Jim Bishop: All the world remains a stage for Ted Swartz

Jim Bishop

Column by Jim Bishop Submit guest columns: [email protected]   It’s a telling sketch. Local actor-playwright Ted Swartz plays a college student who comes home and tells his father that he decided to change his major from theater to pre-med. “I want to become a brain surgeon,” the young man tells his dad. The father, an…

Environmental group challenges Cuccinelli on emissions rule

Chris Graham

Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   Following a 2007 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation today jointly issued a final rule on curbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from light-duty vehicles, which contribute about one-fourth of America’s share of the world’s climate-change pollution.

J.R. Tolbert: Keeping the faith on Earth Day

Contributors

Column by J.R. Tolbert Submit guest columns: [email protected]   Forty years ago, nearly 20 million Americans participated in what was the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Inspired by Sen. Gaylord Nelson after witnessing an oil spill off California’s coast, Earth Day was started to spotlight issues related to environmental degradation and the need to…

The new, new conventional wisdom on health care

Chris Graham

Report by Chris Graham [email protected]    Jody Grogan thought, like a lot of hardcore health-care reform advocates, that Congress was thisclose to passing … something. “I’m one of these real cynics about Congress now,” said Grogan, a retired teacher who lives in Staunton, and worked locally last summer as an organizer on the reform effort,…