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Scrape TV
Folks, we’ve had some trouble with comments being deleted both yesterday and today.
It’s related to a conflict between the commenting system on the blog and another commenting that’s being built for something else.
Those should be resolved now. The work on the other system should be done by Monday — so there might be some brief glitches then, too.
Please comment away!
Lots of you have been asking this question since the change to the new format. I never realized how popular the “Last 10 posts” menu on the right side of the page was.
Rest assured, I’m looking into this with the tech wizards at Roanoke.com. Thanks to your feedback I’d like to bring them back. Right now I’m trying to find out if that’s possible.
In the meantime, there’s a workaround. I believe it was Pirengle who first spotted this.
Under the “About this blog” heading to the right is a link called RSS feed. Click on that and it will take you to a page listing the last 10 posts, with the beginning text for each.
Please use this until we’re able to get the old menu back . . . if that’s possible. In the meantime, you might want to bookmark that page.
Stuart Pilbrow | Wikimedia Commons
If you’re feeling a bit of frustration with this blog or some others today, join the club.
We’re in the process of converting from the “old” roanoke.com to the new “beta” version, which still has plenty of kinks to work out.
Among other things, you may have noticed that there are no paragraph breaks, all (or most) photos are at the top of posts (rather than on the left) and the the “submit” button on comments doesn’t work.
Hang in there, readers. We’ll get things straightened out.
Shot by Dan
My piece in Sunday’s paper marks the Texas Tavern’s birthday, something I’ve paid homage to annually since assuming this columnist gig in March 2009. The big day is Wednesday and it’s the TT’s 83rd.
This year’s tall tale is about the many and varied geopolitical pressures that swirled around the tiny diner on Church Avenue in 2012.
Here are the previous three columns:
Happy 80th, Texas Tavern (2010): In which I extolled the wonderful virtues of the TT’s ambiance, but neglected to say anything nice about the food.
Texas Tavern, let’s have some chile and make up (2011): In which I declared the TT’s trademark chile the best “chile” in the Western Hemisphere (not to be confused with that other stuff that ends in an ‘i’). This officially ended the heated Texas Tavern-Dan Casey feud.
82 years of food fit for the king (2012): The strange and wonderful tale of why Elvis ordered his last meal from the Texas Tavern.
This year’s column includes a broad cast of characters, including owner Matt Bullington, his dad (and former owner) Jim, President Obama, Mitt Romney, and many other other people and local, national and international institutions.
Hope you enjoy!
You may have noticed a new banner add on roanoke.com that offers a sneak peak to the beta version of the new and improved roanoke.com.
Please take a look, and don’t be afraid to offer your feedback.
All of the Roanoke.com bloggers got together Thursday for a confab and lunch at which we discussed changes that will be rolled out with Roanoke.com and the blogs over the next two months or so. To make a long story short, the blogs are going to be more a more prominent and important part of Roanoke.com than ever.
One of the questions we touched on was civility in the comments, something we regularly push the boundaries on here, the “Rants and Raves” blog. I won’t bore you with all those details — the entire FAQ on that is here. Below are three of the salient questions it addresses.
To sum it all up, we’re aiming for a more civil atmosphere. Already on this blog we don’t allow racial slurs or cuss words like the S-word, the F-word, the MF-word and so on (you know them) or potentially libelous attacks on individuals. But we’re going to try to reign it in just a bit more:
Wikimedia Commons
Okay readers, many of you often surprise me with your skills at tracking down information on a variety of subjects. So here’s a question that has semi-stumped me recently.
For a person who was born in Virginia in 1920, what was the first year would he or she have been eligible to vote in the commonwealth?
I had been working on the assumption that the answer was 1941 (when that person turned 21). The person in question, however, told me that it was 1938 — age 18. But that person, sharp as she seems, she doesn’t have a precise recollection of that. And she didn’t vote that year, anyway.
I’ve been looking around and if I had to bet I’d still say it was 1941 (voting age 21). But that’s by inference — I’ve been unable to find a source that says explicitly, Virginia’s voting age was 18 in 1938, or that it was 21 until the adoption of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, on July 1, 1971.
It appears that Georgia and Kentucky were the only states that permitted voting by 18-year-olds before that date. The age was 19 in Alaska and 20 in Hawaii, but those weren’t even states in by 1941.
Can anyone help me nail that one down? The first person who does, and provides a source I consider reputable, I’ll owe a book from Dan’s Bookshelf.
Erin Casey, 22 | From Facebook
And here’s my second wonderful daughter Erin, 22, who I wrote about recently.
She was on WSLS Channel 10 Thursday evening, promoting the eating disorders awareness program she’s putting on Saturday night in Salem.
Click on the jump to see the video. Read more »
That's my California girl, Cait, who was visiting from San Diego this past summer | Shot by Dan
Right around this time, 25 years ago today, the beautiful young woman on the left entered my life and changed my heart forever.
Her name is Caitlin — we call her Cait — and she turned 25 today, almost to this minute. I remember that like it was yesterday.
She was born in Anne Arundel General Hospital during the 7th inning of the 7th game of the World Series. It was a Sunday, and she was about three weeks late, and that morning I’d woken Donna and we drove to downtown Annapolis for an early breakfast.
Afterwards, we marched about 3 miles around down until she went into labor. We were determined this was going to be the day.
When we showed up on the maternity ward, I got some dirty looks from the nurses, I reckon because I was carrying a cooler full of beer on ice (it’s a long story). Anyway, Donna was in heavy labor from late in the morning until late in the afternoon/early evening — not too long at all, really, for a first child.
And then out popped a tiny little creature with a head full of jet black hair. It was a transcendent moment.
Three more children followed in the years to come but that’s the delivery that will always be etched in my mind, the disorienting feeling of going from just a guy and a husband to a father, with all the attendant and life-changing responsibilities.
Today, Cait holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from George Mason University, which she earned at 20. She works in the medical recruiting field in San Diego.
And I’m missing her . . . You can’t see it in this picture, but she has Leprechaun eyes — medium brown with flecks of gold in them. They’re the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen.
Mptv.org
A camera crew from PBS’ “Nightly Business Report” just left The Roanoke Times after interviewing yours truly about President Obama’s speech here July 13, the out-of-context criticism over his phrase “you didn’t build that,” and my subsequent column, “Obama saboteurs twisting the truth.”
They said it was for tonight’s show. It airs at midnight on WBRA.
