Here’s a quick rundown of a few upcoming Charlottesville events heading into the holiday weekend. It’s a hodgepodge, but we didn’t want to let these fall off readers’ radars:
- The First United Church of Charlottesville (101 E. Jefferson St.) is slipping in some community service between services this weekend. From 9am-noon Saturday, volunteers will be packaging wholesome meals for the hungry as part of a local Stop Hunger Now event. Volunteers from the church and community will package dehydrated meals with long shelf lives for the Raleigh-based hunger relief agency, which works nationally and around the world to deliver food to hungry families, school lunch programs, and orphanages.
- Members of the local chapter of Organizing for Action—the reorganized Obama campaign group, now acting as a nonprofit community organizing outfit—is holding an “SOS bake sale” Saturday on the Downtown Mall. In addition to treats, they intend to serve up some ironic food for thought about pending cuts to education due to sequestration: Albemarle County schools are looking at a hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost federal funding, so they’re hawking cupcakes and cookies at a dollar apiece to offset the deficit—or rather, to drive home its magnitude. Included in the press release on the event: “Cookie sales may not quite cover the amount being cut.”
- You’ve got a few more days to get up to speed on the upcoming special election for Charlottesville Treasurer. Set for April 2, it will be the first special election in the city in more than a decade. Interim treasurer Jason Vandever, who has been filling in since Jennifer Brown stepped down from the position last year, is running to keep his seat. He’s being challenged by independent retired UVA professor John Pfaltz.