When journalism hits the bottom line
Perhaps it is fitting that I spend my retirement years working, part-time, for the little weekly newspaper where my career in journalism started as a part time, after school, reporter 43 years ago.
As I sit on my mountaintop writing this, I realize that I am less than 50 miles, as the crow flies, from my first full time newspaper job as a reporter for The Roanoke Times. that gig lasted four years before I headed West for 11 years and then back East to Washington in 1981.
Snakes not on a plane
At first I thought it was an earthworm on the floor of our kitchen but it was too skinny to be a worm. And earthworms aren’t black. About four inches long, it lay coiled towards the center of the floor but slithered quickly off towards the kitchen sink as I approached and into a small hole between the linoleum and the bottom of the cabinet under the sick.
I opened the cabinet door just in time to see it slither down into the opening between the bottom of the cabinet and the kitchen sink drain pipe and into the crawl space under the house.
Of course your realize, this means war
OK. This is war. All-out war. Man vs. the driveway. But this time, man will be armed.
After three months of using shovels, picks, hoes, wagons and rakes to fight a losing battle with an ever-eroding surface on the 35-degree, 450-foot long slope that, in one rainstorm, went from a smooth driveway to Floyd County’s most-challenging offroad trail, I’ve decided to bring in the big guns.
A power grader.
You want musicians? Maybe you can’t handle musicians!
It never fails. I do a photo layout of faces from the crowd at The Friday Night Jamboree and someone posts a whine about "where are pictures of the musicians?"
As if I’ve never posted photos of musicians. Good grief. No photographer in Floyd (and there are many) has taken or posted more photos of musicans.
You want musicians? OK, you got musicians.
The highlight, as noted in a previous post, of last Friday night’s jamboree was the return of fiddler Clyde Williams (above) and his old time country band, a longtime crowd favorite.
The Jamboree is long on tradition and two groups that play there most often are Clyde’s and "Barbershop Grass" (left).
But the music at the Jamboree is more than just the musicians on stage.
Some of the best bluegrass around can be found from those who jam on the streets outside (below) and some come each Friday to hear the street musicians and never make it inside. It’s all part of the fun of Friday night music in Floyd. 
People are the show
The music may be what attracts the crowds to the Friday Night Jamboree but, for a photographer, the people are the show.
Young and old, short and tall, skinny and not-so-skinny — the mixture of bluegrass music fans and those curious enough to see what the fuss is all about make each visit to the Jamboree interesting.
Friday’s mixture included a collection of Radford University students checking out the show along with visitors from as far away as Turkey and Japan.
Friday also marked the return of crowd favorite Clyde Williams to the Jamboree following surgery on his hand and a fourth group kept the music hopping until close to midnight. Floyd County Store owner Woody Crenshaw is expanding the facility with additions to the building, a new stage and sound system and a larger dance floor.
Other plans for for an ice cream and soda fountain and lunch counter, But the Jamboree is, and always will be, the music and the people. It’s Friday night in Floyd, the music is humming and everyone is having a good time. 
Sushi?
Yes, sushi. Raw fish. In Floyd. It was Sushi night at Over the Moon Friday and the overflow crowd dined on California Rolls, seaweed salad, Miso soup and other Japanest delicacies. And it was, by all accounts, a success and something the owners will try again. If you missed Sushi, you can still try out Mexican night at Over the Moon, starting a 6 p.m. today. Ole!
Chicken-fried racism
Hypocrisy is a given with most politicians but few practice it as blatantly as Virginia Sen. George Allen, who embraces Southern racism as though it were a birthright.
That hypocrisy shone brightly recently when Allen insulted a native-born Virginian of Indian descent by calling him "macaca" at a campaign rally. "
"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He’s with my opponent," Allen said, referring to S.R. Sidarth, a campaign worker for Democratic challenger Jim Web. "Let’s give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
"Macaca" is a slang racial slur used to insult people of color. It can mean "monkey" or, in worse cases, "shithead."
Sidarth should have been "welcoming" Allen to Virginia. He was born in the Old Dominion.
Allen was born in Los Angeles. Yet Allen likes to wrap himself up as a "Virginian," one from a part of the past that best left forgotten. A Confederate battle flag flies in the Senator’s office.
Some years ago, while still living in Northern Virginia, I went to a cookout in McLean sponsored by Virginia Republicans. A group of "good old boys" stood by the beer table, laughing their butts off at an unending string of racist jokes told by one of their group – then political wannabe George Allen.
Allen represents a side of Virginia politics that is best forgotten and there are still too many chicken-fried racists like him holding down positions of power in our midst. Like Morgan Griffith of Salem, the Majority Leader of the House of Delegates.
Griffith jumped to Allen’s defense when the Senator committed his racist gaffe, telling The Washington Post that "not many people in southwest Virginia would think (Allen calling Sidarth ‘macaca’) is derogatory. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, and I doubt Allen did, either."
Speak for yourself, Morgan. Your comments might play well at the Klan rallies at Burnt Chimney down in Franklin County but those gatherings, like you, do not represent the majority of modern Virginians.
You may be a dumbass Southern bigot but don’t try to wrap the rest of us up into your mantle of good-old-boy racism. I’m one Southwestern Virginian who knows exactly what "macaca" means and I think any elected official who uses such a word to describe a Virginian should be voted out of office.
Claim jumpers
Whenever something remotely newsworthy occurs in Floyd County, you can be sure politicians who had nothing to do with the event jump in and try to claim credit.
We saw this happen this week when the county announced the deal with Arrow Trucks Sales of the Volvo Group to set up a truck component remanufacturing facility in the Branwick Center.
25 jobs
The news that Arrow Truck Sales, a division of the Volvo Group, is coming to Floyd to build a truck component remanufacturing plant in the Branwick Center, dominated lunch table conversation Tuesday with most saying “Thank God” that the county had found a use for the cavernous shell building on Christiansburg Pike and some wondering why the big announcement meant “only 25 jobs’ for the county.
Volvo comes to Floyd
It’s official. Arrow Truck Sales, a subsidiary of the giant Volvo group, will take over the Branwick Building on Christiansburg Pike and put 25 countians to work remanufacturing truck components for used Volvo and Mack Trucks.
The announcement came today after the Floyd County Board of Supervisors, the Industrial Development Authority, Branwick, and Arrow Trucking reached agreement on a five-year lease.
More to follow.