For a guy who has many reasons to smile—the presidency of utility giant Dominion, a fat paycheck, such plush perquisites as the rectorship of U.Va., his alma mater—Tom Farrell often wears a pained expression. But he managed to beam this past Thursday as high-school buddy Bob McDonnell announced...

Hermitage High School’s athletic booster club has received $2,040 from Richmond Ford and Ford Motor Co. from a recent Drive One 4 UR School event. By test-driving a car, 102 people raised $20 apiece for the school. During the past two years, Ford has provided more than $1.3 million to high schools...

Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt of Portsmouth may earn enough gold medals to fill Fort Knox. Those medals won’t carry more value than the message he imparted to Elizabeth D. Redd Elementary School students about the value of hard work. Despite how we like to think of ourselves, the U.S. work ethic...

The scene at the main branch of the Richmond Public Library—or any library, for that matter—doesn’t usually inspire a comparison to the running of the bulls. But the frenzy surrounding the Friends of the Richmond Public Library Book Sale, where more than 30,000 used and donated books...

Friends of the Richmond Public Library Book Sale   Where: Main library, 101 E. Franklin St.   When: Today, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. (members of Friends only; memberships available for $15); public sale, 1-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.; tomorrow, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Monday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.   What: Hardbacks $1...

From the rear of her Libby Terrace home, Cathy Hayden can see the James River view that named our city, the dock where slaves disembarked and the landing where President Abraham Lincoln came ashore days after Richmond fell to Union forces. “The people who live here feel like they are guardians...

Last time I saw Ed Ackell, we were talking over beers after a round of golf as he prepared to ride off into retirement after a dozen years as presi dent of Virginia Commonwealth University. It was a most pleasant day—even though I’m a lousy golfer—because Ackell had been a tough guy...

No one anticipates a fleet of moving vans rolling up again on City Hall at nightfall. Still, the relationship between Mayor Dwight C. Jones and the Richmond School Board has taken a turn for the Wilder. Jones recently unveiled an aggressive school-construc tion plan that calls for an $81 million replacement...

It’s no surprise to anyone who has tried to get medical insurance that the costs are just shocking. And for those of us who have insurance, I’m sure that you have noticed that our premiums have started to become an uncomfortably large part of our budgets. But we’re lucky—we have...

Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s gubernatorial election—OK, so a lot of people have a pretty good idea who’s going to win—one thing is certain: The victor won’t have squat to spend. Tight money, perhaps the tightest since the Great Depression, combined with a divided...

Columnist Michael Paul Williams’ column will resume Tuesday.

She can’t explain the light that burned brightly without electricity or the overturned salt dishes on the dining room table, so Anne Holton puts it this way: “I think, well, it’s an old house,“ Holton said in an interview yesterday. “There’s room for her and us.“...

“A friend asked to nominate me and we really just wanted to see if I’d be put on the ballot or not,“ Vasold recalled. “I didn’t hear anything about the nomination,“ said the third-year student, who is homecoming queen for the Class of 2011. “And when the link...

“A friend asked to nominate me and we really just wanted to see if I’d be put on the ballot or not,“ Vasold recalled. “I didn’t hear anything about the nomination,“ said the third-year student, who is homecoming queen for the Class of 2011. “And when the link...

BOYDTON In 1977, U.S. News & World Report declared Boydton “a small town that refuses to die.“ Despite some tough times in the ensuing years, Boydton is still not dead, although it is kind of quiet. If you stop and listen, however, you can hear the town’s heartbeat—the rhythmic...

Few sights are sadder, or less attractive, than the decaying remains of a dead shopping center. Malls don’t leave a good-looking corpse. While handsome architecture, prime location or nostalgia helped facilitate the rebirth and reuse of the former Thalhimers, Miller & Rhoads and Berry-Burk...

My mother had a saying, common to her generation, that she taught me: “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.“ She pulled me up short more than once, leaning near to whisper this in my ear. It can be great fun, can’t it, being snide,...

Chris Jankowski has a hobby that helps his day job. The long-limbed, bespectacled lobbyist, in effect, runs campaigns for Republicans, supplying them with money and polling, advertising and mail consultants. Jankowski’s role: informal, but fully engaged. Republicans win targeted elections in the...

Federal recognition for six Virginia Indian tribes is tantalizingly closer to reality than ever. Two bills that have passed the House were approved Thursday by the U.S. Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee and sent to the full Senate, where Virginians Jim Webb and Mark R. Warner support them. Gov....

Columnist Bill Lohmann is out of the office. His column will resume when he returns.

Richmond, which has stopped running and hiding from a fundamental facet of its history, is poised to give birth to a slavery museum that never should have been shopped elsewhere. The Richmond Slave Trail Commission unveiled plans Monday for a slave heritage site in Shockoe Bottom that would include a...

When you visit the Virginia War Memorial, you can count on being moved by the thousands of names etched on the glass and marble walls. You also can count on seeing flags representing the various branches of the military flying conspicuously—24 hours a day, seven days a week—outside the memorial...

Is the American educational system becoming increasingly segregated by passive social forces? A recent conference in Richmond about Massive Resistance brought this question to mind as it explored a time in Virginia history when many public schools were closed in reaction to the 1954 Brown v. Board of...

Forget about the governor’s election and down-ticket races. The battle for the House? Practically a nonevent. The real action may be in the Virginia Senate, even though it’s not up until 2011. Should Republicans sweep statewide, Ken Cuccinelli, as the next attorney general, would have to...

Columnist Bill Lohmann is out of the office. His column will resume when he returns.

Columnist Michael Paul Williams is out of the office. His column will resume when he returns.

Juma Semakula mows lawns for a living, but he cuts no corners when it comes to dreaming big. How big? He’s attempting to collect thousands of pairs of used shoes, enough to fill a cargo container that he can ship to his native country, Uganda, where in rural areas shoes are an unfamiliar luxury....

Now that we’re naming names, which of the six options should be chosen as the moniker for our new baseball team? First, let’s silence talk about the Richmond Hush Puppies. What would the mascot be? A fried cornmeal ball? A suede shoe? Hush Puppies’ trade mark basset hound? I like the...

Building a house is a humbling task. Our dream started two years ago. Two meetings with the Board of Zoning Appeals, five architect design sessions, 12 hours picking out paint at the Mechanicsville Lowe’s, countless unnamed duties and hours of lost sleep have come down to just a few items left...

As if the state’s snakebit computer contractor, Northrop Grumman, hasn’t enough to answer for. Add to complaints about rotten service, rising costs and delays in refitting IT systems, this headache: unpaid local taxes, perhaps $15 million. But before you pop Northrop Grumman for another mess,...