Smart guy
UVA’s Eric Turkheimer makes sense of race, class and IQ

Guess what? Children in poor families face more obstacles in their intellectual development than children from wealthy families. Sounds like common sense, you say? Maybe, but this apparent no-brainer is being hailed as big news in psychology’s ivory tower.

The November issue of the academic journal Psychological Science will feature a paper by Eric Turkheimer, a professor of psychology at UVA. He recently completed a study showing that a person’s intelligence depends not only on their genes, but on how and where they live.

Psychologists are buzzing because Turkheimer’s research challenges some long-held beliefs about brain power. A controversial 1994 book called The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, drew from numerous studies showing that genes are the primary determinate of intelligence. This has led to theories that the so-called achievement gap between black and white students––a much-debated problem in local school systems––is evidence of racial superiority.

"There was a mystery sitting there for a long time," Turkheimer says. "People knew that genes affect IQ. The strange part was that after researchers accounted for genes, it was hard to find evidence that environment was involved at all."

Gene studies typically examine two kinds of twins—fraternal and identical. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genetic material. Fraternal twins, like typical siblings, share 50 percent of their genetic material. Twins share identical prenatal conditions and similar environments, so any differences between identical and fraternal twins must be related to genes.

The problem with those studies, says Turkheimer, is that they were studying only affluent subjects. "The people from the messed-up, chaotic families weren’t showing up at the volunteer twin studies," he says.

For his research, Turkheimer mined data from the National Collaborative Prenatal Project, a now-defunct study conducted by the National Institutes of Health in the late 1960s. It recorded reams of data on 50,000 pregnant woman, and followed their children until age 7. The project included more than 300 pairs of twins, most black and poor, and Turkheimer analyzed their data for one of the first papers on the role of genes and environment in low-income families.

His research found that genetics, not environment, accounts for most of the difference in intelligence among affluent students. In other words, students from already stable homes with attentive parents and good food won’t get much smarter if mom and dad spin even more Mozart records cribside.

By contrast, children in low-income families, Turkheimer says, can greatly benefit from environmental enhancements that mitigate the effects of poverty. "What I’ve shown is that family environment has an effect, but you can’t see it unless you look at some really bad families," he says.

Turkheimer’s work was hailed as "groundbreaking" in a front-page article in the Washington Post on September 2, even though a 1977 study by Arthur Jensen at the University of Berkley reached similar conclusions. But Turkheimer’s work is newly significant because it comes in a political climate where ideas like those in The Bell Curve have influenced recent government policy.

"Popular research has pointed to genetics as the overwhelming determinate of intelligence," says Saphira Baker, director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Commission on Children and Families. "Eric’s research shows it’s more complex. It lends support to programs that seek to move families out of economic crisis and focus on children’s development."

That leaves Meg Sewell, local director for the Head Start program, optimistic about the future of her organization. Head Start strives to improve academic performance by offering prenatal and early childhood care to low-income families. But recently, Sewell says, programs like Head Start have taken a back seat to government initiatives that improve teacher pay and set higher academic standards––the goals of such programs as Virginia’s Standards of Learning and the Federal "No Child Left Behind" plan. Congress is currently considering a 1.5 percent funding increase to the $6 billion Head Start program, which Sewell says is merely a cost of living bump.

"It could have an effect," Sewell says of Turkheimer’s research. "It confirmed what many of us working in the field have believed for a long time," she says.

"Psychology has that problem. These things are easy to believe, but hard to show," says Turkheimer.––John Borgmeyer

 

Road worrier
The trip up 29N raises the question, Where is Albemarle headed?

Until recently, drivers headed north on Route 29 noticed a scenic shift as they passed over the South Fork Rivanna River. Crossing the waterway, 29N changed from a wide thoroughfare rushing past asphalt fields, strip malls and big box stores in Albemarle County’s urban ring, to a four-lane highway lined with trees. Sure, subdivisions like Forest Lakes and Hollymead lie just beyond those trees, but they’re invisible from the road. Crossing the river on Route 29 was like leaving a city and entering the country.

All that’s changing now. The County Board of Supervisors has designated north Albemarle as a "growth area," and a series of new developments will radically alter the landscape there. In another growth area, Crozet, the County has hired architects to figure out what kind of experience people want in the town, and to design a plan that will allow it to grow without compromising its identity. No such design team is tackling Route 29—there, a handful of developers are deciding the sights and sounds of north Albemarle. Want to know where that place is headed? Just read the signs.

The first sign you encounter when crossing the Rivanna River’s South Fork designates the road as the 29th Infantry Memorial Highway, and just north of that a small green rectangle claims the road as Seminole Trail. The next sign says "Speed Limit 55," which must be a joke, as cars crest a hill and exceed 60 miles an hour past a sign warning drivers to watch for stopped cars at the southern entrance to Forest Lakes. Across the road, six cell phone towers rise from the trees like steel dandelions, shimmering in the sun.

At the Holly Memorial Gardens cemetery, a white statue of Jesus, with green mold growing on his outstretched arms, stands among fragrant marigolds. A stone tablet carved with calligraphy beseeches the Lord to "give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." A faded billboard commands: "Be Individual." A white plane heading for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Airport floats in the blue sky.

Across from the cemetery, backhoes, bulldozers and dump trucks squeak and huff through about 100 acres of dirt. By spring 2005, J.C. will gaze across the flowered graves into the parking lot of a Target store, one of the "anchor tenants" of the Hollymead Town Center. It won’t actually center any town, but it will be a must-stop shopping destination for much of Central Virginia. The developers––Wendell Wood, Charles Hurt and a consortium called the Kessler Group––will add one northward lane and two southward lanes to Route 29 in front of the development. According to studies by the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Town Center will nearly double the traffic congestion along this stretch of Albemarle County.

Farther north, near the County line, a United Land Corporation sign proclaims "COMING SOON Office, Retail." Judging by the number of signs bearing the names United Land Corp. (owned by Wood) and Virginia Land Company (owned by Hurt), these two men––or whoever can afford to buy their land at a cost of $12 to $18 per square foot––will determine the future of north Albemarle.

Past Airport Road, new strip malls, fast food joints and gas stations mingle with the old Airport Plaza, home to a vacuum cleaner sales and service shop and a log-home builder. Finally, just before you cross into Greene County, the signage indicates "Psychic Readings" and the way to a winery. And three small trees grow from an oval of flowers, memorial to a fatal car crash.––John Borgmeyer

How many lawyers, judges and City officials does it take to tear down, er, preserve a wall?

Marybess McCray Johnson is stuck between a wall and a hard place, you might say.

Johnson is under court order to tear down the northern wall of her building at 224 Court Square, which is also the southern wall of 230 Court Square, owned by Townsquare Associates, the development team of Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene.

In a civil suit filed in 1995, Silverman and Cadgene allege that an 1838 agreement between the two buildings’ former owners gives Townsquare the authority to make Johnson move her wall, which is technically on Silverman and Cadgene’s property. After years of legal back and forth, Charlottesville Circuit Judge Edward Hogshire ruled in February 2002 that Johnson should separate the buildings by removing the wall, which encroaches by about one inch into the front of 230 and by about nine inches into the rear.

Problem is that on August 19, the City’s Board of Architectural Review voted 5-2 to deny Johnson’s application to tear down the wall.

"The decision to deny was fairly clear," says Lynn Heetderks, vice-chair of the BAR, citing the historic and architectural integrity of 224 Court Square. After consulting with City Attorney Lisa Kelly, Heetderks says, the BAR ignored the court order and considered Johnson’s application "as we would any other request."

On Monday, October 6, Johnson asked City Council during its first session of the month to reverse the BAR’s decision. "I guess you could say I’m not happy about this," Johnson said to the councilors. "It’s going to create a lot of problems between those two buildings. But my court order is to [demolish the wall] and I aim to get it done."

Hogshire is currently considering an appeal from Johnson’s lawyers on demolition details. Council should wait for Hogshire’s ruling before deciding on the BAR appeal, Councilors Blake Caravati and Rob Schilling argued on Monday.

"I’d like to know why Mr. Silverman is pursuing this," Schilling wondered, "other than the fact that he can."

Neither Silverman nor Cadgene attended the meeting. Their lawyer, David Franzen, declined to comment on Townsquare’s motivation for the lawsuit.

Mayor Maurice Cox said he met with Silverman, who by press time hadn’t returned calls from C-VILLE. "I don’t want to paraphrase [Silverman]," Cox told Council, "but it had to do with clarifying property. He mentioned a hypothetical expansion." Cox argued that Council, like the BAR, should deny the appeal and stay out of courtroom affairs.

"There’s lots of awkward adjoined spaces like this on historic buildings," Cox said. "I’m concerned that people want to go about separating these things."

With Kevin Lynch out of town, the vote on this issue came to a 2-2 tie, meaning Council will debate the question again at its next meeting. Meanwhile Johnson and Townsquare will be back in court on October 15.

 

All dogs go to college
City Council is about to resolve the great dog debate––maybe.

Council is close to passing a resolution that will create an off-leash dog park on the campus of Piedmont Virginia Community College. The school has agreed to license 10 acres of its grounds along Avon Street Extended for a $40,000 park with trails where dogs can run free. Half the money will come from private donations, with the City and County splitting the rest of the cost. Charlottesville and Albemarle will not pay rent to PVCC. Instead, the two jurisdictions have each agreed to split the annual $2,500 cost to maintain the dog park. Fundraising will begin once the City and County figure how to share liability for the park, says Pat Ploceck, manager of the City’s parks and grounds division. The resolution will likely pass at Council’s next meeting November 3.

The PVCC park is a compromise arising from the great canine confrontation of recent years, when residents living in Woolen Mills complained that off-leash dogs were ruining that neighborhood’s Riverview Park. After months of heated debate––during which the City posted a police officer outside Council chambers to stop dog owners from bringing their pets to meetings––Council in December 2001 passed an ordinance requiring owners to leash their mutts on Fridays through Mondays at Riverview.

Maybe it says something about the quality of life in Charlottesville that the leash law hearings drew more participants to Council meetings than any recent issue (with the possible exception of the past spring’s resolution against war in Iraq). But it may not be over yet.

On Saturday, October 4, the Daily Progress published a letter from Patricia Wilkinson, a self-described "dog person" who says Riverview Park has been abandoned since the leash law took effect, and claims homeless people and "incidents" at the park have made people feel unsafe. She calls for dog lovers to unite and revisit the Riverview leash law.

Plocek suggests the letter’s complaints are merely pet propaganda.

"A lot of dog owners keep saying that, but I constantly see people every time I go there," Plocek says. He says his staff has never seen homeless people living there, and he is not aware of any incidents or police reports from the park. He says neighbors around the park still complain that off-leash dogs run through their property, however.

A visit to the park on Tuesday evening, October 7, confirmed Plocek’s testimony. "I’ve never seen homeless people here," said a man emerging from a mini-van with his daughter and two unleashed Shelties. He says the leash laws haven’t dampened his enthusiasm for Riverview Park.

"We bend the rules a little," their owner explained, pushing an all-terrain stroller down the jogging trail.––John Borgmeyer

 

Halliday’s new chapter
Local library head turns author by making Predicktions

As director of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, John Halliday spends much of his day surrounded by books. Now perhaps he can add another title to those teeming shelves—one he wrote himself. After decades of dreaming, Halliday has recently released his first children’s book, titled Predicktions. His compulsion to write children’s fiction dates back to high school in Long Island, New York, but until a few years ago, he never had time to put pen to paper.

After graduating from Rutgers University with a degree in library administration, Halliday got married and had four children. But in 1997, before he moved to Charlottesville, he got rolling. "One Father’s Day about six years ago," Halliday says, "my wife, as a Father’s Day gift, gave me a Coleman cooler full of sandwiches and sodas and she said, ‘I want you to just go away to one of the local motels for the weekend and write.’"

So Halliday, who counts E.B. White, Toni Morrison and John Steinbeck among his favorite authors, holed up in a $32-a-night hotel on the outskirts of Bellingham, Washington, for three days in front of the warm glow of his bulky Mac Classic computer and started writing. A year later, Predicktions was finished.

Predicktions follows the adventures of Josh Jolly and his three friends, the colorfully named oddball Rainy Day, chubby brainiac Bill Dumper and bossy Kate Haskell as they become sixth graders. Born in the midst of a carnival in small-town Westlake, young Josh is given a mystic board by his fortune-telling aunt, who thinks Josh will make the town famous one day. Josh just wants the board to tell him what to expect from middle school, but it inadvertently helps him save the town from obscurity.

You might expect a lesson learned at the end of a children’s story, but not here. "It’s purely entertainment, so we aren’t moralizing at all," Halliday says.

Halliday, 51, may be the envy of aspiring authors who spend years trying to get the attention of publishers. He found instant success after he dropped his manuscript off in the mail to major New York City publishing house Harper Collins. "And lo and behold, I got a hand-written letter back from an editor saying, ‘Gee, just really love your book. We’d like to work with you on it,’" Halliday says. When that editor left Harper Collins, she took the manuscript with her to Simon and Schuster, where it was published.

Predicktions isn’t Halliday’s first published book. While that one languished in revision purgatory at Simon and Schuster, Halliday moved on and cranked out a second work—a darker book for young adults about abduction and murder called Shooting Monarchs, which came out in March 2003.

"People say to me, ‘Gee, John, how do you churn these books out so quickly?’ Well, for me it wasn’t that quick. It was a long, long process," he says.—Jennifer Pullinger