Just ask for “Doug’s ribeye”
I’m a country boy, which also means I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy. A doctor-mandated low starch and low cholestorol diet means no potatoes but I can still eat meat and I like the ribeye that Julie Arrington and Kerry Underwood serve at Oddfellas Cantina.
So I eat it often, so often that Julie and Kerry have renamed the steak "Doug’s ribeye" on their new menu.
Try it the next time you eat at Oddfellas. By any name, it’s a good steak.
Fear of floreclosure
A story making the rounds in local banking circles tells of an upscale couple in a big house at Smith Mountain Lake. Behind in their jumbo mortgage they mailed the keys to their house along with keys to both of their luxury cars to First National Bank of Christiansburg and walked away from the house and a lifestyle they could no longer afford.
Bankers tell me such stories are common nowadays and often true. The housing industry, living too large for too long on a boom that had to bust, is in trouble and with them the banks and mortgage brokers who cut too many corners and handed out money with too much ease to those who really couldn’t afford to buy.
We have friends trapped in this cycle, some forced to sell their homes at a loss to get out from under a heap of trash debt.
A banker friend tells me this mortgage crisis in this country may surpass the savings and loan junk bond debacle that struck in the go-go eighties.
Trouble has already hit the urban areas and it’s coming our way. And that starts with "T" and that rhymes with "D" and that stands for "debt."
Bad decision
From the grapevine comes word that the women’s club of Floyd has voted overwhelmingly to invite racist revisionist "author" Gary Walker back to next year’s arts and crafts fair.
Floyd attorney Dale Proffit apparently left the ladies quaking in their seats with dire warnings of legal action not only from Walker but also from the hoard of Confederate sympathizers that he said would rise up in righteous indignation and haul them into court (a threat that I think is as flawed as Walker’s so-called "historical research").
The vote has fractured the membership of the club with some choosing to quit over the action and others taking self-imposed leaves of absence. It also tempts professional rabble-rousers like me to consider turning the matter into a personal crusade. I’d like to think the women’s club did not wish to see their annual arts and crafts fair turn into a bully pulpit for racism but that is exactly what they have done with their vote.
I’m not surprised Profitt was able to scare the bejesus out of the ladies although Dale is not one I would call on for advice on Constitutional law. His legal practice is mostly real estate transactions and helping locals draw up wills. Constitutional lawyers and professors say the First Amendment has nothing to do with the whether or not the ladies club can or should allow an illiterate racist author at an event supposedly dedicated to arts and crafts. As a private organization they are free to accept or ban anyone they wish.
The women’s club had a chance to show that Floyd is not a home for Southern-fried racism but, instead, they made a bad decision based on fear, ignorance and questionable advice. It is a decision they will have to live with.
No matter how loudly they claim their decision is not racist, it is — from my view as both a native-born Southerner and a Floyd Countian — at the very least a passive acceptance of racism in our midst.
Welcome to Blue Ridge Muse…the studio and gallery
Blue Ridge Muse, the studio and gallery, is now open at The Village Green at 201 East Main Street in Floyd.
We’re in Suite #6 at the right front corner of the complex and open Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fridays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 3 p.m.
We may modify the hours after the first of the year and close on Sundays from January through the end of March.
At the moment, we’re featuring our photography plus the work of photographer Don Johnson, writer-photographer Fred First and musical CDs of Bernie Coveney. Others will be added as we bring the studio up to speed.
If you’re in Floyd, drop by and see us.
Bernie Coveney’s new CD
Popular Floyd musician Bernie Coveney’s new CD is now out and worth a listen. We carry copies at Blue Ridge Muse at the Village Green. Drop by and pick one up. Learn more at Bernie’s web site.
Black Friday
Best Buy stores in Roanoke and Christiansburg opened at 5 a.m. today. Kohls opened an hour before that. According to the reports from those brave enough to venture into the area, Wal-Mart’s parking lot was packed with Christmas shoppers on Thanksgiving afternoon and is still packed right now before the sun comes up.
Some chain stores opened right after midnight, wanting a jump on "Black Friday," the busiest shopping day of the year, the day when most retailers hope to do at least 40 percent of their holiday business.
With consumer confidence headed into the crapper, most economic analysts expect a dismal holiday shopping season. Mortgage foreclosures, job losses and an overall nervousness about the future could mean cutting back by consumers.
Still, too many people will pull out too many credit cards to buy too many things that cannot afford and don’t need. On Wednesday, I watched a young man with credit cards close to their limits combine three of them to buy a $400 cell phone with all bells and whistles. I was there to buy a new phone too but used Verizon’s "new every two" discount and an extra rebate to cut my cost to under $50.
Still, my Wrangler gets less about 15 miles-per-gallon on Southwestern Virginia’s winding two-lane roads so my 90-mile roundtrip to buy a new phone that I could have done without added $18 in gas costs not to mention wear and tear on a seven-year-old Jeep. So I have little room to talk.
I may not be standing in line with the hoards on this Black Friday morning but I’m still a conspicuous consumer. At some point in this Christmas season, I will venture into the stores to buy gifts for loved ones and while the plastic that I pull out of my wallet will be a debit — not credit — card, the question still exists: Could my gift giving express just as much love by spending less?
Thanksgiving
The smell of food fills Chateau Thompson today. Amy spent a good part of the night preparing a nice size turkey and fixings. Our original plans to spend today with relatives fell through because of illness of others.
We will probably flip on the tube, watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and remember our 1991 trip to New York to see the parade and endure "Black Friday" by fighting the crowds for the first official shopping day of Christmas.
That year, a decade before the 9/11 terrorist attack that changed live forever in Manhattan and the rest of the country, the mood was festive and relaxed. Our last trip together to the Big Apple came two weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center. We took the high-speed Acela train up from Washington, had a leisurely lunch at a favorite deli and spent the afternoon at the Guggenheim before catching the train back that night.
On 9/11 I spent most of the day at the Pentagon but would head for New York a few days later on assignment. The city remained in a state of shock and incredibly-tight security surrounded the Thanksgiving Day Parade that year. Each time I returned to New York, I noticed, with sadness, how much things had changed for the worse.
New Yorkers, like many Americans, are a hardy lot and can bounce back from tragedy but 9/11 left America scarred and those scars have not healed. When we sit down to our turkey dinners today we need to remember not only the more than 3,000 who died on that day in New York, Washington and a farm field in Pennsylvania where United 93 crashed but also the 3,875 Americans and unknown number of Iraqi civilians who have died to date in a war that many feel never needed to be waged.
As Americans we have a lot to be thankful for on this day but we also must never forget that our way of life could, and should, be much better. Complacency can be a bigger enemy than any terrorist.
The difference between men and boys…
…is of course the price of their toys. I drove down to Roanoke Wednesday to stand in line for 45 minutes to buy Verizon’s new LG Voyager wireless phone, trading in my tired two-year old Palm Trio for the latest gadget.
The Voyager is a sleek phone with an Apple i-Phone like interface on the front but it also opens up to reveal a second screen and a QWERTY-style keyboard for typing email message and other texting functions.
Is it, as Verizon claims, an "i-Phone killer?" The Voyager is a nice break from the more mundane phones usually offered by Verizon but it is a different machine with different functions. Like the i-Phone, it can download music and the speakers are much better than those on Apple’s device but the touch screen that is used when the phone is closed is neither as bright or as useful.
Still, the operating system is not Windows-based and that, like the i-Phone may be the machine’s most desirable feature. I use a Windows machine only when a specific client’s work demands it and live happily otherwise in a Mac-based world where computers don’t crash, software doesn’t freeze up and virus don’t threaten my data on a daily basis.
The Voyager’s email system is the clunky Verizon Mobile email system which requires logging in to check. Push email is available for another $19.95 a month through the company’s Wireless Sync service but it’s not as elegant or useful as a Blackberry and it requires a Windows-based machine to use.
The Voyager works well in the fringe areas of Floyd County and that’s an improvement over the Trio’s lackluster phone reception.
Overall, I like the Voyager and expect it to be my main wireless phone. In areas where Verizon’s high-speed EDVO Network is available, it is far faster than the i-Phone and that makes it more useful on the road. If you want one phone ahead. The Verizon Store at Valley View expected to run out of their current allotment by early afternoon Wednesday.
Like politics, journalism should be local
Twenty-six years ago, I walked away from the best job in newspapers: a gig where I had extraordinary freedom, a twice-weekly column and a chance to write stories and shoot photographs on a wide variety of subjects.
Burnout forced my departure from The Alton Telegraph, a daily newspaper in downstate Illinois. After 11 years of non-stop work and too many missed vacations, I needed a break. So Amy and I packed everything we owned into a Ryder truck and headed for Washington and my new career working in the nether world of politics.
It would take a decade to get back to journalism. I made a lot of money on the political side of the fence but that wealth came with a high price tag: ethical lapses, alcoholism and more than a few sleepless nights.
Now I’m sober 13 years, five months and 15 days. I sleep soundly at night. As for ethical lapses, some would say ethics and journalism don’t mix. I disagree but that’s another debate for another time.
We left Washington in 2004 and moved full time to Floyd, I left most of the world of national and international journalism behind. I still write for a national political news web site that I started in 1994 but most of my energies nowadays focus on local news and events through writing and photography for this site and The Floyd Press. After being away from local news for so long, I forgot that what happens locally more directly affects each of us.
A new poll by The Associated Press find widespread unease and discontent in America. Reports the AP:
There is a widespread unease-shared by 77 percent-that the country has meandered off in the wrong direction. Nearly all Democrats and more than six in 10 Republicans think the country has taken the wrong course. And although almost half express interest and hope in the upcoming elections, a third voice frustration-particularly Republicans.
That same unease can be found here in Floyd County, where Republican voters turned out three incumbents in the primary caucus earlier this year and then sent two of the winners of that primary packing in the general election two weeks ago.
Wi-Fi kind of town
Floyd is becoming a wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) mecca. Free Wi-Fi is now available at multiple locations throughout the town, including:
- Cafe del Sol
- The Floyd County Store
- Oddfellas Cantina
- Over the Moon
- The Library
- Subway
- Pizza Inn
And probably other places that I have not yet discovered (Fred First says he was able to check his email one day while waiting for his wife outside Slaughters Grocery Store).
If you know of other areas in Floyd or other parts of the county, please let us know.