Welcome, visitors from the esteemed science/biology/evolution Web site Pharyngula, and others. We're happy to have you at this humble, homespun and truth-telling blog that originates in the peaceful hills of western Virginia (NOT West Virginia, though that's a pretty good state and we're real close).
This blog is moderated, and I'll be away from my computer for most of today, at a Division III football game in a place known more for its moonshine than anything else.
Because it's moderated, I have to approve your comments before they show up. I'll get to that late tonight, I promise, after that white lightning wears off. But until then your comments will not show up.
But be patient, and please come back. We have a lot of fun here, and we like you!
I know all of you have a deep and abiding sympathy for wisecracking columnist/bloggers like yours truly, and the pressures we are under (just kidding, really). On the other hand, those pressures can get particularly intense during a holiday week like Thanksgiving, which is upcoming.
Especially if you want to take that Friday off, like I do. Which means that I have to write 3 columns in 3 days and kinda sorta manage this quickly growing beast at the same time. OK, enough of the 'poor me' stuff.
I am asking for your help, regulars and newbies, in writing my Thanksgiving Day column. It will be your answers to the following broad question:
What are you thankful for?
Please write something from your heart, rather than from those liberal/conservative/atheist/fundamentalist/cynic/sexist/hunter/animal-rights activist/sarcastic, etc parts of your head.
Please DON'T tell us why you are happy that a Democrat is at long last in the White House, or why you're thankful that the GOP has reasserted itself in Virginia elections, or because abortion is legal or that you're thankful for Virginia's upcoming concealed weapons in bars legislation or any of those other like things.
A couple of notes:
1) Keep your entries to 50 words, give or take a few, and post them as comments to this blog, or in private emails to me at this link. Or, at dan(dot)casey(at)roanoke(dot)com with the subject line Thankful.
2) At the end of your 50 words include your first and last name and locality and state, like this: Dan Casey, Roanoke, Va. (I will not publish stuff in the column without a full name & locality.)
I will sort through these beginning Friday Nov. 20 and cull a wide-ranging bunch of heartfelt stuff for the column that appears on Thanksgiving.
I'll tell you one thing I'm thankful for: That I have a bunch of earnest and passionate readers of this blog who will help me write that day's column.
Her college-bound daughter wonders whether somehow, the Blacksburg-based university is 'cursed.'
The question arises from Thursday's events at Fort Hood, where the alleged gunman was a 1995 Tech graduate. And from the October disappearance in Charlottesville of Morgan Harrington, a Tech student who attended a concert there. She hasn't been found.
And from the mysterious and still-unsolved murders in August of Tech students Heidi Childs and David Metzler at Caldwell Fields, a popular student hangout in the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, about a 20 minute drive from campus.
Matt writes: "So, of the two worst mass murders in America in many years, one occurred at Virginia Tech, and the other had roots at Virginia Tech. Does ANYONE ELSE think that is a remarkably creepy co-incidence?"
Let's not forget the off campus killing of two Virginia Tech students recently, as well as the decapitation of Xin Yang in January, at the school, and the recent disappearance of Morgan Harrington - a current student at Tech.
My daughter, who was once setting her sights on a Va Tech education no longer has any interest in attending the school. She thinks it's somehow "cursed".
I agree with Matt. There have been far too many horrific crimes involving Tech students over the past several years. I don't hear many news reports mentioning other colleges. Is it because it doesn't happen there or because we are just closer to this source? I don't mean to imply there is a common sinister thread here but one has to wonder why...
What do you think, folks? Could there be any explanation for such a series of tragedies all linked to one state university in small, off-the-beaten-path mountain town?
This morning in the newsroom, one editor put it something like this:
For Columbine, the massacre was it. They didn't have any big-news tragedies after that horrible one.
Note: In the same way WHFS ushered in the weekend with this tune each Friday afternoon back in the 80s, I'm going to begin doing the same thing on this blog. That's why you see it here now. It'll be up each Friday afternoon for the foreseeable future.
--dan
I doubt that many of you spent much time around the Washington, D.C. media market in the 1980s. But if you did, and if you liked "alternative" FM music, there was one station, and one station only, that you likely listened to: The legendary WHFS.
It's hard to describe, and to do any justice, to this revolutionary Bethesda-based rock music station (they later moved to Annapolis). It was founded by a radio innovator named Jake Einstein. They were low power from Bethesda and didn't have a lot of reach, but had many, many diehard fans in that densely populated area.
WHFS was distinctive in many ways. It invented, at least in the DC market, the album-oriented or alternative format. Rarely, if ever, did it play any TOP 40. They were the only local radio station that played recordings by local artists, such as Root Boy Slim and The Slickee Boys, and the station had live interviews and performances with rock stars who visited town -- they were always eager to sit down with DJ Damian (Einstein's son) or Weasel (Jonathan Gilbert) or Bob Here or Cerphe (pronounced Surf) or some of the others.
None of the WHFS deejays had the smooth, slick-sounding radio voices you heard on regular stations. Damian, who had been crippled in a car crash years earlier, often slurred his words. He sounded drunk, but it was actually due to the disability he suffered as a result of that accident. Weasel had a voice like Alvin the Chipmunk, only just a little lower -- no lie. Bob Showacre ("Bob Here") had a laid-back and easygoing voice that sounded like an announcer on National Public Radio (who had just smoked a joint). These guys often made public appearances at local clubs to introduce D.C. musical acts. They were DC-rock-scene celebrities.
In short, WHFS was the anti-station of Washington D.C. radio.
Einstein ultimately sold WHFS to a corporation that took it in a more commercial direction. Years later, it changed into a Spanish-language station. But he bought another station, rechristened it WRNR and repeated the formula -- and it worked again. WRNR is still on the air, broadcasting from Annapolis. (Einstein, who died in 2007, sold the station in 1998 to Annapolis-area resident and "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak.)
Okay, here's the point of all this: Every Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. WHFS always played the same set of 4, 5 or 6 songs (I can't remember exactly how many it was). It started with Joe King Carrasco's "Party Weekend," moved on to The GoGos"We Got the Beat." It included a Dead Milkmen song, "Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance to Anything)" and some others as well.
You'd be heading home from work, stuck in D.C.-area traffic, tired after a hard week, and that set would come on the radio and change your mood and your energy level and get you bopping and ready for anything that was going on that weekend.
So here's the lead-off tune, folks. Have a great weekend!
Tea Party protesters in Washington, D.C. earlier this summer / Wikimedia Commons
Roughly 10 of "thousands" of Tea Party protesters who showed up at the Capitol building on Thursday were arrested by police after they invaded Congressional office building and attempted to protest pending health-care reform legislation inside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Henrico, cheered them on and told the crowd that not one Republican would vote for the bill.
. . . Protesters in the crowd watching the arrests were furious. They shouted "Let them go!" and one man yelled at the police that "Martin Luther King" was being dishonored and shouted "Letter from Birmingham Jail!"
One woman told officers they were "shameful." Others called the arrested protesters "political prisoners."
"This is America, this is not the Soviet Union," one woman said.
. . . Several people said the group had been arrested for praying. Others said the group was arrested for ripping up pages from the nearly 2,000-page health care bill.
This is one of my favorite "war stories" from journalism.
It took place at the end of 1994 and continued into 1995, and involves televangelist and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Marion G. "Pat" Robertson, a mansion he built on a mountain north of Roanoke, and the extreme efforts he took to keep The Roanoke Times from taking a picture of it.
It also involves the National Enquirer and one of its ace reporters, the late, great David Duffy. He was one of the most extraordinary characters I've met in this business (mostly, we're a hideously boring lot). But we'll get to that part a bit later.
I and my wife and our (then) three kids moved to Roanoke from Annapolis in June 1994, when I started my new job as the City Hall reporter for The Roanoke Times. A few months after we arrived, Donna and I got away for a few nights up in Bath County, (i.e. Deeds Country) at a bed and breakfast in Warm Springs. It is a bit more than a 2-hour drive north of Roanoke.
This was in October of 1994, and Bath County at that time had zero stoplights, a population of about 5,100, gorgeous mountains and valleys, and the grand old hotel and golf resort known as The Homestead, in Hot Springs. (Donna and I were back there in September -- nothing in Bath has changed). More than 80 percent of the county is national forest. Here is a map.
This is an oldie but a goodie that we've explored in the column some months back. Gonzo blogger Michael A. Howdyshell resurrected it with a comment posted to a different thread this morning. Here is what he wrote:
I have a rant for you and I rarely rant about much. Merging onto 581 South at Orange Avenue. Don't the driver education class's teach merging anymore? Yesterday I witnessed a car that stopped as it came up on 581 I simply passed the car on right, as others did, and proceeded onward. Out of respect for propriety I will not mention the gender of the driver. This is very dangerous. The merge lane is designed for the merging vehicle to attain the speed of the ongoing traffic. I understand this particular entry ramp is a little difficult as cars are exiting 581 to Orange Avenue East, however that does not change the basic skill of merging does not involve stopping. To make this current for the blog I think the people that stop on the entry ramp are probably 1) not Virginians and 2) probably liberals.
Michael is certainly right about one thing: There are lots of drivers around Roanoke who reflexively stomp on their brakes when they should be hitting the gas pedal.
But like any good blogging provocateur, he had to blame it on liberals and/or non-natives who have been allowed in the wonderful commonwealth thanks to the good graces of the REAL Virginians. Heh, heh. And get a gender reference in there, too.
Even though this is off the topic of the post, I'm going to respond to Michael. Being from NY originally (although I've been here for 9 years now and I can't imagine living anywhere else), I've got to disagree with one of your two assessments. You are correct that people who stop on on-ramps are most likely liberals, but the "not Virginians" claim is backwards.
After moving down here I was shocked at how many people don't know how to merge. It was a drastic difference from anywhere else I've been. People will stop even when there are no cars coming. Orange to 581 is the worst but not the only place this happens. I think Liberal Virginians are the culprit.
I understand the irritation. It gets to me, too. And I also get frustrated by:
Drivers running 10 mph under the speed limit (without any obvious reason for doing so);
And, by "biased" traffic lights such as the one at Grandin/Brandon southwest, where the cars on Brandon get all the time in the world to clear the intersection but barely 10 cars in line on Grandin, if that many, can make it through. Thus, many Grandin drivers have to sit through 2 stoplight cycles.
Today, "thousands" of Tea Partyers are set to descend upon Washington to demonstrate against the health-care legislation that is slowly making its way through Congress.
Ah, the day after an election. Everything looks so clear and so obvious, you know?
There is plenty of nerdy election analysis from political pros elsewhere in the paper.
So here is some of the barroom-type stuff:
Creigh Deeds ran the worst statewide Democratic campaign in more than a decade.
How do we know? Rather than leading the ticket, the gubernatorial candidate pulled thousands of fewer votes than ticket mates Jody Wagner and Steve Shannon -- two warm bodies most Virginia voters had never even heard of before.
The Rev. Morris Fleischer of Christiansburg, no Bob McDonnell fan, summed up Deeds best on my blog: "He ran such an inept campaign, I questioned his ability to run the state as governor."
Metro Columnist Dan Casey knows a little bit about a lot of things but not a heck of a lot about most things. That doesn't keep him from writing about them, however. So keep him honest!
He welcomes your rants, raves and considered opinions, so long as the language is civil (i.e. no four-letter words). He'll read all your posts and may or may not respond.
