“I was a boy during the Cuban missile crisis, and we felt we were going to be blasted off the face of the Earth,” says David Speedie, who now lives in Westminster Canterbury, a large senior living complex on Pantops Mountain. Though the Cuban missile crisis was shocking, Speedie says it wasn’t as disruptive […]
The City of Charlottesville was almost all the way through the always-laborious yearly budget process when the coronavirus crisis derailed its plans. City Council held an online meeting Monday night—its first meeting in a month—to discuss the city’s deeply uncertain finances. The most recent projections, delivered by City Manager Tarron Richardson, suggest $8.5 million […]
For decades, Betty Pittman was a U.S. history teacher at Lane and Charlottesville high schools. “My mother taught half of Charlottesville,” says her daughter, Cookie Ferrier. But when Pittman was dying, of pancreatic cancer, no one was allowed to visit. While the casualties from COVID-19 continue to mount, the virus is changing even the […]
Before he was a tiger king, Bhagavan Kevin “Doc” Antle lived in the rolling green hills of central Virginia, at the Satchidananda Ashram, in Buckingham County’s Yogaville. Antle has become an international sensation thanks to his starring role in the Netflix documentary miniseries “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness.” The show portrays Antle as both […]
Chanell Jackson is home early. The local resident and mother of three had about seven weeks left on her six-month sentence in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail when she was transferred to house arrest in late March. She’s one of the 61 non-violent offenders who have so far been released with ankle monitors, as the ACRJ […]
Normally, Charlottesville’s Alcoholics Anonymous members sit in chairs in a circle. Now, they appear as squares in a grid. Coronavirus has forced much of American life online, and addiction recovery groups are no exception—they’re now holding meetings over Zoom instead of in their usual church basements. But social distancing is a tricky proposition for […]
“I’m going to kill a fifth during this lecture,” announced one student, holding a bottle of whiskey aloft as his classmates tuned in for a Zoom meeting of a UVA data science class. “I can hear you,” the professor said back. As coronavirus has swept the nation, universities across the country have had to go […]
Charlottesville has an affordable housing crisis: that’s not exactly breaking news. Local activists have been working for years to elevate the issue, and the city government has become more and more responsive. The most recent city budget devotes $31.2 million over five years to various affordable housing initiatives. (The city has announced it will […]
On March 7, Virginia’s legislature passed the Conference Substitute to House Bill No. 1537, which will allow localities to control the placement of their war memorials. In other words, our city will soon be allowed to remove the statues of Confederate generals from our parks. After the violence of Unite the Right in August […]
Down at the narrow end of East Market street, past the eclectic, slanting houses of the Woolen Mills neighborhood, there’s a little white chapel. It’s been there since Christmas of 1887, perched on the bank of the Rivanna River at the very edge of the City of Charlottesville. The history shows: the white paint […]