“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,...

A nickel at a time adds up to real money if enough people get involved—more than $40,000 for local food banks from Ukrop’s customers and Supervalu. By using 400,571 of their own bags at Ukrop’s stores during the summer months and donating their nickel discount to food banks, customers...

Not all the vestiges of hate had been scrubbed away in Forest Hill Park. Uphill from where workers removed silt from the park’s lake, a crude swastika had been drawn in the center of a pathway. Nearby, a message that mixed anti-black and anti Arab racism was scribbled on a boulder. Last Saturday...

When I tracked down Bill Rice yesterday, he was grabbing a roll of duct tape from a van and hustling into William Fox Elementary School. “Grunt work!“ he said with a smile. Rice, taking a day of vacation from his real job, was hauling audio speakers, connecting microphone wires and doing...

Even if everyone had done the right thing, Loucendia Reed Lambert still might have been hit and killed by a GRTC bus. But people failed to act properly in several instances, which makes Lambert’s death all the more painful. Bus driver Teresa L. Jones did not follow GRTC policy by reporting to her...

I am standing on the roof of SunTrust Center, about 15 feet from the edge and 25 stories above the very hard pavement below, when I suddenly remember something: I’m afraid of heights. Bad timing. I’m interviewing Rick Jeffrey, president of Special Olympics Virginia, the organization sponsoring...

When: Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., SunTrust Center, 10th and East Main streets. Participants will be going down the Cary Street side of the building. The best vantage point will be James City Plaza.   Details: To see who else is going over the edge and make a donation, or just find out more,...

Life affords many opportunities for multiple choices. Unfortunately, living life is an arduous task if the choices that you make lead to a life of incarceration. What comes next? The majority of offenders experience difficulty in terms of transitioning back into society. I recently attended a ceremony...

In the 1970s, a common sight across the state was a bumper sticker that read, “Welcome to Virginia: Owned and Operated by Vepco.“ Thirty years later, Vepco—the Virginia Electric and Power Company—has a new name: Dominion Virginia Power. One JEFF E. SCHAPIRO thing hasn’t...

The candidates in Virginia’s gubernatorial race keep talking about investing in education and transportation. How about investing in the health and well-being of the state’s most vulnerable residents? Virginia ranks 48th nationally in per-capita Medicaid expenditures. Our eligibility standards...

The Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services, at its annual Disability Employment Champions Award today, is honoring seven employers for outstanding practices in hiring, accommodating and supporting workers with disabilities. Two DRS clients are being honored for their achievements. The luncheon...

Considering Kelly Narowski’s experience in the restaurant business, balancing a tray of wine glasses without spilling a drop shouldn’t be a big deal—except that she has to balance the tray on her lap as she propels her wheelchair across the restaurant to a table of customers she’s...

Jokers don’t get any wilder than the one draped on the wall of a Shockoe Bottom strip club. A banner of President Barack Obama as The Joker hangs across Main Street from the Slave Trade Reconciliation Triangle, where human figures lock in a melting embrace. Reconciliation is not what MICHAEL PAUL...

Bill Lohmann is out of the office. His column will resume Friday.