The heat finally broke. I watched the national weather radar on Saturday as a giant green-yellow-orange-red band of storms the size of the country swept from left to right at the front of a high pressure system, erasing months of sticky heat like an Etch A Sketch. On my run that morning, I stepped around […]
The heat finally broke. I watched the national weather radar on Saturday as a giant green-yellow-orange-red band of storms the size of the country swept from left to right at the front of a high pressure system, erasing months of sticky heat like an Etch A Sketch. On my run that morning, I stepped around […]
Last week, tragedy visited our office. Our friend and colleague, Beth Walton, was murdered, apparently by her son. It was like a lightning bolt ripped through the curtain that separates us, newsmakers, from the news. There is nothing to make sense of. Someone we knew and liked, in the prime of her life, is gone, […]
According to the Albemarle County Police Department, our co-worker and friend, Elizabeth Walton, was killed in an apparent murder-suicide around 11:45pm on Tuesday, August 28, at her home in the 3800 block of Stony Point Road. Also killed were her children: Noah Philip Romando, Lily Catherine Romando, and Andrew Ross Romando. According to the police, […]
The poison and the antidote were anciently understood to be of the same substance, so that the word pharmakon was used in Greek to name both toxin and treatment. The Asclepian medical symbol employs the image of the snake, a reminder of the principle underlying healing practices, which administer little deaths to preserve life. Inoculation […]
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 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 […]