Earth Talk | Sunspots, solar wind and oil shale

Roddy Scheer

Dear EarthTalk: Don’t some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity? – David Noss, California, Md. Sunspots are storms on the sun’s surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun’s corona….

Festival combines the serious and casual, sobering and hopeful

Chris Graham

Fanfares and flip-flops. Handel’s massive story of Samson and two short works written within the past year. A call to hope arising from the ashes of New York’s World Trade Center. The 17th annual Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival at Eastern Mennonite University combined serious music with casual dress, Baroque masterworks with contemporary compositions and painful…

Rick Webb | Misrepresenting the status of the proposed Highland County Wind Energy Project

AFP

State and national newspapers, including the Richmond Times Dispatch and USA Today, have reported that Highland New Wind Development is prepared to begin construction by early summer with possible completion by the end of the year. The source of the reported information is the developer’s public relations spokesman, Frank Maisano, who announced in a press…

A real free choice

Chris Graham

George Waksmunski has seen it happen. “Workers are terrorized when they attempt to organize a union,” said Waksmunski, the national representative for UE Local 123 in Verona. “Bosses tell them from day one, You’re going to lose your job, the plant’s going to close, the union’s going to go on strike, you’ll get nothing, we…

Groceries and lunch: Local food pantries, soup kitchens see spike in demand in downturn

AFP

It’s like the parking lot at Wal-Mart outside the door to the Verona Community Food Pantry, located on the backside of the Department of Social Services building at the Augusta County Government Center complex off U.S. 11. Inside it’s just as crazy as the Wal-Mart on a weekend, long lines at the counter and shopping…

Brunk crusades chronicled in print

Jim Bishop

It was an unprecedented event in the life of the Mennonite Church that unfolded over three decades. Between 1951 and 1981, the Brunk Evangelistic Association, based in Harrisonburg, Va., held more than 100 tent crusades across the United States and Canada. Thousands of people gathered on metal folding chairs set up on a sawdust floor…