Building Goodness

By Ken Wilson – Jack Horn loves to build and he loves to travel. A couple of weeks after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated much of Haiti in January of 2010, Horn, the CEO of the Charlottesville contracting firm Martin Horn, Inc., found himself on a mountainside overlooking Port-au-Prince. He was in the country with Building […]

Landscape Design Adds Home Value

By Marilyn Pribus – It’s always important to plan for the future when landscaping your yard. You want it to be nice for you today and you also want to keep an eye on the resale potential because a well-landscaped yard adds to that all-important curb appeal. How Much Landscaping Should I Have? “It’s very much […]

Rob Vaughan puts the ‘human’ in humanities

In a parallel universe, Rob Vaughan would probably have been an assistant English professor somewhere—“not here, because no one gets to stay,” he says. Instead, when then-UVA President Edgar Shannon gave him a call in 1974, Vaughan ended up launching the largest state humanities organization in the country, and a five-month gig stretched decades. After […]

‘Life-changing’: Medical marijuana inches toward desperate families

Within the next few years, three Charlottesville families will be able to legally obtain the cannabis oil extract that eases the seizures of their children with debilitating intractable epilepsy, thanks to unanimous approval in the General Assembly in February, passing even the usually marijuana-averse House of Delegates 99-0. Good news, right? Yet none of those […]

The unmasker: Nikuyah Walker makes independent bid for City Council

In her run to sit on the other side of the City Council dais she’s often stood before, Nikuyah Walker won’t be touting Charlottesville as a world-class city. Instead, her theme of “unmasking the reality” acknowledges the duality of a town that draws the wealthy and well-educated, yet is unaffordable for many of its citizens, […]

In brief: Library shocker, UVA’s $9 million plane and more

Busy as a bookworm Here in the digital age, one relic from our printing-press past is defying obsolescence: the library. The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library saw its busiest year ever in 2016, with its newest Crozet and Northside libraries contributing to the boom, according to director John Halliday. It’s not just books that account for the […]

Pasta supper surprise: Protest interrupts Dem dinner party

Gubernatorial candidates Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello and three lieutenant governor hopefuls were in town over the weekend for the Charlottesville Democratic Party’s 17th annual pasta supper and auction. New on this year’s menu was an Atlantic Coast Pipeline protest in which seven sign-carrying UVA students took the stage to demand that the candidates oppose […]

Legal front: Lawsuit filed to halt removal of General Lee statue

Nearly a dozen citizens filed a not-unexpected lawsuit and an injunction today in Charlottesville Circuit Court to stop the removal of the statue of General Robert E. Lee and any further tampering with Lee and Jackson parks, both donated by Paul Goodloe McIntire. The plaintiffs include descendants from the park donor and the sculptor, as […]

Up Close and Personal: The 2017 Virginia Festival of The Book

By Ken Wilson –  Up and down Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall on a recent Saturday morning, the literati were looking. At New Dominion Bookshop, the oldest bookstore in town, dating back to 1924, a woman was checking out the Lit Crit section.  At the Blue Whale, where original prints, antiquarian maps, and rare volumes sit alongside […]

Curb Appeal Sets Homes Apart

By Marilyn Pribus –  You’ve probably heard the term “curb appeal” that often hovers over discussions of the marketability of a property, but just what is it? “Curb appeal is an individual preference,” declares REALTOR® David Sloan of Sloan Manis Real Estate in Charlottesville, “but I think of a home that is well-landscaped, with a […]