Kathy Erskine before the National Book Award seal went on her book, Mockingbird.
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Charlottesville writer Kathryn Erskine now possesses one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country: the 2010 National Book Award in young people’s literature for her book, Mockingbird.

Erskine was one of 20 finalists at the awards dinner at Cipriani Wall Street last night in New York. Also in the winners’ circle was singer Patti Smith in nonfiction for her memoir, Just Kids, about her youth in New York in the ’60s with her buddy, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; Jaimy Gordon in fiction for Lord of Misrule, and Terrance Hayes in poetry for Lighthead.

Richmond native Tom Wolfe (more)

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James G. Zumwalt will discuss his book Bare Feet, Iron Will: Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields at the New Dominion Bookshop on Wednesday, November 10 at 12:15pm.

Lieutenant Colonel James Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 intervention into Panama and Desert Storm. An author, speaker and business executive, he also currently heads a security consulting firm named after his father—Admiral Zumwalt & Consultants, Inc. He writes extensively on foreign policy and defense issues, having written hundreds of articles for various newspapers, magazines and professional journals.

“The Vietnam war left an indelible mark on America. Not since the American Civil War has a conflict so divided her people. And, a generation after the war in Vietnam ended, many Americans are still haunted by its memory,” writes Zumwalt. “I think there are veterans, like me, who have had difficulty in accepting the suffering the Vietnam war brought on us. It was my return to Vietnam however, in which I was able to come to terms with the internal struggle of my own personal tragedy of the war, which inspired me to write this book.

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Superintendent Pam Moran (left) listens to one of more than a dozen parents decrying an Albemarle  School Board move to save money.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

In a county where over 60 percent of the high school students receive advanced studies diplomas, anything that gets in the way of relentless achievement can send angry villagers, er, parents, to confront the creators of the Frankenstein creature known as block scheduling.

The Albemarle School Board got a more than hour-long earful during an October 14 meeting, as 16 parents and students denounced block scheduling— also known as 4×4— and demanded that the board renounce classes compressed into one intense semester.

“I don’t want the kids to be guinea pigs,” protested pediatrician Lori Balaban.

“My daughter cannot keep up,” said Dawn McCoy of her ninth grader.

“I see no clear justification for this program, which has been abandoned by many other school systems,” said parent Mark Echelberger. Invoking Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, he added, “I fear teachers and students have been left standing on the shore.”

At press time, 369 people had signed an electronic petition on the website of the organization formed to fight squeezing a formerly year-long class like algebra 2 into just one semester.

The plan gives students four 90-minute classes every day for a semester instead of spreading out shorter classes every other day throughout the school year, and it has created something of an uproar— at least among a group known as CASE: Citizens of Albemarle Supporting Education.

“We knew it would be difficult,” says Superintendent Pam Moran. In the face (more)

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Jimmy Hollins, right, played for the Burley Bears when they were state runners up in 1964, and now he’s chairman of the Burley Varsity Club.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

For 17 years, Jackson P. Burley High School was the black high school, and even 53 years after it closed, once a Bear, always a Bear. Around 100 of them showed up October 8 for the unveiling of three markers that commemorate the hope and camaraderie, even during the dark days of segregation. Click to see slideshow.

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On Monday, October 18 head over to the Miller Center to hear E. D. Hirsch, Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at UVA, address the question: how can the U.S. reform its educational standards and curriculum?

Hirsch is the author of “The Knowledge Deficit,” which solidified his reputation as one of our most influential education reformers. With “The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools,” Hirsch argues that a content-based curriculum is essential to address inequality. A book signing will follow his Forum, which begins at 11am

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Chris Farina’s film, subject of a February cover story, is screening this month at festivals as far away as Norway.
HOOK COVER

Seven months after it premiered at the South By Southwest film festival, a Charlottesville-made film continues to reel in accolades including invitations to seven festivals in the next month from Palo Alto to Norway.

“It seems like we’re on the cusp of things happening,” says director Chris Farina, noting that in addition to the festivals, the international television broadcast rights to World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements have been picked up by a distributor, which will present the film at a trade show in France this month.

Additionally, the film is one of 13 finalists and the only U.S. film still competing for the “Japan Prize,” an educational media prize awarded by NHK Television in Japan.

The film— the subject of the Hook’s February 18, 2010 cover story— focuses on Albemarle County teacher John Hunter and his World Peace Game, which teaches students conflict resolution and critical thinking. Hunter created the three-dimensional game as a young teacher more than 30 years ago and has taught it to children from elementary to high school.

Thanks to a partnership with UVA’s Darden School, Hunter is working on developing an “executive” version of the game for adults and is considering possible business angles, but the primary goal, says Farina, remains to push for the game to be taught in schools not only across the country but around the world.

As for the film, Charlottesville audiences won’t be slighted. They can see it at the Virginia Film Festival right here in Charlottesville. (more)

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William Moses and his wife Paticia Kluge, who donated $1.2 million to the project, cut the ribbon in the building that bears their names.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Students already taking classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College’s new Kluge-Moses Science Building, which opened in the spring, had to pass through a throng of more than hundred people who’d gathered in the building’s atrium for the official opening ceremony on September 16, attended by Patricia Kluge and her husband William Moses, the couple whose $1.2 million gift for the project was the largest in school history.

As PVCC president Frank Friedman pointed out, the Kluge-Moses gift, while only a small part of the $11.5 million price tag, made up of mostly state funds, allowed the college to add cutting-edge technology that it might have had to eliminate, such as classroom whiteboards that copy anything written on them as PDF computer files, and two-way video systems that (more)

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Leatherwood meets with parents after the official announcement.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The suddenly-announced meeting at Venable Elementary School had some parents concerned, coming just 21.5 hours after it’s emailed announcement.

“It seems strange that the principal is neither calling nor leading a meeting that was called on such short notice,” said one parent who asked not to be named. Indeed, the principal— a man named James “Jamie” Mathieson— was not part of the meeting. His sudden resignation was the subject of the 3:30pm confab on Friday, September 17 and the prior night’s meeting of the Charlottesville School Board.

Outside the Venable auditorium where school officials announced but did not explain Mathieson’s resignation one parent pointed to a display of recent principal names. Including two retirements and another hasty resignation, Venable was getting its fifth principal in just eight years.

No stranger to students, the interim leader is longtime city schools official Kenneth Leatherwood, who currently serves as the Coordinator of Human Resources. A five-year veteran (more)

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Albemarle School Board Chair Ronnie Price (seated right) says the 15 people who wanted to finish the term of Brian Wheeler (standing behind Price) should have stuck around to learn if they were chosen.
PHOTO ALBEMARLE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD

Martha Redinger was one of 15 people who wanted to be considered to replace Brian Wheeler on the Albemarle County School Board. She gave a 10-minute presentation on September 8. She came back the next night for citizen comment before the board went behind closed doors to pare down the 15 candidates to four. And Redinger learned this morning that she was not one of the finalists when a friend called to say they’d been announced on the radio.

“It’s so unclassy,” says Redinger, a long time county school activist who kept checking her email for the note that would have told her she wasn’t in the final four.

“It was so cool that 15 people were interested in the position, and were so passionate about education,” she says. “I really don’t know why they didn’t notify us.”

Neither do Carmen Garcia and Jim Stern, who also learned (more)

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Attention, beer lovers! Mark your calendar for Saturday, September 11. That’s when Starr Hill Brewery and Beer Run will be hosting their Top of the Hops beer-tasting extravaganza at the Charlottesville Pavillion. There’ll be more that 150 beers to sample, plus some food, live music, and even a Brew University Education Tent with seminars on food pairings and how to brew your own beer. Check out the event’s website at topofthehopsbeerfest.com/charlottesville/ for ticket information for the 3-7pm event.

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Montpelier’s curatorial team checks out the new wallpaper. Left to right: Grant Quertermous, Cheryl Brush, Lynne Dakin Hastings.
PHOTO COURTESY THE MONTPELIER FOUNDATION

In May, Monticello unveiled a dining room redo in eye-popping chrome yellow. This week, another presidential house, Montpelier, announces that the dining room of the Father of the Constitution will be transformed from “drab to fab” with period wallpaper— and says the makeover has nothing to do with keeping up with the Jeffersons.

“We all admire Monticello,” says Montpelier VP Lynne Hastings. “We’ve been working the past year and a half to restore this wallpaper. It’s much more of a detective story.”

On Constitution Day two years ago, Montpelier unveiled a $24-million architectural restoration that stripped away the pink stucco exterior added by a 20th-century owner and returned the house’s look to what James and Dolley Madison knew.

“Now we’re in the refurnishing stage,” says Hastings.

Historians don’t know exactly what pattern the Madisons might have chosen, but they do know the couple were “very enamored of the French taste,” says Hastings. That led the restoration team to Henri Virchaux, a Philadelphia designer popular among the swell set in 1815, the year the Madisons bought wallpaper for Montpelier.

Another ah-ha moment that swung the swatch choice toward this particular pattern of floral swags across a green background: an 1836 list of the dining room furnishings of Montpelier revealing— ta-da— green chairs.

The reproduction wallpaper, dubbed Virchaux Drapery, has been made by (more)

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UVA president John Casteen dedicates his final building.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

In perhaps his last public appearance as president of UVA, John Casteen today dedicated Bavaro Hall, the long-awaited $37 million addition to the Curry School of Education, which has doubled the size of the school. It was a fitting end for a man who has presided over the construction or purchase of 134 buildings for UVA. That’s a lot of golden shovel and ribbon-cutting appearances.

“I think this is the last thing Betsy and I will be doing in our current identities,” Casteen told the crowd.

One of his goals during his presidency, Casteen joked, was to see an open field where Bavaro Hall now stands. “I failed,” he deadpanned.

The new building was designed by Darden School architect Robert A.M. Stern, and includes multiple open conversation areas,  conference rooms, and a garden courtyard. The building— executed in a neo-Jeffersonianism complete with brick columns and hints of Boston’s Faneuil Hall— transforms a stretch of Emmet Street by blocking the old view of Ruffner Hall.

Robert Pianta, dean of the formerly Ruffner-centric Curry School, called the project a complicated one that “went off without a hitch.” He thanked Casteen for his vision and also thanked (more)

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Kranish spent five weeks researching his book in Charlottesville.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Everyone knows what Thomas Jefferson did to make July 4 famous, but it’s what he did— and didn’t do— five years after penning his famous Declaration that would haunt him. And now the controversial events of his Virginia governorship spring to life in a new book by a veteran journalist.

Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War, published in February by Oxford University Press, gives dramatic form to the chaos and calamity that followed the 1781 British invasion of Virginia by none other than the Revolution’s most infamous traitor.

“It stems from one nugget of information,” says author Michael Kranish, “that Benedict Arnold invaded Virginia with 1,600 men and 27 ships and caused Jefferson to flee Richmond. Here’s one of the most reviled men going after one of the most revered men.”

If Jefferson’s retreat from Richmond has dropped from common knowledge, perhaps the same could be said of the burning of Norfolk. Here, Kranish reveals that the British got blamed but that the flames were set mostly by patriots, fearful that their port city might serve as a British base.

Likewise, Charlottesvillians may know that Jefferson slipped out of his house as British Colonel Banastre Tarleton approached. But how much do they know about the quick-riding militiaman named Jack Jouett who notified Governor Jefferson of the advancing army. Perhaps not as much as they know about the Boston silversmith who allegedly looked for lantern light in a church.

“If Jack Jouett had a poet as Paul Revere had his Longfellow,” says Kranish, “the ride of Jack Jouett would be among the best known in history.”

These and other stories are assembled in a book that reads as much like an action thriller as a popular history book. And that’s okay with the author, whose 20 years in (more)

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Outgoing newspaper editor Sean Cudahy and incoming editor Ellie Leech learned the limits of student free speech after an offending editorial.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

In Texas, a high school newspaper’s last issue was pulled because of an editorial advocating legalization of marijuana. In Fredericksburg, the Massaponax High yearbook was reprinted because of anonymous confessions of sex and drug use. And even in the land of Jefferson, Albemarle High School has pulled the last issue of its student newspaper.

The controversy? An editorial suggesting cost-saving changes to the state’s physical education requirements and letting student athletes opt out of P.E. classes.

“The reason they decided not to let us publish was because they felt it would be disruptive to physical education classes,” says Sean Cudahy, outgoing editor-in-chief of The Revolution whose last issue was scheduled to come out May 20.

“The principal grabbed one,” says Cudahy, “showed it to the P.E. teachers, and they didn’t like it.

Cudahy, citing the 1988 student newspaper case, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, says that administrators can censor publications due to “legitimate pedagogical concerns,” says Cudahy. What he doesn’t understand is how an editorial questioning the curriculum could be considered disruptive. And to make sure he understood Hazelwood, he called the Student Press Law Center, and spoke to attorney Adam Goldstein, who’s worked at the center since 2003 and says he’s seen thousands of student censorship cases.

“This has got to be one of the goofiest I’ve ever seen— it’s not even controversial,” says Goldstein. “Nobody thinks (more)

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The restored beer cellar at Monticello.
PHOTO FROM MONTICELLO WSEBSITE

Did Thomas Jefferson have a special recipe for beer? If so, maybe someone could use it and make a fortune. But as Monticello’s executive vice president Ann Taylor informed us, it’s not quite that simple.

“The answer, in a nutshell, is that Jefferson did not have a specific written recipe for beer,” says Taylor.

Indeed, when Former governor James Barbour requested Jefferson’s recipe for his ale in 1820, Jefferson responded:

“I have no reciept [sic] for brewing, and I much doubt the operations of malting and brewing could be successfully performed from a reciept. If it could, Combrune’s book [Michael Combrune's Theory and Practice of Brewing] on the subject would teach the best processes: and perhaps might guide to ultimate success with the sacrifice of 2. or 3. trials. . . .”

Jefferson went on, “We are now finishing our spring brewing. If you have a capable servt. and he were (more)

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Attorney David Franzen and Patrick Crider leave court June 8 while the judge considered Crider’s plea overnight.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

In a plea agreement that keeps him out of jail and allows the charges to be dropped when he turns 21, Patrick Crider, the former Western Albemarle High School student who was arrested in January for threatening on Facebook to kill four classmates and then himself, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making threats.

According to Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Darby Lowe, the parents of the threatened teens “had a great concern he not be convicted as a felon,” she told Judge Paul Peatross in court June 8.

“He did not have a gun,” said Lowe. “He did not take steps to get one. I feel strongly this young man with no criminal record be given treatment.”

She noted that Crider was barely 18 (more)

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