We are now at the second Saturday of the 11th month of the 2024th year of this naming system. It appears that it may become somewhat routine to target the podcast version of Charlottesville Community Engagement to go out on this day named after a planet. Like interplanetary probes, sometimes they’ll make it. Sometimes they won’t. I’m Sean Tubbs, still trying to get a hang out of gravity.
In this edition:
A recap of this week’s elections and a look ahead to next year (learn more)
Charlottesville experienced lower revenue collections in first quarter of FY2025
Charlottesville to make plans to improve pedestrian safety on Elliott Avenue (learn more)
Albemarle wins state award for Human Services Alternative Response Team (learn more)
Piedmont Virginia Community College and the UVA Equity Center have published latest snapshot of family economics in region (learn more )
If Albemarle and Charlottesville plan together, can that help the community adapt to climate change? (learn more)
First-shout: ACHS taking orders for book profiling local artist Frances Brand
Frances Brand lived from 1901 to 1990 and in her later life she undertook a series of portraits of individuals from Charlottesville and Albemarle County that would become her Gallery of Firsts.
Brand was a U.S. Army major, a civil rights activist, a world traveler, a devoted churchgoer, and an accomplished artist, among other things. Some remember her as a colorful eccentric who loved to dress in purple, while others knew her as a committed and lifelong social activist.
Behind each of Brand’s portraits of these 20th-century pioneers is a special story. To collect some of them, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society has created a book that features 51 portraits from the full collection of currently known Firsts portraits and share some of the compelling stories about those depicted.
ACHS is taking pre-sale orders now for shipping in November. To place your order, visit the ACHS store.
Second shout-out: Cvillepedia!
Cvillepedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and this second shout-out today is to provide a little bit about what I know. I helped create the website back in the late 2000’s as a way of keeping track of all of the stories being written for the nonprofit news organization I worked for at the time.
Now Cvillepedia is hosted by the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library under the stewardship of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. There are over 6,500 articles and we need volunteers to help keep it up to date and to capture more of this community’s history, present, and future.
If you want to learn how to do research, learn how to explore historical documents, and want some experience writing, consider becoming a volunteer. To give you a sense of one potential project, Frances Brand painted dozens and dozens of portraits of people in the Charlottesville area. Who were they? What can we learn about where we are now by documenting the stories of everyone from Ruth Klüger Angress to Jay Worrall?
Questions? Drop me a line!
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