A parent’s right to choose

Story by Chris Graham

Dylan Owens-Wargo wasn’t enamored, to say the least, with his mom’s plans to send him to Fishburne Military School for eighth grade.

“I told her I was going to run away if she made me go to Fishburne,” said Owens-Wargo, whose mother, Heather Owens, for her part felt she had no choice but to pull Dylan out of the Waynesboro public-school system.

“He had just stopped caring. He either wasn’t doing his homework, or he wasn’t turning it in, trying to be cool like the other kids. I didn’t give him a choice. This was our only option,” said Owens, who was rolling the dice in more ways than one. Because Heather Owens isn’t the archetype for a private-school mom. She is in fact a single mother and small-business owner who takes on extra clients at her Natural Beauty Studios in Downtown Waynesboro to help pay the $15,000 annual expenses for tuition, books and uniforms for Dylan to be able to attend Fishburne. Read more

Too cool for its own good: Is the Staunton art scene pricing itself out of the local market?

Story by Chris Graham

Kevin Postupak had it pretty good. He didn’t realize that when he was struggling to find a way to keep his Kronos Art Gallery afloat back when the economic downturn started hitting the Staunton art scene hard back around the first of the year.

“People say, That’s what the market bears. If we can charge $4,000 a month for a space, why shouldn’t we?” said Postupak, who has been on the market for a new home for Kronos after a well-publicized order from a city fire marshal effectively ended his three-year tenancy in the Wharf.

The flatlining art market had pushed Postupak to scheduling music concerts to try to make ends meet, and even with some success in packing the gallery with the music Kronos was having a tough time covering the $500-a-month lease on the space some months, leaving Postupak with two alternatives - drop the music and make another go at making the art gallery work, or find another place to do music and art together. Read more

One hat too many: Can city employee run for City Council and keep his day job?

Column by Chris Graham

So I’m hearing though the grapevine that the head of a city-government department in Waynesboro is thinking about running for City Council next year, and that he’s not necessarily thinking about quitting his day job before doing it.

“Can’t be,” I remember saying when I first was made aware of this tidbit of information. “There has to be something prohibiting that in the city charter or the State Code. I mean, hello, conflict of interest?”

You might remember that I ran for City Council in Waynesboro last year, and that my opponents raised the conflict-of-interest issue with me, and though their contention was a fundamental misunderstanding of what conflict of interest is - and no, editing a magazine and news website does not bring into play any conflicts of interest, any more than an attorney or insurance agent or any other small-business owner interested in serving in city government would have a conflict of interest - I still hear from people today who were convinced it would have been an issue for me to have to wade through, I guess believing that I might be tempted to use my position to influence news stories and scoop the competition when something big was about to come down. Read more

Inside the new RMH: No stone left unturned in construction, layout of new hospital

Story by Chris Graham

It’s not even a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Dennis Coffman is getting to do something that only a relative few people have the chance to do in their lifetimes.

“What we’re doing here is setting the course for the delivering of medical services at RMH for the next 100 years,” said Coffman, the point man on the $300 million Rockingham Memorial Hospital project, which is on pace for a move of patients from the Downtown Harrisonburg location that has been the home to RMH since 1912 to the new site on Port Republic Road just outside the Harrisonburg city limits in June 2010.

Coffman, the director of facilities planning and development at RMH, is the kind of guy who as the cliche goes leaves no stone unturned. The overriding motivation for Coffman is to ensure as much as he can that the new hospital makes the best use of the new location that is possible. Read more

The miller’s life

Story by Theresa Curry

Two or three times a year I dodge the barreling southbound trucks on Interstate 81 and travel towards Raphine, to cook with Georgie Young at Wade’s Mill. She and her husband, Jim, left fast-paced urban jobs to restore the old, water-powered mill and the miller’s home across the yard.

Jim oversees the grinding of yellow Virginia corn, wheat and rye, and Georgie gives cooking classes in her comfortable farmhouse kitchen.

On the opposite side of the mill store from the flours, meals and whole grains are shelves of French linens, knives as sharp as razors, non-stick baking pads and wonderful stoneware pots able to stand the heat of a gas flame. Georgie – who once led culinary tours of France – has collected a small but dazzling array of cook’s helpers and adornments, high-tech, low-tech and no-tech, tools distinguished by their practicality and durability, put to daily use in her own kitchen. Read more

Vet student goes wild

Story by Chris Graham 

They’re about as big as a 6-foot tall male, a tad bit thicker - up to 600 pounds - and when stressed, you don’t want to find yourself sitting on top of a wildebeest.

Which is precisely where second-year Virginia Tech graduate veterinary student Becky Davis found herself one day in Africa recently.

“He was darted, but if he’d wanted to get up, he could’ve gotten up. The person in charge of game reserve said, If he tries to get up, you have to lay on him, whatever, you can’t let him get up. You’re in charge. That was a little scary. You definitely didn’t want him to get up,” said Davis, who joined a group of 12 veterinary students on a three-week trip to South Africa in June learning how to treat wildebeests, buffaloes and big cats including lions and tigers. Read more

Not the foosball you play

Story by Chris Graham

Alan Cribbs is a world-champion foosball player. Yes, they have world championships for foosball players.

Cribbs is also a foosball visionary and entrepreneur who has modeled a U.S. foosball circuit after the PGA Tour and hopes that one day top foosball players will be recognized on the street like stars in other sports.

“That’s the way the game is treated in Europe,” said Cribbs, the owner of the Pinnacle, N.C.,-based Bonzini USA, which markets custom foosball tables and organizes foosball tournaments across the country, including the Thunder in the Mountains Foosball Spectacular at Byers Street Bistro in Downtown Staunton that was held last month. Read more

Staunton Music Festival

Item by Chris Graham

The Aug. 21-29 Staunton Music Festival will bring Downtown Staunton to life with eight main-stage festival concerts and many free events, including five free lunchtime concerts, Young Artist master classes and pre-concert talks.

Artistic director Carsten Schmidt, a longtime Staunton resident, has invited more than 35 musicians to perform in the Festival, including 25 outstanding singers and instrumentalists from around the globe, five leading American composers including Judith Shatin of Charlottesville, five Young Artist Fellows and two Emerging Composers. Two area choral groups, the Madison Singers from JMU in Harrisonburg and Mira of Charlottesville will also perform. Read more

The New Dominion - August 2009 edition