Charlottesville Breaking News
Casual encounters: Alleged fake Craigslist poster denied bond
A fake ad on Craiglist brought 100 men to a Fauquier woman's door.file photo by hawes spencerMen kept showing up at the victim's house in Fauquier County wanting sex, she testified– more than 100 males between January and March 20.
A federal judge in Charlottesville denied bond April 5 to Kenneth Edward Kuban, who is accused of posting the fake "close encounters" ads on Craigslist that directed men to his former girlfriend's house.
Kuban, 61, a film preservationist for the Library of Congress in Culpeper, is charged with two federal counts of stalking for using the Internet to post the fake sex-wanted ads on Craigslist.
The victim, a widow and retired protocol officer for the Department of Defense who is identified as L.M. in court papers, testified in U.S. Western District Court.
She met Kuban on an online dating site in August 2010, a year after her husband died. They dated for four-and-a-half months, she told the court, until February 4, 2011, when she asked him to pick up his stuff. She didn't want to be in a relationship with him anymore, she said, because of his "abnormal behavior."
The victim described how Kuban would use her barbecue grill as an ashtray, and drink orange juice and milk right out of the bottles without pouring it into a glass. "He was just a Neanderthal man," she declared.
There were also the sexual abnormalities. "He liked nipple torture and he liked to scream," she said.
When Kuban didn't get the message the relationship was over and kept calling and emailing her, he was arreste...
Flash of insight: Get used to no power
Flickr/Brian GaidSilent flashes lit up the sky in fast succession, like paparazzi, for a good two minutes. The night was dark, and our power had clicked off about a half hour earlier. I stood at our bedroom window, fascinated by this mysterious pulse. Soon, the flashing stopped, and it was time to get some sleep.
But what was that? I’ve heard of “thunder snow,” where there’s thunder and lightning during a snowstorm. Maybe that was it. I live out in rural Albemarle, but a friend in Charlottesville observed the same phenomenon around the same time. The flashes were nowhere near as bright as lightning, though. And I didn’t hear a thing.
The communal wisdom on Facebook declared that what I had witnessed was transformers exploding. Well, I had seen those flashes around 3am when many people reported losing power, so maybe that was it. But I wasn’t convinced.
Today, after weeks of wondering about this March 6 curiosity and finding nothing on the internet to enlighten me, I picked up the phone and got some answers from Dan Genest, a Dominion Power spokesman.
Dan’s best guess was that what I saw was flashing from multiple instances of falling trees making contact with power lines. He said that transformers can, indeed, explode, but it’s rare during a snowstorm, and much more likely during a summer electrical storm.
So, I hadn’t seen transformers exploding: I’d seen power lines shorting out. Lots and lots of power lines, zapp...
Launching dreams: Nguyen's bringing the biz to small business
Courteney StuartWhen Toan Nguyen first conceived of a local microlending program similar to ones that have been successful in developing countries, people scoffed.
"They said $5,000 is too little to start a business in this country," says Nguyen, who proved the naysayers wrong when he launched the non-profit Community Investment Collaborative in December 2011. The program starts with a 16-week class in which participants create a business plan, followed by graduated loans starting at $5,000 and progressing up to $35,000 for those whose plans are approved. It's yielded "phenomenal success" as several members of the first class are already in business, says Nguyen, who now has a new venture– Cville Central– aimed at keeping small businesses afloat.
"Cville Central is a hub– we'll go out and get the jobs from the community from large institutions like UVA and then sub it out to small businesses," Nguyen explains.
Nguyen is well suited to understand the challenges of small business owners. Vietnamese born and a graduate of Darden, he also started C'ville Coffee in the Allied Business Park thirteen years ago.
"I've been in both worlds– I have a degree from Darden, so I understand the large corporation structure and how it does business, and I'm a small business owner and a minority. I'm in touch."
One of the challenges for small business owners is securing the work, he says, but other challenges come after the work is complete in...
Fat secret: Peirce-Cottler seeks cures from saddlebags
Courteney StuartOne doctor's trash is another's treasure– at least that's the case for UVA biomedical engineer Shayn Peirce-Cottler, whose use of liposuction leftovers in her research is helping improve treatment for serious conditions including diabetes and heart disease. Wait a sec. Love handles as potential life savers? You bet, says Peirce-Cottler, who explains it's not the fat cells themselves that offer such promise, but the stem cells that can be extracted and then injected wherever there's a need for an improved microvascular network– a system of tiny blood vessels that deliver oxygen to cells.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which are the most versatile– but also the most controversial– fat stem cells have a variety of benefits, says Peirce-Cottler, starting with the fact that there's little to no ethical debate over their use.
They're also more "differentiated," which means they can't turn into just anything. While it limits their medical applications, Peirce-Cottler sees that as a benefit.
"Embryonic stem cells run the risk of becoming anything, including cancer or teratomas," she says. The latter is known to anyone who saw the comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a tumor made up of hair and teeth.
One of the conditions Peirce-Cottler hopes her research will help treat is diabetic retinopathy, which causes blindness.
"If you're moving them into the eye," Peirce-Cottler says of stem cells, "the last thing we'd want t...
Moves that bind: Katie Schetlick finds connections through dance
Publicity photoWe fidget as we sit, we walk, we run and dance—we’re all in constant motion. But how often do we think of it as something that we share with others, something that links us together? Katie Schetlick, ballet instructor at the Charlottesville Performing Arts School, considers this connection between people, dancing, and movement every day.
“I’ve always just been interested in movement in general, and not even just dance movement," Schetlick says, noting that dance can manifest itself in different activities you might not think of– skating, or even surfing. "Those things can, in my eyes, also be considered dance," says Schetlick, who finds inspiration for her choreography in everyday movements.
“I find that the thing that really inspires me the most, no matter what form it is, is finding movements where people are really present in what they’re doing.”
The belief that dance can be transformative was the inspiration for The Movement Party, a program Schetlick founded with her close friend Zena Bibler. Described on its website as "a growing body politic committed to communication through a physicality currently threatened by the encroachment of a sedentary, voyeuristic life," Schetlick says she and Bibler wanted “to kind of fill the gaps in what we saw happening with dance in New York. We wanted to branch out and make dance more accessible for audiences and in a way, demystify dance.”
After launching The M...
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