school dominates the scene.
The tree’s branches float outside classroom windows, the stuff of daydreams for the elementary schoolers within. In the fall, its crisp brown leaves blanket the playground and the school’s front yard. It’s the 10th-largest Southern red oak in Virginia.
By Sydney Halleman
Very little at UVA resembles normal academic life these days. Many students are taking their classes entirely online, and those who returned to Grounds wear masks outdoors and are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than five people. Recruiting events for clubs and Greek life are held via Zoom.
Last spring, when COVID-19 forced all classes to go online, the university adjusted its grading system, giving students the option of taking their courses “credit/no credit.” (CR/NC is different from traditional pass/fail because classes for which credit is earned can qualify toward major requirements.)
Heading into the fall, however, the traditional A-F system returned.
That policy prompted students like Abel Liu and Ellen Yates, the Student Council president, to campaign for a return to the CR/NC grading system, which they say is beneficial for student mental health, especially those with higher barriers to education.
Last week, the university administration acceded to the organizers’ demands, announcing that the semester would be graded on a credit/no credit scale. Student activists are hailing the move as a significant victory for activism at UVA.
Student Council began by circulating a survey to gauge interest in the proposed new system. Two thousand five hundred people responded, with an overwhelming number favoring the CR/NC option.
Yates explains that this semester is the hardest yet because the pandemic wiped out more jobs in the summer and confined students inside for online classes.
“The lack of peer-to-peer contact is difficult, and it wears on you in ways that are insidious,” Yates says. “You wouldn’t recognize how impactful it is to be alone in a room for potentially eight hours.”
For lower-income students, the burden has been even heavier. Liu and Yates collected 14 pages of student testimonials in support of a CR/NC option. Many of the testimonials come from low-income students who are struggling to achieve good grades and juggle other responsibilities.
“I am a fourth-year full-time architecture student who has to work to pay my bills. I had three jobs in the spring semester and was laid off of all three due to the pandemic,” wrote one student.
“Keeping up enough money to pay bills while maintaining a full course load (as my scholarships all require) is incredibly difficult…I was considering dropping out,” wrote another.
The testimony goes on: “I used to be an attentive student but with online school it is asking the impossible.”
“I am currently in a mental health crisis and have struggled to actively participate in class over Zoom.”
“I live with younger siblings and an autistic brother, the combination of the two makes my studying extremely difficult.”
Keeping the traditional grading system, however, is important to the university and some students: UVA often touts grades and related metrics to lure prospective students and maintain its status as an elite academic institution. And a high GPA is also fundamental to those whose grades are major selling points in graduate school applications.
Yates thinks these counterpoints aren’t a concern (under the new system, students can still opt to receive grades), and she urges the university to be more empathetic toward its students.
“We have a lot of vulnerable people in our community right now who need help,” Yates says. “They need the university to prioritize their well-being and their health over academic competitiveness or national academics.”
Liu thinks the alternative grading policy is a natural extension of progress the university has already made. At the beginning of the semester, UVA announced that it would suspend the coveted Dean’s List in light of the pandemic.
“We take that as an implicit admission from UVA that normal measures of success are not valid or adequate right now,” Liu says.
On Friday, the student activists got their wish when Provost Liz Magill sent a school-wide email announcing a CR/NC option for all students. Magill directly cites student organizing in her email, writing that the admin “decided to revisit our grading decision after many exchanges with students, student leaders, and faculty and staff who work most closely with students. They reported high levels of stress, anxiety, and personal and family challenges among large numbers of students, and all encouraged both the deans and me to consider flexible grading options this semester.”
Students have until November 6 to opt in to the alternative grading system.
“The fact that we had changed their minds is, in my opinion, a sign that student self governance is fundamentally about the collective bargaining power of students,” Liu says.“That’s really what it boils down to.”
As if COVID-19 weren’t enough, central Virginia is fighting another plague, only this one—the emerald ash borer—threatens our trees. The beetle may look like a tiny jewel— it’s a bright metallic green, small enough to sit on a penny— but it’s been scything down local ash trees like a malevolent Paul Bunyan.
“No ash tree is safe,” says Jake Van Yahres, co-owner of Van Yahres Tree Company, which his great-grandfather founded in 1919 during another pandemic. “If you have an ash tree and don’t get it treated, it will die.”
The emerald ash borer, native to northeastern Asia, was first detected in the U.S. in Michigan in 2002, and in Albemarle County in 2017. The beetle lays its eggs in the ash’s bark in spring; when the larvae hatch, they tunnel through the bark and feed on the layer beneath all summer, effectively cutting off the tree’s nutrients. The following spring, they emerge as adults to eat leaves, mate, and lay more eggs—killing the tree in three to five years.
Katlin DeWitt, forest health specialist with the Virginia Department of Forestry, says ash is a popular landscaping and urban species because it is hardy, fast-growing, and shapely. “After we lost elms, people planted with ash,” she says. Just ask UVA—it has hundreds of ash trees on the Lawn, Carr’s Hill, the East Range, and along Rugby and McCormick roads.
A tree can be protected by injecting insecticide around its base, but the treatment has to be administered by a certified arborist and repeated every two years. If started in time, treatment ($350-$600 per tree, depending on size) can be more cost-effective than removal. But if the tree is significantly damaged, removing it may be preferable; while living ash trees are strong and hardy, dead ones quickly become brittle and pose a danger if they are near a building, roadway, or public space.
Michael Ronayne, urban forester with the city, says Charlottesville is currently treating 37 trees that are particularly large or well-placed; in 2018, the city spent $8,600 on emerald ash borer protection. Ash trees make up roughly 2 percent of the forest mix in central Virginia, but their noble shape makes them common ornamental trees, and their loss will be felt by even casual observers. One of the city’s largest ash trees stands just behind the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society building downtown. “Losing that tree would change the entire block,” says Ronayne.
DeWitt recommends homeowners check their ash trees for signs of infestation: patches of light-colored inner bark exposed by woodpeckers seeking the tasty larvae; canopy die-back; sprouting from the tree’s base; and small, D-shaped holes in the bark where borers have eaten their way out. If you see these signs—or aren’t sure whether it’s an ash tree—hire an arborist to evaluate the damage and outline options.
Infected ash trees can be salvaged as firewood, which should be burned that season before ash borer pupae emerge again in the spring—but to prevent spreading the infestation, don’t sell the wood. Homeowners buying firewood should purchase wood from their immediate area, or make sure it’s labeled heat-treated.
Spending money to protect a tree may not seem to make financial sense, but it’s worth it, say many homeowners. “My parents’ house in Charlottesville has a huge ash tree, hanging over the entire house,” says Van Yahres. “It’s being treated, and it’s still up. If we had to take that tree down, it wouldn’t feel like home.”
Correction: The print version of this story reported that the city spent $86,000 on ash borer treatment; in fact, it spent $8,600.
When Andjelika Milicic began looking at colleges, she felt like a lab rat. Her parents, originally from Serbia and Bosnia, did not go to college, and she was the oldest of her siblings, leaving her with no one to guide her through the application process.
“I did not know what I was doing whatsoever,” says Milicic, who is from Milwaukee. “I watched YouTube videos on how to do everything…All the [help] I had from my guidance counselor was very general.”
Milicic’s struggles as a first-generation, low-income student continued well into her first year at the University of Virginia, and beyond. She not only had to adjust to a new environment, but she had to figure out how to navigate the different facets of college, from courses to internships.
“I didn’t really have a set schedule for everything. I had to figure it out as I went, whereas other people knew what they needed to [do]…based off of what experiences their parents or siblings have had,” she says. “It was difficult to find the right people to contact for all my questions.”
So when Milicic, now a fourth-year, first learned about The College Scoop, she knew she wanted to get involved.
The College Scoop is a new student-led initiative—founded this March—that offers mentorship and resources to incoming first-years during the transition from high school to college, with a specific focus on FGLI students.
Throughout the spring semester, the group connected with more than 200 admitted students over social media, leading around 150 of them to enroll at UVA.
“We wanted to provide them with a sense of understanding about what the UVA community is like—without having to come here and visit,” says founder and president Savannah Page, now a fourth-year.
To reach more of the FGLI community, the group has begun building partnerships with the university administration, as well as student groups like the First Generation/Low Income Partnership and Rise Together.
“We want to provide a place for these students to come to with all of their questions,” says Milicic, vice president of the group. “All of the partnerships we’re forming will help create a strong resource for these students, so we can connect them with people who may specialize in whatever question they have.”
When third-year Alessia Randazzo arrived at UVA, she also felt very lost and out of place—until she found a mentor. Now she hopes to prevent other FGLI students from going through the same struggles she did.
“It was definitely a challenge, just in that I felt like I didn’t belong here. How can I compete with all of these people who have had this help and support from the very start?” says Randazzo, who is also the group’s co-chair of leadership and development.
Randazzo says she hopes to serve as an older sibling for incoming FGLI students. “Yes, you can ask us about the best course to take for a subject [or] the best place to eat on the Corner, but also we are a resource for help, when you’re having difficulties with XYZ.”
The group is also working to expand its mentorship to high schoolers interested in applying to UVA, by reaching out to guidance counselors at local high schools.
In the near future, the group plans to offer other types of services specifically tailored to FGLI students. It is currently applying for over $100,000 in grant funds to create a free textbook library inside Newcomb Hall. Textbooks can be brutally expensive, and the group hopes to ease that burden.
“We’re hoping to be able to purchase anywhere from around 300 to 400 books for students…[mainly] for first-year classes” says Page. “The goal is to have the university incorporate it into their services, and keep it going that way. And negotiate with the bookstore to get a good discount.”
Page says they should be able to purchase at least 20 to 50 textbooks by the spring.
The grant would also go toward expanding accommodation services for low-income students with disabilities, as well as the Next Steps Fund at Student Health, which pays for two sessions with a community therapist outside of CAPS.
Both Milicic and Randazzo hope The College Scoop’s advocacy will ultimately push UVA to make a greater effort to destigmatize the hardships FGLI students face.
“When I was a first year, it was difficult to put that label on yourself as first gen, low income—it just kind of makes you feel other,” says Milicic. “There can be less negative stigma [around] being FGLI just by talking about it more, and making it known that there are these resources to help you and there are other people here like you.”
UVA needs to do a better job of promoting FGLI resources to first years, “so they don’t feel like outliers…and want to transfer out,” adds Randazzo. “Feeling like you don’t fit in at your own university is just a really tragic feeling to experience.”