We were out of the office most of Tuesday on a business matter in Charlottesville. We did get to take a late (late, late) lunch on the Downtown Mall, which was a good way to end the day over on the other side of the world.
Bad news about my friend Jim Sacco. He is indeed leaving. Dammit to hell. What’s he thinking, staying around, like, seven or eight years, then moving on to greener pastures like that? And to cover … NASCAR?
I’m thinking a New Dominion Magazine profile is in order. (Maybe Larry Landes will go on the record for me.)
More random musings …
– A reader and good friend forwarded me an exchange of e-mails with News Virginian editor and general manager Lee Wolverton over a pushing-the-envelope editorial cartoon in Tuesday’s NV. The ‘toon in question isn’t online, so I can’t link you to it, so you’ll have to go with my description of it – it depicted a playing card with gloves on knocking out a Cambridge police officer, and the caption below read, “The Race Card.”
I thought it was tasteless, personally, because it seems to me that the hothead cop was as much to blame as the hothead Henry Louis Gates in the incident from a couple of weeks ago up in Cambridge, and I’d hardly say that Gates has escaped from this without something of a black eye on his person, either.
I don’t know that I’d cancel my subscription to the paper over it or anything, like my friend did, but I can see his point. Both local newspapers, in my view, have tilted hard to the right, and if you’re a progressive-minded local resident interested in keeping up with the daily news, and you want something in print, what do you do?
No, I’m not trying to set up the new daily print edition of The Augusta Free Press here. I’d like to make it to 40 without having gone into Chapter 11.
– Thanks to a couple of recent donors to our Tip Jar: regular reader and frequent commenter Brian Rostron and a local resident who wished to remain anonymous in a public context. The second donor sent a nice note encouraging me to “continue to ask the hard questions and present the alternate side of the issue” and to stay active outside of the day job in journalism in the Waynesboro politics scene.
“Our city is at a crossroads and we continue to try to find ourselves. Without someone like you, I believe we are one step closer to becoming a Clifton Forge; rather than the enlightened, sustainable, desirable city that I think we can still become. Thanks for all your hard work.”
Thanks for the encouragement!
– Column by Chris Graham
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