Tuesday, August 8
Oooh, stinky
Blacksburg residents were breathing easier today after an Indonesian corpse flower stopped blooming on the campus of Virginia Tech. By heating up a sulfur-based compound within its stalk, the plant produces a roadkill-like odor and attracts flesh-eating insects for pollination. This process takes several years, but the bloom lasts only a few days, with the odor sticking around a mere eight hours; locals lined up in droves over the weekend for a chance to take a rare sniff. There were no reports of a growing Blacksburg fad of deliberately smelling actual roadkill.
Wednesday, August 9
Football forecast keeps fracturing
The inexperienced and heavily doubted UVA football team suffers a hard break as top wide receiver Deyon Williams must undergo surgery for a stress fracture in his foot, The Daily Progress reports today. Williams, a senior and co-captain, led the team in receptions last year, catching 58 passes for 767 yards. There is no timetable for his return, but Williams can red-shirt if necessary to retain his eligibility for next year. The football team did get some good news recently when head coach Al Groh announced that safeties Tony Franklin and Nate Lyles have returned to the team.
Thursday, August 10
Virginia firefighters get severe Burns
With a scolding editorial in today’s Daily Progress, and a blistering article in Hampton Road’s Daily Press (“The jerk from Montana”), state newspapers are all over Montana Senator Conrad Burns’ recent run-in with the Augusta County Hot Shots—a team of firefighters who flew in to help quell Montana forest fires (and who received around $8 to $12 an hour for their efforts). Upon spying a returning Hot Shot in the airport, Burns reportedly said, “See that guy over there? He hasn’t done a goddamned thing… It’s wasteful. You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around.” Even better, when a reporter from the Daily Press called Burns’ office for comment, an unidentified staffer “responded with language that would make a sailor blush,” and went on to tell the paper, “you can tell Senator George Allen of Virginia to [vulgarity deleted].” Jeez—you kiss your mother with that mouth?
Friday, August 11
Virgil screwed
The city of Martinsville gets the raw end of a deal between Republican Congressman Virgil Goode and now-defunct MZM, Inc. But the city of Martinsville won’t know just how bad it is until well after elections for the incumbent House candidate, the Roanoke Times reported today. While Martinsville won’t be responsible for the full $500,000 in State grants used to lure MZM to the small southern Virginia town, the city won’t find out until next year how much it will have to pay back. Goode has been accused of requesting $3.6 million in federal funds so MZM could base its Foreign Supplier Assessment Center in Martinsville—just so happens, former MZM CEO Mitchell Wade, who’s bribed politicians in the past, was a buddy and campaign contributor of Goode’s. Goode has denied any wrongdoing, but since MZM crashed and burned, Martinsville’s taken a hit which could cost up to $100,000. We’ll see if the whole mess costs Goode any votes.
Saturday, August 12
Washington Redskins could get stripped
The Washington Redskins face a new legal challenge to the football team’s name and logo. The Washington Post reports today that six Native Americans, including Philip Gover of Charlottesville, the former head of the Native American Student Union at UVA, filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office alleging that the name violates a federal law that prohibits registration of a trademark that disparages any race or religion. A similar case was brought in 2003, but the judge ruled the petitioners waited too long to challenge the trademarks, which were issued in 1967. The new group of plaintiffs range in age from 19 to 24 and hope to circumvent that argument since they weren’t yet born at the time the marks were issued. We have a suggestion for the team: Why not go with the “Skins” and play in the buff like the original Greek athletes did? The cheerleaders are halfway there, anyway.
Sunday, August 13
Local civil rights activist dies
Grace L. Tinsley, the first black woman to serve on the Charlottesville School Board and a longtime community activist, died Wednesday, The Daily Progress reports today. She was 72. In the 1990s, Tinsley pushed to establish a public defender’s office despite repeated opposition from then-governor George Allen. She was also pivotal in shifting Charlottesville’s Democratic party from the segregationist “Byrd Democrats,” holdovers from Senator Harry F. Byrd’s Massive Resistance of the 1950s and ’60s. Tinsley was supervisor of the City schools’ nurses and served on the Piedmont Virginia Community College Board until her retirement in 1992. She was also a leader with the local NAACP. In short…she rocked.
Monday, August 14
Big men on campus
Get ready for fresh faces this season. UVA’s new starting quarterback, fifth year senior Christian Olsen, is profiled in today’s Washington Post, recounting his struggles at his first school, Notre Dame, and the long wait for the starting spot behind Matt Schaub and Marques Hagans. Olsen, a drama major, marked himself a Cavalier-for-life recently by tattooing the UVA sports logo above his left ankle. Wahoowa! In other Commonwealth football news, Virginia Tech fans now have a quarterback to focus on: redshirt sophomore Sean Glennon wins a three-way quarterback battle and is named the starter for the Hokies’ first game against Northeastern. Now that Marcus Vick is gone, hopefully the Tech quarterback’s on-field performance will draw more attention than off-field issues.
