Full-body Spandex suits, skates with weapon-like blades, Bonnie Blair and maybe Dan Jansen – this is what "speedskating" means to most of us. To some 15 members of the Blue Ridge Speedskating Club who show up at the Charlottesville Ice Park every Sunday morning, however, it means much more. It was not an easy task […]
About 12 years ago, I had a twinkling of an inkling of what "Beatnik glory" might mean, of what it might mean to be singingly silly. I belonged to a jazz-and-poetry group started by Gregory Foster – formerly a cowboy, carnival worker, journalist, roadie for a famous jazzman, Miles Davis’ cab driver, Thelonius Monk’s chess […]
Wherever waters gather, be it bay or brook, monitors will soon don their hip boots to mark the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Charlottesville resident John Murphy hasn’t yet picked his site, but knows he’ll be somewhere in a "riffle" – the bubbly part of a stream – counting bugs. Between October 18 […]
Straying from the usual despairing discussion of water, the subject of Wednesday’s October 2 meeting among the Board of County Supervisors brought to light an entirely different kind of drought–the State budget. Piedmont Virginia Community College prides itself on making higher education accessible to everyone, but while its enrollment keeps rising (June 30 marked the […]
When the words Paganism and Wicca come up, lots of folks picture sacrificial chickens and chanting nymphs frolicking in a forest. And many also give the Devil his due. But Beelzebub was nowhere to be found on Saturday, September 23, at the fourth annual Pagan Pride Day Festival. With nary a dead chicken nor frolicking […]
"I think we’re in a crisis,” City Manager Gary O’Connell deadpanned to City Council at its meeting on Monday, September 16. It was an uncharacteristically drastic statement for the understated O’Connell, reflecting the panic in City Hall as Charlottesville rapidly dries up. Last week City Council approved a series of harsh water restrictions [See Extra!, […]
The $10 million principle of the thing After tears, jeers and more tears, WVIR is ordered to pay up for its cracked reporting “Thirty-some years of my ambition to make something out of my life has been destroyed,” Sheckler wrote in court documents prior to the trial. “I have suffered so much mental anguish over […]