Author: SeanTubbs

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Tom Morgan Talks the Roots of Jazz

Hurricane Katrina displaced over a million people all around the country, the nation’s greatest diaspora to date. One man who fled the Crescent City was Tom Morgan, a former Charlottesville bartender and WTJU jazz host. He’s the author of several books on the roots of jazz, and also a radio fixture in New Orleans. After Katrina, he was able to produce his program for WWOZ, thanks to the Internet.

Morgan spent part of his exile from the damaged city in Charlottesville, a place where he began his quest to become a jazz musicologist. Dave Sagarin from George Loper’s website interviewed him on October 15, shortly before he went back home.

This podcast was sponsored by George Loper’s website, which focuses on local issues, be they political, social, economic or religious.

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Along the Rivanna Trail with Diana Foster

The Rivanna Trail loops around Charlottesville and Albemarle county, almost exclusively along privately-owned land. Hikers trek across pathways cared for by a couple hundred volunteers. The rustic trail is the best place to get away from it all without leaving the city, a fact that is increasingly recognized by developers, landowners, and government officials.

That’s a far cry from the early days of the trail, according to Diana Foster. She’s the past president of the Rivanna Trail Foundation, which runs the 20-mile pathway. Currently about 18 miles of the loop have been built, with another five miles of companion trails.

Every November, Foster leads a one-day trek around the trail to draw attention to the natural beauty of the urban wilderness. I recently took a much smaller trip with Foster through a small section of the Rivanna trail from Jordan park in southeast Charlottesville, to Fifth Street near the Willoughby section of town. I asked Foster to tell me about the ultimate goals of the Rivanna Trail Foundation.

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Fry Springs Neighborhood Reacts to 2008 Bridge Closure on JPA Extended

Residents of the Fry’s Spring area of Charlottesville are up in arms about the Virginia Department of Transportation’s plan to temporarily close Jefferson Park Avenue Extended near Fontaine Avenue, beginning in 2008, to repair and widen the bridge that crosses the railway tracks. City officials say the plans have been on the books for several years, but many residents argue they’ve been caught by surprise. And they’re not quite sure why the plans call for the conversion of Todd Avenue from a thru-way to a cul-de-sac.

On October 26, about three dozen people attended a meeting of the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association to ask questions of Jim Tolbert, Charlottesville’s director of neighborhood services development. The meeting was moderated by Mike Farrugio, former president of the group. CPN is pleased to bring the meeting in its entirety, and will be following up with a feature on this topic in the near future.



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Debate: Should Charlottesville switch to an elected school board system?

Should Charlottesville switch to an elected school board? Currently, the City Council appoints the seven members of the school board, but a group of concerned parents has managed to get a city-wide referendum on the ballot to ask citizens if an elected board should be adopted. On Saturday September 17, the Charlottesville Democratic Party held a debate on the subject at the offices of the Jefferson Area Board of Aging. Moderated by Assistant U.S Attorney Timothy Heaphy, the panel consisted of current school board member Muriel Wiggins, City Councilman Kevin Lynch, U-V-A History Professor Jeffrey Rossman, Albemarle County School Board member Steve Koleszar, and U-VA Urban and Environmental Planning Professor William Lucy. The program runs for an hour and a half.

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Talking with Charlottesville Young Professionals

Who lives and works here in Charlottesville? Answering that question is one of the goals of the work we post here to the site. To that end, we bring you essays from people like Deepak Singh, and podcast community radio programs like the Sunday Morning Wakeup Call. The idea, we think, is to help expand the public square by giving people a forum to be heard.

With that in mind, we thought we’d start by attending a party thrown by a group that was created in 1999 to help people in their twenties and thirties find a reason to stay in town. Ever since, the Charlottesville Young Professionals has held hundreds of social events to give people the chance to meet each other. On a recent evening in late August, I drove to McIntire Park where the group was holding its annual membership party, and first spoke with the group’s outgoing president.

This podcast is sponsored by Jim Duncan of Jim Duncan Real Estate. Get insights on the Charlottesville housing market by reading Jim’s blog on Central Virginia real estate.



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An Interview with Ralph Chester, New Orleans Refugee

It’s been a week now since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, but the mass exodus of people from New Orleans and other afflicted areas continues, and will continue for months to come as many in Louisiana are told to stay away from their homes for at least a month. Ralph Chester is one of this new diaspora, on the road since Sunday with his wife and two teenage boys. The family’s home is three miles outside of New Orleans in an area called River Ridge, in Jefferson Parish, but they’re not going to be back any time soon. So, they’re settling in as temporary residents of Charlottesville, along with 87 special status students at the University of Virginia, as well as other families and individuals with a connection to Central Virginia. I spoke with Ralph on September 5 in the CPN studio. He says this isn’t the first time he’s had to evacuate his family in the face of what he describes as “a bowling ball thrown by God.”

Now, how can you help?

The Starlight Express luxury bus will be taking at least one of its buses to a refugee staging area in Mississippi on Tuesday, September 6. If you hear this before then, call Starlight at 295-0782, 434-295-0782. They’re looking for donations of all kinds of things, and also might be looking for places for people to stay. Call 295-0782 when you hear this to find out how you can help.

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Political Blogging in Virginia

Blogging is fast becoming an important way for many Virginians to get detailed news and opinion about politics in the Commonwealth. Visit the Virginia Progressive, or the Commonwealth Conservative, and you’ll come across thoughts from across the political spectrum, from both the site’s authors and the reading public.

But the websites have raised many questions about the ethics of blogging: For instance, is a blogger who advocates the election of a certain candidate really producing a political advertisement? Well, on Saturday, August 27, 2005, the Sorensen Institute on Political Leadership at the University of Virginia convened the state’s bloggers together for the first ever Summit on Blogging and Democracy in the Commonwealth. Sean Tubbs attended as a reporter for Virginia public radio stations and the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.

This report from the Summit is 23 minutes and 39 seconds long. In order to help you navigate through this file, we provide this rundown of the various people who were interviewed for this report:


00:00 – 01:00 Introduction
01:00 – 03:10 Former Delegate Barnie Day, Bacon’s Rebellion
03:10 – 04:10 Kenton Ngo, 750 Volts
04:10 – 8:30 Chris Piper with the State Board of Elections
08:30 – 10:45 Jay Hughes
10:45 – 14:45 Frosty Landon, Virginia Coalition for Open Government
14:45 – 18:52 Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, Change Servant
18:52 – 19:19 Kenton Ngo, 750 Volts
19:20 – 20:41 Chris Piper with the State Board of Elections
20:41 – 22:35 Sean O’Brien with the Sorensen Institute
22:35 – 23:38 Conclusion



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Virginia Talkers: A Call From Hurricane Katrina

David Duncan and his sister Sara

Over this past weekend, David Duncan’s sister Sara was in the path of Hurricane Katrina as it stormed through Miami en route to the Gulf Coast. David called her Friday night to see if she was okay, and the University of Miami student reported that all was well. The call was recorded, and we bring it to you now as part of David’s Virginia Talkers’ series.

This file is now off-line. If you would like to hear it, please contact us…

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Wakeup Call: Pie Dumas, Life Coach

Pie Dumas

What exactly is a “life coach?” A look on Wikipedia describes this relatively new profession as someone who aids “clients with transitions in their personal life.” Pie Dumas is a life coach and self-described ‘survior of life’ who appears this week on WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wakeup Call. Rick Moore is somewhat skeptical about life coaches, and asks if these type of people are helpers or hucksters. A lively discussion ensues.

Also on this show: Buying a car is different now that gasoline prices are higher. In his weekly monologue, Rick asks why some vehicles are excluded from fuel economy standards, and expresses gratitude to the person who nearly wrecked into his car this week.

This program is no longer being offered. If you would like to hear it, please contact us.

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An Interview with Sean O’Brien on the Virginia Blogging Summit

Sean O’Brien is the Executive Director of the Sorensen Institute at the University of Virginia

By now, mostly everyone knows that media coverage of Virginia politics is changing because of the blog – web logs run by anyone with an opinion about politics in Virginia. More of these blogs are being added every day, and the form is developing into an important tool to spread dialogue on the important issues that face our state and nation. Because of their increasing influence, the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia is holding a Summit On Blogging and Democracy in the Commonwealth. This week I stopped by the Institute and spoke with Sean O’Brien about the one-day event.

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WVIR to air story on podcasting

This podcast is filed under the shameless promotion category. I’ll be part of a package on NBC 29’s 6:00 newscast on podcasting. Reporter Mark O’Brien stopped by the studio last week to interview me for a story on this crazy new fad. He and his camera man spent quite a while discussing how to depict the story visually. And because this was television, we had to spice up the visuals slightly by flooding the place with light – not easy to do in a basement studio. This podcast is a behind-the-scenes look at being on the news.

We’ve got some interesting shows coming up this week. While me on tape will be appearing over the airwaves, me in the flesh will be attending the Charlottesville Young Professionals membership party tonight at McIntire Park. I’ll be roaming the crowd, asking what their concerns are about the future of Charlottesville. I’ll be compiling a podcast of what I heard later on this week.

In the meantime, here’s the link to the text of the NBC 29 story.

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WNRN’s Wakeup Call: Properly Walking for the Makindu Children’s Centre

On this week’s installment of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wakeup Call, Rick gives the news of the week and talks with two men who are in Charlottesville this week to discuss their recent walk for charity across Kenya. Michael Farley discusses taking “A Proper Walk in Kenya,” a term used to describe the massive journeys he often takes around the African nation to get to know it better. Farley has organized two “proper walks” for charity. Jeff James is a wildlife photographer who accompanied Farley through The Valley of the Black Death. Both men are campaigning to raise money and awareness for a children’s center in a village called Makindu. Their story will be told in the September 2005 edition of National Geographic Adventure magazine.

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WNRN’s Wakeup Call is heard every Sunday at 11:00 AM.