How About Nothing?

As Virginia’s General Assembly considers its policy for regulating gifts to delegates, I have a suggestion. No gifts.

No gifts from Dominion, Star Scientific, chemical companies, railroads, airlines, real estate developers, road contractors. No gifts. None.

But what about meals, the delegates ask. We have to eat, don’t we? Buy your own meals. You’re perfectly capable of feeding yourselves.

But what about access? Let the corporate lobbyists do what the rest of us have to do. Write letters, send emails, make phone calls, schedule appointments to visit you and your staff in your Richmond office, or when you’re back in your district.

No gifts. It’s simple. And think of the money the companies will save on pens, mugs, water bottles, Rolex watches, green fees, big city shopping trips, wedding receptions, vehicle leases, chartered jets, exotic vacations—money that quite possibly can be returned to you as dividends in the stock that you own. You may get a little personal benefit out of some public integrity yet.

Think how good it will feel when you’ve tackled once and for all how much and what kind of gifts you may receive as a side benefit of your good paying, part-time job as public servant.

Along the spectrum of all or nothing—how about nothing?

NO PIPELINE

We’ve heard a lot from Dominion about the public benefit and utter necessity of this pipeline here in Nelson County, Virginia. But in fact much of this gas will be exported to foreign countries. Gas that was extracted in this country with a process that causes earthquakes, and puts unknown chemicals in our water.

If men wearing black ski masks, carrying foreign passports were caught doing this, they would be arrested on suspicion of terrorism and tortured until they gave up the names of these chemicals. Work for an American energy corporation, and it’s all perfectly legal.

While the necessity of this project is in question, what the pipeline represents for certain is additional degradation of our water, and the plants and animals and jobs that depend on this water, from here all the way to the Chesapeake Bay.

It represents a greater potential for landslides in an area that has seen its share of loss to life and property from cascading rock and mud.

It represents endangerment to our citizens through risk of gas leaks and explosions.

It represents a loss to the many small business owners who invested in the beauty of this county with their livelihoods and their families.

This pipeline is a poster child for a lack of imagination that in my opinion is un-American

Seventy years ago, when this grief-stricken country needed to bring about an end to a painful and costly World War, our government assembled the brightest minds in the world around a single project. Working together over two years, these scientists unleashed the awesome energy of the atom.

It’s high time we assembled the brightest minds around the development of pollution-free renewable energy sources. This is America. Our problems are often hard, but never impossible. And we’re not talking about splitting the atom. We’re talking about building a better battery. So let’s get to it.

FERC representatives – you work for the government. If you want to do something that is truly in the public interest, DO NOT approve this pipeline.

This is Only a Drill

I am substitute teaching at an elementary school in Nelson County, where I live. At some point in the day, the lesson plan says, there will be an Intruder Alert Drill. After my class gathers, I explain to them what will happen, and that this is only a drill.

A thin boy raises his hand. He has dark circles under his eyes as though this question keeps him up at night. “If it’s not just a drill,” he asks, “will we have to jump out the window?”

I look from him to the quiet Blue Ridge Mountains beyond our second story classroom. Sure death from bullets, or possible death and broken bones from a leap to the concrete below? Make your choice, little man.

“No,” I say gently. Knife still in my heart, I instruct them to take out their science books and we turn our thoughts to ocean currents, wave action and the effect of jetties on beach erosion.

Later that morning a tone sounds and a woman’s voice comes over the intercom. Calm and friendly, it instructs the students to move to their places, adults to lock the door and turn off the lights.

The children know just what to do. As I turn the knob on the lock and hit the light switch, they cram their twenty bodies into the recessed cubby area, out of sight of the door. They are deathly quiet. I don’t like to think about all the things they are as silent as.

It strikes me, standing there before them, that this drill is little more useful than the “duck and cover” drills of the 1950’s and 60’s. After all, each classroom has a glass door. Someone intent on harming children need only smash the glass with the butt of one of the guns they’re no doubt armed with—the glass is tempered, so it should shatter easily and harmlessly—reach in, and unlock the door simply by turning the knob. All the potential targets are huddled conveniently in one location.

The children and I wait in dimness as we hear someone jiggle the handle of our door. I try not to imagine what this would feel like if it were not just a drill.   If an intruder was trying the handle on the door to this 5^th grade classroom. If the glass shattered. It hits me that there are people all over this country—right here in Virginia— who have experienced this.  Many of these people are dead.

What would I do? I look around and the heaviest thing I can see is a microscope. Could I hit an intruder hard enough to stop him? Would I even have the chance? Would I wish I had armed myself?

No. I would wish that the United States Congress had taken action to limit the sale of handguns and assault weapons and ammunition.  I’d wish that the funerals—no, the lives— of our school children from sea to shining sea had more influence over our lawmakers than the National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers’ lobbyists.

The drill is over, the soothing voice announces from the intercom. We may return to our seats. This time.

One Weekend in July

 

From New York, Delaware, DC, Virginia, and New Mexico, cars pour into the driveway of our house in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Beds full of people, yard full of tents, a rented house and rooms at a B&B.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, husbands, wives, cousins, brothers, sisters, moms, dads, children, toddlers, a babe in arms, another on the way. Girlfriends, boyfriends, in-laws, outlaws, five dogs and a cat.

Teachers, engineers, filmmakers, brewers, potters, nurses, writers, beekeepers, 501-C-3’ers, administrators, builders, artists. Soccer, baseball, Frisbee players. Musicians, eaters and drinkers.

Stacks of bagels, dozens of eggs, pounds of pasta, buckets of salsa, crocks of barbecue, vats of gazpacho, pans of cookie, tubs of watermelon, baskets of peaches, loaves upon loaves of summer zucchini bread. Carafes of coffee, pots of tea, gallons of beer, bottles of wine. Growlers, water bottles, pottery mugs, sippy cups.

Big Frisbees, tiny baseball bats, bike paths, canoes, swimming holes, bon fires. World Cup Soccer games at the local brewery, family music at the coffee house, pottery lessons in the studio. Slow walks to the river.

Birdsong at dawn, cicada by day. Whippoorwill and wood thrush at dusk, katydid and tree frog by night. Buzz of conversation, shrieks of laughter. Talk of courtships, marriages, births, illnesses, deaths. Stories from the past, dreams for the future.

To Rob and Jane Ryan Crowe. For all that you got right in your lives, the wars you fought, the joys you shared, the sorrows you survived. You saw that irresistible something in each other’s eyes and left us with so much more than we can ever thank you for—not the least of which is the Crowe Ryan Family Reunion.

Reaching for the Moon

We hadn’t intended to visit the Memorial after dark; I wasn’t even sure the capitol grounds were open that late, but other people meandered up the lamp lit sidewalks, so we crossed over the shadowy lawn.

In the short time we had, I wanted to show Kevin the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial that claims its unlikely real estate on Capitol Square outside the gates of the executive mansion of what was, once, the Capital of the Confederacy. The sculpture tells the story of 16-year old Barbara Johns, who led her fellow students in a walkout to protest separate—and very much unequal—conditions at Robert R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia in 1951. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 waited thirteen long years in the future.

What followed the walkout was a lawsuit that eventually joined with four other cases to become the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, in which the United States Supreme Court struck down the separate but equal racial doctrine.

“It seemed like reaching for the moon,” said Ms. Johns, and looking back, it was. Following this court decision, powerful US Senator Harry F. Byrd, from Virginia, rallied over 100 others around his “Southern Manifesto,” which opposed racial integration. Byrd and his followers had no need of white hoods; they were duly elected American lawmakers.  They launched their “Massive Resistance” campaign, and in 1959, Prince Edward County closed all its public schools rather than integrate them.

I was in junior high school when Virginia schools were finally integrated in 1971, 20 years after the Moton High School walkout.

In 2008, Kevin and I attended a concert in Richmond and watched as then Governor Tim Kaine took the stage with Dave Matthews.   A Virginia governor was introducing a white man from South Africa, both of them campaigning to elect the man who would become the first African-American president of the United States.   It felt surreal in the best of ways. Here we stood, just blocks away from the avenue that is home to  larger than life statues of men who fought an entire war to prevent just such a thing from happening.

Back at the Civil Rights Memorial, Kevin and I soaked in this dark yet hopeful chapter of race relations in Virginia while the students of Moton High School stood before us in bronze relief, Barbara Johns’ arm raised skyward. As we turned to make our way back to the car,  a quarter moon cast its glow above the rooftops of the city. We took one last look over our shoulder to see Ms. Johns, forever reaching.

A New Car for Jared

Chesterfield County has twelve new police officers and my nephew, Jared, is one of them. Striking in their crisp olive drab uniforms and shaven heads, these young men were sworn in last Friday afternoon. It is hard to hold the tears back as my sister, Laura, and my brother-in-law, Michael, pin the shiny badge on their son’s chest. Hard not to look back on the goofy, happy-go-lucky little kid that he was; to realize that his plastic squirt gun has been replaced with a Glock.

Harder still, not to think about what lies ahead for him.

These men began the physical fitness portion of their training in the intense heat of Virginia summer—in full uniform, Kevlar vest included—sweating through sprints, obstacle courses, push-ups and sit-ups.

They’ve been out on the driving course, learning to execute those stunts we’ve only seen on television (“That was really cool, Aunt Linda,” Jared said. “Those V-8 engines are powerful!”) They’ve spent days on the shooting range, honing their accuracy with weapons. They’ve endured pepper spray and tear gas. They’ve had to drink and monitor their blood alcohol level. They’ve wrestled each other in marital arts training.

The world is a different place now than it was when I was growing up. Unemployment still drives people to drink, and people still drink and drive. But now they also drive and talk on the phone or text. No longer rare are the drug cartels, the gang wars, home invasions, meth labs, acts of domestic violence against the general population. School shootings, mall shootings, workplace shootings. Today’s criminals are often better armed than our law enforcement officers.

And to think. In Jared’s previous job at the glass company, we used to worry that he’d cut himself.

These rookie policemen spent the last six months in school. Now they’ll spend the next few months getting schooled out in the real world where these things actually occur. Where fires destroy and storms ravage. Where cars crash and teenagers bleed. Where adults abuse children and spouses batter one another. Where girls go missing, and kids screw up. Where the bad guys break and enter, steal and murder.

How will they deal with all this? In addition to their weapons and defensive tactics training, they’ll face it all with a dose of compassion.

“Much of this will become routine for us, but we always have to remember that when someone calls the police, very often it is the worst day of their life,” Jared explains to me. “How we respond can make that better or worse. What we do can make a big difference.”

After the family celebration at my sister’s house, after the cake has been eaten and the guests have departed, we talk more about the day’s ceremony and the weeks ahead. Laura tries on Jared’s jacket for size and looks like a little kid playing dress-up in her father’s clothes. The rookies have been issued their cars, but they’ll each spend the next few weeks riding with a seasoned officer before they’re sent out to patrol their beats alone. Jared looks forward to all of this with awe and excitement.

He sits on the floor and leans back against the couch. “I can’t believe it,” he says, his voice filled with wonder. “I’ve got my own police car.”

For a moment, no one speaks. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry, to rejoice or despair. Jared’s got his own police car.

And What About Your Drinking Water?

Watching the people in West Virginia adjust their lives to deal with a crisis of safe water availability makes those of us who are able to drink from the tap feel fortunate.  But should it?

While researching an update on Kepone, a pesticide that was dumped into the James River in my hometown of Hopewell Virginia in the 1970’s, I stumbled upon a startling fact.  Not only are monitoring programs not strictly overseen by “responsible” agencies such as the EPA or the state, sometimes the monitoring required by the EPA is useless in determining whether or not there is a problem.

Take Kepone for example.  The hundreds of thousands of pounds of insecticide that were released into the water floated in suspension, then drifted to the bottom.  Bottom feeders sifted the contaminated sediment.  Bigger fish ate the contaminated bottom feeders.  Humans chowed down on the contaminated fish that contained so much Kepone that in 1975, Governor Godwin banned fishing, crabbing, and oystering from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay, a ban that would not be completely lifted until 1988.  Fish consumption advisories remain in effect to this day. 

Hopewell gets its water out of the Appomattox, in an area that was affected by Kepone.  Today, no one monitors for Kepone in the drinking water, even though Kepone still remains in the sediments of the river in great quantities.

Kepone is buried in cells around Hopewell.  At the state Department of Environmental Quality, I was able to find monitoring reports for only one of the cells— one located on Honeywell property, monitored by the same company that was responsible for the original contamination of the river.  (Allied Chemical, the creator and manufacturer of Kepone, later purchased Honeywell and assumed its name.)

It is impossible to determine from the monitoring reports whether or not Kepone is present at levels that could affect human health.

Here’s why:  The EPA requires a detection method that can tell if Kepone is present at 20 parts per billion or higher.  Honeywell actually uses a method that can detect Kepone at even lower levels – 5 parts per billion according to their reports.  They do an even better job than the EPA requires.

Which sounds nice until you realize that Kepone is harmful to humans at .03 parts per billion

In other words, no one is using a detection method that can determine if Kepone is present at a level that is harmful to humans, even though today’s technology can detect Kepone at parts per trillion.  Note that people still fish, swim and ski in the river at Hopewell and beyond.

When I asked an EPA employee about this, he said, “I hate to tell you this, but it’s like that for things that are far worse than Kepone.”

What happened in West Virginia last week has pointed up how many chemicals we live with and how little we know about many of them.  Even worse in my mind are the ones we know quite a bit about, and still turn a blind eye.

Think about that the next time you turn on the faucet to get a drink of water.

 

Library Wars

“Nelson started it.”

I was standing at the checkout desk at the Amherst County Public Library, inquiring about a book, when the young woman at the desk told me my card had expired. “No problem,” I said, and began to fish around in my wallet for $15.00. The woman looked embarrassed and took my card into a side office. She returned with another woman who looked even more embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The fee has increased to $30.00.” Double? I said.

“Well, that’s what the Nelson library is charging our residents,” she said, “so we felt we had to do the same thing.”

I actually live in Nelson County and I have a library card for the public library in Lovingston, which is part of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library system. But because we’re frequently in Amherst, I also have an Amherst library card. I can get my book group books there a little faster (because the rest of my book group gets the book of the month from the Nelson library). We only have dial-up Internet access at our house, so we also use the high-speed access at the Amherst library. The cost of our library card in Nelson is $0, because we’re residents. Up until recently, the cost of the library card in Amherst was $15.00 (per year), because we’re non-residents. My husband and I save gas by using this library, the books are more readily available, and the Internet is faster. We figured that was worth the $15.00 price of admission. But $30.00?

When I asked someone at the library in Lovingston about this, she said, “Well Albemarle started it.”

What is this, second grade? I thought. Turns out that people from Fluvanna and even Buckingham were using the libraries in Albemarle County. (And who knows what that could lead to—more reading maybe? A better educated public?) Something had to be done.

Remember, the cost of a card is $0 if you’re a resident. The card is good pretty much forever, as far as I can tell. The cost of a non-resident card is now $30.00 EVERY SINGLE YEAR. That’s a lot.

I have a Library of Virginia card. No charge. Because I was doing some research in my hometown, the librarian at the Hopewell public library issued me a card. When I asked the fee, she stared at me as though I were a creature from another planet. “Ma’am,” she said as if I’d attempted to take away her constitutional rights, “we do not charge people to use the library.” Some libraries, it seems, want as many people as possible to use their resources. Encourage it, even.

Virginians, here’s the thing: your state tax dollars went to all of these libraries to buy – wait for it – the books. And some public libraries are perfectly willing to charge you a yearly fee to check them out for yourselves, your shut-in relatives and your children.

As it happens, a number of people from Fluvanna are willing to pay the fee so that they can use the library closest to their house or to their place of work. (Never mind that they pump money into the local economy in other ways—they shop in Albemarle, eat in Albemarle,buy gas in Albemarle…) But I wonder how many people, once turned away, have trouble making it to a less convenient library. Now that I’ve looked into it, I, for one, will not be paying $30.00 every year to check out books that I helped pay for. Further proof that a little education, after all, is a dangerous thing.

Garmina

In preparation for a trip from their rural home to an even more obscure rural destination across the mountains in the Shenandoah Valley an hour away, Kevin and Linda program their GPS unit.

Drive 3.6 miles to Highway 29, the no-nonsense voice (Garmina, they call her) directs them.   Fifteen miles later, they make an unprogrammed detour on Roberts Mountain Road.

Recalculating, Garmina says.  Kevin and Linda laugh.  “We probably should have alerted her,” they say.

Drive .6 miles, then turn right on Hickory Creek Road, says Garmina.    They turn left on Thurman’s Hollow Road.  “This will drive her crazy,” they say as they turn up a gravel driveway to drop something off at a friend’s house before heading to the valley.

Recalculating, says Garmina, rushing to catch up.

“You will recalculate three times before the cock crows!” they joke.

They picture her, middle-aged woman in a small office in a large warehouse far from Virginia— in Brooklyn, say— computer perched on a dented metal desk, maps spread out before her.  Bad coffee sits cold in a Styrofoam cup rimmed with half-circles of lipstick. Ashes spill out of an overfull ashtray, cigarette smoke curls up toward the hazy afternoon light that filters through the broken venetian blind in the one dirty window.

Garmina was young once.  She had ambitions.  But that was many auditions and nearly as many rejections ago.  Two divorces, one eviction and seven lousy jobs later, here she sits in this run-down slum of a warehouse, working for people in a far-off high-rise, doing more with less; her only goal to get Kevin and Linda from one happy location to another, while they have a ball, sing along to music on their car stereo, and sometimes even mock Garmina, as though she could not hear their every word.  As if they were not totally dependent on her tracking their every move.

They’re back in the car now. Continue to highlighted route, Garmina instructs, with the same measured tone that belies her frustration.  And this time they do.  Their detour complete, she watches as they resume the original route she so carefully mapped for them; monitors their progress as they climb Afton Mountain, merge onto I-81 North, then exit at Mt. Sidney and wind their way to their final destination.

It’s 5:30 in Brooklyn. Garmina slides onto her stool in the already crowded bar as the bartender sets ‘the usual’ in front of her.  “You’re half an hour late,” he says wiping the varnished wood with his white cloth.  Jesus H. Christ, Garmina says, leaning forward as he lights her cigarette.  Some people shouldn’t be allowed to drive…

This is a Rant, Y’all.

If I had a penny for every time someone has come down here and insulted us where we live, I’d be rich beyond all imagination.

What are people thinking?  There I sat, in a writing class in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I’d missed the first class and hadn’t met my classmates yet, so I was taken aback during the pre-class chitchat when one woman said to another, “I hate southerners.  They’re all so fake-y.”

Had she taken leave of her senses, I wondered?  Here she sat in Virginia, a southern state if ever there was one, mindlessly offending anybody from down here who happened to be within hearing distance of her loud voice.  The teacher arrived and, for my benefit, asked folks to go around and introduce themselves.  Turned out I was the only person who’d grown up south of New Jersey.

I kept my thoughts to myself at the time.  Did this make me fake-y, I mused, or simply polite?

Recently, a writer whose work I otherwise respect included this sentence (about his move to Albemarle County, VA) in a personal essay:    “Sweater vests, bourbon, boat shoes, and y’all briefly entered my life—bourbon, thankfully, remains.”  He failed to mention that he, also, remains.  And for the record, the term y’all happens to be a contraction for gender-neutral, inclusive you all. It’s a hell of a lot more appropriate than “you guys,” but that’s a topic for another blog.

It’s not that I don’t poke fun at others— I do.  For example, a friend who shares a Swedish heritage with my family recently disclosed his uncle’s favorite slur:  “Norwegians are just Swedes with their brains bashed out.”   Do I agree with this?  No.  Do I burst out laughing every time I think of it?  Yes.    Would I blab this in public in Norway?  Never.  No sooner than I’d visit Maine and complain about the strangeness of the accents, or the temperature of the ocean water.

If only a similar sentiment would keep northerners from blurting out each winter, “You southerners can’t drive in the snow.”

Hey geniuses!  How weird would it be if we were good at driving in the snow?  It doesn’t happen all that often down here.  We don’t worry about driving in the snow for the same reason you don’t worry about finding cottonmouth moccasins in your yard back home. It’s rare here. And isn’t that part of why you moved down here to begin with—to get away from the snows of winter?

Besides, you’re not that good at it either, it turns out.  My great aunt was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts.  She forbade me to visit her after October.  She’d send me envelopes crammed with dire headlines she’d carefully clipped out of the newspaper.  “Local Woman Killed by Snow Plow.”  “Massive pile-up on Mass Pike as Rush Hour Blizzard Bears Down.”

“This whole town shuts down when it snows,” you north people say.  Right again.  It would be pretty fiscally irresponsible of us to make the huge capital investments required to purchase entire fleets of snow-moving heavy equipment that would sit idle for most of the winter.

Still, if it bothers you all that much, you could always lobby your state and local representatives to raise taxes in order to purchase more plows.  Oh wait.  You moved down here in part because of the lower tax rates, didn’t you?  Or was it to establish residency to take advantage of the more affordable tuition rates at our world-class universities in the south?

“And slow?  You southerners are so slow,” you northerners complain, as you lay on your horns if we take more than three seconds to advance through a green light.  We, on the other hand, will toot toot lightly behind your car (as you talk on your cell phones, text, read emails, and whatever else you do) to indicate that the light changed a while back. Then we’ll wave cheerfully so as not to offend.  What’s another light cycle to us?    And what’s it to you?  After all, you came down here to escape the madness of the pace up north, isn’t that right?

You southerners are still fighting the war, is a favorite expression of those of you from the other side of the Mason Dixon.

Not really.  It’s just that the majority of the Civil War was fought down here; a huge number of the battles bloodied the ground right here in the Old Dominion.   And not just the Civil War.  Virginia is the most war-torn state in the union. We’ve got your French and Indian.  We’ve got your Revolution, We’ve got your War of 1812.

And if I’m not mistaken, you all have commemorated a few battlefields of your own up there, haven’t you?  Think Concord. Think Ticonderoga.  What about Gettysburg?

Read your history.  The world over, it’s not unusual to monument places on the ground where blood was shed.  And it can take decades, centuries for the sting of conflict to fade.  Look at England and France.  Shoot— look at England and America.  Heck – look at England and anybody. 

“It take you guys so long to get to the point,” you complain.  When I worked for a non-profit, my Boston lawyer flew down to participate in negotiations with a rural county that wanted to take a portion of our land through eminent domain.  We met with the county attorney at the courthouse in Hillsville, Virginia.   Though long, the meeting proceeded cordially enough and we left with everything we wanted.

“You spent almost an hour exchanging pleasantries and complimenting each other,” my lawyer marveled.  “You took nearly 20 minutes figuring out who your relatives were.”

“I know,” I said.  “Wasn’t that nice?”

“Where I come from, we’d open the conference room door, toss in a grenade, then hand our demands to whoever was left standing,” he raved. “It takes a lot less time.”

All that stress.  All that collateral damage.  Why would anyone want to live like that?  Besides, I want to be on speaking terms with the county attorney.  He and I may wind up at the same family reunion one day.

“The heat. The God-awful humidity,” you moan.

Yes, I say.  While you’re cranking up the AC, we’re drunk on the magnolia and gardenia-scented air that wafts on humid updrafts through our screened porches where we rest feet up with a glass of iced tea.

For us, seersucker isn’t just another southern affectation.  It’s a delightful adaptation.  A  light fabric, worn in hot weather, puckered so that only a portion of it touches moist skin.

The next time you start in on a tirade about your adopted southern home, maybe think about why we love it so.  William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee.  The Williams boys (Hank and Tennessee),  Elvis, Ray Charles, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Porgy & Bess.  Gone with the Wind. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Arthur Ashe.  New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond.  The Everglades, The Okefenokee and the Great Dismal Swamps, Alligators, piney woods, the beaches.  Okra. Collards. Shrimp.  Grits.  Just to name a few.

So take a deep breath of that honeysuckle air.  Pour yourself a glass of sweet tea and: Please.  Just.  Hush.