Seeing purple: As the Cold War and McCarthyism were dominating headlines in the mid-20th century, another cultural persecution was taking place covertly in tandem with the Red Scare. Jefferson-Madison Regional Library and the University of Virginia’s LGBT Committee present a screening of The Lavender Scare, a documentary narrated by Glenn Close that tells the story of a campaign by the United States government to identify and fire all employees suspected of being homosexual. Sign up at the JMRL website or call 973-7893 (x3) to stream the film in advance, and join the virtual Zoom discussion moderated by Gary Nimax, chair of UVA’s LGBT Committee.
Learn hands-on skills from experts at the How-to Festival on Saturday. Publicity image.
Learning IRL: Want to learn how to build a robot? Would you like to jazz up your cooking prep with chef-level knife skills? Or maybe you’re interested in the medicinal properties of the herbs in your kitchen spice rack, learning to ride a unicycle, or caring for goats? The How-to Festival trumps YouTube, advice columns, and master-class lectures by bringing 25 experts in their various fields face-to-face with curious minds for 10-15-minute teaching sessions.
Saturday 5/4. Free, 10am-2pm. Central Library, 201 E. Market St. 979-7151.
The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library was the unexpected beneficiary of a nearly $1 million bequest from one of its Friends of the Library Endowment Fund patrons earlier this year. The donation came from the estate of Nancy Swygert.
Despite the large sum, Swygert and her husband lived a frugal life, never having children or even owning a personal computer. Naturally, she frequented the library. She became a fixture in the Gordon Avenue branch over the years, requesting books every week and taking advantage of the free internet access.
“Nancy was one of my favorite patrons of the Gordon Avenue Library,” says David Plunkett, JMRL’s director, who started at that branch. “She treated library staff exceptionally well.”
Swygert passed away December 28, 2016, shortly after her 79th birthday.
Although everyone knew Swygert viewed the library as a treasured institution, nobody foresaw her making a donation on this scale, says Plunkett.
The $984,098 bequest will bring the endowment fund’s total to almost $2.5 million. The library plans to allocate the money to improvements in infrastructure and expansions of library materials, although it will first have to amend its bylaws, which currently prohibit the use of endowment funds for capital projects.
In the past, money from the Friends of the Library Endowment Fund has gone toward scholarship programs for the NAACP and library staff pursuing a master’s degree in library science.
The endowment fund dates back to 1992, when a group of donors, or “friends,” invested $20,000 in seed money for a separate library fund. While it does not compensate for gaps in government funding, the endowment does furnish library projects with additional funds and serves as a streamlined receptacle for donations.
The endowment’s advisory committee intends to memorialize Swygert at the Gordon Avenue location with a collection and landscaping project in her name.
According to Mary Susan Payne, her attorney, Swygert loved Charlottesville, where she met her husband and worked as a lab technologist at the UVA Medical Center. She moved to the city some 50 years ago, after earning her master’s degree in biology.
A staunch environmentalist and lover of the outdoors, Swygert took full advantage of Charlottesville’s walkable urban design, walking to work and making a daily trek up O-Hill. In her will, she bequeathed another nearly $1 million each to the Wildlife Center of Virginia and the Nature Conservancy.
Swygert was particularly fond of books about nature. “She was such a remarkable fountain of knowledge about the natural world,” says Payne. “She could name every plant you could put in front of her.”
The Northside Library on Rio Road, which opened in 2015, houses 30,000 square feet and the most checked out books.
Stephen Barling
Busy as a bookworm
Here in the digital age, one relic from our printing-press past is defying obsolescence: the library. The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library saw its busiest year ever in 2016, with its newest Crozet and Northside libraries contributing to the boom, according to director John Halliday. It’s not just books that account for the heavy traffic. People go to the libraries for programs, to rent space in the McIntire Room in the Central Library and to use computers or Wi-Fi. E-books are the fastest-growing segment, now making up 5 percent of the volume. The biggest problem at Northside right now is parking. “That’s a good problem to have,” says Halliday.
2016: spine-tingling year
1.7 million Number of books checked out from JMRL
1.2 million Users who came through library doors
103,000 People with library cards
10 Branches including the book mobile
110 employees
$7.6 million budget
Most used branch: Central Library
Branch with most books checked out: Northside
In brief
Keep fighting
A judge ruled March 13 that federal court does not have jurisdiction in the Legal Aid Justice Center lawsuit against the Department of Motor Vehicles that challenged Virginia’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines, regardless of ability to pay. Charlottesville resident Damian Stinnie was one of the plaintiffs, and Legal Aid says it will continue to fight.
“Virginia law leads state judges to automatically suspend a defendant’s driver’s license for nonpayment of court fees and fines, regardless of his ability to pay. That unflinching command may very well violate Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.”
—Judge Norman Moon in dismissing a lawsuit against the DMV
Whiskey rebellion sours
Silverback Distillery owner Denver Riggleman ended his campaign for governor, citing “business considerations, resource shortages and family health issues.” Pundits say the effect of his withdrawal on the now-three-man race for the GOP nomination will be minimal.
Chilling death
On a day where the low temperature was 21 degrees, a man, 58, was found dead on the porch of a business around 7:35am March 15 in the 1000 block of East Jefferson Street. Police said the circumstances did not appear suspicious, but it was under investigation, and the man’s remains were sent for review by a medical examiner at UVA.
Shooting and a chaser
A 17-year-old boy was shot in the 700 block of Sixth Street SE on March 16, according to city police, who said he was arrested the following day on charges of attempted malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Tyrek Wells, Cy-Lamarr Rojas and Quintus Brooks were also charged in the shooting and the subsequent high-speed chase that followed.
What’s with all the chases?
Around 4am on March 21, county police say officers deployed spike strips on Route 250 to stop a vehicle pursuit that originated in Nelson County. Charges are pending for the driver, who was attempting to turn onto I-64 and crashed his car after hitting the spikes. At press time, a police spokesperson did not yet have the driver’s name.
In plane sight
This Cessna Citation XLS is similar to the one recently purchased by UVA. Photo Peter Bakema
In December, C-VILLE reported on a $4 million jet owned by the University of Virginia Foundation since the early 2000s after a rumor that Thomas Jefferson’s university had purchased a new plane, which a
school spokesperson denied. The Federal Aviation Administration’s website documented that a new tail number, N560VA, was reserved by the foundation on December 30—just two days after our report was published—and we found that the original Cessna Citation Bravo was up for sale.
University spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn now says the foundation recently purchased an $8.8 million 2015 Cessna Citation XLS, an eight-seat, multi-engine jet flown by pilots-in-command John Farmer and Stephen Power. The old Citation Bravo sold for $950,000, he adds.
“The foundation’s previous aircraft, which was also purchased used, had been in service since 2004 and was due for a significant scheduled maintenance overhaul,” de Bruyn says. “Instead of investing in a costly overhaul, the decision was made to purchase a used aircraft and to sell the previous aircraft. The foundation, which owns the aircraft, conducted the sale and acquisition. No tuition dollars or public monies were used.”
Corrected March 22 at 9am to reflect the correct number of seats on the University of Virginia Foundation’s 2015 Cessna Citation XLS.
Lorenzo Dickerson’s photo of Will Taylor is included in the exhibition #BlackOwnedCville and ties in with the NEA Big Read by focusing on African-American entrepreneurship. Courtesy of artist
Throughout this month, an exhibition titled #BlackOwnedCville by local photographer and filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson is on display on the third floor of the Central Library. Dickerson says he was moved to pursue the project because, “I was curious myself about African-American businesses here locally. Growing up here I knew of some. Like Mel’s Café on Main Street was always a staple.”
But Dickerson had been away for many years, and moving back to Charlottesville in 2015, he says, “sparked my interest even more. …And I wanted to really display them and let others know that these businesses exist so we can support them here locally. I feel like a lot of people just don’t know that they are even there, that they’re providing these services.”
Dr. Benegal S. Paige. Photo by Lorenzo Dickerson
Dickerson’s exhibition is one of 80 events for adults and kids organized and facilitated by Jefferson-Madison Regional Library as part of the NEA Big Read (formerly The Big Read). The program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, encourages engagement with the community themed around a single book. This year’s selection is the novel Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones. Sarah Hamfeldt, adult programming and reference services manager at JMRL, says that in the past the NEA Big Read options were “heavy on the classics.” But with the introduction of a new category this year called Living Authors, the selection committee at JMRL had the opportunity to choose Jones’ novel and invite her to visit Charlottesville.
“The book itself is readable and relatable,” Hamfeldt says. “It is much more contemporary in tone than others we’ve done before.” Published in 2011 and set in 1980s Atlanta, Silver Sparrow follows the coming of age of two African-American girls who share the same father, but only one of them knows this. The narrative explores themes of love, belonging and security within the lives of the entrepreneurial, middle-class African-American cast of characters. It was pure serendipity when JMRL reached out to Dickerson and learned that he was putting together a collection of photographs that celebrates the entrepreneurial legacy of the local African-American community.
#BlackOwnedCville began with Dickerson’s next-door neighbor, Will Taylor, owner and operator of Chick-fil-A at Fashion Square Mall. And as Dickerson met more African-American business owners, they gave him names of other people to contact. With the goal of representing a wide array of businesses and services, the exhibition includes restaurateurs, medical professionals, artists and store owners.
“Entrepreneurship is something that’s been important to the local African-American community since emancipation from slavery,” Dickerson says. “A lot of African-Americans directly after emancipation from slavery purchased land and owned their own farms. So it’s always been something that’s important to the community. And of course you had Vinegar Hill and a lot of African-American businesses right here in the center of Charlottesville. So that legacy lives on in these entrepreneurs that are here now.”
Eddie Harris, founder of Vinegar Hill Society Magazine. Photo by Lorenzo DickersonMike and Kim Brown, owners of Brown’s. Photo by Lorenzo Dickerson
What ultimately draws him to document the legacy and history of the local African-American community is his love of storytelling. “I used to sit at my grandmother’s feet as a child,” he says, “and ask her to tell me stories of the olden days.” About five years ago, his research into his own family ancestry, coupled with the desire to put together a cohesive narrative for his family, inspired his first film, The Coachman. “And I just fell in love with filmmaking,” Dickerson says. Since then he has made three more films. He has tapped into such a rich local history that the connections he makes during one film become the jumping-off point for the next film.
So many people think, “I don’t have anything to share, I don’t have a story to tell,” he says. His response? “You have a story to tell but you just don’t know it until I ask you the right question.” For the sake of preserving our local history and exploring questions about our future, let’s hope he keeps asking.
Tayari Jones’ Silver Sparrow is this year’s selection for the NEA Big Read. The author appears in Charlottesville to discuss her work on March 17 and 18.
Some critics thought NOW’s sex-ed display in the library was too pro-choice and unsuitable for children. Staff photo
Nine months have passed since library patron Mike Powers voiced his concern over a sex-ed display in the front lobby of the main branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. Following April’s public outcry, on January 25 the library’s board of trustees approved proposed changes to its public display policies that will clarify its stance on freedom of speech.
The display that offended Powers was sponsored by the Charlottesville National Organization of Women and featured books on sex education and birth control, along with the slogan “My Body, My Choice.” Powers says the display was not appropriate for all ages and argues that the display’s “prominent front-lobby positioning” at the central branch implied an endorsement by the library.
“[The display] had a political advocacy slogan and it was very confusing whether the library itself was endorsing a political advocacy position,” Powers says, “That, to me, didn’t seem to match the mission of the library.”
Central Library Manager Krista Farrell says that despite objections to the display, it did not violate the library’s previous display policy. However, she notes that the controversy “highlighted the need to make some adjustments and updates to the existing policy.”
Among the changes, the library plans to remove the phrases “balanced” and “age appropriate” from its policy because the meaning of these phrases is “open to interpretation” and caused disagreement between patrons and board members, says Farrell. The new proposed policy would say freedom of speech displays will be “unfettered” unless they contain obscene or defaming materials.
In addition to somewhat loosening the restrictions on freedom of speech displays, the library plans to enforce new rules on where these displays may be seen and require that each display have a sign indicating sponsorship.
“Realizing most library visitors do not come to the library to view displays,” the proposed policy reads, “the ‘Freedom of Speech’ display cases shall be located in areas generally used by adults at a minimum of 20 feet from the front door.”
Brian LaFontaine, president of the board of trustees, believes these changes will help to clarify the library’s role in offering an equal opportunity for freedom of expression, saying the library has “a responsibility to all of our patrons no matter their political, religious, cultural or social beliefs.”
LaFontaine adds, “We hope, if adopted, the new displays and handouts policy will offer the opportunity for educational displays that will support freedom of speech, a tenet all libraries are charged with, yet be sensitive to the concerns some of our patrons may have on subject matter or presentation.”
Although the process has taken longer than he imagined, Powers says that overall he is supportive of the proposed changes and thinks these changes will better identify the library as a neutral organization.
“It’s going to be more clear that these messages are from an outside organization,” Powers says. “If they feel it’s an important library function to provide a platform for free expression, then I think this is the best compromise.”
