Single vision: Steve Snider views the world through Golden Glasses

Steve Snider laughed when I asked him to list every Charlottesville  band he’s played in over the years. “There’s like, more than a dozen,” he said. “I’m not totally sure I can even name them all.” Among the most memorable are the jangling indie-rock of the Fingerpainters, the yelping keyboard-punk of Cataract Camp, the anthemic […]

DNC Postmortem: A week of eloquence and urban survivalism

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I came to Charlotte in search of rebuttals to the previous week’s nonsense in Tampa, as well as a bit of inspiration after four years of patience-testing political reality. This year’s convention lacked some of the drama and mystique of Denver ’08, which was to be expected. But […]

Live From the DNC: The Grand Finale

I’m going to save more in-depth analysis of the convention as a whole for a later post after I’ve had some sleep. But briefly, my impression of Obama’s speech is that he made a compelling case against the Romney-Ryan worldview. It had more substance than Romney’s soft-focus slice of apple pie, to say the least. […]

Live from the DNC: A chat with VA delegate Chris Dumler

I caught up with local delegate and Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler today in the convention hall. This is the first national political convention for Dumler, a 2009 U.Va Law School grad who just turned 27. Dumler, who hails from Scottsville,  says the Virginia contingent has been treated very well at the convention. “They have […]

Live From the DNC: Making Arithmetic Swing

As you may have heard, Bill Clinton knocked the socks off the crowd in Time Warner Arena on Wednesday night. I thought I’d grown immune to  adrenaline rushes from political speeches, but by the end of that one, when Obama materialized and the entire audience rose screaming, I was feeling it. I will even admit […]