The September 4 issue of The New Yorker features a brief “Talk of the Town” piece by well-known author Malcolm Gladwell (known for “Blink” and “The Tipping Point”) entitled “No Mercy.” Gladwell argues against zero-tolerance (”ZT,” as it’s known) school rules, specifically citing a case of attempted murder, explaining that ZT does nothing to deter bad behavior. He believes that schools have an obligation to look at each student individually and make the decision that best serves that child’s interests, rather than treating each matter as a worst-case scenario.
I mention this because, of course, of the recent and ongoing smoke bomb case.
In today’s Staunton News Leader, Alice Mannette reports on the boom in restaurant spending in Waynesboro and its correlation with Charlottesville restauranteurs considering moving over the mountain. Waynesboro doesn’t have particularly rich dining options (though I understand The Purple Foot is always good), so it’s an easier market to tap into than C’ville’s apparently restaurant-based economy.
I’ve long wanted to cultivate a healthy Springfield/Shelbyville type of rivalry between C’ville and W’boro. Maybe we can start it over food.
I’ve heard tell about gas prices dropping, but it’s been so little that I haven’t noticed. As it turns out, that’s just Charlottesville. I see on NBC 29’s Gas Price Watch page that fuel is $2.30/gallon in Waynesboro, $2.34/gallon down the street from me in Barboursville, and $2.43/gallon in Ruckersville. Here in C’ville it’s between $2.65 and $2.69 a gallon, which is a bit higher than the national average of $2.61 and significantly higher than the $2.30/gallon average in metropolitan areas across the nation. Our prices are, in fact, the highest in the state.
What’s going on? Did I miss a memo?
09/13 Update: Bryan McKenzie has a lengthy article on this very topic in today’s Daily Progress.
David Breeden, of Biscuit Run fame, died of heart failure yesterday. You either knew David for his soapstone sculptures — seven are scattered around public places in town — for his family by way of one of his seven gregarious children, or for his 30-year-running Wednesday night potluck dinner. The Breeden family recently sold the bulk of their property to a developer for $46.2M, which will become “Fox Ridge,” south of town.
The funeral will be at the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church on Rugby at noon next Wednesday. And, yes, the potluck will be held that night.
The running joke that is Psychiatric Solutions’ Whisper Ridge continues, Rob Seal reports in today’s Progress. This time it’s The Virginia Department of Mental Health doing the investigating, with the matters including a suicide attempt and two occasions in which police had to be called to deal with unruly patients. Mind you, they have something like six patients in there now — if they can’t handle a half dozen kids, I’m not sure how they ever hope to function at their full capacity of many dozens. But I get the sense this joint isn’t run by people who think that far ahead.
I must point out, because it’s so bizarre, that the full name of this state government organization is The Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, or “DMHMRSAS.” They actually call it that. I want to know if they spell it out, or if there’s some way that they pronounce it: “dumhumrasass” or something.
Several area environmental organizations have appealed to the Board of Supervisors for a growth target, Bob Gibson writes in today’s Progress. Representatives from Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population, The Sierra Club, and Citizens for Albemarle asked the Board of Supervisors to simply set a number so that we know when we’re done growing: 150,000, 200,000, 500,000, whatever.
They say — and I agree — that we should simply pick a target so we can plan ahead. If what we love about Albemarle that it’s so rural, then we’ll want a lower target. But if we agree that Albemarle should eventually resemble Manhattan, we’ll want a higher number. We’ve been planning the size of families for a couple of generations now. Can’t we plan the size of our cities?
Host Bill O’Reilly put John Casteen on his “On Notice” board on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” last night, The Hook writes:
Those remarks came during a segment about two cartoons run in the August 23 and 24 editions of the Cavalier Daily. Drawn by third year Grant Woolard as part of his comic strip Quirksmith, one depicts Jesus Christ crucified on a Cartesian x/y axis, the other shows a nativity scene in which Mary responds to Joseph’s concerns over a “bumpy rash” by saying “I swear, it was immaculately transmitted!”
“People should write letters to John Casteen until this publication is thrown off campus,” said O’Reilly. At one point O’Reilly began to read from Casteen’s letter to him. When he got to the first mention of Thomas Jefferson, O’Reilly stopped and said, “Thomas Jefferson would throw this publication off campus so fast.”
The Cavalier Daily is, of course, an independent student publication. There’s nothing that John Casteen can do no matter what they write. The paper’s ombudsman, Lisa Fleisher, addressed the topic a couple of days ago, concluding that there’s no need to apologize, but that the comics probably shouldn’t have been published because they’re just not particularly funny.
A Wal-Mart is opening right in the middle of downtown Louisa, WCAV reports, and Mayor Jim Artz couldn’t be happier. He describes it as being “like Santa Claus…coming to town.” Just one person interviewed seems to have any sense, the grandmother of James Grooms, who points out that Wal-Mart will put out of business every local establishment still hanging on. The mayor says, simply, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Wal-Mart’s business strategy is, famously, to move into economically hurting areas like Louisa, make their prices so low that they shut down the mom-and-pop businesses, and then they raise their prices again when they don’t have any competition. In exchange, locals get minimum wage jobs. I’m mostly blogging about this so that I’ll be able to link to my “I told you so” when the mayor gets run out of town on a rail in a few years.
The Board of Supervisors is evenly split on the topics of phasing and clustering, so they decided to not even hold a vote, reports the latest addition to the Progress lineup, Jeremy Borden. The two growth tools have been under discussion for years now, and would slow and focus growth in the rural-designated portions of the county. Dennis Rooker, David Slutzky and Sally Thomas supported them, while Kenneth Boyd, Lindsay Dorrier and David Wyant opposed them. It’s not clear what can or will happen from here, but Thomas wisely points out that “the public will have something to say about that in the next elections.”
Saga Communications (which bought the locally-owned Eure Communications in 2004) has launched a new radio station in town: 106.1 FM “The Corner”. Their website refuses to divulge what sort of music that they play, describing it only as “different.” A quick listen in the car revealed that “boring” might be a better term, but YMMV.
A dozen C’ville bloggers got together a couple of months ago, and now Jennifer and Marijean are staging a repeat. C’ville Coffee, Saturday the 30th, 10am. I’ll be headed to the beach for the week the day, but I’ll see if I can delay my departure by a few hours to join up with everybody. If you’re a blogger, a blog commenter, a blog reader (hint: you’re reading one now), or you’d like to take up blogging, do yourself a favor and come on out and meet the crowd. There are now exactly 200 Charlottesville blogs, so the crowd’s pretty big.
A Daily Progress article describes how Music Today is monitoring eBay and other avenues for after-market sales of tickets. This is in accordance with their terms of service, which states:
Tickets purchased through this site are intended for personal use by the buyer. We strictly prohibit the resale of any tickets obtained through this site for more than the purchase price. If you are found to be or we in good faith believe you are reselling, trading or brokering tickets for profit that you purchased through this site, we may at our sole discretion cancel all or part of your ticket order and all or part of other pending orders in your name and/or put all or part of your orders and all or part of your other pending orders in your name at will-call for pick-up only by you.
This peculiar restriction naturally will upset people who discover the policy when they are turned away at the door. One viewpoint holds that scalpers fulfill a market need for people who don’t, for a variety of reasons, purchase tickets through the official venue. The other viewpoint maintains that Music Today is welcome to set its own policies and the purchaser agreed to them when the ticket was sold.
What do you think?
The Proffit Road bridge opened up again yesterday, with VDOT and CSX officials saying it finished right on time. Which is true if, by “right on time,” they mean months later than advertised.
VDOT should win some kind of an award for the alternate route they had set up in the meantime. Reasonable human beings who want to get from 29N to 20N simply take Polo Grounds Road rather than Proffit, a detour of maybe five miles, depending on where you’re going. VDOT, on the other hand, used signs to direct people south on 29, onto the 29/250 bypass, then onto 64 to wrap around town, then off of 64 onto 250 east of town, and then finally on 20N. It’s probably twenty miles long.
This seems bad:
A University of Virginia student was hospitalized this week with what family members believe was an E. coli infection he contracted after eating a salad made from bagged mixed greens purchased in a local grocery store.
C’ville Market tells the Progress that one of their suppliers called them and had them put all of their spinach in a trash bag, and the supplier event sent somebody out to pick it up. This national outbreak of spinach-related E. coli just seems to be getting worse.
In yesterday’s Daily Progress, Jeremy Borden wrote about the Polo Grounds Road underpass, where the road goes to one lane while it goes under the CSX tracks. In the daytime a brief tap on the horn ensures that nobody is coming through, while a headlight flash does the trick at night. Traffic was increased considerably there while Proffit Rd. was closed, so the VDOT set up a temporary traffic light to handle the flow through the one-lane underpass. Rivanna district supervisor Ken Boyd was disappointed to see the light come down when Proffit opened up again, and is advocating for a permanent light there.
I drive through that a few times each week, as do many friends and family members, some of whom have done so their entire lives. I’ve never heard anybody complain about it. If there’s ever been an accident there, I’ve never heard of it; in fact, VDOT says it has a flawless record for at least the past five years.
A big ol’ fireball hurtled through the air sometime between 8:20pm and 8:30pm this evening, Morgan McLeod reports. It sounds crazy, but Morgan also reported last year’s fireballs, not to be confused with the 2001 fireball that turned out to be a Russian rocket falling to the ground.
Did anybody else spot this? It’ll be interesting to figure out if this was a meteor, space junk, or what.
Well-known and well-liked CHS choral director Jonathan Spivey has been accused of improper sexual contact with a student, Lisa Ferrari reports for CBS 19. The accusation was reported to the school by the student, and then reported to police. The police searched the school for evidence a week ago, and he has not reported to work all week, presumably indicating a suspension during the investigation. Spivey also serves as minister of music at Mount Zion Baptist Church. No further details have been made public.
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