Author, advocate to speak in Harrisonburg

Chris Graham

Item by Chris Graham Author and educator Chris Mercogliano will speak at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Church next week. Mercogliano is the author of In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness. Mercogliano was a staff member at the Albany Free School in Albany, N.Y., for 35 years and is an advocate of noncontrolling education…

WVPT documentary tackles illegal immigration

AFP

Story by Chris Graham Brent Finnegan is on the immigration issue where many of us are. “It’s a mess,” said Finnegan, the director and producer of “Virginia Reports: The Latino Underground,” a documentary that will air on WVPT-Virginia’s Public Television beginning Oct. 22. “There are conflicting solutions,” said Finnegan, who spent a year putting together…

The hubris of Karen Schultz

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Op-Ed by Seth Thatcher As of late, my mailbox has been filled with political mailings from state-senate candidates Democrat Karen Schultz and Republican Jill Vogel. As is her style, Jill Vogel is running a positive campaign based on important issues that face the 27th District. Jill Vogel stands up for protecting life, keeping taxes low,…

EMU prof gets hands-on experience during sabbatical

Jim Bishop

Story by Jim Bishop Spencer L. Cowles, chair of the department of business and economics at Eastern Mennonite University, feels like he had the best of all possible worlds during his recent sabbatical. Prior to teaching at EMU, Cowles worked in commercial banking at a major New England bank, where he developed skills in financial…

Breaking down the race in the 27th Senate District

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham The 27th Senate District promised to be a wide-open affair even before moderate Republican Sen. Russ Potts announced his retirement plans. But now with Potts out of the picture, the battle between his successor as the Republican standard-bearer in the district that stretches from Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley…

Breaking down the 24th Senate race

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham He had to fend off perhaps the fight of his political life in June with a party-primary challenge from Rockbridge County businessman Scott Sayre. With the change of seasons from summer to fall, 24th District Republican Sen. Emmett Hanger would seem to have if not the second-biggest fight of…

Tee it up

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Story by Chris Graham Golf can teach life lessons – and the younger you start, the more you can learn. Students in grades K-8 in Charlottesville city schools will be able to find that out for themselves. The city school system is participating in The First Tee National School Program. The Charlottesville-based SNL Financial is…

Seminary interns spreading themselves across Valley

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Story by Laura Lehman Amstutz As second-year Eastern Mennonite University students anticipate the start of the new school year, they usually think about one thing – the internship. Seventeen second-year seminary students began internships this fall. The internship is part of the “Formation in Ministry” course, required for students in the three-year master of divinity…

The ‘local’ in local radio

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Story by Chris Graham The Federal Communications Commission is opening a window for local groups across the country to apply for full-power FM-radio noncommercial educational frequencies. A Valley-based chapter of the OrangeBand Initiative is aiming to bring one of these stations to Western Virginia – but it is running out of time. “This is a…