She Signed Up, Laced Up, and It’s Changing the Roller Derby Game

JESSICA UGARTE AND HER ROLLER DERBY TEAM WORK TO REDEFINE THE SPORT

By Kelly Emmrich and Abigail Whittington

From the outside, the Richmond roller rink, the Roller Dome, looks like a warehouse with panel siding and a few floodlights. Inside is a different story. Blow-up aliens dangle above the arcade, neon flashing lights fill the rink and a Bruno Mars music video is projected up onto the front wall.

Teenage boys fly by performing tricks. An older skater wearing faded blue jeans with a white bandana hanging out of the back pocket and a yellow tank top eases closer to the wall. One four or five year old boy hangs on his mom’s leg for support.

Jessica Ugarte said that the Roller Dome “looks like it was ripped right out of the 80s. There’s neon. There are gaudy colors. A lot of the rinks are holdovers of that time period.”

Jessica is not there to leisurely skate. She’s there for practice. On the front wall Jessica puts on her gear with the rest of her team. A few members of the team start warming up on the rink. Jessica finishes lacing up her skates and moves out to the center as well to warm up. Like clockwork, at 9:30 p.m. the fluorescent lights turn on and the casual skaters thin out.

Jessica is part of Mother Skate Roller Derby which is based in Richmond, Virginia. Mother Skate was founded in January in 2010, and has been going strong since. On their website it states that Mother Skate “promotes the progressive growth and sustainability of women’s flat track roller derby as a competitive sport by implementing a traditional athletic approach to training and team.”

For her practices, she often wears her long brown hair in two braided pigtails. She takes off her red-framed glasses. The rest of her ensemble is made up of athletic wear: black leggings and a black short sleeved Mother Skate t-shirt with the number ‘6’ on the back.

Mother Skate, she wants to make clear, isn’t the Roller Derby that you imagine, replete with tutus, butt shorts and glittery hose. For them it’s not a show. Their goal is to show the world that roller derby is a serious sport. It’s not just the woman’s version of WWF.

* * *

Around 9:40 p.m., the coaches starts practice. The women form a line with one coach in the front and an assistant coach in back. They all start skating around the rink keeping in tight formation. Then they move on to other drills working on their speed skating forward and backwards. For the last drill, they move into a tight clump and work on moving from the inside of the boundary line to the outside and back, quickly.

The coach ends the drills, and the women quickly stretch out their muscles and get a sip of water before splitting up into two teams of five to scrimmage. The head coach hands one team, Jessica’s team, orange mesh jerseys and the other team sticks to their black t-shirts.

Roller derby is played by two teams of up to fourteen players, who both field up to five members for each two-minute jam, simultaneously skating counterclockwise on a circuit track. Each team designates a scoring player (the "jammer"); the other four members are "blockers." The goal is to get the jammer around the tracks.

Despite the intense drills and long and frequent practices that Jessica’s team and teams like hers go through, roller derby has frequently been covered as a lifestyle story in media. Roller girls have been described as “chicks on wheels” rather than female athletes. It wasn’t until recently that journalists began covering roller derby in the sports section of news outlets, but there is still progress to be made as far as the way roller derby is represented.

Jessica, Mother Skate and the rest of the roller derby community are currently struggling with how to get people to take roller derby seriously.

In 2006 while Jessica was working on her undergraduate degree in Savannah, Georgia, she found a flier hanging up on a coffee shop wall that advertised the need for more roller girls to join a local roller derby team. Jessica had always been athletic, competing in a variety of sports growing up, but she lost interest in college. When she saw the flier though, she decided ‘why not give it a try.’

Jessica had never been on a roller derby team, and her experience with skating was limited to a handful of childhood birthday parties at local roller rinks. She found that many others were in the same boat. Many of her teammates were beginners too. During her first few practices almost everyone hugged the wall while trying to complete laps around the rink. Only those who had experience being a figure skater or a hockey player had the balance to step onto the rink immediately without falling.

Now Jessica has found her balance. Just a few months ago, Jessica tried out for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s All-Star team. The requirements for joining were that the skater must live in Virginia and be on a team already. A lot of getting on the team is how the skater works with others and how the skater adapts to different skating styles. Jessica has played for many teams in her lifetime. She has had the opportunity to learn from different coaches and work with skaters with different styles and techniques. Because of that, her knowledge and experience with roller derby is vaster than most.

It came as no surprise that Jessica made the team. She is now practicing to try-out for the roster for the Battle of the All-Stars games that are coming in February in which fourteen different states compete in a four day long competition.

Roller derby, like most sports, can be aggressive in nature. In the span of Jessica’s roller derby career she has broken both of her legs. She broke her left leg in 2006, which now has a plate and six screws. She also broke two bones in her right leg in September of last year. One bone has a plate and six screws and the other has just one screw. She has also suffered from more minor injuries such as a broken finger and various bruises, but she doesn’t let injuries keep her from coming back to the sport.

“I’ve known people doing similar leg breaking things just stepping off a curb so it’s going to happen one way or another and I would rather have fun while doing it,” said Jessica.

When asked what makes roller derby different from other sports, Jessica explained that it is unique because it is an all-inclusive sport. No matter a roller girl’s race, sexuality, or body shape, the community offers support and guidance to make sure that everyone can succeed.

“The meekest little mouse of people can practice and still learn and grow in roller derby,” said Jessica.

* * *

Roller derby was invented in 1935 by Leo Seltzer as an attraction to fill the Chicago Coliseum. It was modeled off of dance marathons and bike races popular in the 1930s. Roller derby at this time consisted of a team of one man and one woman who raced across a mythical track that represented one coast of the U.S. to another. However, Seltzer knew that while having a team with women athletes would attract a crowd because it was taboo at the time, he also knew that the sport would not be taken seriously by the media for that very reason.

Unfortunately, the sport lost its traction shortly after it was invented. It wasn’t until about 1970 when the sport reemerged, but it was still thought of as a sport of showmanship similar to wrestling. Roller girls were expected to dress in quirky clothes.

“Way back in the derby dinosaur days it was the tutus and the fishnets and face paint and all that stuff,” Jessica recounted. Even Jessica used to wear silver shorts to games.

The change in attire was purposeful for many teams. Jerseys made them look more professional. Jessica’s league, Mother Skate, wears all black and gray to games: gray jerseys, black shorts, black shin guards, black knee pads, black wrist guards and gray helmets. They got rid of the kitschy costumes in hopes that a more regulated uniform would help spectators and media take their sport more seriously.

Jessica’s team has also made the decision to skate under their real names rather than their roller derby names. When Jessica started skating she had the opportunity to pick out her roller derby name. At this time there was a volunteer run roller derby name database that roller girls had to register with. The database was already fairly large when Jessica chose her roller derby name, Rae Gunn, a reference to the TV show, The X-Files.

However, as the sport’s popularity grew, so did the database. It became impossible to find a name that wasn’t already claimed and the volunteers who ran it felt overwhelmed with the number of new registrations coming in. Besides, they also had a desire to leave the kitsch behind.

They also hope getting rid of the names can help bring in more spectator because many of the names that people have chosen are slightly vulgar which makes it uncomfortable for families with children to watch the sport.

It looks like the efforts to professionalize the support are garnering wide-spread support. Roller derby is now on the short list for consideration as a sport in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Inside Paganism

FOR ONE STUDENT, PAGAN PRACTICES HELPED TO EXPAND HIS MIND AND ALSO ACCEPT HIMSELF

By Ester Salguero

Bradley Veerhoff walked in late to the workshop for basic energy manipulation. He looked around the room in Monroe Hall at the University of Mary Washington and saw everyone was holding their hands out in front of them, palms up. He quickly sat down while someone in the group showed him what to do. Now he had his hands out, palms up and he began to feel an energy gathering between his hands. It made something like what he described as a spherical movement. He was amazed at what he was feeling.

“I was definitely smiling, or like holding back a smile because it was a real physical thing,” Veerhoff confessed. Though he had always been open-minded, which was why he decided to attend this Sunday Pagan Society meeting for the first time, he had no idea he would have had such a transformative experience. He admits that he did have a little bit skepticism about it, as he usually does with new experiences. His friend invited him to the society meeting at the beginning of the semester but he had become familiar with Paganism before then. The group started gathering about a year ago, but recently it became an official club at the university.

Veerhoff isn't sure about how long this journey will last until he finds something else, but he has found a sense of community at the meetings and value in some of its spiritual practices which comforts him. He's someone who likes to seek out different theoretical, mythological and spiritual perspectives, trying each of them on like hats. Veerhoff is an example of many Americans these days who are reluctant to identify with any particular religion but who still feel the need to find a sense of spirituality.  

“I consider them [various theologies] to be different ways of seeing the world, which are more or less useful for me in different circumstances,” he said.

This is why Veerhoff's story is so interesting. His spiritual journey is similar to the search for meaning that so many of us go through.

* * *

When Veerhoff was younger, he used to go to church with his family. They went mostly because many of their friends did. But when Veerhoff was in elementary school his father started to doubt his own involvement in the church. His father started questioning the religion and found an unpleasant taste with the way that the church was becoming too political or too promotional of certain Republican Party platforms.

Since Veerhoff's father didn't want to go to church anymore the rest of the family followed, eventually. It was the beginning of a time when all of the family members started to think more deeply about who they were and what they believed.

One day, during Veerhoff's high school years, his father handed him a book. It was a science-fiction classic that sorted out conspiracy theories of his age, in a tone that was satirical and filled with adventure. His father knew that Veerhoff was interested in these theories and thought it would open his mind.

For Veerhoff, it did that and more. It made him realize something about conspiracy theorists, that their beliefs cloud their judgment, or as he says, “Your beliefs alter your vision.”

The book introduced him to Discordianism, as well as to a study of occult practices. What he liked about Discordianism was that it promoted questioning. It's a theory that expects its followers to figure out where they stand in the theology, without resorting to a central dogma. Discordianism and its “impetus to seek out new experiences” helped Veerhoff get out of his comfort zone.

“You are supposed to take issue with them [Discordian theories] and then form your own schism, as part of our principles,” he said, as he was trying to spool out this very confusing but intriguing theology.

"I went on the internet to find out more about this obscure religion. He was right in saying that the religion was humorous. It was sort of like a parody of religion. The central dogma is that there are no dogmas."

Given this background, paganism intrigued him since it didn't involve one single religious division. Paganism incorporates multiple outlooks from different regional religions that originate from areas like, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. It is a blanket term that encompasses many different theologies. Pagans tend to collectively venerate nature and worship manifold deities, either goddesses or gods.  

For Veerhoff, Paganism is also a way to understanding. He says the community on campus makes him feel “like [he] can learn about Paganism more readily” than, if he were to try and do it on his own as he has with many other religions he has studied. It connects him with people on campus and through this society he has learned a lot about himself.

Through these perspectives, Veerhoff hopes to be able to understand people, of all walks of life, and also, to challenge himself to consistently shift his mindset, instead of being complacent with his beliefs.

Andy Unger, the president of the Pagan Society, told me over Facebook that members of the group agreed that Paganism has no central belief.  

“Everyone in our group is from a different pagan religion, and some of us don’t fall into any religion at all,” he said.

The primary value of the Pagan Society “is that everyone is equal and needs to be treated with respect,” Andy said. “The only people we refuse to allow into our membership are those who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will not respect the race, gender, sexuality, [and] religion” of others.

* * *

Hearing about paganism from Veerhoff and Andy made me curious to see what it was all about. So, I went to see for myself.  I went to the last meeting of the semester, and they were discussing rocks, a.k.a healing crystals, and their many psychic properties. They talked about lapis lazuli, a deep celestial blue stone that is known for its "journalistic qualities." According to pagans, it helps people feel more creative, so if you are having difficulty with writing, make this stone your friend. Veerhoff has his own collection that hangs out on top of his drawer in his dorm and he has been wondering what to do with them, since they have been sitting there for a while.

While I was there the group passed some rocks around, someone had volunteered to share their entire collection with the group. The person leading the discussion was passing them out to people who wanted to try and feel the energy or vibrations of the rocks. She even gave each of the rocks a personality.

"This one's aggressive," she said and handed it back to the keeper. I kept looking at her pass them to people because I was curious to see how they responded. There were no visual signs of any interaction between the rock and the people but I still wanted to see if I could maybe feel something. Then she picked up another one and said, "Oh, I felt something there," she handed it to me and asked, "Do you feel it?"

With hesitation, I said, "Not really but I honestly have no idea about any of this."

Then I handed it to Bradley who was right next to me and tried to observe how he responded. He looked very enthralled by the stones, they were very beautiful and interesting to look at anyway.

But even though I didn't experience any visceral responses, I didn't discount the members' own experiences. In my life, I've seen a lot of bodily and emotional responses during spiritual gatherings. I also found the meeting more informative than experiential, this time around. I was interested and inquisitive about the mystical powers of rocks that many of the members seemed to understand.

There is another aspect of paganism that appeals to Veerhoff. Recently, he has observed “how the various pagan religions relate to being neurodivergent,” in that Paganism has a respect for plurality and that the principles also recognize the importance of an individual psyche, the inner most self, along with varying personalities. He sees neurodivergence and Paganism as ‘intersecting fields.’

By Steven Rubino
*Correction: Veerhoff clarified that the book was not The Illuminatist! Trilogy but a book written by the social theorist Paul-Michel Foucault, which he cannot recall the name of, that was given to him by his father.  

By Steven Rubino

By Steven Rubino
Correction: Depicted in the comic are hands-on tests when in reality the tests were completed in an MRI scanner. The depiction is meant to visually illustrate what Veerhoff narrated as an out of body experience. 

By Steven Rubino

Days Making Guacamole at Qdoba, After Standing on the Putting Green Course

Grace Anne Braxton, reveals her secret identity as a top-ranked female Special Olympian gold medalist.

By Ester Salguero

Taken by Alex Sakes

In 2007, Grace Anne Braxton stood among 7,500 athletes from 160 countries at the Tianma Country Club Golf Course in Shanghai, China. It was there and then that she won gold for the championship in women’s golf. It wasn’t her first win. She had also been to Athens, Greece for the World Summer Games and won another gold medal in 2011. Braxton fell in the love with the golf course in Athens. and now she holds the title as one of the top-ranked Special Olympics female golfers of the world. 

Golf isn’t the only sport that she excels in at the World Summer Games, in 1991 she won a gold medal in swimming. At home, she has a closet full of over 700 medals. They have collected from years of competing in the Special Olympics World Summer Games starting from 1991, right out of high school. 

For Braxton, her prowess as an athlete is unknown to many of the people she sees day to day. As a server at Qdoba on the campus of Mary Washington, most people are used to seeing her shuffling from table to table, stopping to talk to students or give them napkins or eating utensils. Many would describe her as humble and sweet. She just loves talking to students and meeting new people.  

Many students don’t know exactly how many accomplishments Braxton has made in playing golf. What makes her so admirable is how hard she works given so few rewards. For an athlete like Braxton, there’s not much chance of sponsorships or brand deals. She really doesn’t even tell many people about her accomplishments, unless they ask. 

But that’s what makes her more impressive. In a world that is goal-oriented, and more focused on the wins than the work, she is an example of someone who works simply because she enjoys it. 

Here at UMW Braxton says she loves the people she works with and she gets excited to meet new students all the time. “I like where I am at [and] I like who I am.” 

Harrison Braxton, her dad, has been right by her side through the years. Before he retired in 2006, her dad was a as a judge on the fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court in Virginia. Her dad was her very first coach but now, she also has Carl Koons, a professional coach from the Fredericksburg Country Club, who has stuck with her from the beginning. Born in Fredericksburg in 1971, Braxton has remained a local resident for 45 years.  

Ever since she was 8 years-old, Braxton, has been a hard worker. She started as an athlete with track and field. “I started when I was 8 years old because I have an intellectual disability,” she said softly. Her father was a judge in the fifteenth Judicial Circuit court in Virginia, and he acted as her first coach. She credits him for molding her into the strong woman that she considers herself to be now.  

She graduated from James Monroe High School in 1990. All the while, she continued her sports training. She began entering competitions in 1991. She was encouraged by her dad and although training was also more intense, she kept at it because Braxton finds motivation in building herself up, like her father taught her to. 

She handles her busy schedule well and likes to keep moving. She is always doing something, whether it be going through different seasons of training for golf and swimming or going to different sports games on campus. 

Other than training, winning and working at UMW, Braxton spends her time playing solitaire or completing word search puzzles while she watches other sports like college football or baseball. She has had three different jobs over the course of her life. She has worked at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, the hospital and where she is now, UMW which she says she wouldn’t trade for anything. 

She still plays golf and swims regularly. Now, she spends her time making a point to never miss a UMW basketball game, ever since 2014 when Taylor Johnson, now an alumnus of Mary Washington, asked her to come watch them play back when you could find her working at the Eagle’s Nest two years past. She has been working at the University of Mary Washington for 24 years and has built long-lasting relationships with members on the basketball team.   

Usually, she would buy her own season tickets to the basketball games but this season the UMW team pulled their money together to buy the tickets for her. 

“I’m a big fan of the UMW basketball team and I love them, I love to be around watching these guys play sports,” Braxton said, sitting across from me, fidgeting with her visor before her shift at work.  

“Every time we see her she gets so excited and it kinda just makes us excited,” said Brent Mahoney, one of the few seniors left on the basketball team. “She’s a day brightener.” 

Shaw talked to me about how important Braxton is to the team. “Grace is extremely important, as I said before, she just has that great spirit,” he said. “I call her Amazing Grace, that pretty much speaks for itself.” Anytime he sees her, his spirits are lifted and they talk about basketball or “which Jamba Juice tastes best.”   

“It was good to see that someone paid attention and cared and just to know that she went out of her way to see how good we were doing,” Shaw said. 

Even as she continues to train and strive for more, Braxton is content with her life. “I just love it here, I don’t want to change it for anything,” she said, fixing her visor. “I like to work with kids, students, meet new students [and] learn about their lives.” 

Taken by Alex Sakes

All the guys on the basketball team agree that Grace is their number one fan. At the first game of the season Eric Shaw, a junior on the basketball team, took time to jump across the seats lined up on the side of the court to give Grace a fist bump before going into the locker-room with the team. In her seat, she tells the players to “man up” and encourages them to play the best game they can, giving them the support that her dad gives her on the golf course.    

He and Grace have their own handshake that they do whenever they see each other, a sign of the special bond they have together. At the game, anytime Mahoney would make a shot she would yell out “Yea! Mahoney” and turn to the person next to her to say a little something special about him.  Mahoney says that he wants to try to get Grace to play a few games with him on the golf course.

Filmed by: Izzy Briones

Edited by: Ester Salguero

Song: Cover by Arcade Fire- Song on the Beach

Nice and Tidy

A GLIMPSE INTO THE LIFE OF SOMEONE WORTH KNOWING.

Every morning, after I return to my dorm from my first class of the day, I find a woman tidying up Jefferson Hall. Sometimes she’s wiping down tables in the common room. Other times, she’s fluffing up the cushions on the couches. Jefferson Hall is where her workday ends each day. It’s the last dorm on campus to get spruced up.

I’m not sure what made me want to talk to her. Maybe it was her always friendly face. Maybe it was that she was always in the background of my life, doing important work, and not I or any of my classmates knew her name. Maybe it was I wanted to let her know she was being noticed. Either way, I decided to pull her aside and ask her for her story.

* * *

Her name, it turned out, was Lisa Stone.

Lisa Stone

The 46-year-old is shorter than most of her co-workers but strong in stature. Her green eyes glitter through her clear specs and align with her tiger-colored hair whipped up in a homespun handkerchief. Her voice is sweet like sugar cookies, translating an aura glowing with yellow rays, welcoming and enveloping me like the sun. She is shy, soft-spoken, and bashful—at first—but when coaxed from her shell, it is like talking to a best friend.

Stone was born in Arlington, Virginia, but grew up in Manassas. She currently lives in Lake Anna, driving a one-hour commute to work. Stone went to grade school in Manassas Park, but never attended college.

“There was never an opportunity for me to go to college. No one ever tried to focus me in that direction,” Stone said.

Stone dropped out of high school her sophomore year but made a comeback when she received her GED in 2012.

“I felt rushed when I was taking classes for my GED. I took books home and found that history was my favorite subject. I always wanted to learn more,” she said.

Though, when she thinks about what she would have done in college, the answer is clear.

“If I had the opportunity to go to college, I would be a history major because I just love old buildings,” she said.

Instead, she found work at the The General Store, a restaurant near campus, where she worked for 15 years.

“I knew most of the customers that came in. They worked at UMW. All I kept thinking to myself was that I should be one of them,” she said.

Then she heard about an opening for a housekeeper at UMW from a friend and started last November. It quickly became a job she loved. She feels like she is contributing in some small way to the educational experience. Sometimes, it makes her wish that she went. But mostly, she prefers to stay focused on the present.

“I think to myself just get it done,” she said. “But I enjoy tidying up and making improvements. I even like the smell of the cleaners, but what I love the most about my job is making a difference by keeping things clean. I should have been here a long time ago.”

Stone uses her break time to chat with her co-workers or go out to lunch with them, but she also enjoys interacting with the residents.

“One time a student gave me a bag of popcorn as a present,” she said.

When she gets home from work, Stone takes a breather from cleaning and goes outside to do the yard work. She takes pride in her vegetable garden. Other than cleaning, she has an array of interests. She is partial to seafood and often has cravings for crab legs. When watching movies, she especially likes comedies. One of her favorite movies is “Bridesmaids.” She also has a soft spot for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. On the weekends, Stone tries to catch up on housework, or she will go to an occasional family gathering at a cookout or a bonfire.

Most of all, Stone enjoys being around her family. One day, she scrolled through her phone, showing me digital memories of loved ones. Her phone was a family album. Her 28-year-old daughter Jesse and 20-year-old son Josh were smiling on the living room couch, but it was her half-pit-half-lab dog named Sunny—short for Sundance—and six-year-old granddaughter Alyssa that stole the show.

Stone had her daughter Jesse when she was seventeen, but at age twenty-one Fate arrived. That’s when she met her husband David.

“The first time we met he said he would marry me. I thought he was crazy,” she said.

For months, the two kept in contact. It helped that Stone was friends with David’s two sisters.

“One day I was on the side of the road and my car broke down. My daughter and I got a ride to the local Fastmart. All of the phones were down, and my only option was to walk inside a local pizza pit to make a call. When I walked through doors, there he was talking with his friends, one of them just happened to be a mechanic,” she reminisced.

From there the relationship flourished.

Lisa Stone is one of UMW’s hidden jewels, leading a valuable life worth exploring.

One of the Kids in Agecroft Hall

MOST PEOPLE TEACH HISTORY BY TALKING ABOUT IT. ONE WOMAN DOES SO BY LIVING IT.

by Mitchell Eubank

To the untrained eye, Jessica Clothier is a modern-day equivalent of Jayne Mansfield or Marilyn Monroe: She is the picture of what boys now in their forties, fifties, and sixties dubbed the ideal woman. Clothier stands at five-foot-two while looking at her guests with baby blues, as her sun-blonde hair waves in the breeze like fields of wheat. Her fleece is of fine ivory, with no need for makeup to cover any conceivable flaws, and the dresses she wears were hand-made in Delaware for months.

Jessica explains how she puts on her current outfit like so: “Basically, you [first] put on a shift, which is … a nightgown – a white, linen, long-sleeved dress that you wear – and then, [on] top of the shift, you put on [a] petticoat, which is like a skirt. [On] top of the skirt, you put [on] an overcoat, which is open in the front so you can see your petticoat through the overcoat. Your overcoat laces up the front, and … underneath … the laces, you put [on] a stomacher. [After this], you have to put your hair up and … wear a coif, which is … a white cap that goes over your hair, because you can’t have your hair showing. Then, you have stockings that are usually about knee-high, and [you complete the costume with] black leather shoes.” As it happens, there is a perfectly logical reason for Jessica’s dress-up routine to be this way.

At least one day a month, she can be found in character as part of the British nobility of half-a-millennium ago, while showing tourists around an estate called Agecroft Hall, which is based in Windsor Farms, Richmond. The Tudor manor house was first located in Lancashire, England, but was dismantled and moved to the United States in the 1920s.

It’s a surprising job for a 27-year-old woman who also works as a first-grade teacher. But her work as a “living history interpreter” lets her pursue her passion for a period she never got to live in.

“[The troupe and I] focus on the Tudor-Stuart period [of the British Renaissance], which is 1485 to 1660,” Clothier said. “As a living history group, we usually portray 1631, [as that] is the year that we have the most information about the [Dauntesey] family [we represent in our shows].”

The Tudor-Stuart reign was Jessica’s personal favorite era to study throughout her formative years. She even received a minor in Renaissance and Medieval Studies when she graduated from college in 2007. As for the reason she first got into the subject, it all stems from the love she had of King Henry VIII and at least one of his six wives.

“[The mother of one of my childhood friends] was an English teacher, and she … was the one who … introduced me to Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn,” Jessica said of when she first found out about this part of world history. “[She] told me about this king who had six wives, and so I [became curious]. I [had] just started reading … historical fiction, and it got me really interested in that time period – how people lived, and how they dressed, and … what the customs were – [to the point that] my interests kind of branched out as I read more.”

Clothier and her fellow impersonators often rewrite the lives of one of the owners of the estate, the Dauntesey family. To figure out the storylines, the reenactors in their group meetings each month decide on a theme. From there, they start deciding on characters they will play based on the Dauntesey family tree. The personal accounts of these characters can only provide Jessica and her fellow players so much information about the people they will play. Beyond the facts, they use some creative license. How do they come up with their characters’ traits?

According to Clothier, the impersonators receive a questionnaire, which they have to fill out as their characters. The questionnaire reads like the character creation screen in a role-playing game: Each character has specific religions, jobs, residences, period-specific political beliefs, and other wants, needs, and basic facts attributed to them. The same rules apply for every member of the group so their characters are developed that much more. It’s during this process, for instance, that Katherine Dauntesey, the character Jessica plays, gets portrayed as flirtatious and boy-crazy, among other things.

“My character, Katherine, was … actually born in 1632, but I portray her as being born in 1613 because otherwise I’d be way too young,” Clothier confessed. “We [also] don’t have … any record that she was ever married or anything like that. We know that she had an older sister named Anna, [who] married a man named John Hall … but we don’t know [anything] about Katherine [herself] besides the year she was born. We just kind of have to guess from there.”

Jessica IRL. (Photo provided by Jessica Clothier)

Those are not the only ways a reenactment group can keep their continuity going between shows. Between the initial meeting and group rehearsals inside the manor, everyone in the troupe does individual research about the theme of the next tour, and how they can make their character fit in that particular context. For example, Clothier attended a week-long class on the Tudor and Stuart homes at Oxford University, so she could provide more information to tourists upon her return stateside. Some of the players learned to speak in a northern English, near-Scottish brogue that reflects the land Agecroft was first built on.

One of the most recent tours the troupe has done ties back to Halloween. Clothier, who was playing Katherine, told a story that mixes Jack and the Beanstalk with Hansel and Gretel, as two girls found shelter from a giant in Agecroft Hall. In that tour, every troupe member went to one of the rooms in the house as they told a popular folk tale from the era. The room Katherine was in, for example, was the study, which was often referred to as the “curiosity cabinet” at the time. Wealthy people such as the Daunteseys would fill these cabinets with rare trinkets and oddities collected from around the world.

In some occasions, interpreters portray multiple characters. Another example from earlier this year was when the troupe held witch trials, with the tourists doubling as the jury. In each trial, the impersonators played different people with their own testimonies, which were then used as evidence against the accused. Now and again, however, there is at least one juror who wants modern evidence to solve what would now be a 385-year-old mystery.

As Jessie pointed out, “A lot of times, people that come into the witch trial want to look at the evidence from a 21st century mindset. They want to say, ‘Well, of course, she wasn’t doing magic, because magic isn’t real,’ and ‘Of course, she wasn’t flying, because you can’t fly on a broomstick!’ So, a lot of the jurors that come from the audience … want to … give the verdict based on 21st century logic.”

There’s just one flaw these culture-clashing judges have a tendency to overlook: “[Several] jury members have a hard time putting themselves into the mindset of someone living in the 16th or 17th century, [because] back then, magic was [considered] a very real thing. When you look at it from their perspective, it’s very easy to go from a ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty’ verdict based on their belief system and their way of life.”

Jessica has taken part in these reenactments four times now – twice as a witness, and twice as the defendant. In those latter cases, she found out how to earn the sympathy of the jury to avoid receiving a death sentence. After her first round as the defendant resulted in every single jury finding her guilty of witchcraft, to the point of cheering for the announcement that she would be burned at the stake or hanged, one of her co-workers applied make-up on her face to resemble a bruise for her second round of attempts. The intended goal was for the jury to think that the alleged witch was actually an abuse victim. Surprisingly, it worked, as far more jurors ended up sympathizing with Jessica, and gave her more “not guilty” verdicts the second time around.

Unlike staged shows, reenactments do not have scripts. Everything the Daunteseys say and do is, for the most part, ad-libbed and improvised, with no memorization of any kind. It takes some visitors time to get used to the idea of reenactment. Yes, just like people who fail to understand the “musical” part of “musical theatre,” there are people who are also unable to comprehend how people at or near their age are acting like people from many a generation before their time. It takes a while for people watching a musical to know the songs are there to advance the plot as effectively as traditional dialogue does, the same way it takes a while for tourists to see that the characters before them are supposed to be their ancestors.

The exterior of Agecroft Hall. (Photo provided by Jessica Clothier)

While Jessica’s day job involves teaching children, her work at Agecroft Hall gives her a chance to reach out to adults about history. But she believes it’s as much entertainment as it is teaching. And for her, it’s a form of escape from real, ordinary life.

The reenactments are funded in large part by an endowment connected to the mansion that T.C. Williams, the owner who moved it from England, funded himself. Williams had an idea to turn Agecroft into a museum once he died, as well as the part in Williams’ own will that allows the troupe to run it as such, as a private, non-profit organization. Williams’ endowment helps pay for the props and kits, or costumes, each member of the group uses in their monthly performances.

Thankfully, that paycheck will not be split with anyone who takes their history for granted, as Jessica concluded: “As far as hecklers [are concerned], we’ve never actually had any of those. Most people that come to our events know what it’s going to be. They want to see it. That’s why they came and paid for the event.” History may be written by the winners, but there are always more sides to every story. Both Jessica Clothier and her troupe show that until all of us are ready, willing, and able to see history sans redactions, the lessons to learn from it all remain incomplete.

Searching for New Life Abroad

When her life came to a screeching halt, her sister got her moving again.

By: Casey Coulter

About a year ago, Georgie Hunt thought she had her life planned out, at least for the short-term. She was planning to move in with her boyfriend of six years, MJ. She had spent her weekend apartment hunting with him. They finally settled on one they kept coming back to. Finally, they decided to call their realtor and tell her they were going to take a place. Georgie told MJ she would take care of all the paper work while he was away on a work trip.  

The next morning, Hunt said goodbye to MJ. They kept in touch over the phone while he was away. So she was surprised when two days later she was visited by the local authorities, who explained that her boyfriend had been in a car accident. “I froze when they told me. It was impossible, I had just spoken to him before lunch…. He always wore his seat belt.”

MJ didn’t know what to do next. She took time off of school and work. She spent days lying silently in her room. “All I remember from that time is laying in my bed day after day,” she said. Then one day, her sister Sofie came to her with an idea. She knew her sister had always wanted to live abroad. They could get visas to work in London, travel until they ran out of money and go back to work and do it again.  

 “Sofie came running into my room and screaming ‘pack your bags’ while waving our plane tickets in the air,” Hunt said. Sofie had just bought two one-way tickets. They spent the next two weeks shoving what they could fit of their lives into four backpacks. Their mother had bought both her daughters a set of two backpacks each. Then, she and her husband drove her kids to the airport.  

 “I had no clue when I would see them again. I didn’t know when I would see my home again, or where I would be in a year, but I was so excited.”

***

One of the first places she visited was Greece. Every view was like a picture and it was well with-in their price range. They checked into their private, 30 euro, hostel the first night and woke up stunned in the morning. There was an infinity pool that overlooked the ocean, and the views just got more breathtaking. “I didn’t think the views could get better, but they did,” she said. She explored Mykonos with her sister and two other girls they had met.

Her next stop was Germany for Octoberfest. When they first arrived they were in typical street attire, but soon realized they needed to buy German outfits. The costumes range anywhere from 30 to 200 euros. Georgie ensured her sister that they would return, so they decided to buy more elaborate costumes. “I never felt so oddly dressed,” she remembered. “The atmosphere is something I had never experienced before. It’s thousands of people celebrating… drinking” she said, laughing.

This was the start of the first holiday season without her family, but she was not even missing home. While, she does think about MJ every day, she has healed some through her adventures. “I just want to keep seeing new places, instead of staying in bed” she explained. 

“You meet so many new people every time you go somewhere, and they become your family for that week” she explained.

Another stop was Croatia. She decided to go with a group of people from the hostile to a nearby waterfall on her first day. “We all took turns jumping in with my GoPro,” she reminisced. This was near the end of her first round of traveling. She knew that she would be returning to London to work after this trip and wanted to make sure it was one to remember. Her favorite memory was one that reminded her of MJ. “We always went hiking in the fall… we had to take this path to get to the top of the waterfall and I just couldn’t stop thinking about the last time we had gone hiking,” she explained.

Smiling, she explained, “It’s nice to not have reminders every second”. While she does think of him every day, it’s not her main focus. “Traveling has let me remember how to enjoy little things,” Hunt said. She enjoys being reminded of her life with MJ, but is glad that she is becoming herself again.

After Croatia, she returned to London to work again.

***

The plan was for the sisters to make enough money in London to continue to travel. But spending their first Christmas away from home, first at a small café and then in bed staying indoors during the rain, Sofie started to get homesick. She decided she had to go home. Georgie was initially upset that her sister was leaving so soon, but ultimately she decided it was for the best, for both of them. Georgie had relied on having her sister there for the first round of their travel. Now she would have to do it on her own.

She has now been traveling on her own for a year. She has gone to Madrid, Oslo and Stockholm. She has seen the Trevi fountain, the leaning tower of Pisa and all that London has to offer. Sometimes she thinks about her family back home and thinks about going back too. But then she thinks of all that she’s gotten to see in her time abroad. At times, she can’t help but think back on MJ.

Sometimes, Hunt worries that by continuing to travel she’s running away from her problems. She’s given thought to the idea that maybe what she’s doing is unhealthy. Yet, she can’t help but think how happy MJ would be for her. Maybe when the whirlwind of travel is over, she’ll finally go back home and sit with her thoughts again.

But for now, she’s got to keep going. 

How to Handle the Election Effect in the Classroom

Is it possible for teachers to address the recent election results and similar sticky topics without being accused of pushing their own agenda onto their students?

by Abigail Whittington

“Mr. Shipe, are my parents going to have to leave this country?”

Ryan Shipe, a student from the University of Mary Washington who has been working with a Spotsylvania County public school as part of his education practicum this semester, received the question from one of his seventh graders. It was the day after the election victory of Donald Trump, whose campaign often vilified immigrants for taking American jobs. 

The girl was not born in the United States, but she and her parents did enter the country legally. Shipe isn’t sure where she and her family are originally from, but he does know that her first language is Farsi, which means she is probably from the Middle East. Shipe was momentarily heartbroken by the question.

“Your parents are going to be fine,” he said. “Your teacher and I will make sure to protect you in the classroom. This classroom is a safe space.”

She thought about it for a minute and then returned to her normal, joyful self. Shipe admired the elasticity of her emotions. She was able to go from cheery to sad and serious to cheery again within a matter of a few minutes. He wished the same could be said about him.

Shipe was already upset about the election, but this student’s worries brought his disappointment back to the forefront of his mind. His glasses served a new purpose; they disguised watery tears forming behind them as just gleams in the glass. Shipe, a 6’2” male with light brown hair and a scruffy and scraggly beard to match, does not appear to be someone who is easily upset. He carries himself with professionalism- always dressed in button downs and slacks both as a teacher and a student. He even surprised himself when he had to excuse himself from the classroom in order to regain his composure. But his concerns came back later in the day, when a student whose parents were major supporters of Trump told a girl in his class that he couldn’t wait for her to get deported.

Shipe started asking himself a question facing many teachers these days: how to talk students following the heated 2016 election. Shipe noticed that many teachers tried to keep conversation away from the results of the election, worried about inserting their opinions into the classroom. Occasionally, a student would make comment about Trump or Hillary and the room would grow quite for a moment, but then the students would quickly go back to their usual playful banter. Sometime their conversations crossed the line into hate speech. How could he know when to step in? 

* * *

Following the election, the website The 74 Million, which reports on public school issues, compiled a list of 430 incidents of post-election bullying in the classroom. Many students emailed in stories about bullying or posted about them on Twitter. In this environment, many teachers who might typically avoid politics in the classroom are trying to figure out how to speak up.

“Probably for the first time, there have been some things said in the campaign that I can’t just ignore,” Erik Anderson, a U.S. government teacher in Edina, Minnesota told Madeline Will, a PBS reporter. “I have to say, ‘This isn’t right.’ I don’t remember ever before being unable to play it right down the middle.” Erik Anderson has always been able to remain neutral in his classes, but now he suddenly feels the need to intervene in discussion. 

However, according to splcenter.org, a survey, which was distributed by several organizations to teachers K-12 after the election found that half of the teachers are hesitant to discuss the election in class because of the heightened emotion. Some even admitted that principals have told them to refrain from addressing the election in any way.

Shipe tried to observe his own college professors to see how they might react. But he found that even in the college setting, professors treated the subject with caution. Most of his professors kept their comments vague and to only a few sentences. However, one professor decided to dedicate forty minutes of his fifty minute class to discussing the election results. 

That is, except for Colin Rafferty, whom Shipe is taking for creative nonfiction. Rafferty walked into class that day with a proposal. He politely offered his class the choice of talking about the election results and what will happen next or continuing on with his lecture about copy revision. 

The class overwhelmingly chose to discuss the election results. The first few to speak were a little timid in voicing their opinion for fear that their peers would not agree, but as the discussion went on students became more willing to share their own experiences post-election.

“One girl in class said that she was walking on campus earlier that day and when she passed by a group of white male students, one of the men smacked her butt and yelled, ‘Trump won!,’” explained Shipe. Her classmates responded with expressions of shock and horror. 

Another girl told the class that one student stood up in the dining hall and shouted, “The white are in power again!”

Raffery’s only contribution to the conversation was an understanding “okay” or an occasional nod to let students know that he is listening to them. He didn’t provide his opinion or criticize others. He was simply there to make sure the discussion stayed polite and calm as students shared their emotional responses.

The tone of the conversation was quite somber and occasionally rampant, but no one talked over anyone else or interrupted someone already talking. There was a mature level of respect among the students that Shipe believed helped contribute to the open discussion that taught him and his peers how to understand other people’s point of view on the same monumental event. 

* * *

For Rafferty, he knew that many students were devastated or scared by the election results. He wanted to provide a forum in which they could express themselves. But he knew that the decision might not be popular, and after the period was over, he wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision. He felt that those students who had supported Trump, might feel attacked. “I hope no one thought I did this to alienate them,” said Rafferty. “I felt that a discussion was just what some people needed. I had only good intentions, but we will see what happens when I get my evaluations back from students at the end of the semester.”

Shipe admired Rafferty’s approach to talking about the controversial topic. He dealt with the issues and the emotions of his students without bringing in his own political views or guiding the students in any specific direction of discussion. However, Shipe still believes that teachers should still have the ability to share their own opinions within the classroom without being criticized for pushing their own agenda onto impressionable students. The best way Shipe believes this can be achieved is by instilling the respect for others opinions within the classroom starting in elementary school. This is already an aim within schools, but Shipe believes that it could be more strongly enforced.

“I hope to achieve that same openness in my classroom when I am a teacher, but I’m still not sure how to do that in a high school setting,” said Shipe.

For now, he has decided to handle each incident he observe on a case by case basis. For example, he pulled aside the student who had cheered on the idea of his classmate being deported. Shipe then explained to him that deportation meant forcing someone to leave the country. “It was offensive and rude and a horrible thing to say,” he told the boy in a raised voice. 

It took some time for the boy to understand, but when he did, he explained that he didn’t want her to leave. Shipe believes he was simply repeating the views of his parents without thinking them through. The boy then went back into the classroom and without even being provoked by Shipe or the teacher, he apologized to the girl and she, understanding that the boy was on the autism spectrum and may have had a mental fixation on Trump and his campaign, forgave him instantly.

“As a teacher, sometimes you have to step in to controversial situations,” said Shipe. “If you don’t, you aren’t doing your job; you aren’t creating better, more informed citizens.”

Election 2016: From Justine to Kelly

I'VE NEVER VOTED, AND THIS SEASON, I DON'T INTEND TO START.

by Mitchell Eubank      

I’ve never voted for anyone to claim a position of power in my entire life, despite being old enough to do so since 2008. There just hasn’t been a candidate I agree with on everything. Everyone says that this election is one of the most important in our lifetimes. Even then, I’m not moved to vote for any single candidate. I remember taking part in an online political survey that resembled a teen magazine personality quiz when I was young, and according to the results, I fell on the libertarian left. That was at least a decade ago. Needless to say, a few more decades of national public discourse moving to the right, resulting in many issues I either was or currently am in favor of being ignored or neglected by politicians and candidates on both sides of the aisle, have left me confused and perturbed as to who I should support this election, or even if I should support anyone at all. Contrary to the cliché, I don’t want to throw my vote away by choosing not to show up at the polls.

As I saw how everyone started filtering into a camp, Democrat or Republican or third party, I started to think about how they came to their decisions. It just seemed so impossible to finalize my own. Based on what everyone was telling me, this election and the presidency that would stem from it would affect me on a personal level, and it would be under that caveat that I figured I needed to see the decision-making process from perhaps a more relative perspective. I decided I wanted to interview two of my relatives, who preferred not to be named, so I will call them Justine and Kelly.  I did this to learn about their past and present political upbringings in the hopes that learning about them might help me figure out my own reluctance to participate in politics.

I spoke to Kelly first. Kelly is my cousin who lives in Spotsylvania and works as a history teacher at a middle school.

Prior to her college days at her mother’s alma mater in Virginia, Kelly’s political beliefs weren’t fully informed. Her parents emphasized “Christian values, [a] smaller tax initiative, and support of the middle class worker.” They believed that “hard work, honesty, and belief in God are all important to succeed in life.” They usually aligned themselves with the Republican Party and more importantly a Christian candidate. As most people do at that age, she followed behind her parents on politics, at least early on in her voting years.

But something shifted in college for Kelly. Kelly “took it upon [herself] to do more research about the current political state,” comparing her beliefs with other, opposing viewpoints. It was then that she became more moderate. Thanks to studying for her history major and social science minor, she was quick to listen to any arguments presented to her from classmates and professors alike, to strengthen her own stance with necessary evidence. As Kelly clarified, “While my early beliefs are different from the beliefs that I have now, I see that as personal growth and realization of what I really support, instead of the beliefs of my parents.”

As a teacher, these days, her biggest concern when choosing a candidate is with reforming the American educational system. She believes that teachers shouldn’t be saddled with testing and should have more independence in their classrooms, something the Republican Party supports.

What makes her torn is that she also supports expanding welfare and gun laws. She supports efforts to help people in need and to restrict gun usage, both of which are issues supported primarily by Democrats. Having been politically neutral since college, it turns out, made Kelly find the flaws with a number of claims made by both parties of late, when she wasn’t also agreeing with some of them. She has a hard time choosing a candidate because her beliefs stand on both sides of the political spectrum. Instead, she votes based on the individual candidate. Regardless, she doesn’t believe that one election can solve all of the country’s problems.

Justine admitted that she has “not paid much attention to the current news” due to election overexposure. Justine further said that “the news is never good” when it focuses on “backbiting and negative slander;” if anything, “it’s depressing.”

Next, I spoke to Justine. Justine is my aunt who also lives in Spotsylvania and is a music teacher at two elementary schools. She, too, spent her formative years in politics the same way her daughter would years later, being raised on the tenets of family and faith. “I have never selected a candidate solely on what party they represent. My choices have always been influenced by the candidate platform and their Christian values. I think my parents felt the same and they set that example for me,” Justine explained.

While she has “never rooted for a specific party” over the others, to Justine, it was the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that led her to turn her back on the Democratic Party. The issues she has with Clinton tie back to “his disrespect of the position [of] president" as "an adulterer and womanizer [who] abused his power” while in office. Her problems with Obama are twofold, stemming from the fact that “[he] hasn't used his position as president [to help] smooth out the racial tensions in our country,” instead “[pushing] his Obamacare plan on the American public which has caused many problems by pressing insurance companies to lessen their coverage and raise their premiums.” Justine “saw…what could happen when the wrong person was in control” through their respective presidencies.

Unlike with Kelly, Justine found that spending more time exposed to politics actually helped her with solidifying her Christian stance. Today, Justine considers herself anti-abortion. She also doesn’t agree with many welfare programs, saying that “I feel our [government] should help those in need, [namely] the elderly and disabled,” instead of providing “too many free services to people that could work to take care of themselves.”

In each of my interviews I learned what I might take away when I make the decision to vote. As Kelly explained to me, trust is a key factor in how she chooses whom to vote for; “I find it much easier to support a candidate [with] an informed stance and [who] honestly supports hot-button issues with a consistent point of view,” she said. She gave the same advice to voters this Election Day, saying, “It is difficult to develop your own political beliefs if you have not made your own discoveries or conducted your own research.”

I began to understand just why the protests, the arrests, and all of the controversy of the last year have plagued many a mind of late, to the point that several youth voters already hated this election season before it had truly begun. As the cycle has progressed, the list of scandals had outgrown the list of candidates by a hefty margin, and I was feeling fatigued.

I tried to be an optimist, tried to keep from skewing towards the cynical, and tried to find the silver lining in each new cloud that formed over my head, and it seems that I may have found one, at last, in my family. They showed me that I wasn’t alone in having these feelings and concerns, and that the least I could do was help them make their lives worth living, something far more priceless than a new administration. Odds are I will not vote this November, or maybe in any election. But I’m thankful to have family members whose experience can guide my own decisions.

Hunting for Home

SOUTHERN BELLE DEFINES HOME THROUGH LITERATURE

By Kellin Gibson

It was a truth sentimentally acknowledged that my childhood home in Abingdon, VA could never be replaced. The historic settlement was my haven, the cozy, wondrous dwelling that seemed to have everything to offer. It was that special place that barricaded any fear or worry, a sort of fortress where I was protected by the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains.

So I wasn’t exactly happy to leave and move seven hours away, from the mountainous southwest to the salted eastern shore, specifically Chesapeake. I felt like a piece of driftwood—broken off and thrown somewhere lost without a purpose. My heart was calling towards home.

When I arrived in Chesapeake, there was neither a divine or heavenly place waiting for me. Instead there was just what seemed like a mocking apartment complex that I refused to call home. I believed nothing could come and rescue me from the life I had just entered. I wanted nothing more than to bring the car back to life and return to the only home I had ever known.

Abingdon to Chesapeake

That move happened three years ago. Now I live in a campus dorm room in Fredericksburg, VA, a world away from the miles of farmland of Abingdon, which I’ve now decided will always feel like my real home.

As I’ve tried to adjust to various communities, I’ve often asked myself what makes Abingdon feel like home to me. What makes Abingdon more “homey” than Chesapeake or Fredericksburg? It’s a question with many answers, but as an English major, I believe that I would find the answer through literature. I wondered, what did great authors think home meant to them.

* * *

After class, I stopped by my creative writing professor’s office to ask him to recollect a literary hero who supplied a definition of home.

His example was promising.

In the short story “Tribulites” by Breece Pancake, the narrator feels the loss of his West Virginia home when his family decides to sell the land.

Professor Pineda explained, “The loss of home is redefining self.”

That’s how I felt. While crossing the many forlorn miles to Chesapeake, I had left a piece of me back in Abingdon. I was half a person. I had lived in Abingdon my whole life, and though I would have said goodbye when I went away to college, my departure had been abrupt. I was not ready to leave just yet. My stay in Chesapeake had only reconfirmed the fact that I was a proud born and raised woman of the South.

Like the narrator in “Tribulites,” I was in search of evidence that would enlighten me regarding the intense connection I felt toward Abingdon. My professor went on to further illuminate me on this subject.   

“Home is an entrance into history. It is not encapsulated by time but rather on-going. There was a history there before you came to it, so you automatically feel a connection to the landscape.”

But I did not stop there.

One day, I brought up the subject to one of my classmates, Jordan Schultz, who is also an English and Creative Writing major.

She mentioned one of her favorite novels, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I had read the book in a previous English class and knew that the idea of home was a major symbol throughout the novel.

I compared myself to the heroine Margaret Hale, who leaves her childhood home in the English countryside of Hampshire and moves with her family to the industrial North of Milton. At first, Margaret struggles to adapt because her life at Hampshire is all she ever knows until she meets the brooding hero, John Thatcher. When Margaret falls in love with John, she comes to terms with herself. Hampshire is only a sweet memory when Margaret chooses to live in Milton with John. For Margaret, the true meaning of home is found through her love for John, thus the concept of home is more of a person than a place.

“Home is something you can make,” Schultz explained. “It’s not really about the place itself or what people you are with, but it’s how you choose to adapt so that place becomes home to you.”

That’s what I had to in Chesapeake, and later, Fredericksburg.  

Although I don’t feel exactly nostalgic when I think of Chesapeake, it did help me in a lot of ways when I moved there. When I came to Chesapeake, I had a job waiting for me, and later, I got a better job. On the weekends, I would volunteer at the local humane society. I started going to church again. I became stronger, more independent.

* * *

After talking to my professor and my classmate, I now understood that my home of Abingdon, VA inhabits history, my history. Home defines the history of the family who came before me, my roots. The land where I was born is molded and carved by time. I felt I should have never left because I was like a queen abandoning her kingdom. Abingdon was home because it displayed the essence of me. It was my origin. But for now, I need to use my time away to allow it to redefine me. Life is all about changing. Different scenery could introduce me to new parts of myself. In feeling unmoored I was also experiencing personal growth.

Home to me is not tangible but rather a feeling, a sense of self. Not only is home a feeling of security and comfort, it is also a feeling of strength and fearlessness. Wherever home is for me, I am content.

The Forbidden-Fruit

I TOOK A 'BITE' AT A YOUNG AGE, BUT WOULD I HAVE MADE DIFFERENT CHOICES IF MY PARENTS HAD OFFERED ME A SMALL TASTE?

By Ester Salguero

My sister Reina was the ‘devil on my shoulder’ while I was growing up. She made life so much more fun. I grew up in a strict household, governed by my parents’ Pentecostal values, which meant that we weren’t allowed to talk about sex, drugs or alcohol. In their minds, talking about these things would lead me into an abyss of sinful desire and if I gave into them, then the next place would be hell, to put it bluntly. As rigid as my parents were, there were surprisingly few rules when I was with my sister because they trusted her to take care of me. There wasn’t even a curfew and we both took advantage of that to partake in the “forbidden fruit;” alcohol. 

Ester Salguero

One afternoon when I was 12, my sister picked me up from home after school to go to her friend Steven’s house. My sister was 17 and her friend was 18. That night they were planning to drink. They had stolen some of the cheapest alcoholic drinks they could find at our local gas station called Four Lokos, it was the poor man’s booze. I was sitting in a room with the two of them when Steven offered me some of his drink. Reina looked at him in shock for a second. She went on talking about how she wasn’t going to corrupt her sister at such a young age, mind you she was already kind of tipsy by that point. Then, she went ahead and asked me what I wanted to do because she didn’t want to make choices for me. 

I ended up almost drinking the entire 23-ounce can. I remember going outside, spontaneously, as drunk people usually do and I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood with my sister’s friend. That night ended with me puking into a bush of roses. Hopefully, no one would smell them the next morning. It wasn’t my finest moment but it started a pattern. Though I wouldn’t say I have a drinking problem, I certainly wasn’t responsible around alcohol. Whenever I drank, I did it to get drunk.  

When I got to college, and I started to observe other people’s drinking habits, I noticed how some friends seemed to know intuitively when to stop drinking for the evening. One friend in particular, who almost never drank too much, explained that her parents would offer her drinks whenever she felt stressed or had a headache. I started to wonder if maybe her parents raised her right while mine did it all wrong. Maybe, if they had exposed me to alcohol, it wouldn’t have been so alluring growing up. Maybe I’d even have more responsible drinking habits as a young adult.  

Taken by some dude, Freshman year fall semester 2014, before leaving to a Rave sponsored by BASSMENT. 

I started with my roommate Sarah. I remembered her telling me once during her freshman year that she had made the choice to purposely stay away from alcohol so she wouldn’t get distracted from her work. That lasted until around February during the spring semester when we got our hands on some rum.  

I asked her what made her get to that point, since for me, I saw college as a time to finally let loose, the be free, away from the rules of my parents. I asked her, “So what kind of rules did your parents have over alcohol consumption for you growing up?”  

She explained that her parents kept beer in the house all the time. Beer was used like ibuprofen in Sarah’s house, it was used to treat headaches. They didn’t keep liquor, though. Her parents never got trashed around her. They drank in moderation but regularly.  

“I grew up seeing it as something that was not necessarily a bad thing and I always got to see people drink in healthy ways, socially [and] in small amounts never getting drunk,” Sarah said. 

Flickr Creative Commons

Sarah said that didn’t make her moderate her intake, necessarily. In fact, she drank in excess the summer before freshmen year in college. Most of the time her and her friends would stay over one friend’s house to party. That friend’s parents would allow her to hold parties all the time as long as everyone stayed the night and gave their keys up for safe keeping. After that it was out of her system for a while. She wanted to take college seriously because she wasn’t so sure of herself but she knew she wanted to succeed.  

The friends that surrounded me during freshman year toned my wild side down a lot, which helped me stabilize myself while trying to adjust to the first years of college life. There still wasn’t a clear reasoning to me about why I felt the need to drink so badly and why my friends seemed less interested. 

I decided to ask another friend of mine about what her parents’ rules were on alcohol consumption because I noticed that she has been going to parties on the weekends about as much as I have been this semester. In the pouring rain on our way back to our residence building, Eagle Landing, I asked Izzy how her parents dealt with drinking.  

“In my house I was allowed to take either a sip or taste of alcohol, really, as young as I can remember,” Izzy told me this on our way to Eagle Landing and she also talked about how her parents did this because they would rather have her drinking under their supervision than with a bunch of strangers at a party. 

The times that I have seen Izzy at parties she has been more coherent than myself and I think that was a result of the model that her parents portrayed with alcohol consumption. I think for a large majority of college students the weekends are treasured because they are our form of releasing the tensions from the week before, usually with alcohol as the substance to get us there. However, some people take it further than others and I found myself wondering why? 

I asked Debra Steckler, a specialist on emerging adulthood at the University of Mary Washington, what would happen if parents were to drink with their kids in a responsible setting. She said, “if the parent drinks with the kids in a responsible way that behavior will have beneficial effects on the child’s drinking behavior, the children will grow up seeing responsible drinking modeled for them and will follow their parent’s example.” 

Steckler told me how young-adults learn from example by modeling the habits that they have observed, whether it be in their household, on television or at school. “Kids have to get their information from somewhere, and if they are not getting accurate information from their parents they will get inaccurate information from their peers,” she says. “Experience is also a form of information, so if adolescents aren’t getting accurate information about alcohol, sex, drugs, etc. from their family they will find out on their own, many times with negative consequences.” 

Sarah Roche

A study completed by the Departments of Preventive Medicine and Psychology at the University of Southern California titled “Forbidden Fruit and the Prediction of Cigarette Smoking,” shows how youth have a rebellious response to products that have been restricted or limited in their use. Youth ignore the limitations as a way to indicate their own independence.  

My sister was experiencing the need to prove her independence. She had her own car and for a period of time she lived with her friends. Of course, that wasn’t okay with my parents but she did it anyways, along with lots of drinking since her friends’ single father didn’t see any harm in that. My sister wanted to show my parents that she could make her own choices. In some ways, I felt the same way as her.  

I don’t blame my parents for the way they raised me. They did the best they could. I mean they aren’t experts in psychology and while they didn’t show me how to drink moderately, they did model many other things for me. Like how to socialize with friends without drinking alcohol, how to be myself and to be cautious around strangers. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell them about the early memories I have of drinking with my sister. In my parents’ eyes I am an angel because I never had to confess to them about my drunken nights, though my dad has had his suspicions. 

Ester Salguero

Something about learning how to drink moderately on your own makes all the difference. Watching my sister make her own mistakes with her friends and listening to horror stories she would tell me the day after her binge drinking provided me the lessons I needed to stop drinking excessively. In the absence of an example from my parents, I learned from my sister and her mistakes. She would see videos that she had taken of herself drunk and pictures that her friends had taken of her that would make her cringe but there were more serious determents as well. I didn’t want any of that, my academics were first and foremost. 

I haven’t cut out drinking completely but I’ve made it a smaller part of my life. Until I turn 21 I think drinking will remain something exciting to do on the weekends.

How Television Convinced Me That I Don't Want Kids

'SEX IN THE CITY' CHANGED MY IDEALS AND OFFERED AN ALTERNATIVE TO MARRIAGE AND BABIES.

By Kelly Emmrich

I’ve known since I was a young girl that I don’t want to have kids. Probably the first time I ever had the thought was when I was 13 and had my first babysitting gig with a little 5-year-old boy. Everything started out smoothly. I made him dinner, chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. They were just leftovers from the fridge that the mom, Marie, said I could heat up for him. But then came bath time.

The kid had been running around all day, and he desperately needed a bath. I left him to go get changed while I turned on the bath water. He ran back in enrobed in, not his cargo shorts and soccer t-shirt, but a too small Spiderman Halloween costume. He declared that he wore this for his costumes when he was three. I remember smiling and asking him to get in the bath, and he scurried away refusing to get in the tub. Little did I know that he had swiped toothpaste from the counter.

I found him two minutes later in his room stripped naked, the Spiderman costume discarded in the middle of the floor, and squeezing the Blues Clues toothpaste all over his stomach and legs. I tried to clean up the five year old, and the carpet in his room, but both were left with several streaks of sticky blue toothpaste. I finally got him to bed just as the parents came back home. I said that there were no problems, and they paid me. I called my mom to come pick me up, and I cried all the way home in the car. Later, I got a call from Marie asking why her precious son looked like he was part of the blue man group. I didn’t have an answer.

I told my mom my plan for a childless future after the incident. She told me that I would change my mind when I was older. They said that 13-year-olds don’t know yet what they want in life. I thought that maybe she might be right. Maybe I didn’t yet know everything about my future. But now, years later, as a junior in college, I still have the same conviction. I really, really really don’t want kids.

It’s not just because of that one isolated incident of toothpaste boy, but that first babysitting gig made me think: What is the ‘motherly instinct,’ that all moms have, and why don’t I have it? I think part of it is that I have different expectations from my parents and grandparents. I want to pursue a career and travel. I want to have a career without worrying about taking care of a child. But also, I wonder if I’ve been partially influenced by TV shows and pop culture that’s making marriage and family seem like less of an ideal. Being single and childless is made to look so much more glamorous.

         * * *

When I was younger, I remember watching cartoon shows with my mom, programs like “Little Bear,” “Arthur,” “Franklin” and “The Bernstein Bears.” My mom showed me the old shows that she used to watch: “I Love Lucy,” “Bewitched” and “the Addams Family.” I noticed something about all of these shows. They all focused on marriage, family and kids.

But even as I was exposed to this traditional idea of marriage and family, I always found myself chafing against it. Perhaps one of the earliest examples was when I got together with the neighborhood kids to play “house.” It’s a simple game. Each person has a different role in the family. One person is the mom one is the dad. Then there are the kids, and, if you have excess people, there can be pets. We usually took turns with who the mom or dad was in these scenarios. However, I was never either. I always wanted to take the role of the kid or the pet. Being a parent didn’t appeal to me.

As I grew older, I began to see TV start to reflect my inner feelings about my adulthood. When “Sex in the City” came out in 2004, Carrie Bradshaw seemed like a beautiful, confident woman. There was something that was incredibly appealing about her singledom in New York. I started to understand better why I didn’t want to be a parent when I played house. I loved the freedom that she had in her character, and I wanted that same freedom in my life.

Over the next few years I watched “Friends,” “Scrubs,” “Parks and Rec” and “The Office.” None of these shows were solely about marriage, though they did deal with the issue to some extent. These shows were about single people in the work world. In “Friends” Rachel wanted to work her way up in her corporate fashion job. Monica worked to create her own restaurant. In “The Office” Pam put her engagement on hold so that she could attend art school. In “Parks and Rec” Leslie is incredibly focused on her job, and will stop at nothing to achieve her work goals. In “Scrubs,” main characters J.D. and Elliot consistently turned down dates, and monogamous relationships so that they could get ahead in jobs at the hospital.

Now, when I went back to watch shows such as “I Love Lucy” and “Bewitched” I saw things I didn’t notice before. In “Bewitched,” Samantha’s husband Darrin molded her into the perfect housewife. Samantha was a witch, and Darrin tried to make her give up magic, so she wouldn’t cause any trouble for him or the neighbors. In “I Love Lucy” Lucy was a zany housewife whose sole purpose was to support her husband, Ricky Ricardo, in the show business.

I was curious if my friends started to notice this change in culture and whether it affected their plans for their future. After all, I know I’m not alone. According to data from the Urban Institute, birth rates among women in their 20s have declined 15 percent between 2007 and 2012, and research from Pew uncovered a longer-term trend of people skipping parenthood. The number of child-less couples has doubled since 1970. Only about half of women from ages 15 to 42 have children.

I was talking to my roommate, Rose Frechette, over breakfast, and we got to talking about after college plans. I asked her what she thought that she wanted to do after graduation, and she answered. “I don’t know. I think I want to travel. Maybe have an Eat, Pray, Love journey. I don’t want to be tied down to anyone. I think that TV shows like “New Girl” andhave had a role in that, I guess the whole feminism, don’t need no man thing has shaped me.”

My other roommate, Ariana Garcia DuBar, heard us talking in the living room and came out of her room. She asked us what we were talking about. I answered that we were discussing our plans after college, and how the media and TV especially had had a role in our decision. She made herself some tea, and said, “I think that TV just like reflects how peoples like views have changed. I don’t think TV has necessarily changed people. TV probably led me to the water, but I feel like I haven’t changed because of it. I was raised to have a career and travel.”

I came to realize that maybe TV wasn’t necessarily shaping what I, or my friends, thought we wanted.  Rather, for those of us who were less interested in a family, it presented us with an alternative view of life. It showed us that there wasn’t just one way to be an adult.

For my mother, TV matched what she already knew she wanted. She graduated college at 22, and moved to Florida. She met my dad when she was 25. She got married at 29, had me at 35. She quit her job as a teacher, and she became a committed mother. There was no room for anything else. She loved the old TV shows because they presented the life that she wanted for herself and created.

For me, I’ve always known I don’t have the innate desire to hold and coddle a baby. And I’m glad I’ve got TV that shows me that’s okay too. 

When you just want to vent

DOES VENTING ANONYMOUSLY ONLINE ACTUALLY MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER?

By Abigail Whittington

I sat on the floor of my dorm, watching the light from the window behind me travel around my room until it was gone. My boyfriend of two years sat beside me as he explained to me that he wanted a break. We had been building up resentment against each other for a long time. One person would become upset over something small, but wouldn’t tell the other person what it was so the other person was left guessing and we would go back and forth feeding off each other’s anger without ever talking about it. Finally, our routine of feeling avoidance grew old. We couldn’t even enjoy the happy moments anymore. His solution was to initiate a break. He said we needed time apart to figure out what we wanted to do about our relationship. 

A break sounded like a ridiculous solution to our issues at the time. I told him, “If communication is our problem then we should communicate right now and get everything out on the table. Taking a break is just enforcing our habit of running away from our problems until they go away or we forget about them.”

But he wasn’t listening to me and he still wanted to go ahead with a two-week break. He didn’t tell me what he wanted from this break, but I assumed it was the same as what I wanted, time apart to pinpoint why we don’t communicate and figure out a way to fix it. Maybe that was his intention at first, but then it became a question of whether or not the effort was worth it for him. He walked out of my room that night completely composed while I remained crumpled there on my floor with tears streaming down my face and a pile of used tissues surrounding me.

As soon as he left, I hastily threw open my laptop that was sitting beside me and began composing a tweet that would express exactly how angry and hurt I was. If he wasn’t going to listen to me, someone on Twitter would. After rewriting my tweet several times I eventually just deleted it and closed my laptop. We still followed each other on Twitter so I didn’t want to tweet something that would make him angry and lead our two-week break to a permanent breakup. Facebook wasn’t sufficient either. If I vented my feelings to Facebook, my family would worry about my mental health and they would ask for details that I wasn’t ready to share. I even tried journaling, but it wasn’t giving me the cathartic feeling I was searching for. I was craving some sympathy, some confirmation that what I was feeling was valid and confirmation from others that a break is not the best way to deal with problems. I had nowhere to go. I wanted to be heard. I needed somewhere I could post publicly, somewhere where it was okay to abandon the polished, cheerful life that I portrayed on all other social media sites, somewhere where I could vent without it tracing back to me, somewhere where I was at least somewhat understood

I thought to myself, there has to be something out there that would provide exactly what I was looking for. So I began my search in the Apple App Store by searching the one word that described exactly what I wanted to do, vent. To my relief there was an app called Vent that claims to be a place where you can “express you feelings and connect with people who care.” I downloaded it immediately, but it took me a while to actually feel comfortable posting on the app and I was doubtful that it would make me feel any better. 

I was worried about how anonymous the app could be. I had never heard of it before, but maybe other people I knew did know about and used it regularly and stumbled upon my profile and pieced my vents together to reveal who I was. It wouldn’t be hard. I made my username my first and middle name out of frustration that everything else I tried was already taken. I was also skeptical about whether or not this would be beneficial at all. I thought it was a hate spewing app that people only went on when they were angry or sad so how could anything good come from it? But after about a week of observing other venters online I finally made my first post: 

I felt a small cathartic release even if it was online and not to his face. It felt good to talk about him in a negative way. Since we had the same friends, I didn’t want to influence them on the way they perceive him. This was my alternative. I didn’t expect anyone to react to my post and I certainly did not expect a reply. Initially, I had a heartwarming feeling from that reply. Here was a total stranger who seemed to care enough to take a few seconds to leave a reply rather than just hit one of the buttons provided by the app to show sympathy and support. However, that heartwarming feeling disappeared quickly because after all, this person was a stranger to me.

The heartwarming feeling didn’t compare to what I had experienced in the past from venting on Twitter about things going wrong in my life. When Twitter was still fairly new and not everyone had an account, it was more acceptable for people to vent online. This was before Twitter made the shift to the polished versions of everyone. This was when Twitter was still honest and raw. Friends would reach out after a post like that and their words would have meaning because they actually knew you and cared about your wellbeing. Facebook was the same way in the beginning. Now it seems that online honest and heartwarming connection is lost.

Despite not receiving the full feeling of catharsis that I was looking for during my first post, I kept posting. The next post I made was after we decided to break it off for good. For context, he cracked my phone screen before our break even started. At the time I didn’t address how angry is made me that he carelessly dropped my phone and did not offer to pay to fix it, but with our distance from each other the anger I suppressed started to surface. I lost $115 fixing what he broke. In a way, I felt that my phone foreshadowed the breaking of my heart and shattering of our relationship and that is what I was trying to convey in this post.

This post received a little more love than the last one and the reply was a little sweeter too. I felt slightly more comforted after receiving attention on this post, but like the last post, the feeling was fleeting.

I wondered if I was just the exception so I went on Vent and asked users if they thought that posting on the app helped them feel better. Most people said they did. MyOwnFriend replied, “When I get a simple comment or even a “hug” (button), it makes all the difference to me, when I have vented something. It changes my mood. Makes me feel appreciated and I do appreciate them reading and the time they took to interact.”

I also asked MyOwnFriend why he or she used the app. They replied, “Many of us are in situations where we feel lonely. We have so much to say, whether good or bad, but have no one to tell it too.” Perhaps the app is really only useful to users who feel that they have nowhere else to go.

I posted again a few days later after learning from a friend that one of her friends saw him on Tinder and matched with him. I was heartbroken that he could move on less than a week after we broke up while I was still processing it and trying to pick myself up again.

This post didn’t receive any love from other venters, but I didn’t feel any different from the other times when my posts did receive some love. It proved to me that I didn’t much care if people hit the reaction buttons at the bottom of the posts or left a nice reply. The real value in the app for me was just putting my negative thoughts out there, feeling like I was being heard, even if I wasn’t really.

I came across a study by Brad Bushman that in which he had one group of people punch a sand bag while thinking of a person that angered them to release their frustrations and another group just sat still for two minutes. Bushman then allowed the two groups to press a button that sounded like a horn to images of these people after their form of venting and those who punched the sand bag pressed the button for a longer period of time than those who sat still for two minutes. Thus he found that doing nothing is more effective in reducing anger than acting on the anger in search of catharsis. 

Perhaps that explained why the app wasn’t cutting it for me. I didn’t need to vent online and be heard. What I really needed was time to process in my head and understand and accept why we weren’t together. I needed introspection.

* * *

In the end though, I did vent one last time and this time was the most beneficial of my venting experience. I finally felt comfortable with calling my parents and telling them from beginning to end what happened since the break initiated and opening up about the way I felt toward the whole experience of the breakup. I spent a lot of time trying to hold back my anger toward the situation, but my parents comforted me by telling me that my anger was valid. I could show those feelings to people without fear of ridicule and I didn’t have to revert to an anonymous app to release those emotions. I was born with a support system and a venting dumping ground that I didn’t have to fear or hide my feelings from, my parents. Nothing can replace talking to the people who know you best and accept you even in your messiest times. 

How Facebook Changed Me

I WAS ALWAYS AFRAID OF PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE, BUT AFTER ONE WEEK OF POSTING EVERYTHING I FOUND A COMMUNITY.

By Casey Coulter

As I lay in bed at night scrolling through Facebook, I saw what my friends were eating for dinner. I caught up on all the drama. I found out who they were planning to vote for and why. I found out who got engaged and who was having a kid. I knew all this without even having a conversation with any of them.

It was Facebook that informed my family that my uncle, my mom’s brother, had died. My sister texted me asking me about it because she had seen her three cousins type his obituary on their profiles. One of them had put up an angry post on how no one had bothered to call to share the news with him. “it pretty bad that u have to find out a week later that ur uncle die. Even though my dad family dont talk to us they should still tell them an another thing that make me mad is that it my dad brother an they dnt even put my dad name in the write up for the siblings of his own brother…” he wrote, in his typical ungrammatical Facebook slang. Until then, I hadn’t heard anything at all.

But I’m not really that into social media. My Facebook page is largely empty. I’m tagged in a few photos and articles. There isn’t much between my annual “happy birthday” messages. I have just a few photos added to my albums. I’d say my Facebook habits are largely a product of my mom, who has always warned again posting too much about my personal life. “You can never erase what you post” is her famous line.

But I wondered whether I was missing something. Yes, I’d protected myself by keeping so much a secret from my online “friends.” But people kept telling me how important Facebook was to them, how it gave them a sense of community. So after years of my self-imposed ban, I decided to break my silence and see if there was anything to gain. Maybe I’d find community online. Or maybe I could become braver about sharing my ideas.

* * *

“Super excited to be going to Australia for winter break!! Can’t wait to ring in the new year with Georgie Hunt in Sydney!”, I wrote on September 27. I had applied to the study abroad program over winter break back in August. I was excited to be able to check another continent off my bucket list. All of my family members liked it, and even some of my closer friends. My Aunt Char commented, “So glad to hear the great news! Can’t wait to see you at the wedding.” The wedding she was referring to would happen in October; my cousin was marrying her boyfriend of 6 years. This started a series of comments between my family members about the wedding and how lucky I was to be traveling.

After this first post and string of comments, I began to see how easy it is to stay in touch even over Facebook. My next post was a bit of a rant. After a long day at work all I wanted to do was come home and take a nice hot shower. Not very much to ask for. But, of course there was a leak in my bathroom right over the shower. So, I put in a work order, and the maintenance worker showed up rather quickly. Good news, or so I thought. Three hours later, he told me my whole shower needed to be retiled. I wouldn’t be able to shower for three days.

My rant got all types of attention. My mom was extremely concerned. She commented and called me less than five minutes later. I had friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years react with the angry and sad faces. My roommate even shared my post, which got even more comments and likes. Having so many people react and comment did give me the sense of community I was seeking from my social media presence. It was nice to have a large group of people, many of whom I hadn’t seen in person in years, validating my feelings. They gave me the confidence to continue posting.

The next day one of my friends from Australia, Georgie, posted a picture of us from over the summer. I decided to reciprocate and post one that I had. It reminded me of the happy time I’d had with my family five friends over the summer. We were all sitting along the dock overlooking the water. “Missing the warm weather, blonde hair, and amazing mates,” I wrote. I tagged everyone in the photo, and they all responded. “Can’t believe how quick the summer went. Miss you all loads! Xx” was Georgie’s comment. The comments continued to pour in as my friends from different time zones saw my post.

After this post, the flood gates opened. I began to comment on other friends’ posts more. I even began to tag people in videos or articles that I thought they would find funny or interesting. I received more messages and was able to catch up with friends I hadn’t spoken to since graduating high school. I began to see that a willingness to be more outgoing online did help to build my bonds with people. Of course, it was still important to consider what I posted carefully. But overall, my Facebook experienced helped me realize how much people truly do care for me. It gave me a chance to know that my opinions are valid.

* * *

I couldn’t believe how much my little Facebook experiment changed me. Suddenly, I didn’t want to just limit myself to the social media I was already on. I even started thinking about creating a personal blog, so I could post even more

After my experiment I talked to my mother about it. I asked her why she was so cautious when it came to posting on social media. Her response was rather simple, “I didn’t grow up with it. I have no idea how to use it, and it’s rather scary to know that people can know so much about you without ever having met you.”

In a sense she’s right. I’m thankful that she made sure I was never posting anything inappropriate, and that she taught me how to be cautious.  According to Drew Hendricks, from socialnomics.net, 81 percent of internet-initiated crime involves a social network site. While there are plenty of scary facts like this, it’s not all bad. Social media has helped to solve 98.5 percent of AMBER alerts since 2005.

Some use social media for bad, while others use it for good. It’s all based on how you approach the opportunity. 

House of Secrets: A Closer Look at the Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge

By Emily Hollingsworth

When I first watched the movie National Treasure over Christmas, sometime in the mid-2000s, I remember vaguely hearing about a group called the Freemasons who had something to do with the symbols on the back of the one dollar bill. At the time, I was too overwhelmed with holiday food and enamored with the hectic chase scenes and Indiana Jones-esque secret passageways to pay attention to the historical details.

This organization, shrouded in secrecy, didn’t capture my interest again until years later. I came across an online trend. . The Illumanati is believed to be a network of people who influences and controls the world’s events, spanning back hundreds of years. The group became part of the popular culture because of the book and movie The Da Vinci Code YouTube and Internet memes tried to claim that major companies and celebrity figures had connections to the Illuminati. These memes show ways that the most innocuous pictures hide the Illumnati’s signature sign: a triangle, meant to represent the all-seeing eye atop a pyramid found on dollar bills. The Illuminati is a network believed to control the events of the world and have symbols and signals people can learn to catch.

Many Internet sources said the Freemasons are connected to this powerful group. The Masons, I learned, are a secret brotherhood believed to have begun in London but quickly taking root in the United States beginning in the 1700s. The masons, collectively known as a fraternal organization, are guided by secrets.

The group was believed to have originated during the stonemasons guild in the Middle Ages with the earliest documented lodges taking place in London in 1717, Their initiations and levels of membership are largely kept mum by its members.

Famous figures have also claimed to be masons. From influential political figures Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson and Winston Churchill to author Mark Twain, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Duke Ellington and John Wayne, it’s easy to see why people believe masons have so much control over current events when its members have had considerable amounts of power and influence themselves.

My real, sustained interest in this group really began a few months ago, I was at my brother’s friend’s party and he told me about his new job digitizing archives of the Masonic Lodge, home of the freemasons. “Hey guys, Mike is working for the Illuminati now,” my brother said.

Shocked, I listened as my brother’s friend told me about the room itself and some of the gossip, that there was an altar in the room where ritual sacrifices were made.

Soon my shock turned into curiosity. The fourth oldest Masonic Lodge was minutes away from my house. I must have passed it so many times, never guessing what secrets may lie inside. I became determined, wanting to know what was really going on within that brick building on Princess Anne Street. Freemasons are a secret hidden in plain sight. Multiple masonic lodges, their meeting places, exist in each state, a historic lodge is even in Fredericksburg. Most would not consider the square, brick house on Princess Anne Street to be home of one of the most scrutinized and feared organizations in the world, yet the organization sponsors blood drives in the area and offers monthly dinners and meetings (though not their secret meetings) to the public.

For a group with approximately 6 million members around the world, I was surprised that it was able to hold on to so many secrets. In this age of information, when anything you ever wanted to know can be reached through a Google search, organizations that operate through closed doors and keep their secrets with lock and key are the subjects of particular interest, scrutiny and distrust.

And if I tried, could I crack their security? What better way to try to understand this phenomenon than to leave the laptop behind and take a tour of the lodge itself, parsing fact and fiction in order to decide once and for all if the legends and power this organization contains is myth, or something to be feared. 

***

It was a surprisingly hot day for October. Heat crept into the square house on 803 Princess Anne St., home to the Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge. This had been the open hiding place of the masons for more than 200 years, but its first recorded meeting took place in September 1752. The organization’s original meeting room was holed on the house’s second floor, a smaller room with warped floors. The meeting room later relocated to the first floor.

Its cemetery, where dead members are buried, is across the street.

Dan Thompson, the lodge’s secretary and the five or six people who had wandered into the house for an impromptu tour were smart enough to wear button-down or polo shirts with short sleeves. I was in a long-sleeved button-down and sweating.

They were standing in the main meeting room, a square room with a high ceiling and long, interconnected blue benches lining the right and left walls. In the bench’s centers were brown chairs, one against the wall with two chairs on either side in front of it. The two chairs were where the stewards, or the group’s lowest members, apprentices, were supposed to sit, according to Thompson.

On either end of the room sat thrones. The chair at the right end of the room was the seat of the Worshipful Master, the highest honor of an individual Masonic Lodge. Below the chair on the left side, a smooth block of concrete sat with a rougher block on its right side.

In the room’s center, however, where Thompson stood by and the few tourists looked on was the large, weathered book encased in glass: the very King James Bible George Washington himself became sworn into when inducted as a member of the Masons. Thompson allowed photos, the men and women casually surveying the case from different angles. George Washington, when inducted into the presidency, was without a Bible to be sworn in, according to Thompson. In a panic, a Congress member ran across the street to a Masonic Lodge, picking up a Bible and using it for Washington’s inauguration.

This says something about the role of religion in the country, Thompson had said later, you have to be a man of faith to be a Mason, but what makes your deity is between you and your heart, not something the lodge determines for you.

Eventually, the group left. But I was curious to know more, so I let Thompson continue to show me around.

Thompson walked through the room, his voice echoing over the expansive walls, sounding impressive and hushed, like liturgy spoken in a cathedral. Everything in the room has a double meaning, ones known only to the members of the Masonic Lodge, according to Thompson. The black and white floors, checkered in small squares, resembles the light and dark of life. The philosophies of the room, the intricate purposes behind every detail, is following the example of King Solomon building the temple in the bible’s 1 Kings chapter 6, according to Thompson.

Thompson then gestured with his hand toward the ceiling, voice echoing pride: “And this,” he said, displaying a house still standing, its members still meeting the second Friday of every month, continuing to move as the building and world outside of it has moved for hundreds of years. “is King Solomon’s palace.”

Worshipful Master, according to Thompson, is based on the Old English language for a leader, not as a blasphemous term for a man who isn’t a god, or a title sounding a degree away from the name given to a leader in a cult. Thompson should know; he has spent the past 20 years fulfilling every single role in the Masonic Lodge’s order, aside from a spare few. He had even been a Worshipful Master, but now works as the lodge’s secretary.

* * *

While taking a tour of the meeting room, I asked Thomson to tell me about the group’s history.

The history of the Masons, according to Thompson, were made up of a series of almost parabolic tales where crafty but illiterate stone masons taught doctors and lawyers about masonry in exchange for their services. Using these teachings, the doctors and lawyers philosophized on the meaning of various types of buildings and tools.

For example, the “square,” or a tool that looks like a ruler, was said to be used by masons to mark true right angles when crafting stone. It’s now symbolic of morality, making sure that members measure up in terms of honesty and integrity. Another tool, the “compass,” isn’t a compass you use to tell direction. It’s a tool with two prongs. You use one prong to put on the center and another to draw a circle. The end result, according to the masons, isn’t a perfect circle but the importance of discipline and setting boundaries, but also recognizing one’s own potential. They took tools that were purely mechanical and crafted them into having moral significance. Essentially, this was a self-help program based on stone buildings. The lessons focused on ethics and good character. They were co-opting the language of this group with lower education and turning it into a philosophy for existence. The square and compass now appear as the insignia for the masons.

Eventually, this educated elite formed a brotherhood, with the doctors, lawyers and other professionals becoming more common than the less educated stone masons.

Current Freemasons are open about some of these lessons. But others, they keep to themselves. Thompson said that group members don’t allow out, for example, their secret handshake, secret passwords they use to find other members and aspects of their initiation process, as members begin as stewards and possibly end at the top tier, the worshipful master.

The mason’s views on women as a fraternal group was also interesting. Thompson mentioned a few female-led mason groups that exist in some parts of the U.S. However, he said that if a woman approached this group and asked to be members, that they would have to “take them out.” Choosing to dismiss the wording as more benign than it sounded, I wondered if their decision to only allow men was only to upkeep yet another mason tradition, or a pointed means of sexism within the organization.

* * * 

After the meeting with Thompson, I decided to look for answers elsewhere. Surely, I thought, the group must have disgruntled members who’ve shared their secrets online. What I found were forums and start-up sites that were asking the same questions as I was: what exactly do masons do? Is the Masonic Lodge safe? What are their secret words, signals, etc.? The forums relating to the masons, particularly the ones on reddit.com, contain users who boast of having family members in the masons or are members themselves.

“We can barely get a pancake breakfast organized; let alone world domination,” user PhonedZero, who claims to be a mason, said about the organization. Questions about what the organization was and what they did were common, and some forums revealed helpful answers.

One forum user claimed to know the secret handshake. According to the user, it is the same as a regular handshake, except the person will use their index finger to lightly press the other person’s inner wrist. If the other person is also a mason, he will do the same motion.

A lot of users and Thompson himself recommended reading “Freemasons for Dummies,” a book written by a mason that describes the basic questions of being a freemason without revealing any secrets. I had not confirmed what I found online with Thompson to know if they were true, and some of the websites that had the most graphic descriptions of what appear to be mason secrets definitely have biases or look a little sketchy themselves. After searching online, I feel like I have more questions than answers. How do I know these users are telling the truth? Why do the answers vary so much lodge to lodge? While the online research was confusing but fascinating, I ended up learning a lot more about the Fredericksburg lodge and about the masons from Thompson himself.

* * *

The Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge has approximately 332 members, according to Thompson. The average member has been with the organization an average of 25 years. In addition, there are 35,000 mason members in the state of Virginia. Thompson, now retired from working at the Library of Congress as a facility manager, now volunteers full time at the lodge. He does paperwork and takes care of the Lodge’s renovations, which has included taking up the carpet in the room outside of the meeting area which was laid down in the 1980s. His office, barely in view, is filled to the brim with papers, furniture and other items, a chair and a laptop a small corner next to the window. The AC and heat have had some trouble in the past year, too.

He has enjoyed putting more of his time into the lodge, saying that it gives him something to do. “It puts me off the streets, keeps me out of my wife’s hair.” Thompson said.

I asked him about the portrayal of the lodge in movies such as the Da Vinci Code.

“Dan Brown is an excellent writer,” Thompson started. “He writes some good books that turned into good movies.”

That being said, he countered his praise with a disclaimer. “Here is what you need to know,” he said. “Dan Brown writes fiction.” According to Thompson, Brown has cinematized the masons, exaggerating their secrets and making some inaccuracies in order to garner a few bucks.

Thompson laughs at the idea held by some that the Masonic brotherhood houses secrets and conspiracies, most grandly, that this brotherhood has an inter-global connection that manipulates the events in the world.

“How can a place that has no heat and basically no air conditioning run a thing like that?” Thompson said. He also added that the toilets only work some of the time.

These conspiracies are far removed from the historic Fredericksburg lodge, which was the fourth oldest Masonic Lodge in the United States.

“The Masons, oh, you mean that one organization with all the secrets?” he said, feigning surprise. “The Masons are not a secret organization,” Thompson said. “We are an organization with secrets.”

* * *

The door in the Masonic Lodge’s basement was open, the chilly air only approaching the entrance. It was now November, and the lodge was having their monthly dinner. Dressed in suits, the men in the lodge, who mainly looked to be in their 60s, made conversation. Sitting in one of eight long tables lined with a white plastic sheet and feeling a bit like a secret agent who sneaked into the basement of the CIA, I waited for the dinner with a few other people who might have also felt out of place. A family with a young daughter sat behind me, and in front of me three University of Mary Washington students studying Historic Preservation, and like my brother’s friend Mike, archived information for the Lodge.

When the dinner was about to be served, the current Worshipful Master himself, Jeffrey VanCuren, came out. 

VanCuren said the meal he cooked is the meal he typically makes for members of the Thurman Brisben homeless shelter once a month. Priding themselves on volunteer and community service, I found out that the masons also run a blood drive throughout the year. After VanCuren spoke and said a prayer, the servers handed out plates of chicken with whole potatoes, green beans, dinner rolls and cake for dessert. It was like Thanksgiving had come early. Making conversation with the other college students and a Masonic Lodge member who wanted to learn more about us, I was surprised by how casual the environment felt. The air wasn’t thick with tension or unspoken secrets, instead, it felt more like a community potluck.

The vibe changed a bit after dinner was served. Everyone was invited to come to the main floor and sit in the meeting to watch the Rainbow group, a group for elementary-school age kids, give a performance. The mason members, formerly in suits, were now decked out in blue and white uniforms, proudly showing off the various badges they had gotten during their years in the masons. It was so crowded in the meeting room everyone had to squeeze together in order to fit on the blue benches. The Rainbow group performance were four or five children reciting poems while one held the U.S. flag. VanCuren became emotional, clearing his throat as he explained having to recite the same words at their age. I wondered if the poems were a Mason tradition. After the meeting, the UMW students had to get to work archiving, but we took a tour of the house first, including looking through their secret hallway, a narrow hallway adjacent to the meeting room that contained mirrors and portraits, presumably of George Washington, a member of the Fredericksburg Lodge himself.  

Peering down the hallway and hearing the muffled sounds of the meeting in progress, I began to rethink my certainty that the group was just a meeting place for elderly men. Turning from the dim hallway to the students standing in the other room, I kept the possibility of there being more secrets in mind, but felt that I was at least partly right.

As another brew house opens in Fredericksburg, one reporter asks, "Why?"

By Della Hethcox

In the 10 square miles of downtown Fredericksburg, visitors can already imbibe at two craft breweries, Spencer Devon Brewing Company and the newly constructed Sedona Taproom. Now, Tom Evans and Dan Baker, childhood friends from Fredericksburg, are in the process of building yet another craft brewery.

The entrepreneurs recently received approval from the City Council to construct a brewery at a historic building on Princess Anne Street, although they are still exploring all their options. Some Fredericksburg residents are welcoming the new hangout spot, while others wonder – Do we really need another brewery?

Fredericksburg, as it turns out, is part of a trend in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 2012, Virginia was home to just 40 breweries. Today, that number has grown to more than 100 independent breweries. Comparatively, Maryland only has 40 breweries and North Carolina just 101. Virginia’s craft beer industry is one of the fastest growing in the nation, and sales increased by 17.2 percent in 2013. This trend is partially the engineering of the state government, which is actively trying to make Virginia a “beer state.”

Entrepreneurs and state governments see long-term potential in investing in craft brewers at the local and national level, to promote local products and the agricultural industry, and also to encourage tourism.

Now that Virginia legislation is becoming more brewer-friendly, it’s is safe to speculate that the craft beer industry will keep growing. As a beer lover, I support Fredericksburg’s new beer trend, but I also wonder: Does our state really need every resident to be within a 10-mile radius of a brewery?

* * *

I met with Evans and Baker, the proprietors looking to open the new Red Dragon brewery in Fredericksburg, at a local craft coffee shop. They were both wearing button-down shirts and baseball caps, looking the part of Southern small town residents. Easy going and calm, they reminded me of my dad, and they were excited to talk about their plans.

Growing up, Baker had been friends with Tom’s brother. Like most small town social circles, your sibling’s friends quickly become your own. Evans and Baker grew up in Fredericksburg and attended local high schools. They both worked in the information technology industry, and Evans also worked for the local city police department. They also brought up their kids in this small town.

Evans’ brewing career started because of a Christmas gift his brother received: a Mr. Beer brewing kit. That’s what sparked his interest and led him to purchase even larger, more intensive brewing kits. Eventually, Evans worked up to brewing all-grain beer, an in-depth process that involves creating the wort, which is crushed malt barley, from scratch and straining it through boiling water.

For years, Evans and Baker envisioned opening up a brewery in their hometown, and they never considered another location. “Tom brews and he gives away,” Baker said, about Evans’ years-long habit of brewing at home for friends. After years of seeing locals drink Budweiser and Coors at local bars, they believed that Fredericksburg needed more quality beer, especially of the craft variety.

In 2012, Evans had almost decided to begin the process of creating a local brewery, however, with his children still at home, he decided it just wasn’t the right time. But when the spring of 2015 rolled around, his kids required less time and he found a business partner in his long time friend, Baker. He also realized that through their local networks they could find financial backers.

Evans and Baker began to put their plans into action, and quickly began looking for the perfect building. They found their dream structure on Princess Anne Street. Formerly a Goodwill commercial laundry service, as well as a Safeway grocery store in the 1940s, this building is part of the historic downtown framework.

For the team, they see it as an opportunity to hop onto the existing beer trend in Virginia and introduce the microbrewery world to their town. “Craft beer is like a virus, it’s spreading in a viral fashion,” Baker said, laughing as he commented on the current food trend revolving around craft beer and microbreweries. “There’s pockets of them popping up everywhere.”

* * *

One of the first steps made by the state to encourage growth of its beer industry was to allow breweries the freedom to sell their house-made brews on their premises. Prior to 2012, breweries were not permitted to serve customers full servings of beers, but rather samples of two to three ounces. But then the Virginia Senate Bill 604 passed and allowed breweries to legally serve their drinkers more than just a sip, which made the creation of new breweries more lucrative.

The next step was to encourage popular breweries located in true beer states to establish outposts in Virginia. In fact, Governor Terry McAuliffe was recently the main instigator in convincing Stone Brewing Company, based in San Diego, to make Richmond its next home. During the courtship period between McAuliffe and Stone, McAuliffe took every opportunity to promote Stone’s products, even in his official office. Rumor has it that a keg of Stone’s finest beer became an official fixture in the governor’s office. During each meeting with Stone, McAuliffe could be seen sipping their beer. When even the governor can be found drinking beer in the comfort of his office, you know that the Commonwealth is on its way to solidifying its place as the next beer state.

Stone “really puts Virginia on the maps and cements our standing as a serious player in the craft beer industry,” McAuliffe wrote in a press release. The brewing company will also create nearly 300 jobs for the Richmond area. For Todd Haymore, the Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry,  "Stone's presence in Virginia, along with our outstanding existing craft breweries, will undoubtedly enhance the Commonwealth's position in the industry and in the research and production of hops, a huge potential cash crop for our agricultural producers.”

In 2014, the craft beer industry contributed roughly $368 million to Virginia’s economic development. $22.4 billion of that was due to tourists, about 40 million of them. So what attracted them? Microbreweries. Virginia now even dedicates the entire month of August as “Virginia Craft Brew Month,” a month that brings enthusiasts to local breweries in droves, thanks to special rates and promotions on brews of all kinds.

Breweries are becoming a destination now, according to Evans and Baker. “You go to a winery and you sit and get a tour. That’s what breweries are now, a destination,” Evans said, trying to explain why the addition of a second brewery to Fredericksburg is not excessive. 

Fredericksburg is experiencing a resurgence of family run, craft businesses, particularly as a part of the city’s development plans. Hyperion, a local coffee shop, and Olde Towne Butcher are some examples the duo gave of these types of businesses. “These crafts are coming back,” Baker said. “Fredericksburg was without a butcher for over 18 years.”

But what about the name? Both men are of Celtic heritage, something they wanted to pay homage to, particularly in their logo. Examine the logo closely and you’ll find the fierce red dragon that belongs to the Welsh Flag. Look even closer and you’ll notice that gripped in its claws is an amber pilsner.

Fun fact: Surprisingly, brewing has been a neighborhood affair for hundreds of years. In the old days, women were the brewers of the family, as well as for any neighbors who strolled by around mealtime. Before prohibition in many states during the mid-20th century, every town had a neighborhood brewery. However, after prohibition, only the larger breweries remained due to their followers and available resources. For examples, Coors made pottery to sustain itself until prohibition ended.

* * *

Beer used to be a stigmatized beverage, a drink reserved for blue-collar workers. But recently, it’s gone through an identity change, and now it shares many of the same virtues that a good wine does. Restaurants are themed around beer and not just wine anymore, a phenomenon that’s made its way down to small towns like Fredericksburg.

Craft beer has become a hot topic, thanks to being one of the food trends in 2015. No longer is beer just for fun-loving college students or blue-collar workers, but it is a serious hobby. For enthusiasts, it is more than a beverage; it is an art and a craft.

So what is a craft beer exactly? According to the Brewers Association, craft beer is made using traditional ingredients like malted barley, but craft brewers interpret these historic and classic styles with unique twists produced in small scale breweries. Additionally, craft brewers maintain their integrity by brewing independently from non-craft brewers. The recent spike in breweries means that Virginia is overflowing with options. “The craft beer trend is just growing and growing, breweries are popping up left and right. Eventually there’s going to be a bubble. Sooner or later,” Evans added.

Dana McCauley, a Canadian chef and food trends expert, is known for her ability to quickly detect, identify and implement new trends in the culinary industry. Want to know the details behind a recent trend, like say...the cronut? She’s got details.

Recently, McCauley has noticed that craft beer is becoming a trend. She first began to notice the uptick in craft beer in 2014, but she wondered how and why it was becoming a trend. “The way food trends emerge has changed since social media became prevalent. It used to be that chefs and the producers and food importers drove emerging trends and that trade magazines and shows were the first place these trends were showcased,” she explained, but now the power of trend creation doesn’t just belong to the experts.

“Now, the emergence can be the same, but it's often consumers (the so called 'foodies') who use social media who identify what is interesting, and then trade magazines and other traditional media come later and help the trend to build momentum,” McCauley said.

However, it can take upwards of two years for a food trend to reach people, particularly if they live in a small town like Fredericksburg. This is where the state government steps in and picks up on these trends, much like Gov. McAuliffe’s courtship of Stone, and the rise of microbreweries throughout the state.

McCauley cites the example of the cronut as a trend that exploded over night, mainly thanks to social media users and self-proclaimed foodies, but also the novelty factor, which beer also possesses. As someone on the inside of the marketing industry, McCauley has noticed the rise in popularity for the craft beer trend.

“It's huge! I actually spoke to a company yesterday that services this segment by bringing a mobile canning plant to [breweries], which are popping up everywhere and affecting food trends as well,” Dana said. So how does craft beer affect food? Just take a look at downtown Spencer Devon’s menu.

It’s built entirely upon beer and food pairings, such as which salads will pair well with a crisp pilsner, or a juicy burger with a throaty porter. However, McCauley cautions that even though it’s a viable market and opportunity for brewers right now, “[it] will hit a saturation point and contract as the better beers and better run companies rise to the top.”

* * *

So far, there’s been just one major hitch in their plans. Even though the state is friendlier toward brewers and breweries, the city of Fredericksburg is not, due to their rule of “production limitation,” which refers to the city-imposed limits on how much beer a brewery can produce. For a new business, this does not spell out future success, or promise a profitable enterprise, despite the community’s welcoming attitude toward the new business. If it was up to him, Evans would have signed a lease already, but now he and Baker are reevaluating their location.

Currently the proposed Red Dragon location on Princess Anne Street is zoned as a “commercial transitional,” which means that even though it’s right in the heart of a neighborhood, it’s ready to become a business. And Evans and Baker have big plans for the building, including replacing all of the barricaded windows and installing a false facade to mimic pubs of old.

Although the city isn’t exactly friendly towards breweries, the Commonwealth is. “The state tourism is concentrated on breweries now, like the Virginia Beer Trail. Virginia as a state is pushing [craft beer] really hard right now, and we’ll be up there with the beer states soon like California, North Carolina,” Baker said.

In order to ensure that their brewery will not become a source of contention in the downtown community, like Happy Endings, a local bar that recently became the target of a new noise ordinance law, Evans and Baker have self imposed regulations to ensure that their brewery will not become the target of noise or disturbance complaints. In general, breweries tend to be outside of what the majority of buzz-seeking college students can afford, which should help keep the volume, and complaints, down at the future Red Dragon.

As for competing with the existing beer houses, Evans says that it is not going to be an issue. “If I’m going somewhere, I’m going to look for a place with the most beer per square foot. So I can go from one to the next to the next. It’s a destination.” As Evans and Baker explain it, if you’re a beer enthusiast, you can never have too many breweries in a town. Which means for tourists, Fredericksburg will soon be an enticing mecca for beer drinkers with three beer-centric spots in a several mile radius, all within walking distance of each other, so drinkers won’t have to worry about calling cabs.

And it seems as though they’ve found a good neighbor in Spencer Devon. There’s no animosity between these businesses, in fact, the breweries lend each other equipment and critique each other’s brews. Check social media and you’ll find local brewers testing (and approving!) each other on Instagram or Twitter. Luckily, many of the men attend the same local churches and their children play on the same sports teams, which means that the Fredericksburg community continues to share everything, even the craft beer trend.

“There’s no competition, it’s truly a collaborative community,” Baker said. “It’s not like your normal business model where your objective is to take away business from that person. Everybody supports one another.”  

Once the Red Dragon opens its doors, the variety of brews will be endless, Evans said enthusiastically. “We’ll have five to six standards, and then we’ll have rotating flavors,” Baker said, the cautious half of the team.

“You never know what you’ll get, some places have no variety,” said Tom, who wants to liven up the Fredericksburg beer scene.

“It’s a balance,” Baker added, “if you go to McDonalds, you always order the same thing. It’s that way with other places, you order the same thing and you expect the same thing. You have to balance that and figure out what you have that you’d want to have consistently and what do you want to have that you’ll rotate in seasonally.”

As for future plans, it’s hard to imagine what the beer scene will look like in Virginia in the coming years. How many breweries will the Virginia Beer Trail promote? Will the craft beer trend have run dry?

Evans admits that yes, there is likely to be a time when the craft beer industry reaches its peak. There’s a saturation point for this market and niche industry, but that’s what beer drinkers want: variety.

For Baker and Tom, they realize that yes, the market could become oversaturated, but a small town like Fredericksburg will only benefit from the addition of another brewery. It will bring in state tourism, as well as provide the locals with an alternative gathering spot to local bars filled with over-eager college students. For now, breweries like Spencer Devon are enjoying the popularity of craft beers. Even on a rainy November afternoon, their industrial building on George Street in Downtown Fredericksburg was bustling with customers, all holding pints of amber-hued liquids that accompanied their locavore plates.

Even if Virginia doesn’t become a beer state like its West Coast compatriots, these niche crafters and brewers have carved out a home in the Fredericksburg community, trend or no trend.

Is community college a better bet? A reporter explores the higher ed bubble.

By Joseph Garay

Jake Barber and Regina Flanders work at a local elementary school They provide before and after-school supervision to children each day or until their parents pick them up. While maintaining their jobs during the day, they also take classes at Germanna Community College.

For Flanders and Barber, the decision about whether to attend a four-year college immediately or going to a two- year community college was a no-brainer. Both wanted to avoid the cost of a four-year school and also wanted to continue to live at home, avoiding the burden of rent.

Most students attending community college with the goal of going to a four year institution at some point down the road. Barber and Flanders both acknowledged their hope that by attending community college they would be able to attend any four-year institution that they wished.

“I didn’t want to stress over the applications” Flanders said.

Flanders, who is about to embark on her path of higher learning by attending community college in the Spring semester, had taken a short break from education due to the effect of stress that she noticed was hindering her senior year of high school.

“I knew community college would be there when I decided to return,” she said. For her, community college offers a testing ground to see what type of workload she can handle and what types of classes she enjoys taking.

Both Flanders and Barber pointed out mostly positives of attending community college. Others include: flexible scheduling, small class sizes and positive experiences with professors.

***

Last year, President Barack Obama announced an initiative to guarantee community college for every student in the United States. This initiative comes from the growing number of employers requiring their employees to have at least their associate degree. It is expected that jobs requiring this level of education will grow twice as fast in the upcoming years.

According to the White House website: “President Obama has set the goal that by the year 2020 America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world and community colleges will produce 5 million graduates.” In order to achieve the goal President Obama has proposed a plan that will make the first two years of community college at any of the 1,100 community colleges in the United States free. This proposed plan would cost $60 billion over 10 years, saving the 9 million eligible students $3,800 in tuition costs.

While that proposed plan was supported by many equal-opportunity advocates, it was also derided by those who say that community college isn’t the jumping off point for four-year schools that people make it out to be. They also arguing that, despite the already cheap tuition costs, graduation rates for community college are still decreasing, and that community students are the most likely to default on their loans. 

On the other hand, four year colleges are extremely expensive. According to credit bureau Experian, 40 million Americans now have student loans, which is up from 29 million in 2008. And despite the improving economy, it is still tough for recent graduates to find jobs, with 4 out 5 students without a job when they graduate, meaning graduates are forced to hold low paying jobs while searching the jobs they want.

As a senior at the University of Mary Washington, I have often looked back and wondered whether I made the right choice by going straight into a four-year institution. When I was in high school, I always assumed that once I graduated, I’d be stuffing my belongings into bins and bags and preparing to move away in my parents’ minivan. I wondered if I could have saved my parents some money and also experienced the comforts of home for a time longer. So I decided to look into this debate to answer once and for all: Are four-year universities worth it?

* * *

Many students might believe that by going to community college they would be putting themselves on the wrong track for what they want in life. Jake Barber, however, says that he isn’t worried about getting off on the wrong track. Community college has worked for him. He is also confident that with good grades he will be able to attend the college of his choice once he receives his associate’s degree.

Many community college classes are not as strict as four- year institutions when it comes to attendance. Due to lower tuition prices and lax attendance policies, students might not take classes seriously and only show up to a handful of classes. While community colleges provide a great and affordable place for students to explore their academic interests and figure out their futures, this can also present a trap. Students might be attending classes with no aspiration to achieve more. Often these students don’t take their studies seriously and hinder the progress of other students in the class. Students who lack the drive to complete their studies often contribute to the increasing dropout rates of community colleges.

According to a study conducted by the National Student Clearing house, “The total completion rate for two-year starters, regardless of whether the completion occurred at a two-year or four-year institution, declined by 0.7 percentage points, from 39.8 percent to 39.1 percent. Moreover, the total completion rate at four-year institutions for students who started at two-year institutions dropped by one percentage point.”

As it is, success for students who transfer from a two-year college, has been found to be harder to obtain. A study conducted in 2009, in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, indicates that students are 14.5% less likely to achieve their bachelor’s degree in the same amount of time as students who went directly to a four year institution. Many students and researchers point to the significant change in school environment.

Many students also believe the quality of professors employed at community colleges to be below par, Barber believes otherwise: “I believe that my professors are just as qualified as those found at four-year colleges.

In more recent years the quality and quantity of qualified professors has significantly increased. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the job market has become so competitive that more doctoral students are taking teaching positions at the local community college, which offers roughly 40 percent of the teaching positions in the United States. Also, according to the American Association of Community Colleges website, approximately 71 percent of full-time professors and 46 percent of part-time professors have obtained their masters—suggesting a higher amount of qualified professors than is commonly expected. 

* * *

One of the most obvious reasons that many in-coming freshmen opt to attend community college before transferring into a four-year college – is due to the rising costs. The University of Mary Washington, which in comparison to many colleges in Virginia is a bargain, is still rather pricey for students who may be financially challenged.

College rates everywhere have been on the rise. According to College Board the average price for tuition and room and board for a four- year public institution has increased from $7,362 in the 1980s to roughly $19,000 a semester in 2015.

The tuition rates at The University of Mary Washington, in particular, have increased by approximately 4 percent for the 2014-15 school year. The yearly average tuition, for this particular school comes out to be around $20,000 for in-states students’ and approximately $32,000 for out- of- state students.

In comparison, the local community college, Germana, costs approximately $2,000 for 13-14 credits. The lowered prices on education are certainly a positive, allowing students to prepare themselves and save up for when they eventually decide to transfer to a four- year college.

While the cost to attend a community college is significantly lower than that of a four year college, class sizes are still small. On average, class sizes at community colleges range from 25 to 30 students per class. This allows students and teachers to have a closer working relationship, also allowing teachers to devote more time to individual students.

In four- year institutions, the average class size for freshmen and sophomores is typically larger, with students clamoring to fulfill general education requirements. Small class sizes don’t usually occur until students reach Upper level courses. So, why not forego the crowded impersonal general education classes by fulfilling those credits in a cheaper setting, while remaining close to home.

* * *

Emily Hollingsworth attended Germana Community College after being homeschooled from kindergarten all the way to her senior year of high school, using the American School of Correspondence to obtain her diploma. Instead of going right into a four- year institution, she decided to attend community college first.

“It was definitely the right move for me,” Hollingsworth said. “When you go to college directly from high school, they put emphasis on standardized tests, but if you go through community college and then apply to a four-year institution they will not look so hard at your test scores.”

Hollingsworth, who transferred to the University of Mary Washington, says “looking back I realize that the professors at the community college did a good job teaching.” While community colleges are more affordable they still have small class sizes. However, within these small class sizes is a very diverse population of students. The student population consists of people who are at different places in their life, like adults with families, high school students enrolling in college level courses in addition to working towards their high school diplomas, and young adults who had taken a break from learning. Of the professors, “They did a good job of helping everyone,” Hollingsworth said. “They especially did a good job helping and accommodating  those students who were at different places in their lives and, as a result, struggled to keep up with the curriculum.”

However, she did note that there were some negative experiences with community college professors. According to Hollingsworth, there appeared to be a shortage of professors in certain areas: “I know for Spanish there was only one professor who taught all the introductory and more advanced courses.” This stressful workload probably contributed to the way this professor treated his students because he “treated students horribly.”

In addition to the shortage of professors, Hollingsworth also mentions the lack of more advanced classes at community colleges. Community colleges typically consist of a two-year education. While students have increased accessibility to their professors, these colleges usually only offer two years’ worth of courses. Meaning that course offerings are very limited. Accordingly, classes specifically created to examine writers like Tennessee Williams’ or poetry classes, which are a mainstay of the liberal arts curriculum of Mary Washington, are not offered.

“They usually only offer introductory courses with few to no upper level courses. I was also disappointed that they didn’t offer any journalism classes,” said Hollingsworth, also adding that “the workload in some classes was easy, in some classes, however, the workload was just as intense as the four-year institution.” Despite the easy work load in some classes and the accommodations made to certain students, there are some who struggle to attend their classes throughout the semester.

“Lack of attendance can also be attributed to the busy schedules that these students have,” said Hollingsworth, also adding that the community colleges have created “hybrid classes where you can take part of the semester in class and part online” making it easier for students with those difficult to navigate schedules.

Hollingsworth also found the lack of clubs and activities to be disappointing. “Germana didn’t have extracurricular activities, activities that would have benn helpful on resumes in order to advance careers.” While two-year colleges do have clubs and organizations, they are usually small. Campus life is basically non-existent. This due to the fact that most students work for large portions of the day and only attend classes when they have time to spare, which is usually at night.

Hollingsworth also found that “students who go to community college typically stay in touch with pre-existing networks of friends in their home towns.” This means that networks of friends are not established at school in the way they are at four-year universities, where students are living with a multitude of people 24 hours a day.

“We kind of made our own little clubs. I know my friend, who still goes there, started a band. I also sat across from this group of boys, before class began, who would always be playing the game ‘Magic’,” said Hollingsworth.

In the end, as many transfer students will tell you, no matter where you start, if you work hard, you have an equal opportunity of succeeding and achieving your Bachelor’s degree as anyone else.

* * *

It’s certainly possible to go to a community college, obtain an associate degree, enter a four-year program and have a successful career at the end of this process. At the same time there are many negative factors working against you: You don’t live on a campus that provides extracurricular activities to put on your resume and it’s hard to make new friends.

Looking back on my decision to attend a four-year college I can say that I don’t regret the decision I made. Yes, it would have been nice to save money, but attending a four-year college was the best choice for me, because it allowed me to have a life separate from my family and provides me with a chance to make new close friends daily, since I live on campus.

While some citizens of the United States criticize President Obama’s proposed free public education plan, it provides a path to the financially challenged that was not an option before. With the establishment of free public college education many more Americans will have the increased ability to obtain their bachelor’s degree, only having to pay for two years of college after earning their associate degree.

But still when it comes to choosing between that new option and a four-year school, it still remains a highly personal choice.

NOT EVERYONE LOVES CARL'S, BELIEVE IT OR NOT

IT'S BLASPHEMOUS IN THIS TOWN TO CRITICIZE THE ICE CREAM SHOP. NeverthELESS, I ASK, "IS IT REALLY THAT GREAT?"

By Christopher Markham

When I started as a freshman at the University of Mary Washington in 2013, I was immediately bombarded with the questions: “Have you gone to Carl’s yet?” or “What do you think of Carl’s” or “Do you want to go to Carl’s later?” I’d never heard of Carl’s. I soon found out it was an ice cream stand. Because of all the hype, during my first week I joined a group of students from my dorm to line up outside the Princess Anne Street establishment. The line stretched to almost 50 people long, and it took about 10 minutes to get to the front.

There were just three options – vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. I chose a small vanilla cone, since it was my first time, and I wanted a fair, accurate representation of the ice cream. The service was so efficient, they were practically handing me my change while they handed me my cone. I watched all my new friends eating their ice cream joyfully. As I tried my first lick, I was surprised. I guess I shouldn’t have been; it tasted like, well, ice cream. It was pretty good ice cream, to be certain, but it definitely wasn’t the best I’d ever had. Still, I joined the line again with my friends in line for another cone. Secretly, I wondered what else I could have spent my $1.84 on.

Since then, my experiences with Carl’s have all been the same: high expectations with average results. So I started to wonder: How can an ice cream parlor from the 1940s that has garnered numerous prestigious accolades be so average? I’m not picky. I’m no professional food critic. I’m just saying that I have tasted many a culinary treat that did blow me away; the ice cream just wasn’t one of them. For example, there’s the chocolate milk from the Old Towne Butcher downtown. Perhaps Carl’s should take a page out of their book.

The small parlor with 1940s style machinery is a large draw to a lot of Fredericksburg natives. It is almost a right-of-passage to be considered a local to go to Carl’s and take in the experience. But the question here that a lot of people refuse to ask or acknowledge is this: does Carl’s deserve all of its glory? Sometimes, you have to ask the tough questions, and for Fredericksburg natives, the questions do not get much tougher or controversial than this one.

* * *

THE FABULOUS, WILD HISTORY OF CARL’S

Maybe it’s the tradition. The business started in 1947. Carl Sponseller had bounced around in a family ice cream truck in Pennsylvania to small stands in the D.C. area until the purchase of a piece of land that was formerly a gas station/restaurant. Everything about the place oozes retro. Its architecture has also played a role in its historic significance. The ice cream stand was constructed by Ashton Skinner in the Art Moderne style, diner-like with clean lines and a large pop-art inspired sign, in 1953. Sponseller designed the iconic neon sign on the roof that serves as a “north star” of Fredericksburg natives.

Located at 2200 Princess Anne Street, Carl’s claims its historic significance a locale built around the automobile, which became widely used in the first half of the century. That’s why it’s located on a major roadway.  Commuters traveling on U.S. Route 1 would routinely detour off of their route and take a pit stop at the ice cream shop. Princess Anne Street was, and continues to be, a major entranceway into downtown Fredericksburg.

Sponseller’s niece, Ramona Settle, is at the helm of the empire today, but runs the business much like her uncle did. From the 1940 Electro Freeze machines that produce their famous treat. The employees wear the same hats and aprons as they did in the 40s. Of course, the garments are not manufactured anymore so a local seamstress has to make them, according to a recent Washington Post article.

The ice cream stand was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, with a plaque on the side of the building designating the distinction. It has gained national recognition as one of the best frozen custard servers in America, despite only offering three different flavors of ice cream. On the parlor itself is even a plaque declaring Carl’s a historic landmark.

Carl's signature neon sign lights up, as does its "open" sign, despite the ominous storm clouds overtaking Fredericksburg. Photo by: Seventh flute/Wikipedia

* * *

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ICE CREAM

Since my first trip to Carl’s, I’ve wondered what’s made it the stand-out ice cream shop in Fredericksburg. Wally’s, for example, in the midst of the downtown Fredericksburg business district, has a menu nearly 30 times larger than Carl’s, with flavors like mint chocolate chip, cookie batter and salted caramel. Depending on what you get, their ice cream is on par with Carl’s.

So I started thinking about what makes an ice cream place legendary in a community. Perhaps it’s the seasonal anticipation. Since its opening, Carl’s has operated under the same seasonal calendar. The original owner would close shop on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and not reopen until the Friday of Presidents Day weekend in honor of hunting season. This seasonal close is still in effect today, and probably plays a part in the anticipation of the ice cream. Other ice cream places are open year round, leaving little to no anticipation when going. However, with Carl’s closed for a few months out of the year, their return draws excitement and enthusiasm from the community. People go in to get their fill before they close and are in line as soon as they reopen. I have seen dedicated fans eating their ice cream while wrapped up in a winter coat.

Maybe it’s because Fredericksburg, in comparison to the large cities such as Richmond and Washington, D.C. where many of its residents work, doesn’t have a major culinary landmark. Both of those cities of plenty of fine dining options and cult neighborhood food joints. Fredericksburg, on the other hand, has a bit less to offer. The answer to that is Carl’s. No other city in Virginia has a Carl’s. It’s become an issue of territorial pride, and we use Carl’s as our crown to show off. But I started to wonder whether we’ve embraced Carl’s so much that we have convinced ourselves we can say “Yeah, you may have a concert hall, but do you have Carl’s?”

Or maybe it’s the fast service. Despite consistently having lines that exceed 100 people, their efficiency makes the wait a measly 15 minutes.

* * *

AWARD-WINNING

Or maybe it’s the awards Carl’s has received. Recently, Carl’s was named as the best ice cream place in the state of Virginia by Business Insider. Additionally, it was on americasbestonline.net’s top 10 “Best Ice Cream” list, which included all of the U.S.A. PBS Food named Carl’s among its “Best Ice Cream Shops in America” in 2013. I tried to reach out the reviewers and was unsuccessful.

But real people also vote Carl’s the best. According to TripAdvisor, as voted by 334 normal, everyday people, Carl’s is ranked No. 2 out of 385 places to eat in Fredericksburg. 203 of those people listed the establishment as “excellent,” 70 as “very good,” 38 as “average,” 18 as “poor” and five as “terrible.” Maybe when we hear that it’s an award-winning establishment, we’re naturally more biased to thinking it’s better.

In the world of psychology, the idea of classical conditional fits into the Carl’s phenomena. According to UMW psychology professor Miriam Liss, people’s experience with Carl’s from their childhood factor into their experiences today. “People associate good taste and good memories with Carl’s. Maybe they went there in their childhood and it was a warm and bonding time with parents,” Liss said. “Now when they see the Carl’s sign they feel a warm feeling and they want to go back.”

Another theory that Liss provided me with was the idea of conformity, similar to my first experience with Carl’s. “People see long lines and that makes people see Carl’s as socially desirable,” Liss said. This idea plays directly into how I feel about Carl’s and how I view others’ experiences with the stand. College in general holds a great deal of conformity, beginning during freshman year. Carl’s is the prime example of college kids or Fredericksburg community members conforming to the majority, traditional opinion. Anybody with a different opinion is shunned or considered “crazy.”

* * *

A VISIT TO THE DARK UNDERBELLY OF CARL’S DETRACTORS

Still, many Carl’s visitors, like me, believe the hype is misplaced. Amongst the rankings on TripAdvisor are comments by people reassuring me that I wasn’t alone. One commenter listed the ice cream as “Just so-so” and complained about the lack of seating and tight parking, both points which are hard to argue. Others do much of the same, calling it “just ice cream” or “average” or “nothing special.”

When I talked to people in person, I got just as much of a mixed response, some in favor of Carl’s, others passionately against.=

“I genuinely find Carl’s ice cream to be the best I’ve ever had,” said UMW student Alex Stoneburner. “I don’t get people who don’t like it. I try not to associate myself with those people. Going to Carl’s is part of what living in Fredericksburg is all about. If you don’t like Carl’s, you aren’t a true Fredneck.”

Others are less supportive. “Wally’s is here *puts hand up high* and Carl’s is here *puts hand to floor,” indicated fellow UMW student Aimee Silverman. “Wally’s is in a better location, has a better menu, and just straight up tastes better. I don’t get what the big deal is about Carl’s.”

Perhaps this is why Carl’s has remained at the top for so long. People refuse to ask the question because they are afraid of the answer. When I asked people about their opinion of Carl’s, I either got the “are you crazy? Just move out of Fredericksburg if you don’t love Carl’s” answer,” which was the majority, or I got the occasional “I agree, it’s nothing special.” But this getting shot down at the point of questioning is what keep the “Carl’s haters” in the shadows, having their voices forced to be silenced.

* * *

ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS

As I stood around at Carl’s, I watched as people lined up on a sticky summer day or a brisk fall evening, I noticed how it helped Fredericksburg to have a central meeting place like Carl’s, a hub for hot days. Every town needs its crown to hoist on its head and show off to the public. Maybe it didn’t matter that Carl’s didn’t have the best ice cream. Maybe the legend was more important.

Back in my hometown of Fluvanna County, Virginia, a similar ice cream war is being waged. Papa Jim’s is an outdoor ice cream parlor with a relatively small menu which sits just off of a highway. In contrast, Frost Bites sits in the more developed part of town and offers a fancier, more diverse menu. The demographic within my small, rural county is obviously much different from that of Fredericksburg, but the sentiment remains. I have begun seeing people take allegiances to one parlor or the other. Papa Jim’s the older of the two, is the Carl’s equivalent, attracting the more “traditional” folk and Frost Bites serving as the Wally’s equivalent. As the years go on, it will be interesting to see how the rivalry plays out. 

WHY YOU SHOULD LIVE IN A COLLEGE TOWN EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT IN COLLEGE

ONE MARY WASHINGTON JUNIOR THINKS ABOUT LEAVING HIS BELOVED FREDERICKSBURG 

By Mikey Barnes

It was August 23, 2013 when I first stepped foot on the campus of the University of Mary Washington as a freshman. To be honest, I cried like a baby as I hugged my mom goodbye. It was hard to leave. No longer was a home cooked meal going to be waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I got home from baseball practice next to a note from my mom telling me how much she loves me. No longer would I be able to spend my down time chasing my dogs around the yard alongside my best friend, my brother. My brother was certainly the hardest person to leave behind, but I knew it had to be done. I did not cry because I was sad; I cried because there was a new chapter in my life and it all happened so fast. 

I soon discovered that Fredericksburg, the town my school was in, became like a family to me. I became infatuated with the school, the town, the townspeople and everything the community had to offer. I loved the look of the quaint downtown. I found my regular spots, like Capital Ale House and the banks of the river. When the weather’s nice, the pace of life picks up and there are more people walking about and visiting shops.

I grew up in what’s technically a college town – Fairfax, Va., the location of George Mason University. While it is indeed an excellent school, the town around it is nothing like Fredericksburg. In Fredericksburg, the true beauty of the town really resonates with you.

Now that I’m a junior in school, I’m starting to think about what it might be like to make another change, or maybe I don’t have to. I started to wonder what it might be like to live in Fredericksburg, not as a student, but as a young professional. What is it like to live in a college town without, well, being associated with the college?

* * *

In 1908, Fredericksburg welcomed a university to its small quaint town. Virginia Governor Claude Swanson signed legislation for the establishment of State Normal and Industrial School for Woman at Fredericksburg, an all girl’s institution.  Known for being a battleground during the Civil War, Fredericksburg reached its peak in significance when the university was brought to its town. Accompanied by the Mary Washington Hospital, which was built in the early twentieth century, the city was starting to develop.

* * *

The business owners in the area say that the students benefit the local economy. Matt Thomas, owner of an upscale restaurant downtown called Kybecca, said that college students were helpful to his business. “I believe a university that is decently run will almost always be a boon for a town and that's certainly true of Fredericksburg,” Thomas said, “A larger university would be a problem since they take up so much more space and town populations change dramatically when students are in town.” He said a school the size of Mary Washington benefitted the businesses but also prevented streets from being clogged up and parking to becoming scarce. Pat Preston, the owner at Cat’s Closet has been in business for 26 years now has seen the evolution of the relationship between downtown and the university. Preston said, “I think it is a positive experience for all parties involved.”

* * *

The University of Mary Washington has done a lot for the community. Often the university hosts events to help clean up the community, such as Good Neighbor Day, Into the Streets, and Pumpkin Palooza. I have participated in these events in the past, and they help bring a sense of community to the town

In 2007, the school bought Eagle Village from the JBG Rosenfeld Company. It was purchased by the University of Mary Washington Foundation for $115 million. On Feb. 20, 2009, the foundation hosted a ceremony for nearly 150 guests. The crane connecting the Eagle Village to campus was put in place in January of 2010. On July 26, 2010, the first phase of Eagle Village was completed. Virgil Nelson, the senior vice president of Eagle Village referred to the shopping center as, “a great economic generator for the City of Fredericksburg.”

As a student of the university and a resident of Eagle Landing, a hotel-style dorm at the other end of the bridge, I know first hand the benefits of having Eagle Village and in such a short proximity from the university. Having Central Park is great for the city, but Eagle Village is so close that it makes life so much easier for the faculty and student body.

University of Mary Washington junior and tour guide Maggie Tuite is a big fan of Eagle Village and feels as though it attracts potential students to the university, “Eagle Village is very beneficial to the university because it has a variety of restaurants and also a grocery store within walking distance of campus. This attracts prospective students here because it is way to eat off campus and get food since they can not have a car here their freshman year.”                       

Stephanie Brown, a resident of Fredericksburg and a commuter herself, had some positive things to say about Eagle Village. “It's more inviting with the new places to eat, and it's pleasing to the eye. Looks a lot better than it did when I first moved out here. It's a one stop shopping center. Plus it's convenient for students and offers employment opportunities for the community.”

* * *       

In deciding whether to consider living in Fredericksburg when I graduate, I spoke to Glenn Taylor, a junior who grew up in town. When I spoke with Taylor, he expressed the significance of how easy it is to become part of the fold in Fredericksburg. “Getting involved in the Fredericksburg community is easy and people don’t take advantage of it like they should. There is so many opportunities because of the people involved with the university.” As a college student now, Taylor has seen the opportunities grow immensely, “I have known people on campus before I even started, to be here alongside of them, I recommend the community get involved, there is so many opportunities, especially for the youth.”

When talking to Taylor about his plans after college, he plans to live elsewhere. Though he loves Fredericksburg, Taylor has had his time and knows they are greater opportunities elsewhere for him. He has not an idea where yet, but he knows he has had his time here. A computer science major, he sees himself working in our nation's capital, as he says, “that’s where the money is.”

Next, I spoke to Brooke Turner, a 2015 graduate who stayed. Turner studied psychology and was in the education program while at Mary Washington. Turner works at UMW as a paid tour guide and does substitute teaching in the area. While in Fredericksburg, Turner is an associate director of LINK after school program, which provides mentoring and resources to local homeless students which is an organization held at The Center For Faith and Leadership, which is right across the street from the UC. Turner described why she stayed here in Fredericksburg, “I stayed around UMW and this area because of the opportunities available for my interest. There are so many ways to grow in my field of study in Fredericksburg and I am taking advantage of every opportunity!”

Next, I spoke to Fredericksburg natives who commute to the Northern Virginia/D.C area for work and they expressed different opinions on it. Melanie Comstock, a faculty member at Belvedere Elementary school said, “the commute is really bad, it's tough, but it gets better if you have an EZPass.” Melanie lives here in Fredericksburg, just ten minutes from the campus of Mary Washington. She commutes Monday through Friday to her job as an elementary school teacher, where she works in the autism program. Fredericksburg to Northern Virginia might not have been her ideal commute at first, but it has proven to be beneficial, as she is in the profession she loves at a place she feels welcome.

 * * *

When I first arrived here at UMW and in Fredericksburg, I never expected to call this my place my home. The first few weeks were so rough for me, I had not a positive thought in the world concerning my future here. I never would have thought I would end up being voted Mr. UMW or chosen as a model for the school. I could not imagine seeing myself as someone not just in love with the school, but the city as well. When talking to all of these people, they gave me great insight on this city and what it has to offer. Taylor could not have put it better, when he was telling me how much this town has to offer and how little advantage is taken of it. I could not agree more with those words. That being said, I also sympathize with Comstock when she expressed the overpriced commute to the DC area for work.

As a communication major, with the intention of becoming a publicist of some sort, I feel as though my best option is a bigger market, outside of Fredericksburg. Though I have immense love for this city and the people, like Taylor, I feel as if I want to make it to bigger and better things, Fredericksburg is not the town for me to reside after graduation. I will always hold Fredericksburg near and dear to my heart and plan to make constant visits to the place I will call home for four years. 

THREE DAYS ON THE FRED BUS

YOUNGER PEOPLE ARE LIVING IN CITIES AND RELYING MORE ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. BUT COULD I?

By Emily Hollingsworth

I walked to the second row of the Fredericksburg Regional Transit bus on the S1 route. I just transferred from route F1 to get from the Spotsylvania Town Center to my home on Roosevelt Road, a strange area situated between Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County. I was new to this route and was trying it out because I was curious about what it might be like to get around town without a car. It was close to 5 p.m. on a cloudy, cold Monday at the approach of fall.

It was when I sat by the window seat and put down my bag that I realized my laptop, an HP Pavilion in a black case that is easily a good third of my height, was not propped against my backpack. When I’d transferred buses, I had left it behind. “I don’t have my laptop here,” I said out loud. I was so disoriented that I actually can’t remember many other details of the moment. Everyone’s worst fear was happening to me. Still disoriented, I told a friend I had met on the bus what happened, and she and I told the driver. The driver phoned the driver of my previous bus. The F1, which had before been parked in front of our bus, had already pulled out of the mall stopping area and was driving down the road. “They’ll turn it in to the station,” my new driver told me. As I cautiously sat back in my seat, I contemplated the fate of my English projects.

I grew up relying on cars. I was homeschooled, so I never experienced school buses. My parents enjoyed rural settings over big cities, so we never considered taking public transportation. We just relied on our family cars: a 1998 Mazda MPV, a 4-door 2005 Mazda B4000 and a 2005 Nissan Pathfinder. But I was curious about what it might be like to ditch the driver’s seat.

More young adults are congregating in cities, according to the 2010 Census Bureau. One of the main demographics of this shift are young adults postponing marriage, families and lacking the money and desire to buy a home in the suburbs. A consequence of city living is also less driving. According to a survey of about 618 adults ages 18-39 conducted by the University of Michigan in 2013, about 13 percent of responders between the ages of 20-29 said they prefer to use public transportation. Exchanging car keys for fare cards has only grown more popular over the past several years, and young adults my age were leading the trend.

Fredericksburg is a city of commuters, many of whom have jobs in big cities, such as Washington D.C. and Richmond. While Fredericksburg isn’t the kind of big city where people choose not to own cars, I wondered if it might be possible to at least supplement some of my driving with sitting in the back of a bus or train. I decided that, to start making public transportation a new habit, I’d have to do something drastic. I decided to rely solely on public transportation for three entire days. The laptop incident happened the very first day. When I drove to the station (in my car) to pick it up at the bus station, it had a piece of paper taped on the case with my name on it. I started to wonder whether I was really cut out for this urban living experiment.

* * * 

The trip from my house to the University of Mary Washington takes 15 to 20 minutes by car. With Fredericksburg Regional Transit bus, affectionately called the FRED bus, even with the three or four stops the bus makes in between, it takes roughly 30 minutes. That’s 30 minutes I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about stopping at yellow lights, where I can send a text or review class notes.

Following that first disastrous day with the laptop, I took the bus again several days later. The morning commute went without a hitch. My laptop was secure beside me, and I was much more aware of my surroundings, much less disoriented by the frequent stops and higher view from the ground. Aside from the bus arriving a few minutes late from my house, everything went smoothly. That is, until 2 p.m.

At the end of my school day, I waited at the bus stop in front of the university, with a group of nine other students. The bus, scheduled for 2 p.m., finally pulled in around 2:21, nearly a half an hour late. A few of the students, who were switching from the bus to the Fredericksburg Amtrak to come home to their families for the weekend, were worried they would miss the trains. It might have been the weather, another gray, cloudy day with some rain, but I felt sluggish and had a headache, ready to go home. When I switched from the F1 route to S1, I found out the bus approaching UMW was not the only one behind schedule.

A man sitting a few rows in front of me complained to the driver about the delays in the buses he had to take. “They should tear this whole thing down and build a monorail or something,” the man told the driver.

“That would be nice,” the driver responded.

Considering I was going to arrive home 40 minutes later than I thought, I had to agree with them.

* * *

Taking the bus taught me a set of new skills I had not had to learn from the comfort of my car. It was tough at first, admittedly. I had to memorize bus schedules. I confused S1 with F1, frequently. I called FRED Transit, usually having to ask, after four questions, if I could ask one more. “Sorry, you filled your quota for questions,” an older gentleman on the other line joked once. Eventually, I figured it out.

I liked the sense of community on the bus. The cloudy days made the bus feel that much more secure as people started conversations with the driver, exchanged small talk or smiled briefly. There was another benefit to public transportation that I had not seen before; it was more environmentally friendly. It carried the amount of people that two or three vans could. And while these benefits were just becoming clear to me now, they had been apparent for some time now for a central demographic: the twenty-somethings.

When it comes to getting to an area in a hurry, I think I will stick with my car. The unpredictable arrival times from the buses and possible delays made using the bus too precarious. Though, if I ever need a taste of the Fredericksburg community, or need an additional half-hour to do my homework, I may consider waiting at the bus stop near my house. 

My third and final day in the experiment took place one week after day two, as Hurricane Joaquin sent rain (and more gray skies) over Fredericksburg. The weather made everyone subdued. There was not too much conversation, save for one of the passengers and the driver, who talked about crackers and hummus. Despite the rain, the bus moved carefully through the route with few delays. Either because of the rain, or because I refused to learn from day 1, I walked out of the bus for the last time, came home, and realized I had left my cell phone behind on the bus.

My painfully naïve entry into public transportation for this experiment was made even more painful by its conclusion: my dad drove me to the station at 8 p.m. and the driver handed me the phone as he stopped in the station for the last time that evening. I realized, as a young adult, I could learn a thing or two by getting acclimated to public transportation, particularly as others my own age are separating from relying only on cars, even some young adults here in Fredericksburg.