But the thing is, I don’t think there’s such a polarized dichotomy between “local” and “global”. Many farmers at those local farmers markets, for example, build their marketing and communication strategies on social media—one of the most globally-minded tools available. And even though the communities they construct may not span countries or even cities, it’s the spirit of global, border-less connectivity that reinforces and expands their local reach.

Art, perhaps, is one of the best mediums for embracing both local and global perspectives, positioning them in a way that illuminates and sharpens the points where they converge. And the Berlin Collective is doing just that.

In a lot of ways, the Berlin Collective is about going global. Built on the premise of facilitating interaction, dialogue and exchange between New York City- and Berlin-based artists, the collective is quickly gaining an international reach, with members from Los Angeles and Boston to London, Paris, Buenos Aires and Melbourne. “It’s a way to connect American artists to an international discourse,” explains artist and collective founder Nicole Cohen. “A way to build community in a time of economic turmoil.”

BC Studio Tour, Judy Byron’s Studio. Photo courtesy of The Berlin Collective.

The collective has recent additions from the greater Washington D.C. area on its membership roster, artists who are finding that an international reach is critical to their careers. “I’m not German and I’ve never been to Berlin,” laughs D.C.-based collective member Judy Byron. “But I’m at a stage…where I’ve developed my career to a certain point, and I’m looking for new growth.” That new growth, for Rosemary Covey, whose studio is currently in Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory Art Center, translates into connecting with a broader network of audiences to see what they are doing, and gaining new perspectives through feedback. All of which the collective offers through workshops, exhibits and other curated projects.

But all of this outward movement isn’t solely down a one-way street. Artists seek feedback that they can channel back into something. New perspectives that they can bring back to their own work. New audiences to merge with old ones. The Berlin Collective simultaneously swings outwards and back again in a full-circle movement, infusing international perspectives into local art communities. Because in many instances, art is grounded in place, rooted in a local context that says something of the time, locale and medium from which it grows.

Says Byron, art is often both a “macro and a micro statement. Small is beautiful, but I think it can resonate out and then radiate back and inform the source.” For Byron, that source includes, in part, her exhibition space, which also functions as her living space. “I love museums, but a sense of place and atmosphere can be right on your own block.” In other words, art lives locally.

BC Studio Tour, Michele Colburn’s Studio. Photo courtesy of The Berlin Collective

Fully understanding and embracing this idea, Cohen has built a series of Open Studio Tours into the collective’s cornerstone, one of which occurred last month in D.C. and Northern Virginia (with more to come in the future, it’s hoped). Running counter to the idea of a traveling art exhibit, members of the collective travel instead (along with any interested local artists, art lovers, collectors) to the studios of artists in a particular city, giving themselves micro insight into both an artist’s working or exhibit space and macro insight into the larger sense of place that they interpret and translate back into their art.

It’s all about understanding art in its local context, from a global perspective.

The article had EVERYTHING to do with culture and place. I had to seek out the connections.

A health feature, the theme of the article hovered around connections between the mouth and the body. Turns out, those connections were an interesting reflection, mirroring the attitudes and approaches American society has to health and the body.

As is always the case, final publications have word counts and angle limits, and there were a number of conversations and ideas I had that I would have loved to develop further. For example, ideas about the conceptual divide between “conventional” and “alternative” medicine.

I’ve always been leery when it comes to hard-line divisions between “conventional” and “alternative” medicine, largely because the stereotype of “western” versus “eastern” (along with a boatload of social, political and cultural assumptions) often comes along with it. You know, Lipitor versus meditation. Hard science versus soft. Real doctors versus quacks. Divisions like these tend to slap negative connotations onto holistically-minded approaches, making them seem “less than”. From the other side of the spectrum, pharmaceutical intervention is demonized, relegated to nothing more than profit-driven chemical abuse.

The human body is so much more complex than such straight-line divisions might imply, rendering them cliché. But yet, they still exist.

When’s the last time you went to a dentist and she inquired about your susceptibility to diabetes? Or asked about your family’s history of Altzheimer’s? Or gave you a questionnaire about your pregnancy? When’s the last time general physician examined your gums during your annual physical?

Me, personally? Never. Approaches like that reflect a more holistic take on medicine, and assume that there are connections between your heart and mouth, or your brain and your teeth (the main topic of the article, and also of burgeoning medical research).

Most medical professionals have a profound awareness of the human body and its complexities. But in interviewing nearly a dozen dentists for this article, it was hard NOT to see that American society still functions under obvious trends that lean too far in one direction—“western” approaches that tend to treat the symptom, but not the person or the whole complex of systems within which that symptom exists.

I’ve come away from this article married to the idea that treatment for illness should include a balance of both—pharmaceutical treatment that addresses the immediate concern, as well as a holistic (or, systemic) analysis of the  complex network of systems that influence (or create) the problem.

And as medical research begins to uncover more and more about the profound connections between different systems in the body (yes, gum disease is linked to heart health), hopefully societal trends will adjust. One dentist mentioned that he had to take a medical class geared toward general physicians during dental school. That’s a step in the right direction.

To see the whole story about connections between the mouth and the body, check out the November 2012 issue of Northern Virginia Magazine.

Sometimes you need to look for different paths.

One of my favorite ways to travel is to focus on the road that leads to a destination before thinking about the destination itself. There is a very very beaten path TO Harpers Ferry—one that’s over 200 years old. But it’s largely overlooked.

The path to Harpers Ferry wasn’t beaten so much as it was carved, nearly 200 years ago. Flanked on one side by the C&O Canal and on the other by the Shenandoah Canal, the path to (and from) Harpers Ferry is literally a towpath.

It’s possible to walk into Harpers Ferry from the west along the former Shenandoah Canal towpath. The trail originates in Harpers Ferry National Park and, unfortunately, most visitors opt to take a bus for the 1.5-mile jaunt into town. Once you pass Harpers Ferry, you can continue along the C&O towpath, taking it, theoretically, all the way into D.C.

The Shenandoah and C&O Canals were built largely by hand in the early 19th century. America’s canal history gets lost somewhere in between Oregon-bound covered wagons and steam locomotives. In today’s contemporary, automobile-focused transportation scene, where trains seem take all credit as the “old-fashioned” mode of transportation, canals rarely get noticed. But at one time, canals were the edgiest technology. George Washington envisioned connecting the east coast American settlements to the Great West via canal, and it was he who created the Potomac Company, the company who built the Shenandoah Canal in 1807.

The company was later bought by The C&O Company, who began a mega, cross-country building project—a canal that originated in Georgetown and continued all the way through Pennsylvania. It was never completed, but 185 miles of the canal still remain, largely intact.

Huge portions of the canals today have been converted to bike and walking paths. In the 1.5 miles between Harpers Ferry National Park and the Lower Town, the path runs parallel to the former Shenandoah Canal, still alive with green algae. About halfway across, the ruins of the Potomac Power Plant, a water-powered pulp mill whose lifeline was once the canal, hints at the industrial powerhouse canals once were.

On the other side of Harpers Ferry, the C&O towpath continues, sharing space for a bit with the Appalachian Trail and running parallel to the Shenandoah River.

Have you ever found a beaten (or unbeaten) path that others didn’t notice?

In fact, there are well over 100 lavender farms across the United States. Though most tend to be concentrated on the west coast, it’s a slowly growing agro-industry.

I recently visited White Oak Lavender Farm, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The family-run farm, which grows over 30 varieties of lavender, has a mission that extends beyond growing and harvesting herbs. Lavender is an integral tool for mental, emotional and physical well-being and, like lavender, every aspect of the farm is meant to soothe tense nerves, relieve stress and put the mind-body continuum back into balance.

2. Lavender cultivation is crowd-sourced.

Lavender farming is fairly new to the contemporary agricultural scene, even though it has been cultivated in other parts of the world, like Provence, France, for much longer. When asked about the body of research they drew from in starting up the White Oak lavender Farm a few years ago, the guide pointed to one major source: the internet. Forums and other spontaneous sites provide real-time information on growing tips, advice for different plant varieties and general help.

3. Lavender can be eaten.

Primarily used in the U.S. as a dried herb for making sock drawers smell nice or as an essential oil for aromatherapy, lavender is also a culinary herb. Its flowery, sweet taste pairs well with bakery recipes, butter, meats and vegetables. It’s an herb rich in iron.

4. Lavender is distilled.

Much like whiskey. That’s how the essential oils are removed. By using low-pressure steam to boil the oil from the plant, the oil and water byproduct, known as lavender essence, both have multiple uses, from aromatherapy to massages.

5. Lavender can put you to sleep.

Post distillation, one of the major uses of lavender oil is aromatherapy. Studies indicate that the scent of lavender may have a physiological effect on the body, slowing down the nervous system and allowing the mind and muscles to relax.

6. Lavender is healing.

Ancient Greeks and Romans intuited the cleansing power of lavender, with written records that identify the herb as a tool for bathing and cleaning wounds. Modern science today is just beginning to unravel the antiseptic, antibacterial and antifungal properties of the plant. A number of studies have linked lavender to effective treatments of hair loss and dandruff, eczema and other skin ailments, headache relief and muscle pain.

Some have an even broader perspective of lavender’s healing power. Prior to its development as a farm at the turn of the century, the property that White Oaks Lavender Farm sits on used to be forest. The site of a major retreat during the Civil War, that same forest briefly became a cesspool of intense suffering, violence and death. It seems fitting, the owners reckoned, that such land would later be used to cultivate a plant with immense healing properties.

Bonus fact: Goats love lavender.

This guy practically stole the bunch of lavender clippings I was holding in my hand as I walked by.

Though 100 apple trees sounded like a lot to me, the amount of actual space (and fruit-yielding potential) the orchard takes up on its 50-acre property is pretty minuscule, relatively. But it’s more than the land, largely overgrown with disuse, has produced in awhile.

Whitehall Manor is a historic piece of property at the western edges of Northern Virginia, within sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The mansion itself, first built around 1787, stood at the center of acres and acres of surrounding farmland for over two centuries. When the farm officially closed operations in 1992, it had been recognized as one of the largest working dairy farms in Northern Virginia’s 20th-century history.

The mansion itself was preserved and converted into an event (most wedding) venue, and 50 acres of the original property saved from imminent development. But the land ceased to function agriculturally.

Until David Weinschel realized its potential.

Though Weinschel owns one of the largest catering companies in Northern Virginia, he wasn’t the first to start connecting his catering services to sustainable practices. Dozens of caterers in the D.C. metro area either source directly from local farms or work (and cater) on the farms themselves.

Weinschel, though, started from scratch. “We bought Whitehall Manor with the intention of having events,” Weinschel explained. “We said we grew events here. That was our crop. Now…we are really growing food too.”

He’s starting small, with herbs, grapes and apples. Over time, he anticipates expanding to include plums, peaches and perhaps, someday, vegetables. He also planted a tree farm to jumpstart the process of reforesting land that is disappearing at a rate parallel to county’s population growth, which has doubled in the last decade.

Weinschel was one of six chefs and caterers I interviewed for a recently published feature in Loudoun Magazine about sustainability and its foray into niche local catering markets. I had the chance to travel across Loudoun County, some of the richest farm (and grapevine) land in Virginia. The underlying theme resonating at the heart of each chef’s endeavor to make sustainability more accessible to the community was one of journeys. Sustainability is a journey.

Given the parameters they work in, no chef is able to operate completely sustainably. Society isn’t built for it. Not yet, anyway. Little steps are the path to progression.

As I was leaving Whitehall Manor, Weinschel showed me the next step in his company’s journey: a new tractor. “Our 19th-century buy!” he laughed.

It seems that the path forward toward a sustainable future is also one that also moves backwards in time.

To see the whole story about sustainable event catering, check out the Fall 2012 of Loudoun Magazine, on sale now. The issue is also available online.

Though the identity markers on demographic census papers are vague (how do you identify yourself if you were born in Central Asia but have a Russian last name and Russian passport, for example?), the first generation of Northern Virginia Korean-Americans and Korean green card holders self-identify pretty strongly, by maintaining vital connections to the food, language and culture of Korea.

The Korean festival has been going on for 10 years.

It was packed.

If you missed the festival this year, here are three things to put on your Korean to-do list while you wait for next year.

1. Learn to make kimchi.

I first tried kimchi at the prompting of my students; I recently finished teaching an ESL class at a Korean community college in Centreville. “It’s healthy, like yogurt,” my student prompted. The sour and spicy cabbage is indeed fermented in such a way that it contains probiotics, and is super healthy for digestion.

I also learned that kimchi can be made with any vegetable: cabbage, cucumber, carrots, zucchini. Labor-intensive at first, most of the kimchi-making process involves simply waiting for it to ferment, which can take days or even months.

2. Taste a flight of seaweed.

Sprawling across three long folding tables, the central tent of the Korean festival was at least half full with seaweed. Though not quite as well stocked as the festival, the Grand Mart International Market in Centreville also sells a wide variety of seaweed. Like kimchi, seaweed is also very healthy, providing a necessary source of iodide. The center package of sesame toasted seaweed won out this tasting, in my opinion.

Not sure what to do with seaweed? I like to crumple it on salads and rice. Or you could try making the staple Korean kimbap – rice and vegetables rolled in sheets of seaweed.

3. Try Pa Jun.

Per my former students’ recommendations, Korean pancakes, or Pa Jun, are the common gateway drug for Americans into Korean cuisine. The pancakes – batter chock-full of scallions, carrots, zucchini and other vegetables – are quite delicious. Of all the Korean restaurants I’ve tried thus far in Centreville, Vit Goel Tofu makes the best Pa Jun.

What is the philosophy behind the Silver Finch Arts Collective?

Silver Finch Arts Collective is a DC-based organization that provides a forum for artists of all types to collaborate across genres. It strives to break down the barriers that people perceive between new art and the public by proving that new art can have a broad appeal without compromising the integrity of its message. Basically, I want to try to bring art to as many people with as many different tastes as possible.

What inspired you to create it?

Almost a year ago I was chatting with some friends about starting an opera company. They were both singers who have sung my work before, and we were looking to put on a production of some new work I had written. We wanted to give the company a name, even if it was just for one performance.

In creating a name, we also ended up with a mission statement. We already knew what kind of audience we wanted to reach: not just opera lovers, but theater lovers, too – a younger crowd. A crowd that might not have enough money to get tickets to see many shows at the Kennedy Center. To get some ideas for how to write the mission statement, I did an informal poll with a handful of my friends who fit the type of audience member we were interested in.

Their answers didn’t surprise me: they were interested in opera, but were turned off by the expensive tickets and by having to get dressed up. They were afraid that they wouldn’t understand what was going on, because they perceived opera to be something that you had to learn a lot about to understand. They were also not thrilled about the common misconception about opera: people standing there, wearing fancy costumes with impressive sets around them, singing beautiful music in a foreign language and not really acting.

Out of these conversations came a new idea: what if our company didn’t just do opera? What if part of the show was an opera and also a short play, a short musical, or a dance piece? The people I talked to about it were interested and even kind of excited about the idea.

How does the collective work?

I’m envisioning that this will work as an online presence at first, rather than a producing presence. An online forum where interested artists can exchange ideas and have access a roster of performers and a few experts in each field to help give advice to the creators.

How would you like to see it develop?

In the future, I’d love it if Silver Finch could help create accessible but still artistically strong pieces that could get more people excited about the arts. This could be from a “come for the musical, stay for the opera” type of approach that draws audiences in with something familiar and exposes them to something new that they would hopefully like. I’d also love it if new hybrids between these art forms were explored.

Why is this sort of collaboration among the arts important?

I think this kind of work is important to the future of all arts. Federal funding for the arts is declining. Large companies are folding because of low ticket sales. Something new needs to happen, and I think small companies have the answer – companies that are small enough to take risks. My Fringe Festival show this year, Fallen Angels, had a budget of about $2000. If it fails, that’s a small enough amount of money that I could easily bounce back from. But any successes with small companies might bring in new audiences, and these new audiences are the ones that are going to sustain the arts in the future.

How does your 2012 Fringe Festival premier fit into the mission of the collective?

Fallen Angels is actually not as collaborative as I would have liked. It was somewhat of a last minute decision to apply to the Fringe Festival. I had two of the three Fallen Angels mini-operas written, and I wanted them to be performed. I spoke to a few playwright friends to see if they had anything that might work with what I had, or if they had time to create something new. That didn’t work out, so I had to fill the rest of the time myself.. The little bit of cross-over is from concert music: the two instrumental interludes in this production of Fallen Angels are two movements from a piece of concert music that that originally had nothing to do with this project. Also, the director, Nick Vargas, has never directed an opera before. I told him to approach it just like any other play, and push the singers to act as if they were speaking the lines, not just singing them. I’m hoping that has brought some dramatic integrity to the show.

Now that Fallen Angels is halfway through its Fringe Festival run, what have audiences been taking away with them?

I’m hoping that the opera-lovers who have come to see Fallen Angels have enjoyed it and perhaps gotten a new idea about contemporary opera. Not all of it is inaccessible! I also hope that people not as familiar with opera have seen that it’s not as scary as they might have thought, and that it can be just as interesting and engaging as drama and musical theater.

The last two performances of Fallen Angels will be Thursday, July 26 and Saturday, July 28. Tickets are on sale now.

Michael Oberhauser’s music has been performed in a variety of venues, from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to WAMU 88.5. He completed his Masters of Arts in Music Composition at the Catholic University of America, and his Bachelors of Music in Composition from Ohio Northern University.

No wild ones, anyway. Contrary to the connections perpetrated in the minds of thousands of pre-teen girls across the last 6 decades, the title of Marguerite Henry’s popular novel “Misty of Chincoteague” is a bit of a misnomer. It really should be “Misty of Assateague”.

In fact, when most people imagine Chincoteague, they are likely picturing Assateague in their minds. At least, I was.

Chincoteague and Assateague are two different islands, separated by a swath of swampy wetlands and connected by a bridge. Assateague is a narrow, 37-mile barrier island, bisected by the Maryland/Virginia border. Chincoteague sits at the southern end of Assateague, on the Virginia side.

While the island of Chincoteague is a town of approximately 4,000 people whose livings come largely from fishing, crabbing and summer tourism, Assateague is a protected wildlife refuge, whose miles of interconnected biospheres are divided into national parks, state parks, national wildlife refuges, and national seashores.

And all the wild horses live on Assateague. One herd roams the northern section of Assateague Island on the Maryland side, monitored by the National Park Service. Another herd, which is owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department, lives on the Virginia side, largely concentrated in an area of protected reserve called (not to confuse matters too much) the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge of Assateague.

2.  You’re more likely to see the horses from a distance…

…unless you take a private (and expensive) boat tour, or rent a kayak and paddle through the marshy coast – then you have a higher chance of coming within closer range. But if you are cycling across the island, as I did, you’ll probably only see the horses from a distance, fenced off and away from the dangers of the roads and the cars.

I would have happily kayaked to see the ponies up close and personally, except…

3.  The mosquitoes on Assateague are intense.

And in a kayak, I wouldn’t have been able to put up a decent fight.

I should have taken the warning signs more seriously.

Upon arriving on Chincoteague, I stopped into Tom’s Beach Supply store to buy sunscreen, and noticed that an entire wall display was devoted to various brands of mosquito repellent.

“Do you have any natural versions?” I asked the teenager behind the counter.

“Natural? You mean with less deet?” She scanned the display.

“No, actually, with no deet” I replied, regretting that I hadn’t brought my own collection of tea tree oil and citronella with me. She quickly stood up. “No ma’am. You’ll need deet. That’s the only thing strong enough to get ‘em.”

I bought the deet.

The next morning, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a tank top, then doused my upper body with deet. I ignored my legs. Mosquitoes can’t bite through denim, I reasoned.

Halfway across Assateague, I stopped cycling to walk a half-mile path to a look-out point. And for the first few minutes, I was sold on the deet; I only had to swat a few away from my arms and neck, here and there.

Then I looked down.

My jeans were black and crawling. Those destructive buggers deem denim as a challenge. The faster I walked, the faster they trailed behind me, swarming my legs and crawling under my pants.

By the time I finished the walk, they’d outsmarted the deet as well, and I was in a full-blown retreat.

The deet’s only strong enough to get ‘em until they outsmart it.

A few mosquito tips:

-They don’t bite as long as you stay in motion. Cycle, don’t walk.
-Swatting and smacking doesn’t work. Instead, I found it more effective to keep a bottle of spray in my pocket and use it every few minutes.
-They don’t come near the beach. 

4. It’s possible to find empty stretches of beach.

Despite only being an hour away from Ocean City, one of the East Coast’s most popular and populated beaches in America, the Assateague National Seashore is not densely utilized. Theoretically, the entire 37-mile shore is open, although the beach on the Virginia side is largely concentrated on the southern tip of the island.

Within a 10-minute, bare-footed, waves-lapping-at-my-ankles walk northwards from the life-guarded beach, the umbrellas and towels became more dispersed. I went minutes at a time without seeing other people. I started to notice the habits of the waves as they swelled, flooding the sand banks with shell particles and hermit crabs before momentarily plateauing and dragging everything back into the sea.

5. The interior of Assateague looks vastly different from the beach.

But it’s equally as isolated. A barrier island, Assateague is a complex biosphere – a mix of marshy wetlands, dense forests and tide pools that bleed onto the coast and that exist in as much a state of balance and flux as the Atlantic waves. About 10 miles of cycling and hiking paths cross the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge on the southern half of Assateague, trails that weave through forests, along swampy marshlands, and that eventually lead to the coast.

6. The seafood will be fresh.

Straight from the coast to the table.

Once the music started, though, I stopped noticing the extreme heat. It took me a few minutes to realize that the audience had quieted down too, equally as engaged in the sounds of the kamancha and the tombak on the stage as I was.

Imamyar Hasanov is a master of the kamancha, a bowed stringed instrument of Azerbaijan. His performance at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Washington DC mall was the first time I’d heard the instrument live. The show, which also featured Persian-born Pezhham Akhavass on the percussive tombak, was nearly full, despite the heat.

As the concert unfolded, my attention – and literally my head – shifted back and forth between the two virtuosos seated opposite each other on the stage. Their instruments were in dialogue with each other – the kamancha asking a question and the tombak responding.

Formally trained in the tradition of Western European classical music, my ear tends to assume that a drum functions solely as the rhythmic foundation of a song. Popular music that floods the radio corroborates this approach.

In contrast, traditional Azerbaijani mugham – a style of music and related set of musical theory of the same family as the Arab maqam – places emphasis on the drum as both a rhythmic foundation and a melodic counterpart.

Fingers flying across the drum head in his lap, Akhavass shifted seamlessly between melody and rhythmic accompaniment; sometimes the drum seemed as melodically versatile as a clarinet, and other times as full and rhythmically rich as full drum set.

The thick and layered texture emanated from his fingers, each of which seemed to move independently, as if he was playing a piano. They maneuvered across the drum sensitively, creating a nuanced and tonal line that wove around the melody, supporting it and filling in the gaps.

The interplay between the musicians was rich and vibrant – the type of transcendental experience that draws your awareness into the music so fully that your peripheral awareness disappears temporarily.

It was only once the audience started clapping, shattering the crystalline atmosphere, that I realized the hot and stagnant summer air had forced me into a sweat.

In a town like Leesburg, Virginia, which is as old as colonial America itself, urban planners and private entrepreneurs have opened up shop in the historical center with an eye toward the past – renovating old buildings (some over two centuries old) in creative ways that reference their histories and former purposes.

Here are three cool converted spaces in Leesburg.

1. Lightfoot Restaurant

Located on the former site of the People’s National Bank, eating at Lightfoot Restaurant felt as if I was eating in a turn-of-the-century bank. Originally designed by the same architects who built the iconic Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, the interior maintains the elements that characterize the Romanesque Revival building – a cavernous dome and wide arches, an ornate ceiling, granite columns, cast-iron railings, and bronze-plated pillars.

When the bank was first built in 1885, it was closed to women, who had to wait in the lobby area next door while their husbands did business inside. Over a century later, the space has been converted into one of the most successful restaurants in Leesburg – its manager and top chef both women.

2. Shoes, Cup and Cork Club

This 19th-century storefront spent much of its history as a family-run shoe repair store, begun in the 1920s by a Sicilian immigrant and his family, and continued by an Armenian immigrant and his family in the 1970s. It functioned as a shoe repair shop until 2006, when it was converted into a fair trade coffee and local wine shop.

The interior was renovated with historical precision, integrating references to the space’s past. The purposefully warping tables and slightly rusting decor meld with the laptop coffee shop atmosphere the cafe promotes. To me, the owner’s decision to convert an entire wall into a community chalk board speaks to his understanding of the role the coffee shop plays as part of the space’s living history – and is an interesting way to nudge customers to take an active part in it.

3. Tuscarora Mill

Located in a grain mill originally built in 1899, the interior of Tuscarora Mill Restaurant is still,  in large part, a grain mill. Huge pieces of thick, warping timber support many of the original pulleys, belts and tools central to the mill’s original function.

The restaurant owners have built the menu with an eye toward the larger agricultural context in which the mill used to function – ingredient and products are sourced from the myriad of local farms in Loudoun county.

What’s the coolest converted space you’ve ever seen?