If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought it was a straight hip-hop show before it began. Three mics, two turntables and a mixer set up at the Paramount, ready for some crowd-starting, hand-waving DJ to kick things off. Instead, the near-capacity crowd got 53-year-old Steve Earle, who stalked to the center of the stage and launched into his set with a fury.

And for the first half of that set it was just Earle, the stand-up mic, and his ever-revolving cast of guitars. He blazed through some of his standards while the decks sat unmanned—“The Devil’s Right Hand” to “Someday.” After five quick songs, Earle stepped back, took a breath and announced “This one goes out to what’s-her-name, wherever the hell she is,” then began picking out “Now She’s Gone” before moving into “Goodbye,” singing, “Was I off somewhere, or just too high?”

Devil’s right-hand man: Steve Earle sent a packed Paramount Theater to hillbilly heaven.

Sure, nobody can do regret with such swagger, but then defiance has always been Earle’s thing, even if it is his outlaw persona giving the finger to his more reflective side. There’s a sweet tension between the two, the ache of loss and the fuck-it-all attitude. Earle embodied both between the two songs, switching harmonicas and saying, “Same girl, different harmonica.” If this is what Charlottesville came to see—the wounded, yet quick-witted cynic—then that’s what it got, at least in the beginning.

Video for Steve Earle’s "City of Immigrants."

But when Earle came to the songs from his latest album, Washington Square Serenade, things changed. While he vamped on Johnny Cash’s “Tennessee Stud,” Neil McDonald strode out from stage right wearing a white Triumph motorcycle t-shirt and took his place at the decks, licked his fingertips and dropped in a looped beat as Earle leaned into the opening riff of “Tennessee Blues,” the first cut from Serenade.
 
And for the next five songs, Earle was backed by McDonald’s decks, suddenly riding head-nodding beats that would have even brought a smile to the face of established hip-hop beatmaker DJ Premier. The rhythm-heavy riff from “Jericho Road” fit snugly into the space between the boom-baps.

Serenade is a product of Pro Tools, digital mixing software that Earle, one of analogue’s most fervent defenders in the past, had sat down to try his hand at. “I finally tested positive for Pro Tools,” he said wryly in an interview.

Earle had played one of his newest songs before McDonald’s entrance, the spike-driving “Oxycontin Blues,” on a silver resonator. But the combination of his finger-picking and the pounding beats backing him quickly became the spine of the show, Earle clearly energized by the new setup.

When Earle unpacked what he calls his Pro Tools “rig” in his new Village apartment, he set out to make a folk record arrived at by hip-hop rules. What he displayed in Charlottesville was the end product, a mandolin and a mixer, two seemingly disparate elements yoked together, a perfect form for all the contradictions Earle happily embraces.

As the deadline nears for the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority (RSWA) to release its final report on its solid waste strategic plan, there is one idea that the head of the RSWA isn’t considering. It hardly seems controversial—consolidating curbside trash and recycling pickup in the city and county—but because of an 18-year-old agreement, it’s off the table.

Tom Frederick, the executive director of the RSWA, says that the 1990 organizational agreement between Charlottesville and Albemarle County states that the RSWA “is not to be in the business of collecting waste off the curb. We are more in the business of managing planning on the mission we were assigned in the agreement.”

The city currently contracts its curbside recycling program with Allied Waste. With the exception of newsprint, the county leaves curbside recycling up to individual residents. In an RSWA survey [pdf], county residents voiced strong support for a county curbside recycling program.

Officials aren’t enthusiastic about the idea of extending curbside recycling to the county’s urban ring around Charlottesville.

City councilors and county supervisors have expressed the need to work together towards sustainability. So why not combine the city and the urbanized county into one pickup program?

Aside from the prohibitions of the organization agreement, there are economic factors.

“There’s a concern there that by government action we can’t force the private contractors out of the business,” said Ken Boyd, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors. “Personally, if we can get the private sector to do it for us at a reasonable cost, I’d much rather leave it in the private sector.”

Boyd does say, though, that having two separate collection systems in an area divided by an arbitrary border isn’t the most efficient setup. “We could do it much more efficiently as a combined body right now,” he says, “but we have different ideas about how to do it right now.”

While Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris acknowledges the city and county operate very differently, he wouldn’t be opposed to looking at collection in the city and county with an eye toward combining the two.

“I think it makes sense to look and see where we can find economies of scale and create a more efficient system,” says Norris. “If the strategic planning process points out the value of greater collaboration and combining both systems, I would be very open to that idea.”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

When you’re trying to scratch out a billion and a half dollars, the last thing you want to see is an economic downturn. So how has our recent financial malaise affected UVA’s $3 billion capital campaign?

Let’s just say University fundraisers haven’t exactly been forced into selling pencils and apples on West Main Street.

UVA President John Casteen has to be on his game at regional campaign events. “In many ways, the President is also the chief institutional fundraiser,” says Bob Sweeney, senior vice president for development and public affairs.

UVA took in over $472 million in 2007 alone, putting it slightly ahead of schedule in its quest to bank $3 billion. The campaign currently shows over $1.6 billion in donations at its halfway point, and according to Bob Sweeney, senior vice president for development and public affairs, big-money donations, like the deep-pocketed donors themselves, won’t be affected by the vicissitudes of the nation’s economy.

“Where it does have an effect are those critically important gifts of $100,000 and $50,000, where most of those individuals have their assets in public equities,” says Sweeney. “We’re still ahead of schedule, we’ve got our fingers crossed and we’re redoubling our efforts to make sure we’re in front of those prospects.”

What? You thought those were the aforementioned big money donors? Oh, no, no, no. We’re talking about those folks who can fork over gifts in eight figures. Those five- and six-figure donors, though, they might be taking more of a wait-and-see approach.

“Some of them will say, ‘Let’s step back and see what the economy does before we make this commitment,’” says Sweeney. “People are a little more cautious.”

Still, the campaign’s cash flow is “neck-and-neck” with last year’s, he says. Now that it has entered the “public” phase (after what Sweeney called “one of the loudest silent phases that anyone could have”), giving has increased 28 percent from two years ago and has doubled from last year.

And there will be no letting up. That means President John Casteen will keep wracking up the frequent flyer miles. Last year, Casteen made appearances at all six “Regional Campaign Celebrations,” trekking to Birmingham, Wilmington, Boston, Houston and two in Dallas. The Celebrations feature full pomp and bring in all of UVA’s heavy hitters to make targeted pitches (read: hard sells) to the major prospects from those areas.

For those prospects who make their millions in struggling economic sectors (think real estate, service industries and anything with “investment bank” in its name), they might get the not-so-hard sell.

“You try to be a little more thoughtful about those individuals,” Sweeney says.

If all else fails, though, there is always the Don of Donations, Mr. Casteen himself, to work the room at each Celebration.

“For us,” says Sweeney, “those are pretty much command performances. In many ways, the President is also the chief institutional fundraiser.”

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Among the P.R. flotsam and jetsam swirling in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 16 decision on lethal injection, a semantic battle over the death penalty continues in Virginia. On April 1, Democratic Governor Tim Kaine granted what he called “a temporary reprieve” of the April 8 execution of Edward Nathaniel Bell while awaiting the Court’s ruling.

But 15 days later, after the Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky’s method of lethal injection was constitutional, Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell sent a press release stating, “Now that the Court has ruled, the Governor has rightly lifted his moratorium on executions in Virginia.”

Governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat, says he granted a death penalty reprieve. Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell calls it a “moratorium,” which is apparently a scarier word to those who want to keep death chambers in full swing

So what’s the difference between Kaine’s “reprieve” and McDonnell’s “moratorium?” In practice, nothing. But in the fight over the death penalty, a reprieve by any other name just doesn’t rile the pro-death penalty crowd as readily.

“To call it a moratorium is what the political opponents of Kaine called it,” says Jon Sheldon, board president of Virginians Against the Death Penalty. “I think to use the word ‘moratorium’ is sort of a buzzword for the Republicans to use to attack Kaine for being prudent. The Republicans know that it’s a good buzzword because it’ll get their constituency all in a lather.”

And even though Virginia’s execution machine as been fired up once again after the Court’s decision on Baze v. Rees, Sheldon says that Baze opens Virginia’s lethal injection process to the same kind of procedural challenges that were brought in Baze.

Kentucky uses two safeguards that Virginia doesn’t: medically trained IV teams in the death chamber and anesthesia monitoring of inmates. Because Virginia’s standards fall below Kentucky’s, says Sheldon, it may be open to challenges using the standards set in Baze.

“It appears under Baze,” he says, “a judge could say, ‘Virginia doesn’t meet this standard.’”

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

(Read Part One here)

Just a few days shy of the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, Governor Tim Kaine signed mental health care reform legislation that some mental health care advocates and survivors say will have disastrous effects.

On April 9, Kaine signed two omnibus bills that provide the system with a little under $42 million while lowering the standard of commitment, making it easier to force people into treatment that some critics say does more harm than good. The reform legislation is meant to bring people suffering from mental illness into the system before they reach a moment of crisis. But mental health care consumer advocates say the changes may have the opposite effect.

Frank Blankenship, the chair of MindFreedom’s Affiliate Support Committee, thinks that the mental health reform will expand forced treatment with drugs at the expense of alternative care for voluntary patients.

Bringing more people into the mental health system via loosened standards of commitment will stretch the resources of a system that is already taxed, critics argue. The increased number of people involuntarily committed, they say, will take resources away from voluntary service for people who choose to enter treatment.

“We currently don’t provide voluntary services in this state at even close to an adequate level,” says Alison Hymes, who was a member of the Taskforce on Commitment of the Virginia Chief Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.

“All this money is going to go for outpatient commitment and crisis beds. So we’re essentially saying we won’t serve you until you’re in crisis.”

Resources at community service boards like Region Ten are tight, and with more people coming into the system through involuntary commitment, patients who seek treatment are in danger of being shut out. Brian Parrish, the executive director of VOCAL, a Virginia advocate group for a mental health system that is more directed by consumers, says that the loosened standard could push out people who genuinely want mental health services.

“Currently, there aren’t enough beds for folks who want to get services,” says Parrish. “People are going to have to be put in a bed in order to be reviewed, and there’s already a lack of beds. So I think you’re going to end up with people being [temporarily detained] against their will, and there will be less beds for people who want them.”

For some advocates, more beds are not the answer. Frank Blankenship, the chair of MindFreedom’s Affiliate Support Committee, is fighting for drug-free treatment for mental illness. The more people that enter the current mental health care system, argues Blankenship, the more people will be forced into treatment that includes psychotropic and neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine and Haldol.

Blankenship says that he is concerned that bringing more people into the mental health care system will simply mean more people will be prescribed drugs. And because these people will be entering the system against their will, or will be under court-ordered treatment, drugs will be forced on them. Treatment, he says, should be drug-free and peer-based.

Hymes agrees that more people will “absolutely” be put on psychotropic and neuroleptic drugs. “The mandatory outpatient commitment is about forcing drugs on people,” she says.

State Delegate Rob Bell, who chaired the mental health subcommittee, says consumers were encouraged to talk about the effects and side effects of drugs in front of the committee.

“The pharmacology is getting better,” says Bell. “Everyone is hopeful in the future that we’ll have a better understanding of how the brain functions. But it’s not perfect.”

One of the major faults survivors and consumer advocates find with the system, and its reforms that Kaine signed into law, is that along with being woefully underfunded, it offers no alternative treatments. Parrish says that for years, there’s been a movement to make mental health services more consumer-driven. According to a 1999 Ohio Department of Mental Health study, consumers’ perceptions that their needs are being met are the best predictors of positive outcomes.

“Everybody understands that coercive [care] is not the model,” says Bell. “The vast majority of the care for the mentally ill is voluntarily delivered.”

But instead of putting money into what they see as a coercive system, some advocates want the state to fully fund voluntary services.

“That would make a huge difference,” says Hymes, “if people are getting care when they’re ready for it and needed it.”

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When the general manager of the Tidewater Fibre Corp (TFC) recycling facility in Chester stands up in front of 15 visitors and says that 95 percent of the facility’s work is done by manual labor, he is to be believed. Citizens of Charlottesville: Recycling all your plastic, metal and paper may be doing its part in saving the earth, but it is slowly crushing the souls of 38 people for 12 hours every day.

That’s the number of workers on the 12-hour day shift at the TFC Recycling facility, located just outside Richmond. It is here that all of the curb-side recycling from the city comes to be sorted. Roughly a truckload a day arrives from Charlottesville, nearly a 90-mile trip.

A line of workers toil for 12-hour shifts at a Chester County plant, manually sorting the recycling from Charlottesville and other localities.

And for exactly half a day, workers stand at conveyer belts as ton after ton of waste streams past, picking out plastic soda bottles and milk jugs—just two of the valuable materials that TFC can in turn sell to places as far away as China. The conveyer belts that make up the guts of the 60,000-square-foot facility drone on all day, only shutting down come lunch break. The noise is inescapable. It feels as if everything—the catwalks, the walls, even the concrete floors—is constantly moving in concert with the machines’ hum.

Charlottesville’s curb-side recycling finds its way to Chester via a middleman. The city has a contract with Allied Waste to collect the recycling that city residents set out once a week.
That material ends up at TFC. But the five-year contract with Allied Waste is entering its last year, and if that contract is not renewed, it could mean changes to the city’s recycling program.

One of the changes could lead to bigger recycling bins, called “Totters,” plastic containers about 3′ tall that are equipped with wheels and a handle. Not only can they hold more materials, but they can be collected with an automated truck.

The upfront costs of using the totters would be large, says Steve Lawson, the city’s public service manager. But the money an automated collection process saves would offset those costs.

“The price of the bins would probably be partially offset by the reduction in the collection contract,” Lawson says. “It’s in our best interest to have as much automated collection as possible. And we think it’s in our best interest to have Totters on the street.”

Since the city does not have a contract with TFC, the end point for city recycling might not remain in Chester. But for now, all the things we don’t want—but don’t want to throw out—run past these 38 people until each of our individual efforts at recycling becomes a blur.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

In March, University of Virginia police charged UVA student Mike Brown—a cornerback on the football team—with grand larceny after he allegedly broke into a car and made off with items worth more than $3,400.

It turns out Brown is in good (or bad) company. Though the number of vehicle break-ins in the city and county dropped from 2006 to 2007, both areas average more than one reported theft from a vehicle per day.

“A lot of car break-ins are crimes of opportunity,” says Lt. Todd Hopwood of the Albemarle County Police Department. “We’re talking about things as little as spare change in your dashboard.”

Thefts from vehicles in the city dropped to 426 in 2007 from 451 in 2006. County numbers fell to 527 in 2007 from 539 in 2006.

In 2007, there were 426 reported thefts from vehicles in the city, down from 451 in 2006. That same year, the county totaled 527 thefts, down from 539 in 2006. UVA Police reported 15 thefts from vehicles, a dramatic drop from 51 in 2006.

However, if you park on the street, you may want to avoid the UVA area. High numbers of car break-ins in both the city and county are concentrated around Grounds.

The Charlottesville Police Department breaks the city into six police districts. District six, which surrounds the UVA campus and stretches from Barracks Road south to Stribling Avenue, recorded 108 vehicle break-ins last year, by far the most in the city, though that still dropped by 26 percent from 2006. The sixth district includes the Alderman Road neighborhood, 14th Street NW and most of Grady Avenue.

The city’s easternmost district that runs from Pen Park to the railroad tracks southeast of the Downtown Mall recorded 75 thefts from vehicles, the second most in the city. That number increased from 69 break-ins in 2006.

In the county, thefts from vehicles occurred more frequently along the major thoroughfares of Route 250 and Route 29. Hopwood says that county police have seen an increase in thefts from vehicles while they were parked in church parking lots.

The greatest number of thefts occurred in the county police district that encompasses the Fashion Square Mall, running along the east side of 29N. There were 77 reported thefts last year, down from 101 in 2006.

“Somebody is walking through the mall parking lot and sees something inside of a car and goes in and steals whatever’s right there, plain and evident,” says Hopwood.

But just north of Fashion Square, in the district that includes Hollymead, thefts from vehicles more than tripled. In 2006, there were 14 reported car break-ins. In 2007, that number jumped to 46.

So how do you avoid having your car broken into? The best advice, Hopwood says, is to keep anything valuable—dimes and quarters included—out of plain sight.

And you may want to avoid Scott Stadium.

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