I’ve been enjoying the music of Charlie Poole for the past six months or so, and I was surprised to discover Loudon Wainwright III’s new album, High, Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project, just before I saw him perform some of the songs at The Paramount last month. If you’re an old time fan—or …
Category Archives: General
With These Hands.
Last night I watched With These Hands, a documentary about the closure of the Hooker furniture plant in Martinsville. Hooker sounds like it was a heck of a company. I say “was”—it’s still in business, but they moved all of their manufacturing to China, and it’s really the same company in name only. The film …
Commonwealth Quest update.
I last wrote about my efforts on the Commonwealth Quest a year and a half ago, at which time I’d visited all but six (or possibly seven) cities and twenty seven counties. By driving to Virginia Beach this week via the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula, and driving back by way of Smithfield, I …
Saving money by downgrading asphalt to gravel.
Some rural Michigan counties are converting their paved roads to gravel, because they’re much cheaper to maintain. I live on a gravel road, and it always grates when developers buy a bunch of land and then offer to pay the cost of paving the existing gravel road that leads to it, knowing that it will …
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“Why journalists deserve low pay.”
Economics professor Robert G. Picard argues that many journalists deserve low pay in an article in the Christian Science Monitor and, to my surprise, I agree with him. Picard’s thesis is: To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to …
Shunpiking.
Shunpiking is the avoidance of major highways while driving, in favor of country roads, though the term originates in the shunning of turnpikes, as in Smithfield Ham truckers’ long-time boycott of the James River Bridge. I guess I’m a shunpiker.
Is “conservative nightlife” an oxymoron?
The Washington Post is in a bit of trouble for disparaging Lynchburg, although really it’s for disparaging religions conservatism. A freelancer promoting Lynchburg wrote of her low expectations, writing that “its reputation as home of conservative Christian-oriented Liberty University and the late Jerry Falwell hardly bodes well for style, culture and night life.” The ombudsman …
Jandd is a company worth buying gear from.
I bought a Jandd Gabriel messenger bag in 1995, in part because of its lifetime warranty. I’ve used it every day since. The shoulder strap wore out in 2000 and again last year. Each time I contacted Jandd, and each time they’ve repaired it for me without complaint or cost (and each time with a …
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Thomas Garrett is now representing himself.
Writes Hawes Spencer at The Hook: Daleville attorney James Creekmore is no longer representing the Buckingham publicist/author/chicken farmer who’s suing the Hook and two of its reporters for $10.7 million. A Buckingham judge signed an April 14 order that allows Creekmore to withdraw as Tommy Lightfoot Garrett’s legal counsel. For those keeping track, I’ve gone …
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The new homesteaders movement.
All of a sudden, everybody’s getting chickens. It started before the recession, over the past couple of years, but it’s really taken off in the past six months. Acquaintances talk of how many square feet their new garden plot is or how many varieties of tomatoes that they’ve planted. People under the age of 65 …