Charlottesville Community Engagement

Today’s sponsor: Sign up for emails from the Ragged Mountain Running and Walking Shop There are many oddities about the names many civilizations use to describe units of time but September is one to be pondered. What we now consider the nine month was originally the seventh of the year until reform around 2,500 years ago, a linguistic quirk that may perhaps one be remedied by future world leaders.

Weeks that begin on the final day of the month are a bit odd, but when that month is September, the feeling becomes a bit more pronounced. Throw in the fact that Labor Day late this year, and there’s a sense that summer is eligible for one last hoorah. Is there to be a break in the newsletter this week, or will this be a week of playing catch-up with so many stories yet to be written?

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:47:46 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. On September 1, the City of Charlottesville is expected to begin clearing out people who have been living in encampments along the Rivanna River and charging anyone who tries to stay with trespassing. September 1 is also the same day that Central Arizona Shelter Services is contractually obligated to begin operating an emergency low-barrier facility at 2000 Holiday Drive.

Today’s sponsor: Big builds, small repairs, and everything in between, Nola Builds does it all Radiation shields are still in place for spent reactor cores of the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor to be connected to the grid. The first phase of Calder Hall in Cumbria in northwest England went online on August 27, 1956 with reactors that weighed over 33,000 tons. A total of four cooling towers were built for the site which had a primary role to generate plutonium for weapons.

Today’s sponsor: Panorama Natural Burial is reimagining death care through natural burial, land conservation, and community All days in history contain examples of humanity’s inhumanity to humanity and August 26 is no exception. Some hit home more than others. Eleven years ago journalists Allison Parker and Adam Ward working for WDBJ out of Roanoke were murdered during a live interview at Moneta at the Hales Ford Bridge at Smith Mountain Lake.

Today’s sponsor: Sign up for emails from the Ragged Mountain Running and Walking Shop The first three records for August 25 as listed on Wikipedia tell stories of various emperors with Gratian being murdered in 383, Marcian being put in charge of the Eastern empire in 450, and Constantine V executing the leaders of a failed coup in 766. Let’s begin this edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement by pivoting to 1958 when an important moment in food history occurred.

Today’s sponsor: Big builds, small repairs, and everything in between, Nola Builds does it all On this day in 394 AD, a priest named Nesmeterakhem celebrated the birthday of Osiris by carving an inscription in hieroglyphics into the temple of Philae in southern Egypt. The author, also known as Esmet-Akhom, may have been one of the last people to make such a mark as the knowledge of how to do so was no longer being spread as new religions had risen.

The slow transition to fall moves a step forward this weekend with the return of students to the University of Virginia. That’s a good time as any to remind you that the Grounds are technically in a portion of Albemarle County because Charlottesville could not annex that land during the decades that option was on the table. It is also important to note that UVA is not under the restrictions of zoning in either city or county.

In any given year, leap or otherwise, August 22 is almost but not quite two-thirds of the way through the year. For this year, the exact tally is 64.1 percent. In 2028 that number will dip slightly to 63.9 percent. One unwritten style note of Charlottesville Community Engagement is that the percentage sign is to be avoided. A perhaps gaudy style note is to use these podcast editions to inform newer readers (and listeners) of previous editions from this day.

Today’s sponsor: Sign up for emails from the Ragged Mountain Running and Walking Shop One hundred and twenty-six years ago today, a media outlet in a Michigan city began sending out the “Detroit News Radiophone” over the airwaves on an amateur radio license with the call sign 8MK. On this August 20, a 50,000 watt signal continues to go out as WWJ, an all-news radio show owned by Audacy, the second-largest radio chain in the United States. How much longer will that form of media last?