Category: News

It starts with the music , one of those brass-and-percussion fanfares that news anchors like to hum on their way to work. Then the announcer trumpets: “From Comedy Central’s World News Headquarters in New York, this is ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’” And before you’ve had a chance to sort through the incongruity of Comedy Central having its own news division, let alone one with a global reach, the music has changed to a soft-rock vamp and the camera has zeroed in on Stewart, a former-frat-boy type with facial features that wouldn’t be out of place on Mount Rushmore. The hair’s a dignified blend of dark brown and gray. And what’s more important, there’s lots of it. For although we Americans are capable of devoting an entire television channel to comedy, there’s no room for a bald anchor.

Stewart isn’t a news anchor, of course. He just plays one on TV. But is it too hard to imagine that someday in the future, when Tom, Dan and Peter can no longer see the TelePrompTer, Stewart will be asked to serve as the National Entertainment State’s once-over-lightly Master of Ceremonies? He’s got the paper-shuffling, pen-twirling thing down. And he’s capable of shifting, in a nanosecond, from utter seriousness to utter fatuity. You laugh, but that may be what we’re looking for in the news anchors of tomorrow. In the past, we wanted them to be wise. (Walter Cronkite, everybody’s favorite uncle.) In the future, we may want them to be wiseasses. For the times, they are a changin’, ladies and gentlemen, and the news better change with them or it could find itself out of a job.

We’ve all seen the statistics. In 1962 (or ‘72 or ‘82 or ‘92) blah-blah percent of Americans read a daily newspaper or watched the nightly news. Today blah-blah percent do, the new blah-blah being significantly lower than the old blah-blah. And the percentages for young people—that Holy Grail of advertising known as Generation X—are even worse. As the 20-odd million gray hairs who tune in to the network news every night get grayer and grayer, nobody’s joining them in the living room. Instead, we’re tuning in to “The Daily Show.” Or we’re poring over the Onion, that weekly cartwheel of fake headlines. Billing itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” the Onion is the newspaper to end all newspapers, a wake-up call to an industry that appears to have taken an overdose of sleeping pills.

Does the proliferation of news outlets like “The Daily Show” and the Onion, that scribble a Mona Lisa mustache on the face of the Fourth Estate, signify the final triumph of infotainment? The giggle-ization of American society? The decline of Western civilization? The end of the world? Or do they, in that tongue-in-cheek, finger-in-the-ribs way of theirs, offer us a view of the world that traditional news outlets are largely blind to? Does Generation X, which supposedly can’t find Iraq on a map, know something the rest of us don’t know—that Baghdad is both a dateline and a punchline? When life turns into a media circus, isn’t a fun-house mirror the best way to see what’s going on? And aren’t news spoofs, therefore, a more accurate reflection of our time? Or are they just, you know, funny?

Stewart likes to open the show with a dollop of pure nonsense—memorably forgettable musings on, say, how risky it is to ignore that old warning about letting the bedbugs bite. (“They won’t stop,” he says with feigned resignation.) Then it’s on to Headlines, a series of riffs on the day’s top stories à la the Weekend Update segment of “Saturday Night Live.” For those who don’t remember “That Was the Week That Was,” a mid-‘60s TV series that made a mockery of current events, “Saturday Night Live” would seem to have invented the fake news broadcast. And its long line of anchors, from Chevy Chase to Dennis Miller to Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, provides a shadow history of the news-reading game. Chevy Chase was Chevy Chase, and we weren’t—anchor as smug superstar. Miller was one of us, only with more flair and more hair, lots more hair.

And Fey/Fallon? Well, let’s just say they’re cute as heck and funny as hell—anchors as precocious eighth-graders. At least Fey seems precocious. Fallon sometimes seems preconscious, dozing off in the middle of a bit. They’re supposed to be a mismatch made in heaven. As producer Lorne Michaels said about the pairing, according to Fallon: “Tina’s going to be the brainy girl, and you’re going to be the kind of goofy guy who doesn’t do his homework and asks her for answers and stuff.” They certainly look the part, Fey with her smarty-pants glasses and Fallon with his randomly spiked hair. But they both have a tendency to crack up at their own jokes, as if they were broadcasting from somebody’s basement. Consequently, the political humor, coming from the mouths of babes, doesn’t seem all that political. Weekend Update used to take its lack of seriousness a lot more seriously.

Stewart, on the other hand, has that you’re-either-born-with-it-or-you’re-not quality called gravitas. When his face is at rest, he could actually be an anchor—he’s that boringly handsome. And his voice, although not quite up there with the dearly departed Phil Hartman’s, has just enough of that adman/madman plasticity to sell us the news as if it were a used car. He isn’t alone, of course. Like any big-time news anchor, he’s surrounded by a stable of thoroughbred correspondents, all of whom should have been put out to pasture long ago. Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Ed Helms, Mo Rocca, Nancy Walls—are these not the most hilarious people on TV right now, somehow managing to keep straight faces while their routines twist in and out of plausibility? Or do the show’s writers, led by former Onion scribe Ben Karlin, deserve a lot of the credit?

When the show’s clicking, the laughs come from everywhere, whether it’s Helms using red and blue M&Ms to show the recent shift in the Senate or Stewart ad-libbing a remark about George Bush’s “stimulus package” when a video clip of the spread-legged president conferring with someone at the White House reveals more presidential timber than many of us care to see. For all its massaging of our funny bones, “The Daily Show” can be surprisingly biting, as when an oil-industry representative (or at least an anchor playing one) says about the latest megaton tanker spill, “Fuel oil is good for fish. They like it. It’s like vitamins.” At such moments, you can’t help but wholeheartedly endorse the show’s ambitious tagline: “Now More Than Before.”

The Onion (also available on the web at www.theonion.com) may not be able to make that claim. Like so many newspapers, it often succumbs to deadline pressure these days, sending out “articles” that are printed to fit rather than fit to print. Articles have never been the paper’s strong suit. After repeating the headline (often verbatim) in the lead sentence, the writers tend to spin their wheels, as if developing a comic premise were a completely foreign idea. Ah, but those headlines! Like haiku, they’re still capable of condensing a world of insight into a few choice words. “Kevin Bacon Linked to Al-Qaeda”—how simple, how deceptively perceptive. Or how’s this for sheer pithiness: “Vote, Voter Wasted.” The dropping of “a,” “an” and “the”—or any other word that might slow down a one-liner—has been a source of constant amusement for the Onion’s writers and readers.

“The Daily Show” and the Onion could be owned by the same media conglomerate, so closely do their senses of humor mesh. And behind those senses of humor is a sense of the world as this man-bites-dog-eat-dog media fishbowl where everybody lies, cheats and steals, both to get ahead and just for the hell of it. Neither outlet is particularly partisan; they tend to be equal-opportunity offenders. But both offer a thorough critique of the way news is packaged these days, everything arranged into neat little boxes and wrapped up with shiny bows. In fact, that may be the major difference between “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and, say, “The Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.” Brokaw refuses to acknowledge the shiny bows. Stewart goes after them with the Christmas-morning glee of a 6-year-old child.

So, if you were an 18-to-34-year-old Nielsen ratings point, which show would you watch? A lot of ink has been spilled in the last 10 years trying to define Generation X, those hazy, lazy, crazy kids of the boom-and-bust ‘80s and ‘90s. And the general consensus seems to be that, when it comes to the news, they…well, they’re not terribly into the news. That’s what the pollsters tell us anyway. But maybe the pollsters are wrong. Maybe Gen Xers are interested in the news. Maybe they’re just not interested in having the news presented to them with a straight face. Maybe they prefer their news at a slant. These are kids who grew up in the media whirlwind, after all. They’re used to spin. And maybe what they want is for the news to acknowledge when spin is being spun—with a well-timed smirk, perhaps.

Jon Stewart is the Man of a Thousand Smirks, each one perfectly timed so as to squeeze every last ounce of laughter out of the studio audience. But if that was all Stewart was, a smirk machine, then “The Daily Show” wouldn’t be worth watching. He also happens to be a surprisingly well-informed guy and a fantastic interviewer. “I like to read the papers, keep up with the world,” he joked one night, but you get the impression he wasn’t joking, really. His interests range far and wide: He can trade deep thoughts with David Halberstam one night, compare favorite videogames with Ja Rule the next. And his guests are as likely to be Washington politicos as Hollywood stars. It’s an opportunity for the pols to let their hair—or, in John McCain’s case, their comb-overs—down. But even that can be instructive. (Don’t quit your day job, senator.)

Are we a nation of infotainment whores? Would the vast majority of us prefer to be well entertained rather than well informed, leaving the diehards to their C-SPAN marathons? Perhaps, but what such questions don’t take into account are the myriad ways we make sense of the world these days. We combine something we read in the newspaper with something we watched on the nightly news with something we heard on the radio with something Jay Leno said with something our neighbor said with something that was floating by in cyberspace, and tomorrow it may be a whole new mix of sources. We’re constantly bombarded with information, and the stuff that tends to stick is the shtick. Is it any wonder, then, that most presidential candidates manage to find their way onto a late-night TV talk show?

“The show is not a megaphone,” Stewart said when asked whether he prefers to go for the funny bone or the jugular. But he may be underestimating his ability to shape the hearts and minds of his audience—i.e., his role as both baby-boom and baby-bust mouthpiece. (Barely 40, he’s a tweener.) In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, it was David Letterman who led the late-night talk-show hosts back up Comedy Hill, pausing briefly to wipe Dan Rather’s eyes, then slowly turning the valve on the nitrous-oxide tank. But the most purely emotional return to the air may have been Stewart’s. Fighting back tears, he delivered a nine-minute valentine to the Big Apple that Howard Stern would rib him about for weeks afterward. “Our show has changed,” Stewart said, softly. “What it’s become, I don’t know.”

Has it changed? Not so you’d notice. The Onion, newly arrived in New York City, also stopped the presses for a few days. (Nothing puts comedy writers out of business faster than a national tragedy.) But after an appropriate period of mourning, it discovered that people wanted to laugh more than ever, not less. “U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We’re at War With,” the major headline in the September 27 issue announced, nailing to the wall the Bush administration’s determination to kick someone’s, anyone’s, ass. By the following week, things had pretty much returned to abnormal: “Greenland Thinks It Looks Fat in Mercator Projection.” But the headline that seemed to capture the mood of the country may also have represented a bit of wishful thinking on the Onion’s part: “A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again.”

The September 11 attacks threatened to end our decades-long pose of ironic detachment, which baby-busters share with baby-boomers. Suddenly, we were thunderstruck with the importance of being earnest. We didn’t want to mime quote marks with our fingers every time we said something. But it turns out that irony, which has been handed down from David Letterman to Conan O’Brien, from “Seinfeld” to “Friends,” from Euripides to Shakespeare to Swift to Twain to Mencken to Wolfe to Eggers, is bigger than Osama bin Laden, bigger than Al-Qaeda, bigger than war. Irony has often been considered a luxury item, something to indulge in during times of peace and prosperity. But maybe it’s closer to a necessity, something to reach for when the powers that be refuse to say what they mean, mean what they say.

And maybe “The Daily Show” and the Onion, like a pair of corrective lenses, allow us to see what we would otherwise miss, which is that the mainstream media are themselves distorting the truth, skewing the news. If present trends continue, there’ll come a day when none of us reads a daily newspaper or watches the nightly news. We’ll get everything off the web, or we’ll get a little bit here and a little bit there, as we’ve always done. And the news spoofs? Maybe they won’t be called the news spoofs anymore. Maybe they’ll be called the news. Maybe Jon Stewart, America’s Jokemaster General, will tell us everything we need to know about this wacky world we live in. Today, you have to keep up with the news to get all the jokes. Tomorrow, you may have to get all the jokes to keep up with the news.

Flashlights, GOP handbooks and dirty shirts: very, very costly.

 

This will not be an O. Henry moment.In what follows you will find no stories of bartered hair and pocket watches. If there is sentimentality in these tales of best and worst gifts, we didn’t put it there. Deploying the sharpest investigative tools, by which we mean, of course, telephone and e-mail, we have asked some of Charlottesville’s fine folks to spill it on what has thrilled them and chilled them. Read on and learn. And here’s a hint: Stay away from toilet fixtures, discount candy and anything with the words “pickled” and “pig” in the description. That is, if you want to be invited back to the feast next year.

 

Kore Russell

Proprietor, Oasis Day Spa

One of the best gifts I ever received was when I was in Nagoya, Japan, and I had been with my ex-husband on a blues music tour. We were in a tour bus going back to the hotel. For some reason the bus was stopped. And B.B. King was up the stairs looking for me. At the time he called me Mrs. Harris. He walked up to me and handed me asingle red rosefor no reason except to be sweet. I kept it because I felt it was a real honest, sincere sentiment and he wanted to make me smile and give me a gesture of friendliness.

 

Charles Peale

Illustrator and WTJU radio host

A few years ago I was given a present by a friend of mine. It was a photograph that she found in her attic, really large, 20” x 18” or something like that. It’s a sterling portrait of a woman in her bridal outfit. She has a string of pearls, her veil off, flowers in her hand and she’s staring off. It was taken by Bradford Bachrach, who apparently wasa sought-after photographeraround here, or maybe somewhere else. It was really something. I have it up in my office. Somehow it was the best present and worst present I ever got, because my friend said she just found it. Anyway, people often come in here and say, “Is that your mother?”

Damani Harrison

Frontman, Beetnix

It was last Christmas. My older sister and I had been really tight until the time I was 16 or 17 and she left home to join the military. While she was gone, a lot of things happened in her life and I had not seen her for more than a week in four or five years. Last year in August she told me she had met a guy, and they were engaged to be married. She called me right before Christmas and told me she wanted to get married here in Charlottesville with my family and me. She came up here Christmas Eve. It took us forever to track down a justice of the peace on Christmas Eve. We married her in town and her daughter was there, too. Her husband was a really wonderful guy. We reconnected that day. And ever since then, we’ve been so tight. We had a beautiful dinner that night. When my wife and I got married, we had a wine goblet that splits in two like a yin yang. My sister and her husband drank from it during their ceremony. That was the greatest gift that I could have gotten—that my sister wanted to share that special moment with me anddrove all the way up from Mississippito do it.

 

Matteus Frankovich

Tea Missionary, Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar

The best gifts were all the American classics. The Schwinn Stingray, the Red Rider BB gun. The best gift was traveling with a friend in British Columbia who got me a ticket to asensory deprivation tankand my mind was particularly ripe at the time and I entered into a state, which has not left me since. It was one of supreme neutrality in which the lines between good and bad diminish. So asking me about a good gift or a bad gift…. Basically what I’m saying is that every complete vision of God must have a vision of terror in it and often times you say the “worst gift” and that could be the most transformative. Like putting you at your wit’s end, you sometimes come closest to the ultimate in those experiences. That would be desirable for me.

 

Ted Rall

Cartoonist and political commentator

The worst gift I ever got was in 1984. I was working on the Mondale campaign at the time. I was really crazy about this girl andspent a ridiculous amount of moneyon a watch for her. It was beautiful and she was really pleased with it, but she didn’t give me anything. Christmas passed; we were well into the new year. It sort of got to be a joke. Finally she decides to cough up a gift. It should be noted, I was in college at the time and had just had my financial aid package completely gutted by Reagan. I was working three jobs trying to stay in school, my grades were going to hell and I really held Reagan personally responsible for the fact that my life was going to hell. With all this, what does she do? She gives me this really, really cheesy GOP propaganda book for Christmas on February 1. And it wasn’t a gag gift. She said, “I thought you liked politics.” It was at that moment that I realized I had to dump this girl I was crazy about who I had thought I would marry.

 

Adam Thorman

Downtown regular

The worst gift I ever got was adirty white shirtfrom a thrift store, from my brother. The best gifts I ever got I bought myself, and there are a lot of them.

Mary Murray

Graphic designer

The worst Christmas present I ever got was when I got a Gravely lawn mower, which is a really good lawn mower, but the message was clear:Guess who’s mowing the lawn?

The best Christmas present I got was from my present husband who doesn’t know that much about art but he got me a French painting easel. The first couple of times I took it out, I was too self-conscious to stay out in public, until my very good friend said, “Shut up and paint.” Now I take it outside and to painting class and I park it in my living room so I look like an artist.

 

John Owen

Interior designer/painter

I was once given a soft toilet seat. That was the worst.

One of the best was from my daughter Sarah who wrote mea wonderful book of poemswhen she was very young and bound it herself and put illustrations in it. Every time I move, should my address change, Sarah will come and find it so she knows where it is should I ever lose it.

 

Alexandria Searls

Writer/photographer

The best Christmas present I’ve ever received: a gold garnet ring that I wear. I’ve also received a beautiful Twelve Days of Christmaspop-up book, by the artist Robert Sabuda. It’s gorgeous.

Worst present I’ve ever received: I have a charm bracelet, and I once received a charm that I just

didn’t want to put on there.

 

Bryce McGregor

Publisher, C-VILLE Weekly

One of the best gifts I got was when I was 5 years old. I got an Electro-Shot Shooting Gallery. It was an arcade-kind of game that had BBs and it was self-fed. But there was a hole in the back andone of the BBs fell outand I stuck it in my nose and ended up in the hospital. I spent Christmas afternoon in the emergency room. My parents treated it as though I had a knife in my frontal lobe, but the doctor plugged up one nostril, put a Kleenex on the other and said, “blow,” and out it came.

 

John Gibson

Artistic Director, Live Arts

We had an aunt who was notorious for her bargain shopping, and one Christmas she stopped by a Russell Stover outlet and we each got two pounds of candy that had been fused together into one solid mass—factory-reject candy. And it wasall fruit creams, too.

 

Terri Saunders

Proprietor, Sunrise Herb Shoppe

To me the best gifts are those that touch my heart, and usually they’re fromsomeone I loveor someone who loves me. It’s not so much the substance of the gift but what’s behind it. Unless the intent is negative, I think any gift is a good gift.

 

Eden Turkheimer

Seventh Grader, Buford Middle School

I got a cell phone. It was good because I can use it and I don’t have topay a billon it and I don’t have to borrow my Dad’s because I got my own.

The worst gift was a hot pink shirt with Barbie on it. I got it when I was 8 and I never wore it.

 

Sandy McAdams

Proprietor, Daedalus Bookshop

Twenty-two years ago at the holiday season, my wife, finally, after enormous pressure, agreed to marry me. Best present I ever got. She’s wonderful, has a huge heart, kept me out of jail andI’m not dead.

 

Barbara Shifflett

Proprietor, Station and Mono Loco restaurants

My best gift was the first year my dad bought Christmas gifts on his own, because Mom always bought. It was incredible to get a gift from your dad that you knew he picked. It was a winter sweater with knitted flowers appliquéd on.

The worst was when someone gave me a jar ofpickled pig lips. It was horrible. I threw it away or probably I re-gifted it like they did on “Seinfeld” to someone equally as deserving.

 

Ann McDaniel

Director, The Warehouse (the official Dave Matthews Band fan club)

In thinking this over, my memory keeps returning to the Xmas when I was probably 8 years old.

I opened a small flat box containing a wonderfulpen and ink drawing my father, an architect/artist, had done of a beautiful canopy bed. It took me a moment to figure out, but in the basement was a canopy bed and all matching bedroom furniture. It was one of the best Christmases ever.

 

Jill Hartz

Director, University of Virginia Art Museum

The best gift was when I was 14, I got tickets to see the Beatles in Detroit. So you can imagine! My father took me with three other girls. He dropped us off and picked us up afterwards. Inside it was just abunch of screaming girls. We made these gum-paper chains that we threw at them. It wasn’t a very long concert, in retrospect. They opened with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The most disappointing part of it was that my father had contacts with people who knew them and thought we’d be able to go to a cocktail party and meet them. But that fell through.

 

Adam Geilker

Fourth Grader, Johnson Elementary School

I don’t know what the worst gift I ever got was, but the best was when I was 4 and my grandmother I call Nana gave me a 3-foot-long white teddy bear.It was all furryand everything. It’s really old and tattered now. Now I use him as a pillow, but he’s mainly legs so he’s not much of a pillow. I named him Jonah.

 

Randolph Byrd

Publisher and Republican analyst

I was 10 years old and I wanted a “big boy” bicycle—26 inches. What I wanted was aSchwinn Phantombut I didn’t want the red one. That year they made them in all chrome. I wanted the all-chrome one. My parents told me prior to Christmas there were none available so I thought I’d have another bad Christmas with just socks and underwear and a lump of coal in my stocking. And I woke up Christmas morning and there was the beautiful, dazzling chrome bike. I felt like Pee-Wee Herman incarnate. That was my Cadillac for a long time.

 

Jen Sorensen

Cartoonist and this issue’s cover artist

A few years ago, my boyfriend, now my betrothed, went to Hawaii over the holidays and brought me back a tiki doll key chain. The tiki was supposed to be a reference to a “Brady Bunch” episode called “The Tiki Caves,” which unfortunately, I had never seen. He also gave me ashot glass covered with hula girls.

Of course, he intended these to be the worst gifts ever, but in these ironic times, perhaps that makes them the best gifts ever.

 

Al Byrne

Co-founder, Patients Out of Time, a marijuana

education group

I was 17 years old. I had been dating her for three years. I was madly in love. She gave mea flashlight. And she did it in front of my best friend and his date. It was over. Right at that moment.

 

NJ Gauthier

Local Music and Metal Director, WNRN-FM

When I was about 6 years old, around Christmas time I was complaining that our cat’s Christmas stocking was bigger than mine, and then—that Christmas day I came downstairs and Santa had brought mea stocking 4-feet tall! Full of goodies. I didn’t complain about my stocking that year again. I think later Santa burned that 4-foot stocking due to the cost of filling such a stocking, but at least I had it for a while.

 

Chad Hershner

Executive Director, The Paramount Theater

One of the things I remember is that growing up as a kid I always got a large orange at the bottom of my stocking every year. It was because my mother grew upin the years of the Depression, and they got an orange or chocolate bar. That was their special gift. I always got an orange and it was always special. It reminded you that then the holidays were more about family and treasuring the gifts you have around you every day.

 

Andrew Holden

Living-wage activist

Best gift was when I was in jail [for protesting low wages at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel]. It was definitely the best gift I ever received. My fiancée knitted me a scarf herself. It’s nothing fancy, but she put so much love into it that it made it wonderful. I wear it all the time.

The worst gift wasone doughnutthat I received as a Christmas bonus from an employer, a factory I worked at. It was a glazed doughnut.

What purpose does a gate serve but to limit access? Depending on the setting, a gate can forbid freedom or promise a new horizon. Or, if you live in Keswick, Glenmore, Lake Monticello or any of the ersatz gated subdivisions around Charlottesville, a gate can rise as a shining symbol of such lifestyle amenities as electronic surveillance devices, swimming pool complexes, clubhouses and steeply rising property values. From the outside, the gates send a hearty message of “Do Not Enter.” From the inside, they signal a distinctive brand of “community.”

But whereas other parts of the country have experienced a rush on wrought iron, so to speak, as concerns about crime and privacy drive families out of the cities and into the suburbs, Charlottesville has become home to hundreds of sequestered houses apparently for different reasons.

“We have a giant bubble over our community,” says Charlottesville Albemarle Association of Realtors President Pat Jensen. “With so many beautiful and safe places to live, gated communities simply don’t mean the same thing here as they do in other parts of the country.”

Still, Charlottesville’s gated enclaves share at least one feature with similar neighborhoods around the United States: They practically guarantee an above-average return on investment. Whether it’s the presumed prestige factor or an epidemic of golf enthusiasm, houses in places like Keswick appreciate at a rate that observers say is greater than the County’s annual 7 percent norm.

Not surprisingly, gated communities inspire vehement opposition, too, among those who believe they promote isolation and homogeneity, not to mention an “us”-and-“them” mentality.

 

Down and out in Fluvanna County

The oldest gated community in our area, Fluvanna’s Lake Monticello, which was built in 1970, doesn’t seem to be constructed on the Who’s Who foundation of other gated enclaves. With more than 3,500 acres filled with 4,500 homesites, the local price of the fortress mentality, in this neighborhood at least, is less than one might think—$75,000 to $500,000, according to Greg Slater, a manager at Lake Monticello. (Lake Monticello also offers three areas that are not gated for those who would prefer access to the golf, pool, lake and clubhouse facilities without the manned porthole experience.)

And, claims Slater, that budget price can buy individuality. “We have no cookie-cutter homes here,” he says.

Close enough to Charlottesville to be convenient but far enough away to be more affordable, Lake Monticello, says Jensen, is a place where “you can simply buy more house for your money than in the rest of Albemarle.”

Not only that, but for an annual owners association fee of $490, you buy access to a 352-acre man-made lake with more than 22 miles of lake shoreline for swimming, fishing and boating; an 18-hole championship golf course; three clubhouse eateries ranging from formal to casual; private campgrounds; tennis courts; and several playing fields. Lake Monticello even has its own closed-circuit informational TV channel. In a mini town like that, why (aside from earning a living) would anyone want to venture past the gate?

For at least one resident, however, a man originally from New Hampshire who would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, neither the amenities nor the gate were the appeal. He retired to Lake Monticello six years ago after buying his house sight unseen, he says, because “the biggest draw was the reasonable price.”

“I rarely even use the lake, golf course or pool,” he says.

Jeane Rashap and her husband moved to Lake Monticello about nine months ago from a home they rented near Charlottesville’s Rugby Road. Although they loved living in the City, when it came time to buy, there was just nowhere else they could find a 2,700-square-foot home for around $200,000. “The golf has been nice for my husband,” says Rashap, “but we wouldn’t have chosen Lake Monticello if we’d found something affordable somewhere else.”

 

Privilege or necessity

Glenmore, the 10-year-old gated colony in Albemarle, east of Charlottesville and on the other end of the pricing spectrum, draws its residents not out of affordability (prices for houses can soar past $1 million), but sheer exclusivity. And nearby Keswick, considered one of the area’s most elite communities, offers 300 homes ranging in size from 1,200 to 10,000 square feet at prices that can be upwards of $4 million.

Evidently, there’s something of value to keep secure behind those gates.

“With all that’s going on in the news today,” says Jeff Gaffney, the supervising broker for the section of Real Estate III that manages Glenmore, “people are looking for that extra safety factor.” Like Lake Monticello, Glenmore has a manned front gate. The gatekeeper will let you pass only if you have been authorized to enter by a resident. Also, all entrances are equipped with security cameras that monitor which cars pass through.

Still, Jensen figures that what really lures people to Glenmore and Keswick are the special amenities like a championship golf course and an equestrian center. Translation: You might live in a glorified subdivision, but you’ve come a long way, baby.

At present, there are 500 residences in Glenmore, with developers hoping for a total of 800 to share what the promotional literature describes as “the beautifully laden emerald-green pastures, gentle knolls and rolling hills reminiscent of a Scottish landscape.” And besides the Platinum MasterCard aura and the manned front gate, something else fortifies Glenmore’s appeal—real estate values.

“When you’re looking at increased property values,” says Gaffney, “while all of Albemarle County has appreciated, Glenmore is at the top of the list.” With land values that have doubled in the last decade compared to the 8 percent increase of the county average, a pad in Glenmore has proven to be a good investment. One home that sold for $170,000 in 1993 recently sold again for $300,000. Another going for $500,000 in 1993 went for more than $750,000 this year. According to recent nationwide real estate studies, in fact, gated community-style housing can fetch anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 more than comparable non-gated housing.

 

State your business here, sir

Even where the lines of secluded turf are not drawn solely by wealth, the message to the public at large remains, “keep out.”

By the same token, however, Glenmore has been praised by some for creating “communal bonds” within the gates themselves. With pedestrian-friendly streets and public spaces like the clubhouse or fitness center, “It is so easy to meet other residents here,” says Gaffney. “It’s like stepping into a built-in social life.”

Tom Pace, who is the sales manager of Glenmore and a longtime resident, agrees. “One can get as involved or not involved as one wants,” says Pace. “It truly is a social lifestyle choice.”

Pace says his clan was the seventh family to move into Glenmore, and, although he has moved three different times within the community, he has never left.

Still, where insiders see “community,” critics on the other side of the gate see an elitist “members only” club.

Dave Norris, chair of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, believes gates serve only one of two purposes—to keep people in or out. Gates can wall off very poor communities and very wealthy communities, all the while eliminating the public spaces in which different social classes might combine. Typical melting pots such as Darden Towe Park or Fridays After Five have been replaced by private soccer fields within the gates and black-tie events at the clubhouse.

“One of the main reasons a neighborhood such as Belmont works so well,” says Norris, “is you have a mix there—an integration of poor people, middle class people, middle-upper class people, residential and commercial retail. Walled-off enclaves removed from services and others kinds of people just don’t work.”

Ron Higgins, the City’s planning manager, also maintains that a city needs to be connected, especially a smaller city such as Charlottesville, which holds dear the value of congruity. “As a 30-year resident of the City,” says Higgins, “I imagine gated communities have their place; it just seems more isolated.”

 

Don’t fence me in

For some people, of course, isolation is exactly the point.

“The gate is definitely a selling feature,” says Slater. “It is nice when not just anyone can drive up on your property at any given time.”

“We have people like [UVA basketball and football coaches] Pete Gillen and Al Groh living in our community,” says Real Estate III’s Gaffney, “and they don’t want just anyone walking up to their front door.”

Yet there are those occasions when the rules and regulations that are the price of admission to the box seats can be real downers. “Sometimes these communities with their homeowners associations,” says Jensen, “can be limiting to people’s freedom of choice.” Want to stack wood in front of your house? Well, that’s just too bad if you live in Lake Monticello. You can’t.

One Lake Monticello resident (who also refused to have her name published) says she came home one day to a “citation” for verboten pipes exposed in her yard. “We are unsure if the complaint came from a neighbor, or from the owners association,” she says, “but either way, there are times when we really have issues with all the rules.”

Lake Monticello is also the only gated community in the area to employ a private police force, a measure often too expensive for other communities, which choose an electronic gate system instead. The Lake Monticello Police Department, on the lookout for any suspicious elements in this forest by the lake, make alien infiltration difficult, unless of course you are the Domino’s delivery guy, the Lake Monticello Fire Department or a construction vendor—these folks have bar codes to get in at any time.

“The gates can be irritating, especially if they aren’t working correctly,” says Lake Monticello resident Rashap, “but they serve their purpose—to protect the residents and their amenities.”

 

Go jump in a lake—but only if you’ve paid your dues

There’s no hiding the fact that Lake Monticello residents, like others in gated communities, want their amenities to remain their amenities. “The gates are necessary for the people paying dues,” says Slater.

The gate at Glenmore was built for $200,000, and yearly maintenance is another $170,000, which includes not only salaries for guards, managers and staff, but electricity and computers, as well. “Although it’s certainly not fool proof, it’s worth it for the peace of mind it gives people,” says Gaffney.

Again, some observers see the situation differently. A gate does not a great community make. As Jensen points out, Charlottesville has plenty of historic and stately areas such as Ivy, Park Street and Rugby Road. Some area residents occupy both worlds. Developments such as Bellair, Farmington, Ednam, Dunlora and Forest Lakes have many of the makings of a gated community, minus the uniformed man (or bar code) raising the gate.

Dunlora, for example, which is fronted by a large brick entrance and a gate-like aura, has some of the same amenities as Glenmore (minus the ACC coaches): community swimming pools, clubhouses, annual dues and basic rules and regulations. But, in theory, anyone could drive through.

In the end however, for whatever reason, communities such as Glenmore, Keswick and Lake Monticello succeed in attracting residents. Fluvanna County, still considered primarily rural, is now the second-fastest growing county in Virginia. With a population of 21,200, it has grown by more than 60 percent during the past decade. “Most of this growth is thanks to Lake Monticello,” says Slater.

 

Access and egress

Whether gated communities promote homogeneity or a secure environment, Gaffney advances the standard market-bearing rationale for their existence around here: If people didn’t want gated communities, then developers wouldn’t be building them. “It’s a ‘move up’-type market and people are choosing it left and right,” he says.

CRHA’s Norris, though, raises doubts about the health of gates for the community at large.

“These gated communities are just a form of ghettoization,” he says. “You’ve got ghettos for the poor and ghettos for the rich.” As an example, Norris points to a new fence, of sorts, at Westhaven, a low-income housing development in the neighborhood of 10th and Page streets. One side of Westhaven borders the rear entrances of West Main Street businesses, some of which have started to complain about graffiti and vandalism and responded with a new divider. “There’s a stairway that ends with a fence now,” says Norris, “just a further sign of the isolation of Westhaven.”

The fences might obstruct graffiti, but they’re roadblocks to progress, too, says Norris. “As long as both the rich ghettos and the poor ghettos remain isolated,” he says, “how can we ever broaden the community, embrace diversity?”

Pace, the Glenmore sales manager, maintains that his community is more than diverse. With residents of every age hailing from places like China, Hawaii, Canada and England and participating in local politics and schools and boards, Pace says it is wrong to think that the people of Glenmore have chosen to lock themselves out of society.

“Living in Glenmore, or any gated community for that matter,” says Pace, “is simply a lifestyle choice, that’s all. It has nothing to do with isolation whatsoever.”

Rain…The word alone forms a complete prayer. Spoken as a plea or demand, the simple invocation has been a common mantra across the Southeast this year. The congregation of thirsty supplicants included, until recently, those of us living in the Rivanna Watershed, which in the past four years has been shy about 40 inches of rain.

To everyone’s relief, our prayers have been answered. In the past two months, a blessing from the jet stream dropped roughly 10 inches of rain on the Watershed, bringing this year’s precipitation levels in line with annual norms. Around here, perhaps no one is more relieved to see the drought subside than the City and County water officials responsible for keeping a clean, cheap supply of life’s elixir swirling down our toilets.It’s refreshing to again see full reservoirs and real dinnerplates in Charlottesville. Yes, the rain soothed a shortage and mitigated an emergency. It did not, however, solve the real problem, which is this: The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has seen this crisis coming for more than 25 years, and yet now, coming out of it, our water supply remains at the mercy of divine intervention.

 

When in drought…

Charles Ancona has lived in Albemarle County since 1967, and in that time he has seen, he says, “many brown Augusts.” He remembers a drought in 1976 that prompted government conservation ordinances. It also convinced many people that, although water had been taken for granted as a “natural resource,” dominated by technology to serve economic growth, water might begin to limit the region’s blossoming development.

“All these years later, and we’ve still done nothing,” says Ancona. Although he draws his water from a well in rural Albemarle, he has followed the water situation for 30 years, and he’s mystified by the response of local officials.

“You can’t have the growth we’ve had, and the reduction in supply, and expect to have sufficient water,” Ancona says.

The last time Charlottesville impounded a water supply was in 1966, when the City built a 1.68 billion-gallon reservoir on the South Fork Rivanna River. Since then, the region’s population has more than doubled, to at least 124,000. But along the way, rather than meet increased demand, the South Fork reservoir has lost about 500 million gallons of its capacity, thanks to sediment filling in its bottom.

In 1972, Charlottesville and Albemarle launched the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority as an independent agency to manage the region’s shared water resources. Within a few short years, when studies showed that demand would outpace supply sometime early in this century, one of the RWSA’s main jobs became to provide enough water to satisfy the growth.

The RWSA met this challenge like an ostrich, Ancona says: “They must have their heads stuck in that sediment.”

Indeed, the rain has been followed by a deluge of criticism for local officials, who critics believe are as culpable as God for the recent water shortage.

“What are you going to do when it’s gone? Vote your ass out of office!” says local bartender Al Zappa, playing on the City’s cartoonish conservation posters. They depict a man examining the dry nozzle of a garden hose, apparently unaware that he’s standing on the hose with a bulge of water building up behind his shoe. Is that cartoon Charlottesvillian supposed to be us, Joe and Jane Car Washer? Is the City saying we’re morons, dumbly pinching off our hose, about to get squirted in the eye?

Many people say the cartoon better represents the RWSA. Some say the water officials must be truly idiotic––after all, they’ve seen a water crisis coming for decades, and yet they’ve done nothing to increase or maintain supply.

Others believe the RWSA feigned surprise at the water shortage. Henry Weinscheck, for one, thinks public officials are the ones standing on the hose, intentionally blocking our water.

“Was it bad planning, or a determined effort? That’s the question,” says Weinscheck, who owns Express Car Wash on Route 29. “The water shortage was not ineptitude. It was deliberate.”

Granted, Weinscheck has never been a cheerleader for the City. He’s a member of the North Charlottesville Business Association (comprising mostly people who own land or operate businesses on 29N), a group most famous for unilaterally supporting the Route 29 Western Bypass. Weinscheck himself defied City Council’s order on August 23 to shut down all commercial car washes.

“It was a knee-jerk reaction [by Council] to get people’s attention,” he claims. “It didn’t do much to reduce water consumption.”

City public works director Judith Mueller admits she doesn’t know how much water was saved by closing car washes. “People understood that car washes were not a good use of our drinking water,” she says. “No one ever called me to complain about it.” Most car washes, she says, imported their own water and reopened.

The notion that some leaders of the RWSA have conspired to limit water and stifle growth is popular among business owners, real estate developers and others for whom growth means profit. Their official house organ, The Daily Progress, parroted the sentiment in a series of editorials last month. But it’s not solely the usual pro-growth advocates who express skepticism about the RWSA.

“It’s all about keeping people out,” says Stephanie White, a UVA-trained climatologist who works at Perrin Quarles Associates. “It’s outrageous.”

Indisputably, there was a drought. White, however, points out that local reservoirs, including Sugar Hollow and Ragged Mountain, were full in July, and it took merely a couple of dry summer months to drain them. Drought or no drought, she says, such a dry snap could happen anytime. “In the summer, the weather is much more volatile,” she says.

The skeptics have some pretty damning evidence on their side. It’s been established that for 30 years the RWSA knew demand would skyrocket. Yet only now, with doomsday on the horizon, did the RWSA move to expand the region’s supply with what most observers characterize as a “Band-Aid” solution.

The RWSA denies any conspiracy––to a point. The current Chairman of the Board, Rich Collins, along with former chairs Treva Cromwell, Francis Fife and Jack Marshall, this year founded Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population (ASAP). They called for a debate on how to slow and ultimately cap regional growth. Collins and Cromwell say the chairs have never forced their agenda on other board members. But Collins admits he likes a soapbox.

“I look at my role as a voice for stewardship of the watershed,” says Collins. “To say that growth is a holy grail is absurd, and to be concerned merely with supply at all costs is a short-sighted vision for the future. We don’t have unlimited supply. We need to include growth in our planning. I use the pulpit that’s there, for good or bad, to highlight these ideas.”

Conspiracy or not, water shortages disturb our quality of life and can seriously dampen the region’s economic prosperity. The RWSA blamed the drought, but rainfall wasn’t actually the issue. The drought merely exposed our real problems, which now lie in the open like dead tress strewn across the crusty mud at the bottom of an empty reservoir.

Water provides; growth consumes––when the two balance, there’s no problem. The RWSA’s dams and pipes have restrained and shaped the Watershed to fulfill dreams of unlimited growth. For the past 30 years, however, Charlottesville and Albemarle have failed to take water into account as the region grew.

The drought just proved something the RWSA should have already known, that water can destroy as well as create. Similarly, the deluge didn’t resolve the conflict between growth and water. It just submerged the tension once again—for now.

 

Water fight

The simple, miraculous liquid from which all life springs has been the source of some bitter disputes between Charlottesville and Albemarle. On the surface, the arguments seem to be about land and money. In truth, the real font of City-County tensions has most often been the question of water.

Before a revenue-sharing agreement reached in the 1990s helped the two jurisdictions fairly divide tax revenue, the question of who pays for water was answered by land grabs and courtroom battles. Pre-RWSA, the City built water infrastructure (such as reservoirs, treatment plants and pipes) for both localities. To help pay for those costs, Charlottesville would occasionally annex portions of Albemarle where business had boomed—along the water and sewer lines—thus bringing more property tax revenue into the City. Annexations had to be approved by a judge, and these hearings, which the City almost always won, were bitter, say those who recall them. The courts’ reasoning was that since Charlottesville incurred the cost of growth, it should reap the spoils.

After losing a particularly vicious annexation battle for businesses on 29N in 1961, Albemarle grew tired of Charlottesville triumphantly using water to justify territorial incursions. The County wanted to build its own network of pipes and treatment plants, and it applied for federal funds to do so. But when the State bureaucrats who doled out the cash saw that Albemarle wanted to duplicate City services, the Commonwealth withheld support for funding until the two jurisdictions learned how to play nice.

“They said the City and County share a common resource in the Rivanna River,” recalls Bill Brent, director of the Albemarle County Service Authority since 1971. “It wasn’t in our best interest––or the river’s––to compete.”

In 1972, the two jurisdictions created a corporation, the RWSA, with a dual mission: provide water and sewer services for the expected growth rate, as determined by City Council and the Board of Supervisors; and protect the Watershed. The RWSA is led by a board of directors (comprising two City officials, two from the County, and a non-affiliated, appointed chairman) as well as an independent executive director.

“Some referred to it as a shotgun wedding,” says Brent. The RWSA’s marriage of convenience solved long-running spats between the two jurisdictions. The epic struggle between water and growth, however, has proved far too complicated for any single agency.

Those two goals clashed soon after a brief, cooperative honeymoon during which the RWSA succeeded in vastly improving the region’s sewage treatment capabilities.

Before the RWSA, most of Albemarle didn’t have water and sewer lines. County leaders tried to make do without them, allowing developers to build subdivisions using well water and septic tank systems.

“You could see a water crisis coming,” says Peggy King, then president of the local League of Women Voters.

That’s because just beneath Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall and a few feet below the County’s spectacular rural vistas, local geology is a hostile foundation for big developments. Under a layer of topsoil and finely crushed stone, there’s a chaotic pile of impermeable rock laced with crevices. The only groundwater the land can contain is what fills up these cracks. In Western Albemarle, groundwater is especially scarce.

“I think a scientist told us the geology was confused,” says Gerald Fisher, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors between 1976 and 1987.

Local geology makes it nearly impossible to discern whether wells for subdivisions like West Leigh will last three years or 30. During the drought of ‘76, that and other subdivisions ran dry, and the RWSA had to truck in water for several weeks.

To make things worse some residents woke up to raw sewage on their lawns––Albemarle’s geology also makes it hard to tell whether wastewater from septic systems will filter deep into the ground.

“The residents eventually had to pay to get connected to the water and sewer systems, at a considerable expense to them,” says Fisher.

 

Turning off the tap

In 1976, drought brought water shortages and government-imposed restrictions to Charlottesville for the first time in recent memory. Newspapers reported that the crisis made people aware of water’s “true value.” Some people wondered how much more growth Albemarle could tolerate. The RWSA promised to take action.

Sound familiar?

When that drought hit, the government was already using its control of the water supply to manipulate free enterprise. “We never talked about limiting the supply of water,” says former County Supervisor Fisher. “We talked about limiting where it would be delivered. At first, the Albemarle County Sewer Authority would hook up services wherever they could, and that caused sprawl. Then we tried to set some limits.”

Albemarle made baby steps toward integrating water and land-use planning. By the mid-’70s, officials knew the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir was rapidly filling with sediment trapped by dams (according to current data, the SFR can safely provide 16 million gallons of water per day; by 2050, sedimentation will reduce that to 5 million gallons daily). At the time, experts believed that erosion caused by development was exacerbating the siltation process.

So between 1975 and 1980, the County Supervisors passed ordinances designed to protect the Rivanna River from the effects of development. They enforced erosion control methods and put most of the public land around the reservoir into conservation easement. Supervisors also down-zoned all the rural land in the Rivanna Watershed, about one-third of Albemarle, drastically reducing the County’s supply of commercial-ready real estate.

Developers revolted. In those years, Fisher says, developers fought the new rules with lawsuits, and some took litigation to ridiculous extremes.

One developer sued every individual supervisor personally, for $1 million each, says Fisher. Another developer sued for libel several members of the League of Women Voters and Citizens for Albemarle, two groups that had opposed development projects during public hearings. None of the developers won, says Fisher, but the experience was expensive and traumatic nevertheless.

“Trying to hold a public meeting at that time was agonizing,” says Fisher. “You’d have the developer up there speaking, and all these people with clenched teeth and intensity in their faces. But they were afraid to say anything. That’s a period I hope we don’t have to relive.”

“The question then was pretty much the same as it is now: How many people can we support?” says the League of Women Voters’ Peggy King. “Looking out for the good of the overall public went against the grain for a lot of locals.”

But in the ‘70s, no-growth or slow-growth voices were muted by RWSA promises to build a new reservoir on Buck Mountain Creek, a waterway originating in the northern Albemarle mountains, then flowing down through Free Union to the South Fork Rivanna River. Numerous studies said Buck Mountain was a prime spot for a dam.

After arguing for months on how to divide the project cost, the City and County settled on a surcharge system. New water customers still pay a $200 surcharge to cover the $6 million of land RWSA bought along Buck Mountain Creek.

Treva Cromwell, who chaired the RWSA between 1978 and 1986, said at the time that the new reservoir could not be developed overnight—and she didn’t think that should be a problem. After all, studies predicted the existing water supply could meet demand until 2012; the RWSA predicted it would take eight to 10 years to build the Buck Mountain facility. They were so confident that when Cromwell retired from the RWSA, she received a plaque engraved with an image of the Buck Mountain reservoir.

In the early 1990s, the RWSA began the long process of applying for State and federal permission to build the reservoir. In the ‘60s, it only took four years to build the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. By the 1990s, however, State and federal regulators at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency were no longer keen on new reservoirs.

“The regulatory agencies reflected the new national mood, that you don’t build dams on creeks and change the hydrology cycle,” says Cromwell.

On top of that cultural shift, in the mid-’90s, scientists discovered an endangered species, the James River spinymussel, living in Buck Mountain Creek. The rare invertebrate effectively killed the Buck Mountain Reservoir.

“The DEQ said they wouldn’t permit a reservoir until we had tried everything else first,” says Cromwell. “If there ever was a shock that went through the community, it was when we couldn’t build the reservoir.”

So the RWSA hired new consultants to figure out the best alternatives to a new reservoir. By then, the doomsday scenario was moved up to about 2000, when consultants predicted water demand would eclipse supply. The consultants, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., further predicted that by 2050, the County’s growth rate and the reservoirs’ siltation rate would combine to produce a water shortfall in the neighborhood of 12 million gallons per day.

But the RWSA had other problems, namely the Ivy Landfill, which had polluted nearby groundwater. It needed to be closed and monitored at high cost to the RWSA and, ultimately, to taxpayers.

“Landfill issues were taking so much of Rivanna’s time for so many years,” says former City Councilor David Toscano. “Council was not as engaged in water issues as it should have been. But, until a crisis emerges, people aren’t focused on it very much.”

 

An unchanging tide

It’s said that there are no new problems in government––just the same issues appearing and disappearing in the public’s field of vision. Conflicts between development and resources have been around a long time, but as Toscano implies, only in times of shortage do people pay heed.

The recent crisis reminded us, once again, that water is not unlimited. It also showed that people can work together to protect a common resource. For that reason, the experience was valuable, says Downtown restaurateur Tony LaBua.

“The City did exactly as it should have done,” he says. “People really stepped up to the plate.” LaBua says that after the deluge he’s keeping the waterless hand sanitizer in his bathroom at Chap’s. The posters––”If it’s yellow let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down”––are staying up indefinitely, too.

“It’s nothing a little incense can’t take care of,” LaBua says.

People’s willingness to conserve water is certainly part of the drought story. On August 23, when the City and County first passed mandatory water restrictions, the municipal water system used about 12.5 million gallons per day; by October 25, consumption had dropped below 7 million gallons per day. Water officials laud the public for their efforts while simultaneously “rewarding” them with hiked water rates––from $3 per 1,000 gallons last summer to $7.48 per 1,000 gallons in November.

“People feel like they’re being punished,” says leading City Republican Jon Bright, who keeps close tabs on public sentiment at the Downtown branch of his Spectacle Shop business. “I’ve heard so many people say that we’ve sucked it up, we did our part, and now we’re being punished.”

The rate characterizes RWSA’s Catch-22. Because all the Authority’s money comes from water sales, when people conserve water, the RWSA has to raise rates to keep up its revenue.

The money is also helping to pay for the $13.2 million, three-part plan to dredge sediment from the South Fork Rivanna, raise the dam by four feet and re-open a pumping station on the Mechums River—a plan widely viewed as a quick but temporary fix. RWSA Executive Director Lawrence Tropea says raising the dam will take at least two years. The pump station should be open by next summer. There’s no telling how long it may take to clean out some 70,000 cubic feet of silt. Right now, the RWSA is waiting for the Service Authority’s Bill Brent and the City’s Public Works Director, Judith Meuller, to hash out a cost-sharing scheme.

Clearly, the deluge hasn’t solved our water crisis. Groundwater, which feeds the streams that flow into our reservoirs, is still below normal. More significantly, there are no clear solutions to the long-term conflict between growth and water.

Any government efforts to slow down growth would be “disastrous,” says Leigh Middleditch, an attorney for McGuire Woods who serves on a water advisory committee. “Growth is inevitable, and managing growth should not be dependent on the water supply. What’s the best approach beyond these temporary fixes? Anything is going to be terribly expensive. The community’s got to debate these things.”

RWSA Chair Collins agrees with Middleditch’s call for a public debate. He believes it would be best to talk about limiting demand as well as increasing supply. Given the State and federal reluctance to approve new reservoirs, building new water impoundments won’t be easy; nor will it be simple to stop growth, either.

“Anyone can come, but not everyone can come,” says Collins. “At some point, we’re going to have to plan and seek the optimum level of population.”

These debates may go on for another 30 years. But by then, water, in its own soft way, will have attacked Albemarle’s solid trend of human and economic growth. In the past 30 years, Charlottesville and Albemarle haven’t made much progress resolving their liquid arguments. That trend likely could continue if the recent deluge dilutes the public water consciousness, which lately made everyone so proud.

Two years ago, Charlottesville carpenter Louise Finger packed her tool belt and sized up a new project. She put aside her usual routine of building swanky homes for Central Virginia’s well-to-do and embarked on what she says is a more rewarding path: constructing no-frills public structures for communities in need.

Ilove that kind of work, but day after day of building high-end homes for people who already have another home wasn’t very fulfilling,” Finger says. “Building a medical clinic for a community that doesn’t have one is more valuable to me than building something else for lots of money.”

With that attitude in mind, two years ago Finger flew to Fort Liberté, Haiti, and spent 10 days lending her craftsmanship to an ongoing medical clinic project. She worked with more than two dozen Haitian laborers hauling loads of concrete in a bucket brigade, looking for lumber in a fairly desolate land, and bending and reusing nails due to the lack of available resources. She loved it, and in the end felt that she had used her skills to produce something desperately needed. That’s the whole design of Building Goodness.

Officially incorporated in 1999, the Building Goodness Foundation assists community-based construction projects in Third World countries by providing planning and implementation services, as well as on-site expertise. Founded by a group of Charlottesville builders eager to give back, local contractors, craftsmen and surveyors now put their years of experience building high-end houses in neighborhoods like Farmington and Glenmore toward figuring out how to build a hillside school in a remote part of, say, Guatemala. And in addition to five current projects in two different countries, the group has finally started to bring those lessons back home by helping Charlottesville’s needy as well.

 

The idea for Building Goodness came, in part, from Jack Stoner, a founding partner of construction firm Alexander Nicholson. Stoner was doing well for himself in the late ’90s. His business worked on more than $60 million worth of construction projects in the past 20 years, including such community landmarks as Kegler’s, the massive ACAC facility at Albemarle Square and the new Catholic school on Rio Road. His firm also works on ritzy houses in some of the area’s most elite subdivisions; clients come to Alexander Nicholson with money, they make it happen.

It was lucrative, but it wasn’t enough. “You reach a point in your life where you say, ‘Is this the point of my existence?’” Stoner explains.

But growing dissatisfaction didn’t immediately lead to a new way of life for Stoner. Six years ago, Lawson Drinkard—a former partner in the influential VMDO architectural firm and a one-time director of the Virginia Student Aid Foundation—asked Stoner to join him on a mission trip to Haiti. Stoner initially declined due to a heavy project load at Alexander Nicholson, but once the projects fell through or were put on hold, Stoner was on a plane heading toward perhaps the most desolate country in the Western hemisphere.

Stoner was dumbfounded by what he found. A near total lack of stability and infrastructure was further starving an already famished country. Charities with good intentions and funding struggled to turn the tide amid limited local resources and facilities.

“There aren’t any general contractors in these areas,” Stoner says.

Upon returning to the United States, Stoner was visited by the big idea: Send teams of Charlottesville contractors to Haiti to build a compound in L’Acul for one of these charities, Haiti Fund—a network of churches and private individuals across the United States that sponsored certain communities on the island nation.

Alexander Nicholson was one of the initial firms to sponsor its employees for the project, paying to send a group to the island and maintaining their wages while there. It went so well—and, according to Stoner, built morale and pride among Alexander Nicholson’s crew—that like-minded contractors decided to charter an organization to make further projects a reality. Other contracting firms that participated in individual projects include Ace Contracting, Inc., Greer & Associates, Central Virginia Waterproofing, Safeway Electric and Sugar Hollow Builders.

“Most people seemed to think they got more out of it than they put into it,” Stoner says.

The positive reactions encouraged him to take the idea and turn it into Building Goodness. With a focus on building structures for the general community, the group works with charities that pay for the materials and organize on-site manpower, while Building Goodness and its member firms provide planning, implementation and on-site expertise.

Stoner has been pleasantly surprised by the willingness to get involved by members of the Charlottesville community. There are lessons to be learned from other communities, he says, as well as ideas about community that can be exported abroad.

“There’s a sense of community in Haiti where if you have a bowl of rice, you’re going to share it,” he says. “But there’s not a great sense of community on the political level as far as being able to band together to improve something.”

Stoner banded together with a friend and former religious adviser to improve Building Goodness. He asked Jay Sanderford, an ordained Presbyterian minister and former youth minister at the First Presbyterian Church on Park Street, to come on as executive director of the foundation after he returned to town in 1999.

Now, Sanderford says, “I don’t have a congregation, but I have lots of partners in building an organization from the ground up. So that’s a pretty exciting challenge.” Long-term, the foundation hopes to export its plan and form satellite groups in other communities, although the local chapter is the only one in operation so far.

Sanderford spends most of his time developing the organization by seeking donors and interested and craftsmen for future trips. Area donors like Mountain Lumber, Monarch Concrete and L&D Association Plumbing help to fund the group’s $125,000 budget, while a string of suppliers, like Better Living, Gaston & Wyatt, and H.T. Ferron Concrete Suppliers, that the builders deal with in their regular line of work provide supplies and logistical assistance for work sites.

Sanderford also writes grants for individual projects and helps organize trips. Since its founding, as many as 50 people have participated in one or more of 19 total trips to Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia and Nicaragua; so far the group has concentrated on works in Central and South America and the Caribbean since those areas are more cost-effective and accessible than other global locales. Sanderford estimates that a total of 150 people have been involved in some way or keep in touch with the group’s progress.

 

Enoch Snyder became heavily involved with the group. Snyder grew up around missionaries in a small town in eastern West Virginia. In high school, he took an exchange trip to Costa Rica. Little surprise, then, when he threw himself headlong into helping to develop Building Goodness shortly after taking a job as a project manager at Alexander Nicholson.

Snyder’s main contribution to the foundation has been advance scouting. So far, the project manager has taken six trips to four countries (Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Bolivia), and plans to lead another trip to Guatemala in January. Unlike many of the craftsmen who travel under the Building Goodness banner, Snyder doesn’t always have a group project on his plate. In Bolivia, for example, Snyder performed consulting work for another group building a hospital for Mission of Hope, Bolivia, a Charlottesville-based religious non-profit..

Scouting projects is a natural extension of his job in Charlottesville, but Snyder says that monitoring the intricate details of stateside projects pales compared to the logistical nightmares of building even simple structures abroad; there are no Allied Concrete trucks backing up to work sites in Haiti, for instance. For that reason, Building Goodness has on occasion turned down solicitations from charities they deem to be disorganized or naive.

“We’ll feel them out by asking things like, ‘What’s your 10-year plan?’” Snyder says.

But while planning out and executing projects can be difficult and time-consuming—combined, Snyder spends a full month a year traveling, meeting, planning and designing just for Building Goodness—he says the reward is great in the human sense.

“Clients around here will thank you, but their expectations are so high that it can be hard to please them,” he says. “Then you can go to Guatemala for a week to work on a school building and be overwhelmed by the peoples’ response.”

Project managers aren’t the only ones who benefit from this interaction; the craftsmen reap the biggest benefits from the exchange.

“Carpentry skills aren’t really valued here. Carpenters are kind of second-class citizens behind doctors and lawyers, for instance,” Snyder says. “But if you go to a Third World country, you’re at the top of the food chain if you can work well with your hands. These craftsmen come back with a whole new perspective on their lives.”

But Building Goodness doesn’t just go to a community to look for what it feels is a problem and then try to fix it. Rather, Snyder says the group typically waits for a community or a charity to come forward with an identified need, one that can be met by a mixing of American expertise and local elbow grease.

“We like to enlist a lot of community labor because of the obvious benefits to the process,” he says.

Sometimes, identified needs can come as a complete surprise to a visiting American. For example, Snyder recalls a project the foundation did in a bayside town in Haiti. The town was built on top of a hill; at the base was its water supply and the home of an elderly woman regarded as a community leader. When the Building Goodness team arrived, the Haitians informed them that they preferred the group construct a set of concrete steps linking the two locales. They put away ideas of grander construction and helped the locals build their vision.

Snyder says his experiences have helped him to not be blind to other cultures. “You are the same person, in better circumstances, than the people you meet over there,” he says.

 

Carpenter Louise Finger learned that lesson during her time working with Building Goodness in Haiti, and more. For her it was a life-changing experience, she says—not just in some abstract, spiritual sense, but in how she lives her day-to-day life.

After returning from Haiti, Finger revamped her priorities. She no longer does contract work and is only a part-time carpenter. Instead, Finger works part-time for the Department of Forestry in the stream-restoration field.

“I probably do more carpentry work for charity than I do for income,” she says.

While the Haiti experience left her thirsting for more opportunities to use her skills to serve others in need, these days Finger donates her time and expertise to local projects. Whereas Building Goodness’ overseas projects advance slowly and take lots of planning, Finger can organize and get a project going around here with minimal planning and expense. Some of her opportunities have come through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but others stem from Building Goodness’ budding local projects team.

That local program may work to placate skeptics who argue that while Building Goodness’ overseas projects fill a need, there are plenty of people in and around Charlottesville who could use a community center or better medical facilities, too. And while the organization has yet to work on any major public facilities in the area, it is starting to make its presence known through private works.

One such local project in late October led Finger and five other Building Goodness members to a house in North Garden that was in desperate need of attention. The Albemarle Housing Improvement Program (one of the organizations Building Goodness has worked with locally, as well as the Jefferson Area Board on Aging and Christmas in April) had the house in mind for a renovation but couldn’t get the approvals lined up. “We weren’t constrained by their funding limitations,” Finger says.

The result: The local craftsmen ripped off the house’s porch, replaced all 12 windows, and poured and placed a cement stoop to help the older woman who lived there come and go more easily. Not bad for a Saturday.

“We could do a lot around here in one day if we had six to eight people who would dedicate their days,” she says. Sanderford says the group has done three such monthly projects, called craft service days, in which Building Goodness rehabilitates dilapidated private homes referred to them by community agencies. The most recent craft service day occurred on November 23 in the Greenwood community. The local approach will be a growing part of the Building Goodness strategy—thus closing the circle on Stoner’s initial idea with benefits being felt right here in our backyard.

Finger says Charlottesville tends to have an excellent sense of community, but that the area’s residents have to guard against facets of their lifestyle that can tear down that mutual caring.

“All in all, it’s a wealthy area,” she says. “With wealth, I think we tend to let go of the importance of depending on others, or looking out for others. You’re less likely to call out to others for help and support, which in turn can make you less mindful of others’ needs.”

But for Finger anyway, her Haiti experience has created a new community here for her—one of friends from different backgrounds whom she might never have met otherwise.

“I didn’t know a soul, and now I’ve met some of the coolest people,” she says. “I’ve definitely made some great friends.”

Yes, he says finally. That will work.

The first day of shooting ANJLZ begins on a cold mid-November morning, in a large garage located on an estate in Free Union, just west of Charlottesville. A group of people, most still looking sleepy and clutching cups of coffee, are milling about in two small rooms adjacent to the garages main bay. A few move with purposescribbling on clipboards, opening make-up kitsbut most look as if they are waiting for someone.

At 8am sharp that someone arrives. Paul Wagner, the director and co-writer of ANJLZ , is an unassuming presence at first glance, a man of medium height and medium build, with a salt-and-pepper beard and dressed in black jeans and a pullover. His hands are in his pockets, and he looks a little chilly as he makes his way to the coffeemaker in the corner. He says a few hellos.

His relaxed demeanor, however, belies how much is at stake. Wagner, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and a Charlottesville resident, has invested a lot of himself and asked a lot of others to get this project going. With ANJLZ , Wagner hopes to make a dark comedy, or, as he calls it, a metaphysical farce, about a man who makes a deal with the devil and the angels who try to save him. It will be, he hopes, a film that will tackle issues of faith and redemption without taking them too seriously. Its an ambitious step for a man whose career has largely been spent making documentaries, with only one real feature film to his credit.

The director, with coffee now, moves into the make-up room to check how the actors are coming along. He talks with an assistant director, who then motions at some production assistants. People begin to move a little faster. ANJLZ gets rolling.

Wagners name is familiar to anyone who has been consistently involved in local theater and filmmaking during the past several years. He is a founder and board member of LightHouse, a nonprofit media-education center for teenagers, and he regularly teaches and heads workshops on documentary filmmaking for that organization. He is also on the board of Live Arts, the citys premier non-professional theater company. He sat on the search committee that recruited Richard Herskowitz, the current director of the Virginia Film Festival. And despite being involved in the community, he hasnt neglected his own career, taking on projects for public television.

His greatest accomplishment since his move to town in the early 1990s came in 1998, when Wagner directed Windhorse , his first feature, a stirring, thoughtful drama about the struggles of a Tibetan family in the shadow of the Chinese occupation. To make it, Wagner conducted an underground shoot on location, under the nose of the Chinese authorities, with a cast composed largely of native Tibetans who had never acted before.

The film was received well by criticsthe San Francisco Chronicle called it amazing, a searing political drama that rips the veils off Western idealism about Tibetand won audience awards at three film festivals. It won the award for Best U.S. Feature at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, where Wagner was also awarded Best Director.

Now Wagner is taking on perhaps his biggest challenge with ANJLZ , a film that is in most senses an entirely local production. Wagner wrote the script in collaboration with Charlottesville resident and novelist Karl Ackerman; the cast is composed almost entirely of Live Arts veterans and former UVA students; crew were generally drawn from Charlottesville and Richmond; Will Kerner, a founder of Live Arts and a well-known photographer, is producing the film. Local investors have provided most of the money for the production. In addition, virtually the entire 18-day shootmost of the action in ANJLZ takes place in one mansionis at Travigne, the Albemarle home of a former Internet executive.

Every effort is being made to keep ANJLZ a cheap, streamlined production. As he did with Windhorse , Wagner is shooting ANJLZ entirely on digital video, which is considerably cheaper than film. The cast and crew are working, for the moment anyway, on a volunteer basis, having accepted deferred salariesif ANJLZ makes money, they get paid. The budget for the film, including the salaries, will total about $300,000.

The prospects for ANJLZ after it is completed are uncertain, but Kerner and Wagner will try to get the film into festivals, and then secure a cable deal. Cable seems a far likelier scenario than theatrical distribution for a small independent film.

ANJLZ will test the resources Wagner has developed over his career, a career that began in the early 70s when he was a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in behavioral research. In what was pretty much an accident, Wagner took a class in documentary filmmaking taught by Sol Worth, a pioneering anthropologist and a brilliant, difficult guy, with whom, Wagner further says, he had a terrific personal relationship.

The class had a huge impact on Wagner. He knew he wanted to make documentaries. He promptly quit school, hit the library, and watched as many films as possible in an attempt to educate himself about filmmaking. In time, he fell in with a group of folklorists at the Smithsonian Institute, assisting them in research projects and doing films based on the ideas.

Through the class, and then the Smithsonian projects, Wagner developed what he called an anthropological approach to filmmaking that has informed his work ever since.

That was the key thing, he says. That sort of set my direction as a filmmaker, particularly as a documentary filmmaker. And so everything that Ive done I think has been pretty much in that ballpark. Certainly the documentaries, and even Windhorse is very sort of ethnographic, even as a feature film.

In 1984, Wagners career got a significant jump-start. In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Office of Folklife Programs, Wagner, with his friend Marjorie Hunt, made The Stone Carvers, a documentary on a group of Italian-American artisans. The charming 30-minute film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Wagner says he doesnt think The Stone Carvers is necessarily better as a piece of work than other films he has made, but he acknowledges what the Oscar meant for him.

It had two effects. The big one isand its sort of ridiculousbut it gives you this phrase, Academy Award-winning filmmaker. Long after people have forgotten The Stone Carvers , you keep using this phrase relentlessly, he says in his High Street office. And the press picks it up, and it gives you an identity, which whether its earned or not or deserved or not, is just sort of irrelevant. It just has the function of giving you this one phrase that gets attached to you, and you know what? Its great to be able to use that, so I use it.

But in a more personal way, it also sort of legitimized the direction of these ethnographic films, or anthropologically based films, as being something other than an academic exercise, he goes on.

In other words, it didnt have to be a boring documentary in which nothing happens because youre looking at real people in their everyday liveswhich might be some peoples assumption about a film like that. But in fact it proved to me that the possibilities for telling a story in that context were terrific, that they could be moving and exciting and thought-provoking and all sorts of things that films need to be successful, even though the people were unknown, or their stories not important in some ways.

Wagner’s other films in the 1980s and 90s centered on a variety of different topics, though all to some degree displayed Wagners ethnographic sensibilities. There was Miles of Smiles: Years of Struggle , which told the history of the Pullman Porters, who formed the country’s first black labor union. There was a profile of playwright George C. Wolfe; a film about the traveling medicine show, which featured many of the few remaining medicine show performers; and Out of Ireland , which dealt with the history of the Irish emigration to America.

His career took another turn in 1993, when Wagners niece, Julia Elliott, was arrested by the Chinese police while traveling inside Tibet for taking pictures during a protest demonstration. The event inspired Wagner to talk to her, and her Tibetan boyfriend, Thupten Tsering, about helping him with a film about Tibet.

There are and were a number of documentaries about modern-day Tibetlegions of artists have protested the human rights abuses committed by the Chinese government since its invasion in 1951and Wagner and company soon decided that this film would be a feature. Even this, however, would be a feature somewhat continuous with the directors earlier work.

They had ideas about what the story could be about, in terms of representing the story for young people specifically, Wagner says. Not just this bigger political story about the Dalai Lama, but rooted in the lives of everyday people, people who are not the Dalai Lama, but who have dramatic stories because their lives were dramatic, and their lives dramatized these broader and cultural forces. So that became the approach, which sort of meshed with the way I had always looked at things.

Windhorse made many people look at Wagner differentlyeven his friends. One of these was novelist Karl Ackerman, who had known Wagner since he moved to town.

Id seen a lot of his documentaries before Windhorse , and I remember one afternoon he came over and [Jennifer, Ackermans wife] and I sat down and watched a rough cut of Windhorse with him, Ackerman says. And I remember beingas well as I knew him at that pointkind of stunned with two things about him as a filmmaker: No. 1, that his movies are really smart; and No. 2, that he is really concerned about story and character.

About one-and-a-half years ago, Ackerman and Wagner began to talk about collaborating on a project. The original idea, they say, was to make a film that could be shot on a single Charlottesville location, with a small cast. Ackerman had been planning a short story about the final day in the life of a wealthy man, and the two discussed ways to make this into a film.

Both men attended parochial schools, and they soon decided to infuse the story with elements from their shared background, what Wagner calls a cultural Catholicism, where youve grown up with these ideas and ways of thinking about these ideas.

In ANJLZ , Sharif and Victor, two angels, travel to the country home of Bobby Buchanan, who they know will die that day, to do his soul crossing. (The title refers to the vanity plate on the back of the angels beat-up van.) What the angels dont know, due to a cosmic mix-up, is that Buchanan long ago made a deal with the devil10 years of wealth and power in return for his soul at the endand that Azazel, the black angel, will soon be arriving on the scene to collect the debt. Victor, over the objections of Sharif, decides to disrupt the process and help save Bobby.

The religious characters in the script, angel or not, are not given an easy treatment in ANJLZ . Sharif is a cynical, hard-boiled pragmatist; and Victor is more crafty than holy. No one is particularly concerned with doing the right thingits following the rules, or getting away with bending them, that concerns them. Nevertheless, the script isn’t wholly cynical, and at the end, to paraphrase the script itself, shit is transformed into love.

The script is clever, but films, such as 1999s Dogma , which mix religion and satire, faith and farce, have a history of backfiring with audiences and sometimes provoking controversy. When youre funny, youre too flip; when youre serious, youre too earnest. Its tough to strike the right note, and thats why such movies are always risky undertakings, particularly by newcomers to feature filmmaking. In other words, theres no guarantee that ANJLZ will work as a film, and quite a lot to suggest it wont.

Whether they have something at stake in the project or not, those who know Wagner well express enormous confidence in his abilities.

Kerner, ANJLZ photographer-producer who also produced Windhorse , has had ample opportunity to observe Wagner work both on and off the set; the two share an office on East High Street.

I think hes a very skilled, patient, thorough, even-keeled personality, Kerner says. I dont think Ive ever seen him on the set lose his temper or anything like that. In a production, whether its Windhorse or ANJLZ , the nature of filmmaking is such that there are so many variables, so many people involved, so many different unforeseen things that can happen, that the attribute he has of being able to stay calm through it all I think is one that is really key to creating a positive work environment.

Richard Herskowitz, who showed Windhorse at the 1998 Virginia Film Festival, calls the director immensely talented.

Hes one of these filmmakers who really fully embraces the project and tackles each job in a fresh way, Herskowitz says. I really think hes one of those people that just loves learning about new things, and so he throws himself into each project without it already having a strong connection to something he already knows.

While Wagner may have the skills to conduct a successful shoot, whether he will be able to turn the script of ANJLZ into a successful movie is a different story. But the director himself does not sound worried about the outcome. For Wagner, the unpredictability, and the risk, is part of the fun.

Thats the nature of this process, and what to me is so exciting about it, that its always redefining itself, he says. Something that seems so important at one point in the process, once you move to the next stage doesnt mean anything. And that to me is sort of liberating, because it means you can make horrible mistakes early on and you dont have to pay for them. On the other hand, you can take extreme risks that might pay fabulous dividends.

And I think thats sort of where we are in our thinking about the script. You look at the page, and you think, to oversimplify: Is it possible to make a joke about death? Particularly after September 11? Can you joke about death?

Well, I dont know. But Im going to find out.

Its mid-morning , a bit later on the first day of the shoot. Wagner and some of the crew are on location at a nearby estate. The property has been chosen as the site for the films few exterior shots primarily because it happens to feature a large gate, which Wagner wants in the film.

Things have been running smoothly all morningseveral of the crew comment how well the first day has goneand Wagner is purposeful but calm, cracking a few jokes. For the most part everyone is smilingfor now.

The director grabs a bagel, and works with the photographer on the angle for the next shot, which will capture the angels as they drive through the opening in the gate in their dilapidated Volkswagen van.

Wagners not entirely happy with the set-up, because the angels are supposed to be speeding and the gate doors dont open as quickly as he would like. However, he knows he can speed up the shot in the editing process.

For a few seconds he looks at the monitor, examining the framing.

Yes, he says finally. That will work.

Charlottesville’s population isn’t getting any younger, and the area’s reputation for a high quality of life is driving not only growth in general but also an influx of people over 60 from across the country. Indeed, 12.5 percent of the Charlottesville-Albemarle population in 2000 was 65 or older, compared to 9.7 percent in 1990.

 

Ned and Fran Morris, formerly of New Jersey, can describe exactly what propels that growth among senior citizens. When they were looking for a place to retire, Ned says, they knew they wanted to continue to live with four seasons.

"But we didn’t want to have to put up with the New York winters," Ned says. "And we knew we wanted a community with good medical facilities, hopefully with a college or university."

Advertisers know that Charlottesville fulfills the Morrises’ wishes almost perfectly. In the Fall 2002 issue of Virginia magazine, a publication of the UVA Alumni Association, for instance, there’s an ad placed by Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, the retirement community where the Morrises have lived since 1990. The full-page ad beckons senior citizens to move into one of Westminster-Canterbury’s cottages or apartments. One selling point is the security of lifelong care, something every Westminster resident is guaranteed.

Yet the ad’s true focus is something else: the quality of life outside Westminster around Charlottesville itself. The marketing piece highlights opportunities that senior citizens have here for cultural activities and intellectual stimulation, which many other medium-sized towns cannot offer. The region shines in this ad as a mecca of learning, nestled in a spectacular natural setting.

"Charlottesville has become a real destination for retirees," says Kevin O’Halloran, development director at Westminster-Canterbury. The ad in Virginia magazine is just one of many targeting retirees around the country. It drops tantalizing names: summer Shakespeare at Barboursville, UVA football games, and—of course—Monticello.

Retirees coming to Charlottesville may indeed find an enjoyable new home awaiting them. Yet, for many other seniors, there is no guarantee of basic services, much less lifelong learning. A growing population and shrinking economy have people worried about the future of aging in Charlottesville.

 

 

Occupying a lofty perch on Pantops Mountain, Westminster-Canterbury’s main building could almost be an upscale hotel. "You think of a nursing home as a grim, sterile place. That isn’t the case here," O’Halloran says. Framed art—original drawings by the daughter of a resident—bedecks a hallway. Gracious common areas include a full-service dining room, complete with linen napkins at each place setting. Outside the building, residents have an eye-level view of Monticello.

Westminster is what’s known as a continuing care facility. Its 300 residents sign contracts guaranteeing them housing, food and medical care for life. Most arrive during what O’Halloran calls the "second phase of retirement." In other words, they’re ready to be done with the responsibilities of home ownership and they’re looking for a secure future. The average age of new residents is 75. At this stage, usually healthy, they live independently in cottages or apartments and drive their own cars. "They want to plan ahead and make sure everything is taken care of so that their children don’t have to," he says.

The Morrises, who moved first to Crozet from New Jersey in 1979 when Ned retired from a marketing career, say their Westminster cottage feels like home.

"The people are great, and it’s beautifully run. You can be busy every minute of the day, there’s so much going on," says Fran.

As residents age and begin to need help with basic activities like dressing and eating, they move into Westminster’s assisted living facility, which has nurses on each floor. Later, they may move again, into full-time nursing care or a specialized Alzheimer’s unit.

With Westminster providing various levels of care at a single site, it can accommodate couples whose needs vary. "We had been here about three years when I found out I had to have my hip operated on," Fran says. "I was over in the health center, and Ned didn’t have to go across town to a nursing home to see me when I was convalescing."

Westminster residents enjoy on-demand transportation around town. They can join bus tours to plays and lectures or take special classes for seniors taught by current and retired UVA faculty at the Jefferson Institute for Lifelong Learning. And their living quarters are hardly cramped: Many have two-bedroom cottages or apartments.

Naturally, all this costs quite a lot. Westminster is a non-profit organization affiliated with the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, and its revenue mostly comes from its residents. To move into an apartment here, a single person would pay an entrance fee of at least $180,000; couples wanting larger cottages shell out considerably more. On top of the entrance charge, monthly maintenance fees range from $2,000 to more than $4,000.

The Westminster Fellowship Fund can cover the entrance or monthly fee for people with limited means, and a few residents receive full assistance. The fund also provides a form of insurance for residents who have unexpected money troubles.

The Morrises have no doubt that for them, the cost has been more than worthwhile, and say that the monthly fee is comparable to the cost of living independently.

"I know it’s staggering to contemplate writing that first check for the entrance fee," Ned says. "But most people, by the time they reach the age to come in here, they own their home, and that money is usually more than is required for whatever unit they want to live in here. It’s upscale, but it’s not expensive."

 

 

Kathy Crosier, who handles community relations at the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, agrees that Charlottesville is a good place to grow old. She says the area offers a wealth of resources JABA can tap to help serve the elderly, and that a commitment to volunteerism is what mobilizes these resources. "We’re very fortunate in this area that there’s such an outreach from the community," she says.

She tells the story of a woman in JABA’s adult day care program who spoke only Japanese. "We were able to contact someone at UVA who found people who spoke Japanese, and they came and visited with her once a week," Crosier says. "If you were in an isolated area, you might not be able to tap into that. Even the most unusual thing, we can usually find someone to assist us."

With its broad mission covering a long roster of programs for the elderly, JABA needs to be adept at drawing assistance from whatever sources it can. A mostly publicly funded agency serving Charlottesville plus five surrounding counties (Greene, Louisa, Nelson, Fluvanna and Albemarle), JABA’s constituency includes all elderly people and their caregivers. "We serve people that may have means, and people that don’t," Crosier says. JABA’s mission is simple and far-reaching—to determine the needs of the elderly, and fulfill them.

Among the services JABA offers are health insurance counseling, home safety assistance (installing handrails in the shower, for example), meal delivery and in-home care. There are even volunteers available to help seniors decipher byzantine medical bills. Joyce Gentry, an information specialist at JABA, says "Some people look at a bill, and say ‘I don’t have a clue; it’s five pages long. What do I pay?’ We have someone who can help them look at that and determine, ‘This is what you pay.’ It gives them peace of mind." JABA is so well known as a go-to information source for seniors that, says Crosier, "People call Joyce for directions to the airport."

JABA also operates senior centers in each of the five counties it serves and is working to open adult day care facilities around the region. Walking through the day care center in JABA’s main office north of Charlottesville, Crosier says that in some ways day care is one of JABA’s most important programs.

"It’s all about creating that quality of life and making the elderly feel useful," she says. "You still participate in life, and you still give back and do things, even though you have physical limitations."

Clients in the day care program can become part of a hand bell choir, arrange flowers donated by Whole Foods Market or help make quilts, some of which hang on the walls of the Charlottesville center’s spacious great room. Outside, there’s a pleasant enclosed patio where clients grow vegetables, which they then cook in the center’s kitchen. Crosier greets a group of about 10 clients making cookies; an activities director handles the oven to help ensure safety.

The day care center has been in this location for five years, and the new building was designed to be more effective at meeting clients’ most pressing needs. A two-bed infirmary has exit doors opening directly to the outside.

"That keeps everybody in day care away from the situation, and they don’t all panic and get worried," Crosier says. "This is a state- of-the-art facility, and when they were planning this building, this was the dream thing, to have an infirmary separate."

Back in the great room, the center serves lunch and two snacks each day. They’re substantial enough to provide all the nutrition clients need for the day, says Crosier, which is especially important for those who live alone. "They may go home and just have tea and toast or cereal," she says, "so at least you know they’ve eaten here and had a hot meal served to them."

With an inexpensive hair salon, therapeutic tub room, geriatric physicians and physical therapists on site, the center functions as a mini-town where seniors can access many services at once. This is just as helpful to family members and caregivers as it is to seniors themselves, Crosier says.

"We wanted to do kind of like a one-stop shopping theme, so while that caregiver is taking her respite break or going to work, she can drop Mom or Dad off [at day care], and if they have a doctor’s appointment, the doctor’s nurse will actually take them for their appointment, then call the family member and give them an update."

Though the agency is involved in affordable housing for seniors (Woods Edge, an apartment building for seniors in Charlottesville, and Mountainside Senior Living, an assisted-living facility in Crozet), JABA is primarily committed to giving seniors the services that will allow them to remain at home as long as possible. "That’s where we find people are happiest," says Gentry.

More than 600 volunteers make JABA run smoothly. Many are able to offer more than just their time, bringing useful skills and experience to JABA programs.

"I think the University is one of the plusses in the community," Gentry says. "We do have people of means here, and also we have people who are very knowledgeable about a wide array of information."

 

 

Crosier and Gentry are each positive about the success JABA has had in its 27-year history. Yet they acknowledge that there are limitations to what JABA can do. Many of its services are free, and the ones that are fee-based operate on a sliding scale. Day care, for example, costs $50 per day, but many clients pay $5 or nothing at all.

"We serve everyone," Crosier says, "and any profit that is made would be just to balance out these programs for the indigent."

The day care program successfully serves about 75 registered clients and has no waiting list.

Other JABA services operate on shakier ground, with seniors who cannot afford to pay left on waiting lists. With State budget cuts looming, even successful programs like day care are threatened.

"When funding sources are cut, that means the indigent will have a waiting list because there won’t be scholarship funding available, or it might be more limited," Crosier says.

Gentry believes that, with budget cuts, the biggest gap that may open in JABA’s services will be with in-home care.

The uncertain plight of some JABA clients clearly is a far cry from a comfortable life on Pantops Mountain. The cost of health care can be an impossible burden.

"It’s not unusual, if someone has a $500 to $600 per month income, and they have a prescription that costs $200 to fill, they don’t fill the prescription," Crosier says. "That’s very common for us to see."

Even seniors who find a way to pay for assisted-living or nursing home care often encounter serious problems in the quality of care they receive. Angela Johnson is JABA’s ombudsman, in charge of investigating and resolving complaints about long-term care. She says the most common complaint is that a resident’s care plan is not being fulfilled. For example, a care plan may include "pressure ulcer [bedsore] prevention for a person who has been identified to be at risk: turning every two hours, hydration, nutrition and personal hygiene." A turn chart is meant to document how often the resident is turned. Yet visiting family members may repeatedly find the chart empty, or worse, their loved one soaked in urine.

Johnson believes that the root of this problem is the typically low wage paid to nursing home staff. Certified nursing assistants have demanding jobs and notoriously high turnover rates.

"The bottom line seems to boil down to staffing, the availability of staff to turn residents every two hours. If you have three people caring for 30 people in a shift, is it realistic to expect that to truly happen along with the other responsibilities they have in the provision of care?" she asks. "In some of the smaller assisted-living facilities, those people are even responsible for cooking and cleaning, along with resident care."

 

 

If JABA faces challenges now, those challenges promise to expand in the future. With baby boomers heading into their retirement years, health care costs rising and Social Security on uncertain ground, the future of aging is of national concern.

"You have all this drain now on the economy because of elderly who need support and services, and it’s only going to increase," Crosier says. "This isn’t a situation that’s just isolated to us, it’s across the nation." Indeed, throughout JABA’s jurisdiction, the Virginia Employment Commission projects a 25 percent increase in the over-65 population by 2010.

JABA’s planners are trying to chart a course for the future that will maintain its current level of service for a burgeoning population. Again, a shortage of nurses and nursing assistants is of critical concern.

"We just have to be as innovative as we know how to meet needs," Gentry says. "It’s not going to go away. We’re either going to meet those needs or we’re going to be in a bad situation."

She worries about elderly people on fixed incomes finding their way through a more austere financial landscape. Those at the lowest income level qualify for Medicaid, the Federal- and State-funded program that provides health insurance to very low-income people, but those with slightly more income are most at risk, according to Gentry. That’s because they can’t get aid, yet can’t afford to pay for services themselves.

"Those are the ones who are vulnerable, because they’re caught, and there’s not very much offered to them," she says.

At Westminster-Canterbury, O’Halloran agrees that aging boomers will cause major shifts in years to come.

"I think we’re seeing the beginning of that now," he says, gesturing to a huge construction project visible through his office window. Westminster is adding a 250-bed addition to its independent-living apartment building, including a new dining room and many other common areas.

"We found there was a very strong desire, and all the apartments were reserved before we broke ground," he says.

Despite that evidence of overwhelming demand, O’Halloran is optimistic about the future.

"We feel the expansion will serve the needs of seniors in this population for the foreseeable future," he says. "I believe we have a great many talented people in the community who are thinking long-term to ensure this continues to be one of the great places to live for all ages, including seniors."

Asked if Charlottesville lacks anything major in their eyes, the Morrises look at each other, laugh, and shake their heads. "Really! I can’t think of a thing," says Ned. Westminster-Canterbury seems to fulfill its promise of high-quality care in a beautiful, well-rounded city. But not everyone is able to claim a piece of this dream.

"I get lots of calls from around the country where people say ‘I’m interested in living in Charlottesville, but I need to know about low-income housing,’" JABA’s Gentry says.

"And I say you’ve come to the wrong place. Our resources are very limited for low-income housing; subsidized housing has waiting lists. There’s not enough of it," she says.

"So if you have a good situation where you’re living, you’d better hold onto it."

"Welcome to our cheese manufacturing facility," Christine Solem says pointedly. She’s standing in her cozy, well-worn kitchen north of Charlottesville, where she and John Coles have run a small goat and vegetable farm since 1973. Outside, their 24 goats wander around a large, partly wooded enclosure.

Solem and Coles, in fact, make goat cheese in this very room; Solem’s arch remark reflects her disdain for regulations proposed by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services that would put her kitchen under the same rules as an industrial-scale dairy farm. Right now, her operation is unregulated.

These days, the debate over food safety rages at a fever pitch. The presumed threat of bioterrorism lends even greater seriousness to the business of preventing contamination. Yet infectious disease – frightening as it is – isn’t the greatest danger, according to some. Proponents of small-scale and organic farming say that in the rush to prevent disease, we are risking something even more important: our connections to our food and, in some ways, each other.For Solem and Coles, the debate begins with a practical question right in their kitchen. The new milk regulations from the VDACS would require a slew of changes in their cheesemaking, and the biggest is a requirement to pasteurize the goat milk before making it into cheese.

"That’s unacceptable," Solem says. "That would ruin the cheese we make."

It seems odd to think that pasteurization – the process of heating milk to kill bacteria – would be bad, but it’s only necessary, according to Solem, if you need the milk to stay fresh for a long time. Large dairies, which often ship their products hundreds of miles, and supermarkets, which prefer milk with a long shelf life, rely on pasteurization to prevent contamination with diseases like E. coli and salmonella.

Solem says, however, raw milk contains beneficial bacteria – part of the immune system – that normally out-compete pathogens. Pasteurization kills these beneficial bacteria, too, leaving the milk sterile but "dead" – that is, vulnerable to any new pathogens that come along.

Solem and Coles say that pasteurization isn’t necessary, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary. They contend that because they make their cheese in frequent, small batches, it’s safe from contamination.

"It’s always fresh cheese; it’s never stored milk," Coles says. "The chances of things happening to it are so much slimmer."

He believes that pasteurization has been the subject of misleading publicity by the government since the 1940s.

"When you’ve got 60 years of lies, it becomes truth," Coles says.

Solem says that the largest salmonella outbreak in U.S. history, which occurred in Illinois in 1985 and affected at least 16,000 people, was caused by pasteurized milk.

If the regulations proposed by VDACS are implemented, Solem and Coles will have to buy an approved pasteurizer, which they say could cost up to $12,000. They’d also be required to build a new building for milking their goats, pay for testing of their cheeses and modify their kitchen (or build a new one) to comply with other regulations. Altogether, they say this will cost $50,000 – a sum that would effectively put them out of business, given their annual cheese revenues of $5,000-10,000.

John Beers, a VDACS supervisor who’s been involved in writing the proposed regulations, says that the department is just trying to bring Virginialaw in line with federal guidelines for food safety developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. He says that bringing unregulated operations under State oversight would "give people the guidance they need to properly handle milk before they process it." Guidelines covering cleanliness, cooling and storage of milk are "commonsense things you would do anyway," he says. For example, the regulations require producers to separate the various steps of cheese-making ("paraffining cheese, rindless block wrapping, curing cheese, cleaning and preparing bulk cheese and cutting and wrapping cheese") by building separate facilities for each operation, or by conducting them one at a time.

Solem says she doesn’t need VDACS’ guidance, and that she’s been fighting with the department for years for what she believes is her right to produce cheese and sell it directly to consumers. In 1999, agents of VDACS showed up at her farm, without calling ahead, and asked to inspect her facilities. She refused, they came back with a warrant. Virginia’s 16th Judicial Court later ruled the search was unconstitutional.

After taking some pictures and a few samples of goat cheese, VDACS charged Solem with six violations of the Virginia Food Laws. Solem says microscopic inspection of the cheese had revealed a tiny hair and one insect part. Other violations involved the state of her kitchen, which was less than pristine.

Against the charge of uncleanliness, Solem says, "How many people’s houses would look really, really nice if someone came in at any minute and inspected? I had been away all weekend, it was just a really bad time," she says, noting she wasn’t making cheese at the time the inspectors arrived.

Asked how they ensure the safety of their product, Solem and Coles have a disarmingly simple answer: "We just clean up before we make the cheese." Their self-imposed safeguards include sanitizing their equipment, sterilizing the cheesecloth and – most tellingly, they say – tasting every batch of cheese. Coles points out that he has a 20-year history of selling goat cheese, often to repeat customers at the Charlottesville farmers’ market, and has never had a complaint about safety.

 

 

The key is that they sell their products directly to the people who will eat them, Coles says. That situation creates a type of personal accountability that larger agricultural operations don’t have.

"Everything that we put out, we have a pride in and, if something happens, the person knows right where they got the food," he says. "It doesn’t go through a middleman, and it doesn’t get shipped to California."

Solem and Coles are members of a new watchdog group that opposes State regulation of small farms and food producers. The Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association is taking on VDACS and other regulatory agencies over what it feels are inappropriate safety regulations. Members recently gathered at Wayne Bolton’s farm in Green Bay to chart a course of action.

Over a meal they’d mostly grown themselves – hamburgers, sliced organic tomatoes, goat cheese – a group of about 15 discussed how to halt the progress of pending regulations through the General Assembly and VDACS. Besides the milk regulations that would affect those with small herds of goats, VICFA is concerned with a broad set of safety rules developed by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which Virginia is considering adopting as State law.

This Food Code aims to ensure the safety of any food sold or given away in Virginia, providing standards for everything from the temperature of delivery trucks to the labeling of wild mushrooms. For example, the Code states "Raw shell eggs shall be received in refrigerated equipment that maintains an ambient air temperature of 7ºC (45ºF) or less." The problem with this, VICFA members say, is that by defining "food establishment" as broadly as it does, the Food Code ends up placing undue restrictions on smaller operations: farmers’ markets, on-farm sales, even church kitchens. "This would eliminate our lunch here today," said Bolton in amazement.

That may be a stretch, but VICFA identifies a real threat to its members’ livelihoods in the prospect of conforming farm kitchens to standards that are scaled to corporate-sized budgets.

Though the tone of the meeting was at times distinctly libertarian (one project involves setting up a hotline for farmers being "harassed by bureaucrats"), the group doesn’t necessarily oppose regulation on principle.

"You need regulations when food is being sold and re-sold," Solem says, referring to supermarkets. She says, too, that she and Coles are required to have their goats certified annually, to make sure they’re free of diseases like tuberculosis. They see this regulation – and the $200 expense that goes along with it – as entirely reasonable.

The key, they say, is to have small farmers recognized as a distinct type of operation, one that fundamentally is less in need of regulation than big agribusiness. For example, they are asking VDACS to include a clause in its proposed milk regulations that would make an exception for small farmers selling cheese directly to consumers, either on their farms or at farmers’ markets.

VDACS’ Beers doesn’t feel this amendment is reasonable. "I’m perfectly willing to be flexible as long as the public’s health and safety aspects are met," he says, "but where a requirement is there because it prevents or reduces a risk, I’m not willing to say the exemption is okay."

He adds that inspections of small farms in the past have revealed contamination in milk products, including insect parts and pathogens.

"I’m quite concerned about what goes on where there is no oversight," he says.

 

People who run food businesses from their homes are the most likely to feel cramped by state oversight. Lisa McEwan owns Hot Cakes, a Charlottesville catering company. Though her business is small and independent – she has only one location and has run it herself since 1986 – she doesn’t feel unduly restricted by safety regulations.

"This business I run is oriented to deal with regulations from day one, not trying to do it as a home-craft kind of business," she says.

Occasionally, she finds safety regulations annoying. "They drive me crazy sometimes," she admits. "I don’t care if somebody’s hands havebeen on my loaf of French bread. I’m comfortable with food. But I do try and keep an open mind and understand where regulators are coming from."

She says that when she visits other restaurants, she likes knowing the regulations are in place. McEwan has noticed an increase in awareness of food safety issues and believes that the potential for danger actually has increased over the years, mostly in the manufacturing process.

"If we could process our food differently, there would be a far lower risk of E. coli and things like that," McEwan says. "I know that the intense, speed-related, factory way that we do our slaughtering definitely makes beef and poultry more hazardous."

The cramming of many animals into small spaces, a common practice in industrial farms, does increase the risk of bacterial contamination, according to pro-vegetarian organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

 

 

VICFA members would agree with McEwan about the risks of so-called factory farming. They are businesspeople looking to preserve their livelihoods by fighting specific political battles, but it’s no accident that VICFA members also share an interest in sustainable agriculture – raising food without pesticides, genetic modification, antibiotics or hormones. Deeper issues about the future of food are at play, they say, in the struggle over regulation.

Joel Salatin, owner of the innovative "beyond organic" Polyface Farm, is VICFA’s president. At the September meeting in Green Bay, he read from a characteristically blunt letter he’d written to new VICFA members: "Under the guise of food security and the war on bioterrorism, government agents are being used as pawns by multinational corporations to regulate alternative food out of the marketplace and eliminate freedom of choice in the food system." The letter also refers to conventionally grown food as "irradiated, genetically altered, and pathogen-laced."

A litany of woes, to be sure. Agriculture is an enormous industry and organic proponents say the large scale of conventional farming is at the root of many evils. The argument often boils down to quantity vs. quality. Solem cites the example of industrial tomato producers. Many use a technique that causes all the tomatoes to ripen at the same time. This is useful in terms of cost and efficiency, but compromises taste, Solem says.

Fabienne Swanson, manager and chef at Veggie Heaven, concurs that the best-tasting tomato is one that ripens naturally.

"We get local organic tomatoes ripened on the vine," she says. "I always prefer them when they’re right out of the garden and ripe."

Rather than cutting costs and pursuing ever-greater yield, Coles adds, "We’re concerned mainly about producing a quality product."

Ironically, efficiency of scale may end up compromising not only quality, but safety, too, Solem believes. In industrial dairies, she says, the sheer amount of equipment that must be sanitized means there are more opportunities for infection. By contrast, she holds up an ordinary saucepan. "Here’s what we have to clean," she says.

Awareness of these issues isn’t limited to the farming community. Heather Karp of Charlottesville approaches the subject as a concerned consumer, a trained chef and a sometime nutrition educator. She’s currently building a private clientele as a "food coach" – a consultant for people trying to make major diet changes. She, too, is suspicious of large-scale agriculture, particularly the practice of planting enormous quantities of a single crop.

"I don’t think that food is about quantity," she says. Clearly, America has no shortage of food, Karp says; in fact, "We have a frightening plague of obesity in this country."

Critics of industrial agriculture say there are plenty of threats to physical health posed by the quest for efficiency. Practices like irradiation (zapping food with radiation to kill pathogens), genetic modification (which is very widely used on two staple crops, corn and soybeans) and treatment of livestock with antibiotics are all fodder for national debate. Yet there is another risk, deeper than physical well-being.

Wayne Bolton hints at it during the VICFA meeting: "When we sat down to the table at breakfast, and I was 4 or 5," he says, "we had a platter of eggs on the table, a bowl of gravy, ham, bacon – all of it came from the farm. I guess this whole group is striving to get back to those old days."

In other words, there are larger social and cultural meanings in our relationship to food. Food has the power to affect our health as whole persons, not just as animals. If all we eat is processed food, shipped to us from factories hundreds of miles away, are we losing an important part of our culture?

Karp stresses the idea of connection to farmers, to those we share meals with, to the food itself.

"I think it’s part of my human nature to have a relationship with the food that I’m buying, eating, preparing, with gratitude," she says. In the joyful acts of cooking and sharing food, she says, there are benefits that are almost spiritual in nature.

Karp likes to buy her food at groceries like Integral Yoga and Whole Foods Market, and she also frequents farmers’ markets, where she values the chance to directly interact with those who produce food. She believes more and more people are becoming interested in buying food from sources besides conventional supermarkets.

Solem and Coles agree: "How can you compete with a farmer who just picked a fresh pepper that morning and takes it right there?" Solem says.

Instead of focusing on unattainable dreams of wiping out conventional agriculture, however, VICFA members say they are simply interested in providing an alternative. "We aren’t saying that agribusiness shouldn’t exist, because how else are you going to supply cities?" Coles asks. Indeed, a total return to the pastoral utopia for which Bolton pines seems unlikely in light of the breakneck pace of growth in Albemarle, which often causes farmland to be parceled into subdivisions. Karp, too, realizes that change happens incrementally, and many people don’t have the luxury of making the same choices she’s made. "I love the smaller scale of things, but I’m not in a huge metropolis with three hungry children working an eight- or nine-hour day."

 

 

The issue of choice, finally, may be the crucial question. Coles says that many of his customers at the farmers’ market specifically seek unpasteurized cheese, in part because they prefer its taste.

Sonia Fox of Charlottesville is one such customer: "Their cheese is delicious, and that’s a primary factor. It actually tastes a lot like the fresh cheeses in France," she says, adding "I prefer to use raw [unpasteurized] milk products whenever I can because they’re more easily digestible."

If Coles is no longer permitted to sell his cheese to Fox, he – and VICFA – believe the rights of both parties have been violated. Nationally, the debate over irradiation and genetic modification often focus on choice, too. Critics of the practices say consumers have the right to know – via prominent labeling – exactly what processes their food has gone through.

The exception VICFA wants to insert in the milk regulations would require small farmers to declare their products uncertified and uninspected, so that customers can decide for themselves if they’re willing to risk the purchase. Beers says that, so far, during the public comment period on the proposed milk regulations, the only comments his office has received are from those who oppose regulation.

McEwan, though, is skeptical of exempting small farms, saying there has to be some recourse if health problems do occur. "I think people like buying from that local person and like that intimate relationship, but if they had a serious problem, they would want to feel like they could go to some responsible party."

Solem counters that small farms have already proven themselves to be safer than their industrial counterparts, and says that money, not a concern for public safety, is behind the increase in regulations.

"The real reason is that big business has got a real foothold in VDACS," she says. The lines are still long at conventional groceries, but Solem and Coles believe that the growing interest in alternative food sources is threatening to large-scale producers.

Karp says it’s unfortunate that trends in food, like so much else, ultimately boil down to money, but she’s interested in working within the existing model to effect change.

"Capitalism has given and developed some incredibly wonderful things, but there has to be the balance," she says. "You’re not going to turn the whole country into people who support small farmers and want organic, but I think there has to be room for this variety."

In case it escaped your notice, there’s an election scheduled for November 5. We don’t blame you if you’ve been out of touch on this subject. Even dedicated pols might find themselves bored by a campaign season that features empty platforms, absent candidates and geeky legislative reforms.

For instance, who is there to care about in the current U.S. Senate race? Virginia Democrats couldn’t even field a challenger for the 24-year incumbent, Republican John Warner. His independent challengers, lacking the financial backing of a major party, have had a tough time competing with the Senator, a longtime GOP darling.

Incumbency has also given 5th District Congressman Virgil Goode (R-Rocky Mount) extra traction against his Democratic challenger, Charlottesville City Councilor Meredith Richards. Goode enjoys closer relationships with deep-pocketed political action committees [see EXTRA page 9], and his "Aw, shucks" demeanor plays well in the predominately rural 5th District. So far, Richards’ campaign strategy has been to use Goode’s conservatism against him, criticizing his stance on abortion rights and environmental issues.

It could be a good strategy in liberal enclaves like Charlottesville. "I’ll be voting against Virgil Goode," says 41-year-old Pete Manno, flipping through a newspaper at the Blue Moon Diner a couple of weeks before the election. "I’m definitely anti-Goode."

Manno says he will also vote in favor of the two bond amendments on the ballot, which would permit the General Assembly to borrow money for parks and for capital projects on college and university campuses. UVA officials have gone to a lot of trouble to promote the bond referendum, saying that although there’s no real opposition to it, they fear the bond won’t pass simply because voters are unaware of it.

Manno says he’s "a little irritated" by what he calls UVA’s panhandling. "They own half the town, and they’re crying for money?" he says. But the school’s fears may be well-founded. While many of the diner’s Monday-night patrons said they will vote, they also professed unfamiliarity with the candidates or issues on the November 5 ballot.

One patron named Jessi says she’ll vote next Tuesday for "whoever’s strongest on the environment."

"But I don’t know the candidates," the 18-year old says. "Who are they? Tell us about them."

You asked for it. Here is the C-VILLE voter’s guide – all the information you need about what’s at stake on November 5. While we can help you make an informed choice, only you can get your booty off the couch. Stand up, Charlottesville, and cast your ballot. The guide begins on page 12 of this weeks’ C-Ville Weekly.

Daily we have waitedby the fax machine for a dousing of the region’s bad news, expressed in terms of percents and millions of gallons: 54.2, 7.091; 53.2, 6.905. These are, of course, the terms of the drought (reservoir level and regional usage), which, even after a healing, gentle rain, have not fundamentally changed since August. Charts, graphs, Wet Ones and paper plates…Will this disposable reality never end?

You’ve heard of chronic fatigue syndrome? We’re all in danger of contracting crisis fatigue syndrome.

Let it never be said, however, that C-VILLE shirks its public duty. (We might redefine it once in a while, but that is another matter.) To that end, we present this week a partial guide to getting through the water shortage with, we hope, your good humor intact. We have put together some of the region’s finest minds to celebrate our arid condition, be it through a liberating session of shrub-hydrating outdoor urination or a new stick of floral-scented underarm deodorant. Also in our guide: the truth about bottled water. We taste-tested two dozen varieties so you won’t have to.

And then there are the hearty artists behind the newly mounted Fringe Festival, who, like desert cactuses, have kept the concept of "wet" (this year’s curatorial theme) tucked deep inside while they deal with dry conditions on the outside.

Rounding out our survival guide on page 63, Natalie Estrellita wrestles with many of the crisis’ imponderables: If we’re running low on water, she slyly inquires, is it still possible to tap dance?

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Liquid Diet

C-VILLE’s experts put the bottled water regime to the test

Drought conditions may be plaguing the area’s aquifers,but inside local supermarkets there’s a flood of bottled choices. To do your part you know you should be drinking water from a plastic jug, but which one? Bottled water ranges in price from 50 cents to $1.60 per gallon, but you can’t choose simply on the basis of that because your taste buds don’t care about the cost.

Still, between rushing to the waterless car wash and striding the length of the Downtown Mall to find the one restaurant that will still let the public use its lavatories, not to mention collecting soapy dishwater to feed your scrawny houseplants, who has time to try the many varieties of pre-packaged potables?

Never fear: C-VILLE Weekly has assembled a crack team of highly trained aqua-logists to test 28 varieties of non-flavored, non-carbonated bottled water under strict laboratory conditions. Each of our eight panel members tasted the samples blindly. Between tastes, they were offered a palate cleanser of the most pristine variety: Molson’s. The water experts were not permitted to leave the room until the entire assortment was sampled, which, in time, gave a second meaning to the notion that they were holding water.

Kroger Drinking Water

Isn’t it all "drinking" water, you wonder? In a manner of speaking, yes, but what distinguishes Kroger’s variety is that it’s, and we quote, "from a municipal source." Our judges’ comments included "It tastes kind of thick;" "It has a bad bottom note to it;" and "It tastes like a fleece sweater."

Triton Purified Drinking Water

"Tested daily, exceeds all standards" proclaims the label. While it didn’t earn the resounding thumbs-down of the Kroger variety, it wasn’t exactly a runaway hit, either: "This tastes like something that would hang around in my cat’s bowl for days;" "It has flavor;" and "I have a hair in mine" were among the comments.

Food Lion Drinking Water

Also bottled at a municipal source (from Abington, according to the label), this water prompted some of the judges to break into the theme song from Caddyshack . One declared it was "better than Evian." Another said it was "pungent."

Giant Filtered Drinking Water

Here’s your source, Charlottesville: The "Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission Water Supply." And here is the comment from your panel of taste-testers: "It tastes like it should." Go figure.

Harris Teeter Purified Drinking Water

North Carolina drinking water at its finest, this stuff was a certified loser: "Absolutely horrible;" "bitter;" and "rancid," were representative comments. Finally, one judge broke her silence: "Can I have a palate cleanser?" she asked.

Dasani Purified Water

This Coke product is "enhanced with minerals for a pure, fresh taste." And while one analyst declared its aftertaste to be "clingy," everybody else gave it a 10.

Aquafina Purified Drinking Water

And, in this corner, the Pepsi entry into the water field. Also highly appreciated by the panel of experts, this one was said to have "the least foreign flavor."

Charlottesville Municipal Water

It seemed only fitting that we should add City water to the mix, but we sure couldn’t slip it past our experts. "It’s chlorinated," they exclaimed, "it tastes like pool water." "This is definitely City water," said one, "and I’m going to need a lot of palate cleansing after this."

Amelia Springs Water

Drawn from an underground source in Amelia, this stuff was a hit in the office, er, lab. Among the judges’ remarks: "No aftertaste;" "I like this one;" and "Throw it in the back of your mouth, swish it around and you’ll taste the snow."

Deer Park Natural Spring Water

The source is Hoffman Spring in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, and the positive comments were unanimous. "It’s simple and clean," said one taste-tester.

Shenandoah Spring Water

Straight from the Valley, it was one judge’s favorite because it "had the least taste of all." To which another connoisseur added, "It tastes like light beer."

Dannon Natural Spring Water

Funny, not one person suggested it tasted like yogurt.

Iceland Spring Natural Spring Water

Ranking dead last among the international contingent, this spring water, which proclaims itself "from the virtually untouched land of the Midnight Sun and the Northern Lights," was deemed to "taste like paint." The general consensus: "Yuck." 

Canadian Naturelle Spring Water

Everybody now: "Blame Canada, blame Canada." Really, it’s not Canadians’ fault if they cannot defend their own national borders. But what explains the taste of this water? "It’s funky," said one analyst. "It’s moldy," said another. One person declared it "halfway decent," and another began to complain of bloating.

Evian Natural Mineral Water

It may be "from the Alps," but our team thought it was more like Alpo. "Nasty, nasty, nasty!" "It has a bad back taste." "It tastes like YMCA showers."

Volvic Natural Spring Water

Also from France, the name of this product, when revealed, provoked a lot of gynecological puns that would be inappropriate for a family newspaper. Not quite as reviled as its Gallic compatriot, this water earned a couple of murmurs of "It’s OK," along with the question, "Did you pee in this?"

365 Spring Water

365 is the store brand for Whole Foods Market and its spring water is from Harpersfield, New York. There was nothing special to report about what most agreed was a neutral water. One person labeled it "flat." Another said "I can taste the corporate mind-control devices in this one," but we think maybe a peek at the label prompted that remark.

Poland Springs Natural Spring Water

It’s actually from Maine, not Poland, but one smarty-pants (we really think this guy was peeking) announced, "This one tastes Polish." We have no idea what that means, but another very finicky expert called it her favorite. "It tastes how water should taste," she said.

Laure Pristine Spring Water

We think the palate cleanser must have been getting to the judges by the time they tasted this product of the Great Smoky Mountains, because one said it was "a little oakey, a little buttery."

Kroger Spring Water

The spring in question is located in Richmond and the taste, according to the experts, was simultaneously "very neutral," "better than swamp water" and "kind of metallic."

Giant Natural Mountain Spring Water

Three separate Pennsylvania springs supply the water that was disliked by all and described by one as "hot tub water."

Pocono Springs Pure Mountain Spring Water

Another entry from Pennsylvania, this one fared no better with our judges. "Tastes like chemicals," said one.

Harris Teeter Natural Spring Water

North Carolina is the source, which one taste-tester declared superior in principle to France. "It tastes better than Evian," she said.

Food Lion Pure Spring Water

The label does not reveal the source of the lion’s fluid, but one person opined that it "tastes like water at the beach."

Triton Spring Water

What is it about North Carolina and water? Sometimes we love it, sometimes we don’t. The taste was described as "sweet," "organic" and "earthy."

Crystal Springs Spring Water with Fluoride

The water comes from Georgia, but there’s no word on the source of the fluoride. It was described as "tart" and tasting like "tap water." Duh!

Trinity Natural Mineral Dietary Supplement

The water is "collected" in Idaho, according to the label, and it should remain out west, according to our folks. Summing up, one person slyly declared it was "WNRN water." Ha ha.

Fiji Natural Artesian Water

Packaged in a lovely floral bottle and hailing from Viti Levu, this exotic libation inspired divergent remarks. "It has a bitter aftertaste," one expert said. "I feel like I’m getting the most nutrition from this one," said another.

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Bathe less – smell better!

How to disguise the drought’s personal effects on a budget

My friend "Lynn" showers twice a day. She keeps a stock of Victoria’s Secret body lotions, Bumble & Bumble fragrant conditioners, Bath & Body Works moisturizing sprays, designer colognes and various deodorants cluttered around her bathroom for any time she deems necessary to "freshen up." It takes her most of the day before she’s ready to leave. My other friend "Ryan" bathes as infrequently as possible. He proudly sports the scent of "ew, de Ryan," and people generally know he’s coming before they hear or see him. Most of those who share his philosophy prefer to live free and wild and "how nature intended us to be."

Considering the current drought conditions, I admire the restraint Ryan shows in water usage. He always seems happy and comfortable. At the same time, I notice the way Lynn draws people to her – how nostrils seem to dilate in her presence. My budget constraints prevent me from emulating her spending habits on toiletries, but my social desires stymie me from accepting Ryan’s routine. I have $20.02 for products that will simultaneously reduce water consumption and still let me feel as sanitary as a cotton ball dipped in alcohol.

I’m on a mission. My first stop is a local grocery store. Apparently, somebody had the bright idea of enlarging those fun travel wipes into portable antibacterial washcloths for the entire body. A pack of 32 costs $2.59, so I can stock up on an eight-month supply. I can hardly wait to bust one open and swash myself from head to toe like I’m waxing a finely tuned vehicle. Vroom!

Speaking of smooth operators, depilatories may be the best alternative to running a faucet over a razor. Three or four of one popular brand can be mine for $5.39 each, and I might get Ryan to sing "Legs! She knows how to use them," whenever I walk into a room. Fortunately for my wallet, I happen to be blessed with a naturally hairless body, like a bald eagle I tell you, so I can save for other items.

These handy facial cleansing, make-up removing towelettes , for example, are on sale at $1.99. I do indeed have sensitive skin, and all those lifestyle magazines discourage using soap on our kissers. Yes!

Stridex offers face wipes "to go" for $5.29. No more blemishes while I’m on the run. Lynn will be so jealous when she sees my new radiant complexion.

You know, sometimes you are what you wear, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m a compost heap or, on a good day, a food disposal. Perhaps I should invest in these dry cleaning sheets to throw in with my soiled, yet stain-treated, apparel. They seem reasonably priced at $9.99 for enough to wash 24 garments.

Oh! Waterless hand sanitizers kill something like 99.99 percent of germs (but hey, who’s counting?), and an 8-ounce bottle sells for $3.49. I could buy five of them and zap any critter who so much as looks at me funny.

Well, I’m out of time, kids. If only I could stand on this soapbox (wink) a little longer to teach all the Ryans and Lynns of this world how to compromise. Smell you later.