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 […]
Three weeks ago on December 15, the Virginia Tourism Corporation awarded two contracts totaling $600,000 annually to the Martin Agency. The big dog of Richmond ad shops will be VA Tourism’s advertising agency of record. On the same day, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published allegations of sexual harassment and other workplace abuses at Martin from 17 […]
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 […]
‘‘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 […]
How did Richard Stuart, trustee of the Westmoreland County Volunteer Fire Department since 1999, father of three, and 2014 Virginia chapter winner of the American Academy of Pediatrics Child Advocate Award earn the attention of two United Nations Special Rapporteurs concerned with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly? As Virginia […]
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 […]
By Darnell Lamont Walker My black mother, a fairly consistent church-goer and wedding and funeral attendee, raised a black and happy heathen in Charlottesville through the ’80s and ’90s, not realizing how political that was or she is. On August 12, just before the terrorist drove his car through the wall of people, murdering Heather […]
Make them pay If the alt-right wants another permit to demonstrate in Charlottesville, why not charge a fee of about $75,000 to $100,000? The KKK rally cost city taxpayers almost 60 grand, and this last weekend will cost even more. If the city is accused of price gouging, it can always argue that’s just business […]
By Bonnie Gordon It’s getting really noisy here. In a few days local and national news cameras will capture pictures of a large Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Right-wing spokesmen say they demonstrate against a City Council vote to move two statues of confederate generals. But really, the demonstration will transform generalized white resentment […]
It’s one thing to seek refuge on Twitter if you’re the sort of the sour-toothed administration official who can’t take a joke. It’s another to drag someone through the courts for the offense of laughing at you. And yet, that is exactly what happened to Loudoun County resident Desiree Fairooz after she chortled during Jeff […]
Just so you know, I had always planned to make this the final edition of the Odd Dominion column. When I first started scribbling this occasionally amusing trifle way back at the dawn of 2007, I assumed that I’d keep writing it until I ran out of jokes, or material, or both. Now, I’ll be […]
Although it seems almost impossible to believe, this is the final column we will publish before the awesomely epic election of 2016. Yes, we will pen one more before the last votes are cast and counted, but it will not see the light of day until the polling places have closed, and the new president […]
Wow. Just wow. We have been following politics for a very long time (too long, perhaps), and we honestly have never seen anything quite like the insane gyrations currently rocking the presidential race. We always knew that the triumph of Donald J. Trump over a field of hapless Republican losers in the primaries was going […]
Believe it or not, election day 2016 is now less than eight weeks away, which means that finally—after a seeming eternity of arguments, attack ads, innuendo and outrageous antics—Virginians will get a chance to vote and, in so doing, put this interminable election season out of its misery. And so, as we gear up for […]
There’s a basic truism in modern American politics: The more people vote, the more Democrats win. This trend began in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. This, in turn, prompted Richard Nixon’s electoral “southern strategy,” which explicitly courted the racist Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic party, and eventually turned the party […]
If there’s one thing we love about penning this column, it’s making ridiculously premature predictions. And though we’ve whiffed a few (like that time we opined that Bernie Sanders would “be out of the [primary] race by May at the very latest”), all in all our batting average is enviably high. And so, as we […]
First off, before we dive into the current parade of political lunacy, we would like to pause for one moment and express our gratitude to Donald J. Trump, who has made this the single most entertaining political season that most pundits can remember. Of course, we should also make it clear that we fully believe […]
They say you can tell a great deal about a man by the company he keeps. As with almost everything else about Donald Trump, this rule of thumb does not cast him in a very favorable light. From his long-acknowledged business dealings with mafia bosses like Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno (“These guys were excellent contractors,” […]