Wisdom from the past

Theresa Curry

Story by Theresa Curry AGratefulSeason.com I often think about our rural grandmothers and great grandmothers, and the lives they lived. In many mountain homes, electrity didn’t arrive until the ’50s; outhouses were still a common sight through the ’60s and ’70s. I still see, though rarely now, smoke coming from chimneys sometimes on a summer…

A vinyl guy needling a digital world

Jim Bishop

Column by Jim Bishop Negotiating heavy traffic on Interstate 81, heading south from Pennsylvania to Harrisonburg after a too brief holiday visit with extended family, I’m thinking how fortunate that my happiness doesn’t depend on acquiring more “stuff” at this heavily-commercialized time of year.

Work begins on Skyline Drive

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] It’s just 
 time. The Skyline Drive was built back in the 1930s and was last touched up in the mid-1980s. “Essentially it’s time for a new construction,” Shenandoah National Park spokesperson Karen Beck-Herzog said of the work that has begun on the drive between Milepost 31.5 at Thornton Gap…

Robertson taking no prisoners in obscenity prosecution

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] “Inga.” It was the big to-do back in 1968 when it was released in America. “Filmed entirely in Sweden,” a snapshot on movietime.com relates, “‘Inga’ brims with a European sensuality and eroticism that shocked American audiences upon its release in 1968.” That about sums it up right there, doesn’t it?…

Downtown vs. The West End: Is economic development a zero-sum game?

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] It wasn’t that there was much left downtown, but Phil Lemons knew that whatever traffic there had been before the West End took off with the opening of Wal-Mart in Waynesboro in 2003 was pretty much going, going, gone. “Having experienced it in other towns, whenever a shopping center comes…

Bolling solidly on Romney bandwagon

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Bill Bolling hitched his horse to the Mitt Romney presidential wagon back in the summer. And he’s enjoying the ride. “I endorsed Gov. Romney back in July. I felt then based on three meetings with him that he was our best candidate and the right guy for the job. I’ve…

A busy season for seminary students in Valley

Chris Graham

Story by Laura Lehman Amstutz The advent and Christmas season is an especially busy time for pastors – even more so for those who are also in seminary. Eastern Mennonite Seminary has 26 students who are also pastoring congregations, which means they are involved with special Christmas services and other holiday preparations along with juggling…

Lucente and Williams, the NV, Little Grill

Chris Graham

Winners and Losers column by Chris Graham [email protected] WINNERS: Frank Lucente and Tim Williams join bond parade I’m calling them winners here not related to the politics of the issues involving bonds for a new West End fire station and improvements to the city library and the city stormwater system, because frankly my view on…

Bond foes in Waynesboro pledge to affirm will of voters on disputed referendum

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Waynesboro taxpayers won’t have to foot the bill for a lawsuit or a second referendum to resolve a legal snafu involving a recent popular vote affirming three capital-improvements projects. “I really think we’re making a mistake, but I always thought if I ever got in this dilemma, I would go…