http://www.readthehook.com/blog From the Hook newsroom Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:13:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A Virginia-based forest conservation group announces it will seek a new leader. Like the current 500-Year Forest Foundation boss, Ted Harris of Lynchburg, the new leader will volunteer the time. Currently, the group works with landowners, including Hal and Jean Kolb in Albemarle, to conserve, educate, and stamp out invasive ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/03/forest-group-seeks-new-leader/ What initially looked like a simple search for a hiker has taken a twist as officials indicate they no longer think that missing develeoper and Glenmore Country Club president Michael Comer will be found at Wintergreen Resort where he allegedly went missing Wednesday, July 1. NBC29 reports that the search ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/03/mystery-deepens-in-club-boss-disappearance/ These jumbo compressors stand between UVA's new Carr's Hill parking deck (vantage point for this June 28 photo) and Carr's Hill Field. http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/03/jumbo-compressors/ Andy Wolpa, "Canyon Vista." It's summertime, and the living is easy (read "slow"). As ceiling fans turn lazily and the lightning bugs come out to play, art has apparently gone on vacation, leaving a rather abbreviated stroll for those out to take in the First Friday air. Nevertheless a few exhibitions stand ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/first-friday-slim-pickings-edition/ Lyndon Larson has cooked at fishing lodges in Alaska, on a yacht, and now serves it up on the Downtown Mall. PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE Street burritos and tacos have joined the offerings out of wagons on the Downtown Mall. L's Burrito & Juice Company moved into town today in front of ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/mexican-magic-new-wagon-rolls-up-on-mall/ We don't live here anymore. PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE Fewer than two years ago, WHTJ hosted a splashy kick-off party for its Terri Allard-hosted program, Charlottesville Inside-Out. Today, the public broadcasting station licensed for Charlottesville still has Allard, but the rest of its local programming has gone dormant--- along with its local ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/latest-cutback-whtj-chops-office-not-shows/ Blogger and digital plagiarism watchdog Waldo Jaquith. FILE PHOTO BY HOOK STAFF Put a blog in Waldo Jaquith's hands, even a literary magazine's blog, and there's no telling what can happen. Last week, the Virginia Quarterly Review employee called out Wired editor and best-selling author Chris Anderson on VQR's blog for lifting ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/copy-paste-jaquith-catches-best-selling-plagiarist/ Luscious Lucas, the girlfriend of one of the men charged in the July 2008 slaying of Joshua Magruder, 19, testifies in court July 1 that her boyfriend, Trenton Michael Brock, had a problem with the victim, Tasha Kates reports in the Daily Progress. That same day, Lucas, 23, is also ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/murder-trial-witness-assaulted/ The Newsplex reports that 47-year-old Samuel Murray of Charlottesville went into the Papa Johns on Ivy Road last month to fill out a job application, then stole a tip jar with $57.55 on his way out, a heist caught on the store's surveillance camera. Charlottesville Police Lt. Gary Pleasants said ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/most-poorly-planned-robbery/ This is how it looked in the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport (CHO) on June 11 when a Delta flight to Atlanta was canceled and these passengers were offered alternate travel arrangements. http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/alternate-arrangements/ Chiropractor Dolly Garnecki with patient Kayla Lisa, a 19-year-old Radford University student seeking to reverse her scoliosis through uncoventional care. PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART Judy Blume's 1973 book Deenie plunged a generation of girls into panic over scoliosis, an all-too-common spinal curvature. But some Charlottesville area girls-- unlike the book's 13-year old ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/02/straight-talk-could-new-scoliosis-treatment-hold-promise/ State Senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds had an invite from President Barack Obama to appear with him today in Northern Virginia, but Deeds reportedly declined, and told the White House he already had other plans-- meeting with the secondary school teachers of Williamsburg. Asked by the Washington Post ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/deeds-declines-obama-invite/ "It takes courageous leadership, as we find in our president and in our Congressman," said Delegate David Toscano, shown here with his Congressman. PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER The so-called Cap and Trade Bill, officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House of Representatives Friday, June 26 ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/cap-gun-gop-targets-perriello-for-energy-vote/ Three years after Sprint-Nextel spun it off to focus on wireless, landline carrier Embarq has been purchased by CenturyTel in an $11.6 billion deal. The two carriers will become CenturyLink, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, and serve 7.5 million customers in 33 states, according to a release. (And we remember ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/embarq-to-merge-with-centurytel/ Construction on the Meadowcreek Parkway will continue after Judge's ruling, for now. FILE PHOTO BY GORDON BLOCK After waiting for nearly six weeks, a group of Charlottesville citizens fighting against the Meadowcreek Parkway finally heard the judge had ruled against them in their lawsuit to stop the controversial road. The plaintiffs argued ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/admit-defeat-plaintiffs-lose-one-battle-against-parkway/ Robert Smith PHOTO COURTESY UVA POLICE A man wearing construction clothes allegedly grabbed a purse while in a UVA building June 29 and fled, plowing into a pursuing university employee with his car. Robert Smith, 59, of 802-M Hardy Drive, is charged with malicious wounding, breaking and entering, and grand larceny. According to police, ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/elder-thief-alleged-purse-snatcher-hits-pedestrian/ UVA's 50-bed long term acute care hospital, or LTACH, on Ivy Road alongside Volvo of Charlottesville, is rising as a steel skeleton. Why, just a month ago, it was little more than its elevator shafts. http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/ltach-rises/ Of all the unusual photographs of Michael Jackson seen over the years (hair on fire, hyperbaric chamber, kissing Elvis's daughter), surely one of the more curious is the circa 1980 shot of him sporting a Confederate Union hat on downtown Richmond's Franklin Street. Style Weekly has the story. (And I ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/rembrances-include-mj-in-confederate-cap/ Daily Progress readers recently received an uplifting, tear-jerking story of the UVA student who suffered what might have been a fatal, face-crushing injury while bicycling the Blue Ridge Parkway. Were it not for some doctors, including Martha Jefferson's well-placed Mark Harris and UVA's Stephen Park, there might have been ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/progress-runs-tear-jerking-story/ Bel Trio: Jim Baldi, Dave Simpson, and Gareth Weldon bring "Munsch" and the "Window on the Belmont Riviera" to Downtown Belmont. FILE PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR C&O Restaurant owner Dave Simpson and the folks at Bel Rio appear to have invented a word. The word is "munsch," and besides being ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/saturday-munsch-in-belmont/ The Food and Drug Administration confirmed on Monday, June 29 that samples of cookie dough from a Nestlé plant in Danville contain a strain of the E. Coli bacterium. Dozens across the country have been sickened from eating the raw Toll House cookie dough  produced at the Danville plant. As ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/danville-plant-source-of-tainted-cookie-dough/ Scottsville has a case of porcine pilfering on its hands. According to the Newsplex, Wilber, the 18" pig mascot outside Pee Wee's Pit Barbecue has gone missing. He was last seen on Sunday, June 28. Wilbur has been previously featured in the Hook during the 2008 presidential campaign, when he ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/pig-mascot-missing-in-scottsville/ As part of its $7.5-million renovation, which appears now to be complete, new lights adorn the trees, as was evident in this photo from 9:19pm on June 29. http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/new-lights-for-mall/ Bryan McKenzie has the story in the Progress about the latest in the ongoing saga of the Meadowcreek Parkway. http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/judge-swett-let-parkway-roll/ The Rotunda stands as the centerpiece of a Jefferson masterpiece, one of only four structures in the United States to be named a World Heritage Site, but there's one problem: 95 percent of it is not the work of Jefferson. FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO As UVA prepares to restore the ... http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/30/the-rotunda-what-the-devil-to-do-with-it/