Charlottesville Breaking News
Corrections: Cover and back-page forehead slap
Due to a contagious and hopefully short-lived myopia that swept the Hook offices last week, our cover bore several errors. As most of you already know, and as the Hook staff has now learned the hard way, we are in the year 2013, not 2012. Furthermore, the Biscuit Run story so proudly touted on last week's cover and yet so noticeably absent from that issue's pages is, as you now will have seen, this week's cover story. A last minute story swap resulted in the error. And finally, the words "weigh in" should not be hyphenated when used as a verb.
On our back page, the essay on the Boston Marathon bombing bore the wrong byline. It was written by esteemed writer and frequent Hook contributor Janis Jaquith.
We sincerely regret the errors.
Still got it? Redford stars, not quite like old times
Robert Redford, 76, plays a man of ambiguous ageSony PicturesBy Richard Roeper
For nearly 50 years, Robert Redford has been on quest to prove he is more than a golden boy matinee idol.
Of course, Redford has succeeded in spectacular fashion, starring in such classics as The Candidate, Three Days of the Condor and All the President's Men; winning the Oscar for directing Ordinary People (somehow besting Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull), and founding the Sundance Film Festival.
He is legend. The notion Redford became a star only because of his looks is as ludicrous as someone saying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a great basketball player only because of his height.
Yet like so many great stars before him, Redford, now 76, steadfastly refuses to go gently into that good grandfatherhood. In The Company You Keep, he looks and moves like a really fit, handsome 76-year-old — a real distraction, given he's playing a former 1970s radical who now has an 11-year-old daughter and is living a quiet life under an assumed name.
OK, sure, guys in their 60s become fathers — but the tim...
Sweet addition: Pearl's comes to West Main
Pearl’s Bake Shoppe owners Laura Condrey and Laurie Blakey sweeten up West Main on May 6.Courtesy Laura Chapman Blakey
Pearl's will even whip you up a wedding cake.Courtesy Laura Chapman BlakeyCupcakes, cookies, macaroons, muffins, tarts, croissants…you can't swing a rolling pin these days without hitting a sweet shop somewhere in town. Come May 6, you'll be able to sink your sweet tooth into goodies at Pearl's Bake Shoppe between Sweethaus and the Albemarle Baking Company on West Main in the historic Peyton-Ellington Building at 711 West Main Street. The Richmond-based cupcake-centric bakery comes with an impressive resumé. Open since 2010 on Richmond's Grove Avenue, the shop's cupcakes have been voted Richmond's best by Richmond Magazine, and last year, Virginia Living Magazine voted them the state's best. Sweet!
The inspiration for the venture has some local roots, as co-owner Laurie Chapman Blakey says it came from her grandmother, Pearl Gentry Chapman, who lived her entire life in Greene County.
"My Grandmother was the most amazing cook. She cooked everything from scratch, using home-grown ingredients," says Blakey. "Even as a child, I appreciated the extraordinary culinary efforts it took to prepare the deliciousness that came from my Grandmother's garden and kitchen."
Indeed, that effort and attention to detail appears to be the secret. According to Blakey's partner, Laura Condrey, when they opened in Richmond, they were inundated with customers.
"We were hoping for...
Arbor Day
Bill EmoryOn April 26, Charlottesville Parks and Recreation planted a large diameter Platanus occidentalis in Quarry Park, Girl Scouts planted five saplings, and Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards unveiled a plaque designating the big sycamore in the background as a landmark tree. Virginia Department of Forestry recognized Charlottesville as a “Tree City” for the 7th year running. Tree Commission boss and former Charlottesville Mayor Elizabeth Waters was on hand, as was City Councilor Kathy Galvin.
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Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.
Biscuit Run bonanza: How Hunter Craig turned a donation into a windfall
Craig and fellow UVA BOV member Alan A. Diamonstein at a Richmond retreat in August 2012.File photo by Hawes Spencer
Life in the Biscuit Run "donut hole": The Breeden family home sits on 36 acres at the center of what will someday be a state park. Peyton Walz, left, Summer Puopolo, center, and Elizabeth Breeden are brainstorming ideas for how best to use the land that's been in their family for 40 years, but they do know they want to be "good neighbors" to the park. "We don't think 100 houses is the best use for the land," says Walz.Courteney Stuart
Outgoing Governor Tim Kaine, right, joined developer Hunter Craig, left, and DMB violinist Boyd Tinsley to celebrate the December 2009 donation of the parkland at a December 2009 event at the Monticello Visitors Center.file photo by courteney stuart
Life in the so-called "donut hole" is idyllic, with mountain views and rolling fields. The planned state park guarantees the land around the Breeden's property will always retain its rural character.Courteney Stuart
Craig admired the Biscuit run parcel as far back as the early 1980s, when he was in college.uvaHunter Craig has a way of snatching victory from defeat. Craig's masterstrokes in the field and in the courtroom follow a tumultuous year for the now 52-year-old media-shy banker, developer, and UVA Board of Visitors member. In May 2012, he withstood a publicized effort to remove him from the bank he helped launch. Two months earlier, one of his children was diagnosed with cancer. While arranging for the girl's treatment, Craig suddenly found himself near the center of what became known as "UVA June."
As the lone Charlottesville-based executive committee member of the University of Virginia's governing body, Craig initially signed off on the resignation of President Teresa Sullivan last summer– and found himself vilified. But as turmoil mounted over the ouster of the popular president, Craig publicly offered to resign to make way for a faculty member on the Board, and he expressed frustration that he wasn't able to muster the votes to bring back the president. A few days later, over the objections of Rector Helen Dragas, Craig and two others forced a Board meeting to take another vote. Although Dragas quickly issued her right-move-the-wrong-way memorandum and secretly plotted to push student leaders to parrot sentiments provided by paid spin-doctors, support for the ouster crumbled. Sullivan was reinstated.
And then, of course, there's Biscuit Run, the 1,200-acre southern Albemarle County tract that Craig and a group of investors donated to the state in...
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