Story by Chris Graham
“Inga.”
It was the big to-do back in 1968 when it was released in America.
“Filmed entirely in Sweden,” a snapshot on movietime.com relates, “‘Inga’ brims with a European sensuality and eroticism that shocked American audiences upon its release in 1968.”
That about sums it up right there, doesn’t it?
“When I got word that a [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
It wasn’t that there was much left downtown, but Phil Lemons knew that whatever traffic there had been before the West End took off with the opening of Wal-Mart in Waynesboro in 2003 was pretty much going, going, gone.
“Having experienced it in other towns, whenever a shopping center comes to the town, [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
Somebody asked Don Morris to sign a petition protesting the pending arrival of Wal-Mart in Waynesboro six years ago.
That the longtime Downtown Waynesboro business owner didn’t is an indication of where his thoughts are on economic-development issues.
“That to me was a no-brainer. Staunton had a Wal-Mart, Staunton had a Lowe’s. It might [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
Wondering what the new Democratic Party majority in the Virginia Senate means for rural Virginia?
The chair of the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee is from Alexandria.
You know, in Northern Virginia.
Extreme
Northern Virginia.
“That was really the power shift, much more than how everybody’s focused on Republican-Democrat. It’s really the power shift to [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
Amid a backdrop of men of various sizes and numbers of tattoos alternatively kicking and punching the air and occasionally a trainer wielding oversized protective gloves, the almost preternatural calm of Tyler Moyer stood out to me.
At least what I was reading was calm. I soon found out that he was a [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
So I’m talking with MMA athlete Dustin Honeycutt backstage about his match - which he lost by submission - and about the broken thumb that he suffered early on that pretty much ate away his chances of coming out on top.

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham

The game plan for 24-year-old Adam Prickett going into his Mixed Martial Arts in the Valley IV fight with Eric Ohene-Bekoe had been to keep things at standup as much as possible.
But the Verona man went back to his training at Valley Chute Box in Harrisonburg and decided to shoot for Ohene-Bekoe’s [...]

Filed under: 4-January 2008 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
“Why do you guys always do this kind of thing at night?” a student asked Terry Howell, the founder of the Central Virginia Paranormal Research Group, who was at Randolph College earlier this year to investigate the longstanding tale of ghosts haunting the former women’s school.
“If something’s there,” Howell said in response, [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out why Nelson County lacks even adequate broadband infrastructure.
The county’s 15,000 residents are spread out over 471 square miles - and without a true population center, it is essentially cost-prohibitive for broadband carriers to be able to lay down the fiber that would be needed [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Column by Erik Curren
“The media backlash is just beginning,” says an editorial in the Ecologist, an edgy environmental magazine out of Britain. “Slowly, almost imperceptibly, global warming is morphing into ‘global boring’.”
It’s not that anyone much outside of talk radio questions the science anymore – led by Newt Gingrich, serious Republican leaders are now saying [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
We grew up with “Family Ties” and cable TV, trips to the mall and video games.
Then they called us Generation X - and no, we didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, either.
Now we’re in our 30s - and maybe it’s the remote control and microwave oven that forced this on [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Chris Graham
I had an inkling as to what the meeting was going to be about - just from the tone of the e-mail.
The station management at WVPT, a public-television station based in Harrisonburg whose audience over the air extends from Charlottesville to Winchester and by satellite stretches into the Washington, D.C., market, had [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Story by Stephanie Pendleton
When arriving at The Little Grill Collective in Harrisonburg, crowds of fashionable hipsters and health-conscious patrons make lines in and out side of the door.
The place is always crowded. Especially on Mondays. Mondays are free. It’s like a soup kitchen, only the dining is family-style.
Ron Copeland greets his customers with an announcement. [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »

Column by Matthew Warner
“Let’s face it, lining the walkway to one’s front door with headless creatures, bones and blood is not the way to make a child feel welcome.”
— Jenelle Watson
As I watch Christmas decorations go up, I’m reminded of a fascinating drama that played out last year in my local newspaper, The News Leader [...]

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue | No Comments »