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 […]
The first sign of change at Spencer’s 206 is the pert display of DVDs at the register. They’re the right kind of DVDs, of course—Dylan’s Don’t Look Back, the Heads’ Stop Making Sense—but they signal the sort of infusion of new merchandise that says “reinvestment.” Then there’s the tidier aspect of the Water Street shop—actual […]
Books and writers certainly get their due starting at about this time of the year as the Virginia Festival of the Book ramps up. Local authors who have been holed away surface to share their year’s work in one way or another, shedding temporary (and sometimes unwanted) light on a solitary process. But there is […]
I am an open-minded fellow. But when I heard I was going to be interviewing an 18-year-old high school student who had organized poetry readings at Mudhouse and was now hosting events at Live Arts, certain unpleasant associations crowded my head, despite my best efforts to banish them. I knew poets in high school—they wore […]
Cindy Stratton grew up more than 30 years ago in Westhaven, the City housing project located in the 10th and Page neighborhood. Raised in a poor and racially segregated environment, Stratton says that, nevertheless, she “had no problem with white children.” But Stratton can’t advance that claim for the black kids growing up in Charlottesville […]
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 […]
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 […]
In his neatly appointed office with its volumes of medical references in the West Wing of the UVA Medical Center, Dr. Jonathan Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics, speaks softly while his hands remain folded in his lap. With his slight stature, firmly pressed shirt and perfectly trimmed beard, he sits as an […]
Did American soldiers commit war crimes during the invasion of Afghanistan? According to eyewitnesses, U.S. Special Forces supervised—some say orchestrated—the systematic murder of more than 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers in November 2001. That charge is the centerpiece of a documentary film, Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death, expected to be released in the United States […]
Seeds…those sleepy little kernels tucked in their winter coats. Not one metabolic quiver until, suddenly and by the millions, they start to move. They travel by ground and by air, from state to state, from December through April. That’s the time of year when discerning growers scour seed catalogues, browsing long lists of plants with […]