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Contents | January 2009 edition
The January 2009 edition of The New Dominion Magazine includes … Cover Story: The Right to Vote, Taken You commit a felony, and you lose your right to vote. And in Virginia, it can be hard to get your right to vote restored upon completion of your sentence. Health Spotlight:... [Read more...]
Education
Special Report: We can’t leave them behind
Story by Chris Graham
Pat Harmon knew what she was seeing. It was like looking in a mirror.
“She was so frustrated, so angry, and she just wouldn’t talk to me. So I looked right at her, and I said, I know how you feel. You feel stupid, don’t you? And the tears started to flow,” said Harmon, a reading specialist at Thomas Harrison Middle School in Harrisonburg, who was not that long ago a student who knew what it meant to struggle, which is a nice way of putting how she felt about herself.
“I remember sitting in sixth grade, and the girl behind me, when I was reading aloud, was chuckling and laughing when I kept missing words. So I told her that, told her that I knew how she felt,” Harmon said.
For every Pat Harmon who overcomes early difficulties in school, and you could say that Harmon has not just overcome her tough childhood experiences, but conquered them, becoming a teacher and being named the 2008 Harrisonburg Teacher of the Year, there are many more students who throw in the towel, and even in the face of the noble attempt at crafting an educational system that leaves no children behind, there are tens of thousands of students being left behind in Virginia every school year.
The head of the class
Story by Chris Graham
Five teachers, all of them their school system’s teacher of the year for 2008. All of them teach students in elementary or middle school. Two are reading specialists. Not one would want to do anything different with her life.
“This is so cool to be here, because I can be an actress and a teacher and a mom and a friend all rolled up into one. And every day I walk in that day is different, because there’s 20 kids in my room, and everybody is bringing their own special package, and that causes all kinds of new little crystals to form. Oh, it’s awesome. This is the best job ever. I’ve never considered this a job. It’s a way of life,” said Bev Roach, a 32-year veteran at Churchville Elementary School and the ‘08 Augusta County Teacher of the Year.
Religion
Understanding Islam: Mosque opens doors to Valley to promote peace, harmony
As my eyes scanned the mosque, I was reminded of what Malcolm X wrote about his pilgrimage to Mecca. “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white,” the ’60s civil-rights leader wrote in a letter that was reproduced in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
I counted 110 people participating in the Friday prayers at the Islamic Center of the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg on the early October afternoon when I visited. Among them were men of a variety of Middle Eastern backgrounds, one family from sub-Saharan Africa, a young Arab-American wearing a backwards Virginia baseball cap with an orange V and silverswords, and the son of a former newspaper colleague of mine from Maine. And they were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that doesn’t at all fit the picture that Islamophobes have been painting of them that has the lot of them plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government and scheming to blow us all up or cut our heads off on the Internet.
A negative into a positive: Staunton woman’s gift from God inspiring others
Story by Elizabeth Geris
Rev. Elaine Rose’s cell phone melodically announced an incoming call six times in the span of about two hours – enough interruptions to tax the average person’s patience – but she didn’t fuss, or even indulge in a sigh. But then again, when you are the CEO and founder of Jericho and Damascus Road Outreach, a local youth ex-offender and reintegration program still in its infancy but gaining a tempo, there is precious little that’s average about you or your day.
After all, there are a lot of questions to answer, a lot of people to talk to, and a lot of work that needs to be done before Jazzy T’s Café on Beverley Street in Staunton can offer local diners a good meal, and local at-risk youth a job and a second chance.
“I usually have five or six meetings a day everywhere talking about the project, asking people to give stuff. … McQuay in Verona donated us a complete heating and cooling unit, and then Lowe’s donated us over $16,000 – we won the Lowe’s Hero Award, so in a couple weeks they’ll be coming and putting those big signs up and they’re going to paint the outside of the building,” said Rose.
Health
Authorized Personnel Only: Behind the scenes with the part of health care that you never hear about
Story by Chris Graham
You’ve probably never thought about what happens when doctors orders tests done in the lab. You might assume that they take them back to wherever the testing is done and do the work themselves.
I don’t know what I thought before, but now that I know what the real deal is, I can admit that I had no idea what really goes on, just that the work was done, and that I wanted to believe that whoever did it knew what they were doing.
Business/Economy
The Second Battle of Lexington
Story by David Reynolds
Visit almost any small town in America, and you will likely hear about an effort to revitalize its downtown. That’s because small towns have become the hole in the doughnut, a 19th century hole in a 21st century doughnut.
So why spend money on life support if the patient is dying? Around the doughnut, where those in charge of the hole have no say, are the ugly commercial strips, the shopping centers with no center and all those acres of free blacktop parking which is the real attraction. Sam Walton has been dead for years, but his supercenters are still sucking life out of old downtowns.
Now visit Lexington, Va. Most of the above apply. But something else is going on. We shall call it the Second Battle of Lexington. The first battle was when the big boxes went up outside of town. The town lost because it tried to fight suburban clutter without offering anything new in town. The Lexington Downtown Development Association waged the fight. Now LDDA is dead.
Remember when … downtown had a grocery store?
Story by Chris Graham
OK, so technically the new grocery store on West Beverley Street isn’t in Downtown Staunton. “Downtown is two blocks that way,” Brian Wiedemann said, pointing east toward City Hall from just outside the new George Bowers Grocery, which is opening Nov. 1 at 614 W. Beverley St. in a location that might as well be downtown, it’s so close.
More importantly for residents of the packed residential area just west of downtown, it’s within walking distance - which is probably what attracted George Bowers to the location back in the 1880s.
“Close application to his customers’ interests is the foundation of Mr. George Bowers’ great success,” reads an entry in the 1901 edition of Staunton’s Business Men of Note on Bowers, a New Yorker who opened his grocery on West Beverley in 1881.
Arts/Culture
Your guide to the holidays - 2008
Story by Theresa Curry
It’s a yearly dilemma: We want the holidays to be festive and cheery, filled with a generous spirit; at the same time, the crowds at the mall, rising prices, a stressed environment and an uncertain economy may leave us feeling demoralized.
The statistics don’t help: In the few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, our trash burden goes up an extra 25 million tons, mostly discarded packaging. We go into debt, putting more than half of the almost $5 billion we spend on our credit cards. Even worse, a quarter of the people on our list will “regift” our presents; others will return them. Those shirts, ties and sweaters we carefully select in just the right colors and sizes will disappoint 40 percent of those who receive them, according to statistics compiled by The Center for the New American Dream.
Photog aims to capture Faces of Waynesboro
Story by Chris Graham
Kevin Blackburn is searching for an answer to the question, What is Waynesboro? And being a professional photographer, Blackburn has engaged his trusty camera to help him out.
“We’re all in this weird transition for what Waynesboro is. That’s the best way I can say it. The headaches and craziness and politics aside, the town itself is growing in this really weird way. It’s like a teenager going through puberty. We don’t know where it’s going to go. The city is in that phase right now,” said Blackburn, who has initiated a project that he is calling Faces of Waynesboro to tell the story of the River City in its, ahem, awkward phase.
The rise and fall of kings: Richard II at The American Shakespeare Center
Review by Lindsay Howerton
Most of us with even a cursory knowledge of William Shakespeare’s works recognize his genius for revealing the range of human experience. From unabashed naughtiness and foolhardy love to strains of hopelessness, ruin and madness, the bard covers it all. That the world’s most famous wordsmith also inspires a fickleness in his audience remains lesser known.
Yet, fickleness happens.
Shakespeare fans often apply the highest acclaim to whichever play we’re currently seeing. “This one is clearly the most soaring, the most ranging in its wit and wisdom, its human touch and divine glance.” Or maybe that’s just when the American Shakespeare Center performs them.
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Featured Video
Vector Industries in Waynesboro is marketing Green Kits that can save 34 percent of your water consumption - cutting your water bill and conserving water. AFP editor Chris Graham reporting. Length: 2:14.
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