LINDEMAN: When Goodness Happens
New Roots Youth Garden pecan pie with Brown Dog coffee ice cream is just the beginning of goodness. Read on!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Last week was hard on Cape Charles, and hard on the WAVE. So thank goodness for more goodness from Lindeman!
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
Cape Charles Wave
December 11, 2012
I had arranged with Tammy Holloway earlier in the week to pick up my pie from her side porch, attached to the magnificently revived Bay Haven Inn on Tazewell. My wife and I had been watching the renovation of Leon’s old house for months. Just the simple act of removing most of the overgrown plantings around the place opened it up and provided a sight not seen in years. To me, one of the prettiest homes in the historic district and well deserving of the love that the Holloways have showered on that place.
When I opened the screen door to their porch, where the pies were awaiting, I could sense even more so the level of detail they had put into this renovation. Everything looked so bright and shiny I just wanted to stay awhile and take it all in. But I had my dad in the car and, well, some visiting to get to as he and my mom had just driven into town for the holiday.
The back story of how I had come to even hold that lovely mocha pecan pie in my hands is a story that “only happens in Cape Charles” as we so often say. I had written about my wife’s and my gathering of pecans a week or so prior in the Wave. Tammy emailed me later that week and politely asked if I could tell her where said pecans could be found. As there are numerous and very giving pecan trees in town, I told her where she could find one of the most giving — Big Mamma. Now, please don’t email me asking where Big Mamma can be found. That’s between me, my wife, Tammy, and a group of enterprising young kids who assisted her in the gathering. [Read more…]
LINDEMAN: What I Learn from My Kids
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
Cape Charles Wave
Thanksgiving Day, 2012
As parents, we typically focus on what we can teach our kids. We only have them for a few, brief years before, poof! They’re gone.
But one thing has pleasantly surprised me during our twins’ nine years on this planet: they teach me things every day.
It may not be something new, but something I somehow forgot or misplaced.
I believe you don’t actually forget most things altogether. You subconsciously place them in memory somewhere back where you keep things like memories of your wedding from 20-plus years ago. It’s there.
You just have to rummage through a bunch of other stuff before you find it. “Ah! There you are forgotten memory! So glad to think of you again. How’ve you been?!”
You psychologists out there please don’t take me to task on the above. This is my take on how it happens. As they say, it’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
My kids teach me new songs that they’ve learned in school — new takes on the smart-aleck ditties of my youth and some completely new. I learn new pop songs from them –- music I would never even think of to listen to.
“What is that? You call that music?! Back in my day . . . .” [Read more…]
LINDEMAN:
Picking up Pecans, Selling Them to Watson’s
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
Cape Charles Wave
November 8, 2012
It was brisk Sunday morning as we walked over to the next block to pick some of the giant pine cones from the ground that fall this time of year. They will be useful for dressing the Christmas table with fresh greens such as magnolia, holly, and such and to give away for others’ holiday decorating.
The bag, now full, was big and clumsy so we left it on the front porch before heading out in search of our prime mission: picking pecans.
If you’re a Cape Charles resident, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. However, what’s intriguing is that so many residents don’t seem to care about the pecans — or so it seems from the sheer amount of them we found still on the ground this year.
Cape Charles is known for its beautiful crepe myrtles and, more recently, its abundance of rosemary which seems to grow so well in our rich Eastern Shore soil. I could go on about rosemary, but we’re talking pecans here.
Our first visit to town was at the end of winter, oddly. While most people’s first visit is during summer — a time of blooming perennials, parades, harbor parties, and the like — we came when there were no leaves on the trees, under overcast skies. Yet we still fell in love with the place. And we hadn’t even seen the crepe myrtles in bloom yet!
Like most visitors, one of the places I had to go first was Watson’s Hardware. Ever since we were kids helping my dad restore a 1920s bungalow on the south shore of Long Island, I’ve had this thing for old hardware stores. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Expert Warns Eastern Shore –
Special Trade Status Slipping Away
Foreign Trade Zone status is crucial to attracting wind energy development. Cape Charles — and the entire Eastern Shore — is in danger of losing FTZ status.
By MICHAEL W. O’BEIRNE
October 23, 2012
Earlier this month I attended the American Wind Energy Association Offshore Windpower conference in Virginia Beach. Coastal Virginia wind-related project sites are in various stages of development. Investors have amassed, and logistics are being refined in hopes that offshore leases will head towards steel in the water.
Yet, as corporate forces are gearing up, the Virginia Port Authority is changing the Eastern Shore’s most vital investment and trade incentive — how they allocate Foreign Trade Zone designations and to whom.
Politics and competing economic interests from Hampton Roads may leave the Eastern Shore high, dry, and out of the game.
A little background: In July 2009 I toured sites along the Delmarva coast in a project development visit for wind energy companies and manufacturers.
Since then, several domestic and foreign interests have proposed, built, and still have site agreements for future wind developments — both onshore and offshore on the Eastern Shore and in the Atlantic Ocean.
But much more work needs to be done.
My business centers on U.S. incentives to attract foreign investment. That’s why I came to Northampton and Accomack counties — to see U.S. Foreign Trade Zone sites firsthand at Wallops Island, Accomack Airport Industrial Park, and the Cape Charles Sustainable Technologies Industrial Park (part of the Southport development).
There is also a tiny sliver of land in Cape Charles used to dump dredged materials designated as a Foreign Trade Zone.
Cape Charles Mayor Dora Sullivan raised FTZs in a 2011 letter to Governor McDonnell urging focus upon her town in the offshore wind energy game. [Read more…]
LINDEMAN
Building Community One Conversation at a Time
“We’ve got to get back to the garden.”
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
October 5, 2012
I often wonder why I like to dig in the dirt. Most of my friends my age don’t enjoy gardening, or at least don’t want to admit it.
It’s not like I even consider myself a “gardener.” I couldn’t tell you the names of many of the plants in our garden, which my wife and I recently inherited with the purchase of our Tazewell Avenue home.
What I do know is that I enjoy it.
For some, however, gardening is a solitary affair: a chance to be alone with one’s thoughts. To escape the other, more mundane chores that await them back inside, to even get a little bit of exercise or to feel the warmth of the sun against their face. The reasons why people garden are about as varied as the shells you might find walking the shoreline of Smith Island.
For me, working in the yard has always been a chance to do all of the above – and to be social. Gardening is not usually a social activity, such as playing golf, or attending a dinner party. It’s usually different with me.
At some point during my yard work, a conversation with someone typically ensues. Oftentimes, a neighbor strolling down the street might toss out a “lookin’ good!” or even a “love what you’ve done with the place” and keep walking. Sometimes, such comments lead to a return of “thanks” and other times, it begins a 20-minute conversation about any variety of topics.
Often, I simply need a break from the work and find an unsuspecting neighbor to walk over to and chat. Such was the case last weekend.
My wife and I live in a wonderfully friendly block of Tazewell and striking up a conversation is never a challenge. But I realized this weekend when our conversation with our neighbors had ended and we went back to working in our respective yards, that there is such a more visceral need for such conversations than we might realize. As much as we may like gardening and the results it yields, we also like to commune. Commune, of course, is the root of the word, community. [Read more…]
LINDEMAN: The Summer of Our Discontent
Day lilies in the Lindemans’ newly weeded garden on Tazewell Avenue.
By BRUCE LINDEMAN
September 26, 2012
“I wonder what this is — hope it’s not something that belongs here,” my neighbor Dave observed. I looked at the plant he had just pulled out of my yard.
“No, it’s definitely a weed.”
I had just arrived back in town to attend to the chores of moving to a new vacation home. Although we were only moving from Monroe to Tazewell, there was still plenty to do.
We’re not full-timers in Cape Charles yet, but we’ll get there eventually. We had kids a little later in life and they’re entrenched in their Richmond school and friends.
So, we come and go, but we come and go often. We relish the moment we reach the bridge-tunnel, as the temperature drops and the briny scent tells us we’ve left the hustle and bustle of city life — if just for a while.
I had been weed-whacking our flowerbeds left unattended by the previous owners, who were residents for some 20 years. Along the way they lovingly restored their home – our new home – to its 1890s glory. But after time the flower beds had languished.
Dave had ridden his bicycle into our yard, beer in hand, and begun pulling weeds. Almost an hour later, he was still weeding.
What Dave was doing would never play out back home in Richmond — at least not where we live.
Don’t get me wrong. Richmonders are a friendly lot. My wife and I love our neighborhood for its handsome architecture and abundance of neighbors out and about, quick to stop and chat. We have great neighbors. But I can’t recall anyone pulling up in my yard and weeding our flowerbeds. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY
Buying Bank Building Out of Sync with Comprehensive Plan
By TIMOTHY J. KRAWCZEL
August 3, 2012
Local governments in Virginia can do only those things that the state code specifically enables them to do, and must do them according to the procedures outlined in the Code.
Virginia envisions that local governments will have robust land use planning programs as a linchpin, engaged citizens, and active civic discourse.
One way the law of Virginia prescribes to fulfill this purpose is to require each municipality to have a Comprehensive Plan for the future physical development of the jurisdiction, founded on careful study and public input.
“Good public policy is made after a careful review of facts and consideration of public opinion.”
The Code of Virginia also obligates public officials, such as Town Councils, to carefully consider the adopted Comprehensive Plan before making a land use decision.
The Code is specific: Section 15.2-2232, Legal status of plan, stipulates that once a Town’s comprehensive plan has been approved and adopted, it shall control the general or approximate location, character and extent of each public facility . . . . Thereafter, unless a feature is already shown on the adopted master plan or part thereof , no park . . . or other public area, public building or public structure . . . whether publicly or privately owned, shall be constructed, established or authorized, unless and until the general location or approximate location, character, and extent thereof has been submitted to and approved by the commission as being substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan or part thereof. . . . [Read more…]
