What's in your backpack?

Patrick Costello Age: 22 Year: Fourth Major: Art Hometown: Charlottesville What’s in your backpack? X-acto knife, Diana camera, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, a ball of yarn. C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

For rebricking, activist pushes local hiring

One outcome of the July 21 City Council vote to move forward with the $7.5 million rebricking of the Downtown Mall was the mandate from Councilor Holly Edwards to Neighborhood Development Services Director Jim Tolbert to explore ways to incorporate local residents into the renovation workforce. “I would hope there are employment opportunities,” she said, […]

Your tax dollars, at work

Worked for the city for: 14 years Resides in: Charlottesville Job title: Commonwealth’s Attorney Best of times: The courtroom experience. “If you are interested in doing trial work, you have access to the most serious and most challenging, most important criminal cases that take place, and that has its own set of rewards in terms […]

What's in your backpack?

Age: 35 Year: Grad student Concentration: Italian Hometown: Milan, Italy What’s in your backpack?: Agenda, CD with recordings of students, cell phone, sunglasses, pencils, Avanti Italian book, international papers, class grade book, visa, passport. Marco Prina

Free Willie association

Dear Ace: Do you think maybe Willie Nelson is stalking us?—Perry NoydPerry: Ace has never been a man to buy into conspiracy theories, but for quite some time now, he’s often found himself looking over his shoulder in dark alleys. Shredding unwanted documents he gets in the mail. Separating his whites and darks (hey, he’s […]

Two turntables and a Danger Mouse

Enlisting DJ Danger Mouse—one half of the psychedelic soul group Gnarls Barkley—Beck seemed poised for a return to the madcap sound collages of his landmark albums, Odelay and Mellow Gold. But on Modern Guilt, Beck’s 10th album, Danger Mouse streamlines the meditations on personal stasis and existential dread that have been the core of Beck’s […]

The art of war

Gordon Emery didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life until he was 20 years old and started practicing Kung Fu …

Scriptural Reasoning program alters traditional religion

In 1994, future UVA religion Professor Peter Ochs started an unusual but simple practice of having academics from the three religious traditions that share the Bible as a fundamental text gather to read scripture, whether it was the Torah, the New Testament, or the Koran. “On a basic level, Scriptural Reasoning (SR) is an experiment […]