Monthly Archive for April, 2006

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Thomas “Gene” Worrell Dies

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 22, 2006 in General News. 2 Comments

I must emerge from my influenza-haze long enough to acknowledge the Thursday death of Gene Worrell, which I learned of this morning. I worked for his grandson, Zack, in the late 90s, and I’ve long admired the musical and filmmaking talents of his granddaughter, Shannon. It’s through them that I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Worrell on several occasions. He was the very model of the American dream—he was self-made man, amassing a $170M fortune through his business enterprises. At one point he owned dozens of newspapers, radio, and TV stations across the state; his son sold the Daily Progress to Media General in 1995, 25 years after his father bought it from its founding family. Mr. Worrell was also well-known for his charity, giving enormous sums of money to causes large and small throughout his life. The phrase “pillar of the community” doesn’t quite do him justice. I can attest that he was a kind man and a gentle soul.

He was 86 years old.

Free Speech Monument Unveiled

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 20, 2006 in General News. 19 Comments
Charlottesville Free Speech Monument
John Grisham and George Garrett kick things off while the press looks on.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression unveiled their privately-funded, long-awaited free speech monument on the Downtown Mall this morning. The monument consists of a large Buckingham-minded slate chalkboard and a speaker’s podium, located in front of City Hall. Blog coverage is extensive, with The Hook, Outskirts, 2300 Days, Charlottesville Tomorrow, and Mayor David Brown all weighing in thus far. And Sean Tubbs has the audio at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, natch. My mother’s got a Flickr set of the proceedings, as well as some of what was written.

From the photos, it looks like somewhere north of a hundred people attended, with John Grisham, David Brown, Boyd Tinsley, Dahlia Lithwick, and George Garrett speaking. At the beginning of the event, the chalkboard was blank; by the end, it was totally covered.

Disclaimer: I’m on the TJ Center Monument board, but it’s just a volunteer gig. But I missed the unveiling because I have the flu. Feh.

Blog Carnival: Jennifer Hosts

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 20, 2006 in Blogs. 3 Comments

For the past couple of months I’ve posted a “blog round up”—a weekly listing of my favorite recent Charlottesville blog entries. Now that I’ve got everybody used to the concept, this show is going on the road. That transforms this into what’s known as a “blog carnival,” a regularly-scheduled best-of listing that travels between member blogs. At first I’m going to reproduce the contents of the carnival here, but eventually I’ll just post a link. Jennifer boldly agreed to kick things off this week:

Waldo’s post on the Al Weed flyer leads to equally fascinating and thorough fact analysis via the comment section; reminding us all why the blogosphere rocks as a forum for discussion and analysis.

Politickchick column was linked on Salon.com. Politickchick also posts some hilarious responses to her Cav Daily columns. What a great idea for columnists to react to comments submitted in response to their columns.

I was reminded by Johnny Metro why I love cville, the ever changing, never boring views.

Outskirts despises most things about the village; complains yet again about the music from the downtown mall. The changes in sound should be coming in two weeks, so complain after the James Brown concert. City Mouse has a different perspective on the pavalion.

City Mouse’s ongoing saga with her neighbor living in the closet continues with an answer from the myopic property management company.

Anoop had to tell the world about the noodle bar on the Corner. I appreciate the weekly updates on where to eat since I never get to go anywhere (ok I did get to go to Mas, I recommend it highly to Anoop).

Brian Wheeler & Charlottesville Tomorrow provide a great service to the community with this particularly interesting post regarding Albemarle Place; shopping, traffic, gentrification, the future is now.

Eat Air got interviewed and made a delicious brunch- all with no meat, cheese, eggs um and other things. I enjoy the recipes because generally it makes the vegan life seem accessible. I am not a convert but I enjoy the idea of the alternative.

Fatuous Observations believes people don’t respect teachers because they talk over children’s presentations. I want to assure her that people are just rude.

There are a lot of new cvilleblogs from people who recently moved here. Matt Fotter is content and needs people to drink beer on the street with him (I have someone in mind); Rob adds some humor with this great post of a mangled subtitle. Rob & Matt might have a heck of a time together.

Finally StlWorkingmom posts some review haikus on recently watched DVD’s.

Thanks for reading, enjoy.

Next week, Duane Gran hosts.

Conversations with Bloggers: Eat Air

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 18, 2006 in Blogs. 1 Comment

Sean Tubbs, of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, has begun a great new series on his site: conversations with Central Virginia bloggers. The first installment is a 20-minute long discussion with Chris and Darlene Bruce, who run Eat Air: A Vegan Food Log. Since November, the pair have posted daily blog entries about how to prepare meat-free, dairy-free dishes along with frank assessments of how they turned out.

20th Anniversary of Pat Collins’ Disappearance

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 17, 2006 in General News. Closed

Yesterday’s installment of WNRN‘s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call featured The Hook’s Fearless Consumer columnist, Barbara Nordin, discussing the 1986 disappearance of UVa student Patrick Collins. The entire show is available on-line thanks to Charlottesville Podcasting Network, as every week’s show is. The topic begins at 05:11 into the show. I have to admit that I was wholly unfamiliar with this case before listening, but it’s certainly an interesting story.

(Via The Hook)

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