The week in review

Best item from St. Anne-Belfield’s auction catalog: A week in Mustique in a five-bedroom villa designed for Britain’s Princess Margaret, including roundtrip private jet travel from Charlottesville to St. Lucia. Bids for the trip, donated by an anonymous benefactor, must start at $5,000 at the April 13 auction.
Worst place to find a UVA association: Edward Chen, who is accused of murdering his parents and brother in 1995 and leaving their bodies in their Great Falls house for four years, attended UVA, according to the Washington Post.
Best NIMBYs of the week: Greene County residents protest a proposed sewage treatment plant near their Locust Lane subdivision, reports Keri Schwab in the Daily Progress.
Best lead in a Cavalier Daily editorial: “Hate crimes laws are the Marshmallow Peeps of progressive social change. They look nice in the box and taste remarkably syrupy sweet. They have no nutritional or substantive value and seem unmanageably gooey when actually put into use.”
Best new trend in criminal justice: Restorative justice – it can’t be any worse an approach than three-strikes-you’re-out laws.
Worst aspect of restorative justice: Do you really want to meet face-to-face the person who wiped up the pavement with you?
Best report from Shenandoah National Park: Its pollution levels are no longer the worst of any national park.
Worst implication for coal-burning power plants like UVA’s: The Washington Post reports that experts attribute the improvement in Shenandoah National Park’s visibility to reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions, of which UVA’s heat plant puts out more than a ton a day.
Best showing by a Hook intern: Jim Meyerle receives a scholarship to study in Scotland from the St. Andrew’s Society of the State of New York, whatever the heck that is.
Worst choice of venue at UVA: Throngs of students who go to see Julian Bond on April 2 are locked out of the Rotunda and have to peer in through the windows to glimpse a TV monitor.
Best catch for a Richmond radio station: Kathleen Willey, who had a breathy encounter with Bill Clinton, is hired by WRVA (1140 AM) to host a two-hour talk show on Sunday afternoons after the church hour.
Best memorial to Emily Couric: Husband George Beller and sister Katie Couric are creating the Emily Couric Cancer Center at UVA, according to Good Housekeeping.
Worst break for a runner in the Charlottesville 10-Miler: Four miles into the April 6 race, fourth-place runner Jason Wall of Christiansburg is hit by a car, the Progress reports.
Best replacements for scrubby trees sheared by VDOT along U.S. 250 west: VDOT crews will plant 2,000 dogwoods and redbuds west of the Boar’s Head, reports Peter Savodnik in the Progress.
Best way to get Charlottesville’s name on the a capella map: At the Contemporary A capella Recording Awards, UVA wins four awards, including the UVA Hullabaloos for best male collegiate album and Mike Daguiso of the UVA Academical Village People for best male collegiate soloist.
Worst news for Bryan McKenzie fans: The Daily Progress columnist has been missing in action. The paper’s surprisingly amusing accounts of his whereabouts– spring fever, bad feng shui– could be a tough act to follow.