SHER: This Place Gets in Your Blood
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
July 17, 2013
There are places that get in your blood. This is surely one of them.
Just last week I met the man who farms the field outside my window. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Bud” he says — “You know like Bud Light. Lived here all my life. Never gonna leave.”
I could ask him what it is about the place, but I don’t. I track the gleam in his eye instead. His love spills into the sandy soil, sails the windswept fields and dips into the sea close by.
The land-and-blood-thing is strong in him.
Along the back roads toward Kiptopeke, the fields of corn stretch into the arms of Virginia pines. In Cape Charles Harbor, small orange claws and tiny fins poke through the slats of wooden baskets.
“Will I ever get used to this?” I ask myself while topping my oatmeal with handfuls of blackberries picked from a neighbor’s yard.
This is a land of abundance. The horn of plenty is all filled up.
But not for all.
It is the riddle of Abundance living next door to Hunger that brings me to a hot and dusty field after a midnight run to the ER. Tired, disheveled, and barely thrown together, I pull up to a land lit with color.
The gleaners are here, 46 of them from three Virginia churches. White-laced bags of potatoes, about 8,000 pounds’ worth, are stacked and nestled in the powdery earth and spent green vines.
Gleaning means to “gather what is left.”
Local farmer David Long invites the Society of St. Andrew to come to his field each year to share in the abundance he co-creates on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Every bit of what’s gathered goes to the hungry people who live here.
Looking over the gleaners, it is clear to me that rescuing potatoes requires strong calves or dirt-coated knees. Surrendering to T-shirts wrung with sweat is part of the whole thing, too, and so is a pretty sore back at day’s end.
Volunteer gleaners: Like the hands in the background, hearts are at work. (Photos by Sher Horosko)
COMMENTARY: Eastern Shore’s Cool/Fiery Pulse of Life
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
June 26, 2013
I have learned in my life that we will protect fiercely whatever it is we love.
And love takes time. It requires an intimacy that is woven between people and life of all sorts, whether fish or flowers, elusive doodlebugs or old forest trees. What is necessary is this: that we take time to stand still and pay attention to the life around us as if it truly matters.
Because it does.
Here, on Virginia’s Eastern shore, life is teeming. Wild turkeys thunder out of the dry thickets of wheat when I walk down the sandy road in the early morning light. A young eagle sits high on the top of a loblolly pine whose center trunk was snapped by a runaway wind. Fastening my gaze on his mustard-colored feet with the curled javelin tips, I think: it may take time for his head to go white but his feet are ready and set.
All day and every day, something big is happening on the Shore. In Red Bank, a frantic mockingbird jumps up and down on the back of a black snake arching and swerving across the road. I reach for my camera but am so mesmerized by the utter bravery of the bird, I miss the shot.
Days later, while wading through the grass at Savage Neck, I spot a blue-colored hornet diving into one of his own kind on a swaying Queen Anne’s lace. Is this a petaled battlefield between the boys or a drunken dive into the sweet elixir of spring passion?
Waiting and watching, I’m certain. Hornet perfume must be very strong.
There are people for whom the land and sea are alive. I am one. And though I have been on your Shore for just a month, it is evident to me there are many others who feel the alternatively cool and fiery pulse of life in this place. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Field of Dreams, Hoops, and Hopes
By WAYNE CREED
June 21, 2013
I spend most of my days driving across the Bay, going to work in Norfolk. Once back on the Shore, in Cape Charles, I tend to do what I really do best: nothing. Sometimes, once I park the car on Friday evening, I don’t get back into it until the next Monday morning.
It sounds boring, but there are many things that fill those empty moments. One of them is taking my beloved Labrador Retriever, Chloe, on walks through the old baseball field, to the fire road that winds through the woods back there. Full of scents and action, on a good day she might even jump a rabbit or a deer.
One Saturday in May I took her back to her haunt, and was surprised to find that the old ball field had been tilled, in preparation for planting summer cotton.
Chloe was unperturbed, nose to the ground like a good gun dog. I, on the other hand, was affected by the turned-up field. Looking past the tilled ground, to the old dugouts, a feeling of emptiness and loss began to spread over me.
Back from the walk, I sat on my porch, watching my son Joey and his friends, Max and Finn, playing baseball in the grassy knoll in front of my house on Monroe Street.
It was becoming overcast, and the slow feeling of dread began to mount. I remembered how, before the high cotton was planted, we used to have the Cape Charles Little League and a ball field, but the Town got rid of it.
We had soccer goals: now gone.
Then the basketball court, part of the old Cape Charles High School: gone.
When I heard the pop of the strike as it hit Max’s catcher mitt, I was jarred again. Why had the majority of people in this town been deaf to the plight of the kids of Cape Charles, and taken sides against them in favor of out-of-town developers? [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Secrets from Seaside
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
June 19, 2013
After days of rain, the sun is bright and sure in a baby blue sky dotted with white sheep. I am itchy to jump in the car and explore.
My map is a scant line-drawing. I aim to travel up the thin gray line that runs parallel to the thick red one. That’s the extent of the plan. I head out, down the long dirt road, through the khaki-colored sea of wheat, turn into Cheriton and end back on the red line. This is the second time I’ve done this: it’s a bit like driving in a corn maze.
I try again, taking a random right off of Route 13. “This is it” I say out loud as I spot a road sign reading “Seaside.” The names we give to things usually make sense. Blackbirds are black. Bluebirds are blue. Pine Street has a row of pines (or at least it did once). Seaside is on the side of the sea.
I drive north with just the right amount of confidence.
It’s a different world back here. Navigating the twists in the road, I drive slowly, spotting boats at-the-ready on pull behinds and stacks of wire boxes six feet high. Even if I’d been taken here blindfolded and set free, I would know the sea was near. The evidence of love for the watery world is all around.
The road curves and opens up to a field of tomatoes, staked-up straight as soldiers, and teeming with green balls. Soon, the fruit will flash like cardinals and the land will be filled with the melodic sounds of Spanish. This language is music to me and it’s sung by a people who have always treated me kindly. Always.
On one side of the road, the draping fronds of corn are knee high. On another, the land is waiting for the farmer-man’s intent. Meanwhile, the copper-colored ibis plunge their beaks into the furrows of dark earth. I stop to watch. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: On a Come-Here Meeting Born-Heres
Just outside Cape Charles, the wheat field has gone golden. (Photo by Sher Horosko)
By SHER HOROSKO
June 12, 2013
Outside my window, a fleece of gray wool covers the sky. A white ibis with her pinky-orange beak prowls the ground while a blue bird stands atop his new cedar house. The wheat field has gone golden. I came here a couple of weeks ago to fall into the arms of wonder. I haven’t been disappointed.
The stories of the “born-here’s” captivate me. Your language is filled with color and sound. You may not even know this is so, because you’re steeped in a lifetime of conversation that draws from the storm and bounty of the land and water, that is tuned to the rhythms of harvest and migration.
But I know a living language when I hear it. I came to Cape Charles with ears used to listening to the thin, plain, read “dull” language of people who live as far away from the natural world as they can be. They don’t know when the flounder is running or the sweet corn will be picked. They buy food from six grocery stores, not one. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Wake Up and Trim the Fat, Cape Charles!
By DEBORAH BENDER
May 18, 2013
It has come to my attention that the Town of Cape Charles is having budget problems. There is not enough money and too many expenses.
In order to help, I did a little homework. And after speaking with the Town of Onancock’s administrative assistant, I have some advice: Trim the fat, Cape Charles.
According to the 2010 census, Cape Charles has 1,009 full-time residents. The town of Onancock has 1,263 full-time residents.
The Town of Cape Charles has 10 employees in the administrative offices at a salary cost of $509,875.
The town of Onancock has 3 employees in the town office for a total of $195,000 in salaries. That is $314,875 less spent on employees in Onancock than in Cape Charles.
How does Onancock manage with such a small staff? For starters, their town manager is also their town attorney, thus avoiding the price tag for a town lawyer.
The two people who work in the office do all the billing, accounting, customer service, and take turns taking minutes at the town meetings.
They run the entire town office with just three employees! Onancock does not have a town planner, a treasurer, an accountant, a building code enforcer, a community recreation activities director, or an assistant clerk. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Cut Taxes to Reflect Lower Property Values
By TIMOTHY J. KRAWCZEL
April 29, 2013
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.”
A Cape Charles town employee told me last summer, “We don’t need anything except money.”
The thinking seemed to be: Money is supreme, run government like a business, we know more about it than you, don’t argue with us, we’re technocrats.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I bought a new fax/printer. It cost $125 and is better than the one we paid $400 for four years ago. Why? Because when there is competition, prices go down and quality goes up. That is the free market.
If the cost of a product is too high or the quality is too low, a consumer is free to buy somewhere else. Business responds by cutting costs and improving quality.
Not so with our Town government. It has a monopoly on service, and the Town Council year after year has allowed monopoly power on setting prices, i.e. tax revenues.
The taxpayer has no choice — pay the tax or face a penalty and a property lien.
This year the money numbers are indisputable. Real estate assessed values are down 20-38 percent, depending on the source of the estimate. Undeniably, the sale value of real estate in Cape Charles has declined from the last assessment five years earlier.
In real terms, many taxpayers have seen the market value of their investments evaporate, and some have lost their life savings.
But what is happening with the cost of local government? Has the Town reduced the burden of taxes in response to lower property values? No. All the Town taxpayers have gotten is a flaccid discussion of whether taxes will go up or stay the same. There has been no discussion of actually cutting tax rates, — of making choices that every homeowner and investor has to make, namely, how to do more with less. [Read more…]
LINDEMAN: Bless Those Worms!
Where would the New Roots Youth Garden be without blessed worms? Kaylen Fitchett picks tomatoes during last year’s harvest on Randolph Avenue and Fig Street. (Wave photo)
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
Cape Charles Wave
April 22, 2013
Last year, I got to meet one of the volunteers of the New Roots Youth Garden (NRYG), Tammy Holloway. Through my story about picking pecans one Sunday morning, Tammy inquired about the location of these trees that were so giving this past year so that the NRYG kids could pick some for the holiday pecan pie sale.
Having watched the NRYG take shape with interest since its inception, I thought that helping those kids any way I could would be fun. Gardening. Kids. Education. All good stuff.
Then I met Tammy and her husband, Jim, and realized: I really need to help these people!
If you’ve met Tammy, you’ll understand. She and Jim have quickly become stewards of one of the most amazingly beautiful homes in Cape Charles, now Bay Haven Inn, but also active supporters of all things Cape Charles. They truly get what this place is all about and have poured their hearts and souls in to making our little town a better place for us all. [Read more…]
