Dave Matthews Band will play a pair of concerts in Charlottesville in September, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports. The concerts will christen the University of Virginia’s new basketball hall, John Paul Jones Arena, which holds 16,000 people. Concerts have been held in its predecessor, University Hall, but the acoustics were terrible. The performances will be held on Friday, September 22 and Saturday, September 23. It will be the first time DMB has played in Charlottesville since their 2001 Scott Stadium show, which was, in turn, the first time they’d played in Charlottesville since the 1996 Crash release party, which wasn’t even a full-band show. There’s no word on when tickets go on sale.
(Cross-posted from nancies.org.)
For all of us who live on Rt. 20 north of Proffit Road, we know that there are only two vaguely-direct routes home: Stony Point Road from Pantops, and Proffit Road from 29 N. (When all else fails it’s possible to circle way around and take Burnley Station or, on the other side of the mountains, Stony Point Pass.) So when an accident closes off Proffit, things get kind of crazy. On Charlottesville Tomorrow, Brian Wheeler reports that Norfolk Southern needs to replace the single-lane bridge over Proffit this summer, so the road will be closed for a month or two. That would be the lovely, though rickety, wooden bridge that spans one of the sets of tracks in what was once the town of Proffit.
We’ll all be changing our driving habits for a while, I suppose.
As of the 2000 Census, Crozet had a population of 2,820 souls. 1,316 of them signed a no-growth petition that was delivered to the Board of Supervisors last night, calling on the county to limit the Crozet population to 12,000 people, Brian Wheeler writes. Charlottesville Tomorrow has a podcast of the remarks made by the public about the Crozet Master Plan.
The Crozet Community Association is asking where the leadership is from their BoS rep, David Wyant. He was elected, after all, on opposition to growth, or so it seemed at the time. It would be interesting if newly-elected Rio representative David Slutzky turned out to be the Crozetians’ best friend.
In today’s Daily Progress, David Maurer has a sweet profile of Mildred Carter, 54-year veteran of Timberlake’s Drug Store. It opened in 1917, and Millie started there in 1952. She still works forty hours a week, and is an indispensable part of many patrons’ lives. And she’s always been nice to me.
When is David Maurer going to start releasing collections of his articles as books? I’d buy a dozen of each one.
For the first time in years, there’s nothing new in the City Council race, despite the pair of nomination conventions this weekend. On Saturday, Democrats nominated the only two candidates for both seats that are up (Rob Schilling’s and Blake Caravati’s), John Yellig wrote in yesterday’s Progress, and on Sunday, Republicans nominated incumbent Schilling, their only candidate, Liesel Nowak writes in today’s Progress. Conventional wisdom holds that Schilling’s best shot at reelection is to run alone, so as to be many people’s second choice, rather than having that diluted with another Republican.
Charlottesville Tomorrow provides the audio for the entirety of the Democratic convention and the Republican convention, while Rick Sincere provides a report from the Republican convention. And, as long as I’m providing audio, the musical stylings of Rob Schilling are available on his CD Baby page.
From here the general election begins, leading up to the May 2 election.
I’ve been enjoying reading a web-based biography, “The Man Who Freed His Slaves: A Narrative of the Life of Edward Coles,” by Nicholas Gordon. The portions about about the Coles and Carter families, once powerful names in the Charlottesville areas (and no slouches now), and Enniscorthy and its subsidiary estates will be particularly interesting to any local history buff. Chapter 2 and chapter 6 are particularly interesting in that context, providing some valuable insight on how Charlottesville and Albemarle were shaped in the 1700 and 1800s.
Some Region Ten employees are unhappy with the organization’s executive director, Philip Campbell. They are consequently circulating a heretofore unknown document, a 124-page report issued by the Massachusetts government in 1997 that comes to rather damning conclusions about the state’s Department of Mental Retardation, which was led by Campbell at the time. Two retarded men were tortured, one was accidentally drowned, one retarded woman was abused, and one man choked to death on his own diaper. In John Yellig’s story in today’s Progress, Campbell agrees that he’s ultimately responsible, but that the abuses were committed by low-level employees.
Region Ten employees spoke to Yellig anonymously, making clear that they really don’t like Campbell’s management style. Campbell admits that he failed to tell the Region Ten board about the report prior to his hiring, and that he likewise failed to inform them of a judge’s ruling that he’d abused his authority in trying to force a private treatment business to close, costing the state $1.5M in damages and leading to his resignation. The Region Ten board chair defends Campbell, describing him as just what the organization needs.
Does anybody have an electronic copy of this report? People ought to be able to read this for themselves.
The filing deadline having come and gone, we’ve got six candidates running for three school board seats in this, our first school board election. The Hook rounds ‘em up:
Sue Lewis, a retired financial advisor, who has been applying for a seat on the board for the last 20 years; Newcomer Charlie Kollmansperger, an ex-teacher, entrepreneur, and strong critic of ex-supe Scottie Griffin. (who famously told the board, “I resent being labeled a racist because me and my colleagues oppose cuts to P.E. and guidance.”); current board member, Ned Michie; former teacher, Vance High; director of UVA’s Upward Bound Program, Leah Puryear; and Albemarle transportation planner, and student tutor, (and former jury foreman in the Alston murder trial) Juandiego Wade.
Any endorsements or predictions of victory?
City Manager Gary O’Connell has presented the 2007 budget for Charlottesville, which proposes $121M in spending, an 8.45% increase over the current year, John Yellig wrote in yesterday’s Daily Progress. Partially offsetting the 14% increase in real estate assessments, the budget cuts real estate taxes by two cents — a thirteen cent cut would be necessary to maintain the current taxation level.
WINA has a new website but, sadly, it represents a big step back for a station that was once a local on-line pioneer. The only obvious improvements are that it’s a little prettier and there’s a hint at future podcasting (though the restoration of streaming, which they once offered, would be good).
There are three big problems. First, all old links to their news are broken, rendering every link on the web to every WINA story useless, leading to an ugly 404. Second, there is no way to link to any story on the website now — there’s not a unique page for every story any more, not even an anchor. Third, not only have the old archives disappeared, but there is no archive of the news being added on the new site. The result is that their stories can’t be linked to, and they’ve essentially excused themselves from participating in the web. I guess I’ll have to wait for other media outlets to carry stories and write ‘em up then, since I can’t link to WINA’s site.
Amazingly, there’s still no RSS feed, something that I can’t really fathom. Any news outlet without a subscription mechanism (RSS, RDF, Atom, whatever) is stuck in the mid-90s. I don’t know why they’d put a penny into altering their website without starting with a feed. So I’ve modified my screen-scraped RSS feed to work with their new code base.
Maybe they’ll go back to their old site. This one sucks. If you agree, you should vote in the poll on their sidebar and tell ‘em it’s no good.
(Via Jim Duncan)
03/09 Update: WINA tells me that the site’s not done — it’s a work in progress. Keep your fingers crossed that all of these things will be fixed.
A plea bargain has been struck between prosecutors and the 16-year-old accused of planning to attack county high schools, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Daily Progress. The boy is the oldest of the four accused of conspiracy. He’ll be sentenced April 5, for which he could spend nearly five years in prison. Court proceedings against the other three began yesterday and will continue on March 17, which may wrap things up.
UVa will raise their minimum wage from $8.88 to $9.37/hour, Melanie Mayhew reported in yesterday’s Progress. The recently re-established living wage movement at UVa has led to activists demanding that the school raise their minimum wage to $10.72, which they calculate as the lowest viable wage for an area resident. There are 809 UVa employees who learn less than that amount. The existing wage rate was established in December.
5:40pm Update: There’s actually a newer article in today’s Progress that expands on yesterday’s internet-only article.
East High Street. Long Street/250. West Main. Ridge/McIntire. From 4:00-5:30 each day, these roads are packed. High Street gets backed up clear past Meade, Long past Locust and sometimes to Park. Navigating Pantops during lunchtime and during evening rush hour is an exercise in patience. As the populations of the surrounding counties boom (Fluvanna, in particular), the number of people commuting to Charlottesville climbs correspondingly.
What are we going to do? It’s not possible to widen most of these roads — we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. The Meadowcreek Parkway and the 29 Bypass Bypass wouldn’t have any effect on this traffic. Public transit to and from population centers in Albemarle and the surrounding counties would be neat, but I don’t see it in the cards. The only solution that I see is a total overhaul of how planning works for the entirety of Central Virginia, creating viable centers of blue- and white-collar commerce all around the area, rather than centering on Charlottesville.
But that’s just one idea. What do you think will keep things from getting worse?
The rumors were true — Beth Duffy left NBC 29 to work for Gray Communications, The Hook writes on their blog. Her non-compete with NBC 29 prevents her from doing any on-air work, so she intends to work in sales.
The scandal over Region Ten Executive Director Philip Campbell’s background didn’t last long — he was sacked by the board of directors yesterday, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. Board members cited his management style as the reason for his dismissal, not the revelations about incidents that occurred under his watch nearly a decade ago.
03/15 Update: Yellig has a followup article today in which one board member expresses great shock at Campbell’s firing and a parent of a client says that the staff was wrong about this.
I’ll confess right up front that I’m a big dork and I’ve never seen American Idol. (The ads indicate that the hosts are jerks, so I’ve never bothered to watch.) I’ll further confess that I hadn’t really noticed that a local fella is really rocking each round, but on the Daily Progress blog, Laura Bland writes that 26-year-old Chris Daughtry, from Fluvanna, is the odds-on favorite to win. He actually lives in North Carolina now, but we take what we can get.
Sean McCord writes: “PVCC President Frank Friedman penned an editorial last week in the Daily Progress endorsing a Senate’s proposal (over a House plan) to divert money from the general fund into transportation. State Del. Vincent Callahan, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, thought this looked suspiciously like a smilar editorial written by Glenn DuBois, Chancellor of the Virginia community-college system, so he called DuBois to a closed-door meeting with House budget negotiators. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, ’shortly afterward, Mr. Callahan, a Republican from Fairfax, filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding Mr. DuBois’s records of telephone and e-mail communications with Virginia’s 23 community-college presidents.’
“Charlottesvillian and freshman Delegate David Toscano is quoted in the article expressing concerns about ‘bringing in a college president to suggest that he should not be saying what he thinks about the budget or anything else.’ Indeed!”
Those of us lacking subscriptions to The Chronicle of Higher Education can get the skinny from Bob Gibson. Unfortunately, Friedman’s editorial is not available on-line.
11:00pm Update: Friedman’s editorial is now available.
In the first Charlottesville homicide of the year, 18-year-old Gerald Washington was shot five times yesterday morning on Sixth Street SW, near Cherry Ave, Bryan McKenzie reports in today’s Daily Progress. Police aren’t naming the perpetrator yet, who immediately telephoned police to turn himself in. In his comments to WINA yesterday, Chief Timothy Longo indicated that it appeared to be self-defense on the part of the shooter, as a part of a dispute between a tenant and a landlord, after Washington brandished a knife.
10:45pm Update: A commenter points out that this is, in fact, a “homicide,” not a murder. It’s a fair point, so I’ve changed the terminology.
Media General, owner of the Daily Progress, has announced that their February revenues were up 4.2% over February 2005. Unfortunately for them, it seems to be a one-time hit, courtesy of ads during the Olympics on their NBC affiliates. Their publishing division is up just 0.8% for the period, and their on-line division is up by 36%, but 36% of nothing isn’t much. Classified advertising was up 9.3%, but the Craig’s List effect doesn’t bode well for that as a long-term revenue source. The Progress‘ is said to have had a “high single-digit increase” in retail advertising. The bad news comes in their outlook, in which they report lower-than-expected growth for Q1 2006.
This means the same thing for the Progress that it meant six months ago, last time Media General reported bad financial news — cost-cutting. And there are only two way to cut costs at a paper — reduce pay or reduce employees. The Progress has instituted a hiring freeze, leaving two staff positions unfilled and the existing staff stretching to make up for the shortfall. I have to wonder if The Hook or C-Ville will be able to take some market share from the Progress (to the extent to which they compete) if the daily falls much further, or if the Progress, by virtue of being our only daily, can lower their standards all that they want and not take a hit in circulation or, consequently, ad revenue.
The lack of rain has made conditions perfect for brush fires which, when combined with recent indoor fires, has made for a spate of blazes in the past few days, David Hendrick writes in today’s Daily Progress. Particularly noteworthy is the fire that broke out at Court Square Tavern at 5am yesterday, evacuating 500 Court Square and shutting the business down for at least a few months; the condos only suffered smoke damage.
What’s interesting about the Court Square fire is that Sean Tubbs, of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, tends bar at Court Square on the weekends. Sean has an extensive and introspective blog entry about the fire, about Court Square Tavern, and its role in his life — it’s well worth reading.
Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week.
Laura found some great classifieds in a 1997 issue of Christianity Today. Anne Metz is “officially in love with Coran Capshaw”. Ryan is in love with Jack Abramoff’s tricked-out BMW. Joe thinks everyone should have a personal FedEx account. Some guy drove clear from D.C. to go to Spudnuts, only to get there fifteen minutes late. Cory has advice for people with ADD. Zoe visited Richmond for the day and really enjoyed herself. Eric just retired from diving, and is trying to figure out what to do with his life now. David Murray says Morrissey saved his life. “The Doctor” thinks cyclists should be ticketed if they don’t follow the rules of the road. Lexi went to Miller’s and the service was so bad that she left and went to Marco & Luca’s. Dellis feels real good about the Redskins for the coming season, and is prepared to defend that position in great detail. Anoop’s Sprint DSL service sucks, but he wrote a few lines in Ruby to fix the problem. Jim Duncan feels good about the competition from the three other Charlottesville real estate blogs. Bob Gibson promotes the first meeting of “Left of Center,” a new group for young Democrats and the Dem-curious (I was there, it was fun). Rick Sincere is a mugwump. Elizabeth has returned from her week in Spain, and it was super fantastisch. Virginia Quarterly Review (my employer) is hyperventilating over their six nominations for the 2006 National Magazine Awards. Both The Hook and Outskirts offered near-real-time coverage of the semi-nude PETA protester on the Downtown Mall. Duane Gran spoke to IT Academy students about careers in tech. And Patience finds that the reason her neighborhood swarmed with cops this morning was because cows escaped from the Belmont stockyards.
I want to call particular attention to a series that photographer Bill Emory has been doing on his blog about the Woolen Mills sewage treatment plant. Bill called for the sewage composting facility to be enclosed, what with the terrible smell, posted the comments of resident Victoria Dunham at the Woolen Mills Neighborhood Association meeting with the RWSA, and mapped the change of the area from rural to industrial, complete with audio of one woman’s childhood recollections of the Woolen Mills area. I love seeing people blog about Charlottesville, particularly Charlottesville history.
I think I’m going to keep doing this round-up every week. If you’ve read or written a particularly great blog entry, please feel free to e-mail me about it sometime Wednesday or Thursday, and I’ll include it in the weekly blog carnival (as they’re known).
Two newspaper articles today describe new movies that take place, at least in part, in Charlottesville.
The San Francisco Chronicle writes about “Don’t Tell,” an Italian-language film:
In a chilling foreshadowing, the distress Sabina feigns in a sound studio later turns out to be all too real when she travels to Charlottesville, Va., to see her brother, Daniele (Luigi Lo Cascio), a college professor. She’s hoping to glean some understanding of her recovered family memories. But Daniele is more inclined to be a tour guide, going on at length about Thomas Jefferson’s neoclassical buildings, than sympathetic kin.
And Newsday writes about Donald Sutherland’s “American Gun”:
Avelino said that during their two-day shoot at the gun shop owned by Sutherland’s character (the story takes place in Charlottesville, Va., the Oregon suburbs and Chicago), Sutherland had to do a crash course in pistol assembly.
I wonder if either of these were actually filmed here. I imagine it would be difficult to fake UVa.
Sean McCord writes: “As part of PBS’s American Experience series, WHTJ will be broadcasting ‘Murder of the Century,’ about the murder of Stanford White in 1906. White, of course, was the renowned architect who over the redesign of UVA’s Rotunda after it burned down in 1895. C-Ville Weekly ran an article a few years ago on White, the rebuilding, and his infamous murder by millionaire Harry Thaw over White’s affair with Thaw’s winsome wife, Evelyn. I am looking forward to PBS’s documentary treatment of this story.
“WHTJ will be broadcasting ‘Murder of the Century’ on Monday, March 20th, at 10:00 PM.”
The six candidates for the two open seats on the Charlottesville School Board participated in a candidate forum held by the Charlottesville Democrats yesterday morning. Vance High, Sue Lewis, Juandiego Wade, Leah Puryear, Charlie Kollmansperger and Ned Michie answered three initial questions before taking half an hour’s worth of questions from the audience. The hour and a half recording is available on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.
Increased safety concerns at Buford Middle School, from students behaving violently, and the school board beginning to address the matter led a reader to send me some data about crime rates there. Police incident reports for 2005 for both Buford and CHS (544k PDF), which are public data, indicate visits to CHS every couple of weeks, with incidents ranging from runaways to bomb threats, “suspicious circumstances” to traffic accidents. Buford received less frequent visits, but offenses include assaults, drug possession, robbery and “fires not arson.” I count twelve assaults (simple and intimidation) for the year at Buford but, having nothing to compare that to, I don’t know how that compares to the average for Buford or for comparable schools.
Mayor David Brown has launched a blog. He writes that being mayor “gives me a chance to see and learn about Charlottesville in ways that I would like to share…I thought a blog might be a good way to communicate,” and also announces his goal of walking or bicycling on every street in C’ville while he’s on City Council. (That was totally going to be my goal if I were ever on Council, not that there’s any danger of that. Damn his creativity.) Charlottesville now joins Washington D.C., St. Louis and…uh…Reading on the list of cities with blogging mayors.
Consider this your reminder that the Virginia Festival of the Book runs from Wednesday through Sunday. Dozens of events are scheduled in that period, most of which are readings or presentations by a panel of authors. Notable participants include David Baldacci, Joan Biskupic, Amy Goodman, Hendrik Hertzberg, Elizabeth Kolbert, Warren St. John, Lawrence Weschler, Jeffery Deaver and Art Spiegelman. Local notables participating include Barbara Ehrenreich, Rita Dove, John Casey, Terri Allard, John McCutcheon, Gregory Orr and George Garrett. (Nearly) all events are free and open to the public. For the schedule, author bios, etc., see the Book Fest website.
Charlottesville School Board candidate Vance High has filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections over comments made about his candidacy by Charlottesville Electoral Board member Joan Schatzman in a recent Daily Progress article, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. From the article in question, which covered Saturday’s school board candidate forum:
Some audience members, who had not known much about the board members previously, left with strong impressions.
“I came here to be informed, to educate myself,” said Joan Schatzman, a Charlottesville resident. “I’m drawn toward Leah,” she said, “but I’m repelled by Vance.”
Electoral Board members are appointed based on their partisan affiliation, and there is no speech restriction that accompanies the appointment to the board. The SBE intends to take no action, as there is nothing for them to do. High says that he’s “not trying to void anybody’s First Amendment rights,” but that he thinks it’s unethical for a board member to talk about candidates.
I’m reminded of a candidate for local office several years ago who I blogged about after she was quoted by the Progress making a shockingly uninformed remark at a candidate forum. A year or so ago she discovered the blog entry, and she proceeded to send me vaguely threatening e-mail, demanding that I remove the offending Progress quote. Because I’m not a member of the media, she explained, I have no right to say anything about her or any other candidate for office. I refused, of course, and added her to my bozo filter in my e-mail client; she could be e-mailing me still, for all I know. (She’s taken to calling radio stations on which I’ve been a guest to complain about me being unethical, as evidenced by my heinous offense.)
It sucks being a candidate, because it means that total strangers may, for the duration of your candidacy, say horrible and critical things about you. It’s not much fun, but it comes with the territory, with everybody from Joe Blogger to Electoral Board members weighing in. C’est la vie.
When the transit center was approved, it required $6.5M in federal transportation funds. Last June the price went up to $10.5M, and last night Council voted to obtain another $400,000 in state and federal funding for the project, John Yellig reports in today’s Daily Progress. The price increase comes from a combination of design changes, weak soil, and the discovery of abandoned fuel storage tanks and old storm sewers on the site. Councilor Rob Schilling voted against requesting the funding, with Councilor Kendra Hamilton saying that doing so would prevent the building from being finished, which isn’t an option.
Walking by there yesterday, it looked like the digging is done and the bulk of the cement for the foundation and the walls had been poured. It looks a lot smaller than I thought it would — I don’t think it’ll be as out of scale for the area as I thought it might be, though the amphitheater and the huge new building on Fifth and Water have set an entirely new scale for the area in the past year.
This story from the Waynesboro News Virginian is awesome:
A student who defecated in a lunchroom bowl triggered a series of events that culminated in the recent walkout by four workers in the Fort Defiance High School cafeteria, The News Virginian has learned.
[…]
It all began Feb. 9 when two Fort students — including a guidance counselor’s son — bet a third student $15 he would not defecate in a bowl.
You can see where this is going, but you’ve got to read it anyway.
If this were in Charlottesville, I’d be outraged. But the fact that it’s in Augusta renders it merely hilarious. Extra bonus points to the News Virginian for the title (”Poop prank leads to uproar” — I love the alliteration) and the great word substitution in this quote:
“This is the first I’ve heard of the [feces] incident,” Shiflett said. “I hope you have your facts straight.”
Who can come up with some alternate headlines?
Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week.
Bob Gibson memorializes his daughter Stella’s dearly departed chicken, Funky. Michael continues his ongoing story of his recent week in Spain. Cory tells us all about Buddhist filmmaker Takashi Miike. Patience is “pissed off that two of [her] kids live with the threat of violence every school day”. Anoop Ranganath ate an apple and it really hurt. Mike relates the story of a friend who is the literal poster child for UVa’s financial aid program who just left school in his fourth year because he can’t afford tuition. Bill Emory provides the history of one particular piece of land in the Woolen Mills, tracing it back to 1870. Scott Johnny had one of those small-town moments that are obvious to locals, shocking to newbies. Sally’s neighbor on Stribling has feral pit bull puppies that wander around the street foraging for food, and animal control won’t do anything. Maiaoming names five blogs she’d create if only she had the time. Jennifer, inspired by Anne Metz’ recent Starlight Express trip, took the shuttle herself, and judges it so-so. Ryan is a little freaked out by Mark Warner’s visage. Mayor David Brown is digging the changes at Reid’s. (Side note: I once saw a candidate for office take a swipe at Reid’s; the audience turned on him at that very moment.) Tim McCormack consumed the most disgusting-smelling fruit in the world, the durian, and lived to blog about it in excruciating detail. Jordan Conley, new to town, doesn’t know what to make of the crazy guy’s signs on Park Street. And, finally Bryan McKenzie figures that neither Vance High nor Joan Schatzman come off well in their spat.
This week’s reading was great. I really liked all of the people writing about things of local interest. If you’ve read or written a particularly great blog entry recently, please feel free to e-mail me about it sometime Wednesday or Thursday, and I’ll include it in the weekly blog carnival when I put it together late Thursday.
I’m a fan of downtown Staunton, particularly its signature clock tower — it gives their downtown a certain iconic flair that downtown Charlottesville lacks. In this week’s Hook, Dave McNair has a nice piece describing the history of the Clock Tower Building on Beverley Street, built in 1890. The clock itself still operates with most of its original parts from when it was built over 120 years ago, and requires just a cleaning and a greasing once a year.
City Councilors Rob Schilling and Blake Caravati are waving their penises about again, John Yellig writes in today’s Daily Progress. (To be fair, that’s my metaphor — no need to blame Yellig for that.)
At a March 9 work session, Councilor Kevin Lynch told Schilling that it was tough to cut the real estate tax by 4% last year, and that Schilling would know that if he’d bothered to participate in the budget process. Schilling, on the paranoid side, responded: “Oh, so we have a secret little cabal going on behind the scenes. We’re dealing with the city manager outside of the public eye composing a budget. I’m glad that you admitted it because I knew that was what was going on.”
At a work session yesterday, Caravati went after Schilling for the comment, saying: “It’s an extremely serious charge, and it has political penalties to it, for sure, and actual criminal penalties. To be accused of criminal behavior and dishonesty is beyond the pale of anything that I’ve ever been accused of in my now eight years of service. Unless this type of thing can be proved and substantiated, I think that a retraction is definitely in order.”
Schilling’s not returning the Progress‘ phone calls, so it’s not altogether clear what he’s talking about. But I’m calling up now that if there’s a vast left-wing conspiracy, I want in.
03/25 Update: Oh, nevermind. Schilling claims that he never said it, audio recording and a half dozen witnesses notwithstanding. Besides, he thinks that this secret cabal only has two people in it — Lynch and City Manager Gary O’Connell. It’s very exclusive.
A UVa committee has conducted a survey of 257 students and their beliefs about the honor system, and the results are disappointing, Melanie Mayhew reports in today’s Daily Progress. Only 39% of respondents said that they would be willing to report a clear violation of the honor code. Half of respondents are unwilling to report because they simply don’t want to be involved with it. It should be noted that the respondents are self-selecting — the survey was sent to 1,000 students, and only 257 replied.
03/29 Update: In their lead edit today, The Cavalier Daily takes aim at The Daily Progress for their editorial condemning UVa students.
Sometime when I wasn’t looking, these antennae sprouted up on many of the traffic lights around Charlottesville. They look like flat panel directional antennae (here’s an example), though I don’t know what the city would be doing with them, least of all in tandem with traffic lights. I’ve got a picture of one in context, at the corner of JPA and Main, too. Does anybody have an idea of what these are for?
David Sewell writes: “Driving home from work tonight, I idly tuned the AM dial to 1450, promised home of WVAX, Air America in C’ville, which has been emitting nothing but faint static since reported interference problems took it off the air following an abortive first launch in January. Now, loud and clear, some sort of generic R&B song was playing. Hmph, I thought, Saga Communications has given up on Progressive Talk for liberal Charlottesville. But just as I reached for the dial, the song was replaced by an announcer proclaiming that yes, this was WVAX 1450, completing FCC-mandated signal testing, and that Real Soon Now it would be Charlottesville’s station where ‘the left is right!’, with the likes of Randy Rhodes, Al Franken, and Ed Schultz. For what it’s worth, its signal stayed with me all the way into White Hall, suggesting that 1450 is at WINA-level wattage rather than the more feeble level they were broadcasting at in January. Is WVAX here to stay this time?”
Today is the fifth anniversary of cvillenews.com. Last year I celebrated by moving from PostNuke to WordPress. This year I’m celebrating by doing nothing at all. Woo!
Some stats. There have been 1,445 front-page articles over the years, and 14,820 comments. That’s an average of an article every 24.2 hours and one post every 2.4 hours. There are an average of 3,031 readers each day, or about 13,000 unique visitors each month.
Next year let’s celebrate by making cvillenews.com useless with a dozen locally-oriented blogs that are better than this one, and then we can shut ‘er down.
Two months after an alleged school bomb plot was discovered by police, the trial is probably over and the kids have probably been found guilty or innocent of something. But nobody knows for sure, because the judge has placed a gag order on the proceedings, with Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos going so far as to threaten to track down the sources for reporters who print any details of the case, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Daily Progress. It’s not known who is affected by the gag order, who requested it, or if we’ll ever find out if there really was a bomb plot. One local trial lawyer not involved with the case thinks she knows what’s going on:
“They sealed it because there is nothing. This is much ado about nothing,” lawyer Deborah C. Wyatt said. “It is my information that there is zero here other than talk. Nothing physical. No bombs, no explosive devices. Only e-mails.”
The Charlottesville Pavilion announced their season lineup yesterday, and it’s a humdinger. Scheduled acts include Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis, Merle Haggard, Bruce Hornsby, The Neville Brothers, Dr. John and James Brown, among others. Jane Dunlap Norris has the story in today’s Progress.
They also announced the year’s Fridays After 5 lineup. It looks very much like past year’s lineups, though I’m particularly happy to see the Hacks opening up the season and the inclusion of Thompson D’earth and Agents of Good Roots.
In today’s Daily Progress, Liesel Nowak outlines the legal debate over the bomb trial gag order, describing the case as starting with a bang and ending with a whimper. But the debate may be irrelevant—both The Hook and The Richmond Times-Dispatch are reporting this evening that there is, in fact, no gag order. That’s how we now know that the 15-year-old in the case has been found guilty of two counts of conspiracy, and will be sentenced in two weeks.
Hawes Spencer writes:
“There’s no gag order,” says a deputy clerk in the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court, after allegedly conferring with Susan L. Whitlock, judge in the high-profile case. The deputy clerk declined to give her name, and the similarly reluctant clerk of the court, Alice Price Waddy, confirmed the facts for a reporter.
Carlos Santos reports having the same experience—the clerk wouldn’t name herself, and wouldn’t provide any documents about the case.
Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week
Anoop Ranganath reviews his dining-out experiences of the week. Let me just say that I’m jealous that he eats out so much. Orbit good. Mellow Mushroom and Sticks eh. Old Virginia Fried Chicken good. Martha’s too slow. Tokyo Rose service atrocious. Sheetz’s nachos awesome. Anoop promises more each week.
Colton Noakes pleads with you, for the love of all that is good and holy, to rent his apartment. He even put up a web page about his Monticello Ave. pad.
Andrew Hersey is freaked out that people from his past keep showing up in his life again. His theory? Good karma.
Jennifer doesn’t understand why Democratic Council candidates don’t have their yard signs out yet. Former party chair Lloyd Snook replied explaining that Schilling broke the no-signs-before-the-Dogwood-Festival deal and caught the Dems unawares.
Dave Norris is worried that the revitalization of Cherry Avenue will destroy its social, historical, and cultural fabric. Smart guy that he is, he proposes a solution involving a Community Development Corporation working with residents and developers to lift up the neighborhood intact, rather than pricing out the lifelong residents.
Bill Emory looks back at the Woolen Mills’ sewage problems in 1917 and doesn’t see that much has changed. Because he’s Bill, he includes an awesome photo that’s also pretty gross—the RWSA outlet into Moores Creek with a sketchy-looking foam on top of the water.
Joe Stirt is amazed by a crazy-cool service that tracks, in real time, what songs are playing on the radio. yes.com tracks some area stations, including WNRN which is, at this second, playing Nelly’s “Grillz.” If it weren’t for the internet, I would have to suffer the indignity of walking across the room and turning on the radio to find that out. WNRN’s top 5: Foo Fighters’ “No Way Back,” Nada Surf’s “Imaginary Friends,” Gorillaz’ “Dare,” Flyleaf’s “I’m So Sick,” and Blue October’s “Hate Me.” I’ve never heard of 3/5 of those artists.
Cory Capron had a run-in with a bobcat at 1:30 yesterday morning. I’m guessing his whacking stick isn’t going to do the trick; I’d best loan him my rifle.
Brian Wheeler provides the audio of the first City Council candidate forum, held a few nights ago by the 10th & Page Neighborhood Association.
And, finally, “Patience Crabstick” (I love that pseudonym) visited a health food store in town only to have a woman recite poetry when the check-out line was held up. Apparently she wasn’t crazy—she just wanted to read her poem. A poem about vegetables. Patience doesn’t report if it was any good.
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