Join the ‘Jane Austen Book Club’ today!

Carl Larsen

Carly at the Movies column by Carl Larsen The leaves begin to fall to earth. The air turns crisp. ‘Tis time for a deluge of Relationship Movies – our autumnal harvest of Sensitive Young People getting their hearts stomped on, valiantly facing unspeakable angst, revealing their innermost secrets, and in the end finding their One…

On meeting with the ‘enemy’

AFP

Op-Ed by Pat Hostetter Martin I met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, last Wednesday (Sept. 26) in New York City. Why would I be part of ongoing efforts at “dialogue” with people and institutions that some Americans view as the “enemy”? The branch of Christianity in which I am rooted, Anabaptist-Mennonite, holds that…

Violence and our kids

AFP

The Top Story by Chris Graham Ours is a violent culture – and we’re not talking about the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles or New York City or some other urban enclave. Violence is in your living room – not to mention your child’s CD player or iPod or Xbox or Playstation2. From…

Is the Valley safer?

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., were a wakeup call for those involved in the emergency-services community in the Shenandoah Valley. “The big thing that came out of 9/11 was the thought that, hey, we’ve got to look at our policies and…

The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham   For a brief moment or two after the 2006 midterm elections, it had seemed that the Republican Party was perhaps going off its ideological moorings. The talk was reaching the level of near-clamor regarding how the GOP was going to have to consider retreating from the right-wing conservative…

Declaration of (public broadcast) independence

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham It’s spring, which means it’s probably time for Congress to threaten to cut funding for public broadcasting. A move by a congressional subcommittee to slash funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that was reversed last week by the House Appropriations Committee had people again discussing the merits of taxpayer funding…

Grappling with Attitude: Virginia promoter talks about changes in industry

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham It used to be easier for Travis Bradshaw to draw a few hundred fans to his Vanguard Championship Wrestling shows. “The whole business changed after The Attitude era,” said Bradshaw, whose Smithfield-based promotion runs shows across the Commonwealth. “Kayfabe got killed, and wrestling got a bad reputation. That made it harder…

Bridging the race divide?

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham   Daryl Davis has plenty of detractors – people who question his motives for wanting to meet with white supremacists, who wonder why an African-American man would of his own volition attend rallies of the Ku Klux Klan, who outright doubt his stories of conversions of racial separatists as…

Virginia Tech’s ACC booster

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham The Big East was going up in flames around them, but Virginia Tech officials knew their bird, as it were, wasn’t cooked quite yet. Because they had a key ally in the moves being orchestrated by the Atlantic Coast Conference to raid the Big East for new members. “The…