The New York Times has an article all about John Casey’s Pennsylvania cabin.
In Brief
Twin Oaks founder Kat Kinkade has died. To learn more about Kat and Twin Oaks, I recommend the Post’s 1994 profile.
Some nice pictures: Ghost signs of downtown (Via LoCoHistory) and Duncan Brown’s 1980 photos of the Downtown Mall.
Charlottesville native Will Frischkorn, racing for Garmin-Chipotle, is kicking ass in this year’s Tour de France.
The Hook calls the Progress on posting a conservative e-mail forward as a letter to the editor when the paper knew it was was plagiarized. Worse still, it’s a terrible letter; why publish it at all?
Council is looking at blanketing downtown with WiFi. I’d go with a mesh network—it’s cheaper, and my tests downtown show that it’ll work just fine.
VDOT is reviewing the timing of lights on 29N. The bad news is that some of these jammed intersections are probably just getting more traffic than they can handle.
The Sheltons’ apple orchard will begin producing hard cider, with the first batch expected to go on sale in the spring. Oh, hell yes.
Crime was down 3% in Albemarle and 7% in Charlottesville last year. Statewide the drop was 1%.
Courtesy of Google Books, “Rev. Edgar Woods’ 1901 Albemarle County in Virginia” (PDF), his 412 page history of the county. I’m excited about reading this.
If you’ve thought the tap water tastes funny lately, you’re not alone. It’s a harmless blue-green algae, and it’ll be gone soon. Heck, some hippies pay good money to ingest the stuff.
Is the heat here to stay?, asks the Progress‘ headline writer. “Oh, Robert, when will this cold snap end?”
Don’t sweat the smoke that’s hanging in the air around town–it’s from a big ol’ wildfire down in NC. I was in NC earlier this week and, believe me, things could be a lot worse here.
Albemarle has joined with Charlottesville in supporting a reservoir dredging study. The BoS vote was unanimous.
Yesterday was a busy day for rescue workers: one guy stabbed himself and one guy shot himself.
The BoS voted to continue providing transcripts of their meetings, with only Ken Boyd dissenting.
Bummed out about the lack of tomatoes due to the nationwide salmonella scare? No problemo: Buy local tomatoes.
I signed up for the Daily Progress‘ site at some point. And today I got my first piece of Media General spam, promoting the craptactular-looking DealTaker.com. It’s like they want people to hate them.
The Albemarle BoS is considering providing less detail in the minutes of their meetings. Because if there’s one thing citizens are demanding, it’s more opaque governance.
Dave Norris exhorts you to apply for these city boards and committees with openings. You could have a seat at the table on housing, transportation, planning and more.
MSN says Spudnuts makes the best doughnuts in the country. The Rolling Stones munched on ‘em when they played here in 2005, I have cause to know.
We’re demystifying the reservoir debate on Tuesday the 10th at 5:30pm. Brian Wheeler, Rich Collins and Doug Lowe will explain the deal with the water debate. Come!
There’s now a farmer’s market at Forest Lakes, Tuesdays from 4pm-7pm.
The local LexisNexis layoffs have begun. The Hook tried to find out more, but they’ve laid off their spokeswoman.
McGrady’s Irish Pub is banning smoking. Knowing it was a smoky place, I’d never been there — I’ll make a point of going now. (Likewise, I recent went to Court Square for the first time in years.)
I’ve been working on making Charlottesville News Headlines more useful.The new look is courtesy of Darren Hoyt.
The Downtown Mall is made of a million bricks. Really? At ~1,800 feet long, 65 feet wide, 3 bricks/ft2, I get 350k. Anyhow, it’s a lot.
Charlottesville Tumblr meet up this Friday, 7:00 at Michael’s Bistro. Conversation will presumably consist of short, unrelated bursts of comments.
Closed
The RSWA’s list of what you can and can’t recycle at each location. D’oh…I’ve been leaving them broken drinking glasses.
Here’s your day-before reminder: Graduation is this weekend, so take in the cat, bolt the door, and stay off the roads until Sunday night.
I’m fostering a mama cat and two kittens. They’re this cute. You should adopt them. They’re even two-for-one at the SPCA right now.
From the DP: “Authorities dug up the hot dog near the Cedar Hill Mobile Home Park, where they discovered he had lost…his bottles of ketchup and mustard, with which he was slathering himself so he could appear more delicious.”
Richmond has the nation’s top citizen journalism blogs and eightyone’s cover story is about hburgnews.com.
The Washington Post [hearts] Charlotteville restaurants, especially the commitment to local food.
The SPCA has gotten a $400k grant, acknowledging the success of their transition to being a no-kill shelter. Disclosure: CASPCA is awesome.
The Washington Post is all about C’ville coffeeshops, and presumably puts Anoop in the “insanely committed foodie” category. (Via The Hook)
It’s official: CVS is coming to the Corner. The landlord says that Plan 9 said they wanted out of their lease last year.
Prom, Foxfield, and the Dogwood Parade are all on Saturday. Stay out of town or, better yet, get downtown around 10:30 and watch the parade.
The USS Charlottesville was a Tacoma-class frigate launched on July 30, 1943. She served just one year in the Pacific before being turned over to the USSR, and then Japan.
Here’s a 1921 New York Times article about the creation of the Paul Goodeloe McIntire Greek Theater, as the UVa amphitheater is apparently properly known. It was a pretty big deal at the time.
This guy conducted a seven-month study of how accurate his local TV stations’ weather forecasts are. The results are sobering. I wonder how well our TV stations would do?
White supremacist, neo-Nazi, onetime cvillenews.com troll and pedophile Kevin Strom was sentenced to 23 months in prison today for possession of child pornography.
Another awesome DP headline: “Christmas arrested on child endangerment charge.”
Friday after Four Thirty: an impromptu Rock Band performance at the amphitheater.
The downtown kiosk is finally gone, available to the highest bidder. It started its life as a Nagle/Danielson newsstand, and never really found a viable use.
If you think the recent cold weather is odd, remember that it snowed this time last year.
It’s tough to tell which recent Daily Progress headline is more poorly written: “Man guilty in scooter death” or “3 charged in minivan killing.”
Peter Kleeman took a tour of the recycling sorting center, courtesy of the city. It’s interesting to find out how this stuff works.
This second Mall crossing is now permanent. How many crossings before we should stop calling it a “pedestrian mall”?
McIntire/250 interchange funding: $29.6M. The selected design: $35M. The forehead-slapping moment when somebody did the math? Priceless.
I love how gingerly the Progress approaches this story of some dopey, drunk student in a lacrosse helmet was hit by a car. It’s the last sentence that really makes it.
The Hook has a nice story about a guy who got his wedding band back after losing it 25 years ago. He lost it washing dishes at Ken Johnson’s Cafeteria.
The 2008 Film Festival theme: “Aliens!” That exclamation point is gonna wear thin pretty quick. (Via Rick Sincere)
The tough thing about selling locally-made from-scratch food is that nobody believes you. We’ve been desensitized by McDonald’s and TGI Fridays cheapening the concept.
Dave, Mandy and Parlie all ran the 10 Miler this morning. The Hook provides an aerial photo.
22 hours after the shootings, there’s an arrest and another guy wanted. A press conference will be held shortly.
UTS has set up their own bus-tracking system, which includes a website that works on all browsers, and even has a mobile phone version. UTS and CTS used the same vendor for their projects.
There’s reason to think layoffs are coming at Lexis Nexis. There goes 10% of cvillenews.com’s traffic each work day…
66% of Albemarle County employees live in Charlottesville or Albemarle. Most of the rest live in Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Waynesboro.
The 250 Interchange committee has recommended a design for the McIntire Road intersection. Wow, what a behemoth.
A study by a UVa student shows that buying food at the C’ville farmer’s market saves energy.
The BoS has set a $0.71 property tax rate for advertisement, setting the maximum possible tax rate. Let the debate begin.