>>We're just here waiting for the King and Queen of England.

>>No one thought that King Charles III was going to come to Front Royal, Virginia out of all places.

You'll never get bored in Royal, Virginia.

(bright music) >>We're here at Ridgeview Park to celebrate the 18th hatch day of our bald eagle, Buddy.

Everyone say Happy Hatch Day, Buddy.

>>Happy Hatch Day, Buddy.

(upbeat music) >>I like to think that our inclinations as human beings towards sanity and community will ultimately outlive hostility, hatred, and violence.

I like to think this.

>>There is a community here that is just about love.

We got jokes too, right.

>>Yeah.

>>The interior life, the life of the mind, the life of the heart are really important things.

(upbeat music) >>We've become who we are because of the deep engagement and even belief, sometimes faith against all odds, of people, that this American experiment someday could include them.

♪ In the heartland ♪ ♪ We rely on ourselves ♪ ♪ And one another ♪ ♪ Hand in hand ♪ ♪ We must stand ♪ ♪ In the heartland ♪ >>This program was made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by.

(upbeat music) >>The top local story we're following this hour, Britain's royals are spending part of the day in the Shenandoah Valley.

(upbeat music) King Charles and Queen Camilla are in Front Royal for a parade tied to America's 250th birthday.

(upbeat music) >>Today, we found out that the King of England and Queen of England, Camilla, are coming to visit our town.

We got very little notice, to be honest with you.

The town is very much scrambling.

I've got my farm here.

We make our artisanal wholesome dog biscuits, and with me is Pepper today.

Pepper, come say hi.

There's Pepper.

(upbeat music) >>We got here at around 9:15.

I think you said you got here around 9:00.

>>Around 9 o'clock, yeah.

>>It's been about two and a half hours.

So we've been standing for a while, but it's okay.

The weather's great.

The views are nice.

You know, the people are friendly.

(upbeat music) >>I'm with my friends Andrew and Anthony and Rob, and we're going to see King Charles III.

(upbeat music) >>It's a great honor to have them.

The Royals come to Front Royal.

We're just a small town and we have a lot to offer.

>>Hopefully, we can see the King and Queen.

We don't know.

>>Front Royal is pretty crazy.

And I grew up two blocks from here up the street.

>>Okay so.

>>And he still had to get all the way in line.

>>We don't usually get this much international attention.

>>Yeah, Bing Crosby was here in 1944 in our ball stadium.

This was named for him and now that's probably the biggest.

>>That's about it.

>>I think Dan Aykroyd drove through here once.

>>Yeah.

>>Bing Crosby came in like 19, early 50s or whatnot.

>>Bing Crosby.

Everybody knows about Bing Crosby coming through.

>>They did his grand opening of his movie.

They did it here at the theater in Front Royal.

>>Of course, I wasn't born then, but I heard my parents told me about it and whatnot.

>>My father drove the car that he rode around town in, the convertible we sat on back of, and they named the stadium Bing Crosby Stadium after Bing Crosby.

(upbeat music) >>This area is definitely a melting pot.

You know?

>>Yeah.

>>Like it's the mountains, it's quaint, it's cute, but it's got everybody.

>>This is the McGregor's stand.

>>Ah, okay.

>>Are you with your family tartan?

>>Yes, the family tartan, yep.

>>You know, Front Royal was founded by England.

>>Oh, that's right, yeah.

>>This is one of the original towns.

We keep wondering why the king and queen are even showing up here to celebrate the 250th anniversary of losing the town.

>>I know, that's the weirdest thing about it.

(upbeat music) >>We definitely consider ourselves to be like a typical American family.

My wife's family has been in this area since it was still England.

My parents came here as immigrants in 1980.

My mom's Italian, my dad's from Uruguay, and we've been in this town ever since, pretty much.

This used to be my family's pizza place.

Actually, you go in there right now, there's a picture of my grandfather hanging over the register.

And my mom's sitting there on the couch at the.

Wave, Mom!

(upbeat music) There she is, anyways.

Frank!

>>Yeah.

>>This guy wants to say hi.

>>My cousin, Thomas Amari, started Anthony's about 30 years ago in Winchester.

>>I'm Giuseppe's daughter.

>>Yeah, this is Giuseppe's daughter, Mena.

>>He's my brother in spirit.

>>That's it.

(upbeat music) There's Mr.

Giuseppe in the flesh, spinning his pizza.

(upbeat music) >>Nah, I'll get something.

>>Royal Thursday, Royal Thursday, ladies.

>>All right, let's get an order of cheese.

And then, um.

>>My grandparents came here on the boat.

I mean, they came in as immigrants and to get a better life for their family.

My father gave us a better life for us.

Came to Virginia 30 years ago.

>>I've been here almost 50 years.

I went to Warren County, and I pretty much grew up here in Front Royal.

>>Slices, nice and hot!

Here we go.

Appreciate it, thank you.

>>Thank you, sir.

>>Have a blessed one.

>>You as well.

>>They're very strict on that checkpoint.

No lighters, my dad told my wife she had to throw her lighter away.

>>Oh, wow.

>>Yep.

>>Even if you get in there, you're going to be like five people deep to try to get photos and things.

(upbeat music) >>Born and raised, class of '96.

I'm a DJ, DJ Worm.

So I grew up right around the corner here on Church Street.

So I was born and raised right here.

A lot of history, this state.

The Civil War was fought here and stuff.

>>This was a Confederate state for the most part.

>>Oh yeah, we're hell town.

>>Yeah, and this was a really rough little town.

>>I'm from the Shenandoah Valley here.

I have a lot of family history and pride in that history and being a Virginian.

Acknowledging the good, the bad, the ugly, and taking stock of that.

>>You know, I look around and I see all the people here.

And think about the way it was 35, 40 years ago, you would have never seen this.

You know, it was such a divided town actually.

>>And this town was extremely divided.

>>Yeah.

>>You can go a quarter of a mile from here to the, I guess it's south and see the plaque where massive resistance blew up.

Massive resistance was the closing of schools in Virginia, because they did not want the integration.

So Warren County Front Royal is historic in that in the 250 years.

>>That's where we, as black students, moved from Kreisner High School into Warren County and begin the process of integration.

>>Total integration, yes.

>>And life began.

>>Yep.

>>250 years, I mean, that's a long time.

It's not something I could fathom, you know?

>>We need to think about how far we've come, how far we can go, as not only Virginians, but Americans to improve upon our democracy, shore up our democracy, make it stronger.

>>We're here in a country full of people that only really know how to argue with each other.

I don't think anyone really has an idea of how they want to proceed forward.

There's nowhere to go when you don't agree with your neighbor anymore.

(upbeat music) I think society has a desire to like have.

>>We want to be on the news!

>>Exactly, just like that.

Like has this, has a desire to matter, I guess, right?

And I think that that's what society lets us feel like.

You know, that we can matter to each other.

>>As a whole, the community has actually come together.

>>We've got ways to go, but we've come a long way.

>>Slice of pepperoni.

Pepperoni.

>>This town here is the best around.

The community is number one.

There's fresh spring coming out of the mountains, you can't go wrong here in Front Royal.

No, we could call it now Front Royalty.

(upbeat music) >>I think people want to feel useful, like they have a purpose in life.

I could just hide up in my mountain and do, you know, keep myself happy.

But I come out because I want to be something or matter.

(upbeat music, crowd cheers) (upbeat music) >>Even though we fight like a family.

>>Yeah.

>>It's still a strong community.

>>Families fight, but they still love each other.

>>It's everything.

>>Yes.

>>Is our faith.

>>Yes, sir.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) >>I like to think of myself as a kind of ambassador for poetry because most people don't know much about poetry, or they've been taught it really badly or perhaps their teachers only said, "Oh, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman, those are the poets, and everyone else is dead."

My first insane passion was a football wide receiver.

I was pretty fast.

I had big hands, and I could catch.

I mean, I believed I could catch anything.

(upbeat music) But even as a kid, I liked to write.

My mom, whenever it was raining outside, she'd say, "Why don't you write something?"

And I thought, "Okay."

When you're a kid, everybody can tell you what to do.

But when I was writing, nobody could tell me what to do.

The best thing about being the Poet Laureate is that your name, of course, is broadcast pretty generously throughout the state.

There's a big event in which a number of writers have written in response to "The Declaration of Independence."

You know, as a person who's descended from people who've been enslaved, you know, reading on the property that used to belong to Thomas Jefferson, I mean, what more could you ask, right?

We've come like full circle, right?

In a certain kind of way.

(upbeat music) >>One, two, three, four.

Checking one, two.

Checking one, two, three, four, five, six.

(upbeat music) >>We often are completely oblivious to the past, and other times, completely obsessed with it.

(upbeat music) >>Yes, how do I pronounce your last name?

>>Seibles.

>>Seibles.

>>I know the spelling makes everyone think it's Siebles, but it's Seibles.

(upbeat music) I don't get as nervous as I once would have.

You know, I just want to make the poem ring as best I can.

You know what I mean?

(upbeat music) The project initiated when we were introduced to Monticello and learned that they had preserved some of the historic wood that came from the iconic tulip poplar tree that used to frame the portico at Monticello.

>>Jefferson loved tulip poplars.

They were one of his favorite native trees, and he said that the tulip poplar and the white oak are the Juno and Jupiter of our groves.

What's happened now is that you're seeing a tree that has grown out of the stump of the original tree.

And it's probably a seedling, but you know, we believe it's still the genetics of the original tree.

>>It gave us an opportunity to really engage with Jefferson in a very direct way and to bring those words to life in the current moment.

Every generation has to accept that challenge and rise to that occasion.

>>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

>>The phrase that I was taken by was self-evident, you know, that all men are created equal, of course.

And of course, this is written by a man owning slaves.

Many of the, quote on quote, founding fathers were people of great intelligence.

Jefferson was a brilliant man in a lot of ways, but it does stun me that something that is self-evident was clearly not self-evident.

(Tim laughs) >>With the tensions between celebrating the origins of this country, the founders of this country, and talking about their mistakes, as well as celebrating people who weren't necessarily seen as part of this country by the founders of this country, and also talking about their mistakes as well.

And that's a really complicated constitutionalism.

We want to have a constitutionalism where we did everything right from the very beginning.

And we knew what we were going to do, and we knew how to do it from day one, and we did it wonderfully, and we're here today.

And that's not my constitution.

I want truth.

I want hard histories, both celebratory.

It talks about how people fought against a king who would not represent them to found one of the greatest countries, I believe, still in the world today, on top of the labor of enslaved human beings and the land of native people who had their own governments and their own constitutions and their own views.

>>There's a line by Mark Strand which I think is, it fits for me and probably many other artists of whatever kind.

He said, "I stand on one leg while the other one dreams."

I hope someone walks away from me feeling that they have more faith in the possibilities of people than less.

That's all I would say.

That would be good enough for me.

There are some things about which there can be no mistake.

Take my blood, for example.

My face, this caramel color of my skin, which proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a collision between two worlds, Africa and Europe, which has come to mean betrayal.

Then commerce and travel beneath the same stars that still freckle the dark.

And cruelty, of course, disguised as necessity, which requires a carefully calculated confusion regarding whose life can matter, what should be remembered, and by whom.

Take my head, for example, which turns and turns but remains attached.

My heart continuing to work.

Its four rooms opening again, again, despite all that has happened, despite what was once declared self-evident.

Take my name, for example, how it is not African.

My lips, my hair, my hands, and whatever else seems undeniable.

Like this wind shuffling the trees, the cold back again.

Take the past, for example, with those well-known chains, those unknown hands cinched around our throats.

Take today, for example, with who-knows-what in the White House.

Take tomorrow.

(gentle music) (gentle music) >>You see the bald eagle everywhere.

You see it on coins, you see it on flags.

You associate it with our country, with who we are as a people.

Every time I've seen a bald eagle in the wild, it is one of those moments where you just stop and you're amazed.

You're like, "Oh my gosh, this is such a majestic animal, and I have the chance to see it today."

>>Buddy is a non-releasable bald eagle ambassador who is housed at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, and he's been with us since 2008.

>>I know, Bud, I hear you.

He's definitely one of our more talkative ambassadors.

We've got about eight ambassador animals, and they're part of education programs like you can see right now.

So we have some school group tours.

And our hope is that when they hear their story, they can learn how we can be better neighbors to wildlife and make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to other animals.

These are our raptor ambassadors.

We have some hawks, some falcons, some owls, and of course, Buddy our bald eagle.

(Buddy squawks) >>Now here's my favorite question.

How much do you guys think Buddy weighs?

>>128 pounds.

>>128 pounds, that's very specific.

>>150.

>>150, so he looks really big and bulky, right?

Buddy weighs seven pounds.

Bald eagles actually have over 2,000 feathers.

>>Here in Virginia is an excellent place to actually see these animals.

We have more than a thousand nested birds across the state.

We're very fortunate that today they're a very healthy population here.

>>They were on the endangered list.

They actually came off of the endangered species list in 2007.

>>Their population was very low.

They were on the brink of extinction.

So they're a true conservation success story in the sense that like we were very close to losing them.

There was a real possibility that, you know, this is our national symbol, and people would never see them again.

In fact, something that's really cool that recently happened is they've been designated as our national bird, which a lot of people don't know that that actually wasn't a thing until recently.

It took, gosh, almost 250 years now to make it happen, but it's finally, it's official now.

They are the national birds.

(upbeat music) >>So we know his exact birthday, which is April 27th, 2008.

But he wasn't exactly birthed.

He was hatched from an egg, so we call it a hatch day.

>>He kind of looks like a bobblehead.

>>We normally do something like smaller scale for the staff.

But this is a fun way for people, now that he's coming out of his enclosure, to get to see him in person.

>>Is the birthday when the egg is laid, or is it when they hatch?

When we celebrate their hatch day of like the day that they emerge from the egg.

(upbeat music) Thank you so much for coming out for this really special day for us.

We are celebrating Buddy the Bald Eagle's 18th Hatch Day.

Buddy, when he was just a hatchling, had something called avian pox.

Even though he was able to survive that disease, it left his beak misaligned.

In captivity, a bald eagle can live to their late 30s.

If they're very fortunate, maybe their early 40s.

So we hope that he still has many, many hatch days to come with us.

Everyone say happy Hatch Day, Buddy.

>>Happy Hatch Day, Buddy.

>>Awesome.

(upbeat music) The biggest thing I've learned working with animals, specifically at the Wildlife Center, is the impact that we have on them.

(upbeat music) This is our front desk area.

So really this is where a lot of the work at the Wildlife Center starts.

>>I'm just looking through turtles.

>>They're sort of like emergency dispatch except for wildlife.

We see close to 4,500 animals every single year.

And almost every single one of them is coming to the Wildlife Center because of human causes.

You know, they're hit by cars, they're colliding with windows, they're getting poisoned.

And it really just shows the extent of impact that we have on them.

This morning already, we've had a Virginia possum come in, a wood duck, another possum, and a turkey vulture.

What have we got?

>>So this is an American robin.

>>They're our wild neighbors.

It's our responsibility to be the best neighbors we can be to them.

What are we making here, Ben?

>>Veggies and fruit, and then a lot of worms today.

(upbeat music) >>Bald eagles primarily eat fish in the wild, but they also are scavengers, so they'll sometimes eat mammals as well.

So we alternate for Buddy.

So one day he'll get fish, and the next day he'll get rat or mice.

We have a very trusting relationship.

It's mostly food related.

He's good at shredding boxes, but sometimes he prefers them to be an easier puzzle.

(upbeat music) Perch, good.

I dropped it.

Last year, we treated 76 bald eagles.

And as amazing as it is, we've released 12 of those bald eagles, but that large number of 76, we unfortunately, they either passed or they had to be humanely euthanized.

Bald eagle populations are doing really well in the wild, but we still, you know, 76 is a large number of bald eagles to see in a year.

Buddy is that representative to show people how truly incredible these species are and why we should care and why we should want to conserve and protect them.

I think of ambassadors for the United States that go to different countries to represent our country.

We want to be able to have him as an ambassador for his species.

We knew about a month and a half, two months prior, we were asked to join US Fish and Wildlife for a VVIP event.

And we actually didn't find out until about like a week to two weeks before who it actually was.

(upbeat music) >>This is Dr.

(indistinct).

>>Buddy was a little unsure of a new person, but he behaved beautifully.

(Haley speaks indistinctly) King Charles was truly so kind and asked lots of questions about how their populations are doing now.

I was just honestly so honored to be talking about a topic, you know, that I care about so much, about what we do at the Wildlife Center of Virginia and how we care for these birds and why Buddy is a representative of these birds.

(upbeat music) Kindness and compassion for our natural world is what keeps society together.

(upbeat music) >>All those animals that we take care of, there's somebody that stopped, saw an animal that needed help.

And behind every animal that's released, there's someone who's donated, who may not have even seen that animal, but they just know our work and they're like, "I want to help support that."

Behind all this work that's done is kindness, yeah.

(gentle music) >>This program was made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by.

♪ Who belongs ♪ ♪ Is it you, or is it me ♪ ♪ Who belongs ♪ ♪ Is it just the brave and free, or is it more ♪ ♪ The meek, the mild, the caged ♪ (gentle music) (bright music) (upbeat music)