He didn’t.

In exchange for suspended prison sentences on felony charges and 60 days in jail (on a misdemeanor related to an $80 Walmart purchase) and $25,000 in restitution – an agreement reached between Commonwealth’s Attorney Art Goff and defense attorney Douglas Baumgardner – Dodson pleaded guilty to seven felonies and a misdemeanor in circuit court March 12, and the case was continued until this week.

Monday morning, Judge Parker announced quickly that he was rejecting the plea agreement, and told the 34-year-old defendant that she had the right to withdraw her guilty pleas and have the case brought before another judge. She has until next Tuesday (May 22) to decide whether to withdraw the pleas and have the case tried by another judge, or to proceed with Parker. Parker didn’t give an explanation for rejecting the agreement.

If Dodson decides to continue the case with Parker, her sentence would be the judge’s decision – or his decision to negotiate a new agreement.

The charges grew out of a Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office investigation that began Feb. 6, when former RCSSA president Amy Hitt called the Sheriff’s Office to report that money was missing from the nonprofit youth sports organization’s accounts at Union First Market Bank in Washington; their $15,000 credit line had also been maxed out.

“This is an important decision,” Baumgardner said to Parker while a date was found for the next hearing, “and I want to make sure she’s counseled in the proper fashion . . . though we would want to do this as quickly as possible.”

Burnett, who attended the hearing with her husband, said in an email Tuesday that she was disappointed that Judge Parker rejected the plea agreement, though she thought “he must have had his reasons.”

“I had hoped to make a nice deposit back into the RCSSA bank account that afternoon so we could move forward and pay off the debts [Dodson] left us with,” Burnett said, listing $15,000 on the RCSSA line of credit, $7,000 owed to vendors, and adding that she’d hoped to use some of the residual for gym improvements that the Rappahannock Youth Basketball League wanted to make with the $2,500 Dodson transferred out of its account (which RCSSA managed). “I have to continue to have faith in the legal system, though, and hope that next week’s day in court – and whatever days follow after that – turn out favorably for our organization and for the kids we support.”

During a court recess, Goff said that he did not foresee Parker’s action. “The trouble with Parker rejecting the plea is that RCSSA doesn’t get that check for $25,000 today,” he said. He noted that the $25,000 for restitution was contingent upon the plea being accepted, and that he had discussed with Burnett the details of transferring the funds immediately before the hearing.

In a discussion with Parker after court, while he would not comment on his reasons for rejecting Goff’s plea deal, he did say that public opinion – what some community residents were calling a “soft” plea deal – did not weigh into his decision.

Sheriff Connie C. Smith said after the court session that she could not recall any plea recommendations from the Commonwealth’s Attorney being rejected during her years with the Sheriff’s Office. Goff said he’d only seen a sentencing recommendation rejected once, in a Page County sex abuse case.

MacArthur sentenced in Grand View case

After Dodson’s plea recommendation was rejected, 20-year-old Cameron MacArthur was brought before the bench in shackles, awaiting sentencing. His two attorneys and both parents seemed noticeably worried about Parker accepting the youth’s plea deal. The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s recommendation would send MacArthur to local jail for three-and-a-half years – a sentence that would prevent state prison time, offered in exchange for testimony against the three other co-defendants in the Grand View arson case.

On Aug. 20, MacArthur and three other teenage Rappahannock boys broke into the Grand View Road weekend cabin of William Rowland, stole beer, drank whiskey and partied in an upstairs bedroom before deciding to burn the place down to destroy any evidence of their presence. When the smoke cleared, only a chimney stood and four boys were in RCSO custody following an early-morning manhunt. The fire caused an estimated $295,000 in damage.

“Mr. MacArthur has been completely and totally cooperative with his and the other cases,” Goff told Parker, addressing MacArthur’s promise to testify in court against all of the co-defendants in the Grand View case, as well as statements he made to Goff and investigator Capt. J.C. Welch in a Jan. 6 recorded interview. So far, Erick Xavier Rodriguez of Boston and Benjamin Thomas Hale of Castleton have pleaded guilty to seven charges each in the arson case; only Julious Caesar Lucas of Boston awaits trial (though his attorney expects to have reached a plea agreement by then).

MacArthur appeared before the court in a white t-shirt with “Trustee” stenciled across the shoulders in thick black, and wore white elastic-banded pants and tennis shoes. One of his attorneys told Parker that MacArthur is one class away from receiving his high school diploma. He only has to finish a history class; RCHS teacher Mark Ramey has been coming to the Rappahannock County Jail each week to lecture him.

Before Parker ruled on Goff’s sentencing recommendation, MacArthur was allowed to make a statement to the court: “I accept responsibility for what I did, and I’d like to apologize to the homeowner for his loss.”

Before accepting the plea agreement, Parker said that he would have gone with the restorative justice program in this case had it been his choice. But he accepted the terms of the agreement and sentenced MacArthur to three-and-a-half years of active incarceration in Rappahannock Jail on the arson charge, with a total of more than 21 years of prison time suspended for the seven charges.

Upon release, MacArthur will have 10 years of supervised probation and owes $295,000 in restitution. As a condition of the plea agreement, MacArthur will be eligible for a work release program while at Rappahannock’s jail.

MacArthur grinned as he turned to walk out of the courtroom, looked up at his parents and shook his head one time.

After the sentencing, Sheriff Connie Smith said she recently started MacArthur at work in the jail kitchen. “He’s already giving back to the community, our community, and I like that.”

Also in circuit court, 21-year-old Shane Dillon Herndon of Rixeyville pleaded guilty to grand larceny. According to Goff’s evidence summary following the plea, on Dec. 29, Herndon and a co-defendant removed a four-wheeler and dirt bike (owned by Donald Southard) from 24 Southard Lane in Castleton. Goff said both vehicles were valued at $2,300, and that Herndon tried to sell them in Culpeper. When confronted by the police, Herndon allegedly confessed in a written statement that they stole the vehicles for cash.

Courtesy of town of Washington

Proposed conservation area (outlined in red) would extend to U.S. 211 on the west side of Warren Avenue.

The town of Washington plans to purchase what’s been called one of the most prime pieces of commercial real estate in the county – and, if all goes right, to turn it into a showcase of non-commercial development.

A forest, in other words.

Proponents of the plan say that in 10 years, the roughly 22 acres between the county’s Gay Street complex and U.S. 211 (encompassing the town-owned Avon Hall and wastewater treatment plant and the butterfly/nature trail already in development adjacent to both) could be a unique, village-based natural forest and wetland area. Its trails will be hiked by visitors and its native plants, restored watershed and upland forest will serve as open-air classrooms maintained by volunteer naturalists and ecology-minded organizations.

“The more I talked to people about this, the more the idea kept not falling apart,” said Daniel Spethmann, a relative newcomer to the town who serves on its planning commission, and who was credited Monday with conceiving and putting the plan together. “So it became clear that the project had legs, and that we should proceed.”

At Monday’s Town Council meeting (May 14), Mayor John Fox Sullivan could hardly contain his excitement at finally being able to make public, after months of private negotiations and planning, the town’s intention to apply for a $400,000 U.S. Agriculture Department grant – the deadline was Tuesday – to help it purchase a 9.1-acre tract owned in partnership by local resident James “Jimmy” DeBergh and former Sunnyside entrepreneur David Cole.

The properties are at the Warren Avenue/U.S. 211 “gateway” to the town and include what’s generally known as the Black Kettle property (named for the defunct motel now mouldering there), as well as the roughly five-acre tract between the Black Kettle site and the four-lane highway.

If it receives the funding and the sale goes through, Sullivan said, the town would put the 9.1 acres into conservation easement.

Together, according to an assessment made last month, the properties are worth $829,000; the owners have agreed to sell them to the town for $675,000. The sale, Sullivan said, is contingent on the town getting the $400,000 USDA Community Forest Program grant, as well as a $100,000 grant from the Krebser Fund, the local conservation-focused organization – which has also agreed to help the town raise the remaining $175,000.

“We hope to do all of this without spending any of our taxpayers’ money,” Sullivan said. He later noted Spethmann’s estimate that maintaining the property – planting trees, removing invasive species, returning the property’s original flow of water into wetlands – would cost no more than $6,000 a year. And that, in addition to state and other funding available for such pursuits, responsibility for much of the work had already been promised by like-minded local organizations.

The council voted unanimously Monday night to make the application – a process that could take months, but which Sullivan said the town is hopeful will be successful. It will be presented to the USDA authorities by Carl Garrison III, the Charlottesville-based state forester with Virginia’s Department of Forestry.

The application contains an impressive docket of recommendation letters: from Sullivan; County Administrator John W. McCarthy; Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District manager Greg Wichelns; Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP) president Rick Kohler; School Board chair John Lesinski and superintendent Aldridge Boone, who would incorporate the nature area’s ecology, hydrology, forest restoration and conservation opportunities into the school division’s science curriculum; and from Patrick O’Connell, a town council member but also proprietor and founder of the Inn at Little Washington, the town’s largest employer and its greatest source of meals-and-lodging tax revenue.

“We see firsthand every day the reaction of our guests to this peaceful, unspoiled little hamlet, and appreciate how rare it is,” O’Connell writes. “Of grave concern to all who live here is the uncertain fate of the gateway to our historic community,” he adds, referring to McCarthy’s, Sullivan’s and others’ long-standing worry that the commercially zoned tract at that corner would eventually attract a service station or fast-food franchise.

“A wonderful solution to this area has been proposed,” O’Connell writes.

Sullivan said that many groups and individuals had been involved “in parts of” the project, but that only a few knew the scope of the project.

“This all started with the butterfly trail,” Sullivan said, referring to the trail now underway from Warren Avenue into the Avon Hall property, a joint project involving the local Virginia Master Naturalists, the Rappahannock Friends and Lovers of Our Watershed (RappFLOW) and others. He said these same groups have discussed helping restore the surrounding tracts, if the plan goes through, and he views the entire 20-plus-acre area as a “commons” – and “a model for other towns throughout the state as well as the nation at large.”

Spethmann, who works in the land-conservation field, spoke briefly at the council meeting and mentioned that the more he talked about such a project, the more interested state and federal agencies seemed to be – in having a “demonstration model for green infrastructure, which is a huge thing in Washington and Richmond right now, that is located not far from either capital.”

As CSWCD manager Wichelns wrote in his recommendation: “The town receives many visitors on an annual basis and since management issues with this small watershed can be viewed as a microcosm of Chesapeake Bay management issues, it represents an excellent opportunity for public engagement. The impact of such programs could likely have a wider impact.”

Several town residents spoke after Sullivan’s and Spethmann’s presentation Monday; most were supportive – after confirming, with a few questions, that maintenance of a natural area would not be an overwhelming or escalating burden to the town, and that the sale of the property was contingent on the Community Forest grant, the Krebser Fund grant and raising the remainder from private donors or like-minded organizations. (As council member Alice Butler put it: “So, if we do this, this land becomes our responsibility – forever.”)

“It seems to be a no-brainer,” said Gay Street Inn co-owner Jay Brown.

Roger Piantadosi | Rappahannock News

Castleton production chief John Harris stands near what will be, by June, an outdoor dining area beside the Festival Tent.

John D. Harris, the Castleton Festival’s chief operations officer, stands near his desk in the cavernous storage shed next to the even more cavernous Festival Tent – the tent-topped hall that’s become home to some of the region’s most impressive opera and classical music performances for going on four years now.

Although, in just over a month, three full-scale operas will need to be almost-simultaneously rehearsed in this same shed, in the Festival Tent and the nearby Castleton Theatre House, Harris is calm, cheerful even.

“We’re trying to get ready to get ready,” he says, as we head out to the former pasture beside the big tent – a structure that he designed last year to be semi-permanent, and where this spring afternoon workmen are busy installing a stripped-down, highly flexible lighting system. That’s another Harris idea, so the festival won’t need to rent one in the future (as it does the seating and sound equipment).

Harris has worked in opera for more than 25 years as a technical and production director, for the Houston Grand Opera and, more recently, for the Virginia Opera. He built his own business, Virginia Scenic, into one of the country’s premiere scenic studios for opera, constructing sets for more than 200 operas and 30 companies. He’s a pragmatic guy.

“When you’re starting your own festival, in a very family way,” he says, speaking of Maestro Lorin Maazel and Dietlinde Maazel’s decision four years ago to build a music festival from the ground up at their 550-acre farm in Castleton, “well, this was a very free-flowing thing. We want to have this show, and we’d like to do this . . . but as it grew, it had to embrace what it was becoming – a major viable music festival, and one not just being discussed here in Rappahannock but all over the country, and all over the world.”

So Harris’ focus this year, he says, has been on ironing out the details. For instance, he says, festival-goers at Castleton have proven over the years that “they like to come early, and they like to have something to eat, and they like a string quartet or a singer in the lobby.” So, he’s planned to move five or six picnic-table pavilions outside the Festival Tent lobby – a large room beside the performance space where, this year, a la carte sandwiches, salads and carry-out foods will be available, provided this year by Claire’s of Warrenton. Small, impromptu performance spaces will be set up in the lobby, as well as, possibly, out among the picnic pavilions.

The festival’s biggest change this year – having been approved by Rappahannock County to have seating for 650 in the Festival Tent – allows the festival organizers to do what Harris called “right-sizing.” To Rappahannock festival-goers who’ve avoided the place because the ticket prices were steep, the additional 200 seats enable the festival to offer four tiers of pricing for every performance – from $20 to $100.

The festival will also be offering fine reserved dining in the Great Room of the intimate Theatre House – a place where, in the past, it has fed the 200 or so young musicians who spend the month living and working at the farm during the festival. Those who eat at Theatre House will also get reserved-parking privileges both there and at the Festival Tent, which is about a half-mile away.

To help accomplish this, the Maazels made a $30,000 donation this winter to the Castleton Volunteer Fire Department, which the fire company is using to install a new kitchen and completely renovate its hall – which, in turn, will be where the festival’s residents will be eating their meals.

A few happenings this weekend (additional information and several other event listings can be found in the Rapp Happenings calendar):

This year’s Miss Rappahannock Pageant, the annual benefit for Sperryville Volunteer Rescue Squad, starts at 3 p.m. Saturday at Rappahannock County Elementary School. The annual Rappahannock County Relay for Life weekend walkathon to raise anti-cancer research funds and fighting spirit, is at Rappahannock County High School track from 6 p.m. Saturday till Sunday morning.

On Sunday, the Rappahannock Historical Society sponsors a dedication of the Civil War Trails marker commemorating “The Rappahannock Old Guard,” at the Rappahannock County Visitors Center (7 Library Road, Washington). The local “Old Guard” unit, as the 6th Virginia Cavalry, Company B, was known, played a major role in the battle at Front Royal, which was 150 years ago this May 23. Contact the society at 540-675-1163 or rapphistsoc@comcast.net.

That lush Pennsylvania bluegrass

Courtesy photo

Remington Ryde

“The best bluegrass from Pennsylvania” –  at least that’s what Ryan Frankhouser calls the music played by Remington Ryde, the band performing at 8 p.m. Saturday (May 19) at the Theatre in Washington.

Remington Ryde is led by Frankhouser, who plays guitar and sings lead vocals. Other members of the band are Billy Lee Cox on banjo, Dan Stewart on mandolin and Wally Yoder on bass.

Based in Pennsylvania, the band performs an average of 150 dates annually throughout the United States. Together more than 10 years, Remington Ryde describes its performances as “good traditional bluegrass along with some comedy completing the show.”

Tickets for the performance at the Theatre (291 Gay St.) are $20 ($10 for students 17 and younger). For reservations, call 540-675-1253 or email TheatreVA@aol.com.

Learn the “future of farming”

The registration deadline for a future-farming reception at the Sperryville Schoolhouse is May 24. Holistic Management International (HMI) is hosting a free town-hall reception 7-9 p.m. May 31 to introduce the 2012 Future Farms and Ranches Upper Piedmont program to area farmers. Meet most of HMI’s 13 Rappahannock County 2011 program participants and hear how they improved sales, cut costs, saved time and improved social interactions on their farms, while practicing sustainable agriculture. Sylvie Rowand and Laughing Duck Gardens will provide fresh local food for the reception. To register (required), visit holisticmanagement.org/piedmont before May 24.

Fighting invasive plants?

Left uncontrolled, non-native invasive plants like kudzu and tree-of-heaven can quickly dominate landscapes that would otherwise be home to a wide variety of native species that better support pollinators and other wildlife. Learning how to control invasive plants can create fields, woods and waterways that are more beautiful, diverse and full of life – from bees, butterflies and birds to larger animals. So, how can landowners stop invasive plants from taking over?

A May 21 daylong workshop at Airlie Center in Warrenton will explore ways to effectively take on the challenge of managing invasive plants. Expert speakers will discuss why invasive plants are a major issue and address their impacts on our farms and neighborhoods. They will present a range of options for controlling them – from chemical herbicides to grazing by voracious goats! In the afternoon, sessions will target problem species including garlic mustard, autumn olive, tree-of-heaven and fescue grass.

The workshop is sponsored by Sacharuna Foundation, the Piedmont Environmental Council, United Plant Savers and Virginia Working Landscapes.

The cost is $75 per person, including full day sessions and lunch. Scholarships are available for those who need them. You can register online at pecva.org/events .

Bon voyage, Mullany mural No. 2!

David Hilty

Rappahannock artist Tom Mullany with a finished mural headed for the Winery at Bull Run.

Local artist, Tom Mullany hosted a viewing and send-off party for a recently completed mural for The Winery at Bull Run, slated to open in June. This is the second major mural that Mullany’s completed this year at Bruce Vierling’s warehouse in Flint Hill, which has great accommodations for projects of this size.

The mural (6 feet by 20 feet, oil on canvas) portrays the morning of the First Battle of Bull Run, as picnickers are arriving from the city and some fighting has just begun on distant hills and fields. The majority of the scene depicts beautiful farmland as it might have looked before the war ravaged it.

The painting was dry enough this week to remove from its stretcher and carefully rolled onto a large cylinder to be shipped to the winery, near the center of Manassas Battlefield Park, where it will be permanently affixed to the main wall of the tasting room.

Scrabble students return 80 years later

Courtesy photo

Sisters Louise Harrison Jackson, left, and Gladys Harrison Gourdine of Culpeper visited Scrabble School and enjoyed the day in their elementary school of more than 80 years ago.

It was more than a building to Louise Harrison Jackson and her sister Gladys Harrison Gourdine, who at ages 7 and 5, respectively, walked to school from their home on the Charles Browning farm in Woodville. Each weekday, Louise and Gladys walked through the fields, “watching for snakes” and avoiding the briars, to get to school. The two former students of Scrabble School in the Woodville/Castleton area came back May 2 to their first school after 80 years. In 1927, a school bus was not available for them, although they do remember “the white kids riding past.”  They recalled liking their teacher and that they learned “some.”  

The girls were sad when their family had to move to Culpeper in 1932, where they both reside today.  Gladys’ daughter, Ruby Carter, and daughter-in-law, Joyce Gourdine, arranged the tour of the school in part to learn more about their mother and aunt in their early years, and to allow Louise (92) and Gladys (90) a trip down memory lane before celebrating their birthdays this Spring. The sisters sat at student desks similar to those they had when attending Scrabble School and reviewed the history exhibit about the school. It was a great way for the sisters to acknowledge “May Day” that was an annual event in the school calendar.  

Louise attends Shiloh Baptist Church in Woodville. Gladys, also a member of Shiloh, attends the Family Community Church in Culpeper. The Scrabble School Preservation Foundation is the sponsor of the Rappahannock African-American Heritage Center located in the Scrabble School. The public can view the permanent display by a self tour 10-2, Monday through Thursday – and by appointment for a guided tour and discussion of the school’s history, its restoration and future plans for telling the Scrabble Story. The Foundation invites alumni of Scrabble School to add to the school’s history and story. For more information, visit the website scrabbleschool.org.

– Bob Lander

Shenandoah National Park hosts regional conference

Shenandoah National Park and its neighboring communities will host a one-day conference from 9-3 p.m. next Thursday (May 24), titled  “Connecting for Prosperity – Charting the Future Together,” at James Madison University in Harrisonburg. The workshop-style conference will include presentations by guest panelists, case studies and facilitated discussions to help identify the region’s shared goals and to build an awareness of the economic potential for the area.

“The 75th Anniversary celebration in 2011 was an exciting year for the park and surrounding communities. We experienced enhanced relationships and communication among the park, our surrounding communities, and partners as a result of the celebration,” said Superintendent Martha Bogle. “Our goal with the conference is to continue this momentum and to begin discussions about the next 75 years.”

The keynote address at the conference will be presented by Catharine Gilliam, founder of Community Collaboration. Gilliam has extensive experience with national nonprofit organizations and has served as a consultant on many Gateway Community projects to build partnerships between communities and their national park neighbors.

Guest panelists will open the conference by presenting case studies on the relationship between public lands and local communities. Gilliam will give her keynote address after lunch, followed by roundtable discussions.

In 2010, visitors to Shenandoah National Park spent more than $71 million in the local communities and the park, supporting 1,087 jobs.

The conference is free and open to the public. Registration for the conference is online here and must be completed by Friday (May 18). For more information on the conference, call 540-999-3500.

Rising folk stars perform June 17

Courtesy photo

Trio Brother Sun (from left: Pat Wictor, Joe Jencks and Greg Greenway) performs June 17 at the Theatre at Washington.

Brother Sun, whose debut CD was named one of the “Best of 2011″ by Folk-DJ and over a dozen radio stations, will perform June 17 (Father’s Day) at the Theatre in Washington. Opening the concert will be the newly formed Bridge Project, with local musicians Howard Weingarten, Martha Hughes, Susan Holmes, Gary Grossman and John Swenson.

Renowned for musical diversity and harmony, Brother Sun was formed in 2009 by Joe Jencks, Greg Greenway and Pat Wictor – all veteran singer-songwriters. The trio fuses folk, Americana, blues, pop, jazz, rock and a cappella singing in the finest of male singing traditions. Their rich voices blend on a well-crafted foundation of guitar, slide guitar and piano.

Wictor took a convoluted path to folk music, winding his way through rock, heavy metal and jazz. He started with guitar, shifted to bass, moved to saxophone and then quit music entirely before a return in 1993, when he also began composing songs. An adept improviser and accompanist, Wictor is sought after as a collaborator, sideman and session musician.

Richmond native Greenway, an accomplished pianist and singer, moved to Boston for its rich folk music tradition. He draws inspiration from a broad spectrum – gospel, rock, blues, jazz and world music. But Greenway’s center is in the singing and songwriting tradition that traces its roots back to the social activism of Woody Guthrie.

Jencks took a more traditional path to music. Born into a family of musicians and conservatory trained, he is known for his unique merging of musical beauty, social consciousness and spiritual exploration. With a brilliant tenor voice and skilled on the guitar, Jencks is also highly regarded as a song interpreter, weaving classical training and traditional folk roots into an intricate musical tapestry.

The June 17 concert will begin at 7 p.m. at the Theatre at Washington. Admission is $20 for adults ($10 for children and students). For reservations or information, e-mail events@uubridge.org giving your name and the number of adults and children who will attend. Those without e-mail, call 540-923-4967.

The concert is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalists of the Blue Ridge. For more information, visit uubridge.org.

– Marcia Kirkpatrick

Federal mortar boats appeared on the Mississippi River just north of Fort Pillow in Tennessee on Saturday, May 10.  The ill-disciplined, makeshift Confederate River Defense Fleet attacked the superior mortars as well as the strong Federal ironclad flotilla of seven boats.  The outcome of this suicidal venture was easily determined, although the Confederates managed to sink two of the ironclads, Cincinnati and Mound City, which the Federals later raised.  The engagement of Plum Run Bend was a decisive Union victory, and Capt. James Montgomery withdrew what remained of his Confederate forces first to Fort Pillow and then to Memphis.  It was one of the few “fleet actions” of the war.

Due to the evacuation of Norfolk, Va., and the destruction of the Norfolk Navy Yard, the Confederate ironclad C.S.S. Virginia lost its home port and place of safety, and being unable to navigate the shallow waters of the various rivers, the Confederates were forced on May 11 to destroy the ship and sink her.  President Lincoln wired Gen. Halleck in Tennessee: “Norfolk in our possession.  Merrimac blown up.  Monitor and other boats going up James River to Richmond.”    Gen. Halleck, in the meantime, had slowed his advance on the Confederates at Corinth, Miss., that it almost seemed to be like a siege.

Natchez, Miss., was occupied by a Federal naval flotilla commanded by Adm. Farragut on May 12, and the city was surrendered by the mayor.  In the Shenandoah Valley, Gen. Jackson’s troops left Franklin, western Va., and started after Gen. Banks’ s Federal troops at Strasburg.  In Richmond, President Davis wrote to Mrs. Davis (who had been sent out of the threatened capital): “if the withdrawal from the Peninsula and Norfolk had been done with due preparation and a desirable deliberation, I should be more sanguine of a successful defense of this city.  I know not what to expect when so many failures are to be remembered, yet we will try to make a successful resistence.”  In Charleston, S.C., martial law was declared, and the Charleston newspapers reported that “a crew of negroes had taken over the steamer Planter and surrendered it to the blockaders.”  

Skirmishing on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad and the Mobile & Ohio RR near Corinth, Miss., took place on May 14 .  Some of Gen. McClellan’s advanced troops skirmished with Confederates at Gaines’ Crossroads as they approached Richmond.  The next day, the U.S.S. Monitor moved up the James River towards Richmond now that the threat of interference from C.S.S. Virginia had been removed.  At Drewery’s Bluff, overlooking the river south of the capital, Confederate batteries met and stopped the Union invasion.  For four hours the forts at Drewery’s Bluff and Fort Darling dueled the Federal boats with heavy fire, forcing the Federals to withdraw downstream.

Gen Ben Butler

In New Orleans on May 15,  Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, the military governor, issued an order: “As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officers or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”  In short, any female citizen who showed any type of disrepect to the military or the U.S. was considered to be a prostitute.

Nothing in Gen. Butler’s already unpopular and dictatorial reign over New Orleans incited Southerners as did the notorious General Order No. 28, the so-called “Woman Order.”  Throughout the South, “Beast” Butler was an object of the most vile venom; President Davis  soon labeled him a public enemy worthy of execution without trial should he be captured.  When New Orleans Mayor John T. Monroe protested on behalf of his city’s citizens, Butler had him arrested. The order also raised an international outcry, especially in London, and was a strong factor in Butler being relieved as military governor in December 1862.

Pam Owen | Rappahannock News

Eastern Painted Turtle hatchling, about the size of a half dollar.

The lower ponds are now coming alive with frog calls, and Spring Peepers are in fuller chorus at the one up the mountain. While apparently no frog eggs have survived predation by the game fish in the lower ponds, the upper pond, which is devoid of fish, is now black with squiggling tadpoles. And those aren’t the only evidence of wildlife reproduction being well underway.

My landlords found an Eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta picta) hatchling about the size of a half-dollar down by one of the lower ponds. Concerned about the baby’s low odds of surviving the oversized gamefish in the ponds down there, my landlords wondered if releasing it in the upper one would be safer. However, I’m always loathe to introduce a new species somewhere, not knowing the impact on ecology at that site. And conditions up there might also be hazardous to the turtle, so instead I released him this morning in the lower pond that seems to have the fewest and smallest fish and the most cover, hoping that would increase the little guy’s chances of survival. Survival will still be tricky, with birds and other predators also working the pond, but a few seconds after I put him into the pond, he went to the top to grab some air, then quickly disappeared in deeper water.

On the way back to the far pond, I checked a Praying Mantis nest in a locust sapling. That should be hatching out soon, considering how warm the spring has been and how far ahead the breeding is for many species of wildlife.

My landlords had tipped me to a nest that a pair of wrens had made in a helmet in the shed down by the ponds, so I stopped there next to see if these were House Wrens (Troglodytes aedon) or, more likely, Carolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus). Surprising one of the parents when I opened the door, I noted the blaze of white above its eye, confirming that it was a Carolina Wren. These fierce, loud little birds have been creeping north for years, taking over the territory of our somewhat smaller native House Wrens.

Manjith Kainickara via Wikimedia Commons

The jaunty little Carolina Wren can be distinguished easily from Virginia’s native House Wren by the white line over the eye and its larger size.

The babies look like they’ll be ready to take off in a few weeks. For such small birds, wrens make huge nests, totally enclosed except for an entrance hole on the side. They’ll nest just about anywhere low but seem to take advantage of the relative safety and often good shelter offered by human structures. These ended up nesting in a discarded bike helmet, but they’ll also take over boots, flower pots, baskets and just about anything else that can accommodate their oversized nests. I had once left one of those cardboard compartmentalized shoe storage boxes in a shed, and it became a wren hotel.

Phoebes, like wrens, also have found safety and good shelter nesting close to humans, usually under eaves of buildings. This morning I finally tracked down the nest of the pair that have been hanging around up here at the house – on top of a light under the eaves of the garage roof. Phoebes are prolific, raise two or three broods a year. This first bunch of fledglings looked ahead of the wrens and likely to leave the nest soon. With Phoebes, one minute all the babies are there and the next, they’ve all flown away.

I’ve seen the adult Phoebes often this spring, usually on the phone cable running to the roof of my house. I enjoy their jaunty, trademark tail-bobbing, and acrobatic displays when they go after insects in midair. I’m not so fond of hearing them incessantly calling their name every dawn, but at least I don’t need an alarm clock.

I’ve been trying to observe what’s going on with the pair of Eastern Bluebirds in the nesting box in my yard. Just as I think they’ve been eaten or have abandoned the nest, one pops out of the box and takes off in search of food. They seem to still be in brooding mode, since I haven’t seen any food in her bill for babies when she comes back to the box. The male does bring food on his more frequent forays, but that could be for the female, which does all the brooding. I’m tempted to open the side of the box, which my landlord outfitted with a hinge, to see if the eggs have indeed hatched out, but the birds got a late start with their breeding after a bear destroyed the other box on the property, so I’m a bit reluctant to disturb them at this point. Like Phoebes and wrens, bluebirds are tolerant of humans, which makes monitoring their nesting boxes easier, as volunteers with bluebird societies are encouraged to do.

While at the lower ponds, I had heard the deep call of an American Bullfrog, the first I’ve heard so far this season. When I went back to do my Frogwatch monitoring tonight, I heard it again, indicating the bullfrog mating season is starting. Several Green Frogs also joined in with their banjolike plunking, adding to the Pickerel Frogs and Spring Peepers that have been calling down there for weeks. One lone Gray Treefrog has also been calling in the forest above the house. I had to be careful going back up the drive to the house, since American Toads were here and there on the driveway, enjoying the light rain. They should be adding their trilling to the mating-call orchestra soon.

WI-120505-YoungCritters.docx                5/6/2012 7:57:00 PM

VCU CNS

Ed McCann Is the executive director of NORML's Virginia chapter.

By Charles Couch and Amir Vera
Capital News Service

RICHMOND – After months of an undercover investigation in 2008, a Yorktown County police officer finally had enough evidence to charge Brandon Gomez, then 18, with intent to distribute marijuana.

“I had actually been just basically the middleman,” Gomez said, describing himself as an intermediary between a dealer and users in marijuana sales.

During the investigation, the undercover officer bought 4 ounces of marijuana. After Gomez spent a few nights in jail, the officer offered him a deal: If he turned in his dealer and buyers, the felony charges would be reduced to misdemeanors. Gomez reluctantly agreed, and spent the next six months betraying the people who trusted him most.

“The way I saw it, that was almost worse than me having to stay in jail – having had to deal with that for months on end,” Gomez said. “I lost friends because I tried to be honest with my close friends about what I had done about the guy I was middle-manning for.”

In 2009, Jordan McNeish was 20 years old and living in Albemarle County. His neighbors had complained several times about noise from his apartment.

When he answered the door one night, thinking it was a friend, it turned out to be a police officer responding to another noise violation. The officer saw a beer in McNeish’s hand. Knowing McNeish was underage, the officer stepped into the apartment to investigate.

“He pushed past me, came into my house, threw his flashlight around and found a bag of what was marijuana,” McNeish said. The officer sent his partner to get a search warrant. When they came back, they ended up finding 2 ounces of marijuana.

McNeish was convicted of intent to distribute marijuana – a more serious offense than possession – and sentenced to five and a half years in jail. He got out after six months for good behavior and now has three years of supervised probation.

“It was determined to be an ‘intent to distribute’ charge not because of packaging or any other evidence other than quantity. Half an ounce is automatic intent to distribute in Virginia,” McNeish said.

The cases involving Gomez and McNeish illustrate how severely Virginia deals with marijuana possession. Both men felt their punishments outweighed their crimes. And both face the long-term consequences of being convicted criminals.

Virginia treats marijuana possession more harshly than many other states, handing down years-long sentences to people arrested with small amounts of the substance. Neighboring states have decriminalized marijuana or approved it for medicinal uses, but Virginia legislators this year hardly gave serious consideration to such ideas.

An exception was Delegate Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke, who proposed House Bill 485. It sought to allow individuals convicted of marijuana possession to petition for expungement, and have the charges cleared, after five years.

“I believe in second chances; I believe a person can mess up. And once they’ve atoned themselves and pay restitutions and rehabilitated themselves, they ought to be restored back whole – meaning it shouldn’t show on their record,” Ware said.

The bill died in a subcommittee of the House Courts of Justice Committee.

Former Delegate Harvey Morgan, a Republican from Gloucester, is familiar with that panel. Before retiring in 2011, he tried for five years to relax Virginia’s marijuana laws.

At first, Morgan, a pharmacist, introduced bills to expunge criminal records of marijuana charges. Then he altered his strategy and tried decriminalizing marijuana – changing the $500 criminal fine for simple possession to a $500 civil charge and eliminating the threat of prison time.

Morgan’s efforts also foundered in the House Courts of Justice Committee.

“The criminal subcommittee consisted primarily of attorneys who have been prosecutors, and they have the mindset that it (marijuana possession) should not be decriminalized,” Morgan said. “If it went to any other committee in the General Assembly, it would stand a lot better chance.”

As a result, Ware said, Virginia remains very strict concerning marijuana laws.

“Virginia is in the minority on this. Other states usually just automatically expunge your records after five or 10 years, especially on nonviolent crimes and misdemeanors. But Virginia, once again, holds the distinction of being in the very small minority. I know we have the most restricted expungement statute in the country,” Ware said.

Ed McCann, executive director of the Virginia chapter National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says Virginia is typical of the South.

“I know states with harsher laws,” McCann said. “As far as Southern states go, we’re probably in the middle.”

He said Western states generally have the most liberal marijuana laws. New England is lenient, too. Connecticut is about to become the 17th state to allow marijuana for medical reasons. Under the Connecticut law, doctors could prescribe the substance specifically to patients with debilitating diseases such as cancer or AIDS.

Midwestern states are still pretty strict, McCann said. The mid-Atlantic states vary in how they treat marijuana users.

North Carolina has decriminalized the substance. So if you’re arrested there with a marijuana cigarette, you might get the equivalent of a parking ticket.

If you smoke marijuana in Maryland as treatment for glaucoma, judges might let you off. Maryland legislators are debating proposals to legalize marijuana for medical uses.

But if you’re arrested smoking marijuana in Virginia, even for medical reasons, you could face hard time – 30 days in a state prison on a first offense or as much as 10 years on a subsequent offense.

McCann says that’s unfair.

“There are a lot of pot smokers in Virginia, you know. We’re all regular people, and we need to be respected and not arrested anymore,” McCann said.

NORML’s goal is to legalize the use of marijuana by adults. The group supports having a regulated system allowing adults to buy marijuana for recreational, medical and spiritual use.

“In other words, just like alcohol – with restrictions and regulations that are approved by the community so that people know where marijuana’s being sold, they know who’s selling it and when it’s being done,” McCann said. “They can collect the taxes and they can make the regulation so that kids aren’t being allowed to access it.”

An initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol will be on the ballot in Colorado in November. The state of Washington is planning a similar referendum.

Those elections may determine how the rest of the nation will view reforming marijuana laws, McNeish said.

“If that passes, I think that other states will probably find this goal is more realistic,” McNeish said. “But if that fails and gets pushed back another two years, I think it could be seven or 10 years before Virginia could do anything like that, because Virginia’s not going to be the first state to legalize it – that’s for sure.”

Before Virginia’s laws on marijuana can change, Ware and Morgan said, the mindset in the General Assembly must change – starting with the House Courts of Justice Committee.

“It never gets out of committee … The people that run it are prosecutors, and they don’t believe giving any break to anybody. Once you’re a criminal, they don’t believe in giving breaks. It’s just a difference in philosophy, so they kill the bill,” Ware said.

In the meantime, people like McNeish and Gomez must live with the consequences of being caught with marijuana. Their criminal records will haunt them the rest of their lives, making it hard to find work or housing and even vote.

Gomez is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University. He’d like to join the Navy SEALs. But because of his record, that might not be possible.

“They passed this new mandate that said that no one, because they’re overfilled right now, with any sort of drug charges is allowed in,” Gomez said. “I know I have potential. I’ve always wanted to join the military, but now I may not be able to join.”

McNeish, who works doing auto restoration, said he has had issues applying for housing.

“I’ve been lucky with jobs,” McNeish said. “But I have noticed that it’s been extremely hard for me to find a place. Lots of applications ask if you have any criminal record; other applications only ask for felonies.”

On the Web

For more about the Virginia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, visit www.virginianorml.org.

A map showing the laws in each state is at http://norml.org/laws.

Capital News Service is a student news-gathering program sponsored by the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Don Audette | Rappahannock News

VDOT's 1929 engineering and plans for the Sperryville bridge.

Of historic interest is the Proposed Truss Bridge over the Thornton River near Sperryville, as laid out by the Virginia Department of Highways on November 19, 1928.   Figures shown nearby include the overall design plan, plus enlargements of parts of that plan. These include: the title of the plan, a close up of the side view of the bridge, and a general note about the bridge.  For the latter, of particular interest is the roadway being 24 feet wide, and the bridge having a capacity to handle two 15-ton trucks passing.

As built by the Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works in 1929, using steel from Bethlehem Steel, the bridge in Sperryville is technically called a “pony Warren truss bridge.”  Pony is the name given to short bridges that have no top.  Warren is the name of the bridge design patented in 1848 by Englishman James Warren (and Willoughby Theobald Monzani, who probably had too complicated a name to include in the name of a bridge type).  Engineering-wise, a truss bridge is, essentially, a number of easily and ruggedly constructed triangles, designed to handle heavy loads for long periods of time by constantly transferring any moving weights on the bridge to the ground.

The interesting point of the Sperryville bridge of 1929 is that the roadbed passes through the bridge part way up from the bottom of the bridge and not along the bottom.  The reason is that the Sperryville bridge of 1929 had no “rollers” at one end to compensate for the expansion and contraction of the bridge metal due to hot or cold weather.  The expansion and contraction was shifted to the roadbed.  This loosey-goosey approach was the source of the vibrations felt on the bridge.

VDOT’s plan for the new bridge (as shown in the photo below) is meant to emulate the look of the old bridge.

Don Audette | Rappahannock News

The bridge as it looked in late April 2012.

VDOT

VDOT's simulation of the new bridge over the south fork of the Thornton River at U.S. 522.

Don Audette

From the Bekins website: "Since 1891, Bekins has been providing our customers with the best value and service. No other van line has more experience than Bekins."

As in the photo above sent in this week by Don Audette, who happened to be among the drivers who had to wait while a truck driver and his partner tried to back their rig out of a bad situation, tractor-trailers have been tying up U.S. 211 in Sperryville trying to make the hairpin turn at Main Street – a turn that big orange detour signs in Madison, Warrenton, Front Royal and Culpeper warn them they won’t be able to make (or, in making, will destroy the new guardrail VDOT just put in, shown below) until the reconstruction of the U.S. 211 bridge over the Thornton River is complete — most likely sometime in late June.

Meantime, if you happen to be in Sperryville when a big rig shows up and attempts to circumvent traffic laws (not to mention the laws of physics), get out that camera and send us your photos — including one of the license number, if possible.

We’ll try to pass the photos on to the proper authorities, or at least the nearest remedial sign-reading school. If you’re a truck driver and you’re reading this, we’ll try to be understanding of how tough it’s gotten, financially and otherwise, to make a living moving freight around on 18 wheels — but you’re still a nimrod, not just for ignoring the detour signs, for speeding down Main Street in a 10,000-pound death machine and for risking lives and property to save 45 minutes.

J.D. Hartman, who owns High on the Hog BBQ right next to the difficult detour intersection, said he flagged down a tractor-trailer driver this week who’d just made the hairpin turn and was driving toward Sperryville down Main Street. Hartman told the driver to watch out because he would likely get a ticket from the deputies Sheriff Connie C. Smith says are now detailed to catch the detour-runners. The driver’s response, according to Hartman: “Well f— you, and them, too.”

Hartman said it seems truck drivers are frustrated by the situation, and recounted another instance last week when a truck bumped the telephone pole next to the damaged guard rail, which shook the power lines dramatically all the way down the street. “There’s going to be an accident right at that turn,” he said. “Mark my words.”

Raymond Boc | Rappahannock News

A guardrail just reinstalled by VDOT, damaged last week by an unidentified trucker.

Main Street resident Christopher Ramey, three houses down from High on the Hog, said he and a Thornton River Grille coworker were sitting on his porch overlooking the south fork of the Thornton River at about 10:30 p.m. the other night when they heard the truck attempting to make the illegal turn onto Main Street crush the new guardrail. “We just sat there watching and listening, and after the driver made the turn, he just kept on going and didn’t seem to look back,” said Ramey, who wasn’t able to see the license plate. Ramey thinks that trucks are more confident to make that turn at night because it is unlikely that police will witness the act.

“We’re down there working traffic, catching speeders,” said Sheriff Smith. “And if we see any trucks going down Water Street or making that turn at High on the Hog – they’re not supposed to be there – so we’re enforcing that.”

Rappahannock County Administrator John McCarthy said at last Monday night’s supervisors meeting that some truck drivers headed north from Culpeper on U.S. 522 apparently have been using their GPS navigation to reroute in Woodville onto the paved but narrow Rudasill Mill Road (and from there to Rock Mills Road and U.S. 211 near the high school). McCarthy said he was concerned that at least one of the bridges on Rudasill Mill was not designed for tractor-trailer traffic.

More historical background

Engineering plans, photos and more are included in this web-only sidebar compiled by Don Audette.

The Sperryville bridge has come to the end of its life. It was a brave little bridge. Day and night, for 82 years, it helped vehicles cross the south branch of the Thornton River at Sperryville. Cars, trucks with giant logs, pickup trucks, tractor-trailers, farm vehicles, bikers, gravel trucks, cement trucks, emergency vehicles, you name it. Only 60 feet long, it went unnoticed by most travelers. It gave its heart and soul to Sperryville. Brave little bridge, we will miss you.

It certainly arrived at a propitious time back in 1929. Construction of Lee Highway was fast approaching Sperryville from east and west. Lee Highway was meant to be the South’s counterpart to the Lincoln Highway. Both were transcontinental highways starting in New York City and ending in San Francisco. The vision for Lee Highway, from Washington, D.C. to New Market in the Shenandoah Valley, was that of a magnificent tree-lined, dual-lane boulevard, with flanking auxiliary roads at its sides for local traffic. It required a 200-foot right-of-way. (You can still see elements of the design near the beginning of Arlington Boulevard, U.S. Route 50, just outside of Washington, D.C.)

Back in the 1920s, it was expected that visitors from all over the western U.S. would approach the nation’s capital via Lee Highway, descending out of the Blue Ridge Mountains along a wide boulevard that eventually rose up over the hill at Fort Myer to reveal a spectacular vista laid out before them: the nation’s capital, from the new Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Mall, the White House and the Washington Monument, and the Capitol in the distance.

Lee Highway never lived up to its dream. Tight-fisted citizens along the way would not give up their land for a right-of-way, speculators and developers drove up prices and heated arguments arose about the route. In the end, Lee Highway was completed on a much smaller scale, but still significant for the times.

Rappahannock County was a laggard in this project. In a slick publication put out by the Lee Highway Association in 1926, describing the transcontinental highway in some detail, it notes a section east of Ben Venue, going toward Amissville, as follows: “This road is now under construction eastward to connect with the pavement west of Warrenton. This is one of the few gaps totaling 200 miles, which breaks the continuity of a transcontinental highway. The State has graded this section and keeps it in good condition. It is even now a very good road, except that it is slippery after rain.”

In Sperryville, Lee Highway followed Water Street and Main Street. How could Main Street – or especially Water Street – handle millions of potential visitors traveling to and from the West? Hence the building of the bypass of current U.S. 211, plus the Sperryville bridge to siphon off local traffic and make connections with Culpeper and Madison. Water Street and Main Street were thus saved by the Sperryville bridge from certain destruction. But, for a short time, they were part of Lee Highway.

There is not much known about the installation of the Sperryville bridge. The Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Highways (the forerunner of VDOT) had prepared a schematic of the proposed bridge, dated Nov. 19, 1928. It was built – as its nameplates proclaimed for more than 80 years – by the Roanoke Iron and Bridge Works, Inc., of Walnut Street SE, in Roanoke. The company was founded in Roanoke in 1915 and by 1930 had 236 employees. Since the Virginia Department of Transportation standardized metal truss bridge plans after 1909, there were 59 such bridges constructed in Virginia the 1920s. The Sperryville bridge was one of them: in place and on time.

But what of that unfinished portion of Lee Highway? It was a really sore point with the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors. At a supervisors’ meeting on Nov. 7, 1929, the board passed a stern resolution to be sent to each member of the Virginia Highway Commission. It cited three facts – the Virginia General Assembly in 1922 created Lee Highway in memory of Gen. Robert E. Lee; the gap in the construction in Rappahannock County; and the imminent opening of the new Arlington Memorial Bridge in 1931 – and then got to the heart of the matter.

Virginia, it said, “ . . . is getting very adverse advertising by reason of the condition of this stretch of road which cannot be properly maintained owing to the present character of construction of this road and the heavy traffic on it. In fact, people outside of the state traveling over this road remark that Virginia has constructed no memorial to our great leader, if the road they are traveling over can be considered such a memorial.”

The Virginia Commissioner of Highways – Mr. Wade H. Massie of Rappahannock County – got the message. Improvements were made to complete the work on Lee Highway here. This work joined the new bypass. And the Sperryville bridge was ready for its future.

So long, little buddy.

Food Pantry Day
Saturday, May 12

At the Pantry

9:30 a.m. – Pet Parade led by 11-year-old bagpiper Jacob Laughlin. Prizes awarded in three categories (dogs, cats, others), registration begins at 9, entry fee is donation of dog food or cat food (no entry fee for Pantry customers).

11 a.m. – Gardening workshop led by Farm to Table coordinator Jen Rattigan and master gardener Mark Cuppet from Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School.

1-3 p.m. – Food Pantry Open House

Also, Trinity Episcopal Church’s lemonade stand and St. Peter’s Catholic Church’s bake sale, both to benefit the pantry.

At the home of Beverly and John Fox Sullivan

6-9 p.m. Fundraising dinner and wine auction at the mayor’s home in Washington; tickets, $85, available by emailing PantryDay@RappahannockPantry.org, visiting RappahannockPantry.org or calling 540-937-4038.

This Saturday’s Food Pantry Day is giving youngsters an opportunity to develop a sense of responsibility for their community and build the habit of helping neighbors less fortunate than themselves. On their own or through scouting and school programs, kids from Sperryville to Amissville are observing Rappahannock County Food Pantry Day on May 12 and simultaneously learning the importance and satisfaction of making a difference.

For the girls in the Rappahannock Service Unit of the Girl Scouts, a food drive was the perfect way to participate, to honor scouting’s 100th birthday and earn the special anniversary patch commemorating their good work. Every Rappahannock Girl Scout, from kindergarten to 9th grade, is taking part in the campaign.

 “Courage, competence and character. That’s what Girl Scouting is all about, and this food drive advances all three of those goals,” explained Janet Robey, leader of the seventh-grade cadet troop and Brownies. “It’s a girl-led project. The girls looked at the needs in this county, and they wanted to focus on combating hunger.”

Basing the collection of non-perishables at the elementary school, the girls made and decorated food boxes for every home room. They went class to class, describing hunger in Rappahannock, explaining the needs and exhorting their friends to help. They made food drive announcements and reported progress over the school’s public address system. On Fridays, the seventh-grade cadets hauled a wagon through the halls, stopping at each home room to collect cans, bottles and boxes. “It was amazing to see the kids pouring out of the rooms loaded down with food. The first Friday, we had to stop and empty the wagon twice!” Robey noted.

And it only got worse . . . or better, depending on the perspective. To earn the 100th anniversary patch, the girls had to achieve 100 of something – pounds, items, hours, anything, as long as it totaled 100 or multiples thereof.

On opening day of the drive, the scouts beat their goal, collecting 209 items that weighed in at 212 pounds. So they upped the target to 1,000, and in week two, they were at 993 pounds – only seven short of the new goal, with the drive only half way through and two weeks of collecting still to go. “It’s been a wonderful success,” Robey added, “and the girls have been able to see the results of doing something for others.”

For those who want to assist the Girl Scouts with the food drive, there’s still time. Perishables may be dropped up at the elementary school through this Friday (May 11.)

For the teenagers in Rappahannock County High School’s Farm-to-Table program, support of the Food Pantry is a continuing effort, with produce picked, bagged and delivered weekly. From cool weather greens, peas and broccoli to the tomatoes, herbs, corn, beans and squash of high summer, hundreds of pounds of high-school grown vegetables filled the pantry’s bushel baskets last year. “It isn’t just the horticulture and agriculture classes,” said Jen Rattigan, who teaches agriculture and coordinates the F2T program. “Every class is somehow involved in our interdisciplinary approach.” For instance, shop classes built the raised beds at the Food Pantry and the Senior Center. Math classes do the numbers, working out plot sizes, plant spacing, cost and output. For school lunches, culinary art students prepare cooked vegetables and salad bar fixings harvested from the Farm to Table gardens.

“After every delivery to the Food Pantry, we report the next day on the experience. It means a lot to the kids,” Rattigan said. “They harvest for themselves, and they look forward to the fruits of their labors, but they gladly give up their shares when they know we’re harvesting for the Food Pantry.”

Students from Belle Meade School are collecting and donating eggs from the farm’s flock to the pantry. At Hearthstone School, kids are holding a food drive. Children from the Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School in Flint Hill, where the Plant-A-Row hoop house is installed, grow, bag and deliver greens to the pantry. At Stuart Field in Amissville, young athletes in the Rappahannock Culpeper Baseball League will be conducting a food drive during Saturday’s games (the drop for donations is at the concession stand.)

Main Hutcheson of Amissville is building a 10-by-12-foot storage shed for the pantry as his Eagle Scout project, and scouts will help with activities at the pantry on Saturday as well as park cars at the fundraising dinner and wine auction that night at the Sullivans’ home. Jacob Laughlin, whose grandmother Annie lives in Huntly, will lead the pet parade on Food Pantry Day with his bagpipes. The 11-year-old ranks fifth in the nation as a bagpipe player for his age group.

 “These young people all have one thing in common – they care,” said Mimi Forbes, Food Pantry director. “They’re in training to carry on the tradition of this caring and compassionate community”

Most of the regular volunteers at the Food Pantry are retirees with time to donate to community causes. Occasionally, a teenager or 20-something will tag along to help parent or grandparent with an afternoon shift at the pantry, but rarely do they become steady helpers. There’s so much else to do, they’re too busy, job and school pose conflicts, or they have family responsibilities. Twenty-seven-year-old Jen Green of Amissville is the exception.

Daphne Hutchinson | Rappahannock News

Two years ago, struggling with severe social anxiety, Jen saw the Food Pantry as an opportunity – a small, safe place where she could practice socialization. Her excellent computer skills made her instantly indispensable; her kind and helpful manner made her an instant favorite with customers. It was a good match. She took on additional responsibilities, her confidence growing as her competence increased, and in no time, she was tapped as deputy – the mini-Mimi – in charge when the director is on leave, comfortable with the authority, at ease in the position, with no trace of anxiety.

How did the transformation happen?

“It’s simple. There’s such camaraderie between the volunteers. It’s fun! And I think I accomplish something positive at the Food Pantry,” Jen explained.

It’s almost Food Pantry Day! Saturday (May 12) will begin with a Washington pet parade at 9:30 a.m., followed by a gardening demonstration at 11, then an open house from 1 to 3 at the Rappahannock Pantry (603 Mount Salem Ave., Washington) – and the day will end with a big party and wine auction at the home of Beverly and John Fox Sullivan in Washington, sponsored by Flavor magazine and a number of local businesses. Food and wine for the event have been donated by local farmers, restaurants, and wineries, and the party is a fundraiser for the Pantry. Ticket price is $85 per person.

Find out more about Food Pantry Day in the story and box on page 2. Support the Pantry not only with food and money but also by joining the celebration. You can also sign up to be a volunteer at the Pantry. While there are many regular volunteers, there is often also a need for a volunteer for an hour or two once in awhile. Signing up won’t commit you to being a regular volunteer.

Montpelier: historic house, ‘happy home’

Kathy Christie | Rappahannock News

The view from the porch at Montpelier.

At Montpelier, the historic F.T. Valley residence of Sarah and James Wildasin, hosts for Belle Meade School’s upcoming fundraiser Saturday (May 12), guests will have a unique opportunity to view a careful, caring restoration of a treasured historic house (shown here is the view from the porch, which features railings that owner Sarah Wildasin carefully reproduced, of the Blue Ridge mountains and some of Montpelier’s horses in background).

“This is a happy home, a very happy home,” Wildasin declares, noting that three generations of her family are enjoying life fully at Montpelier, the evidence supplied by the dogs underfoot and the young folk grooming and riding horses nearby.

The transformation of a Rappahannock gem in the aftermath of a tragic vandalism episode was begun five years ago by Sophie and Roger Scruton, from whom the Wildasins purchased Montpelier in 2010.  But it’s clear that Sarah Wildasin, in the time since, has been busy attending to the details of a long “to do” list.  Old wood floors and walls are cleaned and polished; walls re-plastered and repaired and paints applied in historically accurate colors; baths, closets and kitchen fixed or updated. All the fireplaces operate now with marble facades scrounged from salvage and antique dealers, as well as matches found for missing door knobs, sink fittings and chandeliers.

Saturday’s guests will gain a rare glimpse of a superb and ongoing restoration of a privately owned historic house that is lived in and enjoyed as a home – one, which in days gone by, frequently hosted George Washington, his horse, Buckskin, stabled then in what is now a state-of-the-art  equestrian barn.

The dinner is 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday (May 12) at Montpelier (26 Montpelier La., Sperryville) and features music by Dontez Inferno and a Belle Meade Farm menu by chef Sylvie Rowand with local wines. Visit bellemeadeschool.org or call 540-987-8970 for details or to purchase tickets.

– Kathy Christie

Celebrate Mary Beth, and farming

Courtesy photo

Mary Beth Williams

The Mary Beth Williams Memorial Fund’s annual dinner and bluegrass music gala begins at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 19 at High Thicket (367 Fletchers Mill Road, Woodville). Mary Beth Williams (pictured here), whose life has become a symbol of spring, was tragically killed in an automobile accident on Route 729 in May of 1997. She was 18.

Mary Beth’s greatest passion was agriculture. And so the theme of the event is “farming in Virginia.” Bluegrass music will be provided by the Shenandoah Travelers. Political commentary, with a focus on agriculture, will be provided by Del. Michael Webert (R-18th), who is a Fauquier-based farmer when he’s not in Richmond attending to General Assembly business.

The Williams memorial fund finances scholarships for higher education, camp attendance and other activities for Rappahannock youth. To date, there have been contributions of more than $61,000 to the fund. Scholarships awarded since 1997 exceed $46,000.

Tickets for the May 19 fundraiser ($80 per couple or $40 per person) may be purchased at the Rappahannock County Extension Office (540-675-3619). Children 12 and younger get in free. All residents of the county surrounding area are invited.

Pam Owen | Rappahannock News

The brightly colored Zebra Swallowtail butterfly depends on Paw Paw trees as a host for its larva, but the adults get nutrients from the nectar of several flowering forest plants as well as other sources of nutrients.

Spring’s been racing along two to three weeks ahead of schedule: Bloodroot, Eastern Redbud and American Dogwood all bloomed early, followed by Star Chickweed and, by mid-April, Mayapple. Ladyslippers’ have been blooming for weeks under conifers in forested areas, and Cranesbill, or Wild Geranium, is now everywhere along the forest paths near my house. Ragwort is blooming in bright yellow waves in low, damp areas of the county and here and there in higher areas, and the white blooms of native raspberry and blackberry and the purple of wild phlox are appearing throughout the region.

Last week, to see how spring was progressing in the lower elevations of Shenandoah National Park, I loaded my dog into the car and headed up the hollow to Thornton River Trail, one of my favorite local spots for an easy but beautiful stroll through nature. Stepping onto the trail, I could see a small cloud of butterflies up ahead and, spotting fresh horse dung on the trail as well, I knew why the butterflies were there. While dung – or scat, as wildlife biologists prefer to call it – is not what most hikers go to the park to see, such deposits attract a wide variety insects, including diverse species of butterflies, flies, bees and wasps. The tiny critters take advantage of the nutrients and moisture that are made available through the donors’ digestion process.

Pam Owen | Rappahannock News

A butterfly acquires nutrients from scat left by a passing mammal. While the butterfly’s coloring makes it blend into its woodland landscape, a close look reveals subtle but lovely peach-colored markings that point to its being a species of duskywing.

A canid (dog, fox or coyote) had also left a deposit that was of particular interest to the insect gathering, which to my delight included a large dung beetle. I’ve been enchanted by large beetles since I was first hissed at by stag beetles in Germany, one of my first fond childhood memories. The dung beetle in question, a female most likely in the scarab-beetle family, was valiantly trying to extract a good-sized ball from the larger scat deposit so she could store it in her underground den for either her own use or to provide it as a nutrient source on which to deposit her eggs.

For a few minutes I watched the large beetle – shiny black and flat-headed – wrestle with her prize, but wanted to get further down the trail to a spot in the river suitable for my dog to soak away some of her arthritis discomfort. On the way back, about 20 minutes later, I stopped to see how the beetle had progressed in her task. She was still wrestling with the ball, working under and around it with little success at moving it to her burrow. I managed to get a few photographs to help with species identification later. Noting other insect species that were flitting around, briefly landing on the scat, I snapped a shot of a small, brownish butterfly before it took off again.

Pam Owen | Rappahannock News

Spring is well underway along the Thornton River Trail in Shenandoah National Park.

I kept stopping at every scat deposit on the trail to see the many species of woodland butterflies attracted to them, including a few species that were easy to identify, such as the tiny bright-blue Spring Azures and the much bigger Eastern Tiger Swallowtails (males in their yellow and black stripes and some females in black). Other smaller, quicker species in subtler shades of brown and gray flitted by: nymphs and other satyrs as well as skippers. I knew my camera was no match for these speedy little guys, but I did manage to capture shots of two brightly colored Zebra Swallowtails after a lot of patient waiting.

While adult butterflies find nutrition from several sources, they depend on plants to feed their caterpillars. In forested areas, trees are the most likely hosts. Eastern Tiger Swallowtails use a variety of host trees, but other butterfly species are obligated to just a few or even only one plant species. Zebra Swallowtails, for example, need Paw Paws, which are common in these lower, damper areas of the park, and Spicebush Swallowtail butterflies similarly need spicebush as hosts for their young.

Pam Owen | Rappahannock News

Cranesbill, or Wild Geranium, blooms in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

When I got back home, I took a close look at the photos of the little brown butterfly I’d taken. In my brief look at it in the field, it had looked drab, but on my big monitor I could see small but lovely peach-colored triangles on the top of its wings, a subtle accent I’d missed that helped me with identification. Even then, I could only narrow it down to two similar skipper species in the same genus, the Mottled Duskywing (Erynnis martialis) or the Wild Indigo Duskywing (Erynnis baptisiae), named for one of its host plants.

I also started researching the dung beetle I’d photographed, although it was hard to get enough angles to be sure of the species. She was too busy digging under and around the ball of scat to try to gain command over it to model for me, and I didn’t want to disturb her work. Look for more about dung beetles, which are a lot more interesting and important to the environment than the casual observer might think, in an upcoming column.

No one left happy from Monday afternoon’s monthly Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors meeting – as several of its members had predicted – after the supervisors approved what the county would spend on schools for 2012-2013.

Since the state mandated this year that local jurisdictions would help shore up the underfunded Virginia Retirement System for state employees (at an increased local cost of nearly $400,000 annually), it was a scene repeated in courthouses and county offices around the commonwealth over the last two months.

About an hour of talk Monday revealed sentiments, among the board members and the 20 citizens who showed up for the meeting, to be split roughly down the middle – both strongly for and strongly against approval of a school budget requiring a nearly $560,000 increase in local funding over last year.

After a motion by Jackson district supervisor Ron Frazier to cut $320,000 failed for lack of a second, the board voted on Stonewall-Hawthorne supervisor Chris Parrish’s suggested compromise, to split the proposed increase down the middle, making a unanimous decision to limit the increase to $280,000.

“We’ll have to go back and make the expense side match the revenue side again,” said school superintendent Aldridge Boone immediately after the vote. He had been huddled with school division finance officer Bonnie Hahn over budget sheets and a legal pad as the supervisors calculated how much to cut from the school budget (which now stands at $12.09 million, a roughly $400,000 increase over last year’s $11.69, and which had included allowances for a 3-percent across-the-board school division staff increase – and an additional $392,000 in state-mandated contributions to VRS).

“Something has to be cut,” Boone said, “whether it’s programs or people, I don’t know at this point.”

“The state pretty much mandated this tax increase, and didn’t leave a lot of room to play,” said chairman Roger Welch of Wakefield district, before voting. “As for approving this budget by category [a suggestion made Monday by taxpayer advocate Tom Junk of Sperryville, and by others during this spring’s contentious budget season], we tried that years ago; it did not work – at all.”

Property taxes, which would’ve risen by roughly 5 cents per $100 of assessed value, according to County Administrator John McCarthy, would instead rise by about 3 cents to 61 cents per $100 – though that number won’t be finalized until the county approves its roughly $22 million overall budget sometime next month.

At the school board’s regular monthly meeting the following evening (Tuesday, May 8), noticeably frustrated members compared schedules to find time for a work session to address the reduced budget. Waiting any later than May 31 to submit a re-balanced budget would put the school division in a bind, Boone told the school board.

Boone and the board settled on a final work session day May 25, starting at 8 a.m. in the school board office. Boone said he’ll run a scenario past them with the budget that does not include the proposed new school bus leases (something at least three supervisors seemed to support removing from this year’s budget). “We don’t have any safety issues with the buses,” Boone told the school board.

Early indications are that the 3-percent school employees’ raise could survive the cuts.

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact that we asked for a $560,000 increase, and they only gave us 280,000,” said Jackson district school board member Amy Hitt, her head in her hands, shaking her head from side to side.

During the public comment period at Monday’s supervisors session, Junk suggested the school system – with a slowly declining enrollment – has “too many teachers,” especially at the high school level.

“Over the next few years, with the [costs of the regional] jail coming in, the only way you’re going to get back in line is you have to do something about having too many teachers,” Junk said.

Parrish later defended the school, saying “whether you have 15 or 20 kids in a class, you still have to have a teacher. Whether there are 15 or 30 kids on a bus, you still have to pay a driver and burn the same amount of fuel to get there.

“Unlike private schools,” Parrish said, “our school division has to deal with kids who are not college-bound, and kids with special needs. Those kids, and costs, have to be factored in – and our schools have done a great job in those areas, with the cooking program, with the farm-to-table program.

“I have to say, I’m really proud of this school system,” said Parrish, who also said there was a “strong sentiment” among his constituents and those he’d talked to in recent months, that the school staff should get a raise, something they haven’t received in the last four years of level-funded budget cycles.

“But a 5-cent increase, that’s untenable,” he said. “It’s too much.”

The after-vote school budget funding share will translate to 1.5 cents of a 3-cent increase in taxes; McCarthy has said about one cent is demanded by a sharp increase in social services costs, and the other half a cent by state-mandated salary increases for many of the county’s non-school employees.

“The school board has listened with much interest to the comments of citizens,” said school board chair John Lesinski after the supervisors’ vote. “So there’s nothing that’s off the table. We have spent a lot of time looking hard at this year’s budget, and we’ll just have to go back and sharpen our pencils and do it some more.”

This is the second of a three-part series on controversies over diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. This week will focus on controversies over complicated Lyme testing.

Guidelines condoned by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allows a tick-bitten, symptomatic person with Lyme’s telltale bull’s-eye rash to immediately get a prescription for inexpensive, highly effective antibiotics from a doctor. But rash-less victims are not so lucky, for they are instead thrown into the now nationally contentious area of testing for the bacterial spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi.

There are two current tests for Lyme. The first is an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, or ELISA, which measures antibody levels. The second is the Western immunoblot assay, or Western blot, which identifies proteins particular to Lyme.

Unfortunately for the rash-free patient, neither test is very accurate.

According to Dr. Joseph J. Burrascano, board member of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), ELISA’s accuracy rate is only 30 to 50 percent.

Many doctors will readily send out for ELISA results as it is relatively inexpensive. But speaking at the recent Lyme forum sponsored by the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection in Washington, retired Sibley Hospital internist Tom Connally frankly warned the audience, “don’t bother with the ELISA,” instead suggesting they request the Western blot.

Connally explained that if a patient is tested too soon – within two weeks after infection – their body has not had enough time for antibodies to form (two to five weeks) and induce a positive ELISA.

Possibly unaware of ELISA’s inaccuracy – or using CDC’s Lyme “surveillance” guidelines versus diagnostic guidelines – many doctors will stop testing there. If they do proceed with the more expensive Western blot, with its higher “specificity” to Lyme of 90 percent, the accuracy (or “sensitivity”) of this test is only 30 percent – a statistic mainly brought on by human error.

The Western blot detects two types of antibodies which, if present, have been enzymatically cut into segments of varying lengths and run from end to end through an electrophoretic gel. The problem occurs when the gel analyzer eyeballs “bands” to see if certain segments exist that would claim a positive Western blot for that patient. As lesser-containing antibody bands are harder to see, these bands can be missed entirely.

But there is one big “band” bone of contention between two notable organizations at the controversy’s epicenter: ILADS (whose stance largely benefits Lyme patients) and the Infectious Disease Society of America (whose stance benefits others, such as insurance companies), according to the Lyme Disease Association’s website.

In a January 2012 letter signed by several members of Congress – including Virginia’s own Frank Wolf – it states that the “highly controversial” IDSA guidelines for Lyme disease “have been responsible for insurance company denials of Lyme disease treatments.”

The problem began when IDSA – which devised the guidelines largely behind closed doors – threw out two gel bands for diagnostic consideration. The other camp says many Lyme sufferers are not being diagnosed – and therefore treated – because of this exclusion. Unfortunately for Lyme sufferers, the CDC agrees with the IDSA.

In 2008, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that an antitrust investigation carried out by his office had “uncovered serious flaws” in the guidelines.

Further, Blumenthal said in a press release, “My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists.” Blumenthal claimed the investigation revealed conflicts of interest among panel members, including financial interests in “drug companies, Lyme disease diagnostic tests, patents, and consulting arrangement with insurance companies” – claims all denied by the IDSA.

Putting controversy aside, there exists another diagnostic problem: Other bacterial co-infections can be transmitted in the same tick bite with Lyme bacterium. According to Burrascano, Lyme has been redefined now as “a complex illness potentially consisting of multiple tick-delivered co-infections.”

According to Thomas Mather, director of the Rhode Island-based Center for Vector-Borne Disease, “. . . current research shows that one in four or five” of the black-legged deer tick carries Lyme. Just as alarming, most of these infected ticks also carry lesser-known but equally serious infections of malaria-like babesiosis, as well as ehrlichiosis, mycoplasmas, and bartonella. These bacteria – which require a different set of tests with some requiring other types of antibiotics – are often overlooked by doctors.

According to Mather, the D.C. area is “at the [Lyme] nexus” as there are “lone star ticks coming in from the south [and] deer ticks coming in from the north…” The lone star tick, per the CDC, can carry another mysterious bacterium called STARI (Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness), which has a Lyme-like rash. STARI has no reliable test currently.

Next week’s installment will consider controversy over Lyme treatments.

Tammy Martin

The organizers of the April 28 Womanless Beauty Pageant at Flint Hill’s fire hall, a benefit for Carolyn’s Live, Love, Laugh Relay for Life team, say it was a successful event, both in terms of raising funds for cancer research – and in terms of fashion.

See for yourself by checking out (down front, from left) Nathan Demar and Jay Meehan and (middle row, from left) Bruce Williams, Mike Williams, Eric Phillips, Tony Pyle, Charles Burke (first runner-up) and Nathan Planck (second runner-up and talent winner) and, in the back, Darrell Martin (the winner) and Tim Wion.

If you missed the event, you can still help by calling Karen Williams at 540-635-4673 to buy a raffle ticket the team is selling for a set of cornhole game boards. The Relay for Life walkathon is May 19-20 at the high school.

Photo courtesy RCSO

James Carlton Benkelman

After 10 months in the local jail, 48-year-old James Carlton Benkelman of Amissville – who’d been indicted on 73 felony charges related to possessing child pornography and molesting two young boys – was given an opportunity to speak before his sentencing in Rappahannock County Circuit Court Monday (May 7).

Benkelman removed a folded piece of paper from his pinstriped jumpsuit pocket, and through fits of tears, read a heartbreaking apology to the victims.

Benkelman, who worked as an arborist for an area landscaping company until he was arrested last July at his Rappahannock Lakes home, was sentenced Monday to 101 years in state prison on 11 felony counts of possession and reproduction of child pornography. He pleaded guilty to the charges Feb. 13.

In exchange for the pleas, Benkelman received 32 years of active prison time. On good behavior, he will serve 85 percent of that term, or about 27 years, meaning he’ll be released at age 76. As part of the plea agreement, the remaining 62 charges – including several counts of aggravated sexual assault involving two young boys – were dropped.

Before Judge Herman A. Whisenant handed down the prison sentence, Benkelman asked to make a statement.

“I apologize to everyone. I’m so sorry any of this got started. I especially apologize to [the two victims’] families, and pray that I haven’t caused any permanent harm to anyone,” Benkelman said, choking out his written statement through fits of sobbing and tears. “I hope someday they can forgive me, not for my sake, but for theirs. Please don’t let your hate for me affect others.”

Benkelman said that his mother died during the 10 months that he’s been in jail and that he was not able to attend her funeral. “I hope I can get out one day to help my father and my family, but I doubt it . . . I ask the court to please judge me as an individual, and not as a group of numbers.” Benkelman thanked his family for being a “great support.”

Judge Whisenant suspended 69 years of the 101-year sentence, for offenses related to the possession and reproduction of child pornography (the terms run consecutively). Upon release, Benkelman would have 20 years of supervised probation and no contact with any child under the age of 18 without the court’s permission. He was also ordered to pay $833.30 in restitution to the mother of one of the young victims, for transportation and counselling costs. The other victim’s family did not request restitution.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Art Goff said he agreed to drop the child molestation charges to protect the victims and their families – one of which was in the courtroom Monday. The minimum mandatory sentences on the pornography charges, Goff said, would “send him to prison more than likely for the rest of his life, without having to subject the victims to testifying in an open court.”

Goff said Benkelman’s defense had also reached a plea agreement with Page County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ken Alger related to sex abuse charges there. “I think that Benkelman chose wisely in pleading guilty [in Rappahannock] to the child pornography charges instead of challenging the child abuse charges. It would have been highly devastating to the victims and their families if they had to testify.”

The first charge of first-offense possession of child pornography carries a minimum of a one-year suspended jail sentence; the remaining 10 charges, involving reproduction of child pornography, carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in a state prison, six of those with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

The first child pornography charges (of the 11 to which he pleaded guilty Monday) emerged after a July 1 search of Benkelman’s home last summer by Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office and Northern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigators. The search allegedly turned up pornographic images of children on disks at Benkelman’s basement desk. Goff described the recovered images presented to him by investigators as “sickening.”

The investigation that followed the search led to 62 new felony child pornography and molestation charges against Benkelman, after two juveniles came forward.

“He’ll be in his late 70s when, and if, he gets out,” Goff said, noting Benkelman’s plea agreement in Page County on charges of forcible sodomy and other sexual assault charges – several of which can lead to a life sentence. In that case, Benkelman allegedly took one of the victims to a Page County RV park, where the boy was molested.

Also in circuit court

A bench trial for 20-year-old Julious Ceasar Lucas of Woodville, on 10 charges relating to two crime events last summer, was continued until 9 a.m. June 8. By that date, his attorney said she is confident a plea agreement will have been reached. Lucas is last of the four teenage codefendants in the Grand View Road arson case to await trial. The other three have pleaded guilty in the last two months to five felonies (including arson and conspiracy to commit arson) and two misdemeanor charges, and await sentencing. On Aug. 20, the boys – all former Rappahannock County High School students – allegedly broke into, partied in and burned down the weekend cabin of William Rowland, causing an estimated $275,000 in damage. Lucas also faces three charges related to the theft and illegal use of a credit card in July.

Thirty-year-old Jimmy Allen Kennedy Jr. of Amissville pleaded guilty to felonious possession of a schedule I/II drug and misdemeanor possession of an unauthorized distribution container, and was sentenced to five years in prison (with four years six months suspended) for the first offense and 12 months in jail (suspended) for the second. The drug charges originally emerged when a bag of Adderall was found in Kennedy’s wrecked vehicle when it was towed last July 24. The deferred charges were reopened against Kennedy when he failed to attend his pretrial probation meetings in Fauquier County.

In district court

Twenty-one-year-old Tyler Brown of Chester Gap was found guilty of possession of marijuana and sentenced to 30 days in jail, a $500 fine and a six month loss of license. Brown stood trial in Rappahannock County District Court Tuesday (May 1) in faded pinstriped prison pants, leg shackles and a white T-shirt with black Fauquier County Detention Center lettering.

Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Deputy Ronnie Dodson testified that on the night of March 16 he received an anonymous call to the Chester Gap Baptist Church parking lot, where two people were reported drinking and throwing trash. Dodson arrived to find no one, then received another anonymous call informing him that the individuals had moved to the back of a grey house near Sky Verge Lane in Chester Gap. After parking his cruiser on Sky Verge, Dodson got out and said he smelled burnt marijuana, an odor that he was able to detect based on his drug training, Dodson told the court.

As Dodson followed the sound of voices, near the back basement entrance of the house, he said he saw Brown and James Robert Williams of Chester Gap (who pleaded guilty to underage possession of alcohol earlier in court) sitting next to a 24-pack of Budweiser, and noticed a baggie of what he described as “green leaf material” on a stoop between the two.

Dodson said he watched Williams brush the bag aside and put his foot over it. When Dodson picked up the bag, he said that Brown admitted that it was his and that he’d bought it earlier in Fauquier County, but denied having smoked any marijuana that day.

Dodson presented two evidence bags, one containing the bag of leafy green material, the other containing a makeshift marijuana pipe made out of an aluminum soda can.

In closing, Goff presented Brown’s arrest history, which included marijuana possession arrests that occurred in Rappahannock in October 2010 and in Fauquier in May 2011 (Brown is still on probation for the Fauquier charge, which is why he was being held in Fauquier awaiting this trial). Based on the evidence presented, and Brown’s alleged confession, District Court Judge J. Gregory Ashwell found Brown guilty of possession of marijuana.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people you deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But you have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to your own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine….

Look at the immensity of time behind you, and to the time which is before you, another boundless space. In this infinity, then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations…?

Soon you’ll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most – and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial….

Do not act as if you are going to live 10,000 years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good….

Now obsolete are the men whose names were once on everyone’s lips. . . . For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true not only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but also for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses. . . .

In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes….

The above meditations are from Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher – much admired by Frank Pearl, Rappahannock landholder, lawyer, financier, philanthropist, book publisher extraordinaire and visionary who passed away last Friday at the age of 68. To attempt to put into words some other form of eulogy would surely be inadequate and, given his humble public persona, inappropriate.

Walter Nicklin
Publisher

RCHS shines at Technosphere

Stacey Bailey

Rappahannock’s award-winning TSA team members are (front row, from left) Amber Dodson, Matt Lombardi, Peyton Bailey, Lyndie Paul and Paige Paul, and (back row) advisor and teacher Scott Schlosser, Trey Swindler, Case Kramer, Adam Carter and Maddie Kopjanski.

Rappahannock’s Technology Student Association (TSA) earned their Panther pride last Friday (May 4) at the Technosphere state competition in Richmond.

Adam Carter and Amber Dodson won first place with their paired debate about technology’s impact on food supply, environment and other related issues.

The team of Peyton Bailey, Adam Carter, Amber Dodson, Maddie Kopjanski, Matt Lombardi, Lyndie Paul and Paige Paul successfully developed a video about the average day in the life of a student. At the competition, they created a storyline, wrote a script and shot a one-minute video to earn sixth place.

In the Bio Technology competition, Adam Carter and Peyton Bailey took home fourth place with their display about agricultural runoff.

The Construction Renovation competition required students to design a scale model for a music studio above a garage. The duo of Case Kramer and Matt Lombardi placed seventh in this event.

Finally, the team of Peyton Bailey, Amber Dodson, Lyndie Paul and Paige Paul placed fourth in the Fashion Design contest. These students researched, designed and sewed dresses that they modeled for the judges. Garments represented the theme of a specified historical period.

Advisor and Technology Education teacher Scott Schlosser said: “Congratulations to all of these students on a great showing of skills and knowledge at Technosphere.”

– Melissa Delcour

Wakefield’s park study

On April 27, sixth-grade students from Wakefield Country Day School conducted a macro-invertebrate study in Shenandoah National Park. The students did water testing and a macro-invertebrate population study as culminating activities in their year-long Trout in the Classroom project. The students performed PH and dissolved oxygen tests on a stream and counted mayflies, stoneflies and other aquatic insects. The data will be analyzed for a report on the stream’s health to the park administration.

Teachers Margaret DiDomenico and Jeff Perry supervised the project’s students, who are: Bernie Cieplak, Ben Cotter, Catherine Deane, Grayson Galeone, Connor Glennon, Douglas Griffin, Tyler Johnson, Andrew Kwolek, Drake Lynn, Emma McGunigal, Chris O’Heir, Connor Poe, Jackson Romine, Ben Scaring, Emerson Shepard, Alex Smith, Landon Thede and Owen Youngquist

Battle of the Books report

Six- and seventh-graders from Rappahannock County Elementary School last month traveled  to compete in the annual Battle of the Books, a competition that readers in those grades began competing in last year, trying to read 20 books in a few months and then participate in a challenge against 12 other schools.

In all nine joined: Morgan Flanagan, Virginia Wyatt, Mahlet Yonas-Yirgu, Gabriel Hernandez, Bridget Daly, Haley Streigtiff, Tatyana Yates, Cydney Chambers and I. By the time of the competition four people had completed reading all of the books. The team that would be traveling to Floyd T. Binns Middle School consisted of those four with three alternates, who switched in and out to fill out the five required team members.

We left right after school to go and eat before it started. When we arrived, five of us, along with the competitors from the other schools, individually took a 50-question multiple-choice test on all of the books. Then we competed against five other schools separately in five rounds, in which each school had to answer 10 questions as a group. Missing a question would lower your school’s score and the other team would have the chance to answer that question for bonus points. After that, we headed towards the gym where we were told 10 quotes and required to identify the book they came from.

When all was finished, the scores were shown, and we came in sixth out of the 12 schools. Considering our school hasn’t been involved with this for many years, this is great, and we expect better next year! Keep on reading, Rappahannock!

– Connor Culbertson

Alex Sharp VIII | Rappahannock News

Virginia State Police Capt. Gary Settle presents Peter Luke with a plaque honoring Luke’s nearly 30 years as Rappahannock County’s commonwealth’s attorney. (Luke remains the county attorney, so Settle knew he could surprise him at Monday night’s board of supervisors meeting.)

The award was given on behalf of the Virginia State Police to thank Luke for his career-long support of law enforcement. When Luke took over as prosecutor in 1984, county native Settle had just started as a sheriff’s deputy. Now Settle, who eventually was elected sheriff of Rappahannock County, is the head of the criminal investigations unit of the state police’s Culpeper division.

Luke, who retired Dec. 31, joked with the supervisors: “One of the best parts of my job was working with Gary at the Virginia State Police, because believe it or not, some people in law enforcement can be pretty tough to deal with.”

Alex Sharp VIII | Rappahannock News