Short-term Tax Cuts or Long-term Prosperity?
The 9-0 Republican Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has worked over the past few months to lower tax rates without rigorous economic, social, or scientific cost-benefit analyses, or long-term perspectives on county needs and opportunities. For example, the Board approved a Lyme disease pesticide spraying program without analyses of effectiveness, risks to health and the environment, or alternatives, and launched the program in public parks without following standard protocols for the pesticide used. Read More
Chicken Scratchings
In the space of a couple of days recently, I heard two unfamiliar utterances. The first came from a young Rhode Island Red who was trying to get her “egg on.” She trilled angrily, sort of a guttural, make that a visceral, harrumph. I've known this girl since she was a peep, and I'd never heard this from another hen, but there was no doubt here: she resented a perceived imposition. Soon, in conversation with my lone sibling, Big Brother, I heard “who” instead of “whom.” He blithely informed me that “whom” was out the window, passe, dead. Read More
High School Concussions: A Whole World of Hurt
High school sucks. There, I said it. Now, let me say it again: High school sucks! SATS, ACTS, homework, quizzes, quests, tests…they all suck! Sure, socializing with friends and playing sports are fun, but do they really compensate for all those hellish nights spent studying? For all those months spent working on college applications? For all those horrible school lunches?! No, high school sucks, and there’s nothing that can possibly make it worse…or is there? Turns out, there is something that can make it worse: a concussion. Read More
Readers Comment on New VA Handgun Law
The editors of The Shenandoah Press recently asked readers to comment on the General Assembly's decision to overturn a long-standing Virginia law that limited handgun purchases to one per person per month. We received a few short responses, which are printed here in full, and a few longer responses, which are excerpted here with links to pages where their text appears in full. Our request for comment went to some of the legislators who voted for that change, but they did not respond to our request. Read More
Finding a Lesson in Death
Over the past couple months, I’ve written a great deal about prominent athletes who have suffered concussions. I’ve written about Sidney Crosby and his long journey back to the ice. I’ve written about Justin Morneau and his career-threatening symptoms. I’ve written about Taylor Twellman and his crusade to raise concussion awareness. Why am I bringing this up? Because even though these athletes have suffered an extraordinary amount of pain, they are still alive. Junior Seau, tragically, is not. Read More
The Little Earth Day that Could
The rain, perhaps a drag at other venues, was no problem for Valley EarthFest, “A Grass Roots/Green/Getting Back to Basics Festival.” This year’s event on April 22 was a fundraiser for the Barns of Rose Hill, and thus the majority of the attractions were already planned for the rain-proof indoors, as a way to showcase the barns’ magnificent restorations and awesome acoustic accommodations. Eco-friendly vendors, green living presenters, local chefs, musicians, volunteers, and hundreds of visitors, despite the rain, all crammed themselves into the space, a microcosm of the population bomb. Would there be enough Starr Hill to go around? Read More
Forgiveness – a Forgotten Virtue
Our good friend Paul Dietrich has produced a couple of moving video programs on the process and merit of forgiving various types of offenses, and how doing so empowers and restores both the forgiver and the forgiven, allowing life for both to proceed on a happier and more positive plane. While we saw excerpts of these films in our church prior to Easter, they were re-shown in their entirety on several PBS stations during the Easter week. They are religious only in that they speak to the “better angels” of all humanity. Read More
“Sound of My Voice” Speaks with Integrity
Young film makers Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling know people pretty well. Their new feature Sound of My Voice, which opened in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington on April 27, hits some of our human nails on the head so squarely that you wonder how they came to know so much so soon. They know, for example, that most of us want to be saved -- from the good life, from the bad life, from our fears, maybe even from our hopes -- it doesn’t matter, just save us! And they know that, since we’re a little bit ashamed of that desire, messiahs have to be seductive. When this movie’s messiah lifts the veil that covers her face, she might as well be our bride. Read More
Entertainment
Thirty Years, and Greater Tuna Hasn’t Changed
A single piece of information characterizes “Greater Tuna,” the series of vignettes on stage at The Wayside Theater: in 1990, when erstwhile Texan George Herbert Walker Bush was the POTUS, he ordered a command performance of the show at the White House. Then in 1991, the year before he yielded his commanding powers to a man from Arkansas, he ordered a second performance. Read More
The Rabbit Hole Shows Struggles We Don’t Want to See
Halfway through The Rabbit Hole, which just finished its run at the Winchester Little Theater, one of the characters makes an assertion that goes a long way toward explaining why the play works--and why it makes the audience uncomfortable. “People want things to make sense,” Nat tells her daughter, whose son has recently been struck and killed by a car. The problem is that some things don’t make sense, and if the sense-making process sometimes falters, don’t you have to wonder if it really works at all? Is making sense just wishful thinking? Certainly not! One of the things we like about theater, in fact, is its capacity to suggest that our experience makes sense. Even if it really doesn’t. Read More
Blackfriars Playhouse Saves “Philaster” from Oblivion
In most respects, "Philaster, or Love Lies A-bleeding" is the same old story. “It’s about virginity,” said Dr. Ralph Cohen, the founder of the American Shakespeare Center, in a lecture on Valentine’s Day. The play was co-written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who worked alongside Shakespeare at the original Blackfriars Playhouse in London, and it’s onstage now at the new Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton. Cohen said that Philaster was the only one of the many plays written by Shakespeare’s co-workers and performed by the King’s Men that graduate students are routinely forced to read. “And looking at it on the page,” he added, “you can’t figure out why.” Read More
Film Finds Unifying Values at Last Hardware Store
Nichols Hardware is a haven to anyone old enough to remember pre-big-box stores, anyone with a childlike sense of wonder, or anyone within driving distance of Purcellville with a project--particularly a knotty one--to tackle. The loss of two generations of Nichols proprietors in recent years has been a deep community sorrow; the potential loss of this institution without an heir apparent to undertake its management already fills many with sadness. Read More
Little Meat on “Woody’s” Bones
"Woody" could have been a good opportunity to 'reach out' to the community and educate theater goers on some of the more complicated aspects of Woodrow Wilson's life, even to the smallest degree, but such was not the case. The show's creator, Richard Adams, a local musician, performer and educator, stated in the program that when he first wrote Woody in 2003, his goal was to “make it entertaining and historically accurate” and to show all sides of Wilson. Read More
News
Point/Counterpoint Commentary: One Small Step For Man, Please
I was beset by wonder of a different kind after witnessing spectacle of the passing shuttle, and after reading and hearing a number of laments about the end of the shuttle era, many of which would seem to train their thoughts upon the children in the picture, since they represent the future. What do we owe them, I wonder, those kids we asked to sit together on that piece of playground apparatus so we could photograph the wonder on their faces? And what do we owe the millions of others who are meant to look upon those faces and want to go to schools where children’s faces look like that? Do we owe them travel to the stars? Read More
Point/Counterpoint Commentary: Are We Retiring Discovery or Just the Shuttle Named Discovery?
This week we celebrate our retreat from the exploration of space. Thirty Thousand onlookers are visiting Washington Dulles International Airport to welcome the arrival of the Space Shuttle Discovery so that it may be powered down and cabined away in retirement at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. We should be mourning instead of celebrating because taking this shuttle out of service shows that our nation lacks the resolve that put a man on the moon, a space station in orbit, and an all-seeing eye (the Hubble Telescope) in the sky to show us the way to the stars. Read More
Send in the Drones
Reports of the demand for drones among local police departments are proliferating in our new era of across-the-board budget cuts aimed at balancing budgets absent tax increases. Police Chiefs simply want an opportunity to purchase technology to replace laid off staff – and to get better results on the most challenging cases. People talk of using drones in manhunts and hostage situations. A US market of 15,000 civilian drones has been forecast for 2018. Will they be patrolling the Middleburg skies before the end of the decade? Read More
Politics
Loudoun GOP’s True Colors Revealed During 2012 General Assembly Session
In 2011, Democratic candidates for the General Assembly in Loudoun County campaigned on jobs, the economy and transportation. Their Republican opponents campaigned largely on similar themes. Loudoun Democrats contended that despite their campaign rhetoric, if elected, Republicans were likely to advance a divisive social agenda. Republicans denied this throughout the 2011 campaign. Read More
In Search of a New Vision
Methods to dramatically reduce our annual deficit and, in turn, national debt, have taken center stage in 2012 as both major parties gear up for the Presidential and Congressional elections. Beyond the traditional political posturing and rhetoric, this debate must address two major questions to avoid anesthetized solutions: Read More
Family Values?
There has been a lot of loose talk about “family values” in recent months – on the campaign trail, in the newspapers, on the airwaves and in some of America’s houses of worship. Little of it conforms to the values Purple was brought up to adhere to and respect. Read More
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