Change is gonna come
Want to know why true Charlottesville locals have “a distrust of come-heres?” Take a look at all the people who have moved here in the last 20 years and tried to change this once-beautiful county to closely resemble northern Virginia. Need we say more?
P.S. Adding to your list of what a “real” local knows [“25 essential Charlottesville experiences for real locals,” June 23]: how to correctly pronounce the words “house” or “about,” the true location of “21 curves,” if you knew or took riding lessons from Grover, if you’re a coffee regular at Wyant’s.
Pattie Boden
Charlottesville
Smooth talker
I would like to make a small correction to Wistar Watts Murray’s piece [“25 essential Charlottesville experiences for real locals”]. In regard to John Grisham’s little parking problem at Main Street Market on a hot Saturday in July of 2006: The lawyer in Mr. Grisham was able to persuade the driver from Collier’s—against company policy—to unhook the author’s Porsche Carrera before it was hauled away, though he did pay the required amount.
Jonathan Coleman
Charlottesville
Drivers wanted
A fine list of the 25 must-have experiences in and around C’ville. Could #26 perhaps be driving an Edgecombs loaner Volvo?
Russ Roberts
Charlottesville, VA
Cool it
Thanks for the great article on Fred Oesch’s work in the most recent issue of Abode [“The incredible shrinking footprint,” ABODE, June 2009].
You write in the article, “…as Oesch and other experts will tell you, central Virginia has more days when homes need to be cooled per year than warmed.” This is a common misconception around here. Though we certainly have hot and humid summers, our winter heating season is much longer (approximately six months, November through April) compared to our summer cooling season (approximately three-and-a-half months, June through mid-September).
In addition, the energy used to heat homes in our area is usually three to four times more than the energy used to cool our homes. This is due to the longer heating season, combined with the greater temperature differential a heating system typically has to overcome in the winter (compared to a cooling system in the summer). For instance, in the summer we often have outdoor air at 90 degrees and indoor air at 75 degrees, for a temperature difference of only 15 degrees. In the winter, however, we often have outdoor air at 30 degrees and indoor at 70 degrees for a temperature differential of 40 degrees.
John Semmelhack
Charlottesville