A little secret
Psssst! Got a secret for you. Don’t tell anyone. We don’t want the whole world to know.
The secret? It’s almost impossible to get a parking ticket in the town of Floyd, Virginia.
Yeah, we know. There are signs on Main and Locust Sreets limiting parking to two hours. But what happens if you park all day?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Enforcement of Floyd’s parking ordinances falls under the jurisdiction of the Town Constable.
The what?
Town Constable. Only problem is, Floyd hasn’t had a Town Constable for a long, long time.
Must be the stress
Thought it was a sprain.
Sure acted like a sprain.
Wasn’t a sprain.
X-rays confirm two stress fractures in my left foot, suffered sometime Saturday while at FloydFest.
Treatment? Stay off the foot as much as possible, take lots of pain killers.
Ouch.
What now FloydFest?
FloydFest 6 concluded Sunday with a rousing concert by Railroad Earth. Four days of festival are now in the books.
Ouch!
Hobbing around this morning on a sprained foot. Not sure when it happened. Probably while hiking around the uneven ground at FloydFest Saturday. While driving back to Floyd late in the afternoon, noticed pain while using the clutch to shift the Wrangler.
Sat in the hot tub for an hour or so to relieve all the aches and pains that come from three days walking the hills, dales and byways of the festival, climbing up and down various objects to get better angles for photos and carrying about 35 pounds of camera equipment.
More than music
FloydFest is more than music. It’s food, camping, fellowship and lots of vendors selling lots of different things.
Gone, but certainly not forgotten
UPDATE: 07/30: Talked with Congressman Rick Boucher twice this afternoon. He is very upset over the way the Park Rangers treated festival goers and promises to call in the head of the Parkway and make it clear "that nothing like this can ever be allowed to happen again." I’ve worked with Boucher enough to know that when he gets mad, heads roll. Stay tuned. More to follow.
Payback
Andrew Ward Hayden was a young man on a mission to bring me down because of my comments about Virginia Tech’s abuse of power in covering up the many misdeeds of star quarterback Michael Vick during his time at the school.
Hayden, which is the name he used to open a web hosting account but which I also doubt is his real name, says he is not from Floyd County, but claims he has friends here and, with their help, he admits concocting a scheme to launch a web site called Floyd Free Press that would publish a number of scandalous stories about residents of the county and then be falsely linked back to me as some sort of outlaw pushing effort.
It almost worked. I linked to their site thinking it was a legitimate operation. They wrote about politics with what looked like insider knowledge. Then the stories turned nasty — a review of local bloggers that was particularly scathing towards one; a suggestion that a county official was having an affair with his daughter; a claim of alcohol abuse by another prominent citizen.
Sean Pecor, an alert reader, discovered that running a traceroute on the site appeared to point back to one of my web servers based in Blacksburg. But when I ran a trace based on the site IP it routed back to a server in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Hayden, who says he has a degree in computer science, admits he created a script that sat on his leased server space and sent false traceroute and ping information that pointed back to one of my servers. It was, he admits, part of the plan to eventually falsely claim Floyd Free Press as something I had created.
It didn’t work. At my attorney’s request (a demand actually), Hayden’s web host shut down his site and suspended his right to use it. After we explained the legal ramifications of what he had done, and the penalties he could face, he agreed to admit responsibility for his efforts and apologize to the residents of Floyd County. The apology was posted on the Floyd Free Press web site for one week and the web site is being taken down.
This incident should serve as a warning to all who publish on the Internet that you can’t always hide behind fake names and false pretenses. There are ways to discover who you are and expose your true intentions. I’ve been the target of such smear efforts before, usually aimed at my involvement with the political web site Capitol Hill Blue. Most of the time I ignore such attempts but this one could not be ignored because it involved people I know and respect and it tried to affect where I live and my relationships with friends.
If you mess with me I may ignore it but if you mess with my friends you will pay for that foolish mistake.
Conflict of interest
The Roanoke Times is a sponsor of FloydFest. That’s right, a newspaper — a new organization that is expected to provide objective coverage of an event — is also a sponsor of the event.
In the news business we have three words that describe this situation: Conflict of interest.
Any time you see a news organization taking a financial stake in a public event you immediately wonder if that organization will treat the event objectively. Will The Roanoke Times, for example, provide more news coverage because they are sponsoring the event? Will they overlook stories that might place the event in a controversial or negative light?
Good questions. On opening night of FloydFest 6, the talk on the grounds centered around the gestapo-like tactics of The National Park Police and their "Criminal Interdiction Team" brought in from Asheville to profile, harass and arrest festival attendees. Didn’t see a word about the problem in Friday’s Times. Some gosh, gee-whiz feature stuff about the event but no hard news coverage.
The old Roanoke Times, the one I worked for back in the 60s, would have avoided such a conflict. The editors would have said that such sponsorship creates the "appearance of impropriety."
And they would have been right.
FloydFest 6
FloydFest is underway, kicking off the first night of concerts with the great Sam Bush (above) whose concert featured a more electric and rock-oriented sound than we’ve seen from him in the past.
Bush’s concert capped a beautiful opening day and the festival, which runs through Sunday on the Patrick County farm just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, features an eclectic mix of music, arts, crafts, food and family-oriented entertainment.
The rain and clouds that threatened earlier in the day blew away as evening closed in, providing delightful weather.
The only storm that threated festival goers came from the National Park Service which brought in its "special interdiction" team to stop drivers on the Parkway and use any excuse to harass them with unreasonable searches and ticket them for stupid things like missing bolts on license plates and beads hanging from rear view mirrors.
Avoid the Parkway if you can and use back roads to get to the festival. It will be time well spent.
Gestapo 101
For the second year in a row, the National Park Service police brought in their "special interdiction team" from Asheville to harass attendees of FloydFest. It is a despicable display of government abuse of power and a waste of yours and my tax dollars.
After passing two carloads of young people pulled over by the park police’s gestapo-like tactics, I stopped to take photos of a park service officer who was going through everything in a couple’s Jeep Cherokee — cooler, backpacks, glove boxes and consoles.
As I approached the scene, the park service cop wheeled around, pointed at me and said "Sir, if you raise that camera to take a photograph I will place you under arrest."
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Under arrest? I’ve been shooting photos on the Blue Ridge Parkway since before this kid’s father was born. I muttered somethng about this being a public thoroughfare and I was a working journalist doing my job.
"Sir," he retorted, "this is U.S. government property and under the provisions of the USA Patriot Act you cannot take photographs of official government activity without authorization. Put your camera down now!"
USA Patriot Act? The rights-robbing law that the Bush administration uses to detain citizens without due process, ship people off to the Gitmo and keep critics of the the President from flying on commercial airlines? That Patriot Act?
"Sir, you have 15 seconds to leave or you are under arrest." He had his hand on his gun so I left. I saw the sign above about a mile from the scene and stopped to shoot it, wondering is another Park Service Cop would come by and arrest me for taking photos of a sign.
At FloydFest Thursday evening, a number of people told me about their run-ins with the Park Service goon squad. They are looking for any "probable cause" to pull people over and search their car. One girl was stopped because she had beads hanging from her rear view mirror. Another for having just one bolt holding his license plate (she was ticketed for "improper equipment"). Still another for "driving in a suspicious manner."
A story floating around the festival Thursday night said this same squad pulled Floyd County Sheriff Shannon Zeman over Wednesday night for speeding on the Parkway. I haven’t had a chance to confirm that one yet but will when I see Shannon.
Two warnings: Avoid the Parkway if you can. Take Canning Factory Road to Black Ridge Road to the remote parking lots. You have on-site parking at the Festival, take Black Ridge and cross the Parkway there to enter the event.
If you get nailed by these storm troopers, call Floyd attorney Jonathan Rogers next week and tell him about it. He’s willing to file a class-action suit against the Park Service for their gestapo-like tactics.