By Jennifer Lee

Clarke County’s native son left a legacy of artwork and many friends and collectors

Anyone who knew Bill Whiting remembers his mischievous grin, twinkling eyes, and the colorful, light-filled landscapes he painted of the surrounding countryside … and the cows. “Bill was famous for his cows because he could make sales. He got very bored with them later on in his life,” recalled Judy Whiting, Bill’s former wife but forever friend.

Indeed, many of the Whiting paintings that adorn the walls of dozens, maybe hundreds, of his collectors have at least one or a herd of cows, serenely standing or munching in a Valley field. A luminous, distant Blue Ridge, rolling hills, and tranquil skies filled out the scenes. As manager of the Art at the Mill show for several years, I personally witnessed those works, often still wet, fly off the walls during the semi-annual sale.

Bill came to painting relatively late in life, at the age of 46, after years of painting the walls of houses. “It was purely an economic decision when he realized he could make more money as a full-time artist and he was in control of what he wanted to do,” Judy said. Over the next 13 years, it is estimated he painted over 1,000 paintings (“but who really knows. Bill was not a record keeper,” Judy said), had at least a dozen serious collectors, and at least a couple hundred people who own one of his pieces.

Bill also painted ceiling murals, backdrops for plays at Powhatan School and other productions, faux and marble finishes, and expansive wall murals. “There were some wonderful discoveries along the way,” said Janet Eltinge, one member of a small committee who organized the upcoming exhibit at the Barns of Rose Hill. “The most spectacular was a multi-wall mural of the valley landscape (9’ x 25’) in a dining room,” she added. Committee member Elaine Dennison found and funded a photographer to reproduce the image, which will be permanently mounted in the Barns.

“He loved working on huge pieces,” Judy said. Bored with the cows, he began painting still lifes, florals, seascapes, and street scenes later in his life. At the time of his death, in December 2009, he was working on a large still life of oranges in varying stages of undress around a glass of orange juice. The delicate brush strokes and mottled light are recognizably Bill Whiting, if the subject matter is not.

The upcoming exhibit at the Barns will feature over 60 Whiting paintings from 38 private collectors/donors. The retrospective has been in the works for over a year while Eltinge, Dennison, Cheryl Voytek, and Judy Whiting located and collected the artwork and curated the show. “I have been so amazed at the energy of Janet, Elaine, and Cheryl who have worked tirelessly on the show as a tribute to Bill and his legacy as a Clarke County artist,” Judy said. Bill’s longtime friend and fellow artist, Jane Caspar, will be playing her violin at the reception.

In addition to many landscapes, the exhibit will include Bill’s first attempt at painting at the age of 12, donated by his mother, a portrait of Picasso, architectural subjects, horses and dogs, and a collection of his working tools. Prints of one of his iconic paintings, “Along the Shenandoah,” will be available for sale and one framed, signed print will be raffled off on the last day of the exhibit. Raffle tickets are available at the Barns.

The community was shocked and saddened when Bill died after a brief illness, at the age of 59, on December 13, 2009. Judy said that he was plagued with sinus infections for decades, possibly from paint fumes, and thought that’s what he had when he got sick on Thanksgiving 2009. Having no health insurance, he put off going to the doctor for a couple of weeks. “By the time his mother and I insisted he go to the doctor on December 8, it was too late to save him. He had pneumonia, which caused renal failure and sepsis and led to his death five days later,” Judy explained.

She also recalled that Bill was an artist in the kitchen, as well, famous for his strawberry pancakes, omelets, and chili. And he “was a great dad to his dog, Sweetie Pie. We loved to take rides to photograph the local landscapes and give Sweetie a chance to bark at the cows. Those were the days . . . .” Judy remembered.

“December 13 is the feast day of St. Lucy, or St. Lucia, the saint known as a ‘beacon of brightness’ — very appropriate since Bill’s art reflected so much light and color,” Judy said. All who knew Bill would say his spirit, along with his paintings, was a beacon of brightness, too.

The ‘W.H. “Bill” Whiting, Artist of the Shenandoah Valley,’ retrospective opens on January 14 and can be seen on the first floor gallery of the Barns of Rose Hill through March 9, 2014. For more information, visit www.barnsofrosehill.org or call 540-955-2004.

BMS Announces Membership Drive

Berryville Main Street announced the launch of its 2014 membership drive. The nonprofit organization was founded in 1988 to promote and support downtown Berryville as the retail, commercial and cultural center of Berryville & Clarke County. They urge businesses to be on the lookout for their invitations, saying some new benefits have been added to help promote businesses and services.

Green Country on Main Street

Berryville Main Street partner Green Country Gifts has opened a retail location at 24 East Main Street! Seasonal wreaths and centerpieces along with antique and gift items are available for your holiday shopping.  Check their Facebook page for details or simply stop by the shop.

Gunslinger Opens Berryville Location

Bryan Lingle and his wife Cara were walking up Main Street in Berryville when he noticed the “For Rent” sign announcing a vacancy in a retail space. “She saw my reaction, and knew right away what I was thinking,” said Lingle. The couple had moved to Berryville in July, and Bryan was commuting to Manassas Park, Va., where his flagship store Gunslinger is located, selling firearms, accessories, and ammunition. Seeing the vacancy on Main Street got the wheels turning to open a second location just blocks from their home in town.

Lingle opened the Manassas Park location in 2011, after spending five years with the Secret Service. The store there is small “office-sized space,” according to Lingle. The new Berryville location gives him room to display a range of tactical, self-defense, and hunting gear on the walls and in cases. In addition to rifles, shotguns, and handguns, accessories include bags, eyewear, and other tactical equipment.

Gunslinger held its grand opening December 15, hosting local author and survival consultant Jay Blevins, who was on hand to sign copies of his new book. Lingle says it was Blevins who originally planted the idea of moving to Berryville—the two also collaborated on a weekend event in Berryville this year.

For now, Gunslinger Berryville will be open only on weekends and a couple evenings each week. “Eventually the Berryville store will be our only location,” said Lingle. His current customer base of “law enforcement and contractors going overseas” will eventually get used to the drive, he says. And he hopes business from Clarke County and the surrounding area will  grow steadily.

Gunslinger Arms is located at 110 West Main Street, Berryville. Current hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 9am–5pm. For information, visit www.gunslingerarms.com, find them on Facebook, or call 540-955-8454.

by Joe Sherrier

We arrived at church right on time, which is to say the congregation was already up and singing but we hadn’t missed any required sacred rituals or mandatory opening prayers. Granted, we were cutting it close, but that’s part of the weekly thrill of going to church. How late can you leave the house and still have derriere in the chair-iere without missing the Good News? I ignored the disapproving look of the usher as we brushed by. In the eyes of the Lord, we made it on time.

Arriving without time to spare also means there are only two seating options remaining. One option is the front row, purgatory on Earth for this Catholic, and an untenable position for someone like me who has been known to make a furrowed face during parts of the sermon with which I respectfully disagree.

That leaves only the second option—the middle of a pew. To reach the middle, we must push past the faithful who cannot be inconvenienced by sliding over. After all, as their eyes make clear to us, they were here first and to the victor go the spoils: an end seat.

Just like on an airplane, the aisle seats are gone first, then the window. The middle seats are the last resort. Once you’ve secured the end of a row in church, that real estate must be protected at all costs. Pushing to the middle to accommodate the latecomers (we WERE on time) means sacrificing one of the key benefits to arriving early—a quick escape at the end of services. You’ve got to beat the traffic. Getting stuck in a post-services traffic jam can lead to the occasion of sinful thoughts against thy neighbor and must be avoided at all costs. This rationale justifies the aisle sitter’s decision to act in an un-Christian-like manner and not slide over for fellow worshippers.

Grabbing the end seat is more than the dream of a quick exit after church. People don’t like being in the middle of anything really. How many times have we said, “Hey, I’m not getting in the middle of THAT!”? The middle is for losers, and as Americans, we’re not losers. We’re exceptional.

The middle is an uncomfortable place. It’s a fight for the arm rest. It’s a chance to breath in germs from either side of us. It’s the mental anguish of knowing that a trip to the bathroom means surviving the trip over the legs of our neighbors all the way across the row. It’s called a ‘trip’ for a reason.

Being in the middle is claustrophobic. This is why I don’t want to live in the middle of the United States. I have always contended that I will remain near the East Coast because I need to be near an exit, just in case. The Blue Ridge eastward is North America’s aisle seat, and I like the extra leg room the Atlantic Ocean affords me.

The older we get, the more we worry about our middle. We want less middle, not more, and preferably in 8 minutes or less. No one wants to look like the meaty part of the bell shaped curve when standing in profile.

Being in the middle is the most dangerous for small animals. For the hyperactive squirrel, nothing is worse than being stuck in the middle of the road. At that frozen moment in time when he stares into your soul from his pavement perch, there is nowhere he’d rather be than on one extreme side of the street or the other. The middle is a death sentence for the squirrel.

The middle of the road no longer exists in politics, at least not for successful politicians, defined as those who win elections these days. Spending too much time in the middle can be a death sentence for a political career unfortunately. It’s the fast track to being “primaried” and run out of town.

The middle is also where compromise lives. The middle is where decisions are made. Yes, action gets driven from the left or the right, but to survive, we need the middle.

As we approach the next fiscal cliff, remember that there is national salvation in the middle, just as there is salvation available to those in the middle of the pew. So next time I show up at the top of your aisle with my family, please slide over. The view from the middle isn’t so bad, and we can live together in harmony. It’s the Christian thing to do.

As a compromise, I’ll try to leave the house a little bit sooner.

by Karen Johnston

With an alarming national epidemic of obesity, and a host of digestive disorders ranging from irritable bowel syndrome to gluten allergies, the collective gut is telling us that the food system, and the environment that supports it, is flat out broken.

On the frontline of this systemic failure is an invisible universe: your gut flora and fauna. Called the “forgotten digestive organ” in a 2006 medical study by the National University of Ireland, the microbiome is a diverse population of some 100 billion bacteria, representing 2,000 different species, all inhabiting the mucosal lining of your digestive tract and vital for human function—a vast population of cells living within us, but not us.

Some scientists refer to this world within a world as an “extended self” detoxifying, providing immunity, and enabling digestion of nutrients essential to human life.

Evidence is growing that our gut flora is under attack—compromised and imbalanced by an onslaught of environmental toxins, genetically modified and processed foods, antibiotic overuse, and chronic stress—an assault strongly linked to digestive disorders and to a heightened incidence of autism, Alzheimer’s, and multiple sclerosis.

In a recent study, researchers using high-tech DNA analysis found significantly fewer kinds of intestinal flora in children with autism. Implications of this and other research has triggered support for a National Institute of Heath human microbiome mapping project, similar to the human genome project, to understand the complex symbiotic relationship between us and “the others” of our gut.

Antibiotics, found in everything from overprescribed medications to feedlot meat and antibacterial soaps, are a major threat to the human microbiome. Prolonged exposure to antibiotics kills or alters these microbes, making them pathogenic and compromising digestion and health.

Small amounts of pesticides and herbicides—residual in groundwater, soil, and produce—can also upset microbiome balance, allowing some microbes to flourish to excess, resulting in toxicity, cell death, inflammation and impaired immune response. All are major causes of disease. Pesticide amounts regulated as safe for human consumption by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) are more than enough to create die-off of delicate intestinal flora.

Micro flora imbalance can even harm the brain. A 2011 study by Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology suggests that multiple sclerosis (MS) is triggered when imbalances in the population and diversity of natural intestinal flora activate immune cells, resulting in an attack on the brain’s myelin layer. Factors contributing to this inflammatory response in the gut’s mucosal lining include environmental toxins and heavy metals (especially mercury) found in food. Other research shows that curbing over-proliferation of a common stomach bacterium improves cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

Genetically Modified (GM) foods present more alarming prospects to the endangered microbiome. Assurances by Monsanto that its RoundUp weed killer is biodegradable have proven false scientifically and in court, so this dangerous compound is not merely residual. It’s in your food—a bio-bomb attacking essential gut microbes.

GMO Bt-crops pose a deeper threat. They incorporate a DNA strand to produce a protein that causes leaky gut and death in pest-eating caterpillars. Monsanto assured USDA that mammalian DNA wouldn’t be affected. They were right. It wasn’t. A study on mice fed with Bt-potatoes found something far worse. Within the mice an essentially new gut bacteria was created, potentially able to replicate the same gut-leaking protein as Bt. No one knows Bt’s long-term effect on human gut flora.

What, me worry? Here in Vermont, the stew beef bubbling on a late fall stove began as a neighbor’s calf overwintered on GM corn, fed on summer grass contaminated by mercury particulate drifting east from Ohio’s coal-burning power plants, and treated with USDA-approved antibiotics—so microbiome death is inherent in my local stew and your McDonald’s hamburger.

You can mitigate the damage. Avoid processed food. Buy organic. Go vegan. It helps, but undoing the poisoning of our environment requires a larger movement. What we eat becomes our flesh and bone, built directly out of air, water, soil, and the plants and animals we consume. So rigorous environmental regulation is not just an abstraction for long-haired tree huggers. It’s the foundation of our food system and family health.

Clean food is something everyone understands, which is why the revolution begins in your gut.

Karen Johnston is an Ayurvedic Consultant, former farmer, and community food activist living in Hardwick, Vermont. 

© Blue Ridge Press 2013.