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For any grownups needing a refresher course in the important things in life, a visit to Rappahannock County High School (RCHS) football practice is highly recommended. The team practices every weekday afternoon, for three hours, rain or shine: No matter that the temperature is 90-plus degrees, as it frequently has been. And no matter...
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Sunday, after midnight but before dawn, the rain came. Finally. Not nearly enough, of course, but certainly better than nothing. Answered prayers. Or — as Rappahannock County’s pre-European-contact inhabitants might have had it centuries earlier — the natural, inevitable outcome of ritualized, communal ceremonies, like perhaps a rain dance. And, indeed, on Saturday evening,...
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One 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. The community’s reaction has been almost unanimously positive. Especially...
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“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 places like Rappahannock to retain their good character and...
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Money 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? That’s what I thought . . . . Very...
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In 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 road widening. Since, as the editorial mentioned, the proposal...
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It 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 board of directors. People like to complain. And one...
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The 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 at least half a century. That country’s Hydrometeorological Center...
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Two 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; the other, at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)...
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During 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 waters and the oversight by MMS officials on BP’s...
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Of 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 be those who say injustice has prevailed. So rather...
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For 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 know the people putting on the event. And of...
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There'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...
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The 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 …. Sometimes it feels as though, down deep in...
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To 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 of your Rappahannock roots. That pride, like most finely...
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The 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, I did not believe that the community was adequately...
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Often 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 you’ve just won the Super Bowl, what are you...
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As 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 dead. Heck, it’s not even past. It lives with...
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Spring 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 trucks. Roughly 80 percent of this roadkill, according to...
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For 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 no obstacle that could not be overcome when the...
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The 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 in order . . . . Not. Instead, with...
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No, 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...
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This 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 the spill occurred, is in profound respects not unlike...
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Rappahannock 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 for reductions of $243.5 million in the 2011-12 fiscal...
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There 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 . . . And yet, in the larger scheme of...
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Pop 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 because most people would apparently prefer to spend money...
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Rappahannock 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, a role model for the future. Other models have...
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Typically 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 policy positions and opinions with which any reasonable person,...
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It’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 surveys roll out, there will be a good deal...
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Where 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 from Latin roots, meaning “the love of and responsibility...
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Deadlines, 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 stress-filled is one way to express the mood here...
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Readers 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 of the local weekly newspaper. One day perhaps even...
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Over 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 enough snow. If memory serves, the ski run struggled...
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Land 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, largely undeveloped, is all there is here, the only...
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This 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. Here’s a sampling: “I’m just so glad to finally...
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I 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 place in Rappahannock, a farm called Hawthorn, if I...
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You 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, who are the local folks who’ll make the most...
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