Lawrence Eagleburger, seen here in his official State Department portrait from 1992, served in the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations before retiring to Charlottesville.
PHOTO COURTESY THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Yesterday, former Secretary of State to George H.W. Bush and Charlottesville resident Lawrence Eagleburger joined an increasingly long list of conservatives who are critical of Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s credentials to ascend to the presidency.

Asked yeseterday on NPR’s Talk of the Nation whether Palin was ready to handle a crisis as president, Eagleburger responded, “That’s a very good question,” pausing briefly and then continuing, “I’m being facetious here. Look, of course not. I don’t think at the moment she’s prepared to take over the reins of the presidency.”

Eagleburger was guardedly optimistic that Palin could learn the ways of the office as vice president.

“The question is, ‘Can she learn, and would she be tough enough under the circumstances if she were asked to become president, heaven forbid that that ever takes place?’” said Eagleburger. “Give her some time in the office, and I think the answer is that she would be adequate. I can’t say that she would be a genius in the job, but I think she would be enough to get us through a four-year— I hope not— get us through whatever period of time was necessary, and I devoutly hope that it would never be tested.”

Asked to respond to Eagleburger’s assessment, McCain (more)

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May the jig be with him.
PHOTO COURTESY IRWIN

Late last month, 31-year-old musician and contractor Zach Snider headed to Texas for an event at which he might have heard screams of “drill, baby, drill” and might even meet someone named Carl the Carpenter. But despite the timing just days before the election, this event was no political rally: it’s the Irwin Ultimate Tradesman Challenge, a contest with a million-dollar-plus prize that Snider nearly won last year.

“He beat the time of the eventual winner last year,” says Irwin spokesperson Adam Colborne. “But his jig wouldn’t properly fit in the holes he drilled.”

Wha?

“When $1.26 million is on the line,” Colborne explains, “it can be pretty nerve-racking.”

Indeed, Snider— who plays in the band Straight Punch to the Crotch— admitted he was out for revenge as he went to the competition, which was held Sunday at the Texas Motor Speedway during the Dickies 500. While was wielding a bass guitar the night before departure at a local Straight Punch gig, the weekend in Texas was (more)

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Now: A bit of Woolen Mills dam remains in September.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Then: Woolen Mills dam August 2007, as the breach began.
PHOTO BY HOOK STAFF

It’s been over a year since the historic Woolen Mills dam on the Rivanna River came down in river health initiative, and depending on who you talk to, this deed either was the best thing that could be done for the river… or a travesty.

It was no surprise to the Rivanna Conservation Society’s Jason Halbert, who spearheaded the breach of of the 140-year old dam, that the river’s water level has fallen steeply— as much as six to seven feet lower. But something did surprise him:

“How much of a rock garden was revealed once the water went down,” he says. “You can hear the river at Riverview Park.”

Over the summer, there was an incident in which dozens of gizzard shad were found floating belly up, allegedly the result of high temperatures. However, the gizzard shad have returned, says Halbert, who’s heard a report of a bald eagle spotted tracking the shad.

And he still has hopes that within 10 years, the American shad, with which the Rivanna River once teemed, will return. Halbert has released American shad fry four times, hoping (more)

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This Friday at 10am a 45-foot, 28-ton Bush bashing bus will be rolling in to the Barracks Road Shopping Center. Dubbed the “Bush Legacy Bus” by its main sponsor, Americans United for Change, it is, according to organizers, “a clean bio-diesel powered museum on wheels featuring several interactive exhibits on how two terms of failed conservative policies supported by Bush and his allies – including Senator John McCain and Representative Virgil Goode – have weakened America’s security abroad while neglecting and undermining important priorities here at home.”

As if Americans need convincing! According to a recent Gallup Poll, President Bush’s approval rating is at 25 percent, just a point higher than Richard Nixon’s was in the summer of 1974, just before he resigned over the Watergate scandal.

According to organizers, the bus took off across the street from the White House on June 24th and has visited more than 40 states, including “the hometowns of Bush’s enablers in Congress and symbolic locations like the President’s home away from home in Crawford, Texas,” and logged more than 20,000 miles.

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The Washington Post will soon be tossed in your driveway by the Daily Progress.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The Washington Post is selling its local distribution rights to the Daily Progress, leaving dozens of newspaper carriers out of a job and serving as another signal of dailies in a downturn.

“It’s a cost-cutting measure,” says Charles Leathers, who’s distributed the Post since 1992, as did his father, who started distributing the Post in 1967. He employs about a dozen people to stuff inserts and deliver the Post seven days a week in southeastern Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and Lake Monticello.

“There’s about 30 to 35 of us out of work in one fell swoop a month before Christmas,” Leathers says.

With newspaper readership falling while expenses skyrocket, Post carriers are not the first Central Virginia newspaper workers to feel some pain. In July, the Progress sent its printing operations to Hanover, laying off its entire printing staff of 25 people.

“It’s a very good business decision for the Washington Post and the Daily Progress,” says Fred Greer, regional circulation director for the Progress. “And it makes good sense (more)

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Adam Greenbaum reopened the 1930s-era Visulite Theater in Staunton in 2006. Now, he’s saving Vinegar Hill.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Put away your tissues, dry your eyes, and change out of that somber funeral wear. Less than 24 hours after news of its demise, the word on Charlottesville’s only independently owned movie theater: It’s Aliiiiive!

“We’re taking over Vinegar Hill,” exclaims Adam Greenbaum, owner of Staunton’s own Visulite Cinemas, the art house that opened in 2006. Greenbaum says Vinegar Hill will indeed close down after Sunday— but only for two weeks.

“We’re going to get in there, do some technical upgrades primarily, and reopen on November 14 with Rachel Getting Married,” Greenbaum explains. “Charlottesville is not losing Vinegar Hill.”

Although Vinegar Hill manager Hain Laramore reported last night that the 32-year-old theater has been struggling financially in recent years and that owner Ann Porotti had decided to shut it down, Greenbaum thinks he’ll be able to return Vinegar Hill to its glory days.

“We’re really going to try to focus on Charlottesville and outreach to the University, [and] hold discussions,” says Greenbaum. “It’s time-consuming, but I think it makes a huge difference.” In the long term, (more)

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The end of this year’s Film Fest also marks the end of the Vinegar Hill Theatre.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After 32 years, the lights are going down on Vinegar Hill Theatre for good.

“I knew this was coming, I just didn’t know when,” says theater manager Hain Laramore, who started working for the theater as a teenager 20 years ago. The last evening show will happen this coming Thursday with the scheduled screenings of Religulous, and while the doors will stay open through the weekend for film fest activities, after Sunday the lights won’t go back up.

Laramore says thinning crowds made keeping the theater afloat harder and harder for owner Ann Porotti, who opened Vinegar Hill with her then-husband, Chief Gordon, in 1976 (the same year the couple opened Fellini’s restaurant on Second and Market streets.)

“Our last real hit was the Al Gore film,” Laramore says, referring to the 2006 environmental disaster documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Laramore says Porotti, who was not immediately available for comment, was increasingly financing the theater herself, and “finally decided to shut it down.”

There are currently no plans for the space, and Laramore says he remains hopeful that the theater will someday, somehow reopen. In the meantime, however, he echoes a sentiment sure to be heard around town as soon as the news spreads: “What a bummer.”

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“The master plan is not in stone,” says City Parks boss Mike Svetz, despite City Council’s May 19 to destroy the two softball fields at McIntire Park..
FILE PHOTO BY RYAN HOOVER

In an abrupt decision, Charlottesville’s leaders have suspended until an undetermined date a planned public hearing scheduled for their next City Council meeting— leaving local softball players in limbo without a firm decision on the future of either Darden Towe or McIntire Park’s softball fields.

Following the example of Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors– which recently decided not to sign a resolution approving the lighting of Towe’s three softball fields— City Council has taken the issue of lighting Towe off its radar for the time being.

“Because the County chose to defer their decision, the City chose to defer taking up the issue at this point,” says Charlottesville Director of Parks and Recreation Mike Svetz. “We’ll wait longer because although the city does co-own the park, it is in County property and directly affects County residents.”

Instead of holding a forum for softball, the City will include on the November 3 consent agenda the issue of lighting Towe’s tennis courts, a pill that was easily swallowed by the County back on August 13. The tennis lighting has been seen as a (more)

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Rivanna Authority director Tom Frederick and board members Judy Mueller, Gary O’Connell, and chair Mike Gaffney listen as Betty Mooney lists officials who want pipeline costs.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Despite several recent calls to fully estimate all costs in its now-struggling Community Water Supply Project and despite a tantalizing hint from the chair last month, the board of the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority chose at its Monday, October 27 meeting to skip any discussion of the proposed 9.5-mile pipeline, which appears essential to making the Project work.

“You have new information now,” longtime Authority critic Betty Mooney told the board. “This is a turning point.”

She read names and quotations from several elected officials, including Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker and Charlottesville mayor Dave Norris, along with Norris’ fellow City Councilors Satyendra Huja and Julian Taliaferro— all of whom have in recent weeks begun ramping up the volume of their concerns with the Project.

Already under fire for requiring a 180-acre clear-cut of mature forest in a sensitive natural area, the Project nearly imploded in August (more)

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This parking lot bounded by 1st, 2nd, South, and Water Streets is among the company’s most coveted holdings.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After spending over $400,000 in the quest, the City of Charlottesville appears to have abandoned its effort to buy a private parking company whose one-acre parking lot has long tantalized development-minded city planners.

The retreat was evident in an October 23 letter mailed to Charlottesville Parking Center Inc’s shareholders (which include the Hook). Company president James R. Berry revealed that no bid meeting its minimum threshold— which was $17.5 million— was received.

“The Board has determined that the proper course at the present is to terminate the sale process and operate the company until such time as economic and other circumstances justify reconsideration of the sale.”

The City’s quest came with a price tag of at least $405,000.

Despite having already purchased two prior architectural studies of the site, the City controversially spent $153,000 to hold a design contest last year to incite projects that (more)

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Happy times at Stanford University by UVA’s former “Green Dean.”
PHOTO BY ANDREAS Brændhaugen

In a recent article in Fast Company magazine, “Green Guru Gone Wrong: William McDonough,” staff writer Danielle Sacks goes to great length— over 6,500 words, actually— to dismantle locally-based architect William McDonough’s nearly mythic status as a visionary green architect. As Sacks points out, UVA’s former “Green Dean” was Esquire’s 2005 “Big Thinker of the Year” and one of Time’s “Heroes for the Planet,” but then she proceeds to do a “demolition job” on McDonough, as Treehugger.com characterized it.

At the start of the piece, McDonough is seen palling around with the likes of Cindy Crawford, Goldie Hawn, Universal Studios president Ron Meyer, fashion designer Tom Ford, and billionaire Richard Branson, while he makes everyone swoon with his theories of a waste-free world. By the end of the piece, however, Sacks has McDonough struggling like a dolt to put up a patio umbrella at a mansion in Maine that one of his famous friends has let him use.

“Sweaty and breathless, McDonough finally flips the umbrella upside down onto the deck. “Snap this until it snaps into that,” he instructs me, pointing to a wooden lever. He is crouching over as if he were inspecting some kind of beached specimen, his hair like a tuft of grass atop a windswept rock. It’s hard not to wonder, even with Al Gore’s Hollywood engine behind him, whether this is really the man to lead the next industrial revolution. Or whether, as McDonough says, rising with a gasp, “there’s an easier way to do this.” (more)

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Main Street feels Wall Street’s pain, as this building traded hands for a third of its assessed value.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Citizens awoke Friday, October 24, to news that trading was halted on the New York stock exchange before it even opened because of futures trading and a precipitous overnight drop in global markets that kicked in something called a “circuit breaker” to prevent prices from going lower. Meanwhile, UVA reports that it lost $191 million— before the financial bloodbath of September/October.

“We’ve seen a lot more calls from worried clients and from people without a financial adviser who don’t know what to do,” says David Marotta, financial columnist and president of Marotta Wealth Management.

“Obviously more people want to sell than the market and the market makers can handle,” he says of the morning’s temporary shutdown. “We’re starting at 400 down today, and the market could close positive– it could make it to zero by the end of the day,” he says Friday morning. (The market closed down 312 points.)

Yet Marotta is also getting calls from people (more)

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