College
towns are insular places. They feel like the world entire to freshmen. They
start feeling cramped to seniors. Charlottesville is one of these towns. Tucked
between the Shenandoah and Richmond, the town possesses a hint of Washington
Irving’s narrative fiction—ghosts abound in Charlottesville. Thomas Jefferson
is over one shoulder. Ralph Sampson is over the other. Somewhere on the Lawn is
a room where Edgar Allan Poe toiled away, most likely in misery, or at least
anticipating misery. Perhaps Sampson is nothing more than Poe’s imagination
stretched so thin on a rack that his knees buckle and break. Oh! The misery!