Crozet Gazette

INSIDE
SECRET SANTA
page 3
TURN HERE
page 4
NEW
SIDEWALKS
page 5
STREET VIEW
page 6
FEBRUARY 2015 VOL. 9, NO. 9
BRIDGES
page 7
Developers Propose
Increased Housing
Density in Foothill
Crossings
SNP FEES
page 11
SHRIMP
ÉTOUFÉE
page 12
DEMON SUGAR
page 14
UP AND DOWN
pages 15
A Day at the Races. See Pinewood Derby story page 19.
HOME TECH FIX
page 18
OLD SCHOOL
page 19
CO2 & H2O
page 22
CORYLOPSIS
page 24
WAHS
ROBOTICS
page 26
PALM OIL
page 27
VACCINATE
NOW
page 30
NO PRIVACY
page 31
THE WORLD
HACK
page 32
CROSSWORD
page 33
FEED THE BIRDS
page 34
SNOW SOON?
page 35
BEREAVEMENTS
page 36
Crozet Has Two Pages Serving in
the General Assembly
For the first time since former Fifth
District Congressman Tom Perriello
of Ivy had the job in 1988, two
Henley Middle School students are
serving as pages in the 2015 session of
the Virginia General Assembly. Owen
Thacker and Isabel Brown, both
eighth graders from Crozet, have been
first-hand observers and helpers in the
legislature, Brown in the Senate and
Thacker in the House of Delegates.
“I like civics,” said Brown. “In
school you learn about laws, but I
wanted an experience where I could
see it happen.”
“My sister went to The Village
School and one of her friends did it,”
said Thacker to explain how he got
interested. “They made it sound like a
lot of fun and it is.”
To be eligible, a page must be in
grade seven through nine. A page may
only serve one year, but two veteran
pages, typically tenth graders, are chosen to come back and serve as mentors. The senate has 42 pages and the
House has 41, said Thacker.
Pages sit on benches on the back
wall of the legislative halls and typicontinued on page 21
Civil engineer Scott Collins and
Riverbend Development President
Alan Taylor introduced the Crozet
Community Advisory Council to the
possibility of rezoning 15 acres on the
west edge of Foothill Crossing from
R-1, one house per acre, to three or
four houses per acre at its meeting
January 21. The site is in eastern
Crozet at the future junction of Park
Ridge Drive and “eastern avenue,” a
planned artery for the area, part of
which will be built as part of the West
Lake Hills development, which
recently broke ground on the east side
of the Westhall neighborhood.
No formal request for the rezoning
has been submitted yet.
“We’re trying to rezone to be transitional,” explained Taylor. The county’s Comprehensive Plan allows the
site to be developed with three to six
units per acre.
Taylor said the rezoning would
result in 60 houses, rather than 15,
being built.
Asked by CCAC member Leslie
Burns what sort of houses they would
be, Taylor said, “They’ll be very nice
homes, but at a lower price point
because the lots will be smaller.”
continued on page 13
New Crozet Business Offers Athletic Apparel with a Message
By Rebecca Schmitz
[email protected]
Laura Futty and Jean Momorella
had to tell their daughters “no.” At a
Virginia Beach gymnastics meet last
May, their elementary school-age
daughters were clamoring for commemorative T-shirts. But when the
two Crozet moms strolled over to
check out what was available, they
were disappointed. Where were the
high-quality,
colorful,
flattering
T-shirts featuring positive messages
for young girls? The lack of appealing
clothing was striking. Even their
daughters eventually agreed. “There
was nothing available they really
wanted to wear,” Futty said.
Back at the bleachers, waiting for
their gymnast daughters to perform,
continued on page 9
Courtesy 4 Sporty Girls
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CROZET
gazette
the
Published on the first Thursday of the month by
The Crozet Gazette LLC, P.O. Box 863, Crozet, VA 22932
© The Crozet Gazette
MICHAEL J. MARSHALL, Publisher and Editor
[email protected] | 434-466-8939
ALLIE M. PESCH, Art Director and Ad Manager
[email protected] | 434-249-4211
LOUISE DUDLEY, Editorial Assistant
[email protected]
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
John Andersen, Clover Carroll,
Marlene Condon, Elena Day, Phil James,
Charles Kidder, Dirk Nies, Robert Reiser,
Rebecca Schmitz, Roscoe Shaw, Heidi
Sonen, David Wagner, Denise Zito.
Don’t miss any of the hometown news
everybody else is up on. Pick up a free copy
of the Gazette at one of many area locations
or have it delivered to your home.
Mail subscriptions are available for $25 for
12 issues. Send a check to Crozet Gazette,
P.O. Box 863, Crozet, VA 22932.
CROZETgazette
From the Editor
The Community Comes
Before Profit
Milestone Partners, the new
owners of the 20-acre former
Barnes lumber yard in downtown Crozet, has repeatedly
raised as an issue the “marketability” of the site as its future
uses are currently defined in the
Crozet Master Plan (CMP) and
more specifically in the
Downtown Crozet District
(DCD), a special set of zoning
rules designed to enable the core
of town to prosper and continue
as the commercial and cultural
center of life in Crozet.Those
rules essentially promot a traditioanl twon center that foremost seeks to offer employment
opportunity. Milestone’s implication is that the rules raise too
high an expectation and therefore they must be watered
down.
Tellingly, their first effort in
their development approach
was to effectively sabotage the
DCD rule against first-floor residential uses by arguing the rule
should be waive-able, a proposal
that the Albemarle County
FEBRUARY 2015
Board of Supervisors enacted
with unaccustomed alacrity in
2013. The effect of this change,
not well understood as it was
happening, is to make residential uses comparable to commercial ones. Thus the wheel
spokes were sawed halfway
through and the cart was put
back on the road.
For all the economic consequences of formal town planning, its purposes are fundamentally social and only secondarily about commerce. The
goal of the rules is to foster a
place where people want to live.
Fate looked on Crozet’s advantages, among them a substantial
independent water supply at
Beaver Creek, and made the
former village an official Growth
Area, a tactic in the county’s
long-term aim of preserving the
its suitability for agriculture—
which is a worthy and even necessary goal.
The Crozet Master Plan is the
determined, strategic, public
effort of Crozet’s citizens to
cope with the pressures of
growth while preserving our
long-held values, generally considered small town values,
continued on page 20
3
To the Editor
A Westhall Christmas Story
Send your letters to the editor to
[email protected]. Letters will
not be printed anonymously.
On December 1, 2014, a
small Christmas bag appeared
on our doorstep. In it were two
chocolates, a Christmas tree
ornament and an inspirational
quote. There was no tag or any
other indication of who had left
it there for us. The only clue was
that it had the number 24 on it
and we wondered. Did this
mean we would be getting one
every day until Christmas? Yes,
it did!
The bag was usually on the
doorstep before 7:30 a.m., but
on weekends it would be later
in the day. As my husband had
recently become ill, we surmised
that a group of neighbors had
decided to make this Christmas
magical for us, but no one
would admit to knowing anything about it!
I thought about hiding at a
front window to try to spy on
our secret Santa but was persuaded by others not to spoil
the surprise. On Christmas Eve
Day, McKenna Riley, a neighborhood high school student,
came to visit with the last gift.
She was the spirit of kindness
Pi Day Swing Dance in Crozet
3.1415. 3-14-15
Mark your calendars to
Swing into Spring with Pi at the
Field School on March 14.
Salute to Swing band will again
provide the music for your
swing dancing and listening
pleasure, with Jessica and Taylor
Moore teaching a dance lesson.
The Crozet Community
Association will hold a pie contest and a Pi costume contest
for all ages.
Bake a pie, win a raffle to be a
judge, buy a slice of pie, create a
costume about Pi.
Bring your dancing shoes and
have a wonderful evening
March 14. All ticket and food
receipts will be divided between
the Crozet Fire Volunteer
Department and the Western
Albemarle Rescue Squad.
Start planning your pie and
costume entries now. Read more
details in the March Gazette.
Ann Mallek
Earlysville
continued on page 6
Professional
CPA services
located in Crozet
Independent Perspective,
Individualized Attention
www.jonesandcompany.net
Accepting New Clients for 2014 Taxes
Victoria W. Jones, CPA, CGMA
[email protected] 434.823.5559
4
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Here We Go Again Resale Store
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Left Turn Lanes to Be Marked
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until Valentines Day!
Almost one year in present location!
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The Virginia Department of
Transportation will mark off
four dedicated left turn lanes in
the central “suicide” lane on
Route 250 at Clover Lawn as
soon as warm weather allows,
VDOT Charlottesville residency agent Joel DiNunzio said.
“We are looking at ways to
make that section of 250 more
in line with a small developed
area,” he said. “They added right
turn lanes there. The central left
turn lane is more appropriate
where there is less traffic. We’re
looking at striping them with
left turn lanes. It’s just striping,
so it’s interim.
“I think that will help slow
speeds in there. The county has
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money for pedestrian improvements [at the entrance to Harris
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the area. I think lighting would
help in there.”
VDOT will have to eradicate
current markings first, DiNunzio
explained, and no work will be
undertaken until the risk of
snow is past.
Future alterations to the section could include a roundabout. “We’ll have to see if it
works,” said DiNunzio. “It
would reduce speeds and make
pedestrians safer. We could get a
decent size circle in there. But
we don’t know if it works from a
traffic perspective yet.”
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
North Crozet Sidewalk
Project to Begin
www.stayincrozet.com
First announced when a
grant for it was awarded in
2010, construction of a new
section of sidewalk on Crozet
Avenue connecting Crozet
Elementary School to Ballard
Drive will begin by March 1.
The 600-foot stretch of sidewalk
is paid for through a Safe Route
to School grant administered by
the Virginia Department of
Transportation.
Last month county officials
awarded the construction contract to Plecker Construction of
Staunton, whose bid came in at
$268,750, according to county
transportation engineer Jack
Kelsey.
The project includes curb
and gutter drainage improvements and a crossing light
installed where Crozet Avenue
meets the driveways to Crozet
Elementary and The Field
School. Pushing a button at the
crosswalk will cause a “cross
alert” system to flash to stop
traffic. The sidewalk will be
seven feet wide, to allow bicy-
cles to use it and pass in opposite directions, and will be set
off from the road by a six-foot–
wide grassy strip. The contract
allows Plecker 120 days to complete the project.
Kelsey said the five-year delay
was due to “processes and procedures and requirements that
we didn’t know about when we
applied [for the grant]. We
would have asked for more
money if we had known.”
A second 1,100-foot phase of
the project will build a new
sidewalk with the same character from St. George Avenue to
The Field School. That project
is part of a second grant in
which it is bundled with a sidewalk project on Pantops that
still has unresolved easement
issues. Kelsey said he expected
those to be settled within two
weeks and the county’s hope is
that contracts will awarded in
time to allow the work on the
second section of sidewalk to
pick up as the first nears completion.
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
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CCA Considers Cameras
in Downtown Crozet
The Crozet Community
Association quizzed Albemarle
County Police officer Andy
Gluba, a community resource
officer, about the utility of camera surveillance of downtown
streets at its January 8 meeting
at The Field School.
Gluba discouraged the CCA
audience from aiming for a
publicly installed system. Some
privately installed cameras
already cover some sections of
Crozet Avenue and The Square.
“Experience shows that cameras are not a deterrent to
crime,” said Gluba, who noted
that all ACPD patrol cars are
equipped with cameras and that
there is a move afoot to have
officers themselves wear cameras
while on duty.
“Over 1,000 cameras are on
Charlottesville’s downtown Mall,”
he said. “The average big city resident is on camera 75 times a day
and the average college student is
probably on camera 50 times a
day. A $500 system is now capable of reading a car license plate
at 100 feet,” he said.
“Police support cameras
because they can provide clues
and evidence for court.” He
noted that cameras did identify
the kids egging a house in Old
Trail, which put an end to it
once they were confronted.
“You’re better off pushing for
homeowners and businesses to
install cameras for their own
reasons,” he advised.
He said more downtown
lighting would be a better deterrent to crime.
ACPD Captain Greg Jenkins,
who commands the Blue Ridge
District, told the CCA that
police arrested three men in a
spate of shed break-ins that
occurred in various parts of the
county, including several in
Crozet. Jenkins said police suspect there is another ring of
thieves still operating in the
Batesville/Crozet area.
Jenkins also reported that
two Crozet juveniles were identified in the vandalism of trucks
owned by Allied Portable Toilets
that were parked at the lumberyard when they had their windshields smashed out.
In the CCA’s Crozet history
moment, local historian Phil
James displayed a photo of
Three Notch’d Road that shows
Sandridge’s Esso, which sat
roughly where the ramp to
Crozet Great Valu is now, and
includes a glimpse of the former
freight depot in the distance.
The station was built in 1923
and torn down in 1965. It was
the first in town to offer separate restrooms for men and
women, James noted.
The CCA meets again March
12 at 7:30. To get its local news,
notifications and upcoming
agendas
online,
go
to
crozetcommunity.org.
To the Editor
Christmas and so we wanted to
share this with everyone as a
tribute to that spirit of love and
kindness and to the amazing
young person who made it all
happen.
Thank you, McKenna.
—continued from page 3
Mulch & Compost
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CROZET, VIRGINIA
434-466-2682
and magic behind the whole
plan. She delivered the bags
before she went to swim practice every morning and went to
great lengths not to be discovered.
We feel that this is a wonderful example of the true spirit of
Gerry and Chris Walters
Crozet
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
By Phil James
[email protected]
Bridges
Were it not for our nation’s
network of functional roadways
and bridges, our lives would differ from our ancestors much less
than we might imagine. From
bridges built to carry one person on foot, to heftier structures
allowing passage by horse or
automobile, to awe-inspiring
spans that support mile-long,
fully-loaded freight trains,
Americans have constructed
bridges from any number of
available resources to get them
where they were going. Here
are three stories that describe
our not-too-distant past:
Bettie Via Gochenour grew
up during the 1880s and ’90s at
the foot of the Blue Ridge
Mountains
in
western
Albemarle County. She shared
memories of her life in the
active community of Sugar
Hollow,
surrounded
by
extended family and trusted
neighbors.
“Mother was quite a pessimist,” Bettie wrote. “She could
always see something to worry
about. Father would say, ‘Don’t
cross the bridge till you get
there.’ Mother crossed lots of
bridges she never got to. There
was one bridge she fell off that
was a real bridge. She loved to
7
to the
fish, and she and Mrs. [John]
Wood were fishing one day
when the river was up. Mother
started across the [footbridge]
to come home and got halfway
when Mrs. Wood hollered that
she had caught a fish. Mother
turned around and fell in the
river.
“Georgie Wood, a little girl,
jumped in and kept her head up
until help came. Someone ran
to the house for help. A young
man by the name of Lynn
Chism was there, and they say
he didn’t take time to open the
yard gate. He went over the top.
He and Georgie got Mother
out. What a narrow escape, for
Mother couldn’t swim and she
weighed about 200 lbs. Georgie
said that she never touched the
bottom of the river. Father said
that Georgie reminded him of a
wasp because she had such a
small waist. We lived just opposite the Woods’, with the river
between us.”
Rev. D.G.C. “Alphabet”
Butts was appointed to the
Albemarle Circuit in 1895. His
seven Methodist churches in the
western end of the county
required dozens of miles of rugged travel by horseback, and
more to reach the homes of his
Past
Chesapeake & Ohio steam locomotive #606 pulled the westbound Sportsman
beneath Dry Bridge at Ivy in 1947. The engineer’s next scheduled stop that April
afternoon was at 3:01 p.m. at Crozet station. [Courtesy of the Phil James Historical
Images Collection]
charges. He rightly knew the
value of a well-placed bridge
and the inherent perils of navigating low and high water fords.
In his memoir From Saddle to
City by Buggy, Boat and Railway,
he recollected fifty years of
experiences in the Virginia
Conference.
He wrote, “Up in the very
heart of the Blue Ridge in Sugar
Hollow, near the head of
Moormans River, lived Oscar
Early. He could entertain by the
hour with miraculous stories of
mountain adventure… of the
rushing
floods
that swept down
the Hollow, and
cut him and his
devoted wife and
adopted daughter
off from civilization for weeks at a
time. Oscar Early
was my friend and
brother. To get the
full value of such a
trip, one should
leave the parsonage, in summer of
course, after an
early
breakfast,
strike out up the
banks
of
Moormans River,
C.W. Sandridge Sr. worked on railroad bridges throughout the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway system.
crossing
that
Nearby this C&O trestle bridge across Mechums River, he was introduced to his future career as a
stream
23
times
in
merchant by storekeeper Moelick Mitchell. An earlier railroad bridge across the Mechums met a
dramatic fate during the Civil War. [Photo courtesy of Cole W. Sandridge Jr.]
the ten miles to
Mr. Early’s home. See that you
let him know that you are coming, and do your utmost to
arrive there in time for a bountiful dinner.”
The storied high bridge used
by trains to cross the Mechums
River in western Albemarle
County was the scene of one of
the most dramatic events this
region has ever witnessed.
Completed in 1852, this bridge
complemented another placed
across the South River in
Waynesboro. The two bridges
joined the Commonwealth’s
18-mile-long
Blue
Ridge
Railroad with the Virginia
Central Railroad’s dream of
connecting eastern Virginia
with the waters of the Ohio
River.
The original wooden high
bridge across the Mechums was
a spectacle to behold. Roughly
75 feet tall and 300 feet long
from bank to bank, its
stick-constructed trestles may
have mirrored those of its much
larger and more historic High
Bridge counterpart across the
Appomattox River, downstream
from the town of Farmville. The
two bridge projects were completed the same year.
During the waning days of
America’s un-Civil War, a division of Maj. Gen. Philip
continued on page 8
8
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Bridges
—continued from page 7
Sheridan’s Union forces, led by
Brig. Gen. George Armstrong
Custer, defeated Confederate
Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s forces at
Waynesboro on 2 March 1865.
Having captured most of Early’s
forces, armaments and supplies,
Custer’s troops pursued a remnant of fleeing Confederate cavalry through Rockfish Gap.
Word of that impending battle had already reached
Greenwood, on the eastern
mountain slope in Albemarle
County. Railroad men and
Confederate soldiers had hastily
loaded three train cars with
commissary supplies stored
there in a siding depot. Just as
Union cavalry swarmed into the
station area, the train began
slowly to pull away amid the
dangerous confusion and gunfire.
The Virginia Central steam
engine “Albemarle” pushed
three cars and pulled four others
as it slipped away downgrade
toward Mechums River. Eight
miles later, the train engineer
and his remaining crew of
two—a frightened, inexperienced brakeman and an assistant depot agent who had managed to escape the fray—carefully drifted across Mechums
River’s wooden trestle bridge.
Passing safely over, their relief
was short-lived as they started
up the hill toward Ivy. The little
engine that had weathered
enemy bullets not many minutes earlier now struggled for
traction on the uphill grade. Its
traction sand depleted, the crew
frantically dug dirt from the
trackside, tossing it onto the
rails beneath the drivers in
hopes they could get their train
over the hump and on to
Charlottesville and Richmond.
Their efforts were in vain as
the drive wheels refused to bite
on the incline, and a painful
decision was made to detach the
last two loaded supply cars and
leave them parked on the grade.
Simon and Virgie Hildebrand enjoyed an after-picnic stroll at Sugar Hollow, c.1935,
with two of their grandchildren. This attractive bridge over the north fork of
Moormans River connected with the south fork road, which carried traffic through
Jarmans Gap to Waynesboro. Its massive cement and stone center-support was
pushed a short distance downstream during the catastrophic flood of 1995. [Photo
courtesy of Ella Sandridge Bailey]
“Miller School, Va: The new concrete bridge over the creek at the foot of the hill
leading down from the school has been completed. This is the first concrete
bridge that has been built in Albemarle County... The bridge has a 25’ span and
the roadway over it is 20’ wide... a handsome structure and quite an addition to
the beautiful driveway through the school grounds.” Daily Progress, 23 July 1910.
[Photo by Phil James]
They successfully pulled away
with their lighter load and
finally
made
it
into
Charlottesville, a town greatly
on edge from reports of
approaching enemy troops.
The next morning, Friday
March 3, Federal cavalry came
upon the two loaded supply cars
abandoned on the track.
Releasing the wheel brake, they
rolled the cars back downgrade
and onto the fated trestle. After
dowsing the cars and bridge
with oil, the cavalry set them
afire and then guarded the conflagration while their spoils and
the structure were consumed
and dropped, flaming and
steaming, into the muddy river
below.
No better way existed to
impede the movements of one’s
enemy than to destroy his
bridges. The tactic was
employed equally well by both
sides. When Custer and his
troops arrived in Charlottesville
later that day, civic leaders met
them outside the town under a
white flag of surrender. The
town and university were
spared. Meanwhile, the good
people of Mechums River and
points west stared with disbelief
at the still-smoldering destruction left in the enemy’s wake.
Pete and Charles Woodson flank their neighborhood playmate Lydia Pittman,
c.1925, on the iron bridge over Moormans River at Millington. Regarding this
photo, Lydia’s older brother Avis wrote, “There was an ice house between the
bridge and Millington House. Ice was given away for medicinal purposes.” [Photo
courtesy of the Guy Pittman family.]
Follow Secrets of the Blue Ridge on Facebook! Phil James invites contact from those who would share recollections and old photographs of life along the Blue
Ridge Mountains of Albemarle County. You may respond to him through his website: www.SecretsoftheBlueRidge.com or at P.O. Box 88, White Hall, VA 22987.
Secrets of the Blue Ridge © 2003–2015 Phil James
CROZETgazette
4 Sporty Girls
—continued from page 1
Momorella and Futty batted
around ideas. The two women,
who met playing tennis eight
years ago and quickly became
friends, have been athletes all
their lives—Momorella as a
swimmer and triathlete, and
Futty as a field hockey and
lacrosse player. They now play
USTA tennis for the Boar’s
Head Inn. Each has two daughters, all of whom are involved in
sports. They had been shopping
with their daughters for athletic
wear countless times, and were
frustrated by the lack of clothing that was appropriate, functional, and appealing to gradeschool girls. The styles, while
marketed to girls, were often
more appropriate for boys.
Many T-shirts featured messages
that made them cringe.
Rather than just lamenting
the lack of quality athletic
apparel for girls, the women
decided to take action—and 4
Sporty Girls was born. It would
offer athletic clothing that
“sporty” girls would be proud to
wear and their parents would be
FEBRUARY 2015
proud to buy.
“Our girls live in T-shirts and
shorts,” Futty said. “We just
wanted to see positive messages
on sports-specific apparel.”
Momorella agreed. “We
wanted our girls to wear something that brought them up,
without bringing someone else
down,” she said, referencing the
tendency of some brands to
market T-shirts with boastful
messages.
Futty, who has a background
in apparel production and
design, and Momorella, a physical therapist, spent the next few
months doing intensive market
research. They also began paying close attention to what was
available in stores, noting what
girls were wearing, and realizing
there is a demand for the type of
clothing they wanted to offer.
Their mission is greater than
just creating stylish, cute clothing that girls would be proud to
wear. “We want our clothes to
empower girls and give them
the confidence to be independent, and think for themselves,
and be kind,” Momorella said.
When it came time to design
and create the new clothing
line, their greatest sources of
9
Laura Futty (left) and Jean Momorella. Photo by Robert Radifera.
inspiration and guidance could
be found at home. Their own
four sporty girls—Momorella’s
daughters, Ainsley, 12, and
Reese, 10; and Futty’s daughters
Megan, 11, and Emily, 8—were
instrumental in helping their
mothers decide which designs
would be most appealing. “Our
first big sit-down was in front of
the four girls,” Futty said. The
girls keep their mothers up to
speed on what they see in catalogs and what is popular with
the girls at school.
Futty, who said, “my passion
is designing,” tends to handle
the creative side of the business.
She sketches potential designs,
runs them by Momorella and
her daughters, and then passes
them on to graphic designer
Suzanne Amelung. “She takes
my sketches and makes them
beautiful,” Futty said with a
laugh. Like the others involved
in 4 Sporty Girls, Suzanne is an
athlete—she runs marathons
and is a triathlete. Momorella
tends to handle the business
side.
continued on page 17
DENTISTRY FOR KIDS, YOUNG ADULTS & CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
INSURANCE ACCEPTED
10
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
community events
MARCH 14
Sugar Hollow
Three Bridges 5K
and 10K
The Sugar Hollow Three
Bridges 5K and 10K Race will
be run rain or shine March 14
at 8 a.m. on Sugar Hollow
Road. The race is sponsored by
the White Hall Ruritans.
Proceeds will aid in the restoration of the White Hall
Community Center, a historic
building in western Albemarle
County, and for the many community services provided by the
organization, including scholarships to area college-bound students, fifth grade achievement
awards, highway clean up and
many other projects.
Both a 5K and a 10K course
will be available on beautiful
Sugar Hollow Road alongside
the Moormans River. The
course is measured so that the
5K runners will run over two
bridges to the iconic sycamore
tree. The 10K course will incorporate all three bridges with a
run to the Sugar Hollow reservoir.
The starting line is approximately 1.5 miles west of
Piedmont Store at 5275 Sugar
Hollow Road. Ample parking
will be available. Pre-race registration is $30. To register
online, go to whitehallva.org.
On-site registration is $40,
cash or check only.
Following the race, a pancake
breakfast will be held from 9 to
11 a.m. at the Community
Center, 2094 Brown Gap
Turnpike. Race runners free.
Donation will be accepted, with
a suggested minimum donation
of $5.
MARCH 14
Crozet Swing
Dance Fundraiser
Beauty and the Beast
at WAHS March 6-8
The fifth annual Crozet
Swing Dance fundraiser for
WARS & CVFD will be held
Saturday, March 14 at the Field
School.
There will be a free lesson at
7 p.m., followed by live-music
and dancing at 8 p.m., with
music by “Salute to Swing” 15
piece band. For more details
visit CrozetCommunity.org.
MARCH 22
Crozet Orchestra
Concert
The Crozet Community
Orchestra will perform a free
concert at Crozet Baptist
Church on St. George Avenue
March 22 at 4 p.m. under the
music direction of Philip Clark.
The CCO will be performing in
the sanctuary, with greatly
increased seating capacity and
with additional parking in the
large lot across the street from
the church.
Highlights
include
the
Karelia Suite by Sibelius, the
beautiful Pavane by Faure and
the spectacular Navarra by de
Sarasate for orchestra and violin
duo featuring world-class husband and wife solo violinists
Monika Chamasyan and Master
Sgt. Mark David Dorosheff.
Dorosheff is a violinist with
the U.S. Air Force Strings,
which performs for the
President and First Lady at the
White
House.
Monika
Chamasyan is an ArmenianAmerican prizewinner of many
competitions. This is a rare
opportunity to hear violinists of
such stature locally.
Lily Winkler, Chloe Horner, Brennan Reid, Virginia Garey, and Emma Pastorfield (as
Gaston and the Silly Girls) rehearse a scene for the WAHS production of Beauty and
the Beast, March 5 - 8.
By Olivia Gallmeyer
The Western Albemarle
Theatre Ensemble will present
their next great musical showstopper, Beauty and the Beast,
the classic story of looking past
outside appearances to find true
love within, March 6-8 at
Western.
Directed by Caitlin Pitts,
the show stars a cast of 55
talented children in
elementary, middle,
and high school, as
well as a 15-student
orchestra.
Numerous
more backstage volunteers, such as assistant
directors Laura Barnes
and Emma Gore, as
well as the Western
Albemarle
Technical
Theatre class, round
out the group
developing
this
musical masterpiece to nearly 100
students and parents.
With performances of classic
songs such as “Be Our Guest”
and “Home,” this show full of
colorful costumes, charming
characters, and fantastical special effects is sure to please children and adults alike.
Shows are March 6 and 7 at
7:30 p.m. and March 8 at 2
p.m.
Tickets are available in the WAHS
main office, or
online at ticketriver.com/
event/14338.
Prices for students
and seniors are $6 in
advance and $8 at the door,
and $12 in advance and
$14 at the door for
adults. A charity benefit preview will be held
March 5; tickets for
this performance are by
donation.
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
11
Winter Programs for Adults
at Crozet Library
Everything Austen
Thursday, Feb. 12, 7 p.m.
(Inclement weather
make-up date Feb. 19)
Step into Jane Austen’s dancing shoes to watch (and learn, if
you’d like) a period dance with
live music and dance instruction, then spend the evening
enjoying games, contests and
Austentacious fun. Costumes
are encouraged, but if you lack
‘formal’ attire, do not be dissuaded from attending.
Adults, please. Registration
required. Call 823-4050.
Stories by the Fireside
Thursday, Feb. 26.
Actors from Live Arts and the
University of Virginia’s Drama
Department and will read
selected short stories by the
library’s fireplace. With Cady
Garey, Chris Patrick, Kate
Monahan, and Joe Monahan.
Warm drinks provided. Adults
only, please. No registration
required.
Savvy Parents: Trending
Topics for Parents of
Teens
How do we help teens make
healthy choices? What are the
best strategies to help them
through difficult times? When
should we ask for help, and
from whom? Parents, educators,
and anyone who lives with,
works with, or loves a teen won’t
want to miss this informative
series of discussions with guests
Lou Hanson and Alphonso
Underwood of ReadyKids.
Adults, please. No registration
required.
Upcoming topics include:
February 23, 7 p.m.
Social Media and Bullying
March 23, 7 p.m.
Cutting and Eating
Disorders, and the Struggle
for Emotional Health
April 20, 7 p.m.
Drugs and Peer Pressure
May 18, 7 p.m.
Sex and Healthy
Relationships
SNP Decides to Phase-in
Entrance Fee Hikes
Officials at Shenandoah
National Park have modifed
increases to park entrance fees
that were announced in
November.
The
proposed
increases will now occur in two
phases. Under the revised plan,
which still must be approved by
the NPS Headquarters in
Washington, an increase will
take place May 1 and another
increase will take effect January
1, 2017.
The cost of an annual park
pass will go from $30 to $40 in
May and to $50 in 2017. Per
vehicle rates will go from
$10/15 to $20 in May and later
to $25. Per person rates will go
from $8 to $10 in May with no
further increase planned, and
motorcycle fees will go from
$10 to $15 in May and to $20
in 2017.
Entrance fees are not charged
to persons under 16 years of age
or holders of the America the
Beautiful National Parks and
Federal Recreational Senior,
Access, or Military passes. These
passes may be obtained at the
park.
The park begin charging a
$10 per-person fee for visitors
participating in special ranger-led van tours to Rapidan
Camp, President Hoover’s former retreat and a National
Historic Landmark located
within the park. Children 12
and under will not be charged.
The park has also decided to
move the group campsite currently at Loft Mountain to
Dundo Picnic Grounds, reducing conflicts within the main
campground. Two 20-person
group sites will be established at
Dundo. The cost per site will be
$45.
A discounted entrance fee
rate for “local” citizens is not
permitted under the federal law
that governs fee collection in
national parks.
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Visit Roy Wheeler Realty’s
Western Albemarle Office.
Conveniently located
in Old Trail Village.
Beth Bassett
434-987-4801
Kathryn Bentley
434-989-6769
Shrimp Étouffée
As we plow on through the
winter, there is a little fun to be
had on Fat Tuesday, i.e. Mardi
Gras. What could be better than
a mid-week party before getting
serious (if you’re one of the
liturgically
inclined
who
observes Lent)? Mardi Gras is a
great excuse to break the winter
monotony with your family, or
have a few friends over for this
traditional meal of shrimp and
rice. It takes so little time that
it’s a perfectly reasonable meal
to cook on a weeknight.
One year, I invited a bunch
of friends, cleared the dining
room and set up a ‘café’ of card
tables and side tables. We had
some fun, some songs, some
étouffée, and then I chased
everyone home by 8:30 pm.
(school night).
What follows is my adaptation, with a bit of a surprise. I
will never ever forget a shrimp
dish prepared by my friend and
fellow Free Unioner, Doug
Little. He shared his secret:
white chocolate in the sauce.
I urge you to whoop it up on
Tuesday, February 17, and then
settle in to finish the winter, be
a bit reflective and prepare for
Spring to unfold. And please go
ahead and make good, old white
rice. You can return to brown
rice during Lent.
Shrimp Étouffée with a Doug Little Twist (Serves 4)
For the rice:
1 ½ cup white rice
3 cups water
Dan & Sue Ann Conquest
434-242-8573
Karen Dowell
434-531-6948
1 tsp. salt
2 T. butter
Combine the water, rice, salt and butter. Bring to a boil, turn
to low and cook for 15 minutes.
For the shrimp:
8 T butter
1 large onion
1 large green or red pepper
3 cloves garlic
Cayenne pepper to taste
Mattie Fuller
434-305-5671
Tom Noelke
434-770-8902
3 oz. shaved white chocolate
1 lb. medium shrimp (or those
wonderful gigantic prawns!)
1 T. flour
1 cup water
Chopped spring onions for garnish
Use a large frying pan or Dutch oven. Melt the butter and
sauté the chopped onion and pepper till translucent, about 10
minutes. Then add the minced garlic, the cayenne and whisk in
the chocolate. Add the shrimp and cook for ten minutes or until
they are pink. Mix the flour with water and stir into the shrimp
and vegetables. Stir over medium heat until you have a sauce.
Serve over the rice. Garnish with spring onions.
Sharing the
Love of Jesus
Since 2002
John Updike
434-242-7711
Steve White
434-242-8355
www.ROYwHEELER.cOm
1005 HEatHERcROft cR., cROzEt Va 22932
CROZETgazette
CCAC
—continued from page 1
Collins said that Park Ridge
Drive will be extended to connect to Parkside Village in the
next 12 months, giving the
Crozet Park neighborhoods a
new way to reach Rt. 240 and a
second exit besides Tabor Street.
Taylor said the connection to
Park Ridge Drive would happen
before a connection southward
to West Lake Hills. The company is proceeding with a
by-right development of 67
townhouses and three single-family homes on 17.4 acres
directly adjacent to Parkside
Village that is to be known as
The Villas at Foothill Crossing.
Taylor was not forthcoming
about this project and CCAC
members were alarmed two days
after the meeting when they
received a notification about the
Villas from county planning
staff informing them of a plan
submission. CCAC members at
first thought they had been misled by the presentation they had
heard until they got a clarification about the second project.
Residents of the Crozet Park
neighborhoods
complained
sharply about the heavy traffic
on their inadequate roads and
wondered how more units could
be planned for a congested area.
This raised again the question
of how eastern avenue could
come into existence. Its completion requires either a bridge over
Lickinghole Creek to connect to
Cory Farm on Rt. 250, or a
crossing of the railroad tracks in
the vicinity of the former Acme
Visible site on Rt. 240, which
was recently cleared of its buildings as part of an environmental
cleanup.
Residents of existing houses
in Foothill Crossing complained
that they chose their homes
with the expectation that others
similar would be built in their
neighborhood, not others more
crowded.
“We’re asking the CCAC to
make a recommendation not to
add density until new roads are
in,” said Terri Kostiw.
“This community, and every
growth area, has been asking for
‘concurrency of growth’,” said
White Hall District Planning
Commissioner Tom Loach,
“meaning that infrastructure
should keep up with housing
FEBRUARY 2015
construction.”
“This is the first look,” said
White Hall Supervisor Ann
Mallek. “There will be later versions of the plan.”
Milestone Partners president
Frank Stoner told the CCAC
that his firm has completed the
purchase of the Barnes lumberyard and the CSX parcel adjoining it.
“We’ve started conversations
with several people in this
room,” he said, “and hopefully
that will expand to the whole
CCAC.” Stoner has been meeting with CCAC members privately, those who are willing, to
try to persuade them to his view
of the as-yet undescribed project.
The CCAC agreed to form a
nominating committee composed of out-going chair Meg
Holden, whose term cannot be
extended, and John Savage to
find candidates for CCAC vice
chair. Jennie More was previously elected to succeed Holden
as chair. CCAC member David
Stoner nominated himself in a
message to council members the
next day. A vote will be held at
the February 19 meeting.
The CCAC then turned to
the matter of Crozet’s economic
development, a matter that
CCAC member Kim Connelly
described as arising from Frank
Stoner’s suggestion last summer
that Crozet form a community
development
corporation,
which typically is created to
revive decaying urban areas, not
small boom towns.
“What’s economically feasible for Crozet?” asked Connelly.
“Is this part of the mandate of
the CCAC, or we should take it
on as a discussion? Should other
groups
like
the
Crozet
Community Association or the
Downtown Crozet Association
take it up?”
David Stoner had prepared a
six-point outline of a discussion
and action agenda on economic
development, which the CCAC
turned to next, but without
enthusiasm. Much of it struck
them as issues—such as ‘What
is the community’s vision?’—
already
investigated
and
addressed in the Crozet Master
Plan.
“It is hugely important to
know, but I don’t think we can
take this on as the CCAC,” said
John McKeon. “We don’t have
time for this. I’d be much more
continued on page 23
13
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14
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Now is the time to
jumpstart your health & wellness.
by John Andersen
Are You Fed Up?
Award-winning p.r.e.p.® is
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phone
434.817.2055
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Last month, my wife, my
8-year-old son and I all sat down
together and watched Fed Up, a
documentary on America’s obesity epidemic. I thought initially
that this would be a bit too
heavy for an 8-year old, but I
was quite impressed by his
attention span and understanding of the movie, and it has been
a positive experience as we as a
family discuss what it means to
eat more healthily.
Narrated and produced by
Katie Couric (along with producer Laurie David and director
Stephanie Soechtig), Fed Up
exposes how much of what we
have been told about diet, exercise, and weight loss over the
past 30 years has been wrong.
Traditional nutrition advice for
weight loss has focused on calorie intake, assuming all calories
are created equal.
Further,
because fat has more calories per
gram than carbohydrates or protein, fat content in food has
been looked at as unhealthy.
Yet why is obesity still such a
rising problem? Despite having
“healthier” lower calorie, fat-free
foods available everywhere, why
do our waistlines continue to
grow?
Fed Up clearly and convincingly tells us the answer: It’s not
the fat. It’s the sugar.
It’s amazingly simple, really.
Added sugar. It has zero nutritional benefit, yet it’s in everything. We have demonized fat
for so long that we have been
completely blindsided by the
lacing of most every processed
food with sugar. Bread, tomato
sauce, sausage, yogurt…
Let’s quickly review what
sugar does in our body. When
we eat or drink foods with
added sugar, this is absorbed
into our bloodstream. Our bodies are not meant to handle all
of these simple sugars we consume, so quite quickly our liver
becomes overwhelmed and has
Give Y ou r S
So m e Love mile
Va le nti n e’st his
Da y!
no choice but to just start turning the sugar into fat. Let’s say
that again: when we eat sugar,
much of it goes directly into fat
storage.
Similarly, our body sees simple carbohydrates that are in
bread, pasta, and bagels just like
sugar. So, by eating that whole
wheat bread, organic pasta, or
everything bagel you are adding
to your fat stores.
It is also amazing that though
the science is very clear, this has
not yet trickled down into our
grocery stores or into our political system. Despite obesity
being arguably the largest health
care crisis our country is facing,
nobody seems to be doing anything loud and concrete about
it. We are still stuck on fat-free
yogurt and “Let’s Move.” Fed
Up is surprisingly non-partisan,
blasting both George Bush and
Michelle Obama for their inaction in addressing the root cause
of our obesity epidemic, sadly
because of obvious political
pressure.
Throughout the film, Dr.
Robert Lustig, a renowned
pediatric endocrinologist from
the University of California,
San Francisco, explains the toxicity of sugar using easily understandable facts and explanations. He tells the following
points:
• Calories are NOT all equal.
Our body uses 100 calories of
almonds completely differently
than 100 calories of soda. Why
are we so hung up on counting
calories? This has been ineffective as a sole means for weight
loss.
• Sugar is a toxin. He equates
the toxic effects of sugar on our
bodies as comparable to ethanol: fat storage, hormonal
changes, inflammation and agitation.
I recommend that every
reader of this column, regardless
continued on page 23
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
15
Western Albemarle Fourth Quarter Real Estate Report
Crozet-area Sales Decline Slightly in 2014 as Prices Rise
by david ferrall | [email protected]
2013 was a
great year for real
estate in Crozet,
the best for sales
since before the
“Great Recession”
of 2009-2010. So 2014 had a
tough act to follow. And while
fourth quarter sales in 2014
bested the mark in 2013, total
sales for the year in 2014 fell
slightly year-on-year for the first
time since 2007. This 5 percent
drop is not terribly significant,
and probably just represents a
leveling off of sales that is somewhat expected after years of
post-recession increases. Suffice
it to say that sales in the Crozet
area (as defined by those properties that feed Brownsville and
Crozet Elementary Schools)
were robust in 2014, and most
signs point to the same in 2015.
Real
estate
in
the
Charlottesville area as a whole
also fared well in 2014.
According to the Nest Realty
Annual Report, 2014 saw a 4
percent increase in total sales in
the Charlottesville metropolitan
statistical area (see data table
provided courtesy of Nest
Realty). Average prices rose 5
percent, as did the average price
per sqft by a similar amount.
Properties did sell much closer
to their listing price then in
recent years (98.8 percent),
though in contrast the average
number of days-on-the-market
somewhat surprisingly rose
slightly. This last trend coupled
with months of inventory being
up 6 percent at year’s end really
provide the only slight pushback to our relatively healthy
market.
On the plus side, conven-
tional 30-year mortgages are
again under 4 percent and
trending downwards. This helps
make properties more affordable on the lower end of the
price scale, and lets buyers in
the middle and upper end of
the price scale get more property for their money. For renters, increasing financing affordability certainly makes rising
rents less attractive and might
convert a few to buyers.
Total fourth quarter sales in
Crozet were up 24 percent over
the same period last year. Two
were for properties over $1m
(which will be excluded for statistical purposes), one of which
was the historic 100-acre Seven
Oaks Farm, which closed in
October for $5.5m. Quite a discount on the $12.5m original
list price!
Of the total sales, 48 were for
detached properties, of which
nine were on an acre or more.
Nineteen properties were new
construction, with nine of these
being in Old Trail, four in
Wickham Pond, and a couple
each in Foothill Crossings,
Grayrock West, and Haden
Place. There were 13 sales of
attached properties, up from
only three at the same time last
year. Three of these sales were
for new construction in Old
Trail. Of the remaining resales,
seven were in the Highlands
and one each in Wayland’s
Grant, Wickham Pond, and
Old Trail. In the quarter there
were three land sales, up from
two in 2013. Over the year
there were 17 land sales, roughly
in line with the 16 sales in 2013.
There were three distressed sales
(foreclosure, short sale, bank
CHART COURTESY NEST REALTY
owned) in the fourth quarter,
compared with four at the same
time last year. The more encouraging figure is that in 2014
there were only 12 such sales in
Crozet, as compared to 32 for
2013. It is great to see this distressed inventory depleting, as
clearly fewer homeowners are
experiencing whatever stress
forces such sales.
While sales were up for the
fourth quarter, so were prices
for detached homes. Price per
finished square foot for a
detached home rose slightly in
the quarter from last year to
$153. The average price for the
same home rose 5.5 percent to
$434,000, in line with slightly
larger average home size quarter
to quarter. This was an anomaly
for the year, though, as 2014
saw a reduction in average
house size for the first time since
2009. For the year, there were
two more detached homes sold
in 2014 than in 2013 (184 vs.
182), and the average price for
these homes rose about 3.3 percent to $419,000. Average price
for new construction for the
year rose almost 10 percent to
$515,000.
The opposite was true for
attached homes. Prices for
attached homes dropped to
$137sqft and an average of
$278,000 for the quarter.
Attached home sales cooled in
2014; there were 19 fewer sales
in 2014 than in 2013 (45 vs
66), and the average price
dropped over 10 percent to
$272,000. There are current
new construction attached
homes for sale in Old Trail and
Haden Place, and in Wickham
Pond there are some designated
affordable housing units waiting
to be built.
What 2015 brings to the
Crozet real estate market is anyone’s guess. If interest rates stay
at current low levels, job growth
continues, and rents continue
to rise, sales should remain
strong. If interest rates turn and
start increasing, perhaps due to
inflation from wage growth
(which is currently stagnant) or
a turnaround in gas prices, sales
could slow. And of course geopolitical risk and current high
stock market levels are constant
wildcards. But two things are
certain: sellers who price their
properties appropriately should
be able to sell, and buyers will
have nice inventory to choose
from in the coming months.
16
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
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Freezing Is No Fun
for Outdoor Dogs
to think about if you have an
outside dog.
First, dogs are not wolves!
The domestic dog (Canis lupus
familiaris) in all of its current
breeds and mixes originated
from the gray wolf (Canis lupus)
around 15,000 years ago. Our
most familiar picture of the gray
wolf would be the ones we see
in Yellowstone National Park
and other areas out west. Here
are dogs who were meant for
cold weather, having many natural attributes that allow them
to tolerate the extreme cold.
Their coats are incredibly thick,
making a Labrador’s coat seem
like a T-shirt. They have special
circulation in their feet to keep
their toes and footpads from
freezing. They sleep with their
long bushy tails wrapped over
their noses and feet, retaining
warm exhaled air, which also
helps to keep their feet warm.
Their larger body size is efficient
at generating and conserving
heat.
I’m talking about wolves
because only a small percentage
of the dogs around here are
breeds that remain close to their
wolf ancestry and are cold
weather-adapted. These “arctic
breeds”
include
Huskies,
Malamutes, and Chow Chows
to name a few. If you have one
of these purebreds, your dog
Winter is in
full force for
one
more
month. What
does it mean for
your pets? For
most of us, not
much. I think I
can safely say most dogs and
cats around these parts are
sleeping inside at night. Many
are even fighting you for bed
and pillow space! These pets
have it made. Well done, moms
and dads!
But this article is about those
poor outdoor dogs. I know this
is one of those topics where not
everybody sees eye to eye. I suppose it’s old school vs. new
school. Let me state that I am
not some unrealistic, save-themall PETA veterinarian. I like to
hunt and fish, my dogs sleep in
their own beds. But I do disagree with forcing dogs to stay
outside on cold winter days and
nights (below 40-ish). I think
this is a practice that is done
because “that’s the way it’s been
done,” or “that’s the way my
dad raised dogs,” or “because
they’re fine.”
But they’re not fine. Being
cold is one of the most miserable sufferings we can have.
So, in order to bring some
more light on the subject on the
dogs’ behalf, here’s my argument, plea, discussion. I ask you
continued on page 25
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CROZETgazette
4 Sporty Girls
—continued from page 9
Initially, Momorella and
Futty decided to focus on creating T-shirts and hoodies geared
toward just three or four sports.
But by the time their website
went live in November, 10
sports were represented, with
five designs each. The messages
and designs on the shirts and
hoodies promote self-esteem
and are free from “in-your-face”
flash. One shirt features a heart
forming the phrase “Be Kind,
Confident,
Strong,
You.”
Another features a series of soccer balls with “be YOUnique”
written below. Most shirts are
offered in a wide range of colors
and come in fits
flattering to girls.
The two women
promoted
their
new venture using
Facebook and word
of mouth. When
they held their first
trunk show in
December at the
Fox Chase Lodge, the response
was
overwhelming.
They
worked nonstop meeting customers and filling orders from
10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“The response and support
from the community has been
wonderful. We couldn’t be more
thrilled,” Momorella said.
Moms and their daughters
were attracted not just to the
designs on the clothing, but to
the variety of styles and colors
offered. “They like having
choices, and they like all the
colors we are providing,” Futty
said.
Crozet mom Barrie Scheivert
said she was relieved to find
clothes for her girls that are
high-quality,
sports-specific,
and simple in design: “It is
really, really hard to find cute
girls’ athletic wear without sparkles or glitter.” She also praised
the brand’s wide range of styles:
“It is personalized in that we
can pick out the sport, the
style, the color and the fit. My
girls play the same sports but
are not the same size. They
don’t always like the same color
and they definitely don’t like the
same fit. Girls fit versus a boxy
fit is a huge thing for us.”
Scheivert’s daughters were
instant fans. Ten-year-old Lillie
likes the clothes “because they
make me feel good about myself
FEBRUARY 2015
and about what I play.” Katie,
age 11, agreed: “I like their
clothes because they are super
cute and sporty too, but not too
girly.”
Futty and Momorella soon
discovered that girls are not the
only ones eager to sport their
apparel. Moms also wanted to
wear them, so 4 Sporty Girls
began offering T-shirts and
hoodies in both youth and
women’s sizes.
Customers from all over the
country have discovered 4
Sporty Girls online. Orders
have poured in from states as far
away as California. And they’re
eager for more. As the business
grows, Futty and Momorella
hope to include designs for
cheerleading, gymnastics, and
winter sports such
as skiing and snowboarding. They also
want to expand into
offering headbands
and socks. They will
also be offering limited
edition
designs—their first
is Valentine’s Daythemed.
In mid-January, Futty and
Momorella launched a “Sporty
Girl Spotlight” feature on their
Facebook page. McKenna
Peterson, a 12-year-old Arizona
basketball player who gained
national attention when she
wrote a letter to DICK’s
Sporting Goods lamenting the
lack of female representation in
its catalogs, is their inaugural
subject.
“McKenna is the ultimate
‘sporty girl’,” Futty said. “We
admire her passion for her sport,
and applaud the way she stood
up for a cause that she believes
in.” She said they are always
looking for local and national
female athletes to highlight in
future spotlights.
4 Sporty Girls has proven to
be about much more than just
clothing. “We want girls to be
confident and realize that you
can be strong and pretty and
athletic,” Momorella said. Futty
added that, “One of our cornerstones is our desire to partner
with, and contribute to organizations that help promote the
development of healthy, positive, strong girls and young
women.”
For more information on 4
Sporty Girls and to order their
clothing, go to 4sportygirls.com
or facebook.com/4sportygirls.
17
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facebook.com/crozetrunning | @CrozetRunning
Located on the first floor of the Crozet Library building
Five course dinner paired with Blue Mountain Brewery
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by Taylor Smack. $55 per person, plus gratuity & tax
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Reservations Required
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18
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Home Cloud Technologies LLC Sprouts from Crozet
A business aimed at helping
people solve their home technology problems launched from
a townhouse in Crozet last summer and now finds that demand
for its help is causing it to
expand rapidly.
“We want to help consumers
with technology devices in their
homes,” said Clayton Kenerson,
a co-founder of Home Cloud
Technologies LLC. “There are
so many more now—not just
computers or game consoles.
Now there’s the ‘Internet of
things.’ Normal-type things are
getting connected to the
Internet, like a toothbrush that
reports to mom when a child
brushes his teeth. Or your
grandfather needs to take his
medication and when the bottle
gets opened relatives get notified. You buy four different
brands of things and they are
using different standards. They
don’t always work together.
“Now we’re helping a lot of
businesses too,” said Kenerson,
so much so that they are thinking they may have to change
their name. “We make house
calls or at business offices, and
we make hardware and software
repairs. We can handle a lot of
different problems.”
Raised
in
Tidewater,
Kenerson is a College of
William and Mary graduate
who majored in finance and
Chinese. He went to work for a
company doing data analysis
and began learning about technologies.
“We started with the idea last
year and launched in July. We
exceeded our six-month revenue
goals and hiring didn’t turn out
to be a problem. The business
market has been better than we
expected. It’s working out really
well,” he said.
“We’re trying to solve the
‘geek squad problem’ [where a
customer discovers he needs to
get more than one expert to
help with his trouble]. People
call about one problem and
then they bring up other ones.
Our people can solve lots of
problems at one time. We’re
charging for time. While you
have our person, they work on
all your problems.
Clayton Kenerson
“We work on any make.
We’re ‘vendor neutral.’ We help
people with specific purchases
they need to make and we give
honest advice about what would
work best. We have some vendor connections that allow us to
offer discounts.
“Crozet is my roots now,” he
said. “We’re trying to serve
Crozet and Charlottesville and
the surrounding area. We
started with the idea that Crozet
is the test market and now we’re
studying how to expand. We’re
looking for a general manager
and we’re building a data management system for the company. We’re probably going to
expand in the state when we
think we can generate quality
control.
“The most common problems we see are viruses and connectivity issues where the signal
continued on page 25
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
19
Pinewood Derby Overcomes Digital Challenge
Crozet Cub Scout Pack 79 six. Cars have a five-ounce
held its annual Pinewood Derby
weight limit. Boys start with a
January 24 at Crozet United
block of wood and set of wheels
Methodist Church, where it
weighing three ounces when
meets. Cars built by Turner they make their cars. BBs and
Smith, Luke Vance and Keegan
fishing weights are strategically
Scott took the three top spots,
added to get to the weight limit.
respectively.
Dennis Pupo, who has been an
Things did not go as planned,
“adult scouter” for 30 years,
however, when the digital race brought an impressive display
timing system failed and race
of car designs to show off.
officials were obliged to “go old- Among them were cars that
school” and do the timing and looked like tanks, sticks of
race records by hand. The comdynamite, slices of pie, dollar
puter system had been tested bills, candy bars, mummy casthe night before, but when the kets, an old shoe, a waving
projection system was added,
American flag, and a chunk of
compatibility issues arose and
cheese with a mouse riding it.
despite best efforts it could not
The races started after cubbe made to work. But mean- master David Vance, first holdwhile the lunch pizza arrived.
ing up two fingers, signaled to
The race pitted 46 cars cub scouts to quiet down, and
against each other. Cars speed the pack respectfully recited the
down an inclined aluminum
Pledge of Allegiance. Vance
track with four lanes. Each car
reminded scouts that the pack’s
races four times, once in each
core value is “positive attitude.”
lane. At the halfway point in the
He thanked the scouts’ moms
races the track was vacuumed.
and dads for helping put on the
Scouts built 36 cars (every
event. It was Vance’s last official
boy in the pack made one),
duty, as Jaime Brady now takes
adults entered four cars and sib- over the cubmaster role.
lings
entered another
Hand 1 recordkeeping
TLOT of
Thirdscouts
ThursdayFEB'15_Ad_CrozetGazette_Layout
1/28/15 11:48 AM slowed
Page 1
Keegan Scott, Turner Smith and Luke Vance
down the pace of the heats. But
the scouts, true to their Be
Prepared motto, adapted and
used hand signals to start races
as the gate at the top of the
track was dropped.
“That’s scouting,” said one
dad. “You get a challenge and
you overcome it.”
The fastest car belonged to
Turner Smith, next came Luke
Vance’s car and in third was
Keegan Scott’s. Awards also
went to the fastest cars for each
den (top finishers were not
counted in this) and they went
to Braden Fuller (Tiger), Mason
Cobert (Wolf ), Alex Covington
(Bear),
Will
Schweitzer
(Webelos I) and Jude Sanborn
(Webelos II).
Creativity trophies went to
Max Schinstock and Hunter
Brady. Hands-on awards went
to Alex Flamm and Ketner
Pleasants, and Scout Spirit
awards went to Duncan Healey
and Sean Sanborn.
Third
Thursday
at The Lodge at Old Trail
Bring your
child between
4 - 7 p.m.
for a
FREE
SCREENING!
FEBRUARY 19 2:00 pm
4th Annual
Definitive
Downsizing
Workshop
Don’t miss this valuable
presentation. Seating is limited and this event fills up very
quickly. Local experts will advise on how to: Understand
the spring real estate market; Prepare your home for sale;
Downsize and dispose of unwanted things; Stage your home;
Work with an auction house; Hire the right moving company.
Make your reservation early.
RSVP to 434.823.9100 or [email protected]
Pre-Screening is the Best Way to
Identify and Prevent Concussion in Sports
FREE SCREENINGS
Tuesday, March 3
4 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Location: Connections Crozet Office
375 Four Leaf Lane #202
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Please note the special time for this event only – 2:00 PM
Pre-screen your child before the spring sports begin!
330 Claremont Lane, Crozet, Virginia 22932 | www.lodgeatoldtrail.com
INDEPENDENT LIVING • ASSISTED LIVING • MEMORY CARE
If you cannot attend the screening on
March 3, please call one of our offices
to schedule your child’s pre-screen
before their spring sports begin!
CHARLOTTESVILLE
434-823-2199
375 Four Leaf Lane #202
Charlottesville, VA 22903
ROANOKE
540-400-8505
5430 Peters Creek Road, Suite 108
Roanoke, VA 24019
www.connectionsatc.com
20
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
From the Editor
—continued from page 3
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namely self-reliance and a love
of neighbor that is compassionate but not meddling. Economic
growth follows organically from
a plan that attracts people
because it shows that it puts
people first. Thus protection of
the permanent social goal
trumps in all cases the merits of
any particular economic possibility.
The terms of CMP and the
DCD have been thoroughly
hashed through by Crozet’s citizens and subsequently ratified
by our local political authorities. They are not broken and
they do not need fixing. They
need our loyalty and perseverance. We are trying to bequeath
the legacy of community solidarity we inherited, only on a
bigger scale that welcomes more
people and offers them, too, a
bright future. But the build-out
of Crozet is not on a timer and
nothing is lost in letting it happen in small, digestible steps.
After the adoption of the
CMP in 2004, the people of
Crozet learned a bitter lesson in
how a document could be interpreted by local government with
the saga of the rezoning of what
is now Old Trail. What was first
presented to Crozet as a plan for
800 houses was eventually
transmogrified, mainly through
behind-the-scene arrangements
the public was not privy to, into
a 2,600-unit project.
Stung, Crozet fought back in
the revision of the plan in 2010,
pulling down allowable residential densities and insisting again
on the primacy of a vibrant
downtown. The county saw the
wisdom of the plan and supported it with storm water and
street improvements and a new
library.
A second lesson of the Old
Trail betrayal was the institution
of the Crozet Community
Advisory Council (CCAC), a
citizen review panel for development projects that the CMP
called for but did not then exist.
Previously, in line with the
town’s tradition of self-reliance—we created a fire department for ourselves, a public
park and a pool, a rescue squad,
and a town hall forum, the
Crozet
Community
Association—the CCA organized town views on issues presently facing it or bearing on its
future. Its luster is now somewhat eclipsed by the CCAC,
whose members are appointed
by the supervisors and whose
meetings are effectively controlled by local government policies. But the CCA continues as
Crozet’s grassroots expression of
pure democracy.
The CCAC is meant to be a
jury of citizens that evaluates
development proposals against
the plan—the law, to continue
the analogy—and makes a recommendation to the supervisors—the judge—about the
proposal’s conformity to the
community’s social values. Is
this project good for our posterity is the question CCAC members must answer. And they
must answer truthfully.
Besides introducing the
worm of “marketability” as the
standard by which the success of
the CMP should be judged,
Milestone has pursued a strategy of meeting privately with
some CCAC members to persuade them individually of its
agenda. In the last year clear
factions have appeared for the
first time on the CCAC: those
who defend the Master Plan
and
those
who
defend
Milestone. One side talks about
the integrity of the plan, the
other about that elusive prey,
economic development, which
every town everywhere is in the
hunt for.
The legitimacy of the CCAC
as a voice of the people is now
being called into doubt. Recent
county rule changes about
council membership terms,
designed to deal with a dysfunctional advisory council for Rt.
29 North, potentially give
supervisors the ability to pack
the councils with members who
will recommend in agreement
with a supervisor’s agenda,
regardless of wider public opinion. This is ominous.
The CCAC must redouble
its determination to stand up
for the welfare of the town as a
whole and not allow itself to
be played as a tool of development interests. Milestone has
yet to reveal an enlightened
plan for the lumberyard. That
is what the CCAC is entitled
to expect.
Comment online at crozetgazette.com
CROZETgazette
Crozet Pages
—continued from page 1
cally their job is to run errands
for representatives, who usually
do not leave the room while the
Assembly is in session. The
Virginia General Assembly is
the oldest continuous legislative
body in the U.S. This year is a
“short session,” which meets for
FEBRUARY 2015
have a book to read when they
come to study hall, in case they
finish assignments early. (No
phones are allowed in study hall
either.) They take their tests
under proctors. Curfew at the
hotel is 10:30 p.m. and all lights
must be out by 11. Thacker said
the only class that’s been hard to
keep up with is Spanish, but he
has found language apps and
other electronic assistance.
21
CROZET
PARC
YMCA
Swimming
Fitness and
Family Fun
ADULT PROGRAMS
Group Exercise
Cardio—Belly Fit, Kickboxing, Hip Hop,
Kettlebell Training, Step & Sculpt & Tabata
Strength—30-20-10 & Athletic Conditioning
Mind Body—All/Multi-Levels, Power and
Vinyasa Yoga & Nia
Water Fitness
M-F 9-10 AM
Adult Masters Swim
M/T/Th 5:30-6:30 AM; Sat 7-8:15 AM
YOUTH PROGRAMS
Chito-ryu Karate
February 2-27; M/W/F 4:30-5:45 PM
Girls Lacrosse—Grades K-4
Feb 23-May 2; Weekday Practices, Sat Games
Soccer—Ages 3-8
March 14-April 25; Sat AM programs
Swim Lessons—All Ages
Parent/Child, Preschool, Youth-Various Times
Tennis—All Ages
March 14-28; Sat/Sun programs
Tumbling—Ages 3-11
Isabel Brown and Owen Thacker
45 days. In the alternating long
session, the Assembly meets for
60 days and drafts a two-year
budget for state government.
“We carry messages, lunches,
whatever,” said Brown. Most of
their trips are between the
Capitol building and the
General Assembly’s office building nearby where the representatives’ staffs have offices. “We
all do the same jobs,” she said.
Pages are not allowed to have
cell phones with them while
they are at work.
Pages are on duty from 8:30
a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and
are allowed to go home for 48
hours on weekends. They live in
the Omni hotel in Richmond
(at the expense of the General
Assembly) under supervision by
chaperones and they are paid a
salary. They are not allowed to
be absent.
While they are gone from
their schools, pages go to a
mandatory study hall, (monitored by teachers from the
Richmond area) at the hotel for
two hours every evening where
they keep up with school assignments, which their families and
schools are responsible for providing. Applicants are expected
to have discussed this requirement with their school officials
before they apply to be pages.
Pages are admonished to always
“It’s been nice to be in the
hotel,” Brown volunteered.
Neither complained of being
homesick while serving, though
Thacker said he feels like he is
missing a lot of the basketball
season. Brown called the page
program “well organized.” Its
history dates to the 1850 session.
Applicants are expected to
have A or B averages as students
and they must write an essay
that explains why they think
they would be good pages. They
must arrange for three letters of
reference and Henley also submitted supporting documents.
Applications are due by
November for the year following.
Brown and Thacker met with
local representatives Steve
Landes and Creigh Deeds when
they applied.
“I’ve always seemed to have
leadership skills and I like history,” said Thacker, who added
that he has visited many Civil
War battlefields.
“I like being informed about
current events,” said Brown,
who also agreed that the leadership component is attractive
inducement.
Pages go to classes on how to
handle money and on etiquette
during two days of orientation
continued on page 39
February 22-March 14; Sat/Sun program
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22
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Welcome, Little Ones!
Madeleine and Sienna Gaya
© J. Dirk Nies, Ph.D.
Carbon Dioxide: The Essential
Pollutant (Part Three)
Madeleine Hilda Gaya and Sienna Taylor Gaya were born at
Martha Jefferson Hospital on January 21st at 4:15 and 4:18 pm,
respectively. Both are healthy and beautiful. Madeleine weighed 5
lbs 12 oz and was 19.5”, and Sienna weighed 5 lbs 6 oz and was
19.25”. Mom Lydia Taylor Gaya, Dad Mark Gaya, grandparents
Clover Carroll and Henry Taylor, and Uncle Ben Taylor are head
over heels in love!
Last time, in
Part Two of this
series,
we
learned that edible yields of cassava, an important root crop,
doubled when its leaves were
exposed to elevated levels of
CO2 in the atmosphere; levels
we are likely to see by the middle of this century. This dramatic example of the ‘CO2 fertilizer effect’ arises as a direct
consequence of plants having
more carbon dioxide readily
available for photosynthesis.
In this article, I wish to highlight a related but different
direct impact that higher levels
of CO2 currently are having on
terrestrial plants and indirectly
on hydrology as well. The subject I have in mind is water,
more specifically, how efficiently
trees use water. A recent communication in the journal
Nature addresses this subject.
Researchers at Macquarie
University in Australia “find a
substantial increase in water-use
efficiency in temperate and
boreal forests of the Northern
Hemisphere over the past two
decades.” They assert that the
most credible explanation for
this observation is the “strong
CO2 fertilization effect” brought
on by rising levels of CO2 in the
air.
The boreal forests of North
America and Eurasia (also
referred to as the taiga) are the
world’s largest terrestrial community of plants occupying a
distinct region (biome). They
are found just south of the polar
tundra. Tree species found
within these forests consist
mainly of cold-hardy, cone-bearing evergreens, such as firs,
pines, and spruces, along with
some deciduous trees such as
larches, birches, and aspens.
Temperate forests are located
further south and contain a
higher abundance of deciduous
trees such as oak, hickory, poplar, maple, beech and birch.
In both these forest types, the
trees are not passive; they react
dynamically to changes they
perceive in the environment. In
response to the enhanced availability of CO2 in the air, these
forests and woodlands have
adapted and are becoming ever
more economical in their use of
water. They now need less water
to thrive than they did just 20
years ago.
But why is there any relationship between the amount of
CO2 in the air and the amount
of water trees need to grow?
Trees need both water and
carbon dioxide to make food.
The only source of CO2 available to trees is from the air.
Trees absorb CO2 from the air
through tiny, adjustable pores in
their leaves called stomata.
While doing so, however, they
lose precious water through
these very same pores. Under
hot, dry conditions, upwards of
95 percent or more of the water
absorbed by the roots of trees
simply wafts away through the
leaf canopy and is lost to the
atmosphere (this phenomenon
is called transpiration). Under
ordinary conditions, roughly
400 water molecules are lost to
the air for every single
CO2molecule taken in. Four
hundred-to-one are not good
odds when water is scarce!
Clearly, the exchange of gaseous CO2 and H2O at the surface of leaves creates a biological
conundrum. To maximize the
amount of CO2 absorbed, trees
open their stomata to make it
easier for carbon dioxide to
enter the leaf. To prevent
becoming desiccated by water
loss through transpiration, trees
close their stomata as much as
possible. Trees are tugged in
opposite directions by these two
opposing priorities.
As our human economy has
pumped more and more carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, we
have begun to tip the balance
and ease this dilemma. Our
inadvertent, unintended fertilization of the air with CO2 is
making it easier for trees to get
all the CO2 they need for photosynthesis. As a consequence,
trees are reducing the size of the
continued on page 29
CROZETgazette
Back to Fitness
—continued from page 14
of your weight, watch this documentary. And what are some
solid, practical points that
everyone can take from this
movie? Let me suggest a few:
-Start counting grams of
sugar, NOT calories. Recent
guidelines suggest taking in no
more than 25 grams of sugar a
day, though there is zero nutritional value of added sugar in
food! We get plenty of natural
sugars through fruits and
through carbohydrates. People
who are battling weight should
dramatically reduce if not eliminate sugar completely. Try
counting grams of sugar and
you’ll quickly be surprised how
many you likely consume.
-Read ingredients! Know
what you’re eating, don’t be
fooled by “healthy” labeling.
Again, don’t worry about how
many calories a food has, worry
about how many grams of sugar
it has. Our son has this nailed.
We regularly hear “Daddy, look
how unhealthy this food is. It
has 22 grams of sugar!” (That
was one of his chocolate milks,
by the way.)
-Try to eat as much whole
foods as possible. Avoid processed foods. This usually means
get most of your groceries from
the outside/perimeter of the
grocery store.
-Never drink soda, juice, or
diet soda. Just drink water.
Saying you don’t like water is
like saying you don’t like air!
Get a Nalgene bottle and cut
the cord of soft drink addiction.
-Avoid fake sugars like sorbitol, stevia, etc. They can
induce some of the same hormonal changes as sugar that
FEBRUARY 2015
lead to weight gain.
-Avoid fat free, low calorie
foods. They all have added
sugar and will ultimately cause
more weight gain than their
higher-fat counterparts.
To me, the most real and discouraging parts of the documentary were the families they
interviewed. One in particular
was a family where the son, who
was in high school, was obese.
When looking at the family’s
diet, it was pretty typical – lots
of cereal, pasta, juice, soda, etc.
Over time, the family decided
to go on a “sugar detox,” where
they agreed to just do whole
foods for 30 days. Everyone lost
weight. This new way of eating
continued and the son lost a
substantial amount of weight. It
really showed the power of
everything that had been discussed through the whole documentary.
However at the very end of
the documentary, they added a
note that the son and family
reverted back to their old ways
of eating and the son gained all
the weight back. That broke my
heart. It was a clear message that
the system is broken and it is
way harder than it should be to
eat well, and way easier than it
should be to consume mass
amounts of sugar.
The movie makes a charge
that people and our government
should start to vilify sugar like
we do tobacco. How much time
will it take before this is mainstream? Even Michelle Obama
won’t go there. Fortunately, I
think the wheels are in place,
but it starts with you. Your
home. Your family. Your
kitchen.
For a good intro, watch Dr.
Lustig’s viral YouTube video,
“Sugar: The Bitter Truth.”
23
Tabor Presbyterian Church (USA)
Worship Service
Sundays • 10:30 a.m.
FOLLOWED BY FELLOWSHIP
Rev. Dr. Jewell-Ann Parton, Pastor
Traditional in worship, Prgressive in outreach, Inclusive of All
Shrove Tuesday Supper
Tuesday, February 17 • 6 PM
Sample Louisiana Favorites: Gumbo and Red Beans & rice
Please bring a dish-to-pass
Followed by a musical performance at 7:15 p.m.
Ash Wednesday Service
Wednesday, February 18 • 6 PM
Tabor Presbyterian Church USA, Sanctuary
Services will include Holy Communion & imposition of ashes
An Outreach of Tabor Presbyterian Church
All Events are in the Pickford-Chiles Fellowship Hall Unless Otherwise Noted
Second Saturday Art Gallery Opening
Saturday, February 14, 5 - 7 p.m.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day by stopping in for our art show!
February’s featured artist is Nancy McDearmon. In addition to being
a fine painter, Nancy is aprofessor at Sweet Briar College.
Musical Pasta!
Friday, March 6 • 6:30 p.m.
Come listen to some great local musicians (to be announced soon)
and enjoy a pasta supper. Free to attend, $4 per person for supper.
R.A.D. Self Defense for Women
Saturday & Sunday, March 14 & 15 • 1 - 5:30 p.m.
Both days required. $100 per woman (sliding scale available). For women & girls
ages 13 years old and above. To register: http://we2empower.com/upcomingclasses2.html. For questions, please email Michele at [email protected]
Crozet Community Orchestra Concert
Sunday, March 22 • 4 p.m.
Crozet Baptist Church, 5804 St. George Ave, Crozet, VA
Violin soloist Monika Monica Chamasyan will perform with the orchestra.
Crozet Combined Choir Easter Performance
Thursday, April 2 • 7 pm
Crozet Baptist Church, 5804 St. George Ave, Crozet, VA
CCAC
—continued from page 13
comfortable if it came from
other members of the community.”
Lee Catlin, an assistant to
county executive Tom Foley,
was at the meeting and agreed
to review the outline to see what
information that it asks for is
already known to the county.
She said she would have answers
by the February meeting.
“We want to do organic
Crozet Community Handbell Choir Concert
growth and not hurt the community,” offered county economic development facilitator
Susan Stimart.
“We want to know what we
want and what we don’t want,”
said Mallek.
“The CCAC is the guardian
of the Master Plan,” said More.
“But how much should we be
proactive and how much reactive?”
“We should be proactive
about certain locations, such as
the Acme site,” suggested
Loach.
Wednesday, April 29 • 7 p.m.
See crozetcares.com/handbells for details.
Kindergarten 911
Three Saturdays beginning in April 2015
Free workshop series for parents and caregivers of preschoolers.
Not all children have the opportunity of the preschool experience.
Learn how to prepare your preschooler for kindergarten success!
Childcare and dinner provided for all participating families.
Camp Hanover Daycamp
June 22 - 26, 2015
Summer camp for rising 1st-6th graders. An affordable and fun week with old
friends and new. Cost $100. Contact [email protected] with questions.
For more information visit
CrozetCares.com
Click on Upcoming Events
Tabor Presbyterian Church
5804 Tabor Street • Crozet
www.taborpc.org • 434-823-4255
24
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
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[email protected]
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We are excited to continue
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Be sure to check our website and
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and upcoming special events.
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Facebook.com/themarketatamfog
Open Wednesday – Friday Noon - 5 pm
Saturday 9 am - 5 pm • Sunday Noon - 5 pm
9264 Critzers Shop Rd. (Rte. 151) Afton
540-456-7100
AugustA Audiology AssociAtes
is celebrAting 20 yeArs of service
for your heAring heAlthcAre needs!
We are the only center in the Shenandoah Valley
and surrounding areas that offer complete
evaluation & management of your hearing
healthcare needs, including:
Complete Assessment of Hearing, The Vestibular
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To help you hear what you have been missing,
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“Contestants,
the category is
Ornamental
Shrubs.
This
shrub blooms at
about the same
time as Forsythia
and has pale yellow, fragrant
flowers? Please be sure your
answer is in the form of a question.” (Cue the Final Jeopardy
jingle. And now that will be
going through your head for the
rest of the day.)
Time’s up. “What is
Corylopsis or Winterhazel”?
And I would indeed be
impressed if anyone guessed this
based on the fairly scanty clue.
Hailing from East Asia, these
shrubs are not well known in
American gardens, certainly a
shame. Flowers and fragrance in
early spring are hard to beat.
The Winterhazels should not
be
confused
with
the
Witchhazels, although they are
in the same family of plants,
possibly accounting for the early
spring bloom time and the fragrant flowers found in both
groups. Another possible source
of confusion if you’re using scientific names: Corylus, the
Filbert or Hazel, has a similar
name, but is in the birch family.
And there’s that “hazel” bit to
add to the muddle.
Getting to know the winterhazels is a bit difficult, since
they are “taxonomically confused,” as the botanists would
say. (Are the plants confused, or
the botanists?) They have at various times determined that
there are as many as 30 species,
or as few as seven. We’ll only
look at a few here, and even
then with the caveat that you
might run across a plant with a
different name, albeit similar to
the one that I have used. The
upshot: it’s probably the same
plant, so buy it if you like it.
Corylopsis
(Anybody reminded of T.S.
Eliot’s The Naming of Cats?)
All the winterhazels are
multi-stemmed shrubs, and
they can get pretty sizeable, particularly in spread. Leaves are
ovate and slightly toothed,
sometimes with a blue-green
cast, and don’t provide much in
the way of fall color. Prominent
veins on the leaves give a natty,
pleated effect. Flowers are generally described as buttercup
yellow; although individually
small, they’re clustered in dangly racemes, and open before
the leaves appear.
If you want a relatively tall
specimen, look for Corylopsis
sinensis var. calvescens (sometimes known as Chinese
Winterhazel), which can reach
heights of 12’ to 15’. Fragrant
Winterhazel (C. glabrescens) can
be almost as large, but it can be
found in a much smaller variety,
‘March Jewel’. This little guy
only gets to about 1½ feet tall
and 5 feet wide in 10 years.
Plant guru Michael Dirr says it
“appears woven from willow
stems.”
Fairly tidy in size, C. spicata
(Spike Winterhazel) will generally get to 4’ to 6’ high, with a
somewhat greater spread. This
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Gazette Vet
—continued from page 16
Corylopsis
may be the most floriferous of
all the winterhazels, with little
flowers hanging like tassels. In
spring, the leaves emerge
wine-purple, then change to
bluish green. A few cultivars of
Spike Winterhazel are out there,
‘Aurea’ likely being the most
widely available. (Plants labeled
as ‘Ogon’ or ‘Golden Spring’ are
either the same plant or very
similar.) Leaves will emerge yellow-gold, but will gradually
change to green in our summer
heat. ‘Red Eye’ has reddish stamens protruding from the
flower, but this would only be
noticeable on close inspection.
Also modest in size is C.
pauciflora,
the
Buttercup
Winterhazel. It’s generally listed
as a plant that reaches 4’ to 6’,
with a slightly greater spread. In
the U.K., where ornamental
plants have often been in the
ground for centuries, there is a
fifteen-foot specimen, however.
Notwithstanding, it’s a daintier
shrub than the other winterhazels. As for the pauciflora epithet, don’t worry that there will
be a paucity of flowers. The
individual flowers are just
slightly smaller, and fewer are in
each cluster.
The differences among all the
winterhazels are not great—
again, are there 30 species, or is
it seven?—and their growing
requirements are essentially the
same. Partial shade is best,
meaning high, overhead tree
cover for most of the day, or
perhaps a few hours of morning
sun. Soils should provide that
elusive combination of moisture
and good drainage. If you can’t
provide that ideal mix, at least
insure that your winterhazel has
adequate moisture and is not
sited in a soggy corner of your
yard. Also, avoid windy, exposed
situations; this can be easily
achieved by putting your plant
in a woodland.
You may not find winterhazels at every garden center or
big box store, but specialty
places should either have them
in the spring or be able to order
one. They are a nice alternative
to the “Hey, over here, look at
me!” screaming-yellow of forsythia. If you happen to have
both, keep the winterhazel away
from the forsythia, or you might
end up with an unfortunate
color clash.
And now, how much did you
wager in the Final Jeopardy
round?
probably welcomes the cold
weather.
But most people don’t.
hounds, beagles, pit bulls–great
dogs, very common around
here—but none of these have
coats for cold weather. Even the
retrievers, with their winter
duck hunting roots, do not have
coats thick enough to adequately keep them warm when
temperatures drop. I would
argue that a hound’s coat would
be like us wearing a lightweight
fleece. A retriever’s coat is more
like a winter jacket, but still not
comfortable for an all-nighter.
So, will a night in the
20-degree weather kill them?
Not likely. Will they still be
happy to see you in the morning? You bet—their loyalty is
beyond measure. But was that a
terrible night for them?
Absolutely! Being cold for
extended periods of time is misery.
Most people with outdoor
dogs do have doghouses or
some other form of “shelter” for
them, but unless they are
heated, these are a far cry from
adequate shelter when it’s freezing out. I went out to my shed
one recent night and it was mis-
Home Cloud
—continued from page 18
gets dropped. For business, we
see data management issues,
information being on a different
platform than it needs to be to
be integrated and for back-up
security.
Subcontractors, including a
25
erably cold in there despite my
heavy coat, hat, and gloves.
Bedding, doors, and straw are
better than nothing, but still
there is no heat.
My plea? Let those outdoor
dogs inside at night, and during
the day during cold spells. If
they can’t spend the night in the
back hallway or mudroom, how
about in the garage? If no
garage, how about a doghouse
that’s directly adjacent to your
house to get a little bit of that
heat transferred. I think if people stop and think about it,
there are some pretty simple
things that can be done to make
these animals incredibly more
comfortable.
I can still remember a commercial from when I was a
child. It was a shot of the outside of a house with all the lights
on during a cold winter’s night.
You could hear the voices of the
people inside laughing and
enjoying themselves. Then the
picture zoomed out to include
the poor outdoor dog, shivering
inside its doghouse as the wind
was whipping by. The sad thing
about that image is that it’s happening all over Crozet and
Albemarle County tonight. So
if you’ve got an outside dog,
think about these things and I
think we’ll all sleep a little better.
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26
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
WAHS Robotics Teams Qualify for State Championship in Richmond
By Rebecca Schmitz
[email protected]
After strong showings at a
series of qualifying matches, all
three of Western’s Robotics Club
teams—The Geek Gods, the
Loose Screws, and Her Majesty’s
Engineers—will compete in the
state championship match in
Richmond on February 28. This
makes the fourth year that all of
Western’s teams have qualified
for states, an achievement that
has become progressively harder
to attain as the robotics challenge
grows in popularity and more
and more clubs from around the
area begin to compete.
The matches are part of the
FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC),
which requires teams of up to 10
students to design, program, and
build their own robots. The
robots then compete head-tohead in a sports-style arena, with
loud rock music flooding from
speakers and enthusiastic students in costumes surrounding
the 12 x 12 foot square playing
field and cheering on their
teams. The atmosphere is as raucous as any high school football
or basketball game. “The FIRST
organization wanted to create a
sport for the mind and a feeling
of excitement,” said Western’s
Career
Specialist
Caroline
Bertrand, who helped found the
club four years ago.
Each team designs its own
costumes, with the Geek Gods
cloaked in headgear, togas, and
armor; and the Loose Screws
donning tool belts, hard hats,
and safety goggles. Inspired by
“steampunk,” a genre of science
fiction and fantasy literature that
focuses on the 19th century and
features steam-powered machinery, male members of Her
Majesty’s Engineers wear burgundy vests, yellow cravats, and
top hats; the females wear big
bustle skirts and white tops.
Both genders wear a burgundy
tool belt. “If you don’t look silly,
you’re doing something wrong,”
senior Josh Reid, lead builder for
the Geek Gods, said with a
laugh.
This year’s challenge, “Cascade
Effect,” requires the robots to
score points by racing around
the arena and placing golf balland softball-size whiffle balls
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Western’s “Her Majesty’s Engineers” team gathers after a recent match. Left to
right: Aaron Poulter Martinez, Alex Krasner (graduated from Western’s robotics
program, is now at Virginia Teach studying engineering and helps the team when
he is home), Idan Hananel, James Krasner, Drew McConville, Austin Germani,
Gayathri Prakash, Brynn Jefferson, Justin Zambrana, and Mentor Courtney
Christensen.
into three tall, bucket-style rolling goals. Robots had to fit into
an 18-inch x 18-inch box at the
beginning of the two-minute
long match, but they could
increase in size as the competition progressed, growing taller to
grasp things up high or toss balls
into the goal.
In such a celebratory environment, it’s easy to overlook the
tremendous work these ninth
through twelfth graders pour
into preparing for each competition. While their usual practice
schedule consists of two 2-hour
sessions each week, the students
and their mentors often work
until 8 p.m. at night during the
week of the competition. “We
live on pizza and caffeine,” Reid
said. It’s only natural that the late
evenings have created a bond
among the students. “You can’t
judge each other when you’re
stuffing your face with pizza and
cake and building robots all at
the same time!” said Reid.
Their hard work and dedication have paid off. Last year, the
Loose Screws were ranked fifth
in the state, and were the only
team in Central Virginia to compete in Super Regionals against
teams from the entire mid-Atlantic region. The Geek Gods
were a runner-up to go to Super
Regionals, barely missing the
cut-off.
The club is headed by Tom
Larson, who teaches computer-assisted design, and Bertrand.
Both are dynamic, have an easy
rapport with the students, and
have put in countless hours guiding and mentoring them. The
team also gets help from parents
and volunteers. Last spring, local
continued on page 28
WAHS Robotics
Club Members
Geek Gods
Samuel Carey
Daniel Du
Jesse Galloway
George Hiss
Hamilton Ibbeken
Tatum Norris
Josh Reid
William Stewart
Sarah Watkins
Cole Weiss
Her Majesty’s
Engineers
Haochen Gao
Austin Germani
Idan Hananel
Brynn Jefferson
James Krasner
James Mahoney
Drew McConville
Jessica Novotny
Gayathri Prakash
Justin Zambrana
Loose Screws
Amie Benson
Dylan Boatner
Colton Forry
Dor Hananel
Maddie McKalips
Sarah Meng
Aaron Poulter Martinez
Sophie Salomon
Maggie Stewart
Nelson Zambrana
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
27
Palm Oil Plantations Accelerate Tropical Deforestation
[ by elena day • [email protected] \
When I was
13 years old in
1964 I visited
the New York
World’s Fair.
The song “It’s a
Small World
(After All)” reverberated over
and over in my brain after visiting the ride Disney debuted at
the fair that is now replicated in
all Disney theme parks globally.
The fair’s theme was “Peace
through Understanding” dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on
a Shrinking Globe and
Expanding Universe.” (I believe
women’s achievements were
minimalized at the time.) In ’64
there was a lot of hope in the air.
In 2015 we haven’t arrived at
the “peace” part of the theme,
but no one can deny that the
“shrinking globe”—which I
interpret to mean globalization—is far advanced. However,
it didn’t turn out the way I envisioned as a young teenager.
Globalization has opened to
our current human population
a Pandora’s box of problems.
Today,
global/multinational
corporations have limited and
standardized consumers’ technological
options,
energy
choices/distribution, and available foodstuffs. A global model
of agriculture has been evolving
(and is in place) that is environmentally destructive, threatens
biodiversity, bankrupts smaller
farmers, depresses farm laborers
wages, uses immeasurable
amounts of chemical fertilizers,
poisonous pesticides and insecticides, and contributes to
greenhouse gas emissions.
Palm oil is an apt example of
a food product almost unknown
25 years ago that is now monocropped and threatens rainforests and endangered species in
Southeast Asia. Given that
demand for palm oil is projected to double by 2030 and
triple by 2050, rainforests in
Africa and South and Central
America may be at risk as well.
Palm oil was traditionally
used for cooking in tropical
West Africa. European traders
brought it to Europe as a cooking oil. British traders sought it
as an industrial lubricant beginning
in
the
Industrial
Revolution. The African oil
palm tree, Elaeis guineensi, was
introduced by the Dutch to
Indonesia and the British to
Malaysia in the mid and late
19th century.* It was originally
planted as an ornamental. In
the late 1800s both Lever
Brothers (now Unilever) and
Colgate began production of
palm oil soaps. These were marketed as Sunlight and Palmolive
respectively.
Beginning in the 1970s both
Malaysia
and
Indonesia
increased palm oil plantings in
an effort to lift rural populations
out of poverty. Rainforests were
leveled at an accelerated rate to
make way for palm oil trees in
the 1990s. Multinationals like
Cargill invested in palm oil
plantations. (Cargill is the
world’s largest grain trader. It
owns grain terminals, cargo
ships, storage facilities and cattle
feedlots. I noticed its name on
the entrances to every other
farm on Rte. 340 from north of
Luray to Elkton.) In 1995
Cargill acquired its first palm
plantation in Indonesia. By
2005 it had three large planta-
tions as well as a processing facility in Papua New Guinea. Other
multinationals bought the palm
oil for consumer products.
Today
Malaysia
and
Indonesia produce 85 percent
of the world’s palm oil.
Between 1990 and 2010, 3.5
million hectares of tropical rainforest in Indonesia were
replaced by palm oil plantations. (One hectare is 2.47
acres, so that is 8.6 million
acres.) Indonesia overtook
Brazil as the number one rainforest destroyer in 2012. It has
also distinguished itself as the
third largest emitter of CO2
after the United States and
China.
Whether the clearing method
is slash and burn or mechanical
uprooting, animal species are
decimated and plant biodiversity is lost. One-third of the animal species, including Sumatra’s
tigers, rhinos, elephants, and
orangutans, are endangered.
The Sumatran orangutan has
lost 90 percent of its habitat.
Orangutans are also threatened
on Malaysia’s island of Borneo.
Poachers are relatively unmonitored and have increased access
into intact rainforest areas
because of palm oil plantation
roads. Palm oil trees are thirsty
for water and palm oil processing facilities routinely contaminate water sources with their
waste. Plantations in general
have a poor record regarding
worker protections from applications of herbicides such as
Paraquat.
In 1992, in response to concerns
regarding
rainforest
destruction and global warming, Malaysia agreed to limit its
deforestation to 50 percent of
its original tree cover. Progress
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
implementing this pledge has
been slow.
Currently 50 million tons of
palm oil are produced annually.
Palm oil constitutes 30 percent
of the world’s vegetable oil. It is
included in baked goods and
household products such as
shampoo, cosmetics, cleaning
agents and toothpaste.
Palm oil is cheap and the
trees are high-yielding. It is a
saturated fat. Unsaturated and
trans fats have lost favor and
have been implicated in coronary artery disease. Saturated
fats like palm oil, lard (amazing)
and completely hydrogenated
fats are preferable in those fast
and fried and convenience foods
Americans consume, according
to the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
In 2013 the FDA announced
its intention to ban/phase out
all trans fats from the American
diet. The American Soybean
Association (ASA) immediately
protested. ASA includes all the
usual cheerleaders for genetically modified (GM) soybeans
—Monsanto, DuPont, Dow,
Bayer, Syngenta, and German
chemical giant BASF. According
to Food and Water Watch, these
multinationals don’t want to
lose market share until GM soybeans (DuPont Plenish and
Monsanto Vistive) that have
been engineered to have less saturated fat than palm oil have
replaced current GM cultivars.
In 2004 the Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil was
formed. It has not been very
effective to date in promoting
“sustainability” or curbing /
reversing the negatives of this
new mono-cropping disaster. A
Dec. 2014 article in Fortune
continued on page 39
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Robotics
—continued from page 26
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network forensics company
nPulse (which was just bought
by FireEye) “adopted” the club,
and two of its employees, Whit
Sheldon
and
Courtney
Christensen, volunteer to help.
Riley Chandler, a former nPulse
employee who has since moved
onto another job, also continues
to volunteer. They typically
spend four hours a week helping
the students, but, during the
lead-up to competitions, they
volunteer for up to 12 hours a
week.
With such a successful track
record, it’s no wonder more and
more students are eager to join
this lively group. The club has
increased to 30 members—
nearly double the number who
joined last year. Interest was so
high that some students had to
be turned away at Western’s club
fair.
The students who do join
have a wide range of skills and
interests—not all are budding
engineers. “We have drama people, we have artists, we have
football players, and we have
future med students,” Larson
said. “Our diversity is our
strength. If everybody were an
engineer, we would not succeed.
If you have same-minded people, you get the same results.
Some people are good at design,
some are good at programming,
and some are good at mechanics.
Some do our artwork and some
handle the paperwork.”
One-third of the club members are girls. Seniors Hamilton
Ibbeken and Tatum Norris
appreciate that being in the club
has taught them to work and
communicate effectively in a
field that still tends to be
male-dominated. They are also
proud of the example they’re setting for young girls. As part of its
outreach efforts, the club has
helped with “Girl’s Geek Day” at
local elementary schools. “It’s
fun to see the little girls get that
spark of interest,” Ibbeken said.
Norris says the club has helped
her develop skills that will last
well after her high school career
ends. “It helps with interviewing
skills. It puts you in a situation
where you have to explain your
work,” she said, referring to the
competition’s requirement that
teams explain their robots to the
judges.
Since the program began at
Nelson Zambrana and Dor Hananel hard at work on their robot before a match
Western four years ago, it has
expanded to other schools in the
area thanks to the guidance and
support of Bill Gardner.
Gardner, an independent technical patent consultant, moved
here from California in 2010
and quickly became involved in
robotics at the schools, using his
knowledge and expertise to mentor middle and high school students. After working with his
oldest son’s robotics club at
Henley, when his son moved up
to Western he continued to help
by mentoring the Geek Gods,
which was Western’s newest team
at the time.
Gardener is responsible for
introducing the program to
other schools in the area as well.
“After the 2012-13 season, I saw
how wonderful the program was
and was surprised that Western
was the only school in the area
sponsoring FTC teams. In the
spring of 2013, I decided to try
to expand the program into the
other public high schools in our
area by finding and speaking
with potential new mentors at
Albemarle
High
School,
Charlottesville High School, and
Monticello High School. I also
organized a ‘new mentor’ information session about FTC with
Caroline Bertrand, Theresa
Harriot [another founder of the
group; she no longer teaches at
Western], and the WAHS robotics students, where we showed
potential new mentors the robots
and what FTC was all about.”
Western,
Albemarle,
and
Monticello now each have three
teams, Charlottesville High
School has one team, and Henley
and St. Anne’s Belfield have also
started teams, bringing the total
number of school-based teams in
the area to 12.
Gardner has seen first-hand
the benefits that students reap
from the program: “Kids get to
see their math, science, and tech-
nology skills applied in a fun and
competitive way. They also get to
work together in a team in a way
that many academic extracurricular activities do not offer.
Hopefully, this shows a lot of the
kids that technical and engineering professions can be fun and
causes them to consider technical and engineering career
paths.”
Bertrand also believes that
working together on long-term
projects benefits the students in
many ways: “It helps students
find peers with common interests, it helps them identify and
confirm their interests, and it
helps them learn critical thinking, problem solving, and technical skills while applying their
creativity.”
Not surprisingly, their biggest
challenge has been learning to
work together as a cohesive team.
When the club was first formed,
group discussions could get
heated, with everyone trying to
speak at once. Club president
Dor Hananel, a founding member of the club, remembers those
early days with a chuckle. “We
had very passionate students,
each with their own strong opinions,” he said. The solution? A
talking stick—actually, a talking
sword, made out of cardboard.
“Whoever was holding the sword
at the time could talk, and no
one could interrupt them,” he
said. Four years later, the sword
isn’t used as often, but has still
been known to emerge when discussions get too loud.
Because the club gets no
money from the school, it is constantly raising money to buy
parts and pay for competition
fees and travel expenses. The
club has held fundraisers at Sal’s
Pizza
and
was
outside
Brownsville Elementary on
Election Day, selling baked
goods and coffee while showcasing their robots. “We are grateful
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
to the local businesses and families that support our efforts,”
Bertrand said. Companies who
sponsor the teams have their
logos displayed prominently on
the robots and on the back of the
club’s T-shirts.
At the competitions, teams
are also judged on their community outreach efforts and other
real-world
accomplishments.
Western’s outreach, which they
carefully detail with text and pictures in a large binder to present
to judges, is extensive. They have
conducted hands-on workshops
and demonstrations for younger
children at local schools, worked
with Henley’s Robotics club, and
provided
mentorship
and
demonstrations at robotics ses-
sions at the U.Va. science and
technology camps for rising
ninth and tenth graders.
Clearly, the club is about more
than just building robots. “We
have the opportunity to not just
design and build a robot, but to
help the community and represent our school,” Larson said.
Bertrand believes that being
part of the club will give students
the skills to succeed in whatever
endeavor they choose.
“Engineers tell us that these
kids will be leaders in engineering school. Yet not all are going
into engineering, some are
going into artistic or other professions. This experience will
help them grow in a fun and
creative way.”
Science
ning of the story. Other effects,
not measured in this study, may
become apparent over time. For
example, less transpiration,
which naturally cools the tree
canopy (like perspiration cools
our bodies), may lead to higher
temperatures near the ground.
More efficient water use may
lead to more surface runoff and
flooding, or conversely, may
result in more moisture ending
up in groundwater. Who
knows? What’s clear is that the
carbon-based and water-based
economies of large swaths of
terrestrial vegetation are shifting
in response to our changing the
composition of the earth’s atmosphere.
Until recently over the course
of human history, we could go
about our lives without consequence, blissfully ignorant of
the presence, properties, functions of CO2, and our alteration
of its concentration in the air.
The biological and environmental impact of our economic
activities powered by burning
fossil fuels has grown, however,
from local and negligible to
global and transformative. We
are dramatically increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere around the world
and we are producing measurable impacts on the economy of
life on earth. As more consequences emerge, blissful ignorance becomes less tenable.
Next time, I will report on
recent and surprising research
findings that describe how the
world’s tropical rainforests are
responding and adapting to
higher levels of CO2 in our
atmosphere.
—continued from page 22
openings of their leaf stomata.
This in turn reduces water evaporation rates from their leaves.
In the presence of higher levels
of CO2, trees are drawing less
water from the ground while
still
maintaining
vigorous
growth.
Nature’s biological economy
is built around CO2. The
vibrancy and diversity of plants,
indeed all organisms populating
earth, depend upon and are
influenced by the presence of
carbon dioxide in the air. This
study has shown that in boreal
and temperate forests today,
photosynthesis is stronger,
uptake of carbon from the
atmosphere is increasing, water
use is down, and these changes
principally have arisen from
increased concentrations of
CO2 in the air over the past
couple of decades.
This study also has reaffirmed
that nature is surprising and
complex. The adaptations
occurring within these forests of
the Northern Hemisphere have
turned out to be greater than
scientists expected. Our best
theories and our finest, most
sophisticated computer models
did not predict the magnitude
of the changes we see happening
in these woodlands today. In the
words of the Australian
researchers: “The observed
increase in forest water-use efficiency is larger than that predicted by existing theory and 13
terrestrial biosphere models.”
And this is only the begin-
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29
Chuck Kennedy,
Owner, 1973
5792 St. George Avenue
Crozet,VA 22932
Licensed/Insured • State Registered • Commercial & Residential
Giving back
is my way
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Larry Whitlock, Agent
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30
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
BY DR. ROBERT C. REISER
[email protected]
On Being More Judgmental
CONVENIENT CARE
Get in...
& feel better
Dr.
Sudhir’s
excellent article
last month nicely
highlighted the
challenges
to
empathy that are
ever present in
the chaotic and unpredictable
ER. Patients will indeed ignore
the eminent doctor’s grand
entrance while continuing to
text or talk on their cell phones.
I understand this; patients are
busy and perhaps I have come
at a bad time. I can always
reschedule.
Fortunately I have never seen
anyone who is dying feel the
need to text so I find such
ostensibly rude behavior actually reassuring. I have enough to
do sorting out the critically ill
from the temporarily unwell
and anything that makes that
job easier is welcome.
Another thing that makes it
easier for me to discover serious
illness is not vaccinating your
children. It is the rare physician
who could miss the characteristic rash of measles, for example.
I suppose it is possible, though;
the majority of doctors in the
current generation have never
seen a case of measles (rubeola
or red measles). This is because
measles was eliminated in the
U.S. in 2000 thanks to a highly
effective vaccine. Case closed. I
liked having one less serious illness to worry about.
And yet measles is back! Last
year there were 644 cases in the
U.S. The average has been about
60 cases per year for the last two
decades, mostly cases imported
by travelers from other countries where measles is still
endemic.
The majority of last year’s
cases, 382 of them, were in a
community of unvaccinated
Amish people in Ohio. The
Amish are known as plain people. They tend to avoid technology like cars and telephones,
but also vaccines. The source of
their outbreak of measles was an
Amish missionary who had
traveled (by plane, interestingly)
to the Philippines and back. The
Philippines has seen 60,000
cases of measles in a multi-year
epidemic of measles. The wide
world is full of measles to
import home to the U.S.
The Amish missionary did
see his doctor in Ohio when he
fell ill, but was misdiagnosed as
having dengue fever. Three hundred and eighty one patients
later I bet every physician in
that community is now up to
speed on diagnosing measles.
And virtually all of the Amish
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continued on page 37
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Neighbor Law
CLASSIFIED ADS
© Alice Neff Lucan
Picture You Shopping?
Adding city-owned surveillance cameras to the Downtown
Mall has prompted the
American Civil Liberties Union
and others to say these cameras
will “invade people’s privacy.”
The possibility of cameras being
added in downtown Crozet also
came up at the Crozet
Community
Association’s
January 8 meeting.
Well, guess what: there is no
legal claim for invasion of privacy in the Commonwealth.
And if we’re talking about cameras that are owned and operated by merchants, there is no
tort claim. When law enforcement gets involved, another
body of law surrounding the
Fourth Amendment applies,
but it is most likely to allow evidence of criminal activity to be
taken
from
a
government-owned surveillance video.
Few (to none?) of the people
bemoaning loss of “privacy”
have explained that it is not a
viable legal issue here in
Virginia.
The tort, “invasion of privacy,” is a state issue, not a federal constitutional issue. It was
an invented tort, created by two
law partners in Baltimore in
1890 who were offended when
newspaper reporters (allegedly)
crept through a hedge to crash a
daughter’s engagement party.
They wrote a law review article
about the legal concepts and
since then, nearly every state has
adopted the invasion of privacy
tort, but not Virginia and not
New York.
“Invasion of privacy” often means that an
unwanted third party has taken
an embarrassing photograph,
intruded into a secluded place
where there is a “reasonable
expectation of privacy, ” or published intimate information that
is not newsworthy. It might be
joined with a valid claim for
trespass, but no private citizen is
trespassing when they are taking
pictures from a public thoroughfare.
The General Assembly did
pass a law (Virginia Code 8.0140) that forbids one entity to
use another person’s name, face
or likeness for “advertising or
31
trade purposes.” The fact that
the legislators had the choice to
include other kinds of privacy
claims when that law was written means those claims were
rejected as law in Virginia, at
least according to the Virginia
Supreme Court.
There are other types of
claims. For example: if those
government-owned Mall cameras record a conversation where
the subjects show that they reasonably
expected
privacy,
Virginia Code 19.2-62 (against
illegal wiretaps) might be
enforced against the merchants
or it might be considered a violation of Fourth Amendment
rights.
The Fourth Amendment creates a federal right protecting
citizens against illegal searches
and seizures; “illegal” usually
means that the police have not
followed correct procedures.
But there is no “procedure”
required when government
cameras are installed in public
places.
According to a 2011 decision
from the Virginia Court of
Appeals, “The United States
Supreme Court has made it
clear that a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of
privacy exists under the Fourth
Amendment only if a person
has a subjective expectation of
privacy and if society recognizes
that subjective expectation of
privacy as reasonable.”
In a decision in 1984
Supreme Court ruled: “[w]e
conclude, from the text of the
Fourth Amendment and from
the historical and contemporary
understanding of its purposes,
that an individual has no legitimate expectation that open
fields will remain free from warrantless intrusion by government officers.” “Open fields” are
the legal equivalent of the
Downtown Mall or any other
public space.
It is always the case that if
you’re in public space, or in a
place visible from public space
(like your front lawn or at your
bedroom window), or in the
midst of a police action, there
continued on page 37
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GET FIT AND FEEL
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Make the decision to do something positive for YOU this
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CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Hack Attack
by Clover Carroll | [email protected]
Like millions of perennially optimistic Americans,
I started the
new year by
reading a diet
book. With high hopes and
renewed determination, I dove
into the latest diet bestseller,
recently featured on NBC 29
News: The Bulletproof Diet.
Leaving aside for a moment the
violent metaphor of the title,
what caught my attention more
than this new diet’s guidelines
or recipes were the terms in
which it was presented—that is,
the words and ideas used to
explain and sell it to the
American public.
The author, Dave Asprey,
who describes himself as “an
early innovator in the Internet
(i.e., a hacker),” had become a
Silicon Valley millionaire at a
young age. Turning his computer skills and unconventional
approach to solving the problem of his poor health and obesity, Asprey explains in his
introduction that he “learn[ed]
to hack my biology using the
same techniques I used to hack
computer systems and the
Internet,” a process he dubs
“biohacking.” You, too, he
boasts in the book, can “biohack your diet to lose weight
and upgrade your life.”
Unfortunately, this diet didn’t
work out too well for me. While
I did lose some weight, the
“bulletproof coffee with butter”
touted on the cover made me
sick to my stomach, and I got so
weak that I ended up in bed
with laryngitis. But it got me
started on the path of weight
loss, as well as on a fascinating
word/concept adventure, so I
can’t complain!
I was struck by the application of the word “hacker” to
this completely non-technological problem. It seemed out of
place and gimmicky, as well as
appearing to celebrate something I considered to be a criminal activity. But once I started
looking around, I soon realized
that this word is everywhere, a
new trend, lending marketing
cachet to everything it touches.
I found myriad other contexts
in which the word “hacker” and
the concept of hacking have
invaded our culture, becoming
a kind of watchword of the 21st
century zeitgeist. From Walter
Isaacson’s new book The
Innovators: How a Group of
Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks
Created the Digital Revolution,
which chronicles the lives and
careers of inventors and entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs, to the film Fifth
Estate (2013) (with Benedict
Cumberbatch
as
Julian
Assange), society is suddenly
fascinated with hackers. In my
opinion, the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) should have
chosen “hacker” as their 2014
word of the year instead of
“vape” (i.e., smoke e-cigarettes).
You can visit the blog lifehacker.com for “tips and downloads for getting things done,”
with international editions in
India, the UK, Japan, and
Australia. When making flight
reservations online, you just
might get the best price by
using Kayak’s trademarked
“hacker fares,” touted on their
Travel Hacker blog as “a new
way to find deals on flights.”
Academic computer conferences often feature “hackathons” in which attendees
compete to design the best app
or website, and public schools
have begun creating “hacker
spaces” where students can tinker with electronic programming tools like Arduino boards.
And if you create something
really cool, it might be featured
in the online journal Hacker
News.
But wait! Aren’t hackers the
worst kind of criminals? Aren’t
they the perpetrators of cybercrime—think WikiLeaks, the
Target and Home Depot data
thefts, Chinese infiltration of
U.S. companies, the Great Sony
Hack of 2014, and many more?
Since when did hackers become
heroes?
Temporarily outraged by this
new glorification of criminality,
I began to wonder where this
word came from. What do
“hack” and “hacker” mean, anyway? Among its several definitions—such as using a hoe to
break up clods of dirt into small
clumps--the OED now includes
“a person with an enthusiasm
for programming or using computers as an end in itself,” as
well as one “who uses his skill
with computers to try to gain
unauthorized access to computer files or networks.” This is
a truly schizophrenic set of definitions. But I was also amazed
to notice that the usage examples of both meanings went
back as far as 1976. With further research, I discovered that
although this concept has long
had a split personality and its
definition is still the subject of
heated controversy, the more
positive connotation definitely
came first.
The use of “hack” as a computer term was first used by
computer geeks at MIT in the
1970s to refer to computer programmers and hobbyists. Turns
out, hackers have been heroes
since the beginning! According
to the website “How to Become
a Hacker” by Eric S. Raymond
(author of The New Hacker’s
Dictionary), being a “hacker”
has to do with “technical adeptness and a delight in solving
problems and overcoming limits.” That’s a nice way of saying,
of course, that hackers have an
innate disregard for the rules,
and that is one source of their
success. My son Ben Taylor,
who teaches computer music
and digital media, defines hackers as people who build creative
things with code. “In programming,” he explains, “we call
something a ‘hack’ if it uses
quick/dirty methods to accomplish a task quickly.” Raymond
defines the original hacker community as “a shared culture of
expert programmers and networking wizards.” Like the
innovators
celebrated
in
Isaacson’s book, these original
hackers built the Internet.
So I was dead wrong to think
that marketing and education
trenders have co-opted a criminal term to sell their products—
it is actually the other way
around! In the computer security context, a hacker is someone who seeks and exploits
weaknesses in a computer system or computer network. This
use of the term by the media
didn’t really take hold until the
1980s. But Raymond and other
“ethical hackers” strongly dissociate themselves from those who
enjoy or profit from breaking
into computers and stealing
data. “Real hackers call these
people ‘crackers’ [analogous to
safecrackers] and want nothing
to do with them.” The difference is that hackers build things,
while crackers break them.
Hearkening back to old
Westerns, observers have identified those who use their hacker
skills for positive ends as “white
hats” and those who use them
for nefarious purposes as “black
hats.” While mainstream usage
of “hacker” has mainly referred
to computer criminals for many
years, this is now changing and
the original good-guy hackers
are simply reclaiming the term.
Raymond further broadens
the concept by pointing out
that “the hacker mind-set is not
confined to this software-hacker
culture. There are people who
apply the hacker attitude to
other things, like electronics or
music—actually, you can find it
at the highest levels of any science or art.” Eureka! This
explains Asprey’s use of “biohacking” in the context of losing weight, as well as the application of the concept to airline
fares and a range of other life
problems. Still, I do think marketers play on the word’s double
meaning to lend their products
a certain bad boy cachet.
To resolve the controversy
about its meaning, we could
think of “hacking” as a neutral
term, referring to a collection of
skills which can be used for
either good or evil. While the
media may portray the hacker
as a villain, a book like The Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo (2012)
by Stieg Larsson presents an
independent, savvy heroine who
uses her hacking skills and disdain for convention to put bad
guys in prison. Perhaps it takes
a good hacker to stop a bad one!
The world has changed.
While innovation—thinking in
new ways about old problems—
has always been a major
American strength, today we are
witnessing a new kind of innovation. Networking and computer mobility allow individuals
to share creative and original
ideas at lightning speed. The
Internet, mobile devices, and
soon-to-be-developed
smart
watches, smart cars, and smart
houses offer seemingly unlimited opportunities for success.
Startups­—a play on upstart—
are going mainstream and redefining how we live. So I say, hats
off to the hackers!
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Lincoln: A Great Leader
ACROSS
1 Laslo _____, eponymous inventor of the ball point pen
5 School org. for grownups
8 Scienctific settings
12 Special venue film format
13 TV streaming device
15 One who vents
16 Mayberry boy
17 _____ go bragh
18 Sidewalk eateries
19 One like Scrooge
22 Conscious coupling vow
23 Author Fleming or McEwan
24 Internet access corp.
25 Color for communists or
Republicans
28 Point of balance
32 Full-bodied beer
33 British dance judge _____
Goodman
34 Skin flare up
35 State of matter
38 Boy
39 Poodle parasites
40 Turing or Alda
41 South Sea souvenir
42 Bali _____
43 Some cemeteries
49 Letters for mind readers
50 FS Key preposition
51 Word with MGM lion
52 Republican acronym for Obama
proposals coming to Congress
53 Very narrow view
56 _____ Martin, British
sportscar
59 Jazz singer Fitzgerald
60 _____ quam videre: “To be
rather than seem.”
61 Mild
62 Christian of fashion
63 Eeny meeny endings
64 Great lake
65 Important conjunction
66 Part of MIT
DOWN
1 Daniel Day-Lewis plays
Lincoln in one
2 Get in the way
3 Spoil, as in “_____ my
parade”
4 Pulling team
5 Get ready
6 Gran _____
7 Related
8 Prevaricator
9 Kennel call
10 Spelling contest
11 SAT takers
14 Free-range
15 Amtrak express train
20 Give in
21 Orchestra brass
25 Houston college
26 Europe’s largest active
volcano
Kids’ Crossword
Across
3 Valentine shape
5 Valentine’s ____
7 Valentine’s Day Month
10 Violets are ___
12 ___ is sweet
Down
1 Bouquet of ___
2 Chocolates
4 Opposite of boy
6 Last word after 8 Down
and 10 and 12 Across
8 ___ are red
9 ___ and kisses
1 1 Adore
by Mary Mikalson
Solution on page 39
33
Solution on page 38
by claudia crozet
1
2
3
4
5
5
12
13
16
17
19
20
22
23
28
29
31
32
35
36
6
7
8
14
8
9
15
9
10
11
25
26
27
15
18
21
24
32
37
30
31
33
34
38
40
8
39
41
42
46
43
44
45
46
49
50
51
52
56
56
53
57
54
58
61
66
64
60
62
66 63
27 Colorants
29 Pre-Columbian
Caribbean people
30 Thrash wildly
31 Legal
35 Identical
36 Stadium shouts
37 Word after lava or oil
38 Erudite
39 Widely spoken
Persian language
65
41 Property encumbrance
42 Cambridge university
Lincoln did not attend
44 Boxing unit
45 Cowboy hat unit
46 Wizard of Menlo Park
47 Hanging implements
48 Most rational
53 _____ of voice
54 Director Kazan
55 Half prefix
48
55
59
6
47
66
56 Nickname of 16th
president whose last
name can precede
first word in 19A, 28A,
43A, and 53A
57 Mirror/prism camera,
now digital: Abbr.
58 Half of a rum cocktail
Reverse Mortgages
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quality of life in retirement years by eliminating debt and
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434-249-4080
TheReverseMortgageDoctor.com
The Crozet Gazette is seeking
a high school sports reporter.
Contact
[email protected]
34
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
To Feed or Not to Feed:
That Was the Question
At my last
talk of the
season
in
Shenandoah
National
Park, an audience member
asked me about bird feeding.
He’d heard that this activity was
linked to the increase in Lyme
disease because it increased the
number of mice around people’s
homes.
White-footed Mice serve as
the main reservoir for Lyme
bacteria. These microorganisms
are transferred to people when
larval ticks that have fed upon
infected mice reach the nymph
or adult stage of their life cycle
and feed upon humans. (Ticks
prefer deer, but people make an
acceptable substitute.)
The man was quite concerned
about the possibility of contracting this illness, and he was
rather upset that I didn’t agree
that people should stop feeding
birds. He felt that if people
maintained the nature-friendly
garden that I was advocating,
they wouldn’t need to feed birds
anyway.
While it’s true that people
could—and
should—supply
food to wildlife by properly
landscaping their property, the
reality is that very few people
understand the value of replicating the natural world around
their homes. Thus very few yards
are truly capable of supplying
food to birds and other wildlife.
Bird feeding can help animals
survive, especially during harsh
weather when it’s absolutely
crucial for them to have easy
access to food. However, people
should feed responsibly, which
means understanding the consequences of their actions and
addressing potential problems.
You can avoid increasing
mouse populations by simply
putting out only the amount of
seed that birds will consume in
a day. An organism’s population
can grow only if there is plenty
of food to sustain its expansion.
You can figure out how much
to feed by checking the ground
at the end of the day to assess
how many seeds remain. It’s not
a problem for some seeds to be
on the ground; after all, the
mice have to eat too! But there
shouldn’t be an abundance of
them. If necessary, cut back on
how much you dispense in the
morning.
Some years ago, many ornithologists were also quite concerned about bird feeding and
wanted people to stop. They
worried about the spread of disease among birds in close contact day after day, and they also
felt it made birds more vulnerable to predation by hawks.
Again, such situations can be
easily addressed.
First of all, no feeder should
be much more than 9-12 feet
from shrubs and/or small trees,
or at least a brush pile, where
birds can have a chance to
escape a hawk attack. That distance provides a barrier to prevent Gray Squirrels from jumping from the plants or brush
pile to the feeder (a squirrel can
jump about 8 feet horizontally),
but it’s close enough for a bird
to make a prompt dash to safety.
If there aren’t woody plants
near your feeder pole, you
should consider placing a
fast-growing evergreen (such as
Photinia serrulata) close by.
Evergreen shrubs and trees are
better than deciduous woody
plants as they provide cover all
the year around.
However, the best cover for
birds is provided by a nearby
brush pile. Small birds can navigate through the interlocking
branches and twigs to reach the
safety of the interior of the pile,
while the larger hawk is unable
to get through the small openings.
[For a free brochure on brush
piles that I wrote several years
ago for the Virginia Department
of Forestry, please contact me at
[email protected]]
To avoid the spread of disease
Brightly colored American Goldfinches will visit feeders as well as plants to obtain
the seeds they need throughout the year. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)
among birds at feeders, you
should watch for sick animals.
They can be recognized by their
sluggishness and hesitation to
fly away from food.
If you notice a bird behaving
this way, you should take down
all of your feeders, empty them
completely, and then wash them
well with plenty of soap and
water to wash away microorganisms. Rinse the feeders well and
let them air dry completely,
preferably in sunlight, before
refilling them.
Healthy birds will move off
during this time to find food
elsewhere (in your natural landscaping, I hope), and the sick
bird will die more quickly,
relieving it of its misery.
In addition to believing that
bird feeding can be quite helpful to birds, I also believe that
birds—via bird feeders—can be
quite helpful to us.
More than 20 years ago now,
I took care of my mother in my
home for the last 11 months of
her life. She had cancer and
became bedridden about two
months after I brought her to
live with me.
I had placed her bed where
she could watch the bird feeder
on the deck. I knew she needed
something to entertain her and
watching birds was just the
ticket!
Not only did my mom get to
see birds she had never seen
before, which she found interesting, but she also felt useful by
filling the role of research assistant. Because I couldn’t stay
right with my mother all day
(there was plenty that needed to
be done elsewhere in the house),
she would give me a report
about what I’d missed when I
had been out of the room.
I was thrilled to get her obser-
vations as they added to my
knowledge, and they provided
us with wonderful conversations that could relieve us both
of thoughts about her impending death.
One of the most meaningful
things my mother did for me
under these heartbreaking circumstances was to call me
whenever there was a photo
opportunity. One photo, of a
male Northern Cardinal bathing in my deck water pan, will
always bring back that day so
long ago when my mom helped
me to get that bird’s picture.
For some people, bird feeding has played a lasting role in
family relationships under happier circumstances. Nancy, a
birder I know by way of the
Virginia bird list-serve, shared
with me her experience as a very
young child.
Her grandmother would feed
Blue Jays. She’d hold up Nancy,
who wasn’t even three years old
yet, to see the birds eating. To
this day, Nancy loves Blue Jays.
They are the first kind of bird
she can remember being aware
of and, of course, they will
always make her think of her
loving grandmother who introduced Nancy to a lifelong
hobby.
My only concern with this
activity is when people start to
believe that birds are somehow
more precious than other kinds
of wildlife, and then proceed to
try to banish some species from
around their homes.
Your environment can only
support birds if it contains a
tapestry of organisms living and
working together to fulfill their
natural roles. If you want your
feathered friends to live well,
don’t try to make them live in a
vacuum.
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
35
Crozet
Weather Almanac
JANUARY 2015
By Heidi Sonen & Roscoe Shaw | [email protected]
Where is the Snow?
When it snows a lot, people
complain. When it doesn’t
snow, people complain. This
season has been the latter complaint.
Through the end of January,
just one inch of snow has
fallen. We have recorded nine
different days with snow this
winter but the cumulative total
is just one inch. We are constantly bombarded with the
complaint that “It doesn’t snow
like it used to.” Of course, last
year had a whopping 37” of
snow and 2010 was a record
snow year with 53 inches, but
memories are short. The 1960s
were the snowiest decade here
but otherwise, there appears to
be no trend.
So, will it snow this year? We
can’t forecast snow more than a
couple of days in advance, but
the odds are we will get
some. February is the snowiest
month of the year here with an
average of 6 inches. Statistically,
the rest of the year brings us 10
inches of snow. Since 1950, there have been
six years where we made it to
Jan. 31 with an inch or less:
1950, 1986, 1992, 2009, 2012,
and this year. The only year that
was a complete skunk was 1992,
when no snow had fallen and
the season finished with just 2.3
inches. Only 1981 ended with
less for a season. The other years, however, had
nearly normal snowfall after the
slow start. 2012 and 1950 rallied to finish the season over 10
inches and 2009 and 1986 produced a couple of decent snows
late season.
Overall, years off to a fast
start do slightly better the rest
of the year. But don’t despair,
kids big and small, a sled-able
snow will most likely come
soon!
January Recap
Despite the lack of snow,
January was cold with temperatures running two degrees below
normal. Only four days failed to
get below freezing and the coldest was 4 degrees on the
8th. Precipitation was frequent
but light, finishing below normal with 1.78 inches. The infamous Crozet wind howled on a
regular basis. Rainfall Totals
Mint Springs Farm 1.78”
Charlottesville Airport 1.70”
Univ. of Virginia 2.84”
Greenwood 1.74”
White Hall 2.10”
Nellysford 1.76”
Waynesboro 2.87”
Meet Dr. Garber, your
hearing’s new friend.
1
FRIENDS • 57
FEBRUARY 8 • 10:30 A.M.
The Field School • 1408 Crozet Avenue
Fr. Joseph Mary Lukyamuzi
Holy Comforter Catholic Church
Call to schedule for a free hearing consultation
and meet Dr. Tammy Garber, Au.D.
New office now open
in Crozet!
Join in! Email [email protected]
580 Radford Ln, Ste 106
Charlottesville
(off 250 W in Crozet)
HearingHealthAssoc.com 434.422.3169
36
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
BEREAVEMENTS
Jayne Rauch Tietz, 91
Perry Alan Hopkins, 87
Anne Page Via Wayland, 88
Ann Griffith Dublirer, 66
Lisa Ann Elledge, 49
Barbara Jean Dillard Ford, 59
Mary Ann Chappell, 74
Warren Rockwell Lambert Jr., 68
David Paul Kavanaugh, 83
Bobby Franklin Minter, 65
Justin Michael Frazier, 24
Charlie Austin Gray, 82
David Crenshaw Mahone, 87
Virginia May Haney Tomlin, 96
James Brady Murray, 94
Hatcher Tyree Witt, Jr., 74
Margaret Gabler Bibb, 92
Kenneth Lee Fisher, 64
Grace Jeanette Moss Barnett, 89
Arthur Tracy Coogan Jr., 91
Frederick Taylor Dove, 72
Robert Bruce Baumgartner, 75
Robert Allen Shiflett I, 67
Mary Frances Wood, 69
Russell F. Burnley, 66
Therese Ruth Meslar, 87
Mildred Alice Collins Wood, 91
Willie Beezal Via, 89
Mary Anna Loughridge Rushia, 92
Bernadette M. Mullin, 78
David Smither Spicer, 84
Minnie Coleman Sullivan, 99
Benjamin Hamilton Powell, 63
Thomas Clayton Inskeep, 72
Phillip Leslie Jordan, 61
Herman Wayne Blankenship, 73
Eugene Pannill Brooking, 80
Lorraine C. Brown, 82
Virginia Herron Dodd, 89
Kathryn Rittenhouse Hall, 87
Ida Davis Defibaugh, 70
Mary B. Fields, 93
Margaret Desire Boggs Meek, 81
Ruby Jane Walton, 93
William F. Suter Jr., 74
Zada Izetta Jackson Wells, 77
Robert Horan, 78
Lawrence McDaniel, 98
David Deaderick Stone, 82
Leslie Suzann Diehl, 50
Bobbie Jeannine Hamrick Bowyer, 85
Margaret Ann Houchens, 66
Hazel Hughes Hickman Phillips, 90
Russell Edward Thurston Jr., 78
Patricia B. Francis, 78
McKinley Hobart Herring Jr., 81
Mary Pope Hirsch, 80
December 12, 2014
December 25, 2014
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December 29, 2014
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December 31, 2014
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January 1, 2015
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January 25, 2015
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January 28, 2015
Ann Louise Nice
Ann Louise Nice aka ‘Weezie’
passed peacefully from this life
the morning of January 19 after
a gradual decline in health. She
was surrounded and supported
by her loving family and caregivers during the last days of her
life.
She is survived by her siblings
and their spouses Butch and
Diana Moldenhauer, Mouse
and ‘Willy’ Williams, John and
Ann Moldenhauer and Paul and
Barbara Moldehauer, her son
Eddy Nice and wife Martha, her
daughter Diana Keeton and
husband Josh and her 5 grandchildren
Jasmin,
Shane,
Jeremiah, Alex and Samantha.
She was preceded in death by
her parents, Ernest and Ethel
Moldenhuer and brother, Peter
Moldenhauer.
Weezie was an amazing
daughter, sister, mother, grand-
mother. She lived 71 awesome
years full of love, compassion,
support, adventure and faith.
She will be greatly missed and
never forgotten. She will be laid
to rest in the town of Carolina
Shores, NC where she retired
for 15 years and played many
games of golf and bridge.
Therese Ruth (Horton) Meslar
Therese Ruth Meslar, 87, of
Charlottesville, died Thursday,
January 8, 2015 in the loving
arms of four generations of her
family.
She was born to the late
George and Agnes Horton, May
14, 1927, in Racine, Wisconsin.
Terri graduated from Horlick
High School in 1945. She was
married to Robert Joseph
Meslar Sr., her husband of 65
years, and they moved to the
Charlottesville area in 1993
after raising their family in New
Jersey and Wisconsin.
Terri was the beloved matriarch of her family, instilling the
values of love, faith and community in all of her children
and grandchildren. Whether it
was through her incredible
cooking or bright humor, it was
impossible not to feel her love.
Many of her favorite dishes have
become as treasured as family
heirlooms.
She
loved
everything
Wisconsin including a good
cheddar, O&H Danish Bakery
and the Green Bay Packers. She
also volunteered at the Martha
Jefferson Hospital gift shop for
five years.
Terri is survived by her husband and children: Debbi
Meslar-Little and her spouse
Jack Little, and Robert Meslar
Jr. and his spouse Mary Meslar,
of Crozet; Larry Meslar of
Barboursville; Roger Meslar and
his spouse Patti Meslar of
Chicago Ridge; and Jerry
Meslar of Albion, Wisconsin.
She is also survived by her sister,
Annella Gedemer, of Racine; 13
grandchildren
and
one
great-grandchild. She was preceded in death by her daughterin-law Laurel Meslar, spouse of
Larry.
The family is requests that
donations be made to the Blue
Ridge Area Food Bank, P.O.
Box 937, Verona, VA 24482 or
the Dolores Dalton Mallo
Nursing Scholarship Fund.
Gazette obituaries are only $25 for up to 500 words,
including a photograph. Call 434-466-8939
or emails [email protected] for details.
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
Law
Medicine
would be no claim for invasion
of privacy anywhere.
But let’s say you’re buying a
bottle of wine while you’re
enrolled
in
Alcoholics
Anonymous and have promised
the world you will not drink
again. Casting cautious glances
over your shoulder, you sneak
into the wine store and place
your purchase in a Belk bag.
Then that very videotape is used
to explain to the public how the
surveillance program works and
your guilty-looking face is
framed against the wine shop
sign. Or, if you’re engaged in an
affair and are indiscreet enough
to make an assignation at a
restaurant, then a television
crew bursts in to report on
health code violations, no matter how embarrassing or damaging those pictures might be,
there is no cause of action in
Virginia. If you’re under the
hair dryer or at the barber shop,
you might think those are private places, but in Virginia you
would have no invasion of privacy claim. In those places, the
Fourth Amendment might set
up an argument against police
surveillance, but predicting
such an outcome, without supporting case law, would be
fraught with peril.
Unlike last month’s discussion on trespass, privacy law is
frequently NOT the product of
common sense, especially in
Virginia where we have no
“invasion of privacy.”
Disclaimer: Don’t use this
information as legal advice. Ask
a lawyer who takes you as a client
and can get your specific facts first
hand. The tiniest Circumstance
can change any outcome.
got vaccinated after seeing what
measles looks like first hand.
What does measles look like?
Fever up to 105 degrees with
cough, coryza (runny nose) and
conjunctivitis (pink eye)—the
three C’s that herald the onset
of the disease before the dramatic spotted rash spreads from
the face to the torso and then to
the limbs. Patients are contagious as much as four days
before the characteristic rash
shows up and for about four
days afterward and, by the way,
it is the most contagious disease
in the world.
The virus is spread by respiratory droplets from person to
person. The virus remains infectious in a room for two hours
after an infected person has left
the room. The transmission rate
is an astonishing 90 percent
among the unvaccinated. The
overall mortality rate is 3 percent (lower in the U.S.) and the
complication rate is about 30
percent. Complications include
severe pneumonia and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain).
There is a vaccine, the MMR,
given in two doses, that is 99
percent effective at preventing
rubeola, but a surprising number of parents are choosing to
not vaccinate their children.
There are likely several reasons
for this, but the most common
reason is the belief that vaccines
are not safe. The most famous
anti-vaccine advocate is Jenny
McCarthy, a Playboy Playmate
and reality show B-list actress.
She believes that vaccines cause
autism. No reputable medical
authority supports that belief.
And so measles has roared
back. Already in 2015, one
—continued from page 31
—continued from page 30
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month into the year, we have 98
cases spread out over 14 states,
almost all of it in unvaccinated
kids exposed at Disney Land in
California. Most of the unvaccinated children’s parents are
affluent and highly educated,
the demographic most associated with the anti-vaccination
movement.
While a healthy child may
ultimately do well after contracting measles, he or she is
risking spreading it to contacts
who may be immuno-compromised by age (very old or very
young), illness, or transplant
patients, whose mortality can
then be as high as 55 percent.
Here at home in Crozet we
had a long hiatus from the measles. In fact until 2011 we went
for twenty-one years without a
single case of measles in the
Thomas Jefferson Health
District.
Twenty-one
years without a case
of measles!
In 2011
we did
have a small
outbreak
of
measles in Crozet in
unvaccinated children.
A rigorous quarantine and
vaccination campaign halted
that outbreak but many kids
missed the last two weeks of
the school year.
Parents have to choose who
to believe, Ms. McCarthy,
1993’s Playboy Playmate of the
Year, attractive no doubt, but
possessing no scientific training
or background, or the Centers
for Disease Control and
Prevention, the World Health
Organization, the AMA, the
American
Academy
of
Pediatrics, The American Red
Cross, UNICEF, the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, and
the National Institutes of
Health, who all have declared
vaccines crucial for the health
and safety of our children and
completely refuted the link
between vaccines and autism.
But perhaps neither Jenny
McCarthy nor the AMA holds
much sway over the average
parents. Perhaps we need to
look to a more familiar advisor,
someone like Roald Dahl,
beloved
children’s
author
(Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, The Fantastic Mr. Fox).
Here is his open letter to parents regarding measles:
“Olivia, my eldest daughter,
caught measles when she was
37
seven years old. As the illness
took its usual course I can
remember reading to her often
in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one
morning, when she was well on
the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her
how to fashion little animals
out of coloured pipe-cleaners,
and when it came to her turn to
make one herself, I noticed that
her fingers and her mind were
not working together and she
couldn’t
do
anything.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ I
asked her.
‘I feel all sleepy,’ she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was
dead.
The measles had turned into
a terrible thing called measles
encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save
her. That was twenty-four years
ago in 1962, but even now, if a
child with measles happens to
develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did,
there would still be nothing the
doctors could do
to help her.
On the
other
hand,
there is today something that parents can do
to make sure that this sort of
tragedy does not happen to a
child of theirs. They can insist
that their child is immunized
against measles. I was unable to
do that for Olivia in 1962
because in those days a reliable
measles vaccine had not been
discovered. Today a good and
safe vaccine is available to every
family and all you have to do is
to ask your doctor to administer
it.
Incidentally, I dedicated two
of my books to Olivia, the first
was James and the Giant Peach.
That was when she was still
alive. The second was The BFG,
dedicated to her memory after
she had died from measles. You
will see her name at the beginning of each of these books.
And I know how happy she
would be if only she could
know that her death had helped
to save a good deal of illness and
death among other children.”
38
CROZETgazette
FEBRUARY 2015
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—continued from page 21
before they assume their duties, they said. They
learned the history of the capitol building. “Like
when the ceiling fell in and killed 60 people
during Reconstruction,” Thacker offered.
“[The General Assembly] is sort of like middle
school,” said Thacker. “There are groups [of representatives] and they are all trying to get things
done. It wasn’t what I expected, but it makes
sense. I don’t know how they pass laws because
the [political parties] are mostly even.”
Pages are summoned by representatives
through a “button” system, they said. “Usually
it’s taking things to their office,” said Thacker.
“I really like it,” said Brown, “but some senators are rowdy. Some are really funny. They’re all
nice.”
“They like to mess with us and tease us,” said
Thacker. “We get to go bowling with [Lt.
Governor] Ralph Northam. There’s a basketball
game between the delegates and the senators and
we make posters for that and cheer.”
At the end of the session, there is a mock session where delegates and senators switch roles
with the pages.
“I think [the people of Virginia] are in good
hands,” said Thacker, who noted that because the
session is available on the Internet through
live-streaming, citizens can judge for themselves
how well the legislature is performing.
“You learn a lot about the parts of Virginia” as
a page, said Brown, who is now friends with
pages from Northern Virginia and Southwest.
“I’m definitely more interested in politics,” she
said. “I’m also interested in law. It’s cool to see
the Courts of Justice committee.”
“I’d look into public office for sure,” agreed
Thacker. “What I like is you have to work
together and deal with your differences and be
sure the laws work.”
Palm Oil
—continued from page 27
Phone: 434-823-1420 Fax: 434-823-1610
DOUG SEAL & SONS
39
magazine reported that in response to consumer
pressure and shortly after the UN climate conference in New York this past September, Cargill
CEO David MacLennan pledged to green his
company’s palm oil. Unilever and Nestle’s
strengthened their green commitment to sustainable palm oil as well. Twenty other companies,
including Kellogg’s and Proctor & Gamble,
committed to zero deforestation in their consumer products. Thirty other companies including McDonald’s and Walmart have agreed to
eliminate deforestation from their supply chain
by 2020. One may ask why not 2015? I will be
anxious to hear that forthcoming monitoring
systems are effective in enforcing palm oil “greening.”
Consumer concerns have become global.
Consumers have integrated their health concerns
into those of environmentalists and farm laborers to restore our fragile planet.
I’ll stop here. My optimism remains limited.
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