Lloyd Wright has worked with 10 presidents since the early 1960s and seen how both Republicans and Democrats have failed to address Black farmers’ civil rights complaints and correct institutional racism within the United States Department of Agriculture.

“Many Black farmers refer to USDA as being the last plantation, and the reason for that is, is that it really doesn’t change much from one administration to another, and in all cases, it’s not very good for Black folk,” said Wright, a Virginia-based farmer and retiree who served with the USDA for more than three decades. “There have been some [administrations] better than others.”

He knows first-hand the discrimination Black farmers faced — and the need to rectify their claims. He worked in multiple divisions throughout the years and was the director of the Office of Civil Rights from 1997 to 1998. He came out of retirement to serve as a consultant during former President Barack Obama’s first administration.

As President Joe Biden’s term comes to a close, many Black farmers are bracing for another four years of stagnation on the issues that have long plagued them. Many argue that progress has been insufficient, with a lack of accountability for the secretary of agriculture and limited oversight of local systems that distribute federal funds. 

This week, hundreds of Black farmers are gathering at the National Black Growers Council annual convening in Charleston, South Carolina, to provide resources and education to ensure Black farmers aren’t left behind. And with Inauguration Day steadily approaching on Jan. 20, the farmers have a lot to strategize over during this year’s convening. 

Trump’s Cabinet picks have also raised eyebrows. Stephen Miller, who’s expected to be the president-elect’s deputy chief of staff for policy, successfully blocked the $4 billion debt relief geared toward Black farmers during Biden’s administration. Trump also nominated Brooke Rollins, the CEO of the right-wing think tank America First Policy Institute, as the next agriculture secretary. Rollins would manage agriculture and welfare programs, including food quality, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and free school lunches, which have been vital for shrinking food insecurity and helping Black communities combat poverty.

---

Read More: Justice Has Been Delayed for Black Farmers, and They’re Looking to the Next President for Answers

---

Over the course of several administrations, Black farmers say the systemic problems they face — particularly within the USDA — have gone largely unaddressed. Under Trump’s previous tenure, there was little to no progress, with only 0.1% of emergency relief allocated to them. With the prospect of continued inaction, many fear that discrimination and unequal treatment at the USDA will persist for years to come.

In addition to Trump being back in the White House, Wright’s biggest concern is a narrow Republican majority in the House and three-seat majority in the Senate, and what legislation will be enacted to help, or hurt, farmers.

“For Black farmers, things that weren’t good before won’t get any better, but they may not get worse,” Wright told Capital B. 

He added: “It is not the fact that we’re going to have Trump in, it’s the fact that we lost the House and the Senate. It may be more difficult to get things into appropriation bills.”

What did the Trump administration do for Black farmers?

While Trump promised to “end the war on the American farmer,” his mission excluded farmers of color. Through his $22 billion Market Facilitation Program, which was designed to help farmers directly affected by foreign tariffs from China, nearly 100% of the bailout payments benefited white farmers, with an overwhelming majority going to those who are upper-middle class and wealthy. 

At the time, Sonny Perdue — the former Georgia governor who passed a tax bill to save his business and purchased land from a developer who he appointed to the state’s economic development board — served as the agriculture secretary. The program lacked oversight, failing to make sure the money went to farmers in need, according to the Government Accountability Office. The USDA’s internal auditors found the agency misspent more than $800 million, which included ineligible farms.

Farmers continued to feel the stronghold of the Trump administration even after he left office. 

Only months into Biden’s term, he passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which included a $4 billion debt relief program for farmers of color. However, they never got to see the relief. America First Legal — founded by Trump’s former adviser Miller — sued the USDA on behalf of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller for excluding white people from the relief. Banks also fought back against the program. 

As a result, it fell through. 

Trump also considered Sid Miller as the next secretary of Agriculture for the USDA. Ultimately, he nominated Rollins, who would be only the second woman to serve in this position.

---

Read More: Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Federal Debt Relief Program Dismissed

---

Wright suspects things will only get worse, especially on the local level with the county committees and with the civil rights division. For years, the Office of Civil Rights, of which Wright once served as director, has been in disarray. If a local county committee discriminates against Black farmers and they submit a complaint, “it’s not going anywhere because they don’t process them,” he said.

“You don’t have to hit us in the eyes every day to get our attention when it’s very clear in our history that, given enough time, folk will figure out how not to do something that’s designed to help Black folk,” Wright added. 

Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, it’s imperative that the next administration provides assistance to farmers because right now it’s stressful to be a Black farmer, said Julius Tillery, a fifth-generation cotton farmer in North Carolina who operates BlackCotton. 

“It’s a tough time. We’re having a rough year as well, but I think we could be able to make it through this year,” Tillery said. “We’ve been through worse, so let’s make the best of what’s coming next.”

Why are Black farmers disappointed in Biden? 

Though Trump hadn’t done much for Black farmers, in Wright’s eyes, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hadn’t done much better. He pointed to Biden’s appointment of Tom Vilsack as secretary of agriculture. He previously served two terms under Obama. During that time, Vilsack failed to address outstanding civil rights complaints and staked a claim that he helped increase the number of Black farmers and reduced funding disparities, which was inaccurate.

“I’m sure if Vilsack stayed secretary of agriculture and if the Congress had stayed Democrat, things wouldn’t have been great, but it would have been better,” said Wright.

Under Vilsack’s leadership, USDA employees foreclosed on Black farmers at a higher rate than on any other racial group between 2006 and 2016. The department approved fewer loans for Black farmers than under President Bush, and “then used census data in misleading ways to burnish its record on civil rights,” according to an investigation by The Counter. 

Also, Vilsack also played a role in the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, former Georgia state director of rural development for the USDA, whose remarks at an NAACP event were taken out of context. Though Vilsack later apologized and offered her another position, she declined. 

“To be honest with you, [the USDA] will continue to dismantle and be as dysfunctional as it relates to Blacks [under Trump], as was done under the Democrats — with the Clinton administration being the exception. And whereas Obama probably meant well, he gave us a secretary who was not very sensitive at all to Black issues,” Wright said.

These are a few of many reasons why Wright and others are relieved Vilsack won’t serve again.

Lawrence Lucas, a longtime advocate of Black farmers and president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, said he expects to see a “quick abundance of class actions” during the Trump administration filed against the USDA because of the failures of the current administration, such as the backlog of civil rights complaints that haven’t been addressed.

“I talked to farmers who are concerned about what’s going to happen next, and they are very pessimistic about the Trump administration helping them, but they’ve also been very disappointed with the Biden administration and the way they handle civil rights at USDA,” Lucas added. “It’s very shameful that much of the expectations we had going into a Biden administration has been very disappointing.”

Despite the criticism of Biden, he did a “decent job” of trying to get assistance to underserved farmers, which include Black folks who were locked out of resources during the Trump administration, said DeShawn Blanding, senior Washington representative for the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

Blanding pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s $2.2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program for distressed borrowers who experienced discrimination in USDA farm loan programs prior to 2021. Rather than implement the $4 billion debt relief, Congress approved this new initiative. About 43,000 farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners received funds from the DFAP in July. U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the vice president-elect, suggested in August the program is racist against white farmers. 

Farmer Dewayne Goldmon, also the senior adviser for racial equity to the Secretary of Agriculture, acknowledged the hardships farmers face today. The cost of production is exceeding revenue and because of input costs and lower commodity prices, it’s difficult to have cash flow, he said.

“You might have heard the expression when white farmers get a cold, Black farmers get pneumonia? Those who are struggling the most tend to be more deeply impacted,” he added. 

Goldmon emphasized the changes the Biden administration has made, ranging from supporting the Equity Commission and 1890 land grant institutions to shortening loan applications and removing bias from the lending process. The Department of Agriculture must continue to partner with community-based organizations and universities and build on the work of the previous administration to ensure equity, said Goldmon, who has been farming for 27 years.

“The situation that the Biden-Harris administration, that Secretary Vilsack inherited, didn’t come in one or 10 years,” he added. “When discrimination rears its legs ahead, then the discrimination suffered by previous generations has to be overcome by current and future generations, and that’s going to continue. Folks are just going to have to get accustomed to advocating to bring it forward — creative and effective solutions to deal with prior discrimination.”

How are Black farmers preparing for the future?

Some farmers told Capital B they are in need of emergency support now, and no matter who is in office, they still fear they won’t get the adequate support they need, said Charles Madlock, an urban farmer in New York. As a result, some may be forced to shut down their farms in the near future. 

So, what is the way forward?

Madlock, who started his journey in 2022, decided to turn from farming to advocacy when he learned about the challenges small farmers face to access resources and markets. Also, because he had a prior drug conviction, he was ineligible to receive any resources from USDA for up to five years.

The 40-year-old says he isn’t sure what policies will be passed or implemented under another Trump administration, but his focus is educating a new generation of Black farmers as well as Black communities.

“If they really want to recruit Black farmers … you can kill somebody and you still get funding. You can rob a bank and still get funding, but anything that’s associated with drugs, you can’t get federal funding. And funding is a barrier that will prevent Black people from becoming new farmers,” he said. “I could either try to become a farmer and take on farming full time, or I can try to educate my community and build more Black farmers because that’s kind of sort of really what we need within our community.”

Blanding and the Union of Concerned Scientists are “ready for a rapid response to keep this administration accountable and try and make it transparent about what they’re doing, and also holding Congress accountable to the policies that they put forward.”

“We’ve seen what a Trump 1.0 administration looks like. We’re cautious of what a 2.0 will look like … we’re trying to encourage Biden to institutionalize and preserve the work they’ve done … and that’s really our focus from now until January.”

The post Decades of USDA Racism Leave Black Farmers Fighting for Equality appeared first on Capital B News.

Apple and cherry trees in Southwest Virginia started blooming about three weeks ago — five months too early. 

Orchard owners have seen handfuls of autumn blossoms pop open in their fields in years past, but the consensus is that early blossoming is occurring more frequently due to increasingly warmer weather. Experts say this phenomenon is tied to climate change and are concerned for the future.

Last week, orchards in Cana were quiet and empty. The harvest was over, the workers had gone home. Carroll County farmers were taking a rest before the holidays, before pruning and planting would begin anew. 

The fields, though — they sat waiting, seemingly willing the season to go on. Though the calendar said mid-November, tall green grass was still growing between the trees. Immature, rosy-cheeked green apples still clung to summer-strong branches, and the trees were still covered in bright green canopies of healthy leaves. On and on this went … one row after another, one orchard after another.

There was a single row of apple trees, right next to a road. Though the orchard’s other trees were full and green, the trees in that row had begun to shed their leaves. The process was nowhere near finished, but through those bare spots, it became easier to see that these particular trees were doing something new: They were sending up crisp green growth. 

The cherry trees at Ayers Orchard were mostly bare, but just a week or so prior, they had been hanging full of blossoms, according to packhouse operator Phyllis Allan, whose brother owns the orchard. She was readying things for the winter; that Saturday was the last market day until spring.

The packhouse sits on the edge of a hill. Just beneath the parking area, the cherry trees’ skeletal limbs waved their last bouquets of wilted blossoms. Swollen bulbs predicted that more blooms would be on the way, if a frost didn’t kill the buds first. Lower branches sported fresh greenery. The trees were readying themselves for spring.

These trees should have been preparing for their own winter’s nap, a period of dormancy in which cold-weather acclimated fruit trees stop growing.

“I’m not worried, yet,” said Ricky Berrier, a sixth-generation farmer who operates his family’s 171-year-old apple orchard in Carroll County. “Even 20 years ago, I would see a limb blooming this time of year,” he said, explaining that sometimes weaker trees get a little confused.

If the heat continues or blooms show up in even more apple trees, that’s a different story. 

A couple of weeks ago, Bethany Schaepler’s wife, Cortney, was mowing Hill’s Orchard when she noticed blossoms here and there on the trees. 

Schaepler’s father-in-law, Willie Hill, said he’d seen a few blossoms, too. But he had spoken with friends and neighbors who were experiencing entire blocks of bloom. 

He ticked off the names of folks who have told him about premature blossoms over the last few weeks. Entire groups of Golden Delicious at one orchard just over the hill. Two rows of Pink Ladies had bloomed nearby, and another set of the same had broken open down in Wilkes County, North Carolina. 

“For a whole lot of them to bloom? I don’t know,” he said. 

When Tom McMullen has seen fall blossoms, they appear in clusters, he said — perhaps a dozen blooms per tree, not the thousands that people typically see in the spring. 

“It’s not like you’re driving by and seeing a gazillion flowers,” he said, adding that the premature blooms are certainly related to the weather. McMullen co-owns Tumbling Creek Cidery along with three others; he is also a botanist. 

‘Jack Frost is getting them’

Schaepler also attributed the out-of-season bloom to weather. 

“We’re still very warm. I mean, right now I’m in my car running air. It’s 72 degrees,” she said Monday.

The weather in that area was unseasonably warm for much of October and into the beginning of November. There were some cold days during that period, including a freeze for some, but it wasn’t enough to trigger the trees into dormancy, when the leaves would fall and the sap would no longer pump into the tree. 

This stage is critical because it protects the tree from cold weather damage. During winter freezes, fruit trees that are not dormant are at greater risk of structural damage, particularly if those trees are hanging full of blooms, said Kaden Kilgore, owner and operator of Appalachian Cider Co. in Scott County. That would impact the next year’s harvest.

These early November blooms will most certainly freeze; even if the bloom falls away, the parts of the flower that remain will be left to freeze.

“A cold spell comes in and hits those buds and kills them. Then you get some frost damage. You won’t have any apples on those buds. The blooms in the springtime — those buds won’t bloom then,” Kilgore said.

“Jack Frost is getting them regardless,” Kilgore said.

One bloom isn’t a problem. Neither is a dozen. A treeful? A row? A block? What is the point of tolerance?

Apple trees respond to changes in temperature in order to fall into the dormant state, according to Virginia Tech researcher Sherif Sherif, who studies ways to boost fruit tree production and mitigate frost damage at the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Winchester. 

December, February and March were all warmer than average last winter. McMullen attributes the blooms farmers are seeing now to that warmth. 

Every variety of apple tree needs a specific cumulative number of chill hours — hours spent below 45 degrees Fahrenheit — in order to produce fruit. Apple growers in this state tend to grow varieties that need between 800 and 1,100 chill hours. 

The calculations become increasingly complex depending on the precise temperature of the orchard’s location. Trees perform better at some temperatures than others, and everything really depends on the variety. 

Fruit trees that do not receive enough chill time during the winter months are adversely affected, according to research published in The Texas Horticulturist by Texas A&M researchers David Byrne and Terry Bacon. In conducting their research on peach trees, they found that insufficient chilling led to delayed foliation. When leaves appeared, they were only on the tips of the tree branches during the season following the affected year, and those branches appeared to be weakened.

As with the foliage, blooms were delayed in appearing following winters with insufficient chilling, the researchers found. At other times, the bloom season may have been extended, with blooms appearing throughout the autumn. When this occurred, the fruit failed to develop into full-sized fruit. 

Finally, the fruit quality itself was reduced, they wrote.

“It’s kind of like jet lag for a human. It can really mess you up, you don’t know what’s going on, right?” McMullen said.

Not getting enough chill hours does the same thing for a tree. As Berrier would say, “It confuses it.” 

“We still have a kind of winter that is cold enough to achieve the chilling requirement for most of our deciduous trees,” Sherif said. This includes apples and stone fruits.

“It is a concern for some southern states, like Georgia, Florida. With the warm winter, they might have some issue with achieving the chilling requirement, but not us,” Sherif said.

Sherif is more concerned that farmers will continue to follow their traditional pruning schedules without regard to the state of their trees. 

Farmers absolutely should not prune their fruit trees until they are positive that the trees are dormant, he said — and the trees currently are not dormant. Any Virginia farmer who is planning to prune their trees right now should wait, Sherif repeated adamantly.

Trees that are pruned before they are acclimated to the cold will have a greater risk of suffering extensive damage from a hard freeze or a hard frost. That alone would jeopardize future crops. 

While this may seem to be advice for novice gardeners, pruning an entire orchard is a big job, one that requires a team of employees and a couple of months’ time to complete. To prune Berrier Farms’ 20,000 trees, a team of eight must complete 400 trees a day. It takes about two months. 

Farmers hire crews of seasonal workers to help out. Once employees arrive on the farm, they must work 40 hours a week. A farm with no chores is dead in the water.

The impacts of Hurricane Helene

This is the second time in a matter of months that farmers have needed to realign their traditional farming calendars to align with Mother Nature.

At the end of September, the remnants of Hurricane Helene rushed through the state. Twenty-one Southwest Virginia counties reported suffering agricultural damages in the weeks following the storm, according to a report compiled by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

In Carroll County, a declared disaster area, Cana farmers found rows and rows full of fallen apples — the ground was so covered in fruit that you could hardly walk from one tree to the next. 

“It hampers your picking when everything’s on the ground,” Berrier said. 

Berrier left the apples to act as fertilizer for next year’s crop. Other farmers swept them into a pile, like the one at Ayers Orchard, where a massive hill of apples rots into compost. The heap smells like the strongest apple cider anyone will ever encounter.

Berrier had a block of Golden Delicious that he had half picked before the storm; that half totaled about 1,500 bushels. After the storm, his crews picked only 20 bushels from the remaining half of the block. A smaller harvest meant fewer days in the fields and fewer days in the packhouse. He kept his seasonal employees on as long as he could, he said. Still, the packhouse employees lost a couple of weeks of work at the end of the season.

According to Virginia Cooperative Extension data released Nov. 7, Southwest Virginia apple farmers suffered an estimated $836,175 in direct losses from Helene — the losses immediately attributable to the storm, a number that includes apples that could not be sold from wind-related fruit drop, damage and loss from power outages, said extension agent Ashley Edwards.

Farmers lost the apples that fell from their trees. They lost the ones that were banged around, bounced into each other and left too battered to be sold. They lost limbs; they lost entire trees.

Depending on which varieties they grow, Carroll County apple farmers lost 25% to 50% of their crop during the storm, Edwards said. Their direct losses totaled $617,000, or nearly 74% of the state’s total estimated direct losses to apple farmers.

Virginia Tech agricultural economist John Bovay found that Helene’s current estimable indirect effect on apple farmers is likely between $1.2 million and $2.8 million, in addition to more than $1.4 million attributable to direct losses and future losses.

On Tuesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin submitted a request to President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and Congressional appropriators for $4.4 billion in additional support for recovery efforts. The request includes $630 million to repair and rebuild agricultural producers.

‘It was just warm all along’

But still, the weather still won’t cooperate. The farmers seem to be taking it in stride, saying all will be well. The elders reassure the younger generation: This has all happened before. 

Bert Drake, emeritus scientist and plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, has been plant-watching for over 40 years. He pioneered a decades-long research project that sought to understand how plants react to temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations. 

He didn’t specifically study apple trees, instead focusing more generally on the nation’s crops and crops around the world. He wanted to know how the foods we rely on would react to rising carbon dioxide concentrations. It turns out, plants don’t mind higher carbon dioxide, he said. 

The problem comes when the concentration of the greenhouse gas causes the temperatures to climb, which is what he believes we are seeing now. Many crops that we depend on don’t do well when exposed to high heat for long periods of time, he said, referring to temperatures of about 90 degrees.

If those high temperatures eventually encroach too far into Southwest Virginia’s winter, then the apple trees will not meet their required chilling hours.

“Winter isn’t nearly as long. It’s shortened on both ends,” Drake said.

Early springs induce flowers blooming too early in the spring, thus becoming susceptible to frost, Sherif said. 

This is what Ayers Orchard encountered last year, said Phyllis Allan.

“It was just warm all along. We had one frost we thought would surely kill them, but it didn’t.” Allan said of the fruit trees.

“What’s hurting, is they’re blooming about a month or so early. In February, if the blooms start, you can forget about it,” she said. 

Once the danger of frost passed, the fruit all ripened earlier than expected, Allan said.  Cherries started early in May. Peaches came two to three weeks early, in June. Then apples continued that trend on through, starting on the backs of the peaches. 

Drake sees environmental trends such as irregular tree blossoms as key indicators of what a region’s climate may look like not so many years into the future. 

“We can only see [changes] in retrospect because it’s been so slow. When we see the trends, it’s very clear now that things have changed a great deal,” he said.

According to the 2022 State Climate Summary released by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Virginia’s temperatures have increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century. 

While the state climate summary report recognizes that temperatures in the more mountainous regions tend to be cooler than other parts of the state, data from the U.S. Climate Divisional Database shows that the average minimum temperature in Carroll County is on an upward trajectory.

“Everything has moved north, and it’s moving north in a fairly regular fashion. During the American Revolution, the climate of Richmond, Virginia, was similar to present-day Toronto,” Drake said.

“One of the things we clearly showed with our study was that the increase in crop productivity, or in the growth of plants, is overwhelmed by increases in temperature.

“If I was a farmer, my whole existence depended upon growing apples, I would take that as a warning that that future is not to be had. Doesn’t have a good outlook for me,” Drake said.

Cardinal News weather journalist Kevin Myatt contributed information to this story.

The post As apple and cherry trees burst with blooms months ahead of schedule, climate experts sound a warning appeared first on Cardinal News.

Dozens of residents packed into a room at the Christiansburg Library on Thursday for a meeting on the effects of Hurricane Helene-related flooding on the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. 

As the evening wore on, some became frustrated with what they were hearing: Toxic chemicals had washed from the plant into the New River, and this was the first they’d learned of it, six weeks after it happened. 

“This isn’t how you inform the public,” Georgia Doremus said, interrupting a U.S. Army representative.

Her words were directed at a handful of representatives from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant; BAE Systems, a government contractor that operates the plant; and various environmental agencies, who sat at the front of a room that had been filled with a few dozen members of the community. It was the first time the group had addressed the public directly after the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated the region with widespread flooding and wind damage in late September. 

Floodwaters ripped open the doors of a warehouse at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant — known locally as the arsenal — and swept 13 containers filled with toxic material into the New River in a 31-foot storm surge. Tens of thousands of pounds of wastewater used to create munitions at the plant was said to have been released into the river. 

“I’m furious,” Doremus told the panel earlier that evening. “I can’t believe it took you a month to tell the community about this.”

What was in those containers, and why are residents concerned?

Each of the 13 tanks contained 275 gallons of dibutyl phthalate, a clear, oily liquid used to make rocket fuel. The National Toxicity Program’s Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction has said it’s an endocrine disruptor, connected to decreased fertility as well as liver and kidney toxicity. It’s been deemed hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency.

As of Monday, four containers, also called totes, had been located, two of which were damaged and had released their contents. 

That means there could be 3,025 gallons of DBP waiting to be found along the river, either sealed safely in the barrels or potentially free-flowing in the waterway or on the bank.

Carla Givens, environmental director with BAE Systems, said the floodwaters washed wastewater containing calcium sulfate back out with it — 127,500 pounds of water that had not yet been deemed safe to be discharged into the river. She also said there’s a possibility that up to 700 gallons of diesel fuel were released from tractors and emergency generators that were submerged in the flood. 

Three chemicals were released in the late-September flood: petroleum, calcium sulfate and dibutyl phthalate. The dibutyl phthalate is expected to sink to the bottom of the river, which means bottom-dwelling aquatic animals are most likely to be affected by its presence in the river, Givens said. 

Calcium sulfate can cause irritation to eyes, skin and the upper respiratory system, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Residents said they were not notified of the incident until Thursday evening’s community meeting, one of a few held by RAAP on an irregular schedule each year.

“While they were touting their community service functions, they ignored repeated calls to inform the community of their functions and failures,” said Alan Moore, a resident who attended the meeting. “To me, it was another infuriating meeting with a government facility that shows no regard for the community they’ve operated in for over 80 years.” 

The facility was fined by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality a number of times, including in 2024, 2023 and twice in 2012 for releasing “excessive levels of toxins” into the New River. The Radford plant was reported to be the facility that released the highest amount of toxic chemicals into the air, water and land in 2022, according to a report released by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in 2024.

Community members speak out

Sarah McGee, who lives one house away from the river, said she learned of the missing totes “by chance” at that Thursday community meeting. 

At the meeting, she asked whether it’s safe for her grandkids to play in the river. She said she didn’t receive a direct answer.

“I want us to be safe,” McGee said. “I love that river, and our family has a deep appreciation for that environment.”

At Thursday’s meeting, Givens said that the situation was reported to Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality, as required by law.

Irina Calos with the DEQ said residents are advised to avoid floodwaters and flooded areas. She said the DEQ has not implemented any special water quality monitoring associated with the impacts of Hurricane Helene. 

“Any contamination that has been released from the totes has long washed down the river, such that we do not expect any long-term negative impacts to water quality,” she said in an email. 

As far as notifying the community goes, Calos said state law requires DEQ to share information “when the Virginia Department of Health determines that the discharge may be detrimental to the public health or the Department determines that the discharge may impair beneficial uses of state waters.” 

When nature overwhelms planning

Givens said during the meeting that though some precautions had been taken prior to the storm, the 13 chemical barrels left in the warehouse were “predicted to be not impacted substantially.” They were later submerged in the storm surge. 

She said requirements to notify emergency agencies of the chemical release were executed during flooding, and there is “no reason to believe public health was jeopardized.”

Givens said BAE has contracted with drone companies to fly over the site, as well as helicopters and vehicles to search all the way to West Virginia for the missing barrels. She said that so far, they’ve seen no typical indicators of environmental impact: no fish killed or decrease in vegetation along the river.

That didn’t fly with community members during Thursday’s meeting. 

Kellie Ferguson, a mother of five and member of the group Citizens for Arsenal Accountability group, said questions posed to the panel during Thursday’s meeting about potential health and environmental hazards were left unanswered. She said the CAA group will meet later this week to debrief after finding out about the missing totes.

“They continually downplayed the situation,” she said. “Community members came to the meeting looking for answers and only left with more questions and confusion.”

The post Ammunition plant didn’t notify the public of toxic chemicals released into the New River for over a month, residents say appeared first on Cardinal News.

Meadow Creek Dairy, located in Southwest Virginia where the edge of Grayson County and the city of Galax meet, has been laboring quietly to turn out the perfect artisanal cheeses for 25 years.

Locally, they’re not a flamboyant presence; no cheese festivals, no public tours of the facility, no gift shop where you can buy cute ceramic cows and cheese gift baskets, or cafe with pricey gourmet melts. It’s family-run, small, and they tend to business competently and with minimal fuss. 

They have, however, won a long list of awards, which last year included a Super Gold designation at the 35th annual World Cheese Awards in Trondheim, Norway, one of 100 such designations.

Only one out of 100 doesn’t sound stunning, until you realize they went up against 4,502 cheeses from 43 countries. Their winning entry was the Appalachian cheese, the first they ever made, with its white outer penicillium mold and mild, buttery flavor. 

Thanks to the Feete family and their employees, you’ll never be able to look at individually wrapped supermarket “cheese food” slices the same way again. 

The farm is at the end of an unpaved driveway and isn’t picturesque so much as utilitarian (though inside, it’s pleasantly full of natural light). Depending on when you pull up, it’s quiet, the cows out to pasture and the Feetes and their interns and employees attending to business in the office, the shipping area, the cheese room or the caves. 

Kat, daughter of the owners and founders, shows up to lead the way. Mild-mannered and friendly but not given to superlatives or gushing, she’s the one who OK’d a visit and is willing to explain things with teacherly patience. 

Through a series of seemingly alchemical processes — that aren’t magical at all, but measurable by basic science — milk is turned into cheese here. The kind of patience required for this transformation seems to mark everyone at Meadow Creek with a gentle good nature and a quiet sense of humor. 

Nobody’s lazy, but everyone’s relaxed. There’s no making things go faster, or at least not without compromising quality. And if at the end there’s a bad batch of product, no tantrum will undo the damage. Thus, everyone conveys through their attitudes, there’s no reason to get upset. 

You need that patience and endurance to be a cheesemaker: patience to wait out the process of turning curds into wheels and wedges, and endurance to withstand the almighty stink of the process.

Helen and Rick Feete, Kat’s parents, came to the area from Northern Virginia and Maryland; in their lives before Meadow Creek, she was an office worker and he was a carpenter. 

They decided to build their venture in Grayson County back in 1987, since land prices were good and they liked the local music. “My father’s thing is,” said Kat, “we bring in the New York dollars, but we spend them in Galax.”

She and her brother, Jim, were raised locally, but traveled across the world for cheese shows. Both now married, their lives still vacillate between international dairy events and the bucolic routines of the farm. 

The cows are milked outdoors, New-Zealand style, and driven to whichever meadow is to be their feed for the day; Meadow Creek practices rotational grazing, which means they mostly snack on a part of pasture for a few hours, then get milked and turned out to another bit of pasture. Their grassy diet is supplemented with some grain. 

To travel between most areas indoors at Meadow Creek requires a pair of Wellingtons and stepping into and out of shallow trays of “quat” (quaternary ammonia), to kill off any invasive bacteria that could enter from without and ruin the cheese. (For similar reasons, almost everyone wears head wraps to keep hair out of the way.)

Kat heads for the nearby cheese room, which is where the cooking, aka the first part of the alchemy, takes place. Raw milk stored in nearby tanks is pumped into one or both of the large steel Dutch vats via overhead pipes, she explains. The procedure is a little different for each of the cheeses, but generally, it’s warmed in the vats and starter bacteria is added.

Then rennet, a coagulant, is also added and the mixture is cooked in the vats. Then it’s drained, pressed to get rid of further whey, cut according to the type of cheese being made, put into hoops or forms and drained and pressed again. This continues with occasional flipping to even out the texture, depending on the type of cheese.

The next day it’s brined, then allowed to dry for a day, then moved to the cellar.

The cheese room’s temperature is maintained at a mild, humid 70 degrees Fahrenheit or so, by dint of fans and vents whose airflow keeps condensation from forming and possibly dripping onto the proceedings below. You’d think with raw dairy products, the space would smell, but it’s just faintly milky in a wholesome sort of way.

(It’s worth noting here that Meadow Creek has to date always passed rigorous inspection from both the USDA — which is over the farm — and the FDA — which is over the dairy.)

The vats, whose outsides are encased in a carefully temperature-controlled “water jacket,” sit at the far end of the room. A series of long, rotating blades revolve slowly through them, stirring the current mixture of milk and starter and rennet, which is curding up. 

The dairy employs young people from an internship program based out of Ohio State University; most though not all are from Central America. They start their education in their home countries and spend a year at Meadow Creek on a student visa, learning hands-on, then take the knowledge back with them. 

Two of them, Ana Arguello and James Longanecker, are now working the cheese room, cleaning up, getting ready for the curds to be moved from the vats to a container that looks like a long sink, but is properly called a drain vat, via a flexible hose. Once begun, the process takes a few minutes.

Once they’ve been moved, they stir the curds by hand with an oarlike paddle, separating them from the whey, which is drained from the vat and into buckets. Fresh, artisanal cheese curds, if you were wondering, look like a combination of a separated cream sauce, cottage cheese and foam insulation.

More work has to be done to push as much whey from the curds as possible. While they’re still in the drain vat, flat metal plates are placed on top of them. The plates are themselves topped with the heavy, whey-filled buckets. Using the weight of whey to extract more whey is both ingenious and somehow humorous. 

Plastic hoops and muslin cloths are readied; the curds are cut into portions, packed into the hoops, wrapped in the cloths and stacked in a hydraulic cheese press to further rid them of liquid. The labor of this, which even after hundreds of years relies heavily on the use of human effort and wits, underscores the concept of “artisanal” in a way that all the talk in the world cannot. 

Everything being done partakes of a long tradition — the gentle good humor of everyone involved, the faint watery swish of whey, the stacked wheels of what will develop into cheese. The cheesemaking could be happening today or five hundred years ago, in Grayson County or across the ocean in a land whose borders have long since shifted.

It’s almost enough to make you ask if you could join the farm and become an intern, calmly stirring the curds yourself, awash in the diffuse light and camaraderie.

This fantasy comes to a screeching halt when the work before you is done and Kat leads you to the “caves,” also called cellars, which are underground, industrially kept rooms where the cheese ages, routinely getting flipped to keep its texture consistent. 

Ammonia reams your nostrils out like a blade. The smell grips you and will not let go until you flee upstairs again. If being spiteful on purpose had a smell, it would be the odor of handmade cheese ripening. 

The cheese started upstairs gets washed in a morge (pronounced “morj”) of water, salt and bacteria that creates a rind. Or the Grayson and Mountaineer cheeses do; the Appalachian gets sprayed with penicillium mold on the outside, which develops into a white fuzz. People with penicillin allergies can usually eat it — Kat’s husband, who has the allergy, can — but they don’t recommend it.

“It’s the penicillin rind,” said Kat of the smell, “it’s producing the ammonia. It’s obnoxious, and we’re doing the best we can, but it’s just a natural byproduct.”

She continued, “It’s older, it’s getting aged about eight months or more. That’s why the rind looks all raggedy and shaggy.” (It does, far more than it does when you buy it out in the world.) “They’ve basically grown a second layer of penicillin on top of the penicillin at this point. We just let it age until we wrap it. The penicillin stays. Isn’t the kind you would be allergic to, it’s a different variety. It also will not cure you of your infections!” she laughs.

The Grayson is aged for about 60 days, the big rounds of Appalachian for 90, and the Mountaineer for six months, because it’s bigger, 14 or 15 pounds, as opposed to the others’ square-wheeled weights, at about seven to eight pounds. 

The caves are named for the Marx Brothers, by the way; Harpo has mostly Grayson, Groucho mostly Appalachian. “We’re making the most Appalahcian right now, so Groucho fills up,” said Kat. 

The caves are full of uniform cheeses that please the eye (if not always the nose) and promise a future full of deliciousness. Odd to think how ephemeral the whole of this is, but it is, which was proven by a global disaster.

“It’s a little precarious, you know, especially for smaller cheesemakers,” said Kat of the business in general. “But we had the restaurant market.”

Then, of course, 2020 rolled around and COVID struck.

“It was April when I saw the real nosedive,” said Kat. “We lost 97% of our business that month.”

They managed to recover to a degree; by the end of the next month it was up to 50%. “People were starting to pick up, the grocery stores were figuring out what they could do,” she said. “We were at 30% total [business loss] by the end of the year, and that’s not nothing.”

Most of the cheesemaking community took a hit. 

“And we were one of the lucky cheesemakers, because our cheeses are aged,” said Kat. Aged cheeses meant that possibly by the time some were ready, the worst of the pandemic might be over — though for Meadow Creek, that only got them so far.

“I did end up throwing out inventory,” Kat said. “But if you were making fresh cheeses, which especially a lot of the smaller cheesemakers do, and the ones making goat cheeses, it was a loss. You can only keep it for about 30 days. You have that one month to try and recover and sell stuff out. A lot of people took a hard hit.”

Meadow Creek Dairy spent 2020 dumping good milk, because nothing could be done with it, and cows, whether their product is going to market or into the ground, need to be milked daily; it’s what they’re bred for. 

Additionally, small farms didn’t qualify for government assistance. “There were programs in place, but they only applied to people who were selling into the commodity markets,” said Kat. “If you weren’t, you didn’t get any government money for the milk you dumped.” 

Commodity specifically refers to selling the milk as it is into the market where it’ll be turned into a product sold by a larger company. “It has to move into the corporate structure, basically,” like selling it to a Kraft factory, she said. Smaller farmstead and artisanal venues like Meadow Creek Dairy, who operate independently from these systems, got none of those financial protections. 

“So it was a hard year for us to get through, but we’re a little older and we have a little more of a money cushion,” Kat said. “And we were able to salvage a lot of our cheese because we are longer-aged.”

The crunch meant several cheesemakers went under.

“We lost people,” she said. “There weren’t a ton of people around for cheesemaking in Virginia. The South, there’s not a ton of cheesemakers and then, you know, Virginia’s got some tight regulations — that’s fine, we’ve always been able to work with them. But it’s a hard business to get into. Rick [Feete, her father] says when my parents moved here in ‘88, there were 80 or 90 dairies in Grayson County, and now there’s three. We’re one of them.”

And lately, they had to dump five days’ worth of milk — raw dairy being especially dangerous to leave sitting around — due to Hurricane Helene, but thankfully their generator was running and kept 50,000 pounds of existing cheese at the correct conditions.

“We didn’t have any major infrastructure damage that would set us back, either,” said Kat. “It was no fun, but in the end, for us, it was a blip.” Many farms and individuals in Grayson weren’t so lucky; she expressed gratitude to have been spared the worst of it.

Their herd came through it as well. They have a closed herd, meaning it’s comprised only of cows they’ve raised, of which there are 135, New Zealand Frisian-Jersey hybrids. 

“We call them ‘the French girls,’” she explained. “It contracted a little in 2020, that big ol’ chasm in everybody’s lives. We did have to sell off some of the herd, and we’re working on building it back to about 150 over the next two years.”

In order to live out here and spend your days making cheese, you have to find such things absorbing, and not everybody’s cut out for it, as some interns have found.

“We’ve had two people, one from Houston, the other guy was from New Jersey,” recalled Kat, “and it’s funny; both of them were like ‘We’re so excited to be out of the city!’ and both of them after they got here a few months said, ‘This is awful.’” She laughed. 

“I like it, but you’re gonna have to accept there’s no night clubs. There’s three restaurants. I’m a homebody. For people like us, it’s like ‘Yes! This is my happy place!’ but if you’re used to a more social life, it’s hard.”

What to console yourself with if you discover that farm life isn’t what you hoped for? Well, obviously, there’s always cheese.

Cheese Sex Death, the Instagram account you didn’t know you needed if you’re a cheese-intensive foodie, ran a picture over five years ago of a be-ringed, long-nailed female hand holding a thick, inviting wedge of pale yellow cheese, appealingly riddled with small holes and encased in a light orange-ish rind. 

Captioned, “How do you pair a cheese that smells like feet, feels like custard, tastes like beef, and has a rind that crunches like it’s coated with sugar? Grayson from @meadowcreekdairy,” the entry was more than enough to make you want to roll right out to the nearest cheese purveyor and bite into a piece of said stuff as if into an especially juicy burger. 

Back in the office, Kat brings out a tray of cheeses for tasting: extra-aged Appalachian, Galax and, yes, thank heavens, Grayson. As she points out, Appalachian is somewhat like Tomme de Savoie or Toma Piemontese; Grayson looks like Taleggio (and is often displayed alongside it in cheese cases); and Galax is described as a soft, mild cheese, sort of like an Edam or Havarti.

Grayson is aged 60 days, Appalachian for 90 days, Mountaineer (not in today’s roster) for six months and Galax for at least two. 

Everyone’s favorite, or at least the one you hear the most about, is the Grayson, the one “Cheese Sex Death” took a shine to. 

It’s far and away the most pungent, remarkable in a lineup already so strong. Galax’s Chapters Book Shop, which carries a range of delicacies in their food and wine section, keeps the Grayson in a separate small refrigerator. If it’s opened, everyone in that half of the store immediately knows. If it’s left open, everyone in the other half knows as well. 

Grayson is the stinky cheese lover’s dream come true, and, if you can get past the olfactory assault, like eating the world’s most unctuous fudge, but made of beef, almost steak-like in its fatty density. Take one bite and your entire sensorium is occupied with the experience. 

As Kat points out, its flavor, like that of all Meadow Creek’s cheeses, changes with the seasons, because the cows graze rotationally in the farm’s pastures and the quality of the grasses they eat change as well. It’s a neat example of the French concept of terroir, how the conditions and season and territory a foodstuff is produced in affect its flavor and quality. 

“They produce lots of milk after calving in March, so there’s tons of it, but it’s not necessarily as rich,” she said. “And then in fall, you’ve got this ridiculously dense milk. And that’s partly because of the stage of lactation and partly because the grass is drier and denser. And so the cheese, too, is fattier and richer.”

She continued, “In the case of Grayson it’s most notable. In the summer it’s pretty light, actually, and very smooth-textured and with some mushroomy flavors, but by fall it’s very earthy and much more rich in a way people associate with washed rind cheeses.”

Following its flavor from spring to fall is like drowsing in a meadow, casually taking note of how the light and shadows change as the sun moves slowly from one side of the sky to the other. Each shift affects the experience, never quite the same from moment to moment. If wine is bottled history, cheese, with its shorter lifespan, is an edible memory from a private, blissful season.

“Here’s a young Grayson,” Kat said, pointing to a small piece. “It’s not going to be too crazy on you. This is the spring Grayson. It’s not even all that smelly. It stays pretty calm this time of year. It’s a little earthy.”

You can tell what it’s going to turn into, if you’ve had a Grayson that’s further on in the season; it’s like a very light Morbier or a very young Forme d’Ambert. 

Kat nodded. “You have that edge of earthiness and that texture.”

The inside of the cheeses variously have eyes and crystals; eyes are little openings, like the holes in Swiss cheese and are caused by bacteria, and crystals are made up of either tyrosine or calcium lactate (you might forget to ask which is which as you’re moaning around a mouthful of artisanal dairy product). 

And, counterintuitively, the pandemic gave them the impetus to create new products.

“In 2021, because we had some spare milk and we were struggling to figure out where things were going to go, we tried two new cheeses,” said Kat. These turned out to be Mountain Laurel and Galax. However, Mountain Laurel, with an 18-month aging process, is a “sideline” as she puts it, so much so that by now it doesn’t appear regularly on the website. 

“Mountain Laurel probably isn’t going to expand that much at this point because it’s an 18-month cheese and it takes a really long time,” she said. “When you find out 18 months later what you did wrong — it’s hard.” (By now it seems to have permanently disappeared.)

Galax has entered the regular roster, though, and it’s proven to be a winner, with some up-front fussiness that can be left alone once it’s in the cellar. It’s sort of a Gouda analog, but less sweet. 

“It’s done really well,” Kat said. “It’s a washed-curd style, with a mixed rind, so there’s a lot of skill that goes into it from a cheesemaking end, but once it goes into the cellars, it just kind of rides.”

Galax is a good cheese for someone who’s intimidated by (or grossed out by the potential funkiness of) artisanal cheeses. “It’s very smooth, it’s very mild, it’s very approachable,” she said. “It’s just a great cooking cheese, and we have a lot of fun with it. So we’re happy.”

On average, local family tables are more apt to have grocery-store American cheddar than gourmet cheeses, but that doesn’t mean Meadow Creek never puts in an appearance: “It’s been selling well locally,” noted Kat. “People like having a cheese that’s named after the city, and we did want to honor Galax.”

She adds, “You know, this has always been a good town for us, and we’ve always had a lot of support here. We were trying to keep the price down on it, because our other cheeses, the prices have just inescapably climbed between labor and the feed in the dairy. Grain, grass, hay for winter — everything just goes up and up. We tried to keep the price of Galax low so we have something that’s approachable for folks.”

The Appalachian is a sort of happy medium between the assertive pungence of Grayson and the agreeable mildness of Galax. It’s a slow-change artist in terms of flavor. Regular Appalachian is buttery and somehow manages to integrate a citrusy brightness (more so when young) to a dark, mushroomy note (more so when older). 

“Until we did Galax, Appalachian was our most approachable cheese,” Kat observed.

Extra-aged Appalachian is a deeper, more concentrated version of the same, like the difference between reading an accomplished author’s early work versus a later opus — an odd way to describe a dairy product, but absolutely apt while you’re tasting it. It has a bready sort of smell and could be described as if Parmesan was a soft cheese.

“This is what Murray’s picked up, and what the cheese crowd really wants to taste,” said Kat. “And it’s almost at the edge of having crystals. You taste that, how there’s almost a crunch? So in certain ways the texture isn’t as appealing, but that kind of crunch is considered a big plus mark in the cheese world.”

Back in the day, they sold locally and then on the East Coast alone. Now they’ve been picked up by distributor Murray’s Cheese, based out of New York, so they have a wider range. Their cheeses pop up to favorable reception all the way out in the West Coast. The cheese section of your nearest Kroger, which is stocked partly by Murray’s, will often have a Meadow Creek Dairy product or two in stock. Wegman’s carried a few, such as Appalachian, before the pandemic. 

However, they still wrap and ship cheeses from here and stepped up in 2020, doing a steady retail business. “It’s only a chunk of our income but it’s nice. We can sell directly to people and have a direct connection,” she said. 

There’s a little more time to sit and savor the cheeses and conversation — a consummate pleasure afforded everyone here almost every day. “I frequently have a piece of cheese with fruit and milk for dinner, because I’m lazy,” Kat smiled. Her husband and 12-year-old daughter frequently do the same.

It’s this very pleasure that’s ultimately the point of the work. Kat dislikes most commercial American cheeses; they don’t taste good to her, and seem to be more about getting certain standard elements of nutrition into a diet than anything else. 

“We use [our cheese] all the time in the kitchen,” she said. “We do a staff lunch, so we do a cooked old-school dinner in the middle of the day, a full farmhouse meal, and we use the cheese constantly there.”

The other standard American belief, that too much fatty dairy in your diet, doesn’t seem to hold here. Everyone looks naturally robust, healthy, glowing. Artisanal cheese must be very good for the mind, as well, because everyone also seems very happy. Is that the case?

Kat’s only answer is to laugh, popping another savory, unctuous morsel of cheese in her mouth. 

Meadow Creek Dairy is located in Galax and does not offer tours or an on-site store, but their cheeses are available through direct mail purchase and via retail, including grocery stores that carry foods through Murray’s Cheese. They are on Facebook at www.facebook.com/meadowcreekdairy and can be found on the web at www.meadowcreekdairy.com/.

The post Meadow Creek Dairy puts Grayson County on the artisanal cheese map appeared first on Cardinal News.

Voters in Pulaski and Tazewell counties have received election-related text messages on the eve of the Nov. 5 election that could be a part of a spam campaign or a potential phishing scam. 

The messages appear to follow a similar pattern. They suggest that votes cast early have not been counted or say that the recipient is marked as not voted yet, when in fact they have. 

They say something to the effect of, “According to our records, you DID NOT vote early. Tomorrow is election day. Can the future of America count on you to vote? 13 hours. 780 minutes. That’s how much time you have tomorrow to save our country. See you at the polls.”

Other messages have directed voters to click on a link where they might be prompted to provide personal information or the political preferences. 

In many cases, voters who have cast their ballot early have received these types of messages, prompting many to either respond to the message or to call into their local registrars office to check the status of their ballot. 

What’s the deal? 

“These messages rely on three things:  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.  By using these tactics, the message senders cause alarm, and the recipients of these messages often click the website address included in the message,” Leann Phillips, the registrar for Pulaski County, said. “The reality is that the senders do not have access to voter registration or voter activity information.”

Her office became aware of the spam campaign or phishing scam after a number of voters called in to check on the status of their ballot. Phillips said she is unsure where the text message campaign originated or how the telephone numbers for message recipients were gathered. 

“It seems like the scammers try to take every avenue that they can to try to get people’s information and we don’t want voters to be affected by that,” she said. 

Brian Earls, registrar in Tazewell County confirmed that at least one voter had called his office to ask about the status of their ballot after they had received a text message that said “We see that you have not voted early.” The message encouraged the voter, who had indeed already cast their ballot, to vote in-person on election day. 

What should voters do if they receive similar messages? 

The Pulaski County Registrar’s Office suggests that people do the following if one of these messages is received:

1. Delete the message. Do not respond. Use the option to “report as junk” if available.
2. Recipients of the messages may also choose to block the number from which the message was sent. 
3. If voters are concerned about their registration status, they can double check their registration at visit the Virginia Department of Elections website at: https://vote.elections.virginia.gov/VoterInformation

Voters are welcome to call into their county registrar’s office if they want to confirm that their ballot was received if they voted early or absentee, or they can go online to the Virginia Department of Elections website under the citizen portal and check their voter history to make sure that the 2024 election shows up. 

The post Election-related spam text messages deployed on election eve in Southwest Virginia  appeared first on Cardinal News.

Get a sneak peak of what our election night page will look like. Bookmark it now and get ready to watch the results roll in on election night.

Members of the Roanoke College swim team appeared on stage at a rally in support of former President Donald Trump in Salem on Saturday, reviving a controversy that gripped the sport and the college over a year ago. 

In a move that surprised many, Trump invited members of the swim team to the stage after he brought up a 2023 controversy that arose on the campus after a trans woman athlete who formerly swam on the men’s team requested to join the women’s swim team. The seven team members on the stage on Saturday wore pink shirts that read “Keep [image of a hotdog] out of women’s sports.”

“We know that men have an inherent advantage over women in sports and due to current policies, men are competing against women of all ages in all sports,” Lily Mullens, the team captain, told the crowd.

Mullens, an Ohio native and senior at the college, called the presence of trans women in competitive sports “anti-women” and “sex-based discrimination.” Mullens, a co-captain at the time, was at the center of the 2023 controversy. 

Roughly 34 college athletes out of more than 500,000 identified as transgender in 2023, according to the ACLU of Ohio. 

The controversy and the college’s response to Saturday’s rally

The trans woman’s request to join the Roanoke College women’s swim team in 2023 led to almost-daily meetings between both the women’s and men’s teams, swim staff and school administration, as well as the trans athlete, who has not been publicly named. 

One of those meetings included members of both squads who voted in an online poll on whether the trans woman swimmer should be allowed to compete, while the athlete was in the room, according to team co-captain Kate Pearson. 

In the end, the trans woman withdrew her request to swim on the women’s team.

Frank Shushok, president of Roanoke College, released a statement Saturday evening that said the administration was unaware of the team members’ participation at Saturday’s rally. What they shared on stage, he said, represents only their individual points of view.

Shushok said that the team members exercised their right to free speech and noted that Roanoke College students, including those with diverse political perspectives and those with LGBTQ+ identities, are gifts to the college community and are deeply valued.

“In this moment, we can turn against each other and ignite division, thereby adding to the bounty of suffering already too prevalent in our world. However, in my time at Roanoke College, I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen repeatedly: People who take the road less traveled and aspire to the highest virtues of love, humility, respect and kindness,” he said. “This is who we are at Roanoke College, and this is why, as an affiliated member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), we are rooted and open.”

Besides the presidential candidates, we have more than 500 local candidates seeking office across Southwest and Southside. See who they are and where some of them stand in our Voter Guide.

The post Roanoke College women’s swim team members take the stage at Trump rally, reignite past controversy appeared first on Cardinal News.

Local collector Dr. Mervyn King isn’t quite sure how his vampire killing kit crossed the Atlantic. He is certain that it is among the most interesting pieces in his collection of antiquities. 

“This kit is very, very old,” King said, later speculating that it could sell at auction for several thousands. This is in contrast to other kits, believed to have been constructed in the 1970s using older materials.

King, who traded a gun for the kit 30 years ago, says his is the real deal.

“They [jokingly] called it a Civil War doctor’s kit,” King said.

At first glance, the kit wouldn’t look out of place in a church — a wooden box decorated with an ornate crucifix. King made an effort to preserve the kit, which he says dates back to around 1900.

This would put it decades after literary works like Carmilla that reintroduced the very old concept of the blood-sucking ghoul and only three years into the juggernaut success of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece. 

Vampires, particularly in Europe, were on the brain. 

King said that at the time Europeans believed the vampiric population was burgeoning. Many of these cases derived from reports of exhumed bodies or other unusual occurrences, while others were based on rumors.

Across the pond, the 1854 incident in Jewett City, Connecticut, and the Rhode Island Mercy Brown incident of 1892, in which the living exhumed the bodies of suspected vampires, only fueled the panic stateside. 

Likening the phenomenon to the witch trials of New England, King said it doesn’t matter if you personally believe in the supernatural if enough people do. King described a period in which the public’s belief in vampires was fueled by a lack of education and unique if occasional violent crimes that echoed themes associated with vampirism.

The vampire hunting kits were not supplementary collectibles but practical tools that could kill the living and undead alike. 

Inside the vampire kit

The kit is separated into two sections by a false bottom. Above the false bottom are items less associated with the paranormal: knives, a crucifix, a small pistol and a tool for reloading. Underneath, though, a different set of items lies hidden. King handled them like Van Helsing showing off the tools of this trade. 

He placed the small bottle of what could have once held holy water gently on the table. 

Next to it, a mirror to tell the living from the dead. 

Last were the sharpened wooden crosses that doubled as stakes.

Each item represents a piece of vampiric lore. The knives, for example, while not made of silver, were branded with small crucifixes. This, according to King, is an important detail. In lieu of silver, branding a weapon with a crucifix was believed to negatively affect vampires far more so than ordinary knives. 

King said the kit’s ammunition is made of silver. Perhaps the craftsmen behind the kit were hedging their bets because each pistol pellet is also engraved with a cross. 

King said that education and the spread of literacy are largely to blame for the end of vampire panic. The mystique of the vampire as a pop culture figure remains.

King said there are a number of things that can’t necessarily be explained but are still impactful. The continued popularity of vampires in pop culture speaks to the hold this figure has on the public and why things like vampire hunting kits can exist. 

“People are prone to their vivid imaginations,” King said.

King’s vampire hunting kit is a testament to that. 

The post Did Martinsville become the final resting place for a century-old vampire hunting kit? appeared first on Cardinal News.

You can see where the candidates stand in our Voter Guide.

Tens of millions of dollars are flowing into the coffers of Virginia candidates seeking federal office.

Much of that money is going to support the U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine and his challenger, Republican Hung Cao, along with the state’s two hotly competitive Congressional races in the 2nd and 7th Congressional Districts. 

Candidates in the 6th and 9th Congressional Districts received about $2 million between the two Republicans and two Democrats, with the incumbents claiming the lion’s share. Democratic candidate Gloria Witt outraised her Republican opponent, state Sen. John McGuire, in the ruby-red 5th Congressional District by about $20,000 in the October quarter. McGuire’s campaign attributed his lackluster fundraising to the primary recount, which took about 6 weeks to complete. 

About $26.2 million was raised between Kaine and Cao, with Kaine claiming most of that money. Of the tens of millions raised, about $19.6 million was spent, according to reports released by the FEC in October. 

Of the money spent by the U.S. Senate candidates, about $3.7 million had been spent in ad buys. Of that, $391,999 was spent on ads in support of Cao, and $3.3 million was spent on ads in support of Kaine, according to data compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. 

Where is the money in the U.S. Senate, 6th and 9th District elections coming from?

That answer is difficult to find.

Campaigns are required to break down the contributions they receive into quarterly reports to the FEC. Those reports often include five categories: total contributions, transfers from other authorized committees, total loans received, offsets to operating expenditures, and other receipts. 

The “total contributions” category includes four subcategories:

• Total individual contributions: This could be money donated from voters, for example.
• Party committee contributions: This could be contributions from other politicians or political parties.
• Other committee contributions: This could be contributions from PACs connected to businesses or labor organizations.
• Candidate contributions: Money paid by the candidate to support their own bid for office.

Total individual contributions to a campaign then breaks into two more subcategories: itemized contributions and unitemized contributions. Campaigns are not required to itemize individual contributions that are less than $200, which can make tracking where that money is coming from more difficult. Platforms that funnel money from donors to the candidate of their choice — like WinRed or ActBlue — make parsing out that data even more difficult.

Here’s what was discoverable in each campaign’s FEC report, with the candidates listed in order of the highest fundraiser over the life of the campaign.

U.S. Senate

Incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat

Total raised: $19.7 million

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $6.8 million
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $4.1 million
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $2.4 million
• Transfers from other authorized committees: $6 million
• Offsets to operating expenditures: $55,467
• Other receipts: $307,209

Contributing PACs include Burns and McDonnell, Inc., Constellation Brands, Inc., AKSM Urology, Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, The Real Estate Roundtable, K&L Gates LLP, Mortgage Bankers Association, M-PAC, American Federation of Teachers, NCTA – The Internet and Television Association, Narragansett Bay, Amazon, Keystone America, Motor City, S & P Global, DynCorp Federal and USACS, among dozens of others. 

Challenger Hung Cao, Republican

Total raised: $6.5 million

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $3.6 million
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $2.8 million
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $87,647
• Transfers from other authorized committees: $105,491
• Other receipts: $2,404

Contributing PACs include Texas Red, Send in the Seal, Common Values, Boots, Seal PAC Supporting Electing American Leaders, Madison Project Inc., The Eye of the Tiger, The Guardian Fund, Family Research Council Action, Huck PAC and Congressional Leadership Fund, among dozens of others. 

6th Congressional District

Incumbent Rep. Ben Cline, Republican

Total raised: $929,056

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $416,662
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $50,929
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $443,235
• Offsets to operating expenditures: $18,230

Contributing PACs include National Cattleman’s Beef Association, Space Exploration Technologies, National Automobile Dealer’s Association, Cox Enterprises, American Crystal Sugar Company, National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees, American Israel Public Affairs Committee and The Boeing Company, among dozens of others. 

Challenger Ken Mitchell, Democrat

Total raised: $171,971

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $111,142
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $41,049
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $19,280
• Loans received: $500

Contributing PACs include various county Democratic committees, IBEW Voluntary Fund, CWA – COPE, SMART TD, Machinists Non-Partisan Political League Multi Candidate Committee and New Virginia Democratic PAC, among others. 

9th Congressional District 

Incumbent Rep. Morgan Griffith, Republican

Total raised: $904,558

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $267,935
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $23,570
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $610,350
• Other receipts: $2,703

Contributing PACs include Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, Altria, American Academy of Dermatology, American Academy of Neurology, American Academy of Ophthalmology, AT&T, Celanese Corp, Charter Communications, Comcast, Dominion Energy, Farm Credit Council, Koch Industries, Majority Committee, National Cable and Telecommunications Association, National Community Pharmacists, Reynolds American Inc., The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and Valero Energy, among dozens of others. 

Challenger Karen Baker, Democrat

Total raised: $185,943

• Individual campaign contributions, itemized by the FEC: $105,915
• Individual campaign contributions less than $200, not itemized by the FEC: $67,354
• Contributions from other campaign committees or PACs: $10,674
• Loans made by the candidate: $2,000

Contributing PACs include various county Democratic committees, United Mine Workers of America, National Organization for Women, Roanoke Valley Democratic Women and Biggs for Supervisor.

The post Millions of dollars are going to Virginia’s federal elections appeared first on Cardinal News.

Two Republican members of the three-person electoral board in Waynesboro have filed a lawsuit to push for hand-counting ballots this Election Day, claiming that the use of counting machines in Virginia violates both the state constitution and federal law. Data shows, however, that the machines currently used to cast in-person ballots and to count those ballots in Virginia are among the most secure in the U.S.

Data provided by Verified Voting shows that the voting equipment used by each locality in Virginia has the highest level of security available, based on its reliability and the records the equipment produces for verification. 

Verified Voting is a nonpartisan and nongovernmental organization founded by David Dill, a professor in the School of Engineering and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Its focus is the strengthening of democracy for all voters by promoting the responsible use of technology in elections. Its review of Virginia’s election machines is part of a nationwide, state-by-state audit of equipment being used in each jurisdiction from 2012 to 2024.

Virginia adds another layer of security to its elections system through risk-limiting audits on its equipment. Those audits take place prior to Election Day and include hand-counting a random sampling of ballots to ensure that the machines are working properly. 

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has also lauded the safety and security of elections in the commonwealth.

“I am very confident in what we will see in Virginia as far as an accurate result, reflecting voters’ will. We have done a great job of running a good process, and we have amazing people managing our voter rolls, who are registrars. I just went last week to one of our larger counties and participated in the certification of the counting machines. So, folks can trust our elections,” he said during an appearance Friday on “Mornings with Maria” on Fox Business. 

Attorney Thomas Ranieri filed the lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Elections and the State Board of Elections on Oct. 4. 

Neither of the two Republican members of the Wayneboro electoral board, Curtis Lilly and Scott Mares, responded to questions. Lilly directed questions to Ranieri.

What is the basis of the lawsuit? 

The lawsuit points to a part of the Virginia constitution that says ballots must be counted in public. It states: “Secrecy in casting votes shall be maintained, except as provision may be made for assistance to handicapped voters, but the ballot box or voting machine shall be kept in public view and shall not be opened, nor the ballots canvassed nor the votes counted, in secret.”

Because the ballots are counted by a machine and put into a locked box within that machine — only to be opened by court order — the ballot counting process is not public, Ranieri said. 

“While everyone says these things about data and articles and polling, people believe what they can see,” Ranieri said in an interview Friday. “I don’t trust anyone that refuses to show their work.”

He filed the suit on behalf of Mares and Lilly against Susan Beals, commissioner of Virginia’s Department of Elections, and John O’Bannon, chairman of the State Board of Elections. The suit demands that ballots be hand-counted in public view in order for Lilly and Mares to certify the election results in Waynesboro. 

Ranieri said he would counsel his clients to certify the election in Waynesboro only if a trial court demands it, but if the case isn’t heard until after the election, he would advise them against certifying the election unless ballots are hand-counted. 

“The whole purpose of doing this was to make sure that it was dealt with before the election,” he said. He has not yet been notified of a court date.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, said in an email Friday that the lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law.  

“The Attorney General’s office looks forward to defeating this case in court,” Shaun Kenney said. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Elections declined to comment on the pending litigation. 

Where did this lawsuit come from?

Ranieri said the idea for this lawsuit was born at the Republican State Convention earlier this year when he met two other people who also expressed concerns regarding election security. 

“The three of us talked about some of their ideas, one of which was this ‘secret counting’ idea. It’s against the Virginia constitution, can we argue that this is in some way secret?” Ranieri said. “I said, ‘I think so, let me put the argument together.’”

To get the courts to hear their lawsuit and to avoid issues with standing — or the capacity of a party to bring a lawsuit in court — the group decided to seek out election board members in a small jurisdiction, Ranieri said. He was introduced to Lilly and Mares who, Ranieri said, had also expressed concerns about election security. 

“I tried to make a suit that was as neutral as possible,” Ranieri said. “I left it really very much in the realm of, ‘Look, this violates the Virginia constitution.’”

The effects of the lawsuit on elections workers

Lisa Jeffers, the Waynesboro registrar, said the lawsuit has put an undue burden on the elections office and its workers during an already busy election season. She now spends a large portion of her time, she said, trying to restore the confidence of voters and ensuring them that her office will follow state statute. 

“I spend the majority of my time now answering emails, most not very pleasant. The phone is constantly ringing with angry voters asking questions about whether their ballots are going to count,” she said via email on Friday. “This has had a very negative [effect] on this office as if myself and my staff (which are ALL Part-Time) are the ones doing this.”

Sharon Van Name, the Democrat on the Waynesboro electoral board, said she did not know that her colleagues had planned to sue the State Board of Elections until after the lawsuit was filed. 

“It was a complete surprise to me,” she said in a phone interview on Friday. 

Under state statute, each locality must have three electoral board members, with two coming from the governor’s party and the third from the opposing party. The electoral board for each locality currently is made up of two Republicans and one Democrat. 

Van Name noted that both Lilly and Mares had certified multiple elections prior to the lawsuit without any apparent issue.

“It’s creating a lot of stress in the election process that doesn’t need to be there,” Van Name said. “From that [Verified Voting] data, we are a model of how to run elections.”

“The idea that hand counting is going to be more accurate is just ridiculous,” she said. “I certainly hope that they don’t prevail because, my goodness, it will be less accurate and so much slower, just delay everything. It’s going to be a nightmare, honestly.”

The post Despite lawsuit, Virginia’s voting machines are among most secure in the US, review finds appeared first on Cardinal News.

More than five decades have passed since aspiring writer Annie Dillard wandered the teeming banks of Tinker Creek.

Yet the book that resulted from her explorations of that creek and its environs in northeast Roanoke County proved to be one for the ages. This year, essayist Margaret Renkl wrote in The New York Times that “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” published in 1974, was “a book that changed my life,” while novelist Barbara Kingsolver declared in The Washington Post that Dillard’s masterpiece “rearranged my soul.”

The year after its publication, Dillard’s dense, poetic first-person meditation on the natural world won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. She was only 29. As the 20th century drew to a close, Modern Library published a list of the top 100 nonfiction books of the previous 100 years that featured “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” at number 89, between anthropologist James George Frazier’s “The Golden Bough” and physicist Richard P. Feynman’s “Six Easy Pieces.”

In the Roanoke Valley, the 50^th anniversary of the book’s publication — March 13, for the record — passed by quietly. No regular event or permanent marker exists to commemorate the book’s Roanoke connection, and many, if not most, of the valley’s residents are unaware of its connections to this landmark work of literature.

Or as Andy Hough put it, “They’re clueless.”

Hough, 67, could be described as a “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” superfan. He read the book because Andrew Lewis High School required him to — and he expressed a delighted astonishment at how important that book turned out to be decades later: “Without Annie Dillard’s book, I can tell you this, our lives would not be as enriched as they are.”

Hough and his wife, Judy, 67, may be the only Roanoke Valley residents maintaining an active tribute to “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” Within their Roanoke County home, they operate an Airbnb, which they’ve dubbed Tinker Creek Guest House, right along the stretch of creek where Dillard found her inspiration. A copy of the book lies on the coffee table in the suite’s living room.

“There’s one sentence in the book that talks about Carvins Creek and Tinker Creek,” Andy Hough said. “The closest those two creeks come is right here.”

‘The goosebumps came up’

The house they own used to belong to longtime Roanoke Valley artists and educators Bill and Sarah Kohler. As Andy Hough tells it, he had commissioned artwork from Sarah Kohler for his brother’s wedding and had come to the house to pick up the finished piece. “I pulled up front. There was a for sale sign in front of the house. I took one look at the front of the house with all the landscaping. I reached for the doorknob, got a vision: flat backyard, dogwood tree, Tinker Creek and Tinker Mountain.”

Inside, he beheld a view of Tinker Mountain through the back window. He learned from Sarah Kohler that the house’s for-sale status had not yet been publicized, and he asked her to take the sign down. Not even knowing the price, he intended to buy.

“I said, ‘That’s Carvins Creek.’ And she goes, ‘Oh no, that’s Tinker Creek.’ And the goosebumps came up on my arms,” Andy Hough recalled.

That was in 1999. The Houghs estimate that somewhere between 30% to 50% of their guests rent their suite out of an appreciation for the book.

A woman traveling from Savannah, Georgia, back to Minnesota burst into tears as Hough gave her a tour of the grounds. “She walked into the backyard and started crying,” he said. “And I went, ‘Ma’am, what in the world have I done to upset you?’” 

She explained to him, “‘I have taught Annie Dillard’s book in English Lit 101 for 30 years, and I never imagined I would be able to see Tinker Creek.’ It literally brought her to tears.”

The dogwood tree that Dillard immortalized in “Pilgrim” is gone, toppled by the 2012 derecho. But the Houghs’ backyard affords a close-up view of the remains of the dam the author describes walking across to get from bank to bank. “Every time I cross the dam and dry my feet on the bank, I feel like I’ve just been born,” she wrote.

The view also demonstrates the difficulty of putting some sort of physical monument in the place where Dillard made her famous observations about the local flora and fauna. Though the scenes described in the book evoke a forested wilderness, in 2024, that span of the creek winds directly through a well-developed suburban neighborhood, every inch private property.

Open to suggestions

Arts and culture leaders in the valley love the idea of some kind of continuous commemoration, though, and they are open to suggestions as to how it could be accomplished.

“I think a great approach might be to put an artist-in-residence on it. I could imagine a land artwork or a sensory trail with an audio component,” Doug Jackson, Roanoke’s arts and culture coordinator, wrote in an email. “While we may not be able to do anything in the county portion, we could potentially create something further in along the new sections of the Tinker Creek Greenway.”

The section of the Tinker Creek greenway in Roanoke County begins on Hollins University property, noted Frank Maguire, greenway coordinator for the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission, who referenced Annie Dillard’s status as one of Hollins’ most famous alumnae. 

“Besides the natural tie-in with Hollins, this could also be the easiest in terms of process,” he said. He noted that the green light to go forward with such a project would have to come from the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors.

Andy Hough had a suggestion of his own: a historical marker on the Ardmore Drive bridge that crosses Tinker Creek. This would put the marker in a place where Dillard had roamed without risk of trespassing incidents.

Roanoke historian and former Mayor Nelson Harris has made a cause of establishing historical markers that bring neglected figures and events from our region’s past back into the spotlight. “State historic markers typically do not recognize a single title per se, though one might recognize Annie Dillard as an author incorporating ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ within the marker text,” he wrote. “The caveat here is that markers only recognize those that are deceased.” 

Also, “physical monuments cost money, so there’d be the question of funding.”

State historic markers he has successfully placed cost $3,200 apiece, he wrote. “I have to raise all funds privately for those.”

Harris shared a notion somewhat in line with Jackson’s and Maguire’s thinking. “One idea I have toyed with over the years is advocating the creation of a Writers’ Walk, akin to the Hollywood Walk of Fame minus the hand prints,” he wrote. “The idea would be to celebrate our valley’s premier writers. I also think of poet Guy Carleton Drewry, who was Virginia’s longest-serving poet laureate, science fiction writer Nelson Bond, et cetera.”

House by the creek

Annie Dillard, now 79, only lived in the Roanoke Valley for about 12 years. When she left, she had already achieved a reputation as one of the valley’s most celebrated exports, somewhat at the cost of her own peace of mind.

Born Annie Doak, daughter of a Pittsburgh corporate executive who shared with his wife a love of dancing, she came to study at Hollins College in 1963.

She told The Roanoke Times in a 2014 interview that her parents had hoped Hollins would tame her wild streak, but she was eager to enroll because she already knew of the private women’s college’s growing reputation as a writing mecca, attracting writers-in-residence such as William Golding, author of the classic novel “Lord of the Flies.”

She married one of her writing instructors, the acclaimed poet Richard Dillard, and completed her master’s degree in creative writing as a faculty wife. She and Richard lived in a house with a backyard sloping down to Tinker Creek, nearby to the Houghs’ Tinker Creek Guest House. A diary she kept of her wanderings along and meditations on the creek would transform into “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” composed on a typewriter in the college library.

Annie Dillard dedicated “Pilgrim” to her husband. “Richard Dillard taught me everything I know,” she told The Roanoke Times.

Dense with poetic descriptions of breathtaking beauty, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” plunges deep into an examination of the natural world, combining material drawn from scientific texts and Dillard’s own up-close observations of cruelty and transcendence among flora and fauna. Bible passages appear throughout the book, as Dillard ponders the complexities of a world teeming with constant brutality at every level of life, shaped by a creator presumed benevolent.

Another way to put it: Even though it’s not a long book, “it is a long, slow read,” said Ernie Zulia, retired director of the Hollins Theatre Institute.

And yet, this challenging book became a national sensation at shocking speed, at least as literary phenomena go. Excerpts appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine and Sports Illustrated. Paperback and book club rights reportedly earned the young writer $250,000, the equivalent of $1.6 million in today’s dollars. Publicity averse and used to working in solitude, Dillard found the scale of surprise attention upsetting.

“So much was happening to that book. I just wanted to flee. It became a problem,” she told The Roanoke Times in 2014.

In 1975, the year “Pilgrim” won a Pulitzer, she and Richard Dillard divorced, and she took up residence in Puget Sound, Washington. Later she taught writing at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

However, her ties to Southwest Virginia would continue. She attended Hollins class reunions, and later in life she and her third husband, the biographer Robert D. Richardson, counted among their homes in multiple states a trio of cabins deep in the Wythe County woodlands, which they visited every autumn.

Richardson died in 2020. Richard Dillard, who remained friends with Annie Dillard, died in 2023. Her literary agency, Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents, declined a request for an interview with Dillard for this story.

“Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” exhibits specific Southwest Virginia ties beyond the eponymous creek, and even beyond other cited natural landmarks such as Carvins Cove, Carvins Creek, Tinker Mountain and Dead Man Mountain, an archaic reference that made Harris grin.

“That’s how I first heard Tinker Mountain referenced by relatives,” he said. “They said it was because the mountain ridge resembled a corpse draped in cloth … head and feet both elevated.”

The book’s pivotal chapter depicts the floods that Hurricane Agnes brought to the valley in 1972, and there’s even a wry mention of the Martinsville Speedway — the name the neighborhood children gave their motorbike trail.

‘I can see it’

There’s a piece of art created to celebrate “Pilgrim” that has the potential to return for more encores. Bonus: it has Dillard’s personal blessing.

Led by Zulia, Hollins organized a 40^th anniversary celebration of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” in 2014, centered around a stage adaptation of the book that Zulia commissioned.

When he approached Dillard with the proposal, “she couldn’t imagine it working for the stage, but she gave us permission,” he recalled. Playwright and Virginia Tech alum Andy Belser wrote the adaptation, which took an abstract, meditative approach in its staging.

Zulia invited Dillard to see the play, telling her, “This is really turning into a beautiful piece,” but she declined.

In a Roanoke Times interview, she expressed an abiding love for Hollins and called Zulia “a genius,” but called the “Pilgrim” celebration “embarrassing,” emphasizing that her most famous book was not her favorite among those she’s written, suggesting that readers might better enjoy her novel “The Maytrees.”

Jackson described attending the play with some initial skepticism that it could captivate him after a long workday. “But it did. It blew me away!” he wrote.

Weeks after the play ended, Zulia said he received a shock, when Richard Dillard approached him on campus and said, “Annie loved it.”

Apparently, the still publicity-shy author had shown up to take in a performance, disguised in a hoodie, baggy jeans and crutches.

That wasn’t the end of it. “Maybe it was two or three months later, I was teaching a class upstairs in the studio theater,” Zulia said. “We were doing a performance showcase. At the end of the class, I was greeting family members and talking to people, and this gray-haired woman came up to me and said, ‘Are you Ernie Zulia?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and she says, ‘Well, I’m Annie Dillard.’”

She let him know that she was staying on campus at the alumnae cottage, so he joined her there for conversation, drinks and some naughty cigarettes.

“Annie Dillard gets me to smoke cigarettes and drink bourbon,” he chuckled. “It was one of the most stimulating conversations I think I’ve ever had. This incredible mind and this incredible imagination and this incredible intellect that she had. She’s just something else, funny and raunchy.”

His time with the author gave him insight into how she could have drawn so much from Tinker Creek despite its pedestrian location. “Having met Annie, it’s not hard to imagine her meditating on what was right in front of her as she’s standing in the middle of the road in the suburban neighborhood, looking down the creek or up the creek and completely blocking the entire civilized world out, and just focusing in on the natural world. I can imagine it, no problem. I just can see it. I can see it.”

On a late summer day at the Ardmore bridge, despite the passage of five decades, the Tinker Creek that Annie Dillard saw glittered between rows of houses. To the north, a muskrat dove in from the bank and hid within the weeds. To the south, a heron spread its wings, keeping above the waters as it glided under sheltering trees.

The post 50 years after ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ a question of how the Roanoke Valley could mark its connection to a literary masterpiece appeared first on Cardinal News.