We’ll put just about anyone in The HotSeat—visiting performers, interesting professionals, local tastemakers—as long as they don’t mind answering a few of our hard-hitting questions (asking about a go-to Bodo’s order is the height of journalism, folks). Here are a few of our favorite answers from 2024.
Grad student/lecturer Chandler Jennings
Most embarrassing moment: A few years ago, I ran into an acquaintance from high school. We chatted for a bit, and then she kind of waved goodbye at me. I didn’t realize that it was a wave and reached out and clasped her hand, interlocking fingers, and we kind of rocked them back and forth for a sec before I disentangled and ran away.
Actress/musician Schuyler Fisk
Best advice you ever got: “You meet the same people on the way up that you meet on the way down.”—My mom [Sissy Spacek]
Podcast hosts Mendy St. Ours and Bree Luck
How did you settle on “Well, That Was Awkward” as a title and concept?
Mendy: Pretty much every day, people tell us about something awkward in their lives. Sometimes it’s a small story—like going to a PTA meeting with your skirt tucked into your drawers—or a BIG story, like your ex showing up at your wedding with a clown nose on.
Bree: That happened to me.
Local Girl Scouts Penny (age 10) and Beatrice (age 10)
What’s something about Girl Scouts that people would be surprised to learn?
Penny: We learn knife skills.
Most embarrassing moment:
Beatrice: When I accidentally said “farted” in front of the class instead of “started.”
Trivia host and Monticello tour guide Olivia Brown
If you could be reincarnated as a person or thing, what would you be? I think I’d like to be a millennial’s house plant. Just put me in a nice sunny spot, doted on day in and out, happily growing.
Charlottesville Ballet teacher Izabelly Gleed
What have you forgotten today? To buy eggs at the grocery store—I was too focused on planning my ballet classes!
Virginia Film Festival Artistic Director Ilya Tovbis
Why is supporting the arts important? Especially in our ever-more polarized society, I believe the arts are our best, most honest, and most direct way of connecting to, and understanding, those different from ourselves.
Comedian Brian Regan
What’s something about your job that people would be surprised to learn? I’m not funny every waking moment. And I’m not funny at all when I’m asleep.
Writer, organizer, director John Gibson
Favorite Charlottesville venue: Various basements, leaky warehouses, overgrown gardens, and fire traps, all long since condemned or torn down, replaced with things fancier, safer, and saner.
Musician Robert Earl Keen
Proudest accomplishment: Proudest accomplishment objectively is my two daughters. My oldest—when she was 5—she won the Miss Apple Dumpling Beauty Contest. It knocked me out of my chair and I was so proud.
Theater Director Bob Chapel
Favorite curse word? Or favorite word: (I’m) Sorry.
Boar’s Head falconry experiences with Goldie and Wily (above) are offered daily and require a reservation. Staff photo.
A delightful side effect of writing this column is that people in my life now give me ideas based on their bucket lists and more obscure interests. When a friend said she’d always wanted to try falconry and asked if I would join her, “Heck yeah!” was my nigh-instant response.
Like many wheezy, middle-aged folks, the pandemic afforded me time to become emotionally invested in the birds frequenting the feeders on my deck—to the extent that I intervened when a hawk was trying to make off with one of my mourning dove friends.
In my youth, the 1982 cult classic The Beastmaster tickled my imagination. I longed to have similar furry and feathered friends, like Dar’s slippery-pawed ferrets Kodo and Podo and his majestic eagle Sharak, whose eyes he could see through. At every ren faire and theme park my family visited, the raptor shows were a must. This is all to say I’ve always been enthralled by birds of prey yet never knew much about them, until now.
What
The Falconry Experience at Boar’s Head.
Why
Birds of prey are very cool.
How it went
While one can’t literally learn to fly by simply touching a falcon, figuratively I floated home.
At the Boar’s Head Outfitters desk, we met our falconer. He gave us each a falcon glove and bottled water before we headed out. In hindsight, I wish I’d left the water behind. Yes, I drank it. Yes, hydration is essential, but I’m a Gen Xer (therefore, part camel), and can make it an hour-and-a-half without needing water. What I found myself wanting during the experience was free hands for bird-holding or picture-taking.
As we walked to the falcon house (obvi not the technical term), our guide provided info about American falconry and regaled us with stories about the Boar’s Head’s falcons, Wily and Goldie. Mischievous Wily (think Wile E. Coyote vibes), an African auger buzzard, would be our companion for the experience. Falconry includes different types of birds of prey, such as falcons, hawks, and others, like our buzzard Wily, who is more akin to a red-tailed hawk. After collecting Wily from his abode, we walked to a picturesque spot near a pond where our falconer showed us what Wily can do.
Tempted by bits of unhatched chicks still dripping with yolk (yes, the visuals still haunt my dreams and inspire the urge to rewash my hands to avoid salmonella), Wily flew back and forth between the falconer’s glove and nearby trees. Our guide explained that it’s the food that motivates the birds, not a relationship with the handler, and that one must walk a careful line when feeding Wily to avoid him getting “fed up.” If a falcon gets full, the bird is not motivated to go back to the handler.
Soon our falconer invited us to hold Wily on our gloved wrists, after he tempted him to join us with more chicken. Even though we’d been awestruck by the beating of Wily’s wings as he flew over and around us, nothing prepared me for the rush of him alighting on my outstretched arm. Falcons pack a lot of awesome power per inch, weighing in at just a couple pounds though they have about 200 PSI grip strength in their talons. It felt humbling for Wily to hold onto my arm. At one point, he did his bat impression, dangling from my arm inverted.
As I looked to our falcon whisperer for instructions, Wily let go and toppled unceremoniously onto the dirt. Let me tell you, falcons’ extraordinary vision extends to giving superior side-eye. Despite my faux pas, my friend and I must have passed the vibe test, because our falconer commented that Wily spent a lot of time with us during our experience.
Resilience coach Renee Branson encourages renegade resilience—the ability to pick your battles and avoid situations where you’re forced to repeatedly overcome trauma. Photo by Eze Amos.
Renee Branson considered herself a resilient person. She suffered a sexual assault in her late teens but soldiered on. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Ohio State University and a master’s in counseling psychology at the University of Colorado Denver. She built an outwardly happy home life and went into business helping others overcome their own adversity.
But things began to slip. Branson’s first marriage failed. She was inwardly unhappy. Finally, decades after her initial trauma, she realized she was the wrong kind of resilient. She was practicing what she calls “Rocky resilience” in her new book, Resilience Renegade.
“I was operating from this place of constantly living with my boxing gloves on. It was self-sabotaging,” Branson says. “I realized there was a different way to operate.”
Branson, who grew up in Ohio but has lived and worked in Charlottesville for the past 14 years, discovered what she now calls “renegade resilience.” Unlike Rocky resilience, renegade resilience is the ability to pick your battles and avoid situations where you’re forced to repeatedly overcome trauma. It’s the ability to listen to your needs and stand up for them. It’s being proactive rather than reactive.
Branson isn’t the only therapist or researcher thinking about resilience. While the concept traditionally falls under the umbrella of psychological constructs like “emotional regulation” and “cognitive flexibility,” and has taken a backseat to buzzword attributes like “grit,” resilience is having its moment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are thinking about the ways we bounce back from trauma. And in November, the peer-reviewed journal American Psychologist published a special issue on the topic, “Rethinking Resilience and Posttraumatic Growth,” that “aims to provide a foundation for a new generation of resilience … research.”
Among other things, the journal’s special issue takes on the definition of the term resilience, examining it in the context of community support, systemic societal issues, and the way it’s been studied for decades.
“The general advice I would offer anyone who is thinking about resilience, self control, or other psychological processes is to try to avoid the fundamental attribution error,” says Benjamin Converse, an associate professor of public policy and psychology at the University of Virginia. “That is, we have a general tendency to try to explain people’s behavior by appealing to personality while neglecting the power of social situations.”
Understanding resilience
According to Stefanie Sequeira, an assistant professor of psychology at UVA, people tend to observe others who bounce back from tragedy and think of them as being intrinsically resilient.
“Resilience is this process of adapting well when we are facing adversity—health problems, natural disasters, relationship problems,” Sequeira says. “Adapting requires flexibility, but that is a skill we can develop. Resilience is not a personality trait.”
Thinking of resilience as something we’re born with can actually do us harm, Sequeira says. The mindset might make people decide they are incapable of adapting to hardship and thriving, or that resilient folks don’t feel things deeply. Sequeira says being resilient doesn’t mean you don’t experience negative emotions. Indeed, experiencing sadness is critical for resilience.
In the introductory article to the recent special issue of American Psychologist, the editors likewise call resilience “the ability to adapt successfully to adverse events.” The guest editors go on to say that resilience springs from two sources: both the psychological and social resources within individuals and communities.
Bethany Teachman, the UVA psych department’s director of clinical training, says that part of the conversation today is recognizing that individual actors are often less important than the systems making things difficult for them. In other words, clinicians never put the onus on their patients to solve all their problems or be resilient on their own. “We want to say, ‘you are trying to navigate the system you are in,’ as opposed to saying, ‘this a weakness in you that you are struggling with,’” Teachman says.
According to Teachman, current events like the COVID pandemic, global wars, and the recent U.S. election make overcoming adversity as ubiquitous as ever in clinical psychology. At the end of the day, clinicians help people navigate the hard things in life, and resilience is key for overcoming challenging emotions, relationships, and situations.
Thinking of resilience as something we’re born with can actually do us harm, says Stefanie Sequeira, an assistant professor of psychology at UVA. Photo by Eze Amos.
Enhancing resilience
If resilience is a systemic phenomenon, anyone—from young people to adults—can grow their resilience. For parents, that might mean giving children the “right scaffolding to work through problems,” Teachman says. At the same time, an overprotective environment can hinder resilience development.
Adults who may have failed to develop the social systems necessary to enhance resilience aren’t stuck. Teachman offers several approaches, such as practicing mindfulness during hard times: gain control of your attention, be aware of what you are focusing on, and recognize that you can change your focus rather than being reactive. “That leads people to develop the acceptance they need,” Teachman says.
Clinicians often use motivational interviewing to overcome trauma. If patients feel unsure about whether or how to make a change, the clinician’s job is to help them recognize their desires, abilities, reasons, and needs. (Teachman suggests remembering the acronym DARN.) Through motivational interviewing, individuals facing adversity can find that they want to make a change and have the ability to make a change, why they should change, and the support they require to make it all happen.
Resilience can also be built on what Teachman calls “behavioral activation,” or recognizing that you are overwhelmed, taking small steps to re-engage, and finding pleasure in small rewards. Cognitive reappraisal is another technique. Say you want to be resilient after being fired from your job. The resilient person focuses on taking action on the opportunity, rather than dwelling on why the hardship happened.
“You want to look at the ways you are withdrawing from a situation or avoiding it and re-engage, even if it is a small step,” Teachman says. “It could be as simple as calling a friend.”
Still, it’s difficult to tell yourself simply to change the way you feel, Sequeira says. Folks suffering from anxiety can’t just stop being anxious. Clinicians must therefore find ways to help their patients embrace change, notice “thinking traps,” and avoid catastrophizing. “It can be helpful to think about times you have felt like this before and how you bounced back” from adversity, Sequeira says.
Branson suggests considering what is physically happening to your body in times of stress. If you’re having a difficult interaction with a colleague or loved one, tell yourself that your cortisol levels are high and you can do things to lower them—practice a slow breathing technique, step away from the immediate conversation, or simply take a walk.
Community resilience
Like individuals, communities can be resilient. So, how do you know if you live in a resilient community? Branson says she sees evidence of Charlottesville’s resilience, but she also sees room for improvement. “We could be more brave and more proactive versus reactive,” she says.
Branson has transitioned from a traditional therapy practice to working with law firms and other organizations, including nonprofits, in recent years. In her work, she’s found people throughout the C’ville community who provide the services needed to help people be resilient.
But as it is for individuals, resilience is not a have-it-or-don’t-have-it phenomenon in communities, Branson says. It lies on a continuum.
“One of the things I say in my book is that resilience has several levers,” she says. “We might have times when one lever for resilience is low. For me, after the election, my ability to self-soothe was low. So I am trying to push up the lever on that while also building connections.”
Sequeira points out that research shows loneliness is detrimental to our health, and people are struggling with isolation now more than ever due to remote work and social media. To be more resilient, she says we have to “make social connections, develop relationships, find other people in the community that share the same values as you.” Community groups can not only be a source of support, but they can also give one a sense of purpose.
Parents can help guide the social systems needed to build resilience in their children, Sequeira says. Resilience keys for young people include sticking to a routine, having a sense of control, and meeting small, achievable goals—not to mention sound nutrition, hydration, and sleep.
“Teens want control, they want agency,” Sequeira says. “They are supposed to be departing from their parents and want to feel like they have some control over their environment. So for example, instead of telling teens, ‘you need sleep,’ you might ask them, ‘how are you sleeping and how is that making you feel?’” Taking a break from social media and avoiding behaviors that are “mood congruent,” like listening to sad songs when you’re sad, are also good ideas.
In soliciting articles about resilience, the American Psychologist special issue editors found several recurring themes in the research, including reimagining ways to conceptualize adversity, how we study resilience, and pathways for enhancing resilience. But what emerges most often is how we think about resilience for marginalized communities.
Teachman points out that there are some groups, such as people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, that are repeatedly put into situations where they face adversity and attack. Those people are more likely to develop psychological issues as a result of trauma, according to Teachman, but they are also among the most likely to develop resilience.
“I think it is a really important group to highlight,” she says. “There are costs to being resilient all the time. We can’t just teach people how to cope and think that will solve all their problems.”
Bethany Teachman, the UVA psych department’s director of clinical training, says clinicians never put the onus on their patients to solve all their problems or be resilient on their own. Photo by Eze Amos.
Rethinking resilience
Can a person have too much resilience? Like so many things in clinical psychology, the answer depends on term definition. “You cannot overdose on resilience, but there might be times when you see yourself as a highly resilient person, and that can get in the way,” Sequeira says.
Some of the clients Sequeira has worked with say they feel invalidated by the word resilience. It sounds like an individual-level skill, and they’re turned off by the idea that they just have to cope with all the bad things in their lives.
For her part, Branson doesn’t completely discount Rocky resilience, the ability to take punches and stagger back up. We need Rocky resilience. But for folks in marginalized communities, being resilient becomes too heavy a burden after so many knockdowns.
Renegade resilience, on the other hand, is a long-term solution.
“We have to put ourselves first and nurture our own needs,” Branson says. “When it really started resonating with me, both in my own life as a survivor and working with other survivors, was when I realized resilience is what sustains us.”
So often, we feel like life is about getting past whatever is plaguing us. Maybe it is a severe trauma, or maybe it’s just that ever-present feeling that “as soon as I get through this week, things will slow down.” Branson says that’s no way to live.
Think about the way the heart works, she suggests. Your heart relies on valves to keep certain things in and other things out. In the world of renegade resilience, those valves are “boundaries and vulnerability.” Our boundaries tell the world what is and what is not okay. Our vulnerability allows us to stay open to social connections and be our authentic selves.
“Renegade resilience is something that we don’t have to wait for; it is something we can start to practice now,” Branson says. “We don’t jump out of a plane, then make sure our parachute is buckled up. Prioritizing ourselves is one of the most generous things we can do.”
Central Virginia Sporting Clays combines skill and intuition in its group lessons. Photo by Stephen Barling.
Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of shooting skeet. I must’ve seen it in a Bugs Bunny cartoon or something. My father liked hunting, and to varying degrees, family members enjoyed the venison from his efforts. I grew up around guns and, therefore, grew up with a healthy respect for them.
During grad school, I frequented a gun range, learning to fire just about everything it had. The unfortunate context for my interest at that time was that someone in my life had made threats with a firearm, and my thinking was that if I had to take a gun away from someone, I’d better know how to use it. What I didn’t expect was how much I enjoyed learning about the different weapons and firing them under safe conditions at a gun range using paper targets.
With stationary targets, I’m a decent shot. Still, I longed to try something like skeet, with moving targets. After not shooting for 20 years, I decided to cross skeet off the ol’ bucket list. I called Central Virginia Sporting Clays, and my education began. There are several popular shotgun sports: trap, skeet, and sporting clays. The main difference is how the clays move. With sporting clays, they can go in any direction. I scheduled a group lesson and donned my Elmer Fudd hat.
What
Shooting sporting clays.
Why
Because I’ve always wanted to yell “Pull!” and shoot a moving inanimate target.
How it went
Many clays exploded that day.
From Charlottesville, it’s a bit of a trek to get to Central Virginia Sporting Clays in Palmyra, but IMO it’s well worth the effort. The CVSC site says map apps may not get you there, but friends joining me used their apps with no problem.
Upon arrival, we met up with our instructor who grabbed shotguns before we headed to the five-stand area. Our knowledgeable teacher explained how sporting clay shooting works, shared safety information, and distributed hearing and eye protection. The most Yoda thing he conveyed to us was that shooting sporting clays is more about relying on one’s intuition than aiming.
My friends encouraged me to go first, because they’re kind and I coordinated the outing—but probably more so because the older I get, the less I care about embarrassing myself. The five-stand area has—as you might assume—five wooden shooting stands in a row. After sidling up to a stand, the instructor demonstrated how to load the shotgun properly and coached me on my form. A remote control launched targets from clay throwers in different positions around a clearing in front of the stands. Some clays launched toward the stands while others moved away. Some crossed from the sides, and one thrower skipped clays across the ground to mimic landbound animals (sorry, bunnies!).
My goal was to hit one clay. If I did that, mission accomplished—everything else was gravy. The first clay launched, and I clipped it. I hit three out of four clays in my first round and felt like the queen of the world. But I had just been hitting the edge of clays, making small bits pop off, and I wanted to make a target explode. The instructor repeated the initial training process with each of us, adjusting for our different dominant eyes, body types, stances, and firing quirks. After he finished, we were all breaking clays. I learned that I really enjoy shooting clays—at least trying to—and that I have a proclivity to double tap. Sometimes crossing something off your bucket list results in a new hobby. I know I’ll be back.
Draft horse Big John stands at an imposing 20 hands tall (that’s 6'8"). Like Colby, he lives on the farm as an “organization ambassador,” and won’t be put up for adoption. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Colby’s Crew started with one horse and one decision from the heart.
Colby, a 4-year-old chestnut stallion with white markings, had run out of options. Allison (Ally) Smith, an experienced equestrian studying nursing and training horses on the side, saw an online post about him: “Bound for slaughter. Needs experienced handler.”
“He was flashy and beautiful, and they were only asking $875,” Ally recalls. She bought him, sight unseen.
Ally’s wife Olivia, who is active on social media, posted a video on Facebook of Colby in the kill pen (where animals are held before being shipped to slaughter). “This was July 2020, the middle of the pandemic, when TikTok was just taking off,” she says, “and the video blew up.”
Thirty days later, the shipper arrived at Ally’s family’s Warrenton farm with Colby. The horse was spirited, she had been told; in reality, he was almost feral. The truck driver was afraid to go into the van, so Ally walked in with a lead rope and brought Colby out. “The shipper’s mouth dropped open,” Olivia recalls. “Ally was yelling at her father, ‘Close the gate! Close the gate!’ because she knew if Colby got loose in the field we’d never catch him.”
That’s when Ally turned to Olivia and said, “I’m going to ride him.”
Ally went out to the paddock 10 times a day, working to build Colby’s trust. He was in poor condition and had clearly been mistreated, kicking and biting at any touch. But Ally’s patience and calm won out, as she and Colby developed a deep bond. Within a month he was letting her ride him. Olivia filmed and posted the whole process, and created an internet phenom. By early 2021, Ally and Olivia decided to take on another rescue; then came two more. And then they met Big John.
“We went to an auction in West Virginia one weekend in April 2021,” Ally recalls. “We were just going to look, strolling around, and I went by this stall and said, ‘Oh my God!’ I hadn’t been around draft horses before—this guy didn’t even fit in the stall.” She ran to get her wife, and when they came back a girl was riding Big John around.
Ally Smith and Colby, the horse she rescued in 2020, who later became an internet phenom. Photo by Tristan Williams.
“I looked up, and up, and up,” Olivia says. (Big John is a Belgian, the second-largest draft breed, and he’s 20 hands—which is 6’8″ at the shoulder.) “He was so lame, and he was exhausted. His feet were in terrible shape, he had scars, he had sores, but he was trying to do whatever was asked of him.”
This time it was Olivia who said, “I’m going to buy that horse.”
She started posting Big John videos and pleas for donations, and her online followers responded: “We had $5,000 pledged in 15 minutes.” Fortunately, their trailer was large enough for Big John (“I was scared at first, but he was so gentle,” says Ally), and a neighbor had a field available for his quarantine. When he was released into the field, the giant Belgian who had been worked almost to death took a long roll and then a good look around. “Then he kind of collapsed,” recalls Olivia. “He had been drugged to get him through the auction.”
That was when the pair decided they wanted to save horses that had reached the bottom.
“We hadn’t started out thinking of this as a career,” Olivia says. “But the internet was pushing us along, saying, ‘You need to start a 501(c)(3).’” Colby’s Crew Rescue was founded in 2021, and in 2022 the couple moved to Keswick to build the organization, while Ally continues her graduate nursing studies at UVA. This year CCR saved more than 600 animals, buying them before slaughter or through owner surrenders.
The two women began going to kill pens as well. They never knew what they would find there. They once discovered 13 Belgians waiting to be shipped. (Draft horses bring a good price when you’re selling meat by the pound.)
Olivia had had it. “I said, ‘We’re buying all of them.’ I went online and stayed online until we had raised enough to pay for the first four to six months of care for every one of those horses.”
A young mare facing severe medical issues, Sterling recently underwent eye and dental surgery. Photo by Tristan Williams.
That has become CCR’s methodology. Getting a rescue horse from purchase through quarantine, vet evaluation and routine treatment, rehabilitation, and training costs on average $4,500; CCR’s online ask is calculated to cover both the animal’s purchase price and its maintenance cost through adoption. Clearly, that figure can increase substantially if the animal has serious injuries or illness, is pregnant, or needs extensive training, so CCR also charges an adoption fee. Still, some animals are just not suitable for adoption, and at any one time, CCR has about 50 animals in sanctuary farms, whether for hospice or retirement. And then there are the 10 or so equines that will stay at CCR as “organization ambassadors”—like Colby and Big John.
Equine rescue, while heartwarming, takes an enormous amount of labor and expert help. CCR works closely with vets at Virginia Tech’s Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg, Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. (One of the largest kill pens is in New Holland, Pennsylvania, close to Lancaster and Amish country, where a large percentage of the rescue animals come.)
CCR arranges for a vet to be on site to triage animals as soon as they are purchased. Unless they need emergency care, the animals are sent to one of five quarantine farms CCR contracts with for 60 to 90 days of quarantine and further evaluation. If humane euthanasia is necessary, it’s done by a licensed vet.
Every animal gets a vet check weekly (more often if needed); a farrier visit every six weeks for hoof care; and a full wellness check including grooming and lots of love every day. Once it’s fit, the animal is brought to the Keswick facility to be evaluated by Ally and Olivia, who assign the horses to one of CCR’s network of trainers for at least 30 days of training to get them ready for adoption.
Every CCR adopter gets vetted, including home photos and veterinarian references. The adoption contract is strict. Every animal has been microchipped, and will be tracked by CCR; monthly photo updates are required; the adopter has to keep CCR informed of any sale or transfer; and there’s a $10,000 penalty for breaking the contract. For its part, CCR will take back any animal for any reason, and if that animal requires surgery or humane euthanasia, CCR will help cover the cost.
Every Colby’s Crew Rescue horse gets a vet check weekly, a farrier visit for hoof care, and a full wellness check before being brought to the Keswick facility to be evaluated by Ally and Olivia. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Ally’s equine expertise and ability to bond with weary, sick, and traumatized animals is at the heart of Colby’s Crew, while Olivia’s impressive social media skills and ability to capture the pathos and triumphs of its work have made CCR famous. The Crew has almost 4 million followers on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram who donate, share, and devotedly follow the rescued horses. “We raise all our money online, through donations—we don’t do solicitations, we don’t have corporate sponsors,” says Olivia. “Ninety-five percent of the money we take in goes back into buying and caring for our rescues.”
CCR gets some online criticism claiming it is supporting kill pens by buying from them, but the couple doesn’t see it that way. They see their job as saving sentient beings that deserve better than a truck ride to a cruel death. Eliminating the slaughter pipeline will likely take public pressure and political action; last year, the U.S. House of Representatives considered a bill to ban equine slaughter or export for human consumption, and this year animal advocates in Canada are pushing for a ban on the export of live horses for food.
Animal-lovers, of course, know that CCR’s equines are actually rescued. Online scammers post kill-pen photos with pleas for donations to “save this animal” when the horse has already been sold, or killed, or never existed.
Happily, in the last few years CCR has built an enormous community that is invested in Colby, Big John, and all their equine friends. Sure, these fans respond to calls for money—but they also clamor for updates on Sterling, a young mare facing severe medical issues; on Dudley, the newborn donkey who needed emergency care for deformed legs; and Onyx, the big black draft mule whose brother Obsidian was rescued as well. Visitors and adopters who come to the Keswick farm ask to say hello to Big John and his understudy, Big Sam, who is only 18 hands (6′ tall). And they are excited to see each and every animal that will be rescued next.
… It takes a village
Perhaps this area’s best-known equine rescue is Hope’s Legacy, also named for a special horse. “Hope was an off-the-track thoroughbred,” says Maya Proulx, Hope’s Legacy executive director. “She’d been off the track only six months, and I was her fifth owner. She was one of the sweetest mares I ever met.” The organization’s name honors Hope and all the horses that might easily have been written off.
A Nelson County native and lifelong horse person, Proulx founded Hope’s Legacy as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2008. All its rescue animals have been donated. About half are “owner surrenders,” animals at risk of being auctioned off when their owners die, or face serious illness or financial setbacks, while the rest have been seized by law enforcement in cases of neglect or abuse.
“Most animal control offices don’t have facilities for large animals,” Proulx says, “so if there are horses involved, they have to scramble. I wanted to serve as a resource for them.” Hope’s Legacy has taken in neglected animals from the 2015 Peaceable Farm raid in Orange County; a 2016 Nottoway County seizure that included pregnant mares; and a 2023 Shenandoah County case involving 98 neglected thoroughbreds.
The organization also runs twice-yearly training sessions that are open to animal control officers from all over the state. “Virginia has no requirement for equine training for these people, and many don’t know anything about handling horses,” says Proulx.
At the moment, Hope’s Legacy has 74 horses in rescue—35 living on its 172-acre primary farm in Afton, and the rest in foster homes. Proulx credits the organization’s network of vets, fosterers, and trainers, as well as “120 incredibly dedicated volunteers” who do everything from feeding (two shifts every day) and barn care, to working with the horses on being haltered, led, and handled. One of the feeding shift volunteers has fundraising experience, and now works full-time raising money for Hope’s Legacy and its equines.
Hope’s Legacy runs a variety of activities to build community awareness and generate donations, as well as educational programs for kids (including the popular Books at the Barn). “Part of our mission is to end neglect and abuse,” says Proulx, “and that starts with education.”
Comedian and Darden student Abhishek Kulkarni has found a balance between business and funny business.
Image via Kelly West / UVA Communications.
A few years ago, Abhishek Kulkarni was just a guy getting a business degree who dabbled in comedy. Now, he’s a local open mic mainstay who’s learned to work a crowd.
“Initially, I was writing a lot of new content for the U.S. audience, so I would go like three weeks of telling the same jokes with subtle variation,” Kulkarni says. “Then I got a handle on what they like … and I started riffing on stage.”
Kulkarni, who’s working on a PhD in business ethics and strategy at UVA’s Darden School of Business, started doing stand-up when he was studying in the U.K. He signed up for a random talent show, told a few jokes, and caught people’s attention. He stuck with it and, when he moved back to Mumbai, fell in with a comedy troupe with a large internet following.
Mumbai had just opened its own outpost of the legendary Comedy Store at the time. When five performers approached Kulkarni about joining them in SNG Comedy, he jumped at the opportunity. The experience gave him exposure to multiple formats: podcasts, improv, skits, and stand-up. Kulkarni traveled around India, opened for the more seasoned SNG funnymen, and studied comedy writing.
“Initially, it was very much about getting the joke right,” Kulkarni says. “Usually, when the comedian first writes a joke, it’s not funny.”
Since the early days, Kulkarni’s evolved as a comedy student, dissecting setups and punchlines like business researchers dissect regressions and spreadsheets. It’s no wonder that in 2023 he decided to build on his MBA and find a PhD program where he could dig deep into ethics and strategy research.
What brought him to Darden’s newly relaunched program is laughable. He knew he needed experience to get into a top-flight U.S. university, so he signed on as a research associate at the Indian School of Business. One day he was sitting alone reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A professor walked by and struck up a conversation. The two shared an interest in stoic philosophy and the discussion came around to Kulkarni’s pursuit of a doctorate. The professor told him about Darden restarting its PhD track, and Kulkarni looked into it. The program offered him a chance to pursue all his interests—strategy, ethics, and entrepreneurship—and moved quickly to the top of his list. He applied and was accepted.
“After I got the admissions letter and had the offer in hand, I went to search for this professor,” Kulkarni says. “I could not find this man. I described him to people; I went to the admissions office and told them what he looked like. They said, ‘There is no such person.’”
Since coming to Charlottesville, Kulkarni has scarcely missed a Monday open mic at The Southern Café and Music Hall. He still gets easy laughs for his faux naiveté as an Indian in the United States, but his comedy’s come of age since he started taking on current events and plying the improv chops he learned with SNG. On a recent night, he overheard a young lady in the front row say he was cute and joined the conversation. “You know this is not a TV screen,” he quipped. “But I am very happy you find me cute.”
During the now infamous Biden-Trump debate week, Kulkarni riffed on the candidates’ sophomoric golf dustup: “I was like, ‘First of all, how is this a conversation about vitality? Golf is not a measure of vitality. It’s not even a sport; you use a tiny vehicle to get around.”
Kulkarni finds this kind of humor works well in Charlottesville.
“Honestly, the audience here is just ripe for comedy,” he says. “There have been some cities where I’ve performed where you have to dumb down certain jokes—like, these are the three topics they laugh at. Charlottesville is not one of those places. They enjoy a vulgar joke as much as high-brow comedy.”
As Kulkarni’s comedy has changed, so have his research interests. He’s still fine-tuning his doctoral thesis topic, but it will almost certainly have a humorous edge. One promising avenue? Examining the humor in the show “Shark Tank,” where famous investors decide whether to give an entrepreneur money if they like the pitch. He’s gone through countless episodes of the show, cataloging jokes, how they’re made, and how they’re received. He’s still crunching the numbers, but one takeaway: Jokes are effective in business, but only in the right context.
Kulkarni hopes he’ll be doing comedy for a long time, but not as a professional. There’s too much pressure in entertaining and generating content for a living. He envisions himself as a respected business professor sprinkling lectures with laughs. More than the gratification a performer gets cracking up an audience, lecturers with a human touch are the most likely to reach students—or so Kulkarni finds from his own experience on the other side of the classroom. “I want students to feel like a participating audience in one of my shows rather than [like they’re] being talked at,” he says.
To keep performance a part of his life, Kulkarni thinks he might one day open a comedy club of his own. Who knows? Maybe after he’s well established, he’ll start an open mic for young entertainers, giving them a place to make bad jokes, then make them better, and eventually figure out what the hell they’re doing.
Come poke around at the Albemarle County Fair where animals, agriculture, crafts, and live music provide entertainment over three days. Get in a country mood with a performance by Tommy Wood, and line up for eats at one of the many food trucks or stands (because what’s a fair without funnel cake?)! Flaunt the best pick from your summer garden at a giant sunflower competition and make new friends among bunnies, goats, pigs, and more in the barn. Other events include demonstrations that highlight the history and culture of rural central Virginia.
Thursday 8/1- Saturday 8/3. Prices and times vary. James Monroe’s Highland, 2050 James Monroe Pkwy. albemarlecountyfair.com
Tour guide Lou Hatch offers new perspectives during a tour of Monticello that honors the women who worked and lived there.
Photo via Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
Straight out of the gate, I must acknowledge this wasn’t a fair test. Almost a decade ago (where has the time gone?), I worked at Monticello for roughly seven years. My last few roles were Martha-of-many-trades jobs, doing everything from loading buses and giving tours to helping with events and addressing guest feedback. Not surprisingly, I went full nerd (or as my guide would say, I professionally nerded) when I heard that Monticello began offering a seasonal Women at Monticello Tour.
I did worry that even a new tour might not offer much new information for me, because for years it felt like I was in every nook and cranny (literally and figuratively) of that famous historical home. My concern couldn’t have been more misplaced. Our guide and the information she shared blew ye olde wig off. Seriously, every expectation was exceeded. I need to find a perruquier now.
—Kristie Smeltzer
What
The Women at Monticello Tour.
Why
To learn more about historical women.
How it went
I cried, I laughed, and I learned new things.
As directed, I arrived at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center with plenty of time before my tour. After meandering through the exhibition gallery, I rode the shuttle up to the mountaintop. Our guide collected us when the tour time rolled around, and our education in the women of Monticello began.
We started on the South Terrace and heard about Jane Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s mother, and Elizabeth Hemings and her daughter Betty Brown, women brought to Monticello while enslaved. In the South Pavilion, which I’d never been in before, we visited the bedroom that Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, TJ’s wife, shared with him while the main portion of the house was still under construction.
We toured a few rooms in the dependencies, Monticello’s attached working, living, and storage spaces. In the Granger/Hemings Kitchen, a recently excavated and restored area, our guide shared stories about Ursula Granger’s life experiences, which brought me to tears, and her culinary expertise. I won’t offer any spoilers, but know this tour will be emotional. Many of these women had hard, hard lives. Our guide also spoke about Sally Hemings and her relationship with Jefferson. Despite the extreme imbalance of power between them, Sally Hemings made a deal with Jefferson that resulted in her adult children escaping slavery. Though not part of the tour, an exhibit about Sally Hemings has been added in the room they believe she lived in later in her life. I missed seeing it this time, but I plan to go back to check that out (though maybe in the cooler autumn weather).
Just as our sweat became distracting, we entered the house proper and basked in the glory of historically inaccurate—but delightfully refreshing—air conditioning. We moved through spaces that are familiar to those who have been to Monticello before, but we were prompted to view them through a different lens. Our guide shared moving stories about Jefferson’s daughters, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Maria Jefferson Epps, and Harriet Hemings, as well as prominent female visitors and granddaughters.
While history doesn’t change, our interpretation of it evolves. We learn more. We unearth untold stories and honor the many lives left off the pages of previous texts. The Women at Monticello Tour offers one way to do just that.
Here are some practical tidbits for your own visit. Keep an eye on the temperature. If you typically go from zero-to-melting in 60 seconds, you’ll want to pick a cool-weather day to do the Women at Monticello Tour (and be sure to hydrate!). The tour is available now through September 1, Fridays through Sundays at 2:05pm daily, and will resume for part of October.
As our country celebrates its collective independence, Charlottesville has the additional honor of welcoming new citizens into the nation at July 4th at Monticello. The historic home’s West Portico transforms into an open-air Naturalization Ceremony where the Oath of Citizenship to become an American is issued to dozens of deserving individuals. This year’s keynote address will be delivered by author, philanthropist, and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer Misty Copeland. Shuttles to the mountaintop will run from PVCC starting at 7:30am for a full morning of music, family activities, root beer floats, and more!
Thursday 7/4. Free, reservations required. The ceremony begins at 9am. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, 931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy. monticello.org
Independence Celebration Jam to live music by Lord Nelson with opener Cake Fight. There will be an open grill serving up burgers, hotdogs, and snacks as well as food trucks. Fireworks at dusk. Boar’s Head Resort, 200 Ednam Dr. boarsheadresort.com
Red, White, and Blue in Greene A big Independence Day celebration in the small town of Stanardsville. Enjoy live country music and food vendors leading up to fireworks at 9:45pm. Morris Field, 13510 Spotswood Trl., Ruckersville. rwbng.org
Fourth of July Parade in Scottsville Parade at 9am hosted by the Scottsville Fire Department. Fireworks over the James River at dusk. 141 Irish Rd., Scottsville. scottsville.org
Grave’s Mountain Farm and Lodge Afternoon picnic, evening lodge dinner, music by The Unsuitables, pony rides, and craft vendors. Fireworks at 9pm. 205 Graves Mountain Ln., Old Blue Ridge Tpk., Syria. gravesmountain.com
Wintergreen’s July Jubilee Pool party, live music, racquet sports competitions, artisan market, chairlift rides, children’s block party, and a magic show at Wintergreen Resort. Fireworks at 9:30pm on July 6. Wintergreen Resort, 39 Mountain Inn Loop, Nellysford. wintergreenresort.com (Through July 8)
