Through nearly 30 songs composed by Stephen Sondheim, Putting It Together details an overnight party in a swanky upper-Manhattan penthouse. With dynamic orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick, a longtime Sondheim collaborator, and the creative direction of Robert Chapel, the production features five characters, including a wealthy retired married couple, a younger man and woman, and a vivacious commentator. No one is let off the hook at the party, where relationship dynamics are put to the test in this mature viewing experience.
Through 9/8. $16–20, Showtimes vary. Four County Players, 5256 Governor Barbour St., Barboursville. fourcp.org
On September 28, 2021, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe said something during the second gubernatorial debate that would spark a movement of conservatives in the state: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
The Hill would later describe McAuliffe’s statement as “deserving of a top listing in the Hall of Fame of Political Blunders.” His opponent, current Gov. Glenn Youngkin, would seize upon the gaffe, running the statement ad nauseam in attack ads and quoting it in speeches for the remainder of his campaign. He would coin the term that became a catch-all for everything from divisive content policies, transgender bathroom laws, and discussions about America’s history of slavery and racism: “parents’ rights.”
Since then, a wave of hard-right conservatives and Christian nationalists have come out of the woodwork to run in local elections for school boards, launching crusades against everything from library books to nicknames. In a matter of months, local offices were swarmed with new candidates who had big ideas, bold stances, and hot takes on how to make their little corners of America “great” again.
In the months following Youngkin’s victory, there was no shortage of firebrands on hand in those areas to carry the MAGA torch at the local level. With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, the battle lines for America’s cultural civil war run once again through central Virginia. And in Orange County, a parent and her son are preparing for battle.
A parent’s rights
Laws are hypothetical. Fundamentally, a law is an enforced mandate that, if one commits x action, then y will be the resulting consequence. As a result, political discourse and debate is often based in theoretical discussions involving statistics, principles, and potential outcomes. Over time, talking about statistics and hypotheticals instead of actual people begins to obscure the core truth about the administration of government: The law does not affect hypothetical Americans, but real people, with rights, families, and values.
Emily Potts is not hypothetical.
Potts, a transgender woman who lives in Orange County with her non-binary child Jace, a 10th grader at Orange County High School, is among the few LGBTQ+ people living openly in one of the most conservative counties in the greater Charlottesville region. “There’s a lot more allies than you might expect,” Potts says. “But there’s not a lot of trans people anywhere in our area, much less in Orange County.”
Potts might have begun living openly as transgender in 2021, but she began her journey as a trans woman long before that.
“I’ve kind of known since I was 5 that there was … something going on,” she says. “But when I hit puberty was when I knew [for sure].”
Parents are often credited with having a kind of intuition when it comes to their children’s identity and sexuality. Potts says she had a somewhat different experience.
“My dad had no idea,” she says. “We had to work through some stuff, but we’re good now. My mom has since passed away, but she knew. I had told her a long time ago.” Potts trails off. Her mother, she recalls, sent her to a psychologist (“And not the good kind,” she says. “Think conversion therapy”) followed by military school in Georgia.
Shortly after Potts and Jace arrived in Orange County from Culpeper in 2021, Jace began living openly as non-binary. Around five months later, Emily came out as transgender and began her journey, too.
“I came out after I got sober,” Potts says. “I was self-medicating, trying to suppress it. Once I got into recovery, I realized that I couldn’t keep living like that. I think seeing Jace’s courage in coming out really helped me get the courage to do the same.”
Around the time Potts and her son were beginning their journey as transgender, the parents’ rights movement was taking hold in Virginia. They knew that because they were among the few people living openly as transgender in Orange County, the issue was too important to remain silent.
“This is going to get children hurt,” Potts recalls thinking.
Freedom*
Chelsea Quintern, a former correctional and probation officer, was among those riding the wave of parents’ rights sweeping across the state.
Quintern began her public life in 2022, after being elected to the Orange County School Board. She came out swinging, introducing two resolutions that made national headlines and put her on the radar of just about every conservative in the state. The less controversial of her proposed resolutions was the one aimed at critical race theory. It abandoned the formal, referential language of Youngkin’s executive order, and states that “Critical Race Theory endorses discrimination of individuals based on race.” But it was her LGBTQ+ policies and beliefs that brought national news coverage.
“When I heard about her transgender policy, my first thought was that it would get someone killed,” Potts says. “A lot of times, teachers are like the last line of defense for kids who don’t have a great situation at home. If you take that from them, and give them nowhere they can be themselves with people they can trust, you’re going to see kids getting hurt. Dying.”
Quintern introduced her Divisive Content Resolution at the same time as her Sexually Explicit Materials resolution, and it made headlines that day thanks to its last provision: that teachers inform parents if a student is LGBTQ+.
“The Orange County School Board declares that students shall not be subjected, but not limited, to curriculum, materials, and discussions relating to sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other sexually explicit subject without explicit consent from their parent(s),” the draft read. “Further … the [OCPS] Board requires schools to notify parents of healthcare services and involvement in critical decisions affecting students’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being; including, but not limited to self-identification.”
Quintern’s policy was as brazen as it was vague. To put it simply, she proposed that school teachers and administrators be forced to inform a parent if their child was a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
If there were people who reacted positively to this proposal, they were drowned out by the apoplectic response from the dissenters. The Washington Post ran a story about it, and Change.org petitions, blog posts, and social media posts popped up everywhere. Quintern, to her credit, didn’t flinch, showing local conservatives she was the real deal. A true MAGA acolyte.
On the day of the school board vote, students carried signs expressing outrage, while parents, current and former teachers, administrators, PTA and education department officials, and even Emily Potts took to the podium to eviscerate Quintern’s proposal as a poorly veiled attempt at notoriety.
“Your ‘therefore’ clause is so broad it would require parental notification if a teacher mentions her husband,” said former PTA president Jennifer Heinz. “If you really meant to say, ‘Don’t say gay,’ please don’t insult us by using this ruse of ‘parental notification.’”
While the CRT resolution was passed 3-2, the Sexually Explicit Materials resolution would ultimately fail with the same margin. Quintern, who did not respond to requests for comment on this article, would go on to suggest that this was her attempt to “focus on classroom learning.”
“As a board member who was elected during the wave of parental rights, it was very disheartening to know that as a collective, the Orange County School Board decided not to definitively stand up for them,” she told the Orange County Review in 2022. “The law is clear: A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child. I vow to continue to fight for these rights during my tenure.”
Potts attended one of the school board meetings and it was her first time coming out (literally) as a transgender woman. She said the amount of support she received from people was tremendous, but it was not the only response.
“One of the local Republican organizations started passing around my business card at their meetings,” Potts says. “They’ve essentially blacklisted my business in Orange. I haven’t had a single client from Orange County ever since.”
Fifteen-year-old Jace Potts is glad the resolution failed, even if it wouldn’t have affected them.
“There’s not a huge LGBT community in the school, but I’m not the only one,” they say. “I have a friend who has only come out to their sister because their parents said if they were LGBT, they would kick them out.”
Jace says the unnamed friend lives in near-constant fear of someone outing them to their parents. If Quintern’s policy had gone into effect, any teacher intuitive enough to discern what was going on, or who overheard a conversation, would be forced to blow the whistle.
“I know it could be a lot worse,” Jace says. “The politics stuff hasn’t had as much of an effect on school life as we were worried it might.”
When the Sexually Explicit Material resolution was voted down, both Potts and her child say they were relieved, but felt like it would not end there. And it didn’t.
Emily Potts says her child, Jace, gave her the courage to come out as trans. Now, the two Orange County residents are navigating an increasingly hostile public school environment. Photo by Eze Amos.
Other people’s children
On May 20, 2024, Quintern, together with District 1’s Melissa Anderson, again made headlines when they made a sudden reversal on Orange County School Board’s membership in the Charlottesville-based Virginia School Board Association, and abruptly called a vote on pulling Orange County School Board out of the VSBA entirely. All but three county school boards in the state (Warren, Orange, and Rockingham) are members of the bipartisan organization. Planning sessions do not schedule time for public comment.
Political bias, criticism of Youngkin, and a lack of utility in its services were all cited as reasons for the board’s withdrawal.
Among other useful perks, like a $2,000 discount on BoardDocs, a school board meeting software, the VSBA assists school systems with legal aid and policy review for school systems—at much lower costs than what an independent attorney would charge. Warren County School Board, the first to decide to leave the VSBA, saw costs skyrocket afterwards, and many expect the same thing to happen in Orange.
VSBA has not commented on the school systems that have exercised their choice to withdraw from the organizations. However, a Q&A published by the VSBA addressed many of these allegations of political bias.
“VSBA operates as a nonpartisan association, emphasizing a commitment to issues rather than political affiliations,” the undated document reads. “Its unwavering stance centers around opposing any measures that compromise the autonomy of local school divisions, a position that has remained consistent throughout the association’s 116-year history.”
While leaving the VSBA may have been ill-advised, it was not the decision itself that drew the most criticism, but the way in which the decision was made. VSBA membership renewal was listed as a discussion item in the planning session, not an action item. As an action item, it likely would have been postponed for public input much in the way past important decisions have been, including Quintern’s two controversial resolutions two years prior.
Two weeks later, the public was finally able to comment on the matter. While those in support praised the Orange County School Board for fulfilling the conservative agenda it had promised, those in opposition said it was fulfilling this agenda at the expense of the people who depend on the public school system.
An OCPS elementary school teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the politicization of public schools has left educators and administrators feeling like the school board is playing for a different team.
“Teachers and children [feel] like they aren’t supported,” she says. “They live in constant fear of retaliation. Like they are walking on eggshells. There’s a lot of anxiety.”
Her biggest concern about the VSBA withdrawal is that it would take resources away from a school system that, from a faculty perspective, should be focusing on more pressing priorities.
“People are consistently sick as there is no funding for building improvements,” she says. “Teachers are being pushed to their breaking points, but are not being listened to.”
When the parents’ rights movement swept across Virginia, it was supported by concerned parents who felt like control over their children’s educational experience was being eliminated by those in power. In Orange over the past two years, Quintern, Anderson, and those like them have continuously faced criticism from parents over concerns that their policies were motivated by their own political ambition, and that their children would ultimately pay the price.
This criticism came from OCPS parents, whose rights got Quintern and so many others like her elected. But when it came time to protect them, many are left feeling like it was never about parents deciding what their kids learn in school, but Christian conservatives deciding what their children learn in school. Or what other people’s children learn in public school—Quintern’s children don’t attend OCPS.
Jane Alison will celebrate the release of her novel, "Villa E," on August 30 at New Dominion Bookshop.
Publicity photo.
Jane Alison’s new book, Villa E, is an ecstatic examination of artistic obsession and self-embodiment, inspiration and legacy, memory and aging. The story revolves around Villa E-1027—the real-life modernist villa on the French Riviera created by architect-designer Eileen Gray—and the irreconcilably problematic relationship it created between Gray and the notorious architect, Le Corbusier. We recently interviewed Alison, a creative writing professor at the University of Virginia, about the new book.
C-VILLE: How did you encounter the story of Villa E-1027, and which aspects of the story first grabbed you?
JA: I learned of the story almost 20 years ago … when I was living in Germany with my then-husband, a professor of urban design. He attended a lecture about Gray’s villa and … the story intrigued me at once: Corb’s outrageous vandalism and theft of Eileen’s house, of course; the strangely indeterminate sexual undertones of his actions; Corb painting her walls naked, like a cave painter; the dark perfection of his swimming to his death in the cove below the house.
An early image that turned out to be one of those intuitive kernels: Corb (called Le G in the novel) poised on the beach, about to swim that final day, observing his own footprint, and how that spoke to the swath of his ambition: leaving a mark in matter.
Your work consistently engages the mechanics of human desire and Villa E is no exception. What challenges did you encounter in getting under the skin of both characters?
Le G’s lusts, earthiness, and bombasticism made him pure pleasure to write. I wanted to be in his body and feel it as he guzzled cold wine and mussels, did sweaty old-man push-ups. … Eileen was harder because she had an aloofness and refused to wallow in herself. But her love of the senses, of being a human with a body alive to every atom of the world that might flow through: This is where I began to find her.
Describe your research and what it was like to spend time at the restored Villa E-1027.
The compound of Eileen’s villa and Corb’s cabin is now a protected World Heritage Site, but it wasn’t when I began research in the early 2000s; I could simply walk into Corb’s cabin, while the villa was closed for renovations. By the time I did get inside the villa, I was well-steeped not only in photos and drawings of it, but in the many scenes I’d already written there in those early drafts. So it felt not-quite real, looking at the actual place through veils of other versions.
Research itself had been extensive and leisurely: Reading bios and critical studies of both, as well as their works and letters; visiting as many of Corb’s buildings as I could; peering through a gate to try to see Eileen’s second house; looking at their furniture, paintings, collages, objects. Because of that primary image of Corb painting naked, I also researched cave-painting and visited some caves. One I did not visit but wish I could have is the underwater cave of Cosquer, not too far from the villa.
There are refrains throughout the book, from mantras of each character to sections that consider the roots of human expression. What led you to incorporate these interludes?
Cave-painting was central from the start, as was the idea of leaving a mark in matter. Among the wonderful aspects of the Cosquer Cave is that the people who painted there not only blew pigment around their hands to leave prints but also pressed their hands into the very soft stone high up. This is so exciting, pressing your hand into liquid, living stone. And it turns out that most of the hands that left marks in the cave belonged to girls and women. I wanted to dance from that earliest instance of pressing oneself into the natural world to other instances in the same area—the Ligurian Coast down into Italy—over several thousand years. So I included other refrains: ancient people pressing cockle shells into pottery; a man terracing the slopes; an Etruscan tomb painting of a boy diving into the sea.
In the time you were working on this novel, you also published Meander, Spiral, Explode. How would you describe the cross-saturation that occurred as you were researching and writing these books?
This novel took a long time to write because I could not find the right form or angle. So I threw the project out in about 2012. In the meantime I had to write a short nonfiction novel, where the main motions occur in the narrator’s mind, to get me thinking more about consciousness in this project; and then Meander, Spiral, Explode, to discover the form that had been lurking in my drafts all along: a spiral. The novel focuses on the last week of Corb’s life and everything we can know … comes from his jagged, unwilling memories and Eileen’s obsessive memories. I think that this kind of remembering can feel like spiraling, and in fact both Eileen’s villa and Corb’s cabin are structured by spirals. So the novel finally found its form as something like a double helix, with alternating sections between the two characters, as they wind around each other and wind into the past.
The CatVideoFest is a purrrfect event for children, pet-lovers, and all you childless cat-people out there (meow!). If you’re one to share kitty memes all over social media, come enjoy a safe space with other feline enthusiasts. The hour-long compilation includes submissions, sourced animations, and edits that are the cat’s pajamas. The event supports cats in need by partnering with local pet charities and shelters.
Years back, a Nelson County duo put chamomile and whiskey in a tea cup and decided the flavor profile fit the sweet and raw sound of the music they’d been playing. This weekend, in a two-night event showcasing Koda Kerl and Marie Borgman’s electric Blue Ridge rock and roll, Chamomile & Whiskey performs its 1,000th show. The band, including Marsh Mahon (bass), Stuart Gunter (drums), and Drew Kimball (guitar) will celebrate with four unique sets, including a tribute to outlaw country music each night. With Pantherburn on Friday, and Buckbilly Deluxe on Saturday.
Friday 8/30 & Saturday 8/31. $18-22, 7:30pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 First St. S. thesoutherncville.com
Albemarle County entered into a public-private partnership with Home Depot in 2022. The home improvement hub plans to turn the former Sears at Fashion Square Mall into a new store and garden center.
Image via MG2.
Shortly after the signalized intersection at Rio Road and U.S. 29 was converted to an underpass in July 2016, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors adopted a small area plan to encourage redevelopment of the immediate area to be more dense to meet the needs of the 21st century.
“The plan identifies the Rio Road/29 intersection as the heart of urban Albemarle County and it designated the four quadrants as critical for the commercial corridor’s future,” says Emily Kilroy, Albemarle’s interim economic development director. “It envisions a dense, walkable, bikeable transit-connected environment.”
Nearly six years later, the county entered into a public-private partnership with Home Depot to redevelop the former Sears at Fashion Square Mall into a new store and garden center. The Atlanta-based retailer purchased the site, as well as dozens of individual retail spaces inside the mall, in September 2022.
County officials have approved plans for the new store, but Home Depot’s development costs have increased.
“It was primarily associated with the demolition of the former Sears and the Sears Auto Center, which had a requirement for asbestos abatement as well as brownfield remediation,” said J.T. Newberry, deputy director of the Albemarle Office of Economic Development.
Newberry told the board of supervisors on August 21 that the higher costs may have been a barrier to Home Depot proceeding. The county and its Economic Development Authority negotiated terms for a tax increment financing agreement under the codename Project Julius to grant up to $750,000 in real property tax rebates over 10 years.
In exchange, Home Depot has to be open by December 24, 2025. The company will also dedicate land for a future realignment of Hillsdale Drive, called for in the Rio Road plan.
“They will help actively market the former Red Lobster site, which is currently vacant,” Newberry said.
In addition to more property taxes to be generated from the site, Newberry said Albemarle expects the new store to produce between $400,000 and $500,000 a year in local sales taxes. He said the store is expected to create 100 jobs.
Kilroy says Fashion Square Mall is ripe for a public-private partnership to try to implement that vision. She presented the Board of Supervisors with a slide depicting the decline in value from around $70 million in 2014 to just below $20 million this year.
“Redevelopment of this parcel will correct what has been a stark decline in property value for this area,” Kilroy says, adding that the county’s investment will support the first major private reinvestment since the Rio Road plan was adopted.
Belk Stores of Virginia continues to own its store, and developer Richard Hewitt owns the former JCPenney. Albemarle County now rents a portion of that property for a public safety fleet operations center.
Other investments in the area have not had a public component. Earlier this year, the Carter Machinery Company purchased a 4.67-acre property to the east of the Northside Library for $3.53 million. It has since opened a rental store for construction and lawn equipment, eliminating parking spaces that had been rented for library patrons.
CRCC Chair Sasha Tripp is the owner of Story House Real Estate in Charlottesville. Supplied photo.
More than eight months after the departure of former president and CEO Natalie Masri, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce is launching a committee to find its next leader.
Ahead of the first CEO search committee meeting on August 26, CRCC Board Chair Sasha Tripp spoke with C-VILLE about the hiring process and the chamber more broadly.
CRCC is a membership-based organization that works to connect and advocate for Charlottesville businesses, and is comprised of a volunteer board of directors and salaried, four-person professional staff.
“We try to cater our resources, our events, our networking, our ribbon-cutting, all that stuff, towards the members specifically,” said Tripp. “We don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to service every single business and business owner in the Charlottesville area, but for people who are members, we do everything we can to provide resources for them to make it easier to get their business up and running, to keep their business running.”
Beyond member services, the CRCC also holds regular networking and community events, including State of the Community, which looks at developments in the city, Albemarle County, and at the University of Virginia.
“We watch and see if there is a hot topic that’s going on politically or out in the community that is tied to businesses being able to thrive or grow or hire or remain competitive, and we try to advocate for those issues,” said Tripp. “For a thriving local economy, we’ve got to take these business positions to help our small business owners and then help some of these larger entities that are trying to be good community stewards. … We’re trying to be the voice of business in Charlottesville.”
Since the December departure of Masri, who lasted less than seven months, Tripp and other CRCC leaders have been working to address the logistical needs of the chamber before bringing on a new president—including selling the CRCC building at 209 Fifth St. NE.
“We had been talking on and off about selling the chamber building for, I think, seven years now,” said Tripp. “We wanted a new executive to be able to come in and focus on big picture and strategy.”
The seven-person CEO search committee includes area leaders like Mayor Juandiego Wade and Rita Bunch, the outgoing president of Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital (see story on page 9). With the departure of Bunch from SMJH on September 13, Tripp anticipates adding another local leader to the committee to ensure an odd number of members.
A timeline shared by the CRCC indicates the CEO search committee will begin active recruitment in late September, with a goal of hiring a new president between January 1 and 15.
During the hiring process, Tripp and other board members will focus on advancing the group’s key projects—including the sale of the building and keeping engaged with the Charlottesville community.
Self-described as an “imaginative, maximalist, feminist rock band based in Brooklyn,” partygirl is just about what you’d expect from a group with that description. While the band flaunts an aversion to capital letters and proper spacing, the defining difference in the thickly smothered walls of indie rock held up by the band arrives in the voice of Pagona Kytzidis. Her throaty vocals dive low, warble vulnerably, and sail high over the generally restrained set of songs that comprise partygirl’s 2022 self-titled EP. While the group comes across like young adults (you’d have a difficult time making them laugh for the right reasons), it’ll be interesting to see how its members keep that level of presumed sophistication going with half-drunk audience members pushing sandwiches into their faces.
Fellow Brooklynites PANIK FLOWER make up for partygirl’s lack of capitalization and offers more than its touring counterparts’ less fully realized sound. A gauzy pop that pumps more than anything remotely shoegaze oriented, PANIK FLOWER’s 2023 Dark Blue EP demonstrates the band’s commitment to an aesthetic pursued by vocalist Sage Leopold and convincingly supported by the guitar/bass/drum arrangements executed by the rest of the band with an early ’90s college rock kick.—CM Gorey
Samantha Fish brings her electric blues, rock, and soul to The Jefferson Theater on Friday.
Publicity photo.
Blues rocker Samantha Fish says she “didn’t know what [she] was doing” when she made Girls With Guitars alongside Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde in 2011. The same might be said of the albums’ producers, who probably should’ve known better by then.
When Wynonna Judd released her hit song of the same name in 1994, the guitars-are-for-boys trope was maybe not so tired. Thirty years later, Fish is part of the reason it’s hopefully ancient history.
Fish will take The Jefferson Theater stage on August 30 in the wake of 2023’s critically acclaimed Death Wish Blues, which earned the artist/singer-songwriter/guitarist her first Grammy nomination earlier this year. A collaboration with punk rocker Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album and sat at No. 1 on the Billboard blues chart for three straight weeks.
“I really hadn’t collaborated since Girls With Guitars,” Fish says. “Now that I have some experience, coming back and doing this with Jesse … you learn to take ‘no’ out of your vocabulary. Even if it is something that is a complete departure from you as a singular artist, you say, ‘I can try that.’”
Fish grew up in Missouri and began learning the guitar at age 15, essentially teaching herself, with family and friends showing her tricks here and there. Without any formal lessons, she listened to classic rock—AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Tom Petty—and learned to pick out the riffs by ear. She began writing songs in her late teens, citing Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen as central influences, and found gigs by cold-calling bars.
“Blues was all of my favorite musicians’ favorite music,” Fish says. “So I was just digging backwards and going through the list of all the great traditional blues artists.”
Fish has produced an album every two years since 2009, when she recorded Live Bait with what was then known as the Samantha Fish Blues Band. The guitarist began attracting high praise in 2019, when she made the first of three albums, Kill or Be Kind, on Rounder Records. Produced by Grammy winner Scott Billington, Kill or Be Kind landed on album review outlet AllMusic’s list of editors’ “Favorite Blues Albums.” Fish’s next solo effort, 2021’s Faster, received similar critical acclaim.
Death Wish Blues was born when, after many years of discussing a side project, Fish and her manager decided to approach Dayton, whose resumé includes recording with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, touring with seminal punk band X, and working with Rob Zombie on horror film soundtracks.
Produced by Jon Spencer of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Death Wish Blues attracted not only the attention of the Grammy committee, but also two of Fish’s idols. Eric Clapton invited her to perform at his 2023 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Los Angeles, and GNR guitarist Slash brought Fish on for a run during his S.E.R.P.E.N.T. tour earlier this year.
Now onto her own Bulletproof tour, Fish says she’s finally able to ruminate on her full career and focus on her growing canon. “This is the first time I’ve been on tour without a new record,” she says. On August 30, that means Charlottesville fans will get to see the musician revisit older material and dig into unique covers, along with adapting songs from Death Wish Blues to arrangements sans Dayton.
“It is weird, your relationship with songs over the years,” Fish says. “I will hear some things that I did and cringe—like, ‘what the fuck was I thinking?’—but then other things will hit differently. Here I am years later, and I’ll find I wrote about something I’m just now experiencing. It’s a refreshing look.”
While Fish shakes up the old and new arrangements, she’s also eyeing her next record; after all, she’s never gone more than two years without recording. If her luck holds, she says she’ll be back in the studio sometime during the Bulletproof tour. “We’re aiming for spring or summer, but every time I verbalize it, it doesn’t happen,” she says.
What that record will be, Fish has yet to decide. She’s come a long way since Girls With Guitars, and she says part of the evolution happens all the way up to the time when she steps into the studio with her band. By way of example, Fish says she and Dayton originally conceived of the decidedly roots-driven Death Wish Blues as a “punk rock side project.”
“Talking about things doesn’t necessarily guarantee what they will be,” she says.
What Fish does know is that she plans to make music for a long time to come. “I don’t know what else I would be doing. I don’t have any other skills,” she laughs. “I love playing music, and there’s a little ecosystem built into what we’re doing. We’ve got the train rolling here.”
SMJH President Rita Bunch is leaving Charlottesville to join Erlanger health system in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Supplied photo.
Medical directives
Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital President Rita Bunch is stepping down on September 13. Bunch has served as division president for the hospital since January 2022, and will be joining the Erlanger health system in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“It has been an incredible honor to serve the Charlottesville community and lead Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital over the past 2.5 years,” said Bunch in an August 19 press release announcing her departure. “The dedication and passion of our team have been truly inspiring, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work alongside such committed professionals. I will always cherish the time I spent here and the meaningful impact we’ve made together.”
With Bunch leaving soon, SMJH is searching for a new president. In the interim, Regional President Paul Gaden will fill the position, according to Corporate Communications and Public Relations Advisor Alyssa Pacheco.
“Sentara is dedicated to finding a leader who will build on the solid foundation already in place and continue advancing our mission of improving health every day,” Pacheco told C-VILLE in an emailed statement. Bunch and Gaden are collaborating on a transition plan, with the hospital focusing “on maintaining continuity and ensuring that the hospital continues to provide the highest level of care during this leadership change.”
The change in leadership comes amid heavy legal scrutiny for Sentara Health, which is being investigated by the Department of Justice for allegedly misleading regulators and potential price gouging in 2018 and 2019.
Trickle down
File photo.
At press time, residents of eastern Orange County remain under a Do Not Drink water advisory after hydrocarbons were detected at the Wilderness Water Treatment Plant on August 21. The advisory applies to all WWTP customers, including the Lake of the Woods, Wilderness Shores, Somerset, Edgewood, Germanna Heights, Twin Lakes communities, Germanna Community College Locust Grove campus, and several restaurants and businesses along Route 3.
The contamination was discovered when a “petroleum odor” was reported by plant employees on August 21, prompting water testing. Officials have not confirmed the specific contaminant or its source, but have said the hydrocarbons detected are not volatile organic compounds.
WWTP customers were originally placed under a Do Not Use advisory, but the warning was deescalated to a Do Not Drink Advisory by the Rapidan Service Authority and the Virginia Department of Health Office of Drinking Water on August 25.
The petroleum smell has reportedly decreased, but not completely disappeared. As of press time, WWTP customers should continue to avoid consumption of tap water in any form—including drinking, food preparation, dishwashing, or brushing teeth.
For more information and updates on the advisory, visit vdh.virginia.gov/drinking-water/wilderness-water-treatment-plant-contamination.
Hay there
Cassiopeia Foundation has publicly confirmed its purchase of the Foxfield property in Albemarle County, ensuring the continuation of the iconic Foxfield Races. While the purchase of the property took place in February, the nonprofit officially confirmed it was the buyer—under the name Foxfield Land Preservation LLC—to Daily Progress reporter Emily Hemphill on August 23.
First up
Students are back on Grounds at the University of Virginia, and will soon file into Scott Stadium for the first home football game of the year against the Richmond Spiders on August 31. Second-year Anthony Colandrea will be the Hoos’ starting quarterback against the University of Richmond, with kick-off scheduled for 6pm.
Anthony Colandrea will be the starting quarterback when UVA opens its season against Richmond on August 31. Photo via UVA Athletics Communications.
Going to the dogs (and cats!)
Two Men and a Truck Charlottesville launched its Movers for Mutts campaign on August 19, collecting donations for the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA through the end of October at locations around town. Items needed include blankets, pet food, treats, leashes, toys, litter, and towels. For a full list of donation sites and items, visit either the Two Men and a Truck or CASPCA website.
