By Cindy Ross “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard All along the creek are miles and miles of beaver dams in all stages of construction and deterioration. Behind dry, deserted dams, the silt is built up to dam level, making it clear that it was...
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Rappahannock Forecast
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This Week’s Paper
All the news, none of the paper
For the current week's full Rappahannock News — usually available by 9 p.m. Wednesdays — check out our eEdition, where you can sign up for your free four-week, no-strings-attached trial subscription!
Opinion Column
With nature in their paths, kids will learn
Technology on the farm now fits in the palm of your hand
Agriculture commissioner Matthew Lohr writes about how social media and technology can help farmers and others to stay connected with the land.
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Congregations going green
On a brisk day a few weeks ago, by the meandering banks of Langford Creek on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore, a group of about 50 environmentalists and people of faith gathered to learn, be inspired by and support one another.
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Up in the Hollow: Laws and sausages
A surprise counter-offer to People Inc.'s apartment proposal by a group including the mayor and councilman raises all kinds of questions for Ben Jones, who says he doesn't think "these fellows were elected to do business with themselves, or to indicate their 'nay' vote in such a unique way."
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Up in the Hollow: Praise the Lord, pass the ammo
One could not help feeling the frustration in James P. Gannon’s editorial letter, but his targets, those he holds responsible for this sorry state of affairs, include many of the Tea Party’s usual suspects. And the 1950s were . . . "normal?"
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It’s 2013: Time to grow up?
"In all your official acts, self interest shall be cast into oblivion . . . return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right." Columnist Liza Field takes her cue from the circa-1450 Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy to look for ways to make a better 2013.
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Gaia and psyche: the spirit of place
By Denise Horton Human beings are an expression of their landscape. – Lawrence Durrell I live at the foot of Big Bastard Mountain in Rappahannock County. I have a deep love for the Blue Ridge, a connection so old and bone-deep that I have at times pressed my belly against its rocks, aching. A few years...
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Exurban cowboys pen in biodiversity
When the husband and I bought wooded acreage in the Virginia mountains 30 years ago, we thought we were part of the Back to the Land movement. Turns out we were also part of an exorbitant growth in exurban land use.
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Campaign year spurs a pro-lifer’s lament
What’s it been like as a pro-lifer, during this year's big-money campaign? It’s been an experience of split-personality, I would say as a pro-life conservationist.
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Your electric co-op’s ‘power grab’
In these pages last summer, I wrote about Rappahannock Electric Cooperative’s (REC) efforts to block a membership vote at the co-op’s August annual meeting. The blocked vote would have addressed my proposed bylaw amendment that would require REC to annually disclose the total compensation paid to each REC board member. As a result of...
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Opinion: Putting the uranium cart before the horse
In 2007, Virginia Uranium LLC (VUI) began lobbying hard for the General Assembly’s standing moratorium on uranium mining and milling to be lifted. Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and their allies have fought them every step of the way.
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Opinion: In the end game, there are no medals
“When are the Games over?” my fellow lap-swimmer asked. I stood up from the water and wondered, in a chlorine fog. “Which games?”
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Opinion: If you want cooperation, don’t throw your weight around
A hundred or more miles from its sparkling, reedy inlets, the Chesapeake Bay is still very much in the psyche of people throughout its watershed. Many groups in the Appalachian foothills enthusiastically plant trees along local waterways – doing what they can to stem harmful runoff.
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The View From Massies Corner: Things I miss most in Rappahannock
There are things I miss about Rappahannock County and things I don’t. This article will deal primarily with what I miss the most.
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Virginia ham in China, soybeans in Morocco, apples in Cuba
Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Matthew J. Lohr says he's spent his life working in agriculture in the state, but in those 40 years has never seen anything quite like what is happening now with the state's exports to other countries.
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Opinion: The Constitution’s shades of grey
By Ralph Bates Over the last few months, there have been groups in the county discussing the Constitution and articles written in the Rappahannock News. Recently, Friends of Liberty sponsored a lecture series that was well-attended at the Library. They articulated a conservative or “originalist” point of view very well. Hopefully, all attendees understood...
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Clark Hollow Ramblings: Hunting on Sunday
The question of hunting on Sunday has been around for a long time. I believe it is time to remove the state prohibition against hunting on Sunday.
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The solace of Christmas past
I was a middle child, growing up, with sufficient space between my older sisters and younger brother that I enjoyed my own experience of the world. I was neither the object of vigilance by inexperienced parents nor the focus of longing my brother would be, as the last child and only boy. “Birth to graduation on...
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Up in the Hollow: Gid me a break
Maybe it’s just me, but I was not only bemused, but downright astonished at the screed which Paul Hagstrom wrote regarding his distress at having to travel the wonderful treasure that is Gid Brown Hollow Road.
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Diary of a Haymaker: Do more to save the bay — by doing less
For close to half a century, I’ve been making hay here in the county. Perched on my tractor, I have lots of time to think. Sometimes it feels like I can see forever. At the very least, it gives me an interesting point of view on things, which I now hope to occasionally share...
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Opinion: As in the Blue Ridge, another way of life heads for extinction
Let's talk about an endangered species. I could talk about the Delmarva fox squirrel (Acipenser brevirostrum) or even the bog turtle (Clemmys muhlenbergii). Instead, I will first briefly mention the Blue Ridge Mountain dwellers (Montanus habitus), who went extinct in the 1930s when the federal government resettled them to make way for the Shenandoah...
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Up in the Hollow: Schools and cell towers — git ‘er . . . educated
The Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, at the behest of AT&T, will vote at its March meeting on the tabled motion to place a cell tower at the Rappahannock High School. In a surprise move, according to the Rappahannock News, “an alternate site for the proposed 199-foot monopole at the high school had been...
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Up in the Hollow: Some thoughts on Cairo
Back in another life, I took a pickaxe to the Berlin Wall, and was a part of the euphoria that swirled around the fall of a defunct and dysfunctional Soviet empire. As I write this, I just heard President Obama speaking after the stunning success of the “social network” revolution in Egypt. “There is...
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Up in the Hollow: Let’s put this call on hold
Big Brother is on the loose. When Congress passed the Communications Act of 1996, a piece of legislation written by and for the telecommunications industry, which put $40 million into its lobbying effort (not including campaign donations), the people of America were stripped of some very basic rights. Ten years ago, when Sprint made...
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Postcard from 2020
This following was sent in with a return address -- and a sense of humor -- suspiciously resembling that of Flint Hill resident Ron Maxwell.
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Letter: The War on Christmas?
It is unfortunate that we live in a time when the voices of the few mute the voices of the majority. It is not surprising that a newspaper that I receive every week and one that I find has an ever so slight lean to the left would succumb to the pressures or the...
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General Custer, Rappahannock County and me
Lately I’ve been seeing strange headlines. “Man Swallows 100 -Year-Old Museum Exhibit.” “Woman Robbed by Clown While on Toilet.” “Man Forced to Eat His Own Beard.” And then “Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed U.S. General,” this last courtesy of Fox News. It all got me to thinking, (which, for me, is also unusual...
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Clark Hollow Ramblings: The world as teacher
My wife and I were treated a week or so ago with the opportunity to babysit for a few hours with our granddaughter. Tana is two and a half now, and it is not always nursery rhymes and giggles and kisses for Meme and Poppa. Yes, even this angelic, adorable bundle of life and...
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Rigor, relevance — and relationships that matter
The following is excerpted from the speech Rappahannock County Public Schools Superintendent Aldridge A. Boone delivered to the school division’s staff on Aug. 16: In 1895, Booker T. Washington said, “In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential...
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Editorial cartoon
Submitted by Tom Tepper, Castleton.
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Letter: The best of all possible worlds
It is at my own hazard that I cross pens with the Duke of Sperryville, but being as this is Rappahannock County where the tradition of Virginia’s colorful eccentrics lives on, I’ll take another stab at the inkwell. Could Ben Jones have missed the point of my meandering reminiscences? Were my remarks really a...
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Fond memories shot through with holes
I had an uncle who once shot his television set. I don’t know if it was a symbolic gesture involving his existential angst at the overwhelmingly nonsensical zeitgeist of late 20th century de-culturalization, or if he was just ticked off because “Bonanza” had been canceled, but he put a couple of slugs through the...
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Drowned by the tide of ‘progress’
I remember a time when most of America looked like Rappahannock County. Oh, there were differences of course -- the kind that come with regions, climate and architectural influences -- but what was similar was the quality of rural life, small towns and the human scale of Main Street USA. Since that time significant...
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The Twain is still running
By the time he was 30 years old, Samuel Langhorne Clemens used his nom de plume of “Mark Twain” every time he went out his front door into the public life. That way, he said, Mr. Clemens could blame all of his incendiary rhetoric on his look-alike, Mr. Twain. That scheme mostly worked, and...
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Stirring up the hornet’s nest
Judging from the reaction in the major media to Gov. Bob McDonnell's reinstatement of Confederate History month, the starry cross of the Confederacy remains America's most controversial icon.
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A spirited debate
The Rappahannock News editorial last week “What Do You Think?” sparked Jim Gannon’s “What’s the Matter With Rappahannock,” which in turn sparked a lively debate on the email list-serve Rappnet. Below are some excerpts: Farming and housing In regards to (Jim Gannon’s) editorial reply to the Rappahannock News, the 2007 agricultural data for Rappahannock...
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Column: What’s the matter with Rappahannock?
In an editorial published in his March 18 issue, the new publisher of the Rappahannock News, Walter Nicklin, asked readers what issues are most important to this county and which should be the focus of the weekly newspaper’s news coverage and editorial commentary. This brings to mind a famous editorial penned more than a...
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When Harry met Grover
There once was a time when life was not so hedged in and our elected officials were infinitely more accessible. Recent headlines remind us that White House access is severely restricted — or was meant to be. Just over a hundred years ago, however, gatecrashing was a different matter. In 1894 at age 16,...
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