As seen pre-lighting on October 13.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Highway workers have been installing a new traffic signal outside UVA’s new Transitional Care Hospital (the place that made the news recently for its ability to move one-ton humans via overhead lifts). The new stoplight becomes the second within 4/10ths of a mile, with the other being the one installed as a blinking light in 1997 and converted four years later to stop-and-go status at Broomley Road at the Ivy Nursery.

“It’s about to get harder to get to Charlottesville from Crozet,” notes realtor Jim Duncan, as he Tweeted about the newest light— which came as proffer from UVA as part of the property’s site plan process, according to Virginia Department of Transportation spokesperson Lou Hatter. A recent Charlottesville Tomorrow story noted that UVA’s the big engine driving the look of this road.

As for talk of yet another light destined for the vicinity of the White Gables condominium complex a little closer to town, that hasn’t yet been decided, says Hatter.

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Company president Jim Berry, left, praised general manager Bob Stroh, right, as someone who “lives, breathes, and loves” downtown.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

For the third straight year, the number of cars visiting the three lots controlled by Charlottesville Parking Center has fallen. And yet that didn’t stop the company, the city’s oldest and largest parking company, from increasing its profitability.

The report came Thursday, March 25, at the annual meeting of the firm organized in 1959 to fend off competition from Barracks Road Shopping Center by providing free or low-cost parking to downtown businesses.

The privately-held company (of which the Hook owns a single share to gain meeting access) reported that the number of (more)

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Ummmm, pie.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Coconut cream. French apple. Peanut butter. Chocolate chess. To leaf through Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies is to salivate. Sating such desires used to require a 30-minute or so jaunt over to Staunton to Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant and Bakery. The new book by Mollie Cox Bryan lets those so inclined create Mrs. Rowe’s confections at home.

Released June 1, the Little Book of Southern Pies has already made a New York Times list of cookbooks to watch, and on June 8, was reviewed by Publishers Weekly.

Bookworks in Staunton is holding a special event for the release of the book on Saturday, June 27 11am to 1 pm. 101 West Beverley Street , Staunton, Va. 540-887-0007.

Mrs. Rowe’s restaurants make about 60 pies a day, says Waynesboro resident Bryan, who wrote Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook in 2006. In the new book, published by Ten Speed Press, she assembles more than 50 pie recipes from the Pie Lady, the late Mildred Rowe. Detailed directions make pie-making look easy.

But for some of us, the crust is the most intimidating part of the pie process. “If crust is what’s stopping you from making pie,” advises Bryan, “use a frozen one.”

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Fran Cannon Slayton
PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

For a suburban-raised girl, Fran Cannon Slayton knows a lot about the romance of the railroads. She knows the difference between the sound of a steam engine and a diesel engine whistle. And she knows how the economics of a new technology killed a town like Rowlesburg, West Virginia, where her father grew up and where her grandfather was foreman for B&O in the 1940s.

Slayton never met her grandfather, but she heard all about him from the stories her father told her, stories that she channeled into a novel for young adults, When the Whistle Blows, that not only got published, but has garnered glowing reviews.

“An unassuming masterpiece,” says Kirkus. “Nostalgia done right,” according to the School Library Journal.

A former Charlottesville prosecutor, Slayton didn’t really set out to be a writer, even though a nagging idea for a book hit her about the time she started law school. “I didn’t want to admit I possibly wanted to be a novelist,” she says. “It’s like saying I wanted to be a super hero… so farfetched.” (more)

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In the city that never stops alluding to Jefferson, it’s great to get a fresh perspective once in a while. Back in March, the Hook talked to Alan Pell Crawford, author of the new book, Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson. Now the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (ACHS) and the Charlottesville Senior Center Inc. are bringing him to Charlottesville as part of the Last Wednesdays lecture series, so that he can dispel assumptions surrounding geriatric Jefferson once and for all.

In Twilight at Monticello, Crawford digs past Jeffersonian superficialities and deep into the nitty-gritty. While Jefferson lived to be 83, greatly exceeding the life expectancy of his day, his golden years were not the typically imagined walk in the park. Crawford reveals that boils, bowel problems, and rheumatism plagued his old age.

One of his greatest legacies, the University of Virginia, opened a year before his death, but it was roiled by drunken student brawls against foreign faculty members. Perhaps Jefferson’s most magnificent elderly hardship mentioned by Crawford was his never-diminishing debt of $107,000— equivalent to several millions by today’s standards. In a heartbreaking contradiction, Jefferson, a man strongly opposed to lotteries, asked the General Assembly to hold a lottery for him.

Richmond-native Crawford is a former U.S. Senate speechwriter, Congressional press secretary, and a magazine editor. He recognizes that many alternative sources portray Jefferson’s later years relaxing around Monticello, but he contends, “It’s a more interesting place if you know the things I know.”

As for Monticello, Twilight surveys all the architectural facets that aided Jefferson in his affairs. Crawford shows us Jefferson’s nephews dismembering a slave. He admits he believes Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’ children “Because the alibis are weak.”

Twilight at Monticello is a symbolic transition from the light portrayal of the third president’s descent into old age and darkness. Crawford is also the author of the bestseller Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America, another dark non-fiction piece that tells the tale of Nancy Randolph’s adultery and infanticide. He speaks at the Senior Center Inc. (1180 Pepsi Place just off Route 29 North) Wednesday, July 30. A Question and Answer session follows his presentation.

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Jenny Block.
PUBLICITY PHOTO

Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage.
SEAL PRESS

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This is how Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage, describes the first sexual encounter she and her husband had with a mutual friend as part of their open marriage. According to Block, the friend was “a younger, hilarious, intelligent woman,” and their relationship lasted for years.

Although Block, a Dallas resident, discovered her bisexuality in her twenties, she always thought that it would eventually translate into her finding one man to be with for the rest of her life. But three years into her marriage, she had a six-month affair with a woman that led her to wonder if that dream could actually become reality.

“I had a lot of questions,” she says. “I kept (more)

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That National Geographic’s latest offering is a gorgeous photographic amble through our neck of the woods is no surprise. In current parlance, it’s what they do.

But even so, from its first 10 double pages of lush landscapes through chapters surveying the history (and wars) of Virginia, Maryland, and Mason-Dixon Pennyslvania, Journey through Hallowed Ground is enough to make a native’s heart swell with pride.

Author Andrew Cockburn, a native of Ireland but now happily living in the shadow of the Blue Ridge, teams up with photographer Kenneth Garrett to tour the ridges and valleys from Monticello to Gettysburg, from the early 18th century to the present.

The book’s motto seems to be preserve, preserve, preserve. Preserve the land, preserve history, and preserve legacy. The cover depicts the floating heads of influential historical figures– an art form usually reserved for advertisements of epic films. In the foreword, (more)

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