Charlottesville Breaking News

After working a long shift as a chef at the Main Street Arena on Friday, March 15, Kenny Jenkins headed over to the Elks Lodge on Second Street NW for a drink and a dance with his fiancée. A longtime Charlottesville resident, Jenkins has been going to the Elks Lodge, a historic African-American fraternal organization with deep roots in the community, for over 30 years.

"It's a nice place to go, to relax, to see old friends," says Jenkins, 50. "Most people respect the Elks because it has a long history, or their parents went there. Now," he says, "it's really the only place for black folks to go."

Jenkins says the club scene on Friday nights has always been for older, working class African-Americans, but that younger people have started to go there because there are so few other places for them in Charlottesville. On that particular Friday, says Jenkins, an altercation broke out inside the club and a chair was thrown. Out on the street, as Jenkins and other people were leaving the club, the violence suddenly escalated.

Sitting in a cab he had just hailed, Jenkins heard a gunshot and then saw a Charlottesville police officer draw his gun, shout "drop your weapon!" and fire twice.

In the aftermath of the shooting, which left two men wounded and is still officially under investigation, the Elks Lodge has come under fire as a place with a history of chaos and violence after their Friday night dance parties. Nearby business owners have expressed outr...

I have a furnace that runs on natural gas, a gas stove, a gas dryer, and a gas hot water heater. I am happy with these, especially the stove. Gas is great for cooking. It never occurred to me, however, to wonder where my gas originated until I signed on for an overnight camping trip in West Virginia.

Wild Virginia, a non-profit environmental organization based in Charlottesville, welcomes members who believe passionately in caring for the outdoors and the creatures who live there. Its members are smart people who recognize that what happens in the forests affects the air in our cities and the streams that flow into our reservoirs, as well as into rivers like the James and the Shenandoah.

Earlier this month a caravan of cars carried 17 of us over too many hairpin curves to count until we were in the northwest corner of West Virginia. We didn't go to camp at the base of a waterfall, or to hike a scenic trail, but to observe up-close the industrialization that occurs when an energy company goes after the deep natural gas supplies more than 7,000 feet under the farm houses, brick ranchers, and cow pastures that straddle the narrow mountain roads of Doddridge County.

As resident Diane Pitcock will tell you, "Doddridge County lies at the heart of all the wet gas." Wet gas, she says, has more than just natural gas. It contains other saleable gases like ethane and butane, making her underground neighborhood prime real estate.

When...