A story I wrote in last week’s Floyd Press — about the indictment of a female member of Floyd County’s rescue squad on four sexual abuse charges involving a 16-year-old boy — generated a lot of comment and public debate in Floyd County.

Customers at Express Mart in Floyd cornered owner Roger Hollandsworth — a Rescue Squad officer — and demanded to know how he could “allow someone like that on the squad.” Some assumed, incorrectly, that the charges stemmed from alleged incidents from her duties with the squad.

Diners at Blue Ridge Restaurant came up my table during breakfast and assumed she is guilty of the charges.

“Let’s don’t assume anything,” I said. “An indictment is not a conviction.  There’s an old saying in legal circles that the grand jury system is so rigged in favor of the prosecution that a ham sandwich could be indicted.”

That’s the problem when someone is indicted and news of that indictment is published in a newspaper or broadcast over the airwaves.  Too many people assume that an indictment is an indicator of guilt.

It’s not. An indictment simply means a grand jury was presented enough information to suggest a crime may have taken place and that someone should be charged with that alleged crime.

The grand jury reviews material collected by law enforcement and prosecutors.  It does not hear from the defendant.  That comes later.

The American criminal justice system operates under the theory that anyone charged with a crime is presumed “innocent until proven guilty.”

As a newspaper reporter who covers courts, I often write about local people who face indictment for crimes they may or may not have committed.  Some end up convicted in a trial. Some cop a plea.  Some are cleared of the charges and go home.

Everyone should remember this before assuming anything about anyone is named in a story about a grand jury indictment.

At lunch not long ago with local blogger and concealed weapons permit instructor Jim Connor, our conversation turned to the local tea party, where he serves as an officer.

“Why don’t you drop by a meeting? You might find it entertaining,” Connor said.

So I did, stopping by the latest gathering of the self-declared “grassroots” organization at their regular monthly meeting on a rainy Tuesday night at the Jesse Peterman Library in Floyd, joining 14 other county residents.

Amy laughingly suggested I might also want to stop by the Sheriff’s office beforehand and ask to borrow one of Shannon Zeman’s Kevlar vests. I opted instead to exercise my Second Amendment rights to bear arms along with my Virginia Concealed Weapons Permit.

Neither, of course, were needed. Except for a minor dust-up with longtime activist Joe Montague, who told the meeting that he “wondered if Doug Thompson had gotten to Wanda Combs” because the Floyd Press editor chose to trim the hyperbole out of one of his letters to the editor, I was treated with courtesy and respect. A couple of people approached after the meeting to question a story I wrote about the proposed county comprehensive plan and one suggested I “slanted” what I wrote because “you write like a liberal.”

Amy, who is a true liberal, got a good laugh out of that.

“They obviously don’t know you,” she said.

I suggested to Joe that he might want to get his facts straight before making such a statement in a public meeting. Contrary to the illusions held by some, I have no control over The Floyd Press or their editorial decisions. I am a private contractor who provides articles, photos and videos for their use. How the content I provide is used is their decision not mine and I don’t read the letters to the editor, much less influence how they might be edited.

Jim Connor has an incredible gift for understatement. A tea party meeting is not only entertaining but also educational, if you choose to define education as the dissemination of misinformation for use as political propaganda.

I’m not sure what rules govern the meetings of the tea party but Roberts Rules of Order are not among them. Vice Chairman Al Pearce ran the meeting, reading emails, offering opinions and often wandering off topic into rants about President Barack Obama, the Virginia Republican Party, United Nations Agenda 21 and other topics. Audience members jumped in whenever they wanted without asking or waiting to be recognized.

At another point, he launched into a rant about political correctness, telling the meeting that he didn’t believe in using the term “gays.”

“They’re homosexuals or queers, which is what they are,” he said.

Virginia’s Republican Party, Pearce declared, is engaged in a “conspiracy “to assure former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney the GOP nomination for President. Gov. Bob McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling head up this conspiracy, he says, and its all part of a grand plot by the national GOP to grease the skids for Romney.

Pearce told the meeting that the Republican Party, not state law, kept Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry off the primary ballot this year. He also said it Republican party rules, not state law, prohibits write-in ballots “in Republican primaries.”

Both statements are wrong. Virginia election law sets the rules that require a specified number of signatures from each Congressional district. It also prohibits write-ins in primary elections. The law applies to both Democratic and Republican primaries. The Virginia Republican party simply enforced state law in denying both Gingrich and Perry spots on the GOP primary ballot because they failed to collect enough signatures in each of the existing districts.

Pearce passed on other misinformation, including the claim that the county will put meters on private wells to limit the amount of water that can be pumped for residential use. No such plan exists nor has one even been discussed.

It’s not the first time I’ve witnessed Pearce pass on misinformation as fact. At a board of supervisors meeting last year, Supervisor Fred Gerald of Indian Valley asked for a moment of silent prayer in honor the the “National Day of Prayer” and Pearce blurted out from the audience that “you can’t do that because the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.”

Not true. An atheist group did file a federal class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “National Day of Prayer.” A federal appeals court dismissed the challenge in April 2011. The Supreme Court has never considered nor ruled on the constitutionality of the law. The National Day of Prayer has been around since the days of George Washington, who first called for one. President Harry S. Truman issued a proclamation and asked Congress to make it the law of the land, which the House and Senate did in 1952.

When I asked Pearce during a break in the supervisors meeting where he heard the Supreme Court had declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional, he shrugged his shoulders and said “oh, on the radio today” but he couldn’t remember what show.

Pearce, as does any American, has a right to his opinion but when misinformed opinion is presented as fact it damages the credibility of the speaker and/or the organization he or she represents.

Another claim uttered by the vice chairman of the tea party on that rainy Tuesday night was that county sheriff Shannon Zeman, as a “constitutional officer” in Virginia, is somehow failing in his duty to enforce the Constitution of the United States.”

In fact, the term “constitutional officer” applies to five local government positions established by the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, not the U.S. Constitution.

Virginia established “constitutional officers” in the Commonwealth’s first constitution in 1776 — the same year the Deceleration of Independence was signed. The U.S. Constitution did not come into existence until 11 years later: 1787.

As one of five state-mandated “constitutional officers” in Floyd County, Zeman, of course, takes the standard oath to uphold and enforce the laws and support both the Constitution the United States as well the Constitution of The Commonwealth of Virginia. But Zeman has his hands full with a rising crime rate and a crystal meth epidemic. He doesn’t have time to serve as a watchdog for the federal Constitution, particularly as it is so often misinterpreted by groups like the tea party.

In many ways, the U.S. Constitution is like the Bible. It is all too often misquoted, misinterpreted and misappropriated to serve a particular political agenda or bias. When biased opinions are presented as facts and propaganda is substituted for truth, democracy and freedom are not served.

Updated to add new information.

Related articles

• Court rejects Perry appeal for inclusion on Virginia ballot (thehill.com)
• US judge rules against ballot challenge – The Keene Sentinel (sentinelsource.com)

The National Music Festival, the two-week classical music series that drew much praise in its debut season in Floyd County this past summer will stage its second season in Maryland.

In August, the Festival announced it was in the black and told The Roanoke Times it had expanded its board to include Floyd County notables Bernie Coveney, Marie Henry and William May among others.  Festival organizers talked glowingly about a second season, which new members of the board — and many of the festival’s financial contributors — assumed would be in Floyd County.

“For a new nonprofit organization, in this economy, we are proud that as we enter our second fiscal year we have paid all our bills and don’t have any debt,” Festival Executive Director Caitlin Patton told The Times. “We are now working hard to plan next year’s Festival.”

On July 5, the Festival posted on its Facebook page:

To everyone who donated so generously and worked so hard this debut season, please accept our heartfelt thanks. We will continue to work diligently and use our collective abilities to bring the finest concert music to Floyd, Virginia, the New River Valley and the Nation.

On August 24, the Festival posted on Facebook: “Planning the 2012 Festival…a lot of great music in store for next year!”

On September 1, the Festival posted: “Today marks the beginning of our second fiscal year, and we are very pleased to announce that the Festival is in the black – all bills have been paid and we have no outstanding debts!”

On September 9: “We’ll be announcing next year’s Festival season soon, so keep your eyes and ears open…”

Then, on Nov. 26: “”The second season of the NMF will be June 3-16, 2012 in and around historic Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.”

Coveney and Henry are missing from the site’s board of directors page on the festival’s web site although Henry is listed as a member of the advisory board on one page and is not listed on the advisory board on the other.

The festival’s donors page is still dominated by Floyd County resident and business contributors.  Some of those contributors now tell us privately they gave money with the understanding the festival would remain in Floyd County and are not happy that festival organizers have packed up and left.

On the festival’s Facebook page, a question asking for an explanation for the move went unanswered publicly.

On December 1, the festival changed its location and phone number on its Facebook page.

On December 3, festival organizers went on Facebook to ask for volunteers in and around Chestertown, MD, to help unpack the moving van that brought the festival’s belongings from Floyd to the Eastern Shore.

No contributor we contacted wanted to talk openly about the festival’s change of venue.  The sudden departure of the music festival — which added to the county’s musical heritage — leaves a sour taste in the mouths of some.  Email requesting an explanation for the move went unanswered.  Phone calls were not returned.

And the web site for Executive Director Caitlin Patton — as late as Thursday, Dec. 22 — still talked about the National Music Festival as a Floyd event:

The National Music Festival, located in Floyd, Virginia, is an orchestral training festival designed to mentor and provide performance opportunities for gifted musicians on the cusp of their professional careers.  The Festival will present about 25 performances (including everything from large orchestral works to solo recitals) and over 200 free open rehearsals annually.  The second season will take place June 3-16, 2012.

So what happened?

Floyd County Supervisors

The dangers of pulling misinformation off the Internet and using it in a public venue surfaced Tuesday at the regular monthly meeting of the Floyd County Board of Supervisors.

A county resident who spoke during the public comment period presented the supervisors with a printout from a web site that she said proved that the CEO of Nordex, the company proposing a wind generator farm in Floyd County, had ties to organized crime in Europe.

Nice story but the printout came from an anti-Semitic web site and was based on a report about a Ukranian mob boss — who is Jewish — who controls a Russian company called “Nordex.”

The “Nordex” cited in the article is not “Nordex SE,” the company that controls “Nordex USA,” developer of wind generator farms.  Someone else emailed me the same link early in the wind generator debate and I checked it out.  There are 52 companies named “Nordex” in the world.  Only five are connected in the “Nordex” network of companies that includes “Nordex SE” and not one of those five has any connection with the “Nordex” controlled by the Russian mob.

This is a problem when people take unsubstantiated information from the Internet and pass it off as fact. Spreading such misinformation is both wrong and libelous and bringing more misinformation into a debate that is already muddled with too much misinformation and emotion is a disservice to the public and county government.

The demise of Borders went largely unnoticed in these parts because we didn’t have Borders stores in either the Roanoke or New River regions.

But Borders was already a big deal when it opened a store in the Tysons Corner area near Washington, DC, nearly 20 years ago.  Amy and I were among those who flocked to the “big box” store with its shelves crammed with thousands of books, a coffee shop  and large overstuffed couches that encouraged relaxing and reading.

That first opening in the National Capital Region spawned a dozen or so stores throughout the metro area.  Barnes & Noble also opened a few stores but Borders dominated the region.

Borders was among the first retailers to offer Wi-Fi Internet access. It wasn’t free initially but you could buy a package plan through T-Mobile that also worked at Starbucks coffee shops around the country.

Whenever I traveled, I could scope out a Borders or Starbucks to access the ‘Net, file stores or send photos.

In 2003, while Amy worked to settle her mother’s estate in Belleville, Illinois, I set up shop in the coffee shop of a Borders in nearby Fairview Heights and worked with a laptop and endless cups of coffee.

We missed Borders when we moved to Southwestern Virginia in 2004.  We shopped at the Barnes & Noble in Christiansburg or the one at Tanglewood in Roanoke.

I never understood the business model of either Borders or Barnes & Noble.  Both encouraged customers to browse and read books and magazines without buying. I would see people sit down with a cup of coffee at these stores and read through four or five magazines before returning them to the rack. Several folks we know go to the area Barnes and Noble stores to read the first few chapters of a book and then order the book at a discount online from Amazon.Com.

Borders began closing stores a few years ago, citing declining sales and lost business to e-books and online retailers. More than half the stores in the Washington, DC-area closed.

The last stores closed a couple of weeks ago. Books-a-Million bought some of the locations, Barnes & Noble a few others.

Another part of the past disappears from the scene.

Related articles

• Good-bye Borders Hello Barnes & Noble (bookwormbly.wordpress.com)
• Barnes & Noble buys Borders customer info (abclocal.go.com)
• Barnes & Noble tries to win over Borders customers (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Barnes & Noble CEO on Borders’ demise and the future of Borders customers (shelf-life.ew.com)
• Crossing Borders (06880danwoog.com)
• Borders Employees: “Good-bye, Cruel World!” [Moe Lane] (minx.cc)

Lunch last week with two friends who approach life from opposite ends of the political spectrum:  Fred First, Floyd County’s “first blogger” and Jim Connor, a relatively-recent addition to the area’s population of bloggers and diverse characters.

Fred — for the most part — is an unabashed liberal, an ardent environmentalist with a passion for resource conservation.  He is one of the driving forces behind Sustain Floyd.

Jim is a proud conservative and a gun-safety trainer and with strong beliefs in his causes.  He serves as sergeant-at-arms for the local tea party and moderates their on-line discussion forum.

As most readers know, I don’t fit into a conservative or liberal mold. For the most part, I’m a political agnostic.

Yet the three of us are friends.  We share a common love of writing and photography and we all three have Internet sites where we freely express our opinions.  We also love our country, even if we think it should be headed in different directions.

The fact that we can have lunch together, poke fun at each other and laugh and have a good time makes us an anomaly in today’s overly-stressed and overly-tense political environment where different beliefs become personal vendettas and turn friends into enemies.

As someone involved with politics for most of his professional life — mostly as a journalist and for a while as a Capitol Hill staffer, political operative and a political action committee executive — I’ve watched politics shift from just being part of a person’s life into a controlling influence that dominates thought, actions and the sole determining factor of lifestyle, social interaction and litmus test for friendship.

Because of political differences, some who once called themselves my friend now send letters to editors of publications I write for and demand that I be fired. Some have contacted the advertisers on this web site and others that I have and called on them to drop me as a client because of views I have expressed publicly.

Fred First and I have had differences over the years but we have always worked them out because we value friendship above politics. We’ve have the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

That’s how true friendship works.  My granddaddy once told me: “A friend will help you move. A true friend will help you move a body.”  Haven’t had to move any bodies lately so I can’t vouch for that litmus test of friendship.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed the companionship of friends from widely-varying political and philosophical beliefs.  My circle of friends includes liberals, conservatives, independents, Democrats, Republicans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, heterosexuals, bisexuals and gays.

Yet a growing number of folks I know can no longer do so.  They limit themselves to social interaction only with those of similar political views, obtain news only from sources that agree with their own political bias and attend only events that agree with their narrow views of the world.

Life, in my opinion, is far too short for such limitations.

We all need to remember that this nation was founded on the desire to welcome — and embrace — all forms of opinion, religion and beliefs.  We all need to remember that the expression of a differing opinion does not make one a moron or wrong.  We need to relearn how to enjoy the company of others without labels, stereotypes or bias.

In 1982, I worked on the re-election campaign for Rep. Manuel Lujan of New Mexico.  During that election, I became friends with the campaign manager for Jan Hartke — Lujan’s opponent.

We had dinner, shared beers and campaign war stories and respected each others opinions.  After the election — which Lujan won — I recommended him for a job on the Congressman’s staff as a veterans affairs caseworker.  Manuel did not care if he was Democrat or Republican.  He did care that he was a veteran with a strong commitment to helping those who served.  He became one of the best case workers on a staff known for its casework and constituent service.

Could that happen in today’s highly-charged, overly-personal political environment?  Probably not.

The sad fact that it cannot may explain the mess we’re in as a nation and a society.

While the 52-minute film by director Tom Hansell has a clear anti-coal point of view, it presented a reasonably-balanced account of the years-long fight that divided Wise County residents and became a rallying cry for clean air activisits.

One part of the film, however, offered a bit of irony for Floyd.  When the camera focused on the banner and logo for “Wise Up Dominion,” the organization formed to block the power plant, it featured a ridge line with electricity-generating wind turbines — signalling the group’s support of the cleaner, wind-energy generating of electricity instead of a coal-fired plant.

The irony comes from the 11 people I saw among the crowd applauding the documentary — the same 11 who have appeared before the Floyd County Board of Supervisors in the last two months to oppose construction of wind generators here.

The opposition demonstrates the “not-in-my-backyard” syndrome that creates some hypocrisy in such debates. It’s easy to support clean-air alternatives for energy when those alternatives aren’t proposed for your backyard.

I cruised by the power plant construction site in Wise County a couple of weeks ago. The plant — expected to cost at least $1.5 billion — is scheduled to open in the next year or two.  It will provide more than $400 million in annual tax revenue to cash-strapped Wise County.

But coal is not a “clean energy” alternative and even the best efforts by coal companies to promote the fantasy of “clean coal,” it never will be.  Solar, wind and Geo-thermal offer some cleaner alternatives but when you suggest constructing wind generator farms on Wills Ridge and other ridge lines you get dire warnings about damage to the county’s fragile water table and destruction of the area’s “view shed.”

Like the coal-fired power plant debate in Wise County, the wind generator issue has sharply divided residents of our county.  Facts get lost in passionate arguments from both sides.

As counties like Floyd struggle to find new sources of revenue, proposals to construct a power-generating facility cause eyes to light up in meetings of governmental bodies.  Those who support or oppose such projects need to provide our elected officials with facts, not hyperbole.

The Electricity Fairy offers a clear example of how gimmicks and photo ops don’t work. The opponents of Dominion Power‘s plant paraded a mile-long petition before the TV cameras, sang 60s-style protest songs and even chained themselves to the fence leading to the construction project.

None of it worked.  The company gained all the required permits and approvals to build the plant and construction is underway.

And “WiseUpDominiong.Org,” the web site of the organization that fought the plant, is gone from the Internet. The domain name is up for sale.

Any tour of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky or West Virginia seems like a trip through a fading past.  As I cruise the back roads and byways of our region, the rumble of my Harley’s exhausts too often echo off abandoned buildings, empty shells and remnants of long-lost prosperity and shattered dreams.

On recent rides, I’ve cruised through the devastated towns like War, West Virginia; Harlan, Kentucky; Eden, North Carolina and Basset, Virginia. In each case, the town stands mute as a monument to corporate abandonment, shifting economic priorities and lost hope.

Textile mills and furniture factories relocated overseas or moved south of the American border through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  The empty shells and abandoned buildings remain in various states of decay — reminders of manufacturing jobs that will never return, along with the prosperity that those jobs brought to communities.

Floyd County knows the economic bite of lost jobs. The textile factories that once boosted the area economy left long ago.  Agriculture in the county is not the driving force of years gone by.

Yet Floyd is fortunate because it has found some salvation in tradition and heritage — particularly music.  Tourists flock to town to visit the Country Store and clog away the night at the Friday Night Jamboree. Yet, too many county residents must still drive 60 miles or more for work but you don’t find many empty buildings or abandoned storefronts in Floyd.

But the main drag of Basset looks like a bombed out European town from World War II. The main street of downtown Eden, North Carolina is lined with empty buildings. The same is true in Fries, Virginia.

The current recession has turned the luxury McMansions of Smith Mountain Lake into abandoned eyesores. Some developments never opened but decay under the sun as weeds spout through the cracks in parking lots never used.

Blacksburg still struggles to find a formula for its downtown and retail areas. Books-a-Million is closing next week at the “manufactured main street development” at the entrance to the town.  An independent coffee shot on University Boulevard closed without warning last week.

Some areas still thrive.  Boone, North Carolina is packed with tourists.  Riding back from Rocky Mount, North Carolina Monday, I inched along in traffic jams from the Research Triangle Area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill.

Feast or famine.  Little in between. That’s life in the area.

Many incredible claims and so much misinformation emerged from a 43-minute public comment session before the Floyd County Board of Supervisors this week.

Proponents of the 400-foot plus windmills that one proposal wants to place on Wills Ridge claimed the massive turbine generators are “majestic structures” that will beautify the rural landscape and bring hoards of tourists to Floyd County to stand and gawk in awe at the turning blades.  Those who support the farms also claimed construction and maintenance of the wind farms will generate jobs and add untold amounts of cash to the strapped county economy.

Opponents decry a spoiled landscape, noise, potential damage to the county’s fragile water table and plummeting home values.

As happens all too often in impassioned public debates, hyperbole buries fact and emotion overshadows reason.

Some argued that wind generators are better than nuclear power plants. Probably true, but no one to date has proposed a nuke plant in or near Floyd County. A few on both sides of the argument presented some statistics and studies to bolster their case but most did not, choosing instead to rant and rave about the dangers of zoning and other emotional issues.

Interestingly, the wind generator debate pits environmentalists against each other as some see the idea as a ecology-friendly alternative to coal-fueled energy while others issue dire warnings of threats to water and towering eyesores that will litter the landscape long after the federal subsidies expire and the companies that built the generators head for other mountaintops.

Proponents hoped to create a media event by inviting The Roanoke Times and WDBJ TV to the supervisors meeting. The Times showed up. Channel 7 did not so they did not get the desired sound bite on the evening news but the 40-some residents who packed the small meeting room of the supervisors Tuesday did manage to muddle the issue with hysteria and hyperbole.

The board of supervisors needs to get beyond the emotion and the unsubstantiated claims on both sides of the argument and get some solid research into both the pros and cons of wind generation.

Then, and only then, maybe a rational, reasoned decision can be made and we can discover if the promise of such generation comes on the winds of change or just another blast of propaganda-driven hot air.

You know a community is in trouble when even the police department and jail is closed and boarded up.

War, West Virginia, calls itself the southernmost city in the state but like so many communities where coal was once king, War has seen better days.

Discovered War by accident while riding West Virginia 16 on the Harley through the southern part of the state recently.

As I walked the deteriorating main street of War, I passed empty store fronts, abandoned buildings and cars and signs of despair.

Yet War’s population increased 9.4 percent from 2000 to 2010 — from 788 to 862.  A longtime war resident sitting in the old Miners Club seemed surprised by that.

“Sure seems to me that people are leaving,” John Putnam said.

Before its incorporation in 1920, War was simply known as “Miners City,” a town fueled by nearby coal operations.  It thrived during the coal boom of the 40s and 50s, reaching a peak population of 2,998.   Three theaters, a hotel, variety stores and other retail outlets lined Main Street.

But the demise of the coal industry in the region turned Main Street into a a dreary line of abandoned buildings, broken sidewalks and vanishing hope.

“Ain’t much here now,” says Leo Ratner, who sits in the Miners Club.  “We just sit here, listening to the town rust.”

The town’s web site hasn’t been updated in years.  Some links are broken.

Notes the town’s web site:

By the late 1960′s, with less demand for the bituminous coal of southern West Virginia, and with mines being closed all over the County, the city began to decline in population. This downward slide continues, even today. In 1995, there are several store buildings that are closed and remain empty. There are many things you cannot buy in town—shoes, clothing items, furniture, linens, etc. Some of the basics of life are here, but any unusual items, and many usual ones, must be secured out of town. Today, there is no competition in terms of items being sold. Only one store might carry an item which a person might want to purchase and, if you want it without leaving town, you pay the price. This includes groceries.

“We lost the war here in War,” Leo says. “It’s as simple as that.”