ACFF features 48 films and complimentary programming

The American Conservation Film Festival is adapting to the times and sees opportunities that it never realized before in presenting its curated film 
line-up entirely online. “While this pandemic has presented incredible challenges to so many people and organizations, including small non-profits like ours, it has also pushed us to come up with innovative ways to share the compelling stories about our environment that are more important than ever,” says Jennifer Lee, ACFF’s executive director.

The 18th annual festival will be presented online starting March 24 and running through March 28.  All of the selected 48 films, including 5 award winners, will be available to watch during all five days of the festival. ACFF has always strived to make films and programs accessible to as many people as possible. The online virtual format increases that potential, and ACFF is going two steps further to create access for all — all films and programs will be free and all films will have closed captions.

“Working for the National Park Service has really inspired me to become a big advocate for captioning,” says ACFF board member and conservation filmmaker Sarah Gulick. “As a federal agency, we are legally required to caption all of our films, but it is also just the right thing to do. I also have a good friend and neighbor who is deaf. While COVID may keep us from watching together in person, I want to be able to share these films with everyone I know. The conservation challenges of today require all hands on deck, and the amazing stories of our natural world should be available to everyone.” 

The theme for this year’s festival— Voices for a New World — speaks to the diversity of film subjects and filmmakers, the new world of virtual programming, and the importance of listening to each other and the environment to effect positive change.  Film topics (searchable on the festival platform) include the standard ones like wildlife preservation, climate change, and food and agriculture while putting new and greater emphasis on environmental justice, youth perspectives, and diversity.

“Everyone wants clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, pristine lands and rivers and oceans to enjoy. I think that’s where we can all literally find common ground that serves everyone, not just a privileged few,” says Lee. Five panel discussions on the themes of environmental justice, greener farming, women leadership in conservation, the role of indigenous leaders in preserving wild lands, and youthful perspectives will also be offered, as well as interviews with filmmakers and film subjects and nightly Zoom meet-ups for audience interaction.

Registration for the festival is now open at: https://2021festival.eventive.org/welcome. Film descriptions and trailers allow people to get a sneak preview of festival offerings and start planning their viewing experience over the five days of the festival.  

For regular updates, follow conservationfilmfest.org and social media channels.

By René White, Lt. Col. (Retired) U.S. Air Force

Graduate Kassidy Zugelder attributes an elementary-school assignment to her life-changing decision to join the U.S. Air Force. 

“When I was in Mrs. Elizabeth Miller’s eighth grade, I had to do an essay about someone who was 35 years or older,” Kassidy said. “I wrote about my O-pa, my father’s dad Milton Zugelder, who lives in Strasburg, Va.” 

“O-pa retired from the Air Force after 21 years. I interviewed him and listened to his stories,” she said. “Then, presenting to the class sparked something inside of me.” 

Military stories from both her grandfathers influenced Kassidy’s future. Her mother’s father, Richard Vance Kave of Clarke County and graduate of 1966, also joined the Air Force. 

“I want to go places and do important things, and have some sort of bigger purpose to serve in my life,” Kassidy said. “In high school, I bounced around from basketball and DECA (Distinguished Education Clubs of America) to the Republican’s Club to robotics and anything I could explore to find my niche.” “Exploring opened me up to new people and new experiences,” she said. “I have always loved math and science; anything with numbers, I’m all over it.” 

Kassidy attended honors classes, completed 30 college credits, and is graduating with an advanced diploma with goal to become a Pharmacist.

“I didn’t want my family or me to go into debt paying for college,” she said. So, at age 17 Kassidy talked with her school counselors and parents about joining the Air Force. “I’m going to be a 1N431 Fusion Analyst in the Air Force,” Kassidy said. “I’ll read top secret documents to detect security threats for the United States and annotate documents to send to higher-ups.”

“This is my best course of action,” she said. Not only because she gets a job now and money for college she added, “I want to find who I am as a person and get a chance to go out and help people.”

After meeting recruiter Air Force TSgt Joshua Walters in Winchester Va., her mom Abby Zugelder said, “If this is what you want to do, who am I to stop you from your dreams to be as successful as you can be?”

Kassidy’s high score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery put her in the 99th percentile for science, 98th percentile for mathematics, and high 90’s for electronics. At age 17 she took early commitment with the Air Force Delayed Entry Program (DEP), which means she was locked in and waiting for an assignment. 

After two-weeks of COVID-19 quarantine, Kassidy departs on July 7 for Basic Military Training (BMT) at Lackland AFB Texas, then five months of technical training school at Goodfellow AFB, Texas. “I’m so excited,” she said. “When I think about going, packing up soon, or anything that deals with serving in the military I get this feeling of butterflies,” she added. “It’s overwhelming sureness! I have never felt so sure of anything in my whole life.” 

By Rebecca Maynard

Kiley Ramey has a love for animals — she has showed goats, lambs, pigs, and steers at the Clarke County Fair since she was in fifth grade.

“I have always been interested in doing something with animals ever since I was little,” said Ramey, who has considered the possibility of K9 dog handling training. “When I was younger I always wanted to be ‘the cop that had a dog all the time with him,’ but now that I am older and see what’s going on in the world right now, I thought maybe not so much,” she said.

“So I thought about training dogs for law enforcement officers and other things like training services dogs as well.” Online canine instructor programs and courses are available, but with graduation just days behind her, she plans to take the summer off to spend time with family and friends and go to the beach.

As vice president for the Clarke County High School FFA (Future Farmers of America), Ramey held meetings once a month after school to talk about upcoming things and make sure to get everyone’s new ideas for the chapter, such as different fundraisers. “To finish up the meetings, we would plan something fun, and every year we all looked forward to our cornhole tournament meeting, where we would finish the night and meeting with some cornhole as well as some snacks and drinks!” Kiley said. 

“I’ve competed in quite a few different events over the past four years at our state convention every year in June,” Ramey said. “I competed in plant science my freshman year along with horse judging, I continued horse judging my sophomore year, my junior year I competed in ag sales, and due to COVID-19 I won’t be able to compete this year, my senior year, at state convention.”

Ramey has an identical twin sister, Dana, and going through school and other activities together was a unique experience.

“Being a twin is actually very entertaining when we go out of town together or go anywhere together,” Ramey said. “We get very strange stares and we already knew why everyone stared at us or took a double take. We always thought that was pretty funny.

The most stressful thing is doing everything together, going through school together, and hanging with family and friends that don’t always get to see us — because they can’t always get our names right — but we have both learned just to answer to both after a while. Being out together, we have gotten used to the question ‘Are you all twins?’ at least once after walking into a store.” 

“My favorite memory out of all the years of showing would have to be showing a lamb for the first time and winning Reserve Grand Champion market lamb!” Ramey said. “My sister and I have always been the girls that showed goats and pigs, and two years ago we decided to show lambs, as well. With a lot of help from family friends and my parents, we were able to get two lambs, one for my sister and one for me. All I can say is my first year with a lamb was a lot of hard work and a lot of long walks up and down our back roads! But it all paid off in the end.”

By Claire Stuart

Members of Clarke County High School Class of 2020, like every class before them, are faced with the question of what they are going to do next.

Recent research shows that the most popular college majors are business and the health professions. Currently, the “best jobs” are considered to be physical therapists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and software developers. 

Some students have been focused on a career for years, some go to college with no clear goals, hoping to find an inspiring major, and some go on to trade or technical schools.

Class of 2020 grad Hayden Hartsell is going his own way, planning a career that’s probably unfamiliar to most people.

Hartsell grew up on a farm and has never lived in town, and fall means it’s time to go deer hunting. His whole family enjoys hunting, and he started going out with his parents on hunting trips when he was about four years old. He describes deer hunting as his favorite hobby, but he occasionally hunts squirrel or turkey.

“I have a little sister,” he reports, “and she’s a more accomplished turkey hunter than I am!” Asked if he’d bagged any trophy bucks, he reports that he got a 9-pointer, with 18-inches across the brow. 

Proper maintenance of one’s hunting rifles is a must for any dedicated hunter. “But it’s expensive to have guns worked on,” says Hartsell, “so I figured that if I learned to do it myself, I’d save some money.” 

Hartsell taught himself to work on his guns through trial and error. He noted that he did go to YouTube to learn to apply bluing (a process that protects the metal finish against rust and superficial scratching) because “there are complicated chemicals.”

He had never planned on doing any more than caring for his own guns but he found that he enjoyed working on guns enough to consider doing it as a career, so he is taking an online course in professional gunsmithing. He explained that gunsmiths do a great variety of maintenance and repair. “The most common thing is that someone wants their stock redone — it’s scratched or chipped. There could be mechanical failures that the average person can’t figure out. And there can be modifications like barrel extension or re-chambering for 
new calibers.”

He reports that the course can be completed on-line in three months but students study at their own pace. “It covers all forms of modern-day civilian-use firearms, including shotguns, handguns, bolt-action rifles and traditional old style rifles.” It doesn’t include automatic weapons. The course consists of video lessons as well as physical projects that the school sends to the student to complete and return. At completion, he will be a licensed gunsmith.

But that is not Hartsell’s ultimate goal.  He plans to attend NOVA to take the first two years of a mechanical engineering program. Then he will apply to complete his degree at VCU.  Finally, he hopes to get a job with a firearms manufacturer as a firearms designer. He hasn’t gone so far as to picture himself designing a new gun, but he has already been thinking about working on recoil management systems.

Hayden is the son of Tad and Sara Hartsell of Berryville and grandson of Eddie and Barbara Hartsell of Warren County Va.