In 1986, a young lawyer and UVA grad named Rick Middleton left his job at a national environmental nonprofit in D.C. and moved to Charlottesville. With two other lawyers, a three-year grant, and a small office on the Downtown Mall, he established the first environmental advocacy organization focused on the South, determined to use the […]
In 1986, a young lawyer and UVA grad named Rick Middleton left his job at a national environmental nonprofit in D.C. and moved to Charlottesville. With two other lawyers, a three-year grant, and a small office on the Downtown Mall, he established the first environmental advocacy organization focused on the South, determined to use the […]
A 75th wedding anniversary is so rare that the U.S. Census Bureau keeps no statistics on it, Mary Jane Gore tells us. Estimates are that fewer than 0.1 percent of marriages make it to 70 years or more. So this Valentine’s Day week, we tell you about Bill and Shirley Stanton of Afton, who celebrated […]
February is Black History Month, a time when schools across the country dutifully trot out lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. In 2015, a minor firestorm ensued when Orange County High School students connected the civil rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter movement in a school performance, and an […]
The tail end of January can be a tough time of year. It’s cold and gray. The rush of holidays is over, with nothing looming on the horizon except the questionable occasion of Valentine’s Day. Spring seems ages away. While you may deal with this turn of events like me (read: wearing out your new […]
“If Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence,” my 7-year-old asked me the other day, “why did he have slaves himself?” The notion that “all men are created equal” was a radical and noble idea, and it still is, if you take “men” to mean “human beings.” But back then, as I struggled to explain […]
Nearly four weeks in, the federal government remains at a standstill over the president’s maniacal demand for $5.7 billion in American taxpayers’ dollars to erect a giant wall. But local government, at least, is raring to go. “Eighty percent of what we do is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Republican Delegate Steve Landes tells […]
Start reading about the opioid epidemic, and there’s no shortage of staggering statistics. Drug overdose has become the leading cause of death in the U.S. for those under 50, surpassing deaths from firearms, car accidents, homicides, or HIV/AIDS. In 2017, the number of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. reached a record high—70,237, more Americans […]
Although technology may, overall, be destroying our collective attention span, the internet has also brought us new ways of telling stories. And the startling popularity of podcasts is proof that many of us are still hungry for a slower kind of media, one that pauses to examine the esoteric, interesting, and complex stories that don’t […]