February 2009 edition
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Read our February 2009 edition of The New Dominion Magazine here.
The thing called love
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Story by Chris Graham
Larry and Shana Sabourin have been married for going on two months now. And they’re starting to get worried. “We’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives,” said Larry Sabourin, the director of education at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, to which Shana, a teacher at Wilson Middle School in Fishersville, added, reflexively, “It’s nervewracking, it really is.”
They don’t make love out to be nervewracking in the movies, do they? Love isn’t work; love is, well, a many-splendored thing, whatever is meant by that. We’ll go with the common concept of splendors - the weakness in the knees, the pangs in the stomach, the loopiness in the head, at the mere thought of your honey.
Harrisonburg riding the tech wave
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Story by Chris Graham
You know an economic zone is doing pretty good for itself when you can’t decide which of several companies is its anchor. That’s the problem, if you can call it a problem, that Harrisonburg has in its technology zone.
Breaking things down, you’d have to call Rosetta Stone the top contender for anchor status - right? - if only because the company that has revolutionized the way people learn new languages has been there the longest, since 1992. But then you have to consider the role that SRI International is going to play in the next phase of development of the tech sector in the Friendly City. After all, SRI is the reason California has a Silicon Valley.
Valley marks Obama inauguration
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Story by Chris Graham
An estimated 2 million people were in Washington for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Many millions more were watching at home, at the office or at events like the one that our sister online publication, The Augusta Free Press, cosponsored in Waynesboro.
Gallup survey data had six in ten Americans watching the inauguration live. Which just blows my mind. I’m 36 years old, a politics junkie since I was old enough to talk, and I don’t remember any of the other eight inaugurations that I obviously had to have lived through.
Happy being second banana
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Story by Chris Graham
Jon Bowerbank is good at math, sure, but 3+3=6 isn’t exactly advanced calculus. Political calculus, sure. “We get a threepeat in the governship Democrat, we get all three statewide offices in the Democratic fold, and by then, if we accomplish that, we’ll pick up six House of Delegates seats,” said Bowerbank, a Southwest Virginia energy magnate who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for lieutenant governor in the June party primary.
New joint chiefs of staff
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Story by Chris Graham
We first met Jerry Carter last summer when his crusade was getting people out to see the Valley League in all its glory. His focus has narrowed a bit since.
“We’re going to try to create an atmosphere at the ballpark similar to if you went down to Salem and watched the Avalanche play or if you went down to Lynchburg and watched the Hillcats play. We’re going to try to create an environment that is either a Single-A or Double-A environment at the ballpark,” said Carter, the new co-owner of the Waynesboro Generals, perhaps the summer baseball league’s flagship franchise right now, if its back-to-back-to-back regular-season championships have anything to say about it, anyway.
Retired General
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
He didn’t have to say much more. “My priority is my wife,” Jim Critzer told me when I asked him about his decision to sell the Waynesboro Generals, which he had almost singlehandedly saved from oblivion a decade ago, back when it looked like the Valley League original might be moved out of town.
Weddings 101
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Column by Heather Owens
Planning a wedding? If you are, chances are you are encountering higher levels of stress than you even imagined possible. Beyond the traditional wedding stress triggers, such as choosing exactly the right gown and ordering the perfect flowers; new situations, like a tight budget and the politics of extended families compound the possibility of stress overload. Establishing, and sticking to, some simple rules helps in maintaining balance.
Patience, commitment are their virtues
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
They met as college freshmen, but it took 10 years for Dean Welty to ask Janet to marry him.
“I had to work on him,” Janet said, playfully nudging Dean, her husband of 38 years now.
“I had to get over my gunshyness,” Dean said.
Sitting at the same table
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
It took him three years, but he finally asked the question in a way that he thought would harken back to the time that he asked her out on their first date.
Except that Shana closed the card before seeing the hidden panel on which Larry had proposed marriage.
“What I remember is when I asked her on our first date, I had one of the kids at school take a note over to her, you know, those kid notes, Will you go out with me? Circle Y or circle N. So I did this the same way,” said Larry Sabourin, who met Shana when they were both teaching at Stuarts Draft Middle School.
Their secret: Not-a-dates
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
Neither was looking to get into another relationship. Leslie Lindsay was just coming out of a divorce from a marriage of 14 years. Kevin Chisnell had been married twice and had been out of the dating game for much of the previous 10 years.
And then they got introduced to each other one night at Byers Street Bistro in Downtown Staunton.
“A patron introduced us,” said Chisnell, the pavement manager for the Staunton District office of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
The biggest adventure of their lives
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
Phil Floyd is the one with the memory for details.
“We met on May the 5th, 1991. At 2 o’clock in the morning,” Floyd said.
“What a memory!” his life partner, John Ong, said.
“I can tell you what I had on,” Floyd said.
Floyd, the manager of adult clinical support services at the Rockbridge Area Community Services Board, is emotional intelligence. Ong, a mathematics professor at Mary Baldwin College, is cerebral intelligence.
A Blueprint | What Waynesboro can learn from Harrisonburg
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
Waynesboro was once the envy of Western Virginia for its manufacturing economy. As recently as 1990, almost half of the city’s workforce was employed in manufacturing, whose rate of pay has traditionally been at least 40 percent and some years approaching 50 percent higher than the median income in the city.
Is the Valley positioned for more tech-sector growth?
February 1, 2009 by crystalabbegraham · Leave a Comment
Web Extra by Chris Graham
Some of us want to see the Valley add to its agriculture-economy foundation with something of an emphasis on the development of a high-tech and green-collar-focused economy. Good news from Richmond - that’s how they’re selling us.
“The Valley is in many ways a region that is ahead of everybody else in that respect,” said Liz Povar, the director of business development at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the state’s economic-development entity, citing the presence in the Valley of SRI International, which is locating its East Coast operations north of Harrisonburg to head up new drug-research and alternative-energy efforts, and the work in Harrisonburg to jumpstart a now-thriving Downtown Technology Zone.
