Local Blogads Options

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 27, 2006 in Blogs, Business and Site News. 4 Comments

There are a good number of local businesses wondering how to reach the thousands of people who read local blogs; here’s how to do it.

Some folks have taken to advertising here via Blogads (the image-and-text vertical rectangles often found at right), but there are now a couple of other local blogs that are newly part of the Blogads network. Sean Tubbs’ Charlottesville Podcasting Network starts at $10 for a one-week run of a full-sized Blogad, and nailgun (the excellent and popular local music blog) starts at the same rate. Also, I’m now accepting them over at Charlottesville Blogs for $15/week.

I think local businesses would do well to give ’em a whirl.

Historical C’ville Maps

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 26, 2006 in General News. 2 Comments

The U.Va library’s Geostat Center makes available maps of Charlottesville from 1907 and 1920, and they’re pretty great. The detail and level of description is what really makes it. The room-by-room rendering of the Woolen Mills’ Pantop Academy, for instance, notes that there are night and Sunday watchmen, that it’s heated by steam fueled with coal, and that there’s a 20,000 gallon water tank. Businesses’ names aren’t given but, instead, they’re described. Downtown, Sal’s was a barbershop, CVS was a telegraphy shop, the corner of 3rd SE and Water was a carriage shop and a wheelwright, the Jefferson Theater was the Jefferson Theater (“moving pictures”) and Timberlake’s was Timberlake’s. (Not everything has changed.) All are accompanied by metadata so they can be loaded into mapping software, for that extra touch of awesomeness.

800 Refugees Relocated Here

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 26, 2006 in General News. 5 Comments

There have been a pair of interesting articles in the past few days about the hundreds of refugees resettled in Charlottesville by the International Rescue Committee. The first is what I guess qualifies as propaganda, an article by the State Department, and the second is Bob Gibson’s pieces from yesterday’s Progress. I knew that refugees were being relocated here, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea that we’re unusual in the scope and scale of our role in that process, that our schools take a big hit on those kids thanks to No Child Left Behind, or that nearly 100% of refugees are self-sufficient within four months of arriving here.

Give these a read — it’ll give you a new perspective on C’ville’s role in the international community.

Proffit Bridge Weight Limit Increased

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 23, 2006 in Transportation. 2 Comments

VDOT has approved the Proffit Road Bridge to handle up to 16 tons o’ vehicle, John Yellig reports in today’s Progress, a four-ton increase that will allow Stony Point‘s firetrucks to cross it.

They stopped sending trucks over it in 2002 when they realized that sending their 15.5 and 16.5 ton trucks over a bridge with a fifteen ton weight limit wasn’t a great idea. After the bridge was replaced this summer, the SPVFC was annoyed to discover that the weight limit had been dropped to twelve tons. Though they don’t normally respond to fires west of the bridge, they figure they should have the option. Now they do, at least for their smaller truck.

Jury Rules Against County Police in Shooting

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 17, 2006 in Law and Justice. 14 Comments

Today a Charlottesville jury awarded $4.5M to the family of a man killed by police at Squire Hill in 1997, Liesel Nowak reports for the Daily Progress. Twenty-six year-old Frederick Gray was unarmed when fighting with police after they entered his home. They attempted to subdue him with pepper spray and a baton, but police said that he had incapacitated three of the four officers and the remaining officer was forced to shoot and kill him. Sgt. Amos Chiarappa had previously come out on the winning end of a civil trial in 2003 and was even cleared by police.

The case pitted well-known local attorney Debbie Wyatt, who argued that there was a racial component to the case (given the the victim was black and the officers were all white), against Sen. Mark Obenshain, who argued that the inconsistencies in the case did not merit ruling against the officer. Obenshain was elected to the 26th District (in the valley) in 2003. His sister stepped down this week as chair of the Republican Party of Virginia, and their father was a powerful and well-known Republican leader in the state until his 1978 death in a plane crash.

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