New Media from a Journalism Veteran
Oh my aching butt
Set through a two-day jury trial in Floyd County Circuit Court, a sexual molestation that ended with a not-guilty verdict in the evening hours of Thursday.
My old bones can’t take that many hours on the hardwood benches of the Floyd County Courthouse.
Another jury trial set for this week (Monday and Tuesday) involving the bitter and often petty feud that that marks life in Park Ridge, Floyd County’s only gated community.
Today, everybody is a Hokie
A cop I know cried when he saw the horror at Virginia Tech Monday.
So did others.
The media calls it as massacre.
It’s more than that.
It’s madness.
We may or may not ever know what triggered the young South Korean English major to go on a killing spree that left 32 dead before he took his own life.
How can we? Insanity, whether temporary or permanent, is difficult to explain.
As a student at Floyd County High School in the early 1960s I contemplated attending Virginia Tech (or VPI as it was known in those days). I opted instead for the Roanoke campus of the University of Virginia so I could work at The Roanoke Times.
Yet Tech remains "our university," the one right down the road, just 35 minutes away. Hokie fever runs strong here.
So does pride in the Tech engineering school, long recognized as one of the best in the country.
When an escaped prisoner killed a security guard and a cop and threatened the Tech campus last fall, we held our breath and then breathed a sigh of relief when police captured him.
When the first reports of a shooting at a dorm surfaced Monday morning, we said "oh no, not again." As more details emerged, shock turned to horror and then revulsion.
I’ve witnessed and been a part of too much death in my lifetime. I have photographed death through my camera lens and taken lives in service to my country.
The nightmares have lessened over the years but they remain in the subconscious, ready to surface.
Monday’s carnage triggered far too many memories and a sleepless night.
Those who died must be mourned. Those whose heroic acts saved the lives of others must be remembered and honored.
Already, those who exploit tragedy in order to promote their political agendas show their true colors with callous disregard for simple human decency.
There will be time to deal with such opportunists.
Not now.
I’ve had my fights with Hokie fanatics over the years.
Not today.
A cartoon that shows a crying Hokie bird being comforted says it all: Today, everyone is a Hokie.
Apathy rules
The setting had all the trappings for a packed house and a long night of angry voices. On the stage of the Floyd County High School auditorium sat the board of supervisors, looking like the lineup out of the move, "The Usual Suspects."
The supervisors booked the large auditorium in case a howling mob of angry county residents came to protest a proposed budget that included the second increase in real estate taxes in three years.
But the mob had beter things to do.
The sparse group of 23, mostly teachers angry about a proposed cut in their cost of living salary increase, occupied only a small corner of the cavernous hall.
Of the nine who spoke, seven were teachers, and no one said a word about the proposed tax increase.
The hearing ended 43 minutes after it started. In a night devoted primarily devoted primarily to education, one might call the hearing a test of participatory democracy. If so, the residents of Floyd County failed the test and democracy drowned in a sea of apathy. 
Taxing times
When we lived in Arlington County, residents there often referred to the local government as the “Peoples’ Republic of Arlington.” Arlington’s government is, if nothing else, aggressive when it comes to collecting taxes.
So aggressive, in fact, that they try to collect taxes you don’t owe for years after you leave the county.
Last year, we received a letter from Arlington County demanding payment of personal property taxes on our three cars for 2005, which was odd since we lived in Floyd County fulltime in 2005 and paid taxes on our cars to our home county government.
If it says "Haynes" on the sign, avoid at all cost
If you drive a Jeep and have a breakdown in the Richmond area, do not let Chrysler’s Roadside Assistance Program direct you to Haynes Chrysler-Jeep. Stand your ground. Refuse. Insist on something more pleasurable – like a root canal.
When the slave cylinder for the clutch on my 2000 Wrangler failed Saturday after the Virginia High School League Championship game at the Siegel Center on West Broad Street, the roadside assistance folks told the two truck driver to take the car to Haynes. They are, according to my dealer in Floyd, the largest in the region, a dealer that gets a “4-star” rating from Chrysler.
Largest doesn’t always mean the best and I can tell you now from personal experience that Haynes is far from the best but not far from the worst experience I’ve had with a Jeep dealer in the many years that we have owned the excellent four-wheel drive vehicles.
Meltdown
Amy and I joined my mother Sunday for a benefit brunch for the families of Chance Harman and Joshua Cantrell at Ray’s Restaurant and saw a lot of new and old friends as we carbohydrate-loaded on biscuits, gravy, bacon and eggs.
Then Skip Pendrey, who runs the sound board at the Friday Nite Jamboree, stopped by the table to drop some disturbing news about an apparent meltdown by a prominent Floyd musician on stage.
“You should have been there,” Skip said. “Your name came up.”
A not-so-excellent adventure
I stopped for gas at a Citgo station a few blocks from the Siegel Center in Richmond to top off the tank before heading back to Floyd after the Virginia High School basketball final Saturday.
Leaving the station with a full tank, I figured I could be back home before 5 but as I pulled out onto Lombardy Street, something in the clutch linkage of the Wrangler popped as I tried to shift from first to second. The clutch pedal went to the floor with the transmission stuck in neutral.
A couple of friendly passersby helped me push the Wrangler into the Lowe’s parking lot right next to the station. I crawled under the Jeep to see if I could spot the problem. No luck.
Reality bites
The grand experiment called Blue Ridge Creative is no more, an aborted three-year attempt to become part of Floyd County’s growing, but not yet thriving, artistic community.
The last evidence of the studio we operated in Floyd’s Jacksonville Center for the Arts is gone – most of it now occupying our garage while we decide what to do next in what we saw as relaxing retirement years in the county.
We're sorry…this is a recording
AEP (Always Erratic Power) called shortly before 9 p.m. Monday. Actually, their machine called with a recorded message to let us know the power had been out during last week’s ice storm.
Liars, damn liars and AEP
Appalachian Electric Power, which should be named “Always Erratic Power,” stopped publishing updates on its website Friday at 10 a.m. when the chart still listed 2,600 Floyd County homes without power.
According to the web site, power to those homes would be restored by midnight Friday.
They lied. Fire and police officials tell me at least 1,000 homes in the county remain without power and many of them have been told it will be Monday before the electricity comes back on.