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Editorials Archive
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Editorial: All the news that fits (on-screen)
Posted on September 9, 2010 | No CommentsOne of the most gratifying experiences in the eight months since assuming responsibility of publishing the Rappahannock News has been the creation of the newspaper’s Web site: www.rappnews.com. The creator is the paper’s editor, Roger Piantadosi, together with Jan Clatterbuck, editorial assistant and office manager.... -
Editorial: Of the land
Posted on September 2, 2010 | No Comments“He loved the land and everything that came from it,” says Washington, Va. attorney Doug Baumgardner of his longtime friend, Ray Cannon, who passed away this week at the age of 93. There can be no greater tribute for a Rappahannock County native son. For... -
Editorial: Consequential choices
Posted on August 26, 2010 | No CommentsMoney isn’t everything. That’s easy to say for those of us still standing at the tail end (one hopes!) of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. So to rephrase the sentiment: Who here would want to live in Loudoun County? Fairfax? Prince William?... -
Editorial: No Autobahn
Posted on August 19, 2010 | No CommentsIn an editorial a couple of weeks ago it was suggested that a proposed widening of U.S. 211 to six lanes between Warrenton and Clevenger’s Corner was like a dagger pointed into the heart of Rappahannock County. Many readers became justly alarmed about this proposed... -
Editorial: Vote!
Posted on August 12, 2010 | No CommentsIt seems an odd time of year to encourage readers to vote, but this is not politics as usual. This is business. For most readers are now members of the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC). As in effect shareholders, you are entitled to elect your own... -
Editorial: Bearing witness
Posted on August 5, 2010 | No CommentsThe heat is on. And the precipitation is not. That’s the story now and here in Rappahannock County. Things could be worse. Things can always be worse, of course: there’s consolation, if not rainfall, in that. Russia, for instance, is experiencing its worst drought in... -
Editorial: The future is now
Posted on July 29, 2010 | 1 CommentTwo decisions in the coming days, seemingly minor in the larger scheme of things, will actually reveal what kind of world we wish to bequeath to our children and grandchildren. One decision will be made at the August 2 Rappahannock Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting;... -
Editorial: Protecting sources
Posted on July 22, 2010 | No CommentsDuring the course of its investigation into the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill, The Associated Press was given information from the then-office of Mineral Management Services that was not making a lot of sense. As millions of gallons of crude spewed into the gulf... -
Editorial: Deadly combination
Posted on July 15, 2010 | 1 CommentOf all the recent Rappahannock News stories to stir reader reaction, none has surpassed the verdict in the trial of a teenage driver whose schoolmate was killed in a vehicular crash last October. In a case like this, no matter the outcome, there will always... -
Editorial: Happy 234th?
Posted on July 8, 2010 | No CommentsFor those of us who have experienced both the national fireworks display on Big Washington’s mall and the Fourth of July celebration here in Rappahannock County on Thornton Hill Farm, there is no comparison. One is definitely bigger. The other is better. Here we actually... -
Editorial: Gaga-hannock?
Posted on July 1, 2010 | No CommentsThere's a fine line nowadays between gossip and news. A very fine line. The newest hotshot political journalists in Big Washington not only acknowledge but also even seem to brag that they'll “put a story out there” just to get reactions, which in turn become a story in themselves: “Congressman so-and-so responded to rumors today that . . . .” -
Editorial: Oil spill on the Thornton
Posted on June 24, 2010 | No CommentsThe kingfishers that flit along the Thornton, Hazel and other tributaries of the upper Rappahannock are not brown pelicans. The river mussels are mere distant cousins (multiple times removed) from saltwater oysters. And freshwater crayfish only seem like baby shrimp. And yet … and yet... -
Editorial: Congratulations, graduates!
Posted on June 17, 2010 | No CommentsTo those graduating from not only Rappahannock County High School but also Wakefield, other private schools, and homeschooling . . . and, of course, college graduates who still call Rappahannock County home. Congratulations! You make Rappahannock County proud. And we hope you’ll always be proud... -
Guest Editorial: Goodbye, hello
Posted on June 10, 2010 | No CommentsThe Rappahannock Voice was started as an experiment in local online journalism in the fall of 2006. It has served the community with local news and commentary for nearly four years. Thanks to those of you who tuned in. At the time I launched RappVoice,... -
Editorial: Rappahannock’s Super Bowl
Posted on June 3, 2010 | No CommentsOften more memorable than the athletic contest itself are the commercials that punctuate the football game on Super Bowl Sunday. The one that continues to play in many people’s minds goes something like this: “Hey, Drew Brees (or Tom Brady or Eli Manning), now that... -
Editorial: Time and place
Posted on May 27, 2010 | No CommentsAs the rest of world “globalizes” into one huge fast-food outlet and discount-shopping mall, we here in Rappahannock County can take pride and comfort in our backward ways. And that includes looking backwards. We understand that, as William Faulkner famously said, the past is never... -
Editorial: Kill, baby, kill
Posted on May 20, 2010 | No CommentsSpring and summer mean carnage on Rappahannock roads. Mechanized, so-called civilization in the form of gasoline-powered cars and trucks collides with the very life-force that awakens and propels our still-wild co-inhabitants to get to the other side of the roads that carry the cars and... -
Editorial: To honor her memory
Posted on May 13, 2010 | No CommentsFor those of us not blessed with lifelong, full-time Rappahannock residency, we knew Ester Settle primarily by reputation. And what a reputation it was: “The little woman with the enormous heart,” in the words of one county native. “The little engine that could.” There was... -
Editorial: Town Elections Down to the Wire!
Posted on May 6, 2010 | No CommentsThe hotly contested campaigns in the Town of Washington’s municipal elections brought much- needed public debate on all the important issues. Still, there are no clear winners from Election Day this past Tuesday. The vote is that close! The razor-thin margins mean a recount is... -
Editorial: Eye of the Beholder
Posted on April 29, 2010 | No CommentsNo, it's not installation art. The clear-cutting, the digging, and the constructing are almost done in the county's far northeastern corner for the new power transmission line -- the wisdom of which had been debated and litigated for more than two years. There's no longer debating the facts on the ground, however: Virginia Dominion Power and its partner, Allegheny Power, won. -
Editorial: Embarrassment on Earth Day
Posted on April 22, 2010 | No CommentsThis week marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. It was thought up by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson when he, along with many Americans, became outraged by a 1969 oil spill off the California coast killing untold marine life and migratory birds. Santa Barbara, where... -
Editorial: Who pays for higher education?
Posted on April 15, 2010 | No CommentsRappahannock high-schoolers are likely looking at a tougher time getting into state colleges than their predecessors faced — plus higher tuition and fewer classes if they do get in. That’s because of Virginia’s ever-shrinking higher-education budget. The budget that state legislators approved last month calls... -
Editorial: The Real News
Posted on April 8, 2010 | No CommentsThere is no frontpage headline, much less a detailed news story. It does not appear inside any national newspaper, nor even here in the Rappahannock News. And, of course, “breaking-news” status is not merited on cable news channels or their Internet equivalent. And yet .... -
Editorial: Rappahannock Playground?
Posted on April 1, 2010 | No CommentsPop quiz: what’s the most popular tourism destination in Virginia? Colonial Williamsburg? No. Then it must be Mount Vernon? Sorry, no. Okay, then, it’s got to be Monticello? Wrong, again. It’s a sad state of affairs to report that the answer is Potomac Mills. Sad... -
Editorial: What Works
Posted on March 25, 2010 | No CommentsRappahannock County is not too big to fail. That is one proposition upon which all county citizens — no matter how divided over contentious issues like riparian buffers — should agree. In fact, being small is the source of our success — making us, perhaps,... -
Editorial: What Do You Think?
Posted on March 18, 2010 | No CommentsTypically and traditionally, the editorial page of a newspaper like the one you now hold in your hands tells its readers what to think. Not always imperatively and directly: it’s usually more subtle than that. In a polite yet persuasive matter, the editorial lays out... -
Editorial: Count us in
Posted on March 11, 2010 | No CommentsIt’s time for Rappahannock residents to be counted. In the next week or so, a packet from the U.S. Census Bureau will land in each of our mailboxes, marking the start of another once-a-decade quest for demographic information. As is the case every time these... -
Editorial: Healthy Place
Posted on March 4, 2010 | No CommentsWhere we live matters. That’s certainly the case when it comes to health, as reported elsewhere in the newspaper this week. But more than health, there’s soliphilia. Soliphilia? No, it’s not a typo, misprint or some other kind of spelling mistake. It’s a neologism, formed... -
Editorial: To the rescue
Posted on February 25, 2010 | No CommentsDeadlines, like the hangman’s noose, concentrate the mind. For the Rappahannock News, Tuesday and Wednesday are the deadline days for any and all stories if they are to be printed in that Thursday’s edition of the weekly newspaper. To say that Tuesday and Wednesday are... -
Editorial: Let it melt!
Posted on February 18, 2010 | No CommentsReaders have asked how the great snow events of recent days compare with times past. Such queries reconfirm the central place that traditional county-seat weeklies have in local citizens’ lives. For this kind of local history is readily available only in the usually dusty archives... -
Editorial: Let it snow
Posted on February 11, 2010 | No CommentsOver 30 years ago a small ski lodge was opened in Harris Hollow. The entrepreneurial idea was a good one: It was the closest such recreational facility to all the would-be skiers and snow bunnies in metropolitan Washington. The only problem was: there was never... -
Editorial: Mixed blessings
Posted on February 4, 2010 | No CommentsLand is really what it’s all about here in Rappahannock County. We have no easily exploitable natural resources like coal or natural gas, no industrial base like manufacturing, no entrepreneurial incubator as in Silcon Valley, no retail mecca of big-box stores and shopping centers. Land,... -
Editorial: The New Rappahannock News
Posted on January 28, 2010 | No CommentsThis week’s newspaper marks the fourth weekly edition since we’ve taken the helm of this Rappahannock institution. We have absolutely no regrets; and from what readers and advertisers have been telling us, they are pleased as well. I hope they are not just being polite.... -
Editorial: the center of the world
Posted on January 21, 2010 | 1 CommentI got my first job in journalism here in Rappahannock County. It was on a weekly newspaper, but it wasn’t the Rappahannock News. It was The Stuart News in Martin County, Florida. How’s that? The man who had recently acquired The Stuart News had a... -
Editorial: Make the News!
Posted on January 14, 2010 | No CommentsYou will have heard by now that this newspaper is under new ownership, and that the new owners, along with the publisher and editor, are all local, Rappahannock-based folks. This is a good thing. But the more important reality is that it’s you, our readers,...