For Foothills Forum

Former Board Member, Friends of the Rappahannock County Library, former Board Member and Chair Library Board of Trustees, former Board Member and Chair of Rappahannock-Rapidan Community Services Board. A resident of Woodville, she’s lived in Rappahannock since 1968.

For Foothills Forum

In Rappahannock, the challenge of charity is finding ways to help others while avoiding cultural fault lines.

As they adapt to the community’s changing demographics, local nonprofits wrestle with how much they should shift their focus

Volunteers have become an essential cog in how Rappahannock works. Can the machine keep running?

The Rappahannock News and Foothills Forum revisits our past reporting projects to see where the county stands on everything from broadband to health care to housing

Eve Brooks (center) and Diane Dodge listen to Tac Tacelosky during the annual meeting gathering of Foothills Forum last Friday at the tasting room of Gadino Cellars. Also pictured are Stephen Brooks, left, and Lowell Dodge.

Reality: ‘Fundamentally our land is too expensive here to farm on’

Dozens of community members joined Foothills Forum, the Rappahannock News and Businesses of Rappahannock at Mountainside Physical Therapy to discuss issues raised in the recent series “Work in Progress,” a look at the past, present and future of the county’s economy.

County looks to agricultural roots, craft-alcohol industry to draw tourists and revenue

Some farmers see agritourism as financial salvation. Others see it as a buzzword.

Some call it the Rappahannock Hustle, and the many who do it need no further description.

As Rappahannock ages and farmers struggle, where does business — particularly tourism — fit into the economic mix?

Rappahannock is facing an economic transition. But it has a long history of dealing with changes brought by forces beyond the county line.

With many family farmers now senior citizens, agriculture in Rappahannock is heading into uncertain times

Three-dozen Rappahannock community leaders and residents attended last Sunday’s Foothills Forum community discussion surrounding rural transportation challenges. The forum, held at Reynolds Memorial Baptist Church in Sperryville, followed reporter Randy Rieland’s two-part special report — “G…

Part two: Like Rappahannock, rural communities around the country are wrestling with transportation challenges. Here’s how some are dealing with them, and how future solutions may be built around software.

Part One: Lack of transportation is a hard — and sometimes life-threatening — reality for many who live in Rappahannock. And that can spiral into social isolation.

M.J. Wooldridge: So Many Stories

A ‘10 percent’ solution could help alleviate problems

Video of the community discussion co-sponsored Oct. 8 at the Washington fire hall by the Rappahannock News, Foothills Forum, Aging Together and Rapp at Home to assess the findings of “A Troubling Diagnosis,” the recent three-part explanatory journalism series published in the Rappahannock News.

As we look ahead to Sunday’s community forum, here’s a summary of this summer’s Rappahannock News-Foothills Forum series about healthcare in the county.

Community support for the nonprofit, nonpartisan Foothills Forum provides research and reporting about Rappahannock County matters, in collaboration with the Rappahannock News. Here’s our work so far:

The Rappahannock community takes on an uncertain future, where the health of most of its residents is more likely to get worse than better

As Rappahannock’s population gets older, so do the volunteers who handle its medical emergencies

Raised in Rappahannock, Andrew Kohler, M.D., is making the county proud as he continues upon his own journey to becoming a doctor.

A Foothills Forum/Rappahannock News Special Report

With this week’s edition you will notice a new byline in the Rappahannock News. Please welcome Monica Marciano, who thanks to the generosity of the Foothills Forum will spend this summer of 2017 as an editorial intern with our newspaper.

A stranger dropping into the Washington Fire House last Sunday during the 90-minute Foothills Community Forum would have received a crash course on Rappahannock County, its residents, opportunities, and challenges.

Six years as editor of this rag and I have refrained from writing even one opinion column because . . . well, it seemed as if having an opinion, or making you all read it, would clash with the work I mostly do — which involves listening, taking notes and praying that I can read them later.

Money matters dominate the supervisors May agenda

Whatever folks make of the Foothills Forum survey, one fact is irrefutable: a lot of residents filled it out.