Meager profits for ash vaults

Many institutions of higher education, including UVA, offer alumni and faculty a unique final resting place near the hustle and bustle of academic life: With burial space on campuses dwindling, colleges and universities are now building columbaria—memorials used for the internment of funeral urns after cremation—to meet a growing demand among aging alumni and faculty. […]

Tenants pushed out in Fifeville

Fifeville tenant Michael Lannutti knew his landlords were selling their property at 918 Grove St. to a larger rental and development company, Grove Street Properties LLC. So he was pleasantly surprised to learn in February from the soon-to-be property manager Tim Slagle that he could stay on with only a slight rent increase. But two […]

Locals float ideas for Eastern Connector

How does the public pick a path for a new road? Most of those attending an initial meeting May 22 for the Eastern Connector couldn’t even tell you why we need the road in the first place. They asked: Why are we connecting Route 29 to Route 250 East? Why don’t we talk about better […]

The little Frenchman who could

Dear Ace: Forgive me, Professor Atkins, but my American history is spotty. Basics I got. Jefferson? Check. Madison? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Monroe? Old news. But what about this Claudius Crozet I’ve been hearing about? With a town (and a pizza joint!) named for him, he must have been someone pretty special. But special how, when […]

My Father’s House

words Memoirs—such a hot genre in the current book biz that a certain James Frey was willing to pass off fiction as fact in his notorious A Million Little Pieces—tend to come in two forms: 1) dramatic personal events that demand expression, and 2) ordinary personal events made dramatic through description and analysis. Beatrix Ost […]

Spider-Man 3

game After three mega-successful Spider-films, it’s safe to say that even non-comics-geeks grasp the whole “with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility” thing. It appears, however, that Treyarch, the team responsible for creating the Spider-Man 3 videogame and its predecessors, missed the follow-up memo about great power and great expectations. Instead of giving us a spectacular next-gen web-slinging adventure, they’ve given […]

The Book of Liz

stage Satire, it’s said, is a pretty mocking of life.  And satire is exactly the word to describe The Book of Liz, a play penned by the famed brother-sister duo of David and Amy Sedaris.  There’s little else you could call theater that puts on the same stage an Amish-like religious sect, a Colonial-themed chain […]

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight”

comics In 2003, the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV series was canceled after its lackluster seventh season. Now creator Joss Whedon has returned to his cult occult property by telling the continuing adventures of Buffy Summers and her “Scooby Gang” in comic form. Whedon has increasingly turned to the comic industry in recent years, having […]