Creative responses to tragedies run the gamut

Story by Chris Graham

Jim McCloskey had had the same feeling after 9/11.

 

“As a cartoonist, that was the real challenge that I had,” says McCloskey, an editorial cartoonist at The News Leader in Staunton, whose image of the Hokie Bird head in hands in anguish over the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16 that left 33 people dead has become iconic. Read more

Northern Virginia: Power line, or power down

Story by Erik Curren

Civil War battlefields and horse farms, or Tysons Corner and subdivisions – which comes to mind when you think of Northern Virginia?

Your answer will most likely determine your attitude to a controversial plan by Dominion Virginia Power to build a $243 million high-voltage power line over a 65-mile stretch of half-a-dozen counties ending at a substation in Southern Loudoun County. Read more

Hokie bears hold clues for humans

Story by Theresa Curry

When Front Royal author Christine Andreae needed a plot device to begin her wildlife thriller, Grizzly, she introduced a corpse. Skinned, and minus its heads, hands and feet, the body kicked off a murder investigation, until the forensics lab reported the gruesome body was that of a male bear.

“This was a grizzly, not a Virginia black bear,” says Andreae, who lives near a mountain path frequented by bears, “but I’ve always been struck by how much the torso of both these bears resembles a human’s.” Andreae made use of another similarity in her Montana-based mystery. The rear footprints of bears look like they’ve been made with a human foot – shorter and wider, but with the foot landing firmly on the heel, and the marks of five distinct toes. Read more

GOP splits – can Dems take advantage?

Story by Chris Graham

If any of the four moderate-conservative Republican senators being challenged for their party nominations was thought to be vulnerable, it was Emmett Hanger.

Go figure, then, that Hanger, R-Mount Solon, was the one incumbent who didn’t have to sweat much the night of the June 12 primaries. Read more

Where there’s smoke, there’s political fire: Legislative battle over restaurant smoking ban promises to heat up again

Story by Chris Graham

I’ll be the first to say that I wish that more restaurants prohibited indoor smoking – I mean, seriously, I have asthma and can barely breathe as it is without somebody blowing unfiltered Winston or Marlboro into my lungs.

But that said, do I think restaurants should be required to ban indoor smoking?

The way that I’m not answering that one right off might indicate to you how conflicted I am personally on this issue.

Because the way I look at it, if a restaurant wants to cater to customers who smoke and is willing to risk losing my business to do so, they can have at it.

I can be persuaded, of course. Read more

(Re)Introducing Jim Gilmore: Former governor shakes off political cobwebs, makes run at White House

Story by Chris Graham

You’ve heard this story before – a former Virginia governor known on the national scene is making a run at the White House.

It’s Mark Warner, right?

No.

That’s right – he dropped out.

George Allen?

Oh, yeah – he lost his Senate re-election bid last fall.

Don’t tell me – Jim Gilmore? Read more

Itching to figure what happened in ‘06: Sabato book more than scratches the surface in political analysis

Story by Chris Graham

One way to look at the 2006 midterms is to view it as being about the war in Iraq, about voters’ frustrations with the Bush administration, about Republicans letting themselves get caught up in too many scandals, about Democrats finally finding some middle-of-the-road candidates to carry the flag for them.

University of Virginia political-science professor Larry Sabato doesn’t dismiss any of these factors as having played at least something of a role in the outcome last fall that saw Democrats back in the majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1995. Read more

Love lost? Byrd-era values and suburban Virginia voters

Column by Quentin Kidd

V.O. Key, the great scholar of Southern politics, once said of Virginia’s political class: “(It) demonstrates a sense of honor, an aversion to open venality, a degree of sensitivity to public opinion, a concern for efficiency in administration, and, so long as it does not cost much, a feeling of social responsibility.”

Key, of course was describing the Byrd organization, the oligarchy that ruled Virginia for half a century. Byrd’s political machine may be a thing of the past, but some of the values of its political philosophy – principally an aversion to taxes and little interest in government services – echo in Virginia to this day, and are at the heart of our current political debate. In fact, the transformation of Virginia politics from the 1950s to the present is a fascinating story of great political and social change within the context of amazing consistency in certain core political values. Read more

Jerry Falwell: The man, the legacy

Story by Chris Graham

When someone with the Q rating that Jerry Falwell built for himself from his humble beginnings as a small-time Lynchburg pastor to having the ear of the most powerful man in the free world dies, you can almost bet that the words that are said in remembrance are going to be positive, glowing, if not downright reverent.

“Dr. Falwell was a great Virginian and a great American who made significant contributions to our Commonwealth and our nation. He was a man of strong, unwavering faith whose leadership helped advance Christian and conservative values,” Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling said in a statement issued after Falwell, 73, died on May 15 of apparent heart failure. Read more

Elizabeth and her hat: Why are Americans so fascinated with royalty?

Story by Chris Graham

I didn’t know why I was there.

I mean, I had long since given up on the idea that I was going to somehow land an audience with the Queen.

Oh, I had harbored that illusion early on – specifically back late last year, when word made its way from across the pond that Queen Elizabeth II was planning on coming to Virginia to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony.

I had envisioned at the outset being able to ask Her Majesty a question or two – perhaps even being given the opportunity for a sitdown interview. Read more

Feeding Her Majesty: Virginia, White House pull out all the stops

Story by Theresa Curry

White House and Virginia chefs chose springtime as the menu theme for Queen Elizabeth’s May visit, highlighting products at their peak in early May.

As Her Majesty noted in her formal address, times have changed since her last visit. The food world has changed, too: The best American chefs don’t try to dazzle dignitaries with exotic, offseason ingredients from all over the world, but focus on what’s local and in season. Read more

Invasion of the Pod People: Valley DJ, liberal blogger, offers political take

Story by Chris Graham

“Who’s Pedro?” Eddie Garcia says to me – only I don’t know it’s the radio DJ that I’d interviewed on the phone a week earlier that I’m talking to, because he’s not in radio-DJ character, as he was then, and otherwise I only know him from his diary on the liberal website Daily Kos.

“Um, well …”

I was wearing the only piece of clothing with anything remotely political on it that I had hanging in the closet – a T-shirt requesting a “Vote for Pedro” in the spirit of the cult movie “Napoleon Dynamite” from a couple of years back.

I explain this to the wild-looking man that I knew not at the time to be Eddie Garcia who as it turns out just happened to be standing out in the parking lot in front of WZXI-95.5FM’s headquarters south of Harrisonburg on what I also knew not at the time was for him another in a long series of smoke breaks this particular early-spring afternoon. Read more

Director in the making: Virginia Tech grad hopes to parlay award into career in Hollywood

Story by Chris Graham

Tim Leaton was able to meet Isaac Mwesigwa because of that video camera that he got for Christmas in middle school.

Go figure, right?

“One of the main reasons that I brought my camera over was the purpose of showing the church where their money was going, and how much it was helping these children over there,” says Leaton, who took a video camera with him to Uganda in 2005 while on a mission trip with his Richmond church.

The result – a film that he titled “Orphans in Africa,” chronicling the activities at Canaan Children’s Home, an orphanage founded by Pastor Isaac Wagaba – might end up launching Leaton into Hollywood. Read more

There’s no place like ‘Homeplace’: Horror novel set in Nelson County evokes supernatural, familial, rural

Story by Chris Graham

That was just – just wrong.

That poor guy – Howard Bryan, I think his name was, though I’m half-afraid to go back and look to make sure – he didn’t deserve that fate.

Nobody deserves that fate.

The guy got, you know, flambéed, right there in front of his cousin Yule.

And – by what, exactly?

I’m still not too sure on that – I’m guessing it was the ghost, but there’s no such thing as ghosts.

Right? Read more

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