“Jeffersonian” quest

Two decades before UVA welcomed its inaugural class, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Littleton Waller Tazewell, future Virginia governor, about his hopes for the University of Virginia. “What was useful two centuries ago is now become useless,” wrote Jefferson. “What is now deemed useful will in some of its parts become useless in another century.” And […]

Let gays raise?

Following the recommendations of Governor Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia Board of Social Services recently voted against nondiscrimination regulations that would have allowed gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. The vote is particularly significant for Charlottesville and Albemarle County, where adoption numbers have risen during the past three years and […]

UVA fights TBI at home

For the past five years, UVA’s neurotrauma laboratory has gathered the school’s top doctors to study what has been called a “signature wound” in American military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Traumatic Brain Injuries—known as TBIs—have afflicted 200,000 soldiers since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. In an effort to develop TBI testing […]

Suit yourselves

At its most recent meeting, City Council voted to authorize condemnation proceedings to secure a section of the $30 million Hillsdale Drive Extended project between Kmart and what will soon be a new Whole Foods grocery store.

Painting the town red (and black and purple and green…)

“If you drive into a completely unknown city and there’s public art everywhere, you just know that the place is alive,” says photographer Ross McDermott. He should know—he recently spent a year driving through hundreds of American cities for a documentary project on American festivals. “You know that there are people with money who care […]

Stench rises in Woolen Mills

One month ago, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority (RWSA) was poised to launch a study of two plans for expanding the Rivanna pump station, which transports sewage to the Moore’s Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. The first would keep the sewage pump in the Woolen Mills residential neighborhood and near the foot of Riverview Park […]

Horning in

Zinnia and her half-sister, Ella—short for Ellamenope—ran to the fence and wagged their short tails when called. They enthusiastically hopped and bleated while Woolen Mills resident Laura Covert uncovered two baby bottles filled with milk. Three times a day, Covert and her husband cross their 1.5-acre garden to feed two of the first miniature dairy […]

A redistricting brawl?

Say what you will about Virginia’s political class (after all, we certainly have), but it simply can’t be denied that they are, by and large, a pretty genial bunch.