Del. Onzlee Ware

Over on our Style Street fashion blog, who should make an appearance today but Del. Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke.

Style Street blogger and fashion guru David Verde proclaims him “one dapper delegate.”

You can find more photos and Verde’s fashion assessment of the Roanoke state legislator here.

Holiday movie season is in full swing, and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (filmed partly at Richmond’s Capitol Square after the state lured it with more than $4 million in incentives) has drawn a lot of positive reviews.

Blue Ridge Caucus contributor Dwayne Yancey had words of praise for it this morning (I’ll leave it to him to elaborate). But our morning small talk sparked a related conversation about politics movies.

“The Campaign” just arrived in my mailbox from Netflix over the weekend, but I haven’t yet had the chance to check it out. I’m not looking for realism so much as I am a few laughs.

I watched 1972′s “The Candidate” a couple of years ago and was struck, both by how dated it feels at times but also how it’s still very current in other ways.

There’s “The War Room,” of course, which focuses largely on Clinton staffers James Carville and George Stephanopoulos during the 1992 campaign. The “War Room” is a documentary, but the characters are so vivid that at times it feels like a fictional movie.

Closer to home, there’s also “A Perfect Candidate,” which focuses on Oliver North’s 1994 run for U.S. Senate against Chuck Robb. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention there’s a scene with a press scrumb that includes Christina Nuckols (now the Roanoke Times editorial page editor), David Poole (founder of the Virginia Public Access Project) and Warren Fiske (now of PolitiFact Virginia).

Probably the two most quoted movies in the press room during my four years covering the Virginia General Assembly aren’t technically political but have either elements of politics or good lines that are applicable: “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (see the clip at the top of this entry) and “Animal House,” which is filled with quotable lines.

Dwayne also reminded me of a great political scene from an all-time classic: “Citizen Kane.” I’ve included the scene (it’s less than 20 seconds) below.

Clearly, we’ve omitted a lot of great politics-related movies. So please weigh in with your contributions in the comments below. What are your favorite political movies or scenes?

– Mason Adams

In mid-December I’ll begin a new chapter in my life.

After nearly 10 years at The Roanoke Times, I’m leaving to take a job with SustainFloyd, a non profit that aims to bridge the gap between rural traditions and the 21st Century global economy.

There are inherent risks in such a career jump, and it’s not a move I’m making lightly.

For more about the why’s of this, read on below the fold.

– Mason Adams

Read more »

Chief Carl Custalow presents Governor McDonnell with a deer as tax tribute, killed Monday | Courtesy of Kathy Scott

It’s late November, which means it’s time for the annual tax tribute from the Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes at the Virginia governor’s mansion.

After Bacon’s Rebellion, the British Crown concluded a peace treaty with the Mattaponi and Pamunkey Indian tribes in 1677. In it, the British reserved certain lands for the tribes, “confirming to them their just Rights.” In return, the Indians and their posterity were to pay the royal governor a token every year in lieu of taxes.

In the tribute ceremony, tribal members honor their ancestors who negotiated the Treaty of Middle Plantation to preserve Virginia Indian lands and the rich heritage they enjoy to this day. The ceremony is the oldest continuing nation-to-nation ceremony in the United States.

So today, Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen McDonnell welcomed Chief Carl Custalow of the Mattaponi Tribe, Chief Kevin Brown of the Pamunkey Tribe, and other tribal members to the Governor’s Mansion to observe the 335th tax tribute ceremony.

Chief Carl Custalow presented them with a piece of pottery decorated with fish and turtles, a beaded feathered medicine bag and an eight point buck deer. Chief Kevin Brown presented them with a drum made by a Pamunkey artisan, a beaded barrette, and a deer. Drumming and dancing followed the presentation of gifts, led by Assistant Chief Mark Custalow.

Governor McDonnell also announced that as soon as next year, there will be a new monument on Capitol grounds – a tribute to Virginia Indians. The Virginia Indian Commemorative Commission recently voted on a design submitted by a Canadian Indian artist and fundraising has begun for the new monument here on the capitol grounds.

Find more photos of this year’s ceremony, plus a throwback photo to the 1928 ceremony with then-Gov. Harry Byrd, below the fold.

We wrote about last year’s tribute as well.

Read more »

Carol Lee McGuire-Bishop. The Roanoke Times | File 2009

I wanted to take a moment today to note the passing of Carol Lee McGuire-Bishop — my sixth and seventh grade social studies teacher and probably the biggest reason you’re reading my reporting in the Roanoke Times and on the Blue Ridge Caucus.

McGuire-Bishop — I still have a strong urge to call her Ms. McGuire — died early yesterday from injuries she suffered in a car wreck in Clifton Forge on Friday morning.

As some of you know, I’m a Clifton Forge native. I lived just outside the city limits on the east side, which meant that I attended Sharon Elementary School, which in the 1980s meant that I had Ms. McGuire as a teacher.

Her reputation was already well established at a school-wide level by the time I started kindergarten. She taught 6th and 7th grade social studies, but stories of her legendary temper trickled down to the lowest levels of the then-K-through-7 school. One story (probably a myth, but I wouldn’t rule it out as possibly true) had her slamming a door so hard that the window came out and flew across the hall, where it shattered on the opposite wall. When I first started school and paddling by the principal was still a real threat, that story was terrifying.

By the time I reached 6th grade, I was struggling with the onset of adolescence and dealing with one of the more challenging years of my life. But contrary to what I and my classmates had feared, Ms. McGuire wasn’t as bad as we’d heard.

True, she did work us hard. She all but required us to keep up with current events — preferably by reading a newspaper, whether it was the Roanoke Times or the local Virginian Review — and quizzed us regularly. She also lived up to her reputation for assigning lots and lots of reports: I think we did at least a dozen each on various aspects of the Civil War and World War II, ranging in length from a half a page to 3 or more pages.

But we found out she had a wicked sense of humor and could keep students laughing when she wanted. Her love of sports rivaled and probably surpassed that of even the most fervent fanboys in our classes. To some extent, we could predict her mood and homework load based on how the Washington Redskins, Virginia Tech Hokies and New York Yankees played.

And as stressful as the current events quizzes could be, they proved to be the gateway into the daily paper for me. I read the comics and sports pages for fun, but I read the news section for class. And it turned out the fall of 1988 through the spring of 1990 turned out to be a dramatic time for historic events — the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That doesn’t even take into account the the 1988 presidential election.

Ms. McGuire would dictate current events for our notes. She didn’t cover every story in the paper, of course, so in some ways her delivery of each day’s events helped illustrate the idea of sorting stories by importance. As I got used to the paper, I got to where I could tell when something truly monumental had happened — and on those days I looked forward to hearing her take.

All of that helped prepare me for this job: I don’t know that there’s any better training to report and write for a newspaper than by spending years reading one.

In 2009, when Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, won the Democratic primary for governor, I was assigned to travel up to my home Alleghany Highlands and get reaction from locals. I knew to hit some local hotspots — Cucci’s Pizzeria in Covington, the old Varsity Grill in Warm Springs — but on the drive up U.S. 220 I decided to call Ms. McGuire. She was retired then, so she was at home and was happy to agree to an interview.

She told me she was “elated” by his victory and added some local history:

“When Creigh first started out, he was so nervous and so self-conscious, but he always had the fire in his belly and the fire in the heart,” said Carol Lee McGuire-Bishop, who taught social studies in the Alleghany County school system for 31 years. “When you see him over TV or out with big crowds, you don’t understand how much he feels what he says. His grandparents were poor. He still lives in the same house his grandparents used to live in. His mother still carries the mail. I bet he’s the only candidate whose wife works. He is just true to his values. I don’t think his basic values have changed one bit.”

She introduced me to her new Scottie (her classrooms had been laced with images of the dog), but I didn’t realize until this weekend how she had regularly driven stray animals to other states to find “no-kill” shelters for them.

I did know, of course, about her love for Virginia Tech. I had an old Bimbo Coles poster from his time at VT, and Ms. McGuire is identifiable in the crowd in the background.

And earlier this year I was thrilled to see that she was the “feisty 70-year-old woman” who grilled Shane Beamer at a meeting of the Roanoke Valley Sports Club, which drew the notice of columnist Aaron McFarling.

Perhaps also noteworthy: The 2011 Ford Mustang she was driving at the time of her wreck on Friday was maroon with custom burnt orange pin stripes and VT logos.

In any case, I wanted to pay tribute to Ms. McGuire, who inspired me and a ton of other students in the Alleghany Highlands. I’ve been struck by how many people have written on Facebook and elsewhere, citing her as their favorite teacher. She certainly was a heck of an influence on me.

– Mason Adams

Last week we were joined by two international journalists who flew in to the Star City to cover the presidential election from the Roanoke Times newsroom.

In the time they’ve been here, Reem Yousuf Al-Harami, from Qatar, and Elham Mustafa A.Salih, from Sudan, have gotten to cover visits to the Roanoke Valley by Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.

And today, of course, they’re covering the actual election.

The two are part of a program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists, which has placed reporters in newsrooms throughout the battleground states.

If you want to read coverage of tonight’s election by those participants, they’re posting in a live blog at ICFJ’s website.

Reem and Elham will wrap up their time in Roanoke tomorrow.

– Mason Adams

We’ve already told you about the two international journalists, Reem Yousuf Al-Harami, from Qatar, and Elham Mustafa A.Salih, from Sudan, who are covering the presidential election from the Roanoke Times newsroom as part of a program funded by the International Center for Journalists.

The two accompanied a team of Roanoke Times staffers on Thursday to cover Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s rally in Bonsack. (My story on the rally is here.)

Today, Elham brought us a copy of the front page of her newspaper in Sudan, which includes a photo (by RT photo Jeanna Duerscherl) and her story on the rally in Roanoke County.

No word yet on whether the Sudanese version of the story included a Bonsack dateline. (UPDATE: I’m told the story bears a Roanoke dateline.)

– Mason Adams

Photo by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

The Crooked Road (or to use its official title, “The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail“) is up for consideration as a National Heritage Area.

According to the National Park Service (and via a Tad Dickens news story), the National Heritage Area designation means the 19 counties and four cities that comprise the Crooked Road region would be eligible for “public-private partnerships, leveraging funds and long-term support for projects that support historic preservation, conservation, recreation, tourism and educational projects.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, favors the effort, as does 9th District Congressman Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.

But there’s opposition, too.

We received a news release from the Liberty Confederation, a self-described “coalition of liberty groups from across Southern Virginia” that condemns the proposed National Heritage Area designation.

“We must ask Congressman Griffith and Senator Warner — is this is an order by decree?” asked Liberty Confederation Chairman Phil Spence in the news release. “Our own Virginia Declaration clearly says that there must be consent of the governed. Here we have a situation where the governed know nothing about what a National Heritage Area designation entails, not to mention that such a designation is bearing down on their right to use, enjoy and make their livelihoods in the manner in which they are accustomed on their own land.”

The group also included a link to this 2007 paper on the Heritage Foundation’s page, entitled “National Heritage Areas: Costly Economic Development Schemes that Threaten Property Rights.”

We also received a summary of comments collected during 12 public meetings across Southwest Virginia about the proposal. This came from the Crooked Road group and includes several references to opposition to the proposal.

You can read the entire summary here:

Crooked Road National Heritage Area – Preliminary Summary of Public Comment 8-22-12

But in the interest of brevity, we’ll reprint the paragraph about opposition:

Opposition to the proposed designation was expressed by commenters at the Abingdon, Marion, Tazewell and Wytheville meetings, primarily by attendees who indicated they were either members or supporters of local Tea Party organizations. some of those expressing opposition attended multiple meetings to express their opposition. The primary basis for their opposition appeared to be their belief that a Crooked Road National Heritage Area designation would result in land use restrictions that would infringe on private property rights. They also indicated that they felt a decision to pursue a National Heritage Area designation should be made by referendum, i.e., it should be voted on by residents of the 19 county, four city region covered by the proposed designation.

Later in the document, the Crooked Road group responded to the concerns, acknowledging there had been impacts on property owners within a the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area in Arizona, but arguing that the issue there was “action at the local level and not based on any federal action.” The group wrote that based on its mission, the Crooked Road “has never been involved in owning, managing or controlling property and has no plans to do so in the future.” And it wrote that the public input meetings were intended to collect the feelings of residents and that no referendum is required.

What do you think? Should the proposed Crooked Road National Heritage Area be a concern to property owners within the region, or is it a non-issue?

– Mason Adams

With all the attention that Western Virginia is getting from the candidates lately, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there’s another Virginia — you know, the one with a lot more of the state’s population.

Last week, I travelled through that part of the Old Dominion on my way to see baseball games in Washington and Baltimore.

When I took the Metro from Northern Virginia into D.C., lo, what did I see plastered at every subway stop in Virginia but a picture of Mitt Romney.

Not exactly an image the Romney campaign would approve of, though:

This sign is at every Metro stop in Virginia that I saw last week.

I have one more vacation photo to share. While taking my morning walk in Baltimore, what did I discover near my hotel but . . . a communist bookstore!

Technically, the store prefers to be called a “radical” bookstore, but if you’re calling yourself “Red Emma’s,” well, I don’t think that’s red as in “red states” and “blue states.”

I ventured in out of curiosity. The coffee shop fare was strictly vegan. There were lots of posters in support of Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking secrets to Wikileaks. I also noticed a sign asking shoppers not to “steal, liberate or lift” the merchandise — because the store needed the profit to survive.

– Dwayne Yancey

Baltimore has a communist bookstore. It prefers to be called a "radical" bookstore, though.

Voters at the South Roanoke 2 precinct in 2008.

In February, Roanoke’s electoral board pitched the idea of consolidating the city’s precincts, from 32 to 19.

The city registrar and three members of the board say the change will save Roanoke roughly a quarter of the cost of each election but cutting down on staff and equipment that needs to be set up.

The city council heard the recommendation and put it on the backburner until after the May 1 elections, when councilman Sherman Lea proposed moving elections to the fall.

At that point, the consolidation came back up again.

Now, the electoral board has scheduled a series of open houses in August to collect public input on the proposed consolidation.

Three have been announced. They’ll take place from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Thursday, Aug. 9, at the Jackson Park branch library multipurpose room;
• Monday, Aug. 13, at Preston Park Recreation Center; and
• Monday, Aug. 20, in Room 159 of the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building.

Two other open house sessions will be held in August at William Fleming High School and Patrick Henry High School. Those dates have yet to be announced.

For more information, you can contact City Registrar Lavern Shepherd at 853-1037 or by email at lavern.shepherd@roanokeva.gov.