Three strikes, but not out

Jim Bishop

Bishop’s Mantle column by Jim Bishop “EMU – Bluffton baseball game cancelled.” This notice in small type on the calendar of the sports section of the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record might normally command a passing glance. But on this occasion, these few words jumped out at me like special effects in a 3-D movie, a jarring…

Do you believe in ghosts?

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham Brenda Gordon didn’t want to admit to herself that she believed in ghosts. Being confronted with evidence of their existence will tend to make a believer out of anybody, of course. “I moved into the house that my dad lived in, and he’s been dead since 1997, and the…

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…

Reform? Or increase?

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham   It was tax reform. It was a tax increase. The 2004 Virginia General Assembly session is being played out again in the 2005 Virginia gubernatorial campaign – and still the two sides can’t agree on even the most basic terms of what happened last spring. “My opponent is using all…

Life by design: Debate heats up over new theory of how we got here

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham The fact that President Bush thinks intelligent design should be taught in American public schools is more than enough for JoAnne Shirley. “I absolutely hope that this becomes an issue here locally and statewide. Students need to be given a choice, as the president said,” said Shirley, a former…

Tweaking NCLB: Republican delegation to ask feds to ‘back off’

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham When Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Mount Solon, brought up his concerns with respect to the No Child Left Behind education-accountability initiative during the news conference in 2003 in which he announced his candidacy for re-election to the Virginia General Assembly, it didn’t take long for fellow Republicans to paint a…

Study in contrasts: Monroe, Reynolds vying for Ward B council seat

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Tom Reynolds won election to represent Ward B on Waynesboro City Council in 2000 after receiving more than 80 percent of the votes cast in his two-way race with Blue Ridge Area Food Bank chief-executive officer Marty White. On Tuesday, Reynolds, a member of the faculty at Fishburne Military School, is…

Like the Maytag repairman: Unopposed candidates talk about running a one-person race

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Jean Shrewsbury could take it easy this election season. Given that Shrewsbury, the commissioner of the revenue in Augusta County, is unopposed for re-election this fall. But the Republican isn’t sitting on the sidelines lamenting the fate of her challenged colleagues.