It was over before it began. When Make Me a Supermodel contestant Kerryn got her walking papers last week, the writing was on the wall: nerd-a-licious local, Colin Steers, would be the next to go. Kerryn’s ouster meant innocent Colin’s lessons in Carnal Knowledge 101 would remain incomplete, and without the possibility of the Charlottesville virgin’s public deflowering on cable TV, the show’s producers could no longer justify keeping the modeling novice in the catwalking pack.

Furthering the dismal prognosis for Colin’s fate was his first camera confessional this week, in which he talked about how much he’d progressed and geekily made a graph with his arms, concluding, “I’m not going home this week— no, no.” Sigh. Reality TV Rule #6: Whichever contestant talks about “not going home” and wanting to stay to realize his or her “potential” WILL most definitely be on the bus.

This week’s photo shoot challenged the would-be models to pose with farm animals. Although our handsome geek thought he showed great range in pulling a bull through fake dust clouds, the photographer offered a different opinion: “He would make these faces like he was going to the bathroom or something.”

Colin’s devolution continued back at the models’ house when his fellow contestants concluded our boy was smelling up the room as they ate ice cream. That’s right— sweet Colin literally stunk. Colin also confessed to the camera that he’s really a pre-med student trying to mimic being a model.

At the catwalk challenge, host Tyson Beckford told the contestants they would embody tweedy landed gentry. Surely, our boy from Albemarle County could master this one! Familiar territory from a life in Virginia hunt country, right? Alas, no. Colin’s large brain proved to be his undoing, as they judges attributed his awkward performance in an over-sized duster to his over-analysis of the challenge. The fat lady’ singing was loud and clear when one judge declared in exasperation, “Models are not supposed to think! What is he doing?”

As expected, our favorite brainiac found himself once again in the bottom two. Tyson faced him soberly and declared, “Colin, you’re a neuroscientist who can’t believe he’s here to become a supermodel.” And then the boom came down on our boy. Tyson’s parting advice? “Colin, go home and get laid.”

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In 2000, Vicente Fox famously became Mexico’s first president not belonging to the Institutional Revolutionary Party due in some part to his promotion of free-market capitalism and to a fortune made as an executive for the Coca-Cola Company. Nine years later, Fox is still preaching free trade, but he told an audience of hundreds at UVA’s Darden School of Business that Americans have become “xenophobic” toward his country to the point where it hurts the economic interests of both nations.

“We were told by America that trading was a win-win tool,” said Fox. “Now we have [the U.S.] saying ‘I have to build a wall. I don’t like outsourcing. Why should my job go overseas?’ The leader is not being coherent with its founding ideas.”

Fox returned to this theme of admiration for American ideals but criticism for the United States government’s decisions toward Mexico throughout his keynote address at the Darden School’s annual Latin American Student Association conference. For an hour, the Mexican president from 2000 through 2006 eschewed the podium and instead paced the stage at Abbott Auditorium, filling the room with his booming baritone.

Particularly troublesome to Fox was the 2006 legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“When we’re neighbors, when we’re partners for prosperty, why build a wall?” said Fox. “Walls don’t work. The Berlin Wall didn’t work. The Chinese wall didn’t work.”

Additionally he praised all Mexicans who had emigrated to the United States, specifically not reserving his comments for only those who had come legally.

“Migrants— documented or undocumented— I admire,” said Fox. “They have something within them that makes them leaders that look for opportunity and have heroic aspirations for their families, and for their nation.”

To that end, Fox called for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform as part of a renewed partnership between the United States and Mexico.

“Migrants make it possible to collect the apples in Washington, to collect the vegetables in California, to make the service industry work, and to care for the elderly,” said Fox. “It would not open our borders, but it would bring order to an issue that is an asset to this great nation’s economy.”

Further, Fox predicted that if Mexico became more prosperous as a result of American investment, the illegal immigration along the Rio Grande would cease to exist.

“Canada is a great trading partner with the U.S.,” said Fox. “Do you see a problem along that border? You don’t need anyone to be there.”

Fox even stressed the need for U.S.-Mexican cooperation as it applied to the current outbreak of swine flu that originated in Mexico, but has now spread to both sides of the border.

“In 2005, after the bird flu, we came out of meetings with American public health officials with a policy this thick,” said Fox, holding his hands about a foot apart. “We bought millions of vaccines. The problem is vaccines only work if you know what the virus is. Now, everyone needs to collaborate to figure out what the virus is as quickly as possible.”

Fox wasn’t the only one making controversial statements during the lecture. When Fox began to speak of his successor President Felipe Calderón’s handling of the ongoing war between the Mexican drug cartels, one man who looked to be a UVA student silently stood up with a black gag in his mouth and a sign in Spanish which, roughly translated, said “No police state! Enough is enough!”

To this, Fox simply said, “Hola.”

Fox continued his remarks, but 20 seconds later, turned to the protester and said “Esta bien, eh?”

As a University police officer began to move down the aisle in the protester’s direction, the protester folded up his sign and walked out of the hall without an escort. The officer did not follow the protester outside of the auditorium.

It would seem that the man’s displeasure was not shared by all in attendance. At the beginning and the conclusion of Fox’s remarks, the former president received a standing ovation. In exchange, Fox offered the Darden students and faculty a standing invitation.

“You are all welcome to come to my home at Rancho San Cristobal,” said Fox. “We have the best enchiladas and the best tequila.”

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Laura Burns didn’t realize how bad the swine flu epidemic was until her classes in Mexico City were canceled Friday, April 24. Even then, she thought it was just for one day.

“They canceled classes in all schools,” recounts Burns, a former Hook intern who’s doing graduate work in international relations at La Universidad Iberoamericana and who describes her adventure on her blog. “On Saturday, they announced they were canceled until May 6.”

She began hearing more on the news about the swine flu outbreak in the city of 8.8 million, and the news was getting more dramatic.

“The mayor started talking about canceling public transportation and suspending all activity,” she says. “I went out on Saturday night, and all the bars were closed. It was like a ghost town.”

By Sunday, April 26, Burns decided to return home to Charlottesville. She already had a ticket to come back May 6 for her sister’s medical school graduation, and she changed the ticket.

The airport scene Monday was calm, says Burns, with most people wearing masks. “I wore one the whole airplane ride because planes are infamous for being spreaders of disease,” she says.

At the airport in Mexico City, surveys were passed out that asked people if they were sick or had any symptoms of swine flu and suggested they not fly if they did, but Burns didn’t observe anyone being prevented from flying.

There was one more trauma before Burns could leave Mexico.

“The earthquake was the day I was leaving,” she says of the Acapulco-centered 5.6 tremor felt in Mexico City. “It was the apocalypse,” she half jokes.

Also landing in Charlottesville from Mexico on Tuesday, April 24 was former Mexican president Vicente Fox, who was the keynote speaker at this year’s Latin American Student Association conference at UVA’s Darden School of Business. Fox took time away from his lecture on leadership in a globalized economy to address the swine flu outbreak.

“I think President [Felipe] Calderon is doing a great job making courageous decisions like closing all of the schools,” Fox told the hundreds gathered at the Darden School.

Fox says based on preparations his administration made before his term was up in 2006, he believes the Mexican government should be able to mitigate the effects of the epidemic.

“In my administration, in 2005, we came out of meetings with American public health officials with a policy that’s this thick,” said Fox separating his hands by about a foot. “We bought millions of vaccines. The problem is you don’t know which vaccines to use until you know what the virus is. Everyone needs to collaborate so we can identify the virus and distribute the vaccines as quickly as possible.”

At press time, 152 deaths in Mexico City were suspected of being caused by swine flu.

–updated April 28 at 5:02pm

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“I think it’s a pretty darn sad day,” says Carter Myers, owner of Charlottesville’s Colonial Auto Center, reacting to the news that General Motors is killing its Pontiac brand. “It’s about as unfortunate as what happened a few years back to Oldsmobile.”

At Colonial, where Pontiac constituted a small percentage of the eight-branded dealership’s total sales, Myers says it’s business as usual for parts, repairs, and— for at least a year or two— even for sales of new Pontiacs.

In Harrisonburg, however, GM’s edict coincided with an announcement by Charlie Obaugh Pontiac-Buick-GMC that it will go out of business April 30. And in nearby Elkton, a dealership called Dick Myers Chevrolet-Pontiac announced that it would shut its doors the same day.

Colonial’s Carter Myers contends that Pontiac suffered after the brand— perhaps best known for creating the GTO, original muscle car— stopped sponsoring Nascar races and after parent GM began offering newer lines, such as Saturn and Hummer, both already on the chopping block.

“GM just got stretched too thin,” says Myers.

–last updated 3:43pm, April 28

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With revenues slammed by an ailing economy and a thriving private competitor, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority will begin closing the popular McIntire Recycling Center on Mondays as part of an effort to rein in expenses.

“In order to deal with some of those reductions in revenue, we have cut operational expenses 17 percent,” explained Waste Authority financial manager Lonnie Wood, filling in for executive director Tom Frederick, who was reportedly out sick Monday, April 27, when the board publicly heard the news. “We just went line by line.”

Such cuts weren’t enough, however, to balance the Waste budget, whose operating revenues are expected to fall 32 percent. To cover the expected deficits, Wood proposed a budget that gathers over $1.3 million from local governments and pulls about $1.1 million from its own reserves.

More deficits could appear on the horizon, according to a memo making the rounds at the meeting. Penned by the absent director in response to a recent Hook story, the memo suggests that more service cuts and and perhaps a restructuring— or something more dire— lies in the Authority’s future.

Frederick blasts the Authority’s own service contribution fee as “shrinking” and “not sustainable,” and it blames the contract that created the fee for having “seeded” a recent dispute between the the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle.

“If the future decision is to eliminate the Authority, it will not be because the Authority failed to succeed,” Frederick writes, “but instead because the County and City will reach a conclusion that their future recycling and solid waste efforts need to take a completely diverse path from one another.”

Already, the proceeds of the $16 fee have shrunk to the point that they’re no longer the Waste Authority’s main revenue source of revenue. Fee income is budgeted to fall from $1.7 million to just $1 million in the coming budget year, a one-year decrease of 44 percent.

Closing the McIntire facility on Mondays disappoints Watts Schwab, who– along with over a dozen other citizens– was using the Center in the moments shortly after the fateful announcement.

“It just gets terrific use, even on rainy days,” Schwab said as 16 material-laden cars thronged the Center’s parking lot. Fellow recycler Steve Shuman was less perturbed.

“I can do it whenever I need to,” said Shuman. “As long as it’s open on weekends.”

Wood said that typically lower useage makes Monday the best day to axe and the safest to empty the containers.

“All days are busy, but that day’s probably the slowest,” Wood noted at the board meeting, held at the Authority headquarters, which was steeped this day in a smell giving ample evidence that it shares a site with the Moore’s Creek human waste treatment facility.

Speaking of which, the bids to expand and renovate the treatment plant have come in, and the low bid was more than $9 million below the estimate of consulting engineers, Hazen & Sawyer.

The Water & Sewer Authority board, a sister organization to the Waste Authority, voted at its meeting to give director Frederick, despite his absence, authorization to award a construction contract to Adams Robinson Enterprises, Inc. of Dayton, Ohio in the amount of $40.3 million, with a state grant expected to pay up to $21 million of the total.

Wood told the board that the Authority had been facing a January 1, 2011 mandate for removing nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from its discarges into the Rivanna River.

In other activity, the board– which will be augmented next month by two new members due to its apparent insulation from the electorate– heard from three citizens who suggested that the Water Authority may not need to build its proposed new reservoir because water use has been falling over recent months and years.

“It’s great that it’s gone down,” said Chair Mike Gaffney when asked if he might quash the dam. Attributing some of the consumption decline to the current economic malaise, Gaffney said he’d first need to examine the City conservation report which was presented to City Council April 20.

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When Dutch citizens turned Crozet residents Gerard and Paulien van Dijk were preparing their application for permanent residency in the United States seven years after moving here, they thought they had everything in order. They triple-checked the proper forms with their attorney and even pulled their children out of Albemarle schools to move to a foreign country in hopes of complying with American immigration regulations.

So it came as a shock when, on March 30, after waiting six months outside the United States, an American official informed Paulien van Dijk that she and her family might never return home to Virginia.

“I lost it,” she says. “I cried and cried. I couldn’t even look at my children at that moment.”

The critical mistake? Omitting Mrs. van Dijk’s grown daughter from a previous marriage in an online application filed with the State Department a year ago.

“We had been so careful,” says Paulien. “We had made sure to include my grown daughter on every form where it said to list your children. I couldn’t understand why this couldn’t be resolved, and why no one ever told me.”

The van Dijks have lived in Crozet since 2002, with Gerard van Dijk having relocated his family to the Charlottesville area nearly two decades after he first fell in love with Central Virginia while earning his master’s degree from the University of Virginia.

The van Dijk family had always been in the country legally on a series of temporary visas. Then, last year, Gerard heard of a long-shot opportunity to gain permanent residency status.

“Every year,” Gerard explains, “the State Deparment holds what they call a diversity lottery, and if you’re chosen, you become eligible for a green card. Any legal resident from a list of under-represented countries can apply, and Holland was one of them.”

To improve his family’s odds, Gerard filled out online applications for himself, his wife, and his three children. He forgot to mention his wife’s eldest child.

“They only choose 50,000 out of about 20 million applicants every year,” says Gerard, “so I wanted to improve our chances and applied one form for each of us.”

Paulien was among the chosen few; so, in order to prepare for her green card interview, she left the country in September, a month before her last temporary visa ran out. Along with Gerard, as well as 17-year-old son Alexander and 16-year-old daughter Julie, both students at Western Albemarle High School, and 12-year-old son Willem, a student at the Field School, they moved to the Dutch-owned island of Curaçao, located in the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela.

For six months they waited for Paulien’s day at the American embassy to have her green card interview. Finally, at the end of a long day at the American embassy in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, after she had answered her last question, she thought she would finally win her permanent residency status in the United States, she heard the last words she expected to hear.

“The immigration official told me, ‘I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,’” recalls Paulien, “‘but you’re not going to get your visa.’”

“I couldn’t believe they were refusing us for this,” says Gerard. “I just forgot to include Paulien’s daughter when they asked if there was anyone who might follow her from Holland. The federal government knew for months about this discrepancy, and nobody had told us anything.”

After the two of them pleaded for further review, the American official finally said he would send their application back to the State Department in a last-ditch effort.

“He said, ‘I’ll send it,’” recalls Paulien, “‘but I give you about a one percent chance.’”

Immediately, the van Dijks e-mailed friends back in Charlottesville to alert them to the situation. Less than 24 hours later, several friends congregated at the office of freshman Congressman Tom Perriello’s (D-Ivy).

A Perriello spokesperson confirms that the congressman’s office inquired with the State Department, leading to a second interview in Caracas on Wednesday, April 15.

“We were in and out in 15 minutes,” says an exultant Paulien. “We flew into Baltimore the next day, our kids are back in school, and we’re all permanent residents now. I can hardly believe it.”

A spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Services referred a reporter’s questions to the State Department’s consular affairs office, which declined to comment, citing a policy not to comment about specific cases.

Despite their harrowing experience, the van Dijks say there’s much more to America than its bureaucracy.

“The way everyone pulled together for us is what the United States of America is all about,” says Gerard. “If you get a group of people together, you can get a movement going, and really change things.”

–updated April 28 at 9:15am

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As daily newspapers’ sales plummet nationwide, editors and publishers are employing myriad strategies to stay afloat as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for their news. Now, the Waynesboro News Virginian is testing a new strategy to drive readers from its free website back to buying the hard copy.

On Monday, April 27, the News Virginian posted a story about a parent’s complaint about lewd music at a middle school dance on its website, corresponding with the same article which appeared in its print edition. However, after the fourth paragraph on the web version of the story, readers find a message that informs them that the text they’re reading is only “an excerpt”and instructs them to “pick up The News Virginian today at an area newsstand to get the full story.“

“It’s an experiment,” says News Virginian editor Lee Wolverton. “We’re toying with it and trying it on a few stories to see if it will drive sales.”

However, Wolverton says that online readers feeling deprived will still be able to get the whole story online, just not right away.

“We’re embargoing the rest of certain stories for a day,” says Wolverton. “Hopefully it will get more people to buy it off the newsstand.”

The News Virginian and the Charlottesville Daily Progress are both owned by Richmond-based Media General. The company has seen its stock prices drop by 91 percent in the last seven months, leading to layoffs at several Media General publications, including the Daily Progress. Still, Daily Progress managing editor McGregor McCance says the News Virginian’s strategy is not a company-wide initiative and that the DP’s online readers won’t see a change like this— yet.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” says McCance. “I hope it works for them, and if it does, maybe we’ll try it.”

Already, local blogger and media commentator Waldo Jaquith has given the move his thumbs-up.

“It’s actually a sensible strategy,” writes Jaquith on his cvillenews.com blog, “because it drives readers to where the advertising (and copy-sales) dollars are. This might have been a foolish move a few years ago, but now newspapers are in such dire financial straits that it seems well worth a try.”

–updated April 28 at 10:11am

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