Lots of changes on the Floyd scene as the old year rings out:

Lawrence Wood is closing the funeral home that bears his name.  Wood has buried a lot of people in Floyd County, including my maternal grandparents. He’s been a fixture around here for a long, long time.

Protocol Automotive is becoming “Joe’s Garage,” reflecting the name of owner Joey Kaylor and perhaps also reflecting Kaylor’s continuing legal problems.  He faces trial next year on a 14-count embezzlement charge.  The Commonwealth of Virginia claims Kaylor diverted funds for employee withholding for other purposes.  Is the name change part of a defense strategy?  We will have to wait for the trial.  Kaylor, the self-declared “hateful” mechanic, isn’t keeping a low profile.  He held a “customer appreciation day” at Protocol after his indictments and applied not once, but twice, for open positions on the county’s Economic Development Authority, citing his experiences in dealing with the many challenges of running a small business in Floyd County.  He didn’t get either appointment.

The Tea Party became a county-wide laughing stock when it tried to pack a public hearing on the proposed comprehensive plan with claims that the plan was a tool of the United Nations.  A lot of talk but little change in the plan, which will be discussed at the board of supervisors meeting in two weeks.

A lot of controversy over proposed wind turbine farms on Wills Ridge and possibly other places in the county.  The county board narrowly passed a proposed ordinance banning ridgeline development — including wind farms — but the ordinance faces what is expected to be a turbulent public hearing on Jan. 31.  If the county could harness all the hot air generated in the debate it could produce enough geo-thermal energy to power all the homes and businesses here.

The Floyd Country Store is curtailing its hours, starting next week, going from a six-day a week schedule to Thursday-Sunday.  The store expects to expand back to a fuller schedule when the tourist season kicks in.

The National Music Festival held its first season with critical acclaim, finished the year in the black and then packed up and left town for the Eastern Shore of Maryland, leaving some contributors feeling conned.

The Wine Tasting Shop at the Station on South Locust packed up and left.  Owners are still looking for someone to occupy the space vacated by the County Health Department and other vacancies in the complex.

Our old space at The Village Green — home for a brief while to a bicycle shop — remains empty.  It’s a nice corner location but the vacancy is a sign of the times not only in Floyd but elsewhere.  Floyd has fewer empty business spaces downtown than most communities. For that we can be thankful.

On The Run at the Exxon Station is now a Circle K.  Same owners, just a different name. Circle K bought the national On the Run chain from Exxon.

The video store is gone.  The Harris & Baker building remains empty.  Internal dissension continues to affect Angels in the Attic.  Prices are up and customers report often surly service from the new crop of volunteers brought in after the old timers left in a dispute with Kathy Blackwell.

Longtime school superintendent Terry Arbogast left under a cloud amid questions about his salary and a lack of accountability in public disclosure.  New school boss Kevin Harris is still getting his bearings.

The local elections put two new faces on the board of supervisors (Lauren Yoder and Joe Turman) as longtime supervisor and board chairman David Ingram lost out to Yoder in the primary and fell short in a write-in effort.  Challenges to two school board incumbents fell short.  Sheriff Shannon Zeman survived two opponents — a disgruntled former deputy and an Indian Valley resident with no law enforcement experience who said God told him to run and assured him he would win if he did.  No word yet from God on why his candidate lost.

Crime is up, court dockets are crowded and the crystal meth epidemic is spiraling out of control.  The sheriff’s department is busting a record numbers of meth labs.  Meth, it seems, is the new moonshine in Floyd County.

It’s been that kind of year.

The computer was so new that I had to wait six weeks for a Serial 422 cable to use the printer that came as part of the Mac package.

The Mac became my computer of choice. As a chief of staff on Capitol Hill at the time, I put Macs in our office — the first one to adapt to Apple — and MacWorld magazine sent a writer and photographer to capture the event.

When Photoshop came along, I started using it for my photography. Amy and I got into documentary filmmaking in the late 1980s and — the the time — we had to invest heavily in a dedicated and expensive editing system for videotape.

Final Cut Pro — developed my Macromedia and acquired by Apple — changed video editing for professionals.  It offered an affordable editing platform that ran on a Mac and produced results good if not better than some more expensive dedicated system.  We started using it with version 1 shortly after the new century again.

Over the years, we edited all of our projects — large and small — on Final Cut Pro.  We were in good company.  George Lucas used Final Cut Pro for Star Wars.  In fact, more than half of broadcast and film professionals cut their video shorts, documentaries and feature films on Final Cut.  I built an efficient video workstation using Final Cut Studio 2, an Apple PowerMac G5, dual cinema monitors and multiple disk arrays.

But Apple changed the game in two ways.

First, the company switched their operating system away from the Motorola chips used in the G5 PowerMacs to an Intel-based system.  We saw no reason to change over because the G5 had all the power we needed and the software we used ran well.  Unfortunately, as more and more updates to Apple software were released, we found that newer versions would no longer run on the G5.

Second, Apple decided backward compatibility was no longer important.

We were using Final Cut version 6, which ran well on the G5 and I was thinking about upgrading to an Intel Mac and version 7 when Apple announced Final Cut X — jumping three version numbers — this summer.  Version 10 wasn’t an upgrade — it was a complete rewrite of Final Cut Pro and it not only left out features that many pro editors need, it wasn’t backward compatible with projects produced with earlier versions of the software.  Apple also discontinued version 7, which left me stuck with version 6 and the hundreds of projects edited with it and earlier versions.

Professional videographers and editors reacted — for the most part — with shock, anger and disappointment over Final Cut X.   Apple promised to restore features through updates and two updates since the program’s release this past summer have answered a few of the complaints but the program still — in my opinion and the opinion of many other pro editors — fall well short of the needs of the professional market.

Yes, Final Cut Pro X is slick, it is relatively cheap — $299 for the program and $50 each for the the Motion and Compressor add-ons — compared to the $999 for just an upgrade to Final Cut Studio in the past, but it still ignores the needs of many professionals.

Fortunately, I had a a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 lying around from a project that I did several years ago.  I was able to upgrade to Premier Pro CS 5.5 for less than the cost of Final Cut X.  However, the version I had ran on a PC, not a Mac and I upgraded to the latest version and installed it on a Gateway PC.

The program not only runs faster than Final Cut Pro did on the Mac, it handles the newest HD video formats seamlessly.  Apple has problems with some of the new formats and editing them requires transcoding or conversion.  Even the new Final Cut Pro X requires importing a lot of extra files, for example, to handle AVCHD files but Premiere Pro edits the files natively.

Bottom line: After 27 years of using a Mac, I’m back on a PC for the bulk of my video work.

New River Valley Harley-Davidson in Christiansburg

New River Valley Harley-Davidson, Christiansburg, opened with much fanfare and high hopes in October 2008, shuts it doors at the end-of-business Saturday, Dec. 31.

The shop’s inventory will go to Roanoke Valley Harley-Davidson — which has the same owner — along with some employees.

Employees got the news Tuesday.  A sign announced “Clearance Consolidation” went up on the door and anything with the NRV logo or name on — T-shirts, etc. — is 50 percent off.  Employees began clearing parts and Harley items off the racks and calls to order parts were directed to the Roanoke Valley store.

Construction on the shop began in better economic times but the opening came just as the economic downturn sent Harley sales plummeting.  Several Harley dealers around the country have gone out of business.

Lloyd Shiffer, who owns  the Roanoke Valley and New River Valley operations, has put NRV building, just off I-81 in Christiansburg, up for sale.

The closing also means the end of the line for the 18-month-old New River Valley Harley Owners Group, which had planned a banquet next week to install its 2012 officers.  The banquet will still be held but will be for awards and a meeting with national H.O.G. representatives to discuss the group’s next steps.

We jokingly call ourselves the “Sons of Lethargy,” riders 60 and older who still climb aboard our two wheelers and enjoy life.

We’ve talked about creating jackets with a logo that shows the Grim Reaper in a wheelchair — or perhaps a Hovaround — but that might not sit well with the Pagans, who consider Floyd County their turf.  Besides, that would seem too organized.

There’s Joe Kenny, a transplanted Pennsylvanian whose machine shop in Floyd makes parts for vintage motorcycle and does a lot of work for Crenshaw Lighting, and Greg Locke, a Detroit native whose hand-lettered sign work adorns the Floyd County Store, ,Barber Shop and other local businesses.  Locke once belonged to a Detroit MC (motorcycle club) called the “Slimy Crud.”

Sometimes we talk politics but mostly we talk motorcycles.  Sometimes we’re joined by others who don’t ride but who have become friends with a trio of old-timers who refuse to admit they’re old.

Many things come and go in life but true friendships endure.  Joe and Greg are friends.  We don’t agree much when it comes to politics but we share a love of life and motorcycles.

Since returning to riding, I’ve made more friends than at any other period of my life. We ride with each other, we trust each other and we know we can count on each other.

In an age of “networking” when relationships are too often built on self-serving agendas, having friends — real friends — is something special.

A 2005 snow at Chateau Thompson

The smell of coffee wafts through Chateau Thompson this morning as we begin to prepare Christmas dinner to take over to my mother at her assisted living apartment.

With temperatures forecast in the 50s, it hardly seems like Christmas outside so I dug through the archives for this snowfall from January 2005. Just imagine that it’s a White Christmas.

From Amy and I, our best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The year in review, courtesy of Google and YouTube.

And 2012 is almost here.

The National Music Festival, the two-week classical music series that drew much praise in its debut season in Floyd County this past summer will stage its second season in Maryland.

In August, the Festival announced it was in the black and told The Roanoke Times it had expanded its board to include Floyd County notables Bernie Coveney, Marie Henry and William May among others.  Festival organizers talked glowingly about a second season, which new members of the board — and many of the festival’s financial contributors — assumed would be in Floyd County.

“For a new nonprofit organization, in this economy, we are proud that as we enter our second fiscal year we have paid all our bills and don’t have any debt,” Festival Executive Director Caitlin Patton told The Times. “We are now working hard to plan next year’s Festival.”

On July 5, the Festival posted on its Facebook page:

To everyone who donated so generously and worked so hard this debut season, please accept our heartfelt thanks. We will continue to work diligently and use our collective abilities to bring the finest concert music to Floyd, Virginia, the New River Valley and the Nation.

On August 24, the Festival posted on Facebook: “Planning the 2012 Festival…a lot of great music in store for next year!”

On September 1, the Festival posted: “Today marks the beginning of our second fiscal year, and we are very pleased to announce that the Festival is in the black – all bills have been paid and we have no outstanding debts!”

On September 9: “We’ll be announcing next year’s Festival season soon, so keep your eyes and ears open…”

Then, on Nov. 26: “”The second season of the NMF will be June 3-16, 2012 in and around historic Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”

Coveney and Henry are missing from the site’s board of directors page on the festival’s web site although Henry is listed as a member of the advisory board on one page and is not listed on the advisory board on the other.

The festival’s donors page is still dominated by Floyd County resident and business contributors.  Some of those contributors now tell us privately they gave money with the understanding the festival would remain in Floyd County and are not happy that festival organizers appear to have taken the money and ran.

On the festival’s Facebook page, a question asking for an explanation for the move went unanswered publicly.

On December 1, the festival changed its location and phone number on its Facebook page.

On December 3, festival organizers went on Facebook to ask for volunteers in and around Chestertown, MD, to help unpack the moving van that brought the festival’s belongings from Floyd to the Eastern Shore.

No contributor we contacted wanted to talk openly about the festival’s change of venue.  The sudden departure of the music festival — which added to the county’s musical heritage — leaves a sour taste in the mouths of some.

And the web site for Executive Director Caitlin Patton — as late as Thursday, Dec. 22 — still talked about the National Music Festival as a Floyd event:

The National Music Festival, located in Floyd, Virginia, is an orchestral training festival designed to mentor and provide performance opportunities for gifted musicians on the cusp of their professional careers.  The Festival will present about 25 performances (including everything from large orchestral works to solo recitals) and over 200 free open rehearsals annually.  The second season will take place June 3-16, 2012.

So what happened?

The only loss suffered by the Floyd County High School varsity girls’ basketball team so far this year came at the hands of Lord Botetourt early in the season.

The Lady Buffs avenged that loss Wednesday night, beating the Cavaliers 61-49 in a physical game.  The girls are now 9-1 and the JV Lady Buffs dispatched Lord Botetourt as well.

Meanwhile, the boys varsity remains unbeaten at 7-0 and survived a close call with Bland County 67-65 Monday night and then came back to trounce Rural Retreat 88-59 Wednesday.

Lived in Alton, Illinois for nearly 12 years. Met Amy there.  We married and lived in an 1835 townhouse that some said was haunted.

Amy said she saw apparitions in the house.  I laughed it off even though I sometimes felt liked someone was watching us.

According to some, Alton is one of the most haunted towns in America.  I recently came across these two excerpts from the SyFy channel that dealt with our former hometown.  Amy directed a play in the Mineral Springs Hotel, which is featured in the first segment, and I drove by the McPike Mansion nearly every day.

Fact or fantasy?  Good question.  Scary one too.

Floyd County High School’s varsity boys basketball team is off to a strong 5-0 start, culminated with a 99-33 pounding of Patrick County at home Friday night.

With the Lady Buffs at 7-1, both teams head into district play soon with confidence building records.

The girls take on Patrick County at home tonight and Lord Botetourt (their only loss so far this season) Wednesday night.

More photos and stories in Thursday’s Floyd Press.