Virginia Humanities 50th Birthday Bash

With the mission of connecting people and supporting ideas to explore the human experience, Virginia Humanities celebrates half a century with its 50th Birthday Bash, marking a golden anniversary as the commonwealth’s humanities council. Community members are invited to revel in the achievements of the council and enjoy conversations, food, drink, and entertainment with the […]

Tunnel vision

By Lisa Provence Nothing happens quickly with the Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel. Not its mid-19th-century eight-year construction, nor Nelson County’s nearly 20-year effort to reopen it, nor the documentary recently released by local filmmakers Paul Wagner and Ellen Casey Wagner. “I thought it would only be a few years, weaving the reopening and the […]

Pick: Leah ‘n’ Lulu’s Virtual Picnic

Outside chances: The environment is getting a healthy respite right now thanks to less human activity around the globe. Is it possible to get back out there with intention and a newfound respect? Two area authors consider the role of nature in our lives during Leah ‘n’ Lulu’s Virtual Picnic, an immersion in “environmental writing […]

Building bridges: Lua Project connects cultures in Mexilachian Son

The fandango in Veracruz felt familiar to Estela Diaz Knott. Under a tent, musicians strummed guitar-shaped instruments of different pitches—requintos, jaranas, and leonas. With their feet, they stomped and scuffed rhythms on tarimas, rectangular wooden platforms that serve as both stage and percussive instrument. They mixed centuries-old verses with ones they made up in the […]

Vaughan’s passing: Visionary founder of Virginia Humanities remembered

Rob Vaughan, founder of Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, died March 6 at age 74, after a rapid progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to his obituary. He leaves behind the largest, best-funded, and what a colleague calls “the gold standard” of humanities organizations in the country. When then-UVA president Edgar Shannon tapped Vaughan, an English […]

Removing the mask: Series unveils racial issues within the community

By Jonathan Haynes A little backstory: Charlottesville began as a plantation community with slavery as its foundational industry. Racial violence did not stop after Emancipation, but continued with lynchings and segregation, according to Monticello historian Niya Bates. The University of Virginia, she adds, was a big proponent of scientific racism at the turn of the […]

Confronting a shameful past: Search for 1898 lynching site narrows

As big a role as history plays in Charlottesville’s identity, some events, like an 1898 lynching, were pretty much buried or forgotten until Jane Smith was doing historical research and going through old issues of the Daily Progress in 2013. She happened upon this July 12, 1898, headline: “He paid the awful penalty: John Henry […]