Positively jammin’: No matter the weather, the vibes will be sunny at Springfest, an all-reggae concert featuring Mighty Joshua and Positive Collective. Hailing from Richmond and backed by Zion #5, Mighty Joshua weaves conscious lyrics with one-love energy in classic and original tunes that elevate and uplift. Charlottesville’s Positive Collective draws influence from ska, roots reggae, and Caribbean and West African grooves, and has performed with everyone from Culture to The Wailers. It’s outside, it’s socially distanced, and it’s jammin’.
Saturday 4/17, $15-20, 3pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St SE. ixartpark.org.
Tracing the music: Get in your steps and a history lesson during David McCormick’s Black Fiddlers of Monticello walking tour, a tribute to the Scott and Hemings family fiddlers. McCormick, a founding performer with the Early Access Music Project, uses recent research as a fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies to trace the families’ history on Main Street and in Maplewood Cemetery and other locations we frequently pass. He will perform a short set of music associated with each stop along the one-mile journey.
Through 5/15, $10-20, 2 and 4pm, Maplewood Cemetery, 425 Maple St. earlymusiccville.org.
Festy founder Michael Allenby says the time is right for a new festival business model. He’s taking the Festy to three different locations for 150 shows between April and November. G. Milo Farineau
By Shea Gibbs
Festy founder Michael Allenby wants to rock the concert production business. And he has no second thoughts about whether he will succeed.
“It doesn’t make me nervous at all. It makes me enthusiastic,” Allenby says. “There is no better time to innovate in the live music business than right now. This is way more tremendous than the internet hitting the record business. …This was immediate and swift.”
The catalyst Allenby’s talking about is of course COVID-19. So, what’s Festy’s innovation?
Allenby and the Festy team canceled their regularly scheduled outdoor festival last fall. The multi-day music, camping, and lifestyle mash-up had cast itself as somewhat unique ever since its 2010 inaugural. Founded with a jamgrass band with local ties, The Infamous Stringdusters, and initially held on the grounds adjacent to Devils Backbone Brewing Company, Festy set out to be a smaller, boutique event, crowd surfing over the monstrous music blowouts proliferating around the nation.
But even a small-scale outdoor festival seemed ludicrous during a global pandemic. You just couldn’t bring crowds of people into a space while a highly transmissible virus ran through the community.
The result was a series of 14 live music events from September to November at Chisholm Vineyards in Earlysville. Concertgoers bought tickets in pods of two to six and watched the shows from private boxes, roped off and six feet apart, from which they could make contactless food and drink orders. Restroom trailers in place of cramped port-a-johns completed the high-end outdoor COVID concert experience.
“We thought, ‘what if you just took the VIP section from one festival set and made that the whole event?’” Allenby says. The rest of the fest—general admission ticket holders more interested in socializing than scrutinizing their favorite band’s every move—could casually watch the shows streamed on the internet. And hey, their running commentary, typed silently into the ether, wouldn’t even bother the superfans.
Allenby says Festy’s new strategy was a success. Sales met projections, with more than 2,000 attending the series, and anecdotal evidence suggests folks enjoyed the format.
“First live, in-person concert since January,” local artist Elizabeth Rodriguez said on Instagram during the October 17 Carbon Leaf Festy show. “It was outdoors, masked and socially distant, and it was awesome.”
The whole scheme made sense in 2020, a year during which the live music events industry lost more than $30 billion, according to concert trade pub Pollstar, and any fund recovery was considered a win. But what about in 2021? While many early season festivals like SXSW and Coachella have been streaming-only or postponed, other big outdoor concerts—Chicago’s Riot Fest, Life Is Beautiful in Las Vegas, and California’s Aftershock, among others—are on the schedule to return by this summer or fall.
Allenby has doubled down on his design. Instead of gearing back up for a Festy in the Blue Ridge foothills later this year, he’s expanded his concert series concept to two more markets. In Charlottesville, Charleston, South Carolina, and Asheville, North Carolina, Festy will host 150 shows from April to November.
C’ville residents will get Carbon Leaf on April 17, followed by Saturday night shows (on a mostly weekly basis) featuring the likes of Kendall Street Company, Mipso, David Wax Museum, Molly Tuttle, Everything, Martin Sexton, and Eddie From Ohio. Some artists will do two shows, at 6pm and 9pm, others only one. Tickets range from $40 to $60, depending on pod size.
Allenby thinks demand will be just as high as it was in 2020. One thing he figures Festy has going for it: His team crowdsources the festival’s artists, letting fans vote for who they want to see before the organizers reach out to book the bands. Not all the artists people want to hear will play intimate shows at wineries, Allenby admits, but he expects Festy’s stable of bands to grow in the months to come.
Festy will also retool the online production of its concert series this year, offering livestream tickets at $10 per. Allenby and his team didn’t market online sales in 2020, he says, instead taking time to streamline and elevate quality. He says he feels like Festy now has a product worth pushing out.
If the new Festy format feels like a long-term solution to a short-term problem, Allenby disagrees.
“Festy is a sustainability brand, and live events—festivals as we know them—are inherently unsustainable,” he says. “Environmentally? There is no environmentally sustainable festival. And they’re not economically sustainable.”
Speaking to the economics, Allenby says it’s just a matter of time before another pandemic shuts live music down again. Why continue following a business model completely at the mercy of infectious viruses? Others will certainly go back to their old ways. But Festy won’t be a part of it.
“COVID set up a unique set of conditions so we could maybe start looking at the live music experience,” Allenby says. “There is a lot of weird history about how the live music business has been created. I have always fantasized about starting from scratch.”
Angelic’s Kitchen offers homestyle soul food delights seven days a week.
Staff photo
In an ongoing effort to support local dining establishments during the pandemic, our writers have been enjoying a variety of takeout meals from some of their favorite restaurants. Contribute to this ongoing series by sending your own delicious experiences to living@c-ville.com.
When your soul needs soothing, Angelic’s Kitchen offers a variety of fried foods, as well as homestyle sides. Unable to decide, I ordered Angelic’s Sampler Tray so I could try a little bit of everything. It came with fried fish, two crispy wings, mac-and-cheese, hush puppies, cheese sticks, and street corn fries with ranch and marinara. There’s enough here to share, and my roommates got to feast on what I unfortunately could not finish from my delicious meal. The hush puppies and mac-and-cheese were the best part of my order. (You know a hush puppy is going to be good when you can see real corn on the inside.) The mac-and-cheese was clearly made with love, and had gobs of melted cheese and a crispy top. Next time it will be a large order of mac, just for me. While I feel I got an ideal sampling of Angelic’s food, I’ll be back soon because I can’t stop thinking about everything else on the menu. The service was also excellent. Angelic herself enthusiastically welcomed me to her Dairy Market stand, which is open seven days a week, gave me my order, and was eager to offer me extra sauces. I felt like I was at home in my own kitchen. —Madison McNamee
Ivy Road House
4300 Three Notched Rd.
ivyroadhouse.com
The menu at the new Ivy Road House has something for everyone. The wide-ranging offerings from chef Christian Kelly (Maya) infuse traditional American fare with Asian and Mediterranean influences, and feature small plates, entrées, salads, a kids’ menu, and even family meal packages. I decided to order the best of all words—artichoke corn cakes (featuring cilantro and kimchi mayo), lamb meatballs with braised greens, tzatziki and harissa, and the (phenomenal) Winter Vegetarian Lasagna comprised of sweet potato, spinach, roasted red pepper, and herbed ricotta cheese. I recommend IRH for the sauces alone—all of them are housemade and unique. The bistro, located outside Crozet, opened for take-out in January and dine-in in March. There’s a price adjustment to account for the packaging costs, but the food is worth the few extra cents. Each takeout container is microwave-safe, to ensure a proper warm-up if you have a long car ride home. —Desiré Moses
Wayside Takeout & Catering
2203 Jefferson Park Ave.
waysidechicken.com
It’s just chicken, man—and I mean that as a serious compliment. Wayside doesn’t get cute. Its fried chicken is everything fried chicken should be: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, salty enough to sting your lips, and greasy enough that the box gets damp. Scarfing down a couple of wings will leave you in a glorious, satisfied haze. The sides complete the picture. The coleslaw cuts the grease a bit, the beans add a little sweetness, and the cornbread fills in the cracks—if you still have room.
The Jefferson Park Avenue shop has always done a brisk takeout business, so the pandemic hasn’t disrupted its usual system. The decadent chicken is affordable, reliable, and fast. You can’t eat like this every day, but it would be a sad world if you couldn’t eat like this once in a while.—Ben Hitchcock
Russ Warren painted his way through the last 14 months of pandemic quarantine, resulting in his new show “The Disciple” at Les Yeux du Monde through May 16.
Image courtesy of the artist
By Sarah Sargent
A sense of joy permeates Russ Warren’s “The Disciple” at Les Yeux du Monde. The feeling comes from the jazzy Tex-Mex inflected palette—fiery reds and oranges, slicker yellow and bright turquoise—Warren favors. But it’s also conveyed by the sense of humor, surrealist flourishes, and simple, almost childlike forms that inhabit Warren’s particular brand of figurative abstraction.
Nearly all the work in the exhibition was created over the past two years, and much of it touches on COVID-19. There’s an amusing portrait of an appalled looking Dr. Fauci, mouth agape and surrounded by floating viruses. The subject is serious, but Warren puts his own wry spin on it.
“Deep into August” is another matter. A rare departure in its grim intensity, the triptych was painted when the pandemic was settling in and the future looked pretty bleak. “I was getting really tired of COVID,” Warren says. “I’d thought it would be gone by then, but it was in full force. I was working on each panel individually, sitting outside on a terrace where wrought iron furniture was casting these weird, threatening shadows. It was spooky and intense. The first panel is the pandemic going on, the center one, it’s letting up, and then boom, back to the pandemic.”
By contrast, “Pineapple Ascending” offers hope with its rising symbol of hospitality and welcome, the promise of future interactions with other people.
A Houston native, Warren grew up surrounded by a combination of Mexican influences and cowboy culture. Visiting his father’s office in the Southwest Bank towers as a boy, Warren was dazzled by an enormous mural in the lobby by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. “It was the first real art I’d ever seen and it became my idea of what art should be,” he says.
Like any good Texas boy, Warren helped out at his family’s cattle ranch. That legacy is commemorated in a series of works on paper that he has been producing for many years. They feature line drawings of bulls and horses placed against a field of sumptuous color, and Warren titles them by number using Roman numerals, which he places on the animals’ rumps like brands. For the background, he uses liquid acrylic and livestock markers, applied and then scraped away, creating a rich, subtly mottled effect.
“My family used to be a cattle family, in a real small way,” says Warren. “And they used to brand everything. So from the time I was a little boy I was involved and, whoo—the branding was horrific! The Roman numeral brands and the livestock marker are pictorial devices that also reference Texas and this personal history.”
Other artists figure prominently in Warren’s work. He’s co-opted the dots of Picasso and Braque Synthetic Cubism to mute down or heighten a field of color, provide surface variations, or represent things like stars. Warren is also drawn to pattern and texture, working stripes and scumbles into his picture planes. In “Oh Tamayo,” he mixes crushed glass beads into acrylic medium and black pigment to create a lustrous tarry background. The painting includes a collaged newspaper thought bubble in the body of the animal, meant to convey its frustration at not being able to communicate.
“Queen Anne’s Revenge” features a mound of skulls, bones, and other body parts, rendered in bulbous Dubuffet fashion with red and green outlines against a field of black. “‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ sounds Dylanesque, which being a huge Bob Dylan fan, I like,” says Warren. “It’s an homage to the South Carolina Coast where we go often. Edward Teach, a.k.a Blackbeard, hid out there; Queen Anne’s Revenge was his ship.”
The commanding visage of “The Disciple” is fractured into two distinct expressions. The left side appears alert and interested, while the right is affectless and blank. The two sides meet in the lower part of the face with the slightly pursed lipstick-red mouth. The bold palette pairs a rose and moss green background with black, white, and yellow ochre defining the head. “The disciple is me,” says Warren. “And the mentor was painter Earl Staley.” The two had a friendly yet competitive relationship that Warren feels was important to his development as an artist. “Things kind of went south during the painting process, and the figure switched to become more androgynous. It came together so fast, I never thought it would become one of my favorite paintings.”
A series of small sketches reveal a bit about Warren’s working process and also showcase his line—something you don’t notice in his paintings. “I have different sketch books,” Warren says. “Some are for pen and ink, others for watercolor. I work in one or the other every day. It’s like a third cup of coffee. I’ll go into my studio, do one, let it dry, turn the page and do another. It limbers me up and affects my line and my mark and everything.”
But the joy in the sketches, and that of the paintings, is tempered with the weight of reality—of being human. We get glimpses of this in the memento mori skulls, the specter of COVID, the branding references, the expanses of black that pervade certain works. These things bring an elegiac quality that gives depth and resonance to work that at first seems so simple and so sunny.
Marijuana legalization will go into effect three years earlier than initially planned after Governor Northam amended the General Assembly’s bill. Photo: Mark Warner Flickr
Virginia’s marijuana legalization law will go into effect on July 1, making the Old Dominion the 16th state in the nation and the first state in the South to legalize adult recreational cannabis use.
The state’s Democratic-controlled legislature passed an initial marijuana legalization bill in February, then sent it to Governor Ralph Northam for approval. Northam returned the bill with a series of amendments, and last week the legislature voted to approve those changes.
The gov’s amendments accelerated the legalization process significantly. The version of the bill that passed the General Assembly in February would have made adult recreational use legal starting in 2024, with the delay giving the state time to establish a new agency to oversee sales of marijuana products. Northam’s amendments make simple possession legal beginning this summer.
The vote on final bill was deadlocked 20-20 in the state Senate, with Democrat Chap Petersen of Fairfax joining all 19 Republicans in opposition to the legislation. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax stepped in to break the tie in favor of passage.
The bill does include a few contradictions. If possession is legal this summer but sales aren’t allowed until 2024, how are law-abiding stoners supposed to get their herb? One way is to pick up the fertilizer. It’ll be legal to grow up to four marijuana plants beginning July 1, and it’ll be legal to receive the drug as a gift from a grower.
You’re also not supposed to drive with unsealed containers of marijuana—but officially sealed containers don’t exist yet, as state-sanctioned distributors won’t be in action until 2024.
The final version of the bill includes some important criminal justice provisions aimed at redressing the state’s long history of racist implementation of drug laws. The law says that all misdemeanor marijuana possession charges will be automatically expunged, and those with marijuana felonies will be able to petition for expungement. The General Assembly delayed making a decision on what to do about those currently serving time for marijuana-related crimes.
The commonwealth stands to make a tremendous amount of money from taxes on marijuana sales, with early estimates suggesting $300 million over the first five years of legalization. The governor did not change the initially proposed disbursement plan for those funds. Forty percent will be devoted to preschool programs for at-risk kids, 30 percent will be placed in a new Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, 25 percent will go to substance abuse treatment programs, and 5 percent will be left for public health programs in general.
The General Assembly will continue to iron out details in the legalization process during its session next year.
In a statement after the bill’s passage, Northam said he was pleased that the state’s “framework for legalization focuses on public health, public safety, and equity.”
“Marijuana laws were explicitly designed to target communities of color,” he said, “and Black Virginians are disproportionately likely to be stopped, charged, and convicted. Today, Virginia took a critical step to right these wrongs and restore justice to those harmed by decades of over-criminalization.”
COVID-19 cases are increasing, but high vaccination rates in the Blue Ridge Health District have helped keep new infections mostly in the single digits. PC: File photo
After months of reporting on the local COVID-19 vaccine rollout, I finally received the email I had patiently been waiting for: I was eligible to get the shot. I scheduled my appointment and headed over to the vaccination clinic inside the former JCPenney at Fashion Square Mall the next day. The long Moderna line moved quickly enough, and I was out the door around two hours later, with a pink bandaid on my arm, a vaccine card in my hand, and a huge smile on my face.
For many in the Charlottesville area, the anxious wait for a vaccine will also soon be over.
On April 12, the Blue Ridge Health District moved into phase 2 of vaccine distribution, meaning all residents age 16 and older are now eligible to receive a free jab. Those who want one must pre-register with the Virginia Department of Health, and wait for an email or phone call from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inviting them to schedule an appointment. Vaccine appointments may also be available directly from local pharmacies.
“All vaccine appointments will remain by appointment only,” says health district spokesman Jason Elliott. “Maybe one day down the line we’ll have the option to expand to walk-ins, but that’s going to depend on a consistent supply [and] other factors.”
Because the Charlottesville area has a high population of health care workers and senior citizens, it took the health district much longer to move through the rollout’s initial phases than other parts of the state, Elliott says.
“One of the biggest challenges that we’ve had…is limited vaccine supply,” he says of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. “Even though we had staffing and people who wanted the vaccine, we didn’t necessarily have enough vaccines to make all of those moving parts come together.”
There have been other kinks in the complicated rollout process. Since vaccines became more widely available, area residents jockeyed for position in the virtual vaccine lines, traveling to other localities to seek shots. Recently, some mixed messaging from the state sent waves of central Virginia residents south to a Danville mass vaccination site, only for the state to halt walk-ins at the clinic a few days later.
In Charlottesville, vaccine seekers at the JCPenney site, and its predecessor in the old Kmart parking lot, have occasionally experienced long lines.
There have been small-scale technical difficulties, too. Last week the Blue Ridge Health District tweeted an apology for an email that erroneously told users their vaccine appointments had been canceled.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was temporarily halted on April 13 due to a rare type of blood clot, had significantly sped up the vaccine rollout. Before the pause, BRHD administered several thousand doses of that vaccine each week. Of the almost 7 million doses of the J&J vaccine given in the United States, six women, between the ages of 18 and 48, reported clotting symptoms six to 13 days after vaccination.
One of the things that we’re seeing is that some people who didn’t want [the vaccine] before, are deciding that they do want it now.”
Jason Elliott, Blue Ridge Health District spokesman
Per the Virginia Department of Health’s latest data, around 20,000 Charlottesville residents—almost half of the city’s population—have received at least one dose of the three vaccines, and around 10,000 are fully vaccinated. In Albemarle, nearly half of the county’s population—around 53,000 people—have also received one dose, and around 30,000 are fully vaccinated.
Across Virginia, about 3,100,000 residents—36 percent of the state population—have received at least one dose, and about 1,800,000—21 percent of the population—are fully vaccinated. On average, nearly 75,000 vaccine doses are administered each day. The commonwealth currently ranks 13th out of 50 states in percent of residents who have received at least one shot, according to The New York Times.
In addition to administering vaccines at its Seminole Square and Fashion Square Mall sites, BRHD will continue to host at least one vaccine clinic in every locality within its jurisdiction per month, in an effort to reach residents living in rural areas.
To get the vaccine out to Black and Latinx communities, the health district has partnered with an array of community organizations to host clinics in neighborhoods, apartment complexes, churches, and other easily accessible locations. It’s also hired Spanish speakers to staff its COVID-19 hotline.
It currently remains unclear how long it will take to vaccinate every adult in the health district and the state.
“One of the things that we’re seeing is that some people who didn’t want [the vaccine] before, are deciding that they do want it now,” Elliott says.
The CDC reports the current vaccine options are highly effective at preventing people from contracting the virus and developing severe symptoms, and may keep them from spreading the virus to others. The vaccine also offers protection against several super-infectious variant strains.
Per the CDC’s recommendations, it is safe for fully vaccinated people to socialize without a mask with other fully vaccinated people in a private setting. They may also travel domestically and internationally without a pre- or post-travel test (depending on the international destination), and without quarantining after travel.
However, fully vaccinated people should still wear a mask in public and around high-risk people, practice social distancing, wash their hands regularly, and avoid attending large gatherings, says the CDC.
“It’s really important, while we’re all becoming vaccinated, to remember not everyone around us is and that we’re still in this,” says Elliot.
To preregister for the vaccine, visit vaccinate.virginia.gov or call (877)VAX-IN-VA.
Several advocacy groups are pushing City Council to establish a right-to-counsel program for residents facing eviction.
PC: staff photo
As millions of people across the country struggle to get back on their feet, an eviction crisis rages alongside the coronavirus pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide ban on evictions has been extended until June 30, and states continue to offer rent relief options for struggling tenants—yet these protections have not been enough to keep people safely in their homes, including in the Charlottesville area.
From January 1 to April 12, 97 eviction hearings in Charlottesville resulted in 17 evictions, and 67 Albemarle County hearings led to 15 families being removed from their homes.
One persistent problem with the nation’s eviction system is that tenants facing eviction often go to court without legal counsel. Those with lawyers are far more likely to remain housed, yet few can afford them. Meanwhile, a majority of landlords have attorneys with them in the courtroom.
Since March, several advocacy groups including the Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America, the Human Rights Commission, and the Public Housing Association of Residents have pushed City Council to commit $460,000 to establish a right-to-counsel program for low-income households facing eviction. The funds would go to hiring three full-time attorneys and an outreach worker to administer the program, which would be overseen by the Legal Aid Justice Center.
“People who don’t have an attorney, their outcomes are much worse. So this will level that playing field,” says Brian Campbell, co-chair of DSA’s housing justice committee.
According to the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, New York City established the first right to counsel program for evictions in the country in 2017. The program has been wildly successful—86 percent of tenants represented by legal counsel have been able to stay in their homes, and eviction filings have dropped by 30 percent.
Seven other cities now have right-to-counsel programs for evictions. If Charlottesville moves forward with a right-to-counsel program, it would be the first city in the South to establish one.
Last month, City Council discussed setting aside $117,000 of the $10.5 million it will receive from the American Rescue Plan next month to create a right-to-counsel program, which housing advocates immediately protested as an insufficient amount.
During an April 5 council meeting, City Manager Chip Boyles announced that the city will use ARP funds to establish the program for at least two years. Yet it remains unclear if it will receive all of the requested funding.
“Getting them to agree in principle to the $460,000 is important. It means the program will be robust enough to work,” says Campbell. “It’s not window dressing—this is an actual real program that will help people.”
People who don’t have an attorney, their outcomes are much worse. So this will level that playing field.
Brian Campbell, co-chair of DSA’s housing justice committee
Since last summer, DSA volunteers have visited tenants with eviction cases on the docket in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, informing them of their legal rights and connecting them with rent relief programs.
“A lot of people we canvass don’t know the [moratorium] is in place…[or] that they are being evicted until a DSA volunteer knocks on their door,” says Campbell.
From July 14 to March 9, DSA observed 142 of the 259 eviction hearings that occurred in Charlottesville. Around half of the tenants did not show up, and half of those hearings resulted in an eviction judgment. Only around 8 percent of tenants who attended their hearings came with an attorney.
These few fared much better in court—their cases were either dismissed or set for trial, instead of resulting in an eviction. Meanwhile, nearly 30 percent of tenants without legal representation were evicted, and almost 50 percent had their cases continued or set for trial.
Charlottesville’s long history of systemic racism and wealth inequality makes the eviction crisis a racial justice issue too. More than half of the tenants facing eviction were Black, reflecting a much higher risk of eviction for Black families than white families.
According to DSA activists, the federal eviction moratorium has been weakened by loopholes. Landlords are still able evict tenants for reasons besides non-payment of rent, such as noise complaints. They can also refuse to renew the leases of tenants they want to evict.
In Charlottesville, LAJC currently takes on a limited number of eviction cases, typically those involving public housing residents.
“The way that we’ve been doing it is kind of a triage approach, [helping] people who are in the worst-case scenarios,” explains Deputy Director for Advocacy Elaine Poon. Because Charlottesville has 500 to 700 eviction filings a year, “it’s just not enough people to handle them.”
City Councilor Lloyd Snook says he recognizes the dire need for a right-to-counsel program in Charlottesville. While managing his private law firm, he often received calls from residents facing eviction who needed legal representation, but most of them could not afford it.
He agrees the program should be run by LAJC, and hopes the city can collaborate with Albemarle County, which is set to receive $21.2 million in ARP funds.
“When somebody is getting evicted, they may not even know if they’re living in the city or county,” says Snook. “We ought to approach the problem in a unified kind of way.”
But to keep evictions from happening in the first place, housing activists continue to emphasize the critical need for affordable housing in the Charlottesville area.
“One of the reasons that this is such a crisis is because people are spending so much of their income on rent,” says Campbell. “Affordable housing is the long-term goal.”
Charlottesville-based African dance group Chihamba performed at the virtual dedication of UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. PC: Courtesy University of Virginia
UVA remembers
“I welcome you to join us and share in the experience as we memorialize, as we celebrate, as we commemorate and learn lessons of the contribution of people of color who were enslaved and yet helped to build this university community,” said Mount Zion First African Baptist Church Pastor Alvin Edwards at the opening of last weekend’s virtual dedication ceremony for UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. The memorial has been open to the public since last year, but an official dedication ceremony had been postponed due to coronavirus.
The virtual event featured remarks from UVA President Jim Ryan and former president Teresa Sullivan, a performance from local African dance group Chihamba, spoken word poetry from two current Black students, information about the memorial’s creation, and testimony about the site’s importance from a wide variety of community leaders who had been involved in the project over the last few years.
“As students, we felt the legacies of those whose names were engraved here, and those whose names we do not know,” said Ishraga Eltahir, a 2011 UVA graduate whose advocacy as a student helped create the impetus for the memorial. “As a Black student at the University of Virginia, those legacies manifested in particularly complicated ways. They were everywhere and in everything. …Memory of a complete history is what we were denied.”
Throughout the program, multiple speakers emphasized that the memorial is the beginning, not the end, of racial justice work at UVA.
“We feel this project has brought life and light to the buried and forgotten,” said Khalifa Sultan Lee, another former student whose work was instrumental in the memorial’s creation. “We pray everyone joins us in the consistent remembrance and the ongoing reparations work to come.”
Bugging out
You might have heard some buzz about a wave of cicadas swarming across the East Coast this May. Billions of winged creatures—the ominously named Brood X—will soon wake up from their 17-year slumber and emerge ready to mate, lay their eggs in trees, and then burrow back underground. If that prospect gives you the heebie-jeebies, don’t leave town this spring. Northern Virginia skies will ring with the high-pitched wail of the insects, but central Virginia’s cicadas, known as Brood II, are set to snooze until 2030.
__________________
Quote of the week
“To tell us that a Black Army second lieutenant in uniform can have that type of treatment imposed upon him—imagine what happens when the body cameras are off.”
—NAACP Executive Director Da’Quan Marcell Love, speaking at a press conference after video surfaced of Windsor, VA, police harassing and pepper spraying a Black man at a traffic stop
_________________
Jerry jumps in
Local media mogul Jerry Miller announced that he’s running for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. In a rambling campaign announcement livestreamed on his I Love Cville Facebook page, Miller said he’d seek to prioritize economic growth, job creation, and support for small businesses, as well as public transportation and broadband internet expansion. If you’re itching to head to the polls and cast your ballot for Miller, you’ll have to wait a while longer—the seat won’t be open until 2023.
Suite deal?
The Omni Charlottesville Hotel is suing the City of Charlottesville, reports The Daily Progress. In 2020, the city charged the downtown hotel $440,000 in taxes. On its website, the hotel advertises “Downtown Luxury, Southern Splendor,” but in court filings the hotel’s representation insisted that the place is actually not nearly so resplendent, and that the tax figure should have been closer to $350,000. City Council voted last week to retain an outside lawyer to argue on behalf of the city.
Ralph backs the Mack
Governor Ralph Northam has endorsed his former boss, Terry McAuliffe, in the 2021 governor’s race. Northam served as McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor during The Macker’s first term, from 2013-2017. McAuliffe was among the many state political leaders who called on Northam to resign after Northam’s 2019 blackface yearbook scandal, but apparently any bad blood from that moment has passed. Northam chose to endorse McAuliffe over state legislators Jennifer Carroll Foy and Jennifer McClellan, either of whom would become the nation’s first Black woman governor should they triumph in November.
A VP of sales in the tech industry by day, Tessa also moonlights as an abstract painter. It was a no-brainer, then, that her artwork needed to be included in her big day.
“I love blending colors and building texture with my paintings, so I wanted to focus on creating the perfect palette that added pops of color to complement the natural aesthetic [of Pippin Hill],” she says.
The bride painted mini canvases for each place of the 125 place settings, as well as created the background for the wedding invitations (designed by her maid of honor, Christina Janczak), escort card sign, and menus. And, the pièce de résistance, the bride even painted a 6’x6′ welcome sign that her guests saw upon arrival.
Other elements of the wedding pulled in colors from her art, as well. The flowers, for instance, were meant to have a fresh-from-the-farm look, but with slightly unique colors.
“I wanted the flowers to complement my artwork and palette (blues, greens, peaches, coppers),” Tessa says. In fact, the flowers played a big part in the couple’s favorite memory from the wedding: standing under the floral arch, exchanging their vows as the sun set behind them.
“It was the perfect moment to say ‘I do’ to my best friend,” says the bride.
Photo: Jen Fariello
Queens of hearts
After the ceremony, the bride and groom danced with their mothers in Pippin Hill’s courtyard under bistro lights. “They made this amazing day happen and have been our support system through it all,” Tessa says. “An unspeakably special moment for both of us.”
Photo: Jen Fariello
Meet and re-meet
After graduating from Miami of Ohio, Tessa and Steve reconnected at a mutual friend’s party. Steve asked Tessa for her number and then convinced her to give him a kiss on the cheek in exchange for buying her a drink.
Photo: Jen Fariello
Sweet stuff
Steve’s sister, Madeline, owns Maddie Bakes, a Chicago-based bakery. She made the couple’s custom cake, complete with decorative sugar flowers that mimicked Tessa’s abstract art theme.
Photo: Jen Fariello
Choices, choices
“[Pippin Hill] was everything we wanted,” Tessa says: It was close to Washington, D.C., where they live, and it embraced its bucolic surroundings. Plus, they knew the food and wine would impress guests. A surf-and-turf menu combined both the bride and groom’s favorite foods, and a warm veggie salad nodded to the fall season.
Photo: Jen Fariello
The details
Event planner Adam Donovan-Groves Officiant Thomas Doman Catering Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards Flowers Nature Composed Cake: Maddie Bakes Music The New Royals Bride’s attire Love By Pnina Tornai Shoes Valentino Groom’s attire State & Liberty Groomsmen’s attire State & Liberty Bridesmaids’ dresses Amsale Rings Market Street Diamonds Makeup Poneh Grey (Makeup By Shirin) Hair Devon Baltimore (up-do specialist) Videographer Shaking Hands Productions
