I had lived in Charlottesville for 10 years almost to the day before I saw the inside of City Council chambers. I’d paid my gas bill in person once or twice. I think I bought a trash sticker in 2012. But I’d never even been upstairs at City Hall before. If you’d asked me at […]
A few years ago, Molly Conger was just your average Charlottesville resident who, to be honest, didn’t pay much attention to politics. Now she’s got more than 20,000 Twitter followers hanging on her moment-by-moment reports on local government meetings, which she’s been live-tweeting since December 2017. In this issue, Conger, in the first of what […]
Last week, Albemarle County Schools superintendent Matt Haas declared a ban on Confederate, Nazi, and other imagery associated with “white supremacy, racial hatred, or violence” from the school system’s dress code. A few days later, the city quietly celebrated Liberation and Freedom Day, which City Council established just two years ago, to commemorate the arrival […]
Countless studies have found that parents are less happy than non-parents (who, after all, are free to spend their weekends sleeping late, pursuing activities they enjoy, and having uninterrupted conversations). But American parents, it turns out, have got it particularly bad. A 2016 study found that the “happiness gap” between parents and non-parents here was […]
In 1986, a young lawyer and UVA grad named Rick Middleton left his job at a national environmental nonprofit in D.C. and moved to Charlottesville. With two other lawyers, a three-year grant, and a small office on the Downtown Mall, he established the first environmental advocacy organization focused on the South, determined to use the […]
A 75th wedding anniversary is so rare that the U.S. Census Bureau keeps no statistics on it, Mary Jane Gore tells us. Estimates are that fewer than 0.1 percent of marriages make it to 70 years or more. So this Valentine’s Day week, we tell you about Bill and Shirley Stanton of Afton, who celebrated […]
February is Black History Month, a time when schools across the country dutifully trot out lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. In 2015, a minor firestorm ensued when Orange County High School students connected the civil rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter movement in a school performance, and an […]
“If Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence,” my 7-year-old asked me the other day, “why did he have slaves himself?” The notion that “all men are created equal” was a radical and noble idea, and it still is, if you take “men” to mean “human beings.” But back then, as I struggled to explain […]
Nearly four weeks in, the federal government remains at a standstill over the president’s maniacal demand for $5.7 billion in American taxpayers’ dollars to erect a giant wall. But local government, at least, is raring to go. “Eighty percent of what we do is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Republican Delegate Steve Landes tells […]
Start reading about the opioid epidemic, and there’s no shortage of staggering statistics. Drug overdose has become the leading cause of death in the U.S. for those under 50, surpassing deaths from firearms, car accidents, homicides, or HIV/AIDS. In 2017, the number of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. reached a record high—70,237, more Americans […]
Although technology may, overall, be destroying our collective attention span, the internet has also brought us new ways of telling stories. And the startling popularity of podcasts is proof that many of us are still hungry for a slower kind of media, one that pauses to examine the esoteric, interesting, and complex stories that don’t […]
Among the many Christmas rituals going on at this time of year is the Mexican tradition of las posadas (literally, “the inns”), which commemorates Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in Bethlehem. In the nine nights leading up to Christmas, families, friends, and neighbors go on a candlelight procession, knocking on doors and asking for […]
By Bonnie Gordon For almost two years, Charlottesville has felt like Act IV, Scene 1 of Macbeth. So when I saw Black Mac, a radically black take on Shakespeare’s play about the violent hauntings of the past, it felt like a staging of collective memory, trauma, power, and space. Directed by 23-year-old black Oberlin student […]
By Herbert Braun I’m tired. I live in our town, this partly bucolic mid-sized college town. I ride my bicycle to work, three miles down Rugby Road, on lovely tree-lined streets, courteous drivers sharing the road with me. And on many days I can just stay home and work. I read books and articles, do […]
The first time I met Kelly Cox, she was sitting on a green exercise ball with a baby in each arm. She bounced both babies on her knees while two moms in front of her held their yoga poses. Cox, co-owner of Bend Yoga, offers classes for moms from pregnancy to post-birth, as well as […]
By Sean Lyons The impending retirement of Cathy Train, the long-time president of the United Way of the Thomas Jefferson Area, presents an important opportunity for one of the region’s most prominent philanthropies to better meet the needs of the community and embody what it claims is one of its core values: striving to be […]
It’s disappointing that the Virginia legislature didn’t see fit to advance even a sliver of new restrictions on guns, militias and racist, reactionary mayhem during the current session. Not a single bill drafted in response to August 12 made it through for consideration in the other chamber, nor did some 60 gun control-related bills. Plainly, […]
“Catnip for reporters.” That’s how Metallica fan and Democratic newcomer Danica Roem described her winning campaign in Virginia’s 13th District last November. She is, after all, the transgender woman who defeated the anti-LGBT incumbent Bob Marshall. Nevermind that her platform was all about lines of stalled traffic and not lines outside bathroom stalls. The simple […]
The high-profile sexual harassment cases continue to pile up and I’m reminded of the Emerson String Quartet. The world-renowned musicians can hold audiences rapt with the passion and delicacy of their playing. And yet without fail, when they rest their bows between movements the concert hall will erupt in a chorus of coughing and sputtering […]
Letters to the editor Childish board behavior to blame The article “Secret history: Is the Charlottesville historical society a thing of the past?” [October 25-31] by John Last should have been on the opinion(ated) page as it does not qualify as a news article. Starting off the article by referring to Steven Meeks as an […]
‘‘You’re expecting too much from people,” my friend Lisa explained to me. “We’re mere animals.” I had been pacing the sidewalk rehearsing the details of the Harvey Weinstein story—at press time, following investigative reports in the New York Times and the New Yorker, more than 50 women have alleged he sexually harassed, abused and in […]
On the path to planetary destruction For those of us concerned that the race to completely destroy the Earth’s biosphere might be behind schedule, not to worry. This year’s worldwide forest fires, heat waves, droughts and historic-level hurricanes could prove to break all records. According to the National Fire Information Center as of September 15, […]
Permanently drape the statue My wife, Jill, and I have longtime ties to Charlottesville, so we watched with horror and sadness as the white supremacist violence played out on the news. Last weekend we were back downtown and could not help visiting the park where the statue of General Robert E. Lee stands shrouded in […]