Author: david-t-roisen

Tuesday, August 1
Cirque du Soleil’s Delirium. 8pm. $71.50-$101.50. Wild acrobatics and elaborate costumes are included. ‘Shrooms are not.

Wednesday, December 6 through Sunday, December 10
Ringling Bros. Circus. Price and time TBA. At least these elephants won’t cut taxes while a war’s on.

A mostly older crowd packed the meeting hall of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church on Wednesday, July 19, with one purpose: to impeach the president.
    The event, sponsored by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, was moderated by David Swanson, a board member of CCPJ and co-founder of the anti-war website afterdowningstreet.org. He kicked off the teach-in by introducing David Waldman, a nationally recognized blogger who has written at length about impeaching President Bush.
    Following the introductory speeches, a video produced by The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit human rights group, was shown. The short film cited unauthorized NSA domestic wiretapping, the war in Iraq, and the use of torture as valid reasons for impeaching the president.
    Swanson and Waldman both offered their take on the video and fielded questions from members of the audience, many of whom had traveled from out of town for the presentation. CCPJ is more focused, however, on taking local action. According to Swanson, the group will soon present a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush to Charlottesville’s City Council.

We recently sat down with David Waldner, a UVA professor of comparative politics and the author of the book State Building and Late Development, to try and make sense of the current dust-up between Israel and Lebanon. Hostilities in the region exploded when members of the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Israel, in turn, began a bombing campaign that has devastated much of Lebanon’s infrastructure, killed hundreds of people and sent tens of thousands fleeing from their homes. Hezbollah has retaliated with crude rocket attacks against northern Israel, killing dozens and sowing panic there, as well. Here’s some of what Waldner had to say.

C-VILLE: World leaders have been calling for a cease-fire and for the deployment of international peacekeeping forces. Given the conditions set forth by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—that the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers be returned, that Hezbollah leave the south, that the Lebanese army create a buffer zone along the border and that Hezbollah be disarmed—is a cease-fire likely to happen?
David Waldner: Absolutely not. Israel has stated categorically that, as you just pointed out, a number of conditions must be met before a cease-fire. I think the Israeli and the American calculation is that, were Israel to agree to a cease-fire short of receiving something very close to their demands, it would be a huge victory for Hezbollah. Hezbollah would have drawn Israel to a stalemate.

Will Israel likely face any U.N. sanctions for its role in the conflict?
On the Security Council, the U.S. will always be the veto player. There’s absolutely no way that the Bush Administration and John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., will agree to any sanctions against Israel. U.S. support for Israel is almost complete in this situation.

Will Lebanon?
I suspect that, in general, world opinion is supportive of the Lebanese position here. Some people would say “you can’t hold the Lebanese as a whole responsible for what Hezbollah is doing.”

Israel’s bombing campaign has destroyed much of Lebanon’s infrastructure. Where will this put Lebanon’s economy?
Lebanon is still slowly recovering from all the economic damage it incurred during the civil war of the 1970s and 1980s. Without large-scale international assistance, I think we’re going to see Lebanon set back at least another decade.

Joggers puffing past UVA might notice that the crowd on McCormick Road looks a little younger than usual. They’d be right. No college co-eds, these. With summer here, UVA hosts a number of summer camps targeted at aspiring athletes and other high school students. Here’s a quick run-down, by the numbers.

Number of kids attending UVA summer camps: 10,000
Number of dorm rooms used by summer campers per week: 400-500
Number of meals eaten by summer sports campers per day: 2,520
Projected UVA revenue from summer camps: $3,000,000
Projected UVA revenue from summer sports camps: $1,000,000—$1,500,000
Cost for a high school student to attend a three-day, two-night UVA baseball camp, including room and board: $399
Average salary of a Major League ballplayer in 2005: $2,476,589

Sources: University of Virginia, Major League Baseball

Sure, we know that Charlottesville is home to the occasionally top-ranked public university in the nation. And we cannot deny the awesome truth of the city’s No. 1 ranking by Frommer’s in 2004. Still, who wants to rest on those laurels forever? Now, we don’t have to: Charlottesville has been awarded runner-up in a survey of the top 50 U.S. city slogans.
    Oddly, City officials have not ordered a parade in light of the news. (Perhaps they’ve been too busy with the Mall’s never-ending 30th-birthday party to organize an appropriate slogan-celebrating event.)
    The survey, by the branding company Tagline Guru, was conducted among “100 advertising, marketing and branding professionals.” Charlottesville shut out big competitors like New York (“The City That Never Sleeps”) and Hershey, Pennsylvania (“The Sweetest Place on Earth”), only to lose the top spot to the dominating Las Vegas, Nevada (“What Happens Here, Stays Here”). Two other Virginia cities, Norfolk (“Life, Celebrated Daily”) and Fredericksburg (“Where History Never Gets Old”), also made the list at 41 and 46, respectively.
And what, you wonder is Charlottesville’s slogan? “So Very Virginia.”

The good news in the first-quarter crime stats from Albemarle County is that there were fewer violent crimes such as murders, assaults and rapes so far in 2006 compared to 2005. The bad news? This year has so far seen a substantial increase in other types of crime.
    As shown here, instances of larceny increased by nearly 20 percent to a total of 398 in the first quarter of 2006, and the numbers of burglaries and stolen motor vehicles rose a whopping 50 percent each. Albemarle Police Lieutenant John Teixeira says the numbers “are pretty much in line with what’s going on across the Commonwealth.” Contributing to the numbers, according to Teixeira, was a string of thefts from local construction sites. He says the suspected thieves were arrested and most of the property was returned.

A former employee of Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is suing the City of Charlottesville to the tune of $300,000. Angela Estes, who worked as a property manager for CRHA in 2005, claims in her lawsuit that her former employer discriminated against her because she is black.
    Estes alleges that she was denied training, time off, overtime pay and the use of a CRHA vehicle in the execution of her duties. By contrast, the suit claims that white CRHA employees were given the use of official vehicles and training and received overtime pay and time off. The suit also calls the City’s actions “willful, wanton and malicious” and claims they “were calculated to cause her harm.”
    CRHA director Noah Schwartz declined to comment.
    In addition to the $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, Estes is seeking compensation for overtime and an official apology from the City.
    “We haven’t been served any papers yet,” says City Attorney Allyson Davies, explaining that the suit should have been filed against CRHA itself, and not the City of Charlottesville.
    “That is a technicality,” countered Estes’ attorney Martin Hogan. “I think there is more than sufficient grounds to bring this cause of action.”

Summer is here, and with it comes a host of jobs offered by your local government.

    Maybe you want to switch careers, or maybe you just want to expose your teen to actual sunlight. Fortunately for eager job seekers, Albemarle County and Charlottesville have dozens of open positions for part- and full-time workers of every stripe.
    If your brand-new Hummer still leaves you feeling…inadequate, why not compensate by driving something even bigger? Luckily for you, the County is currently hiring school bus drivers! And you can even park your ginormous new vehicle right outside your home (a fact listed by the County as one of the benefits of the job). Imagine how impressed the neighbors will be with that bright-yellow beast nestled in front of your crib.
    And even if that country club you had your eye on still won’t let you in, your fantasies of torrid affairs with desperate housewives need not die. Why not be a tennis instructor for Charlottesville’s Recreation Department? The ladies do so love a tennis pro, don’t you know.
    Speaking of fantasies, here’s one for all of the masochists out there. Looks like the City’s Treasurer’s Office is seeking customer service representatives. (Extremely high tolerance for existential pain a must.)
    Still not sure what to do with your life? Don’t worry, neither are most high school students. And looky here! Western Albemarle High School needs a guidance director. At over $50K a year, this gig looks pretty sweet. Oh, hold on… it requires “considerable tact and diplomacy.”

Well, it looks like this writer, for one, won’t be switching jobs this season.