I grew up in the city and I love the country, a fact borne out by the fact that I have lived as an adult in New York, Boston, and Chicago, and also in Kyle, Rhinelander, and Sylva. It’s a quintessential American desire to marry Mayberry to the Metropolis, hence the suburb, and my experiences […]
We launched a new website today. People are launching new websites every day, but it’s a big deal for us as a print-focused media company that’s been on the same online platform since 2006. I arrived at the paper last year from a digital startup in a small market that used WordPress and harnessed community-sourced […]
I was always very nervous on the first day of school. I remember sitting on the front steps with my backpack, waiting for my carpool to pull up, and having butterflies in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I had the feeling that when I got to school, everything would be different, that […]
There’s a direct connection between the cover story I wrote last week about immigration policy’s affect on the local Latino community and Laura Ingles’ story this week, which looks at Habitat for Humanity’s plan to redevelop trailer parks. It’s no secret that Southwood Mobile Home Park is home to immigrant families and that many of […]
Last week in this column, I admitted to rarely taking a position on local news cuts or delving into national issues, because I’m interested in a more open conversation about the place we live than editorial argumentation generally yields. That said, when logic is exhausted, when self-interest is not a motivating factor for the majority, […]
I arrived at Southwood Mobile Home Park through the back entrance, an unmarked driveway off Old Lynchburg Road just past the Albemarle County Police Department offices. It’s so easy to miss that, even though I’d been there before, I drove past the turn and had to double back to catch the narrow access road, which leads […]
I have been in Charlottesville at my editor’s desk for a year now. In this line of work—which is, in a way, about keeping time—it means that I have turned a shift. I’ve always thought of three month-, one year-, and three year-anniversaries as important moments in a job. When you start something new, it […]
“Despite its relative affluence, Charlottesville has an income gap problem,” writes our news editor, Graelyn Brashear, in this week’s story about the Green Dot Cooperative . Hmmm. Despite its relative affluence, America has an income gap problem. That has a nice ring to it. Despite my relative affluence, I have an income gap problem. Too […]
When the Jefferson School City Center opens its doors in January, nine nonprofit tenants with overlapping missions in health and education will share the responsibility of making good on the City’s $5.8 million equity investment in the project. Most of them—like the Jefferson Area Board on Aging (JABA) and Piedmont Virginia Community College—have long track records in […]
A few weeks back I marveled in this column at the clarity of John McPhee’s writing in Coming into the Country, which was written in 1971, the year my older sister was born. McPhee operates as a passive observer in his books, but is almost always intimately connected with his main characters and subject matter. […]