Archives for October 2017

Computer CORE with Lynn O’Connell – Your Need to Know

(Oct 25, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Lynn O’Connell, Executive Director of Computer CORE, a non-profit providing work force development through computer training, and Evelyn Woodard, a Computer CORE graduate who is now an instructor. This volunteer driven organization was founded in 1999 to provide computer literacy training to low income individuals and they served about 48 students per class. In 2007, the Board of Directors of Computer CORE made the decision to focus on a broader workforce development curriculum and expanded their resources to serve more students.

Currently, Computer CORE has seven training sites as well as the ability to provide on-site training for other organizations. They serve about 260 students annually, and part of this program is providing these students with refurbished laptops. They are a Microsoft Certified Refurbisher and they welcome donations of computer equipment, laptops, flash drives and binders. Providing students with a computer to use at home that is loaded with the software they are learning in class, is critical to their long term success. It is also a necessity for job today’s job search.

Lynn O’Connell explains that this is a volunteer driven organization with volunteer instructors who bring with them a skills based expertise. While most instructors say on for an average of 3 years, Lynn says there are instructors who have been with the program longer than the 10 years she has been Executive Director. She also explains that there is a great diversity in the educational levels of these adult students as well as a diversity in the languages spoken. Many students come in with an advanced degree but lack computer skills and a familiarity with the job search process in this country. Computer CORE classes offer a variety of skills based training including assistance in developing a good resume and practice in role playing job interviews.

Evelyn Woodard was referred to Computer CORE by her brother who was a volunteer instructor. The majority of students find their way to this program largely through word-of-mouth referrals like this one. While she was initially intimidated in the early days of learning the new computer technology, she stayed with it and completed the course. She actually changed jobs during her initial course and explained to her new boss she had a commitment to be on time to the class two nights a week. Her boss not only encouraged her in completing the course, but when she did, she was given a raise. Evelyn has now returned to Computer CORE as a volunteer instructor and she believes in the value of what this program has to offer.

Computer CORE collaborates with other non-profits in the Northern Virginia area to provide on-site instruction to the people they are serving. One of the organizations they work with is Friends of Guest House, which helps formerly incarcerated women return to their communities. Computer skills are an important part of workforce development and training.

For more information about Computer CORE, visit them at http://ComputerCORE.org

by Catherine Read

The Comfort Food Diaries – Emily Nunn

(Oct 2017) I listened to The Comfort Food Diaries as an audiobook on a long drive from Northern Virginia to Dalton, GA, and back home again. I wanted my husband Tom to listen to this book with me because I didn’t think it was a book he would read otherwise. We both loved it.

Tom was drawn into Emily Nunn’s story without knowing any of the people in the book. I was drawn into the story because I knew many of the people in this book and I wanted Tom to know them too. I became aware of Emily’s journey on her Comfort Food tour because of Facebook. After connecting with her Aunt Mariah on Facebook, I ended up connecting with her cousins Toni and Susan, and then with Emily. There’s a point in the book when she talks about posting a question on Facebook asking people what they think of as their comfort food. I remember answering that question.

Galax is a small city in southwestern Virginia near the North Carolina border. The five Nunn siblings and the five Sublett siblings attended the same Methodist Kindergarten. My family lived next door to her Uncle John and Aunt Mariah Nunn (to whom she has dedicated this book) and their three daughters until we moved in 1968. The parts of her memoir that talk about her childhood in Galax have a familiarity to me that is uniquely personal, and yet it could be the story of many small rural towns in the 1960s and 70s.

As I listened her memoir unfold, it also brought to mind a famous quote from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I can’t speak for other people’s relationship to food, but in my family, when we think of our best childhood memories, food always has a central role. Is that just a Southern thing? I’m not sure. But the recipes in this book speak to both the dishes of my childhood and the life I live now married to a “foodie.”

She talks about making Morning Custard at the Bluebird Café in Athens, GA, when she was a student at the University of Georgia, and that reminded me I had made a video several years ago of my 90 year old Tia Sylvia showing my sister and I how to make our Granny’s baked custard. Does this happen in all families? I have no way of knowing. Emily’s memoir, centered around food, family dysfunction and failed relationships resonated with me.

My daughter Emily called me tonight to ask me recipe questions – she can’t make out her Grandma Sublett’s handwriting on her signature meatloaf recipe. In a meandering conversation about her childhood, she observed that sometimes she wonders if she and her sister Allison actually lived in the same house because they remember things so differently. That was a real “aha” moment for me. As one of five children myself, I’m sure we each experienced our lives in the same family and household quite differently.

That is a significant point that I don’t want to overlook. This is Emily Nunn’s story of her life the way she experienced it. It’s not up for a vote on “right or wrong” or “good or bad” nor is it anyone else’s story but her own. Her relationships with her family, fiancee and friends are relayed to the reader as she lived them. It’s not about them . . . it’s about her relationship with them. This is her journey. She owns it and she’s sharing it through this memoir. Writing a book about the most personal aspects of your life is likely quite cathartic and satisfying on a number of levels. The vulnerability required to then look at reviews written by friends, colleagues and total strangers about that book, is beyond anything I can imagine. That takes strength and fortitude I’m not sure I have.

After hearing the wonderful audiobook version of The Comfort Food Diaries, my husband Tom ordered the hardcopy book so we would have the recipes. It was a glorious experience to hear Emily’s descriptions of dishes, meals and so many aspects of food preparation while sitting in a traffic backup on I-81 in Virginia. We’ll always remember where we were when we heard her talk about Cathy’s mother’s Sour Cherry Pie, which I knew immediately was the book’s cover photo.

Spending time with this book, experiencing it with someone I wanted to understand the people and places contained in its pages, was a beautiful thing. Life is about the journey. We need to embrace it all – it’s what we have. My heart aches for the loss of Emily’s brother, as my heart aches for the loss of my own brother – who, quite ironically, was born the same day in the same hospital as her cousin Toni Nunn. My dad was the hospital administrator. Because that’s how life was in Galax in the 1960s.

I highly recommend this book. It’s unique. It’s thoughtful and hopeful and real. And the recipes are out of this world wonderful!

by Catherine Read

The Women of Network NoVA – Inside Scoop

(Oct 23, 2017) Catherine Read talks with several women in the Network NoVA organization about how they found each other, how they came together around shared goals, the momentum behind the June 2017 Women’s Summit, and what they are doing in the final days of Virginia’s 2017 election cycle to get more progressive minded candidates elected to office.

In the first segment, Stair Calhoun and Katherine White discuss how they began to organize for the Women’s March shortly after the presidential election of 2016. They knew each other previously and worked together to organize transportation (including water taxis) for women in Northern Virginia who wanted to attend the march. They organized volunteers into teams and created opportunities for women to make pins and buttons for the march as well as selling 1,500 beanies and march t-shirts. It was a collaborative effort from the beginning. Meetings in basements and restaurants, attending Huddle meetings, hosting their own meet-ups and building a network of other women willing to do the same. It has been a learning process for many women who have never engaged in political activism and are focused for the first time on the importance of statewide elections. It was also about shared trust and risk-taking to make things happen.

Barbara Jones and Holly Hazard joined the effort to move the momentum of the Women’s March forward into a grassroots effort around Virginia’s 2017 elections. Virginia is one of only two states with an off-year Governor’s race, and we are also electing a Lt. Governor, Attorney General and 100 members of the House of Delegates. Once the idea of hosting the Women’s Summit, Flip Virginia Blue conference was born, eight women put together the event in just 70 days. Held at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, it attracted numerous supporting organizations as sponsors, brought in 344 attendees and 30 candidates running for the House of Delegates from all over the Commonwealth of Virginia. Each candidate got to speak for a few minutes and each one was impressive in the stories they had to tell about why they were running for office. The idea of the initiative for The Blue Migration came out of that event as Network NoVA turned their attention to how to support candidates in rural areas with the manpower and resources available in Northern Virginia.

Robbin Warner talks about the concept of Postcards4VA that took off and spawned dozens of postcard parties at kitchen tables throughout the area. People hosted their own postcard parties which involved printing out the cards for specific candidates and then hand addressing them and writing personal messages on them. It was a massive effort resulting in over 136,000 postcards being printed, hand addressed and mailed with a stamp – all provided by individual volunteers. Efforts like this involved even the youngest of family members and resulted in a statewide civics lesson to many people who have not gotten involved in statewide elections before this year.

From the beginning, Network NoVA was about collaboration with existing organizations, using social media to meet people where they were already congregating and showing up to events with buttons and flyers to promote the Network NoVA events. Some events were fundraisers, many others were canvassing initiatives to door knock and phone bank for individual candidates and for the Democratic ticket. Ideas were welcomed from every source and resource and many were a triumph of will and ingenuity over any previous experience or know how. The white board video Why Virginia Matters 2017 is an effort to explain in the simplest terms possible why voters need to care about the elections taking place on Nov. 7, 2017.

The branding of “When We Vote We Win 2017” on buttons and t-shirts has become ubiquitous in the year’s campaign cycle – in Northern Virginia and across the Commonwealth. In the final days leading up to election day, Network NoVa is focused on activities to Get Out the Vote (GOTV) and all are welcome to join the effort. You can follow them on Twitter @NetworkVirginia, find them on Meetup, join their Facebook group, or check the website for updates including the planning for The Women’s Summit on June 23, 2018. Email them at [email protected]

by Catherine Read

Mid-Atlantic Wine Tourism – A Discussion with Blogger Brian Yost

(Oct 18, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Brian Yost, most widely known for his wine blog The Virginia Grape. Long considered a reliable source of information on Virginia wineries across the Commonwealth, he has recently started to write about wineries in other states that compromise the region we call the Mid-Atlantic.

Wine tourism is something that conjures up images of Napa Valley in California, the Tuscany region of Italy or perhaps the Loire Valley in France. Brian has discovered that outside the borders of Virginia, there are wineries that are producing great wines along the East Coast. The Mid-Atlantic region is known for many things from historical battlefields and museums to outdoor hiking and kayaking to cultural events and attractions along our shores. At this juncture it does not have a reputation for wine tourism. Most visitors to Virginia wineries are people who live here, usually within close proximity of the wineries they are visiting.

There are wineries in the region that have been here for decades. However the recent explosion in the number of wineries, as well as the increasingly good quality of the wines produced, has given this industry some sturdy legs to stand on. Brian explores the hurdles to creating a more robust wine tourism among the Mid-Atlantic states and makes some suggestions for how to focus and elevate the region’s assets as part of better wine tourism experience. Creating an itinerary driven tour package where winery visits are part of a more complete exploration of a particular area has some merit. He references Bindu Trips as one of a handful of companies providing this service. Efforts like this would require some collaboration among tourism organizations that promote attractions in a particular county or state to map out wineries in relation to other major features.

The top producing wine states on the West Coast are California, Washington and Oregon. On the East Coast, New York has 385 wineries producing 28,000,000 gallons of wine annually, with Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey continuing to grow both production and number of wineries. To gain traction in making wine tourism a pillar in the overall tourism promotion in the Mid-Atlantic will require greater collaboration. Hospitality, transportation, food and wine establishments, museums, parks and outdoor attractions need to find a way to include the region’s wineries in their promotions and packages. It’s an idea whose time is now and Brian Yost is giving considerable thought in how to move it forward.

To keep up with Brian Yost, subscribe to his blog The Virginia Grape and find out more about which wineries should be in your future travel plans.

by Catherine Read

The Power of Moments – Chip and Dan Heath

(Oct 2017) I read Chip and Dan Heath’s first book, Made to Stick, months after it was published in 2007. I am still recommending that book to people today for it’s exceptional concepts and the way in which those ideas are presented.

The Heath brothers have created another extraordinary book with The Power of Moments and I am again evangelizing about the value of what they have to say. I love the way they write. There is an easy and natural humor in these pages that has been in all the books they’ve written. The subject matter can be substantive without being tedious, pedantic or dry in its presentation. Actually, that is one of the central themes of this book – creating memorable moments – peaks.

Creating a peak has four essential elements, although not every peak may have all four. They are Elevation, Pride, Insight and Connection. Peaks will have one or more of these elements. One of the hallmarks of a Chip and Dan Heath book is the well researched case studies explained in an engaging and memorable way. Presenting these elements through real life stories well told is one of the true delights of reading this book.

From the first paragraph on page one, they demonstrate how one powerful moment of recognition can lead to the creation of powerful moments that are intentionally created to be life changing. Two guys are sitting in a pub watching National Signing Day on ESPN in 2000. Not any two guys, two educators running a start-up charter school called YES Prep in Houston. Their “aha moment” came when they asked themselves why there wasn’t similar excitement around academic achievement, not just sports. And then they answered their own question by creating Senior Signing Day at their school where the faculty, all the students and senior’s family members gathered in the auditorium (later moved to the arena at Rice University) to watch seniors march across the stage to “reveal” what college they would be attending after graduation.

There are so many wonderful examples of how the ordinary can become the extraordinary with some creative thought and a change of perspective. The Hillsdale High School “Trial of Human Nature” is such an inspired idea. One of the standout concepts in that chapter is the recognition that the process of education can seem like an endless practice without a culmination (See: All Practice, No Game?). Unlike sports, where you practice toward the goal of playing a competitive game with a definitive outcome, academic study is a process that goes on and on with few peaks to provide a payback for the effort. The annual “Trial of Human Nature” has become a peak – for the students, teachers and other members of the community.Read More

by Catherine Read

AARP – We Want to Know – Voter Engagement Program

(Oct. 11, 2017) Catherine Read talks with AARP Community Ambassador Berniece Courtenay about a new program called “We Want to Know” which was created to foster greater voter engagement. Virginia is one of only two states with an off-year Governor’s race in 2017. Along with Lt. Governor and Attorney General, there are also 100 seats in the House of Delegates on the ballot this year.

Berniece Courtenay talks about her journey to becoming an AARP Ambassador and the many volunteer opportunities available right here in our local community. Many people have a very narrow and one dimensional view of the AARP organization. There are thousands of AARP volunteers spread out across the country, and many volunteers here in Virginia. One of the core missions of AARP is education, and related to that is advocacy around issues affecting their members.

The AARP We Want to Know voter engagement program is using social media to encourage voters to reach out to the candidates running for election in 2017 to ask questions about the issues they care about. They are using Twitter to encourage people to submit questions to @AARPVa and also their Facebook page to highlight their “Flat People” device for encouraging people to write down their questions for candidates and post them on social media platforms. They are using the hashtag #WW2K

Catherine points out the reluctance some people have of asking their question in a public forum even when the opportunity is created, as it was during the NoVIE Forum for both gubernatorial candidates. Those specific voter questions are central to making candidates aware of what a particular community, or region, is concerned about. It also highlights very specific issues that may not be part of a candidate’s talking points or stump speeches.

According to Virginia’s AARP State Director, Jim Dau, “We Want to Know amplifies the voices of Virginia voters so that candidates have to listen – and respond – to their concerns.”

Virginia voters can send their questions to candidates via @AARPVa on Twitter, post questions to AARP’s Facebook page, visit the We Want to Know – Virginia website and also find links to statewide candidates social media pages at http://states.aarp.org/va-candidate-links/

by Catherine Read

Lewinsville Faith in Action – Inside Scoop

(Oct. 9, 2017) Catherine Read talks with John A. “Jack” Calhoun and Cindy Speas of Lewinsville Faith in Action. This group was formed following the Women’s March in Washington, DC, on January 21, 2017. Within the community of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church in McLean, VA, people came together to talk about the issues they felt strongly about. The group grew from that first meeting of 25 people to more than double that number now. They also formed five “Issue Groups” to more specifically focus their advocacy and activism around the passions of those involved. Those groups include: work on elections of progressive candidates at all levels of government; non-partisan redistricting and the end of gerrymandering; support for immigrants and refugees; gun violence issues; and healthcare and environmental issues.

Jack Calhoun, a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, has spent much of his career in policy development from federal work under several different administrations to state and local work around the country. He’s written three books, including his most recent Policy Walking, and continues to work as a consultant, keynote speaker and blogger at www.HopeMatters.org

Cindy Speas has a Masters Degree in History and spent a number of years teaching Government in Virginia public schools before turning her attention to building a regional donor registry in the DC Metro area. Although she officially retired in 2015, she remains active in the community and has taken a leadership role in building the Lewinsville Faith in Action group to include people outside their faith community as well. They collaborate and coordinate with a number of faith based progressive organizations both locally here in Virginia and nationally.

Cindy quotes their mission statement from memory: “Informed by faith and fact, Lewinsville Faith in Action, in partnership with others, will work to advocate for political, social, economic and environmental policies that are based on justice and fairness.”

Jack and Cindy make a powerful case for their activism based on the theological imperative of the Christian faith. That includes honoring and welcoming people of other faiths, such as our Muslim brothers and sisters who live in our communities and in our country. They speak in terms of how a beloved community became inspired by the Women’s March to commit to a course of action that is both transformational (providing opportunities for profound changes as individuals) and transactional (providing opportunities to live our values through action.) What began with meetings and writing postcards now includes showing up to direct actions at Dulles Airport and the Justice Department and the monthly vigil at 10 am on the 14th of every month in front of the National Rifle Association headquarters in Fairfax, VA.

They welcome individuals who want to be a part of the Lewinsville Faith in Action and you can reach out to Jack by email at [email protected] and to Cindy at [email protected]

by Catherine Read

Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat

(Oct. 2017) When folks think about the problems of growing up in the hood, they think about what it must feel like to be poor, or hungry, or to have your lights cut off. The struggle nobody talk about is what it feel like to be invisible, or to know it in your heart nobody cares. Mama didn’t want to be famous, she wanted to be seen.

That realization came to Patricia Williams as she began her career as a comedian in Indianapolis in 2010. This audiobook, read by the author, is remarkable on so many levels. Her nickname Rabbit was given to her as a child. The name she uses professionally, Ms. Pat, is what her children’s friends called her. She spent much of her life thinking she had nothing in common with her alcoholic mother who died at 39. Then she realized when she went on stage to do stand up comedy that she also craved to be seen, acknowledged and heard.

She gives her listeners/readers an unvarnished truth about her life that few of us could imagine – growing up in abject poverty with a mother who taught her to roll drunks in her grandfather’s “liquor house” when she was 7. She and her sister Sweetie were molested as children by a friend of their mother’s, and both sisters ended up pregnant as teenagers. Rabbit had her first child at 13 and another at 14. She dropped out of middle school to raise her kids, discovering she could support them pretty well by selling crack – the drug that held Atlanta’s poor neighborhoods in its grip in the 1990’s.

Rabbit did a stint in jail for drug possession with intent to distribute. It meant her two young children were left in the care of their daddy Derrick’s family. Her daughter started her first day of kindergarten while she was in jail. When she got out, she went back to selling drugs – a risky employment but one that supported her kids and allowed her to also help her mother out. It also got her shot at one point.

Along the way, she meets people who help her navigate her teenage years and early 20s. A turning point was finally cutting Derrick loose, which made it possible for her to meet Michael. This man helped her to raise her two children, as well as her sister’s four children for 10 years while Sweetie was in and out of rehab. Then they had two children of their own. It was Michael’s job transfer from Atlanta that put them into the mostly white suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Doing comedy was not something Rabbit had thought about, but she walks us through all of her failed attempts to get a “regular” job, which was nearly impossible because of her felony record that turned up in background checks. She had gotten her GED, invested money in vocational training, and THEN discovered she would likely never be hired to work in the field for which she had received a certification.

Her first foray into comedy was simply standing up at open mic nights at a local club and telling stories about her life in the hood. She quickly discovered that “it turns out comedy and selling drugs have a lot in common. You have to be quick, work hard and give people what they want.” She also discovered something else from the people who came up to talk to her after her performances.

All those times mama told me white folks were better than me, had me thinkin’ white people all live the easy life. But that woman isn’t the only one who has come up to me after a show to tell me about her shitty childhood, or her drug addicted parents. I was a grown woman before I found out black folks aren’t the only ones who had hard times. Everybody got a struggle. Nobody get through this life easy.

She started opening for another comic at clubs that had a largely black audience. As she honed her material, other comedians started to give her opportunities to work with them as well, and then her big break came when she was asked by Marc Maron to be a guest on his WTF podcast. She’s now been a guest on a number of his podcasts and that has led to bookings at clubs around the country.

While I’m sure the printed book is wonderful, I wouldn’t trade the experience of this woman telling me her story for anything. It’s a remarkable journey of resilience with a happy ending. While her early life is far from unique, in fact it’s all too common in many poor communities, her ability to find her way forward out of all of that is a true odyssey, well told.

You can follow Patricia Williams and where she is appearing on Twitter @ComedienneMsPat