Charlottesville Podcasting Network
Lectures, radio shows and more available on-demand
A dozen years, several conferences, a score of books, and hundreds of scholars from twenty countries. Radio producer Sean Tubbs talks with Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies about the Center’s work fostering and sharing new Jeffersonian scholarship at home and abroad.
Canine Campus, an Earlysville-based dog obedience training company, has released its third podcast. From their website:
“In the third part of our series on adult and adolescent obedience, we’ll wrap up the class with a discussion on the difficulties of generalization, the life cycle of a behavior (“from new to known”), the different types of rewards we use to encourage desired behaviors, and a few more tips on capturing behaviors for recall and house training.”
Now that Charlottesville voters have decided the city’s school board should be elected, there’s one more thing that has to be sorted out. How should the elected members be selected? Should each person represent a particular area of the city, or should all members serve in an at-large capacity? Or, should there be a mixture of the two extremes? The City Council appointed a task force to study the issue, which is studying six possible options. A hearing was held last night in City Council Chambers to take comments from the public.
John Yellig of the Daily Progress has an article today, as does cvillenews.com.
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Anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and Ann Wright were the guests of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice for an event on May 17, 2006. Sheehan is active in the group Gold Star Families for Peace, and Wright is a former state department official who resigned on the day the war with Iraq began. The event was held at Charlotteville High School and was introduced by Sean McCord.
Last year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation selected a Charlottesville man as one of this year’s 25 MacArthur Fellows.
Terry Belanger is the founder and director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He was chosen for “raising the profile of the book as one of humankindGuv,!v,,us greatest inventions.”
Shortly afterwards, Sean Tubbs took an elevator ride to the sub-basement of Alderman Library to speak with Belanger about the school.
This podcast concludes with music from Magnatune. The track is Daniel Berkman’s “Folkways” off of the album Calabashmoon.
Soundscape fans may be intrigued by MacArthur’s selection of Emily Thompson, an aural historian.
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Albemarle County’s Places 29 initiative continues this week with an open house on Thursday, May 18 and an all-day workshop on Saturday. Both events will be held at Sutherland Middle School. The project is at a critical phase – three frameworks offering three different alternatives for how to plan land use and transportation infrastructure will be critiqued by attendees. I stopped by the Albemarle County Executive Building on Tuesday to speak with Albemarle County senior planner Judith Wiegand and Harrison Rue of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to find out more.
I also stopped by and spoke with Brian Wheeler of Charlottesville Tomorrow to get more perspective on Places 29. To learn more about the initiative before you go, visit Charlottesville Tomorrow’s Places 29 page.
 Meredith Richards giving her presentation to potential members of Charlottesville Citizens for Better Rail Alternatives(Michael Testerman) |
The group Charlottesville Citizens for Better Rail Alternatives was created last year to create public demand for an extension of the Virginia Railway Express to Charlottesville. The group is spearheaded by Meredith Richards, a former Charlottesville councilwoman and candidate for Congress. Richards is now the public voice of the group, which hopes to convince the Virginia Railway Express to extend its service all the way to Charlottesville.
Last September Richard gave a public presentation to the group, as well as an interview with Mike Thrift, a Charlottesville man who commutes to D.C. at least once every week.
A unique class in the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture has spent much of this last semester analyzing where Charlottesville residents get their food. Students in PLAC 569, Community Food Systems, presented their results this week in City Council chambers in front of a group of local farmers, grocers and food activists. The basic consensus: most of our food comes here from a long way away. We present an edited portion of their presentation in this podcast.
What do you think? Please leave your comments below and let us know where your food comes from. A follow-up meeting will be held in June to take further action on the findings of the class. Next spring’s section of PLAC 569 will continue the research.
Update from July 6: Waldo Jaquith says the preliminary report of the class “is very much worth your time.” And here is a link to the paper.
 Courtesy of Bill Emory |
Charlottesville is going through a dramatic period of transformation, caused by the region’s quality of life and a general rise in housing prices. This has forced the evolution of the city’s historic neighborhoods, including the Woolen Mills area, just to the east of the downtown mall. In this second in our continuing series on Charlottesville area bloggers, photographer Bill Emory takes us on a tour of the neighborhood. He’s taking a visual inventory of what the area looks like today to make sure it’s still there tomorrow.
You can read more on the Woolen Mills area here. This piece is supported in part by the Charlottesville Daily Progress, our news partner.
Our series of conversations with Charlottesville bloggers began with a talk with Chris and Darlene Bruce, the folks behind Eat Air, a blog about vegan cooking.
Supporters of immigrants’ rights held demonstrations across the nation yesterday as part of a day of action to demand fair treatment. Many are opposed to border security legislation that passed the House of Representatives that would make it a felony to be in the country illegally.
Over three hundred people turned out at a rally in Charlottesville Monday night to show their support. They sang songs, lined Preston Avenue, and heard comments from Tim Freilich, the managing attorney of the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers.
This podcast is an expansion of a report produced for WVTF Public Radio, and features some of the songs and Freilich’s comments. We also spoke with one of the people who participated in the rally.
The Daily Progress has coverage of the event from Sarah Barry. We’ll update this page with other links as we can find them. We’d like to know what you think as well. Please leave a comment below. Bill Emory has a nice picture of a painting that was displayed on the steps of the Albemarle County Executive Office Building. Waldo has a post on it, and mentions that Nell Boeschenstein of C-Ville Weekly wrote about it as well.
 Courtesy of the Montpelier Foundation |
Two years ago, James Madison’s Montpelier was partially demolished in the first step of major renovations to restore the house to the way it was back in Madison’s day. The Montpelier Foundation hopes the reconstruction will allow visitors to the Orange County estate to learn more about James Madison, who is often called the father of the U.S. Constitution.
On a sunny day in late April, the new/old exterior of the mansion was formally unveiled in ceremonies presided over by Senator John Warner and Representative Eric Cantor. Both men paid tribute to Madison’s role in the creation of the United States of America. In this report, you’ll hear excerpts from both men’s speeches. You’ll also hear from Mark Wenger, the project’s architectural historian. Ambient music in the piece comes from the Shenandoah University chorus, who were on hand to sing the national anthem.
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About three hundred people gathered this morning under a bright April sun on the east end of the Charlottesville downtown mall to be among the first to watch someone write on the new community chalkboard. The 42-foot-long slate wall is a monument to the First Amendment built by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression. Area celebrities were in attendance, and short remarks were made by George Garrett, John Grisham and Boyd Tinsley. We present the entire event in this downloadable recording,
along with reactions from people who were there.
00:00 – 00:34 – Introduction
00:34 – 03:41 – Robert O’Neill, Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center
03:41 – 06:24 – Bruce Sanford, Chairman of the Center’s Board of Trustees
06:24 – 08:16 – Charlottesville Mayor David Brown
08:16 – 13:00 – Former Virginia Poet Laureate George Garrett
13:01 – 18:12 – Bestselling author John Grisham
18:12 – 27:05 – Dahlia Lithwick, legal writer for Slate and host of WHTJ’s For the Record
27:05 – 30:10 – Violinist Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band
30:10 – 33:31 – Brandon Dudley, Charlottesville High School Senior
33:31 – 35:20 – Closing remarks from Bruce Sanford
35:20 – 37:00 – Closing Remarks from Robert O’Neill and the unveiling
37:00 – 42:47 – Montage of reactions and first words written
You can see better pictures of the event on Doc Multimedia’s blog. 2300 Days has a really nice picture of the wall shortly after it was open to the public. Charlottesville Tomorrow has many pictures of the people listed above.