Hardscrabble

We’ve all heard of brain food, and the debut book of poems from Kevin McFadden, associate program director of the Virginia Festival of the Book, is a full-course meal for the gray matter. One of a handful of books in the new Virginia Quarterly Review Poetry Series, Hardscrabble offers pun after home-cooked pun, and the […]

Voting rights elusive for ex-felons

In the coming summer months, when Virginia Organizing Project (VOP) organizer Harold Folley knocks on doors and talks to folks about the 2008 elections, inevitably some will tell him that they aren’t able to vote.

Helping the homeless…by bowling

At the same time that Charlottesville’s homeless population is growing, so are the efforts to help them. After conflicts with city government and lack of funds have forced the Hope Community Center to close a homeless shelter, another attempt to help the homeless took place Saturday, May 17, when people congregated in Kegler’s for the […]

Your tax dollars, at work

Worked for the city for: 29 years Resides in: Charlottesville Job title: Customer service representative for utility billing. Works with customers with billing disputes and those unable to pay their bills. Best of times: “I enjoy all of the people around. The best times are when somebody comes in here really, really upset and they […]

Saturation point

For an update on City Council’s May 19 public hearing on water needs, click here. In many ways, the latest flap over the community’s long-term water-supply plan is quintessential Charlottesville. It involves most of the basic elements of your typical local story—excruciating planning, expenditures of public money, and questions of human desires vs. ecological needs. […]

Supes to study land use tax changes

On Wednesday, May 14, the county Board of Supervisors voted to unanimously “re-validate” the Land Use Taxation Program while also agreeing to study substantial changes to the program. Under the current system, landowners are allowed to significantly lower taxes on undeveloped land used for agricultural uses, while only having to pay full taxes on their […]

Cohousing creates community (and density)

When it came over from Denmark in the early 1980s, it had a difficult name with a host of consonants and the letters “a” and “e” squished together. For lack of a more pronounceable name, the American patrons of a type of intentional community dubbed it “cohousing.” Central Virginia’s first cohousing development is springing up […]