“Pfc. Thomas R. Wilson, 21, of Maurertown, Va., died Aug. 27 in Paktika, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit during combat operations. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.” —DOD

Wilson is the grandson of long-time Shenandoah County employee Jim Hepner. We mourn his family’s loss, and I have asked that all flags in the county be lowered in honor of Thomas Wilson’s sacrifice.

UPDATE - AUG 30: Here is the Northern Virginia Daily coverage (or local copy).  If you can’t make Thomas’ service, leave a comment on his MySpace page.

UPDATE - SEP 02: Visitation is today, Sunday September 2nd, at Dellinger Funeral Home from 1-7. The 11:00 a.m. service will be at Central High tomorrow (Monday) and burial at his grandfather Hepners’ place on Back Road. There will be a fellowship meal following the interment at Thomas’ home on Alonzaville Road in Maurertown.

Shenandoah County took its first, tentative steps to address problems of illegal immigration. The resolution passed is our version of the Culpeper Resolution to ‘stand ready to join with other localities to study and formulate recommendations to the General Assembly’.

click for full-size copy of the resolution

It is a start, but there is more the Board can —and should— do in this.

Distracted by cell phones ringing, I proposed a ‘voluntary fine’ for each instance of a phone ringing during the course of a meeting. The rest of the Board agreed, but applied it only to themselves; not citizens attending.

They also agreed that the ‘fine’ would be a five dollar donation to Shenandoah County’s animal shelter, a worthwhile cause.

We’ve collected a little bit, but Board members learned quickly to use the silent-vibrate feature. Some of the purpose —preventing meetings from being interrupted— is lost when a Supervisor suddenly claps a hand to their pocket, drags the phone out, then dashes out of the room to talk.

Knowing my stance and knowing I leave my phone outside, fellow Supervisors played a trick; hiding another cell phone at my seat and dialing it during last night’s meeting.

I took it as a good sport, paid the ‘fine’, and explained to the audience why the rest of the Board was roaring with laughter. Most were amused.

But . . .

We had just turned down an Ag-Forestal District withdrawal request, and the applicant was still there. They were moving overseas, and couldn’t sell their property with the District designation. Failure to sell isn’t a hardship condition, but it wasn’t any easy vote to make.

So there this person was, having just been denied access to their own property —or the proceeds from it— to finance their new life in another country. And the Supervisors are cutting up and playing practical jokes. Ouch!

The Tinkling Spring.  Headwater of Freedom; established in 1740.

Four years later, the first Patricks immigrated to the area and became active members. In the 1790s, the log structure was replaced by stone, similar to Old Providence Stone Church. Replaced once again for its growing congregation, the present Tinkling Spring building was completed a decade prior to the Civil War.

The present building, built under the direction of R.L. Dabney, the incumbent minister, was first used on March 30, 1850. Noted for his arch-conservatism, Dabney helped to counteract the liberalizing influence of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the southern mind. He started work on the Tinkling Spring building with the intention that it would be “a very neat handsome and convenient house, the best country church anywhere in this part of the country” . . . “a perfect gem, plain, chaste & proportious”.  —Virginia Division Of Historic Resources; emphasis added.

Liberalizing influence indeed!

In 2007 once again, a growing congregation exceeded the building’s capacity, and it has been expanded and updated.  This Sunday, a seventh generation descendant became Elder Emeritus.  And an eighth generation successor accepted the election to Elder and takes on the challenge of church leadership.

Some of the other newly elected Elders have family names that hark back to the beginning; others have ‘new’ names as this community grows and changes. While the only constant is change itself, it is good to see the threads that run backward through time.

Most of Shenandoah County has gotten inadequate rainfall and is suffering a drought. Similar conditions are affecting Augusta, Frederick, Rappahannock, and Warren Counties.

With over 40% losses of pasture and hay crops, the Board of Supervisors has approved a resolution requesting federal drought declaration. If approved, that designation will offer aid to farmers in the area, primarily low-interest loans.

The deeper water table is stable and wells are in no danger; it is the upper soil layers that are driest. The grasses for livestock grazing and hay are the first impaired and the most affected. At this time corn, soybeans and other grains are holding hold their own.

Like all weather, there are quirks. I’ve heard (but haven’t confirmed) that Page County’s grass is flourishing. Despite dry conditions in Shenandoah County, a section of District 2 —a belt running across the county from the state line to Mount Jackson— has received enough rain. This field in the photo above just had the best hay second-cut in years.

As with all weather and agriculture . . . it’s developing.

Yes, they’re coming back.

It happens every year.

But all MSM outlets are breathlessly anticipating their reports on the start of Virginia Tech’s school year.  All promise to have vital details that are crucial to their readers, audience or viewers.

Here’s some clues for our intrepid reporters:
It’s a school, not a media playground.
They are students, not props.
Leave them alone.
Go home.

‘Journalists’ still on campus Monday deserve to be called “vermin”.

On a twisty, winding road —a road with a steep ditch instead of a shoulder— another driver overshot a curve. What happened next highlights a partisan divide in Virginia politics.

Resentment over the inequality of ‘abusive driver’ civil penalties is driving a re-debate of Virginia transportation funding. We need to remember the basics.

The road is 12 miles of two-lane. It starts from Route 11 in the middle of the Valley and ends at the west edge of the county. A low-traffic primary, the two-lane blacktop is adequate for most of its length.

But for one mile, the road snakes up through a creek ravine; a drop to the stream on one side, a rock embankment rising on the other. Other winding sections have room off the asphalt for shoulders; they often have guardrail too. This part doesn’t, and it’s no surprise all the fatalities and over half the critical injuries are in that one mile.

November 3, 2003
The wreck was a combination of faults; too little steering put the SUV slightly off the road; too much speed caught the driver by unaware; too little shoulder dropped the vehicle’s side into the drainage channel; not enough brakes made any change too sudden; and too much over-steer out of the ditch launched the SUV completely across the road.

It was a series of errors many others had made, frequently wrecking their cars off the left side of the road. The entire sequence happened in a flash with the last stage —crossing the whole road to go off the left side— less than 500 milliseconds.

The SUV only made it partly across. There was a van coming up the road in the opposite lane, a family going home. As the heavy SUV slewed across the lanes, it smashed into the van’s front quarter, hurling it backward and off the road.

(more…)

Mom-and-pop stores. Norman Rockwell’s depiction of gatherings around the country store pot-bellied stove are long gone —those were set in Vermont anyway— and the EPA shut down more than their share of them.

There’s only a fraction of them left, but a great deal of Shenandoah County’s rural culture revolves around the small stores. They’re convenient places to grab some refreshment and compare grouse about politics, compare farm problems, or fib tell about fishing.

To make a go of it, small store owners have sell a little of everything. From gas to groceries, hunting and fishing, basic hardware, and . . . lottery tickets.

When I asked the owner of this store about the rotten job somebody had done installing a satellite antenna —using cinderblocks to keep it from shifting— I was surprised to find out it was a requirement of the Virginia Lottery. Apparently to sell tickets, all retailers must now have a satellite connection, and the Lottery performs the installation of the dish.

It sounded worse when I learned the installer was from California, when there are several satellite earth-stations in Shenandoah County, and a commercial satellite dealer —including design and engineering— center in Basye.

Why not contract in Virginia? After all, the dish and modem are standard Direcway products. It was all made clear when I discovered the Virginia Lottery contract for satellite installations was given to GTECH Corporation, a “leading gaming solutions provider.”

Under investigation by Texas in 1997, GTECH fired chief Texas lobbyist Ben Barnes and paid him a $23 million “severance”, then GTECH was awarded the Texas contract. (Journal News)

So the Virginia Lottery awarded the contract for new terminals and communications to the most corrupt, foreign-owned company they could find.  It isn’t a surprise that they in turn are erecting shoddy, trashy-looking mounts on all of Virginia’s stores.

Four seconds showed me that the ‘transportation debate’ wasn’t —and isn’t going to be—about transportation; it’s over road building. Paving more land. Sucking up to the construction lobby. Period, end of story.

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Driving north on Interstate-81, traffic was moderately heavy but moving at a good clip. As I was passing a tractor-trailer —with another car tailgating me— the truck’s driver decided to get in the passing lane also.

Despite the fact I could see the driver’s head (so he could see me too) and laid on the horn, the truck kept moving over. As I was forced off the road and crossed over the rumble-strip, even that noise didn’t make the trucker back off.

Once my vehicle was off the road completely, the cars behind me slowed down. Then I was able to re-enter the left lane and continue on.

I called the state police and reported the truck and what happened. At that time I only knew the trailer number, color, and cab color. Once it was established there was no wreck or injury, the woman advised me she’d ask troopers ‘to be on the lookout’ for the truck.

The offending truck was last seen continuing north past Winchester.

 

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We learn . . .
I quickly found out the universally known 911 is for fire, rescue, and sheriff only. I learned that our Shenandoah County dispatchers cannot transfer or patch a caller to the state police. Sort of sad that our communications haven’t improved in the last 40 years.

Whoever came up with state police emergency phone number clearly meant to save tax money. If you don’t know the number, you cannot call; meaning less work —and less tax money— for troopers. I’ve since discovered that almost nobody knows this number, and no-one I’ve asked has it programmed into their phones.

The state police dispatcher didn’t ask for any more details or —more importantly— ask if I wanted to press charges, prosecute or meet with a trooper. I learned there were no troopers between Woodstock and Winchester that day, including at the truck scales.

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We reason, we deduce, we use logic.
Similar to other roads in the state, I-81 problems don’t all stem from one cause; nor can they be fixed with a single approach. Asphalt deteriorates, accidents pile up, trees accumulate, and abusive drivers dominate.

Roadways are the most visible part of a large transportation system; a system that includes driver education and licensure, roadway maintenance and repair, regulations and laws, and onsite enforcement. As Jim Bacon, a Richmond insider and policy analyst, constantly reminds us, the transportation system and its problems are a result of our zoning and land-use.

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Returning to the troublesome trucker. Something’s rotten in the system where bad drivers aren’t caught. It’s even worse when —if caught, convicted, and subject to the new ‘abusive driver’ civil penalties— that money would finance asphalt; not troopers, driver improvement, communications, or anything related to the driving behavior.

The asphalt lobbyists have won; the debate in Richmond is over paying for paving. No different than our situation in the last 40 years, it’s just very disappointing that Virginia’s solutions to transportation are stuck in the last century.

Shenandoah County may follow the example from Loudoun and Prince William Counties.

Toward the end of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Chairman Dick Neese announced he wanted to make English the official language of Shenandoah County, and explore the ability to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants.

Following the lead of these two counties (and other NOVA jurisdictions) is a past bad practice of Shenandoah. It’s been a real effort —and a real success— to have shifted our focus to other rural and agricultural counties for example zoning and ordinances.

This situation may be an exception. It is far better to prevent or reduce a problem ahead of time than to let it get to the point existing in Loudoun and Prince William.

Our friendly leftists, the Northern Virginia Daily, breathlessly reported it as a “crackdown” by “surprise directive”. They further suggest hint Neese would abandon poor, bleeding people on the street if they couldn’t show citizenship papers to rescue squadmen.

Following the Chairman’s statement, a motion was made —and passed unanimously— to have the attorney and Shenandoah County staff examine legal and practical aspects of these proposals. Stay tuned.