I’ve noticed that nothing brings participants out of the woodwork here like a post about the Charlottesville school system. A whole new crowd got involved during the Scottie Griffin fiasco, parents who normally wouldn’t participate in blogs, and many of them continue to read. I think somebody — ideally a parent of one or more children in the C’ville public schools — could provide a great service by creating a blog about the ups and downs Charlottesville school system. I’d be happy to help somebody set up such a blog; contact me if you’re interested.
Also, Jennifer is hosting this week’s C’ville Blog Carnival, so if you’re a blogger that wants to brag about a recent blog entry or a blog-reader that wants something you’ve seen to be read more widely, e-mail her. And if you’re a local blogger and you want to have many hundreds of people descend on your site, please volunteer to host the carnival in an upcoming week.
Jennifer hosts this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival. Fourteen enjoyable bests-of are included, neatly summarizing what Charlottesville bloggers have been discussing in the past seven days. If you’re a Charlottesville blogger, and you want to host, holla.
It’s the end of an era, kind of: Brian Fox has sold Bodo’s, Dave McNair reports in this week’s Hook. But not to some chain or a developer; he’s passed the torch to a new corporation formed by the managers of each of the three locations. It was twenty years ago that the Fox family founded Bodo’s Emmet St. location, expanding to Preston and, at last, The Corner in the decades since. The 61-year-old Fox says he’s done, and new owners John Kokola, Scott Smith, and Connie Jenson still seem to be absorbing the new direction their lives have taken.
After AHS lacrosse player Nolan Jenkins died in what appears to have been an alcohol-related car accident, some parents want to see kids punished by their schools for drinking, Sarah Berry reports in today’s Daily Progress. Student athletes are required to sign a pledge that they will abstain from drugs and alcohol throughout the season, and it’s suggested that all students should need to do so. The School Board is asking for input from the public, as well as the board’s attorney.
I think giving schools the authority to punishing kids for what they do when they’re not in school is asking for trouble. Underage drinking is already illegal, as evidenced by the tickets issued to 27 AHS and WAHS students for doing so a couple of weeks ago. If a teenager wants to consume wine with dinner under parental supervision, that’s a reasonable and responsible thing; they shouldn’t fear being suspended for doing so.
The Jefferson Theater, recently sold to Coran Capshaw, is in its final week of business, and it looks like they’re trying to enjoy themselves on the way to the 15th. Tickets and refreshments are a buck a pop, and the movies in the final week are Groundhog Day, Fargo, Ghostbusters, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They wanted some cooler stuff — Jaws, Carrie, Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller, etc., but that stuff just isn’t available on reel-to-reel any longer.
Coran will have the theater shut down for the next year for some much-needed renovations and, when it owns, it’ll be a movie theater, but not a second-run movie theater. There’s no money to be made in that.
Cameron hosts this week’s C’ville Blog Carnival, tracking down sixteen local blog entries well worth your time, all from the past few days.
Next week Steve Whitaker hosts.
The Albemarle County School Board is now providing the audio of their meetings as MP3s. The audio up there now seems to be limited to the Thursday-night board discussion about student conduct policies, a prelude to the plan of having an actual podcast of all meetings’ audio beginning in a few months. I’ll be happy to see that next step. Why can’t Charlottesville be this innovative? (Via Brian Wheeler)
The Daily Progress reports that a “proposed 101-foot-tall building at 201 Avon St. could add up to 116 condominiums and 22,000 square feet of commercial space to downtown.” The architect boasts a record of environmental advocacy and, in their words, “focuses on the full ecology of the building.” From the article:
The building would be one of the first structures in Charlottesville to be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design specifications through energy-efficient construction, use of recycled materials and other green building techniques.
A small plane crashed late this morning while attempting to land at on the strip at Fred Scott’s Bundoran Farm, south of town near the crossroads. There was an explosion upon impact, followed by a fire. The two men in the the plane have died.
Bundoran is in the process of being sold to developers Qroe Farm — it’s yet to be seen what this crash has to do with that in-progress sale.
NBC 29 has the story, and The Hook is following developments.
3pm Update: Sean Tubbs, who’s really on his toes today, already has a podcast report from the scene.
10pm Update: The AP has more, including that the plane is owned by David Brown, of Hartford, CT. Brown was described as “regional director of Qroe Companies” by the Progress last month, so it seems clear that Qroe employees were the victims of the crash. Finally, The Hook reports that the plane hit some wires while landing, which is the apparent cause of the accident. It was pretty rainy at the time of the crash, which must have made for poor visibility.
In today’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin and Bryan McKenzie write that Qroe Companies founder and president Robert Baldwin and regional director David Brown both died in yesterday’s Bundoran Farm plane crash. The NTSB investigation is underway, and it seems likely that they’ll conclude that the crash resulted from the pilot hitting power lines during landing as a result of poor visibility.
Though Qroe’s $30M purchase of Bundoran has been described as a done deal, it’s my understanding that, in fact, the transaction had not yet been completed — perhaps that was on yesterday’s agenda. With the blow that the loss of these two men must represent to Qroe, I have to wonder if the Bundoran sale may may by the wayside.
8:15pm Update: The Hook points out there ain’t no overhead lines to be hit. There goes that theory.
It was one year ago today that the Charlottesville Blogs website was established, in order to aggregate all of the great blogs in Charlottesville. There were only maybe a dozen Charlottesville bloggers at the time: BK Marcus, Bill Emory, Brian Geiger, Colten Noakes, Duane Gran, Helena Cobban, Jim Duncan, Lafe, Polyglot Conspiracy, Ryan Chiachiere, Rick Sincere and Joe Stirt were all running thoroughly enjoyable blogs at the time. Granted, at first it was basically all Book of Joe all the time (face it, Joe, you’re prolific) but as the ranks swelled, the variety and insight represented became more and more impressive.
Today there are 174 Charlottesville area blogs, and I can honestly say that I really, really enjoy reading them. I couldn’t have forecast a fifteen-fold increase in just twelve months, and certainly I never would have expected that the quality of writing and insights would increase at the same rate. I believe I’d be happy limiting myself to reading only Charlottesville blogs, so impressive is the bunch.
Nothing particularly special happened a year ago — Charlottesville Blogs was just a way to aggregate all of the great blogging that was going on, that in some cases had been going on for years. But the explosion in blogging among y’all in the past year has been amazing, and worthy of acknowledgment. So I celebrate this arbitrary anniversary today. What it’ll all look like in a year’s time I don’t dare speculate.
Steve Whitaker hosts this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival, condensing a week of Charlottesville blogging into a sixteen-item digest for your reading pleasure. Not satisfied with the normal format, he’s invented a cool little numbering scheme.
Want to host sometime? (You should!) Drop me a line.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the city’s three newspaper publishers sobbing softly. This evening, classifieds-killer Craigslist expanded their city-specific listings to include hundreds more cities across the nation, including Our Fair City. There are only a half dozen listings at this moment, but that’ll number in the hundreds in a week or so, and in the thousands not too long after that. As the San Francisco Chronicle explained yesterday, Craigslist’s free online classifieds have left newspapers’ balance sheets in tatters, thanks to a simple, obstinate, profitable approach to their business.
Classifieds are absurdly expensive. Want to run a one-day ad to sell something in the Progress? That’ll be $44.50. Craigslist? Free. Media General is far too large and cumbersome of an organization to be capable of reacting to this incursion prior to 2008, or thereabouts — and that’s no exaggeration. Their advertising revenue is going to slump in the next couple of years, and that means life is about to become more difficult still for the Progress‘ beleaguered reporters.
Reader Charles Marsh sent me this: “Two weeks ago, around 10:00 on a Wednesday night, the Venable neighborhood was treated to intermittent blasts of exceedingly loud music which continued for an hour and a half period. The next day, we learned that the source of the music had been the new John Paul Jones arena, whose managers had run tests on the new state-of-the-art sound system. The cause for concern to Venable neighborhood residents is great. In every neighborhood meeting with arena planners over the past three years, our questions about potential noise problems have been answered with the promise that the arena would be acoustically insulated; noise pollution should be the least of our worries. But the music from a routine sound test in the arena could be heard loudly inside our homes and thus portends a long and difficult future for arena-community relations. The failure to keep this simple promise threatens the quality of life in a neighborhood that has been remarkably supportive of the universitys ambitious plans for growth.”
Did anybody else experience this? If the volume of concerts is going to be that loud, I think the resulting fight is going to be much worse than the Belmont/amphitheater volume problem.
Megan Rowe has an interesting article in today’s Daily Progress about mobile phone carriers’ efforts to expand their networks in the area to fill in the blank spots. There’s an inherent conflict there — I wish I had GSM service at my house, but I don’t particularly want to have a tower in my viewshed. Phone companies are getting smarter about it, though, hiding their towers in church steeples and attaching them to electrical towers, making greater coverage less contentious. The topography of the county is such that 100% coverage will never be viable with existing technology, though, so don’t hold your breath.
Former UVa employee Dena Bowers has sued the school for wrongful termination, Aaron Kessler reports in today’s Daily Progress. Bowers was fired last November for sending a private e-mail containing an NAACP analysis of the charter’s effect on medical center employees; the e-mail was subsequently forwarded by others to all classified staff at the College of Arts & Sciences. The firing was followed by a rally and much concern that this was a case of UVa trying to squelch staff concerns over the school’s change to a charter status. Neither the school nor Bowers will comment on the case.
UVa professor Wende Marshall was arrested for trespassing at the recent living wage sit-in, and the charge remained while charges against students were dropped last month. But yesterday the charge against her was dropped, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Progress. Prosecutors asked the judge to drop the case, saying that since the students weren’t charged, it hardly seems fair that she, who wasn’t there very long at all, should be convicted. That would seem to bring the legal end of this whole affair to a close.
In a press release, The Charlottesville Pavilion has announced the second half of this year’s Fridays After Five lineup, from July 7 - September 15. That lineup consists of The Beetnix, Tea Leaf Green, Nighthawks, Tommy Wood, Andy Waldeck & the C’villians, DJ Williams Projekt, Terri Allard, Sons of Bill & Jim Waive, Sparky’s Flaw, The Houserockers, and Indecision, in that order.
Y’all fellow geeks out there will appreciate this: Google Maps has considerably improved their satellite photography for Charlottesville and areas north. From just west of town to Keswick, in a rectangle clear north to Stanardsville, it’s possible to zoom in far enough to see individual cars. Thanks to Fred for the tip.
Councilors-elect Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro were sworn in at a brief ceremony at the courthouse yesterday afternoon, ten days before their terms will official begin on July 1, John Yellig writes in today’s Daily Progress. The two Democrats enjoyed a sizable victory over incumbent Republican Rob Schilling on May 2, and will attend their first City Council meeting on July 3.
Whisper Ridge Behavioral Health System was accused in February of human rights violations against their patients; in today’s Daily Progress Sarah Barry reports that they’ve avoided being shut down by paying $30k in fines and agreeing to change how they do things. The facility is in the business of treating minor teenagers for mental or drug problems, and its staffers are accused of sexually assaulting patients and human rights violations. They’re now required to maintain a 1:4 caregiver-to-patient ratio, which shouldn’t be too difficult with the 5-6 kids they’ve got in there now. Police are investigating the sexual assault allegations, with Capt. Chip Harding saying that “one investigator has been working on the case pretty much full-time since [February].”
Those of you playing along at home will remember that Whisper Ridge used to be named The Brown Schools of Virginia, when they racked up 107 state citations in just under two years, including human rights violations. Before that they were named The Millmont Center, and then they were caught with 50% of their staff consisting of utterly untrained temps and, again, sexual assault. Lest you think this is normal for such facilitations, the director of the state licensing agency described them as having “more violations than we have ever seen,” and that was back in 2002 before it got really bad.
I’m baffled as to why this place is permitted to remain open. I wonder what they’d have to do to get shut down. Beat a kid to death? Accidentally burn the place down and leave the kids in there to die? Kill, butcher and eat a puppy live on national television? With all of the competition in the local media market, somebody ought to go in there under cover, as a patient or an employee. That would be one hell of a story.
Last week we were under a drought watch. This week we’re hoping that they’ll wrap up construction of the “Evan Almighty” ark in Crozet. Jessica Kitchin reports in today’s Progress that the buckets of rain that have been falling for days now are enough to end short term drought concerns, though there’s no telling what things will be like in a couple of months. It hasn’t been enough to make up our 12″ rain deficit for the year — not even half that so far — but it’s enough to keep us in good shape for the next month or two.
Earlier this month somebody posted a restaurant review on Charlottesville-Dining that was not altogether complimentary. The anonymous contributor reported that s/he had gone to Mas, had a tasty dinner, and then became violently ill. The illness was labeled “food poisoning,” with the contributor claiming that others have had the same problem after eating at Mas.
Mas’ owner and chef Tomas Rahal spotted the review and was upset, and wrote Charlottesville-Dining creator Fred Telegdy, asking him to take it down. Simultaneously the original reviewer wrote Fred, also asking for the comment to be removed, judging it too harsh. The review was erased (as was, eventually, Mas’ very existence in the site’s database) but the e-mail battle between Fred and Tomas went on.
In this week’s Hook, Barbara Nordin steps in, siding with Mas on the basis that the rather serious charge of food poisoning wasn’t based on any medical opinion. (Nordin doesn’t identify the website or the restaurant. I’ve done so here because it’d be mere minutes until somebody identified each in the comments.)
There are a few lessons to come out of this interaction. The first is that it can be a real pain to run any website that takes public comments (though y’all have been sweethearts for years now). The second is that local businesses have got to keep an eye on area websites and blogs to be aware of when they’re being written about and what’s being written. And the third is that there’s another tapas bar named “Mas”, over in the UK — how weird is that?
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