The Top Story: Obama, McCain visiting Va.

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Barack Obama is not welcome in Southwest Virginia. That was the rather curious, to me, anyway, message today from the presidential campaign that has said that it will tone down the partisan rhetoric and even reach out across the aisle to welcome Democrats into its reform-minded administration if…

The Top Story: The new new McCain

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Two weeks ago, the ’08 presidential election was essentially a referendum on whether Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama was fit to be commander-in-chief, even as Obama had been efforting for months to convince voters that it was really about change. Last night, John McCain, a political maverick to…

White House ’08: Unemployment on the rise, and candidates respond

AFP

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Another key measure of economic performance appears to show the continued effects of slowdown. The national unemployment rate rose four-tenths of a percent in August, topping the 6 percent mark, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in the manufacturing and employment-services sectors, with gains in the mining…

Harrisonburg: EMU bids adieu to residence hall

Jim Bishop

Item by Jim Bishop A wreath placed on the entrance door read “R.I.P.” but few tears were shed at the “funeral” for an Eastern Mennonite University icon, Oakwood residence hall, age 39-plus. Former residents of the fabled building that has housed some 2,800 men between 1969 and 2008 paid their last respects to the hallowed…

Rockingham: EMU students learn more about why they’re there

Jim Bishop

Story by Jim Bishop So, why are you here? A rather strange question, perhaps, for the president of Eastern Mennonite University to ask those who filled Lehman Auditorium Wednesday for the opening convocation of fall semester, but he had good reason. “Most of us think about education in terms of what it will do for…

Fear and Loathing: Moving Waynesboro Forward

Chris Graham

Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham [email protected] When the editorial page at The News Virginian is compelled to complain about the new conservative city council, then you know that something worthy of a closer look is taking place. “(W)hat Waynesboro needs is a quickening of the pulse,” the NV opined today, and…

Rockingham: BC adds new VP

AFP

Item by Mary K. Heatwole Beverly S. Butterfield of New Market has accepted the position of vice president for institutional advancement at Bridgewater College, effective Oct. 1. Butterfield, a 1979 graduate of Bridgewater College, has held a faculty position with the Virginia Tech Extension Service since 1979. Most recently, she served as the director of…

Creation, Christ and the classroom focus of EMU conference

AFP

Story by Chris Edwards At the fourth annual conference of Mennonite higher-education faculty – held this year for the first time at Eastern Mennonite University – two keynote speakers approached the theme, “Creation, Christ and the Classroom,” from opposite perspectives, theological and temporal. They spoke Aug. 8-9 to about 45 faculty, plus several graduate students,…

The car tax as a Senate voting issue

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] “Since my time as your governor,” Jim Gilmore writes in a fundraising letter that went out last week, “I have routinely been vilified by the biased liberal media, by the state Democratic Party and even by the liberal tax-and-spend members of my own party. Why? Because I promised…