Tuesday, November 30
Guv urges fitness
Mark Warner’s two-day Summit on Healthy Virginians wrapped up this afternoon with a visit from the trim guv himself. Addressing several hundred people, Warner reiterated the state’s dire obesity figures and identified a trio of target groups for improved health—State employees, school children and Medicaid recipients. Warner characterized the nascent health initiatives, such as encouraging State employees to trade walk breaks for smoke breaks, as “works in progress.” After his talk, Warner responded when asked about his own fitness that he plays “a mean game of basketball.” Five days earlier, Warner, 50, ran the Alexandria Turkey Trot 5-Miler, placing 573rd of 1,072 runners with a time of 43:50.
Wednesday, December 1
Feds kick in dough for cleaner water
The National Park Service scored $1.3 million to purchase Hightop Mountain, at the headwaters of the Rivanna River’s North Fork, the Nature Conservancy announced today. The North Fork supplied 94 million gallons of drinking water to this area last year. The land purchase is good news for local water drinkers, says a Nature Conservancy spokeswoman, as conserving undeveloped land is beneficial to aquifers.
World AIDS Day quietly noted
In front of rush hour traffic, about 80 people—mostly UVA students—lined up along the corner of Barracks Road and Emmet Street to observe World AIDS Day. The activists held a 23-minute candlelight vigil to mark 23 years of fighting the disease. At the rally that followed, former City Councilor Meredith Richards told the crowd, “[Tonight] we’ve reminded some people as they go on with their busy lives that we are part of a global family.”
Thursday, December 2
No bail for accused wife-killer
Accused wife-killer Anthony Dale Crawford, 45, was today arraigned in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on three charges. The former Manassas car salesman faces felony indictments for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, as well as the abduction and the murder of his estranged wife, Sarah Louise Crawford, 33. Sarah Crawford was found shot to death November 22 at the Quality Inn on Emmet Street. Judge Victor Santos assigned Crawford to the public defender’s office and ordered him held without bail. His preliminary hearing date is January 28. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jon R. Zug, fresh from the murder trial of Andrew Alston, will prosecute the Crawford case.
Friday, December 3
Feel the earth move?
The U.S. Geological Survey confirms on its website today that an earthquake registering a 2.5 magnitude shook portions of Louisa County, about 30 miles east-southeast of Charlottesville. Thirty-four people contacted the USGS (www.usgs.gov) to report tremors, which were felt beginning at 8:27pm yesterday.
Saturday, December 4
Affordable housing on Page
Two families, each first-time homeowners, will join the 10th and Page neighborhood, thanks to a couple of low-income housing programs. Yesterday, Piedmont Housing Alliance celebrated the completion of 1119 Page St., which became the new home of the Adish family, Afghanistani refugees who left Kabul after the Taliban caught them educating their children. Today, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville raised a wall on a new home that will be owned and occupied by Emperatriz Amaya, a single mother and Salvadoran immigrant who fled civil war in her homeland.
Sunday, December 5
UVA soccer season ends with loss
After last night’s 3-0 defeat by Duke at Klockner Stadium, the UVA’s men’s soccer team officially has plenty of free time to study for exams. The Cavaliers made it into the quarterfinal round in the NCAA tournament and for the fourth time, according to The Daily Progress’ Andrew Joyner, surrendered their hopes of moving to the top challenge with a loss at home. Meanwhile, in other sports news, Hokies fans are eyeing tickets to New Orleans for the January 3 Sugar Bowl, the destination for ACC winners Virginia Tech, who last night secured their BCS berth with a 16-10 victory over Miami. And hoops fans have their fingers crossed that tomorrow night’s game against Iowa State will not mark the first loss for the No. 24-ranked UVA men’s basketball team, which goes into the contest with a 6-0 record in nonconference play.
Monday, December 6
Lt. Governor race begins
Fairfax Democrat Chap Petersen, 36, plans to officially kick off his bid for Lieutenant Governor today with a morning event at the State Capitol. The 37th District Delegate said in a news release in advance of the day’s events, “My campaign is basedon a simple idea: it is time for a new generation of leadership, both in Virginia and in the Democratic Party. I take pride in beingan independent Democrat, not beholden to any special interest except one—the public interest.” Last Thursday, GOP hopeful Sean T. Connaughton, 43, stopped by Wolfie’s in an early campaign stop. Connaughton chairs the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.
–Written by Cathy Harding from news sources and staff reports.
Fight for your white
National Alliance targets Charlottesville
When Kim Langford went home for lunch on Tuesday, December 1, she found two sheets of paper, rolled up and wrapped in a rubber band, on the front lawn of her home on Lexington Avenue.
“I picked it up, thinking it was a flyer for gutter cleaning or something,” says Langford.
Instead, the flyers proclaimed that the United States invaded Iraq to satisfy Israel, and exhorted readers to “deport these arrogant Jews.”
“I was shocked,” says Langford. She says the flyers appeared in many of her neighbors’ yards, too, and were probably put there overnight. “Everyone on the street is shocked,” she says.
The flyers came from members of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group based in Hillsboro, West Virginia, with a Virginia outpost in Achilles, a small town in Gloucester County. According to its website, www.natall.com, the group believes that white people have evolved higher mental faculties than non-whites, and the group advocates creating a “white living space” by a “racial cleansing of the land.”
Shaun Walker, the chief operating officer for the National Alliance, says the flyers on Lexington Avenue came from Alliance members in Charlottesville, who distributed between 1,500 and 2,000 similar flyers along the I-64 corridor around the city.
“We have members in that area who want to spread the message to their neighbors,” says Walker, declining to provide their names.
“There’s no authorized spokesman in Charlottesville,” Walker says. “But there are a few strong candidates. When the time is right, we will authorize them and they can do interviews themselves.”
Charlottesville Police Sergeant Stephen Upman says the department received a report of “anti-Jewish” flyers around Hill Street and Robertson Avenue. Upman says the report was forwarded to police investigators. “How they’ll go with it, I can’t tell you,” he says.
Jon Zug, the City’s Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney and a member of Congregation Beth Israel, the city’s only synagogue, says that the First Amendment protects inflammatory or hateful speech. There are limits, however—obscene language, threats to specific people, or attempting to incite a riot is against the law.
After being told about the flyers, Zug, who had not seen them himself, says “it certainly steps over what I would consider the moral line, but what you’ve described to me doesn’t step over the legal line.”
While the ideology governing the National Alliance, as outlined on its website, seems almost comical in its aims—a society, for example, where people dance waltzes and jigs “but never to undulate or jerk to negroid jazz or rock rhythms”—the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping defamation of Jews, has linked the National Alliance to violent crime.
According to the ADL’s website (www.adl.org), the National Alliance was founded in 1974 by William Pierce, who died in 2002. The ADL claims Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was inspired by Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries; the ADL also links Alliance members with other killings and attempted bombings.
The National Alliance also distributes racist music through Pierce’s record label, Resistance Records. The ADL claims the National Alliance membership has grown 50 percent in the past six years to 1,500, mostly through literature distributed by more than 35 cells in 30 states, including Virginia.
Langford says she thinks Alliance members put flyers in most of the yards in her neighborhood. “I guess it’s not surprising,” she says, “but I’m shocked this stuff is in Charlottesville.”—John Borgmeyer
Security blanket
Smart, sober workforce could bring even more homeland security jobs to region
When Governor Mark Warner announced on November 16 that four companies riding the homeland security gravy train would hire nearly 11,000 Virginians over the coming five years, it was no surprise that the overwhelming majority of those new jobs would be in Northern Virginia. After all, NoVa’s proximity to Washington D.C., not to mention the preponderance of high tech companies along the Beltway, make that area a natural for the job growth. More unexpected, however, was the additional news that some of those homeland security jobs will land in Charlottesville. In fact, Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, a San Diego-based research and engineering company that has done big business in integrating security systems since 9/11, will add to its local workforce. Eight more jobs are coming on top of its existing 90 in Albemarle, according to SAIC corporate public affairs spokesman Jared Adams.
SAIC, which is fully employee owned, was last month ranked No. 1 in Physics Today magazine as the “Top Physics Company.”
The so-called No. 1 place to live in the country and a top-ranked systems integration company—sounds like a natural alliance. “Charlottesville is a good place for us to grow because there is such a tremendous knowledge base for us to draw on,” Adams says.
Bob DeMauri, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development, foresees more homeland security pie coming our way. “I see the potential as being pretty good for the future in that Charlottesville is more than 100 miles from Washington and Northern Virginia, and that is an informal type of distance that people put on convenience and a higher level of security,” he says. “That, coupled with the technology-oriented environment with the university and the ability to access people who potentially could work in the homeland security area bodes well for this particular activity in terms of job creation for the future.”
Most of the eight new jobs currently open at SAIC are in computer application development and systems support, Adams says. After acquiring Presearch, a high-tech engineering firm also closely tied to the Pentagon, earlier this year, SAIC has all its Charlottesville employees together in a nondescript business park on Peter Jefferson Way. It’s not exactly the type of steel-trap environment that comes to mind with the phrase “homeland security.”
Both DeMauri and Walt Levering, regional director for Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology, point to the presence of the National Ground Intelligence Center on Route 29N as another reason homeland security jobs are moving here. In addition, defense-related industry at UVA could boost homeland security jobs here, Levering says, citing nanotechnology, information technology and biotechnology as sectors on the move thanks to the federal dollar.
Jill Vaughan, the communications manager for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, which joined Governor Warner in last month’s jobs announcement, confirms that homeland security is the “hot industry right now.” Her group tracks federal contracts, she says, and she too expects more of Uncle Sam in this region’s future. “A lot of companies need satellite offices far away from the capital,” she says. “And another reason is the workforce.
“You have talented people here who can get security clearance,” Vaughan says.—Cathy Harding
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HOW TO: Become a docent at UVA Art Museum Want to learn what an artist meant when he splattered paint over a canvas, and then explain it to everyone else? Volunteer to be a docent at the UVA Art Museum. Every year thousands of people tour the museum, a mansion-like space on Rugby Road, led by docents who range from 18 to 70 years old. They tell stories, and explain techniques and themes related to the art on the museum’s walls. To get the gig, you gotta like art and folks, have “intellectual curiosity,” fill out an application (of course), and have an interview. No previous art history knowledge is required. Once you’re in, new docents meet every Wednesday throughout the spring for two hours to learn about the exhibitions. The rigorous training will ramp up your knowledge of art and, no doubt, your intake of wine and cheese. There are additional perqs, too, like trips to other museums, and the auditing of University classes at no charge. Prospective docents are invited to attend education programs at 9:30am on the first Wednesday of each month in the Museum’s main hall. For more information call coordinator Deryn Goodwin at 924-7458. |
Hey Joe, whadya know?
Baseball star stops in at local gym on his way to the pros
They say what goes around comes around, and in a Southside gym Joe Koshansky is bearing that out. Koshansky, the pitcher, first baseman and slugger who powered his way to 2004 ACC Player of the Year as a star on UVA’s baseball team is spending the next couple of months coaching the young players who work out at Total Performance gym. When he was a high school player in Fairfax, Koshansky says, former major leaguer Brian Snyder coached him.
Coming full circle, Koshansky is on his way in March to spring training with the Colorado Rockies organization, which last summer drafted him as a first baseman in the sixth round. But before he gets there he’s putting in some time coaching local kids.
“This is what I had when I was younger,” he says, “and I feel I can give that back, too.
“I can help the kids here by showing them that hard work can make you successful,” Koshansky adds. “I don’t think that I have the most talent out of some of the guys I played with, but I think my work ethic made me a very good baseball player. If I can instill that on some of these kids, you never know what could happen.”
Baseball fans remember the hearty calls of “Hey, Joe” and “C’mon now, Joe” that greeted his every at-bat at Davenport Field as the UVA team made its meteoric rise last season. A big man striding to the plate, he was a study in confidence. But Koshansky’s college career got off to rocky start. Through determination and what UVA baseball head coach Brian O’Connor calls Koshansky’s “work ethic,” he remade himself as a player. Koshansky is about to face another challenge of the same order as he transitions from cosseted college ball player to rookie minor leaguer.
“When you get into professional baseball, you have to have a certain type of work ethic and professionalism about how you go about your business every day in terms of climbing the ladder,” O’Connor says. “If you don’t have professionalism and have a plan for what you’re going to do, the game will consume you. It will eliminate you.”
At the tender age of 22, Koshansky is already a veteran at executing a plan. A much-noticed high school player, Koshansky did not distinguish himself in his first couple of years at UVA. Frustrated, he hit the weight room—and the protein powder, he says—and added 15 pounds of muscle to his frame. When the economics major returned to UVA for his junior year, he was a different athlete entirely. “The big thing Joe has going for him is he is a self-made player,” O’Connor says.
While he waits out the 10 weeks until he flies to Tucson, Arizona, to join the Rockies’ preseason training, Koshansky is working out just as hard. “I spend a lot of time in the weight room,” he says, and it really shows. Clean-shaven with warm eyes, the muscles on his 6’4” frame practically pop through his orange Under Armor t-shirt during an interview. Still, between his continuing training sessions at UVA and Total Performance, he does manage to squeeze in some recreation: movie viewing (The Talented Mr. Ripley was a recent selection) and a few rounds on Halo 2, which every player knows is crucial for developing strong thumbs. (“Hey, it’s hand-eye coordination,” he jokes.)
Larry Mitchell, who opened Total Performance in the Frank Ix building with partner Todd Proctor in February, says Koshansky has been an asset in the couple of weeks he’s been on board. “It’s good to have a guy like that around. He has a knowledge of hitting and a knowledge of the game,” Mitchell says.
But beyond that, Koshansky also “knows what he doesn’t know,” and Mitchell, an 8-year veteran of pro ball who now directs baseball at Charlotttesville High School, says that quality will help get Koshansky to The Show. “He seems willing to learn,” Mitchell says. “He doesn’t seem like a know-it-all and that will serve him well in professional baseball because there is a lot to learn.”
With classic rock blasting and the sharp ping! of hard hit baseballs punctuating the air in the workout room, Total Performance is right now something of an enclave for pro ballers. Besides Koshansky and Mitchell, who pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies and also played AA ball for the Orioles, White Sox and Yankees, Thomas Martin is also around the place for a couple of months. The San Francisco Giants club drafted Martin, the left-handed pitcher who was a standout at Albemarle High School and the University of Richmond.
Whether the Little Leaguers and high school players who frequent Total Performance after school realize the caliber of the coaches helping them tweak their pitching mechanics or adjust their batting stances, they can’t help but feel the intensity. Especially when it comes to Koshansky.
“He’s very dedicated and focused,” O’Connor says.
“I’m going to have to step my game up again to get to where I want to go in the big leagues,” Koshansky says with apparent determination.
There are a couple of aspects of his game that he already figures could use improvement. “I want to be able to wait longer so I can pull the ball to the right,” the left-hander says. “That’s one thing I’m working on right now.” And for another thing, he needs to up his velocity. “Cardio—that’s not one of my favorite things to do, to run,” he says.
Lucky for Koshansky, he can get a head start on that project before he heads out to Arizona. Total Performance is equipped with two treadmills.—Cathy Harding
Blame game
Audit cites leadership failures in schools’ racial gap
A recent professional audit of the Charlottesville city school system doesn’t seem to be resolving any of the conflicts that have roiled parents, teachers and administrators since the school year began.
Released on November 30, the 155-page audit was performed by Phi Delta Kappa. People had their first chance to comment publicly on the audit on Thursday, December 2, at the school board’s regular meeting at Charlottesville High School.
The audit recommended broad changes to the city school system to deal with the so-called achievement gap, a general performance disparity between black and white students that plagues many school districts across the country.
In Charlottesville, the issue has taken on new urgency because the federal No Child Left Behind program demands all students pass standardized tests before they graduate. New superintendent Scottie Griffin is charged with meeting the NCLB standards amidst criticism that her reforms could turn city schools into “testing mills,” as one speaker said on Thursday. One city elementary school, Clark, has already been sanctioned under NCLB.
Charles Morrill, PTO president at Buford Middle School, praised the report as “the unvarnished truth,” and supported the audit’s call for reorganization.
“I ask that you get your act together and do some of these things,” he said. “Let’s end the incredible waste of money.”
Rick Turner, UVA’s dean of African-American Affairs, who has been a regular outspoken presence at school board meetings lately, said the report proves the achievement gap is not simply related to social and economic factors: “Now we know that for too long the problem has been one of leadership.”Others aren’t so sure.
Five PDK auditors spent four days in September examining the school system, leading some to wonder how such a rapid assessment could be complete or accurate.
“It seemed like a monumental task for five people,” said CHS language teacher Diane Price. “They were in my class for about two minutes.”
Parent Paul Wagner opposed the PDK audit because he believed it heaped all the blame for the achievement gap on the school system.
The achievement gap already exists “at the kindergarten door,” Wagner said. Administrators should “make schools places where every parent wants to send their child,” he said. “If we do that, the achievement gap will take care of itself.”
There will be more chances for people to comment on the audit in the coming weeks; school board members said Thursday they will decide in 2005 which of the audit’s recommendations they will incorporate into the system. The entire audit can be seen at www.ccs.k12.va.us.—John Borgmeyer
Bandwidth bandwagon
A new AM radio station prepares to hit the local market
Charlottesville’s media market keeps growing. As television stations multiply like bunnies and local radio stations draw attention and dollars from media conglomerates, a new player is set to enter the AM radio market.
On October 27, Anderson Communications, LLC filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build and operate a new AM station in Charlottesville. Charles Anderson is the manager and sole member of the company, based in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Anderson owns an FM station with an “adult contemporary” format in Bowling Green. In January, Anderson set out to find available frequencies in communities where he thought the market might bear a new station. In addition to Charlottesville, Anderson has applications pending for new AM stations in South Shore, Kentucky, and in Glasgow, Kentucky. He estimates it will take nine months to a year for the FCC to process his application; if Anderson gets his permit, he would have three years to build the station.
“My interest in Charlottesville was based on its size, being a university town, its obvious economic and cultural qualities, and the availability of the AM frequency,” Anderson says via e-mail.
According to Anderson’s application to the FCC, which is available for inspection at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, the new station’s frequency (and location on the dial) would be 1450 kHz. “Given the nature of radio,” says Anderson, “it would be premature to speculate on programming.”
Anderson plans to use an existing tower near the intersection of Melbourne and Rio roads.
If the FCC approves Anderson’s application, his station will join Charlottesville’s crop of three AM stations. National radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications owns WCHV, a news-talk station, and WKAV, a sports station.
In early October, local media mogul Brad Eure sold his three-station empire, which includes the news-talk AM station WINA as well as the FM stations WWWV and WQMZ, to Detroit-based Saga Communications. So far, Eure and Saga promise there will be few changes at the three stations.
While the rise of Internet and satellite radio threatens to toss AM radio in the dustbin with cassette tapes and VCRs, Eure says a new AM station can make room for itself by defining and targeting the right audience.
“AM has its listeners, but certainly more people listen to FM,” Eure says.
According to the media research group Arbitron, the number of FM stations has grown in America (to 8,831 in 2003 from 4,190 stations in 1980) while the number of AM stations has remained level, at about 5,000 stations, over that same period.
New stations will have to find their niche to succeed, Eure predicts—a rule all the new media in Charlottesville may have to apply.
“We’re constantly searching for more choices, whether it’s in TV, radio or print,” says Eure. “The total number of radio listeners isn’t going to decrease. But the more stations there are, the more defined those stations are going to have to be.”—John Borgmeyer
