Saturated Fat

Hazardous waist Super-sizes and not-so-super exercises have born one nation under lard It’s a fat, fat world. More than 60 percent of all American adults are categorized as overweight or obese. And Virginia is expanding right in line with the trend. According to the Virginia Department of Health, 36.7 percent of adult Virginians are overweight […]

Fishbowl

Artists to Zion: Deliver us Will performance come to the house of God? In the year of the building’s 119th anniversary, Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street stands vacant, and what fills it will likely stir conversation in the coming months. The Mt. Zion congregation held its final service in the building on May […]

Fishbowl

Deadline blues Hawkins fails to file, Mitch marches on Blair Hawkins made a last minute decision not to deliver his Republican nomination speech at the local party’s mass meeting on June 2. For one thing, he missed the filing deadline of May 27 at 7pm and couldn’t be nominated, period. For another thing, other than […]

War no more

“CCPJ provides a way for those in our community who care about peace and justice to join with kindred spirits,” says CCPJ steering committee chair Bill Anderson, above. “As our name suggests, we in CCPJ believe that peace and justice are inextricably intertwined. When we work for one we promote the other.” Twenty years ago, […]

Fishbowl

Charging elephants Republicans stand up for John Q. Public Tax day makes everybody cranky and on Tuesday, April 15, Charlottesville Republicans were no exception: Prominent elephants got down- right snippy about the Democratic establishment. In separate instances, Councilor Rob Schilling and GOP stalwart Jon Bright declared that City Council couldn’t care less about the little […]

Meet the mouth

Liberals like to think, conservatives like to have their opinions thrown back at them,” said cartoonist and writer Ted Rall during his speech to a packed auditorium in the Albemarle County Office Building on Wednesday, March 26. The wild cheering that followed this proclamation, however, seemed to contradict Rall’s claim. The Charlottesville Center for Peace […]

Best local coffee

After water, coffee is the world’s most popular beverage. For most, it’s also a way of life. “Long before the great coffee craze, I was born and raised in an era when it was totally natural for my family to serve us kids espresso after dinner,” says Tony LaBua, owner of the Java Hut and […]

What they don’t tell us

One of the most striking aspects of life in Third World countries is information starvation. Because they’ve learned not to trust their state-controlled media, people in authoritarian backwaters carefully debrief newcomers. What’s going on abroad? What’s going on here? Did you get any foreign newspapers or magazines through customs? News is a component of infrastructure […]

Artistic Choices

Budding art historian Aviva Dove-Viebahn is articulate, attractive, friendly and self-assured. She smiles readily. She makes a good first impression. None of that, of course, is very extraordinary. Unfairly or not, one expects a certain polish from the daughter of Rita Dove, a former United States poet laureate under Bill Clinton, and Fred Viebahn, an […]

Dog eat dog

Five pit bulls were euthanized during the last week of January at the Charlottesville SPCA. The dogs would only respond to their owner, who had just been arrested for murder in connection with a Federal drug charge. “Not only were they trying to kill other dogs,” says SPCA spokeswoman Carolyn Foreman, “but they were trying […]