Make the connection

Dear Ace: What’s happening on the Bypass near the 250 exit? I see lots of construction and dirt movers. McMansions? Rest stop? —Rhodes Scholar Rhodes: With all the earth-moving going on around town (or earth scorching, as the case may be—the first time Ace drove by the Hollymead Town Center site he thought a nuclear […]

Be Fruitful

The double doors of an A-frame barn open to an empty hall ending in a wall of windows. The intervening space is bathed in gentle southeastern morning light. The view looks northwest toward the forested backside of Carter Mountain. Charlottesville’s there somewhere, but it’s hidden behind blue mountains that overlap in rising layers. Red bud, […]

Row your oats

Dear Ace: Cruising down Earlysville Road on my way to work each day, I always see a fleet of long, skinny boats next to the reservoir. I’m tempted to take my smokin’ date for a moonlit boat ride next Saturday night. But I wonder, who owns those boats and how can I use one?—Boatless Romantic […]

Sitting pretty

They may be homegrown fellas, but Stefan Lessard and Boyd Tinsley are having trouble navigating Belmont. The bassist and violinist for Dave Matthews Band are late for a Monday afternoon interview at Mas, the tapas restaurant on Monticello Road that’s owned by their manager. Tinsley finally pulls up in a yacht-sized Escalade and later Lessard […]

Mouthing off

Dear Dr. Ace, What’s this I hear about area dentists getting together to organize a dental clinic for low-income families? Where’s it going to be and how can I help?—Pearl E. White Well, Pearl, you ask an important question. Because if you aren’t born with good, healthy teeth you gotta buy them. Ace, for example, […]

Trickle down theory

How did that happen? Every time you sign the check for your water bill, you’re paying the price for years of misadventures in water supply planning. Our water rates include money for two water expansion plans that have since been flushed, even though the debts remain.    Now the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is under […]

Sloppy seconds

Dear Ace: What’s with those recycling boxes at Central Place? Some City project or what? And how can we be sure the plastics and glass bottles get to the recycling place, anyway?—Sierra Klubb Oh, my fine Sierra! Ace detects a sliver of skepticism in your query. Could it be that the one and only Sierra […]

Sonic Booom

   Angst and network news go together like—oh, like Simon and Garfunkel, whose popularity peaked around the same time that Walter Cron-kite was signing off with the comforting fiction “that’s the way it is.” For more than a quarter of a century, the audience for the three evening network newscasts has been both shrinking and aging, […]

Who’s got your number?

Ace, it’s not an emergency or anything, but I’m curious about this community phone system that can alert the community to crisis by calling everyone in an imperiled area. Who gets to use it and for what? Earthquakes? UFOs? A GOP invasion?—Chatty Cathy Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, talking dogs are more likely to take over our […]

Where do we go when we die?

A recent online survey showed that more than one-third of us think that once we die, we end up in some kind of merit-based afterlife, like Heaven or Hell. Another 29 percent figure we go nowhere—we’re just dead.    Well, yes and no. No matter where you think you’ll end up in the long run, you’re […]