Essays
ESSAY- Flat Stanley: Up in space with our astronaut
Published on Apr 15th, 2010
0 comments Briton in his 2nd grade class and "Auntie Dottie" (center) with her Shuttle Discovery class.NASA Some time in first or second grade, most kids in the US are sent home with a stack of envelopes for...
ESSAY- True radical: Jefferson wanted revolutions, guns, liberty
Published on Apr 8th, 2010
0 comments Jefferson had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that today and...
ESSAY- Bloody Kansas: Why incivility can be dangerous
Published on Apr 1st, 2010
3 comments Prior to the Civil War, Jefferson Davis (while a member of the U.S. Senate) spoke against slavery spreading north of the 36th parallel, arguing that the institution everywhere would soon die on its...
ESSAY- Roger and we: Mr. Ebert returns to Charlottesville (sort of)
Published on Apr 1st, 2010
0 comments Ebert meets the press outside the Regal cinema in 2002COURTESY VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL It was October 1992 when I got the call. It was an administrator with the Virginia Film Festival, which was...
ESSAY- Blue Bird: Have we lived up to our early potential?
Published on Mar 25th, 2010
6 comments There's something you should know about me: I was in the Blue Bird reading group in Mrs. Prolman's first grade class. Impressed? You should be. And every morning, we would drag our little wooden...
ESSAY- Sham recovery: Why the economy's not getting any better
Published on Mar 18th, 2010
1 comments Are we finally in a recovery? Who's "we," kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the...
ESSAY- First stone: Why I won't be protesting John Yoo
Published on Mar 11th, 2010
0 comments Almost the minute the announcement that the Justice Department ended the possibility of censuring lawyers who wrote memos backing extreme measures to question potential terrorists in the immediate...
ESSAY- Spineless sack: <i>Style</i> sacrifices talent for political correctness
Published on Mar 4th, 2010
0 comments Channel 6's Mark Holmberg has also taken up the cause.WTVR Autocomplete wasn't the only thing that screwed Chris Dovi. Sure, the now-former reporter at Richmond's Style Weekly did himself no favors...
ESSAY- One-minute warning: How to really reform campaign finance
Published on Feb 25th, 2010
3 comments Now that the hoopla is dying over the Supreme Court's decision to allow political giving by corporations, it's time to time to consider real political reform, reform that might address the "deficit...
ESSAY- On shoveling: One step closer to the grave?
Published on Feb 18th, 2010
0 comments Oh, that scrape... scrape... scrape of the shovel. Having grown up in New England, that's a sound as familiar as my own heartbeat. As a little kid, lying in my blissfully snug bed, I'd hear that...
ESSAY- For Salinger: With love and squalor
Published on Feb 11th, 2010
0 comments An author who wrote 'a key book of the present decade.'man: Lotte Jacobi. book: Flickr/Andy Field (Hubmedia) At times, it seemed like he was long dead; and the news that he had in fact passed away...
ESSAY- Trapped in Haiti: A true story with a tragic ending
Published on Feb 4th, 2010
0 comments "What do you need?"MSNBC The network news video showed French rescue workers digging through rubble of a Port-au-Prince luxury hotel and cutting through the rebar, and there was my brother-in-law. "...
ESSAY- After Robertson: God and man in Haiti
Published on Jan 28th, 2010
0 comments Rising like a headland of hope out of a sea of heartbreak, one of the most touching scenes out of Haiti on the Sunday after the earthquake was a religious ceremony held in a makeshift church in the...
ESSAY- American Made: Why Haiti's earthquake started here
Published on Jan 21st, 2010
4 comments As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti began arriving, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western...
ESSAY- New normal: Know your wants from your needs
Published on Jan 14th, 2010
0 comments Your portfolio looks wilted. Your home's value is seeping through the basement floor. Perhaps your income has been battered, too. All together, your personal wealth, thanks to a few economic...
ESSAY- Pooch policy: Raising 'fetch' to a new level
Published on Jan 7th, 2010
1 comments Picture this: a dog that can flip your lights on and off, bring you the cordless, and fetch that bag of Cheez Doodles that is way too far away in the kitchen. While you were at your holiday parties...
Last night Virginia? Don't let this New Year's tradition end
Published on Dec 24th, 2009
0 comments   Author Carroll Trainum now has 28 First Night buttons.PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER Say it ain't so. Organizers are suggesting that the economic downfall may mean that the 28th annual First Night...
ESSAY- Real clunker: How we should have treated old cars
Published on Dec 17th, 2009
0 comments With the announcement last week that the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration was delaying the forced crushing or shredding of 690,000 Cash for Clunkers trade-ins from this summer,...
ESSAY- Tiger abuse? Double-standard pervades Woods discussion
Published on Dec 10th, 2009
0 comments As the news of golf superstar Tiger Woods' alleged multiple affairs spills all over the media, a fascinating– and disturbing– subplot to the story has become a revealing litmus test of...
Boojum! The novel (and author) that time forgot
Published on Dec 3rd, 2009
0 comments   Henry Fonda played Wertenbaker  on Broadway in 1962.PLAYBILL Charles Wertenbaker is the forgotten man of twentieth-century American literature. He chronicled D-Day with Robert Capa,...
ESSAY- Small portions: The meaning of the ping pong ball scoop
Published on Nov 26th, 2009
0 comments What the hell? I looked down at my serving of apple pie à la mode and thought I'd been punk'd. Where was the TV camera? Ashton Kutcher had to be lurking around, somewhere. The menu said it was...
ESSAY- Sayonara, ABC: McDonnell's getting Virginia off the sauce
Published on Nov 19th, 2009
0 comments Ask an immigrant to tell you about her first impressions of America– especially someone who hails from a communist or socialist state– and eventually she'll get to the part about the...
ESSAY- Mutual respect? Iran gets but never gives
Published on Nov 12th, 2009
0 comments While the focus last week was on the failure of President Obama's campaigning to help Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, a much more important presidential issue was taking place on...
ESSAY- Locally shot: The Zen horror movie that works
Published on Nov 5th, 2009
0 comments Lora Lee Jones (not shown) and Lara Blake and Ashley Florence (quite shown here) star in Mantra, a film written and directed by Brian Wimer and available on DVD through mantramoviesite.com.Photo by...
ESSAY- God and prayer: Tough on us... and on egos
Published on Oct 29th, 2009
0 comments Gordon Livingston's October 8 essay "Divine design: Survivors right to question unanswered prayers" (The Hook 10/08/09 -10/14/09) verbalizes an almost universal concern, "unanswered prayer." He...
ESSAY- Localvore's dilemma: How I learned about shooting food
Published on Oct 22nd, 2009
0 comments "I'm sorry, honey," I said, extracting a toy rifle from the small hands of the visiting 8-year-old boy, "but we don't allow guns at our house, not even toy ones." I then walked the twenty feet from...
ESSAY- Toas-Tite: Snug as a bug at grandpa's farm
Published on Oct 15th, 2009
1 comments When my grandfather passed away, I told my mother I wanted just one treasure from my grandparents' estate: the Toas-Tite sandwich maker. I'm sure I was the only grandchild to make this request, and...
ESSAY- Divine design: Survivors right to question unanswered prayers
Published on Oct 8th, 2009
0 comments In a society in which at least 9 of 10 people identify themselves as believers in a Supreme Being, it is natural for people to pray for what they want and identify good outcomes as God's...
ESSAY- On Amtrak: You can't get there from here...
Published on Oct 1st, 2009
8 comments Nearly everything about my recent vacation in Florida was perfect: the beaches, wildlife, sunsets, you name it. My only disappointment? The way I got there. I took a plane, as anyone who lives 1,500...
ESSAY- September slump: The empty nester's lament
Published on Sep 24th, 2009
0 comments You are a slacker, a dropout – you're the loser sneaking a cigarette behind the gym while the good kids are in algebra class. You are aimless and useless and worthless.  Or is it just me?...