Understanding Islam: Mosque opens doors to Valley
As my eyes scanned the mosque, I was reminded of what Malcolm X wrote about his pilgrimage to Mecca. “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white,” the ’60s civil-rights leader wrote in a letter that was reproduced in The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

I counted 110 people participating in the Friday prayers at the Islamic Center of the Shenandoah Valley in Harrisonburg on the early October afternoon when I visited. Among them were men of a variety of Middle Eastern backgrounds, one family from sub-Saharan Africa, a young Arab-American wearing a backwards Virginia baseball cap with an orange V and silverswords, and the son of a former newspaper colleague of mine from Maine. And they were all participating in the same rituals, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that doesn’t at all fit the picture that Islamophobes have been painting of them that has the lot of them plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government and scheming to blow us all up or cut our heads off on the Internet.

Special Report: We can’t leave them behind
Pat Harmon knew what she was seeing. It was like looking in a mirror.

“She was so frustrated, so angry, and she just wouldn’t talk to me. So I looked right at her, and I said, I know how you feel. You feel stupid, don’t you? And the tears started to flow,” said Harmon, a reading specialist at Thomas Harrison Middle School in Harrisonburg, who was not that long ago a student who knew what it meant to struggle, which is a nice way of putting how she felt about herself.

“I remember sitting in sixth grade, and the girl behind me, when I was reading aloud, was chuckling and laughing when I kept missing words. So I told her that, told her that I knew how she felt,” Harmon said.

The head of the class
Five teachers, all of them their school system’s teacher of the year for 2008. All of them teach students in elementary or middle school. Two are reading specialists. Not one would want to do anything different with her life.

“This is so cool to be here, because I can be an actress and a teacher and a mom and a friend all rolled up into one. And every day I walk in that day is different, because there’s 20 kids in my room, and everybody is bringing their own special package, and that causes all kinds of new little crystals to form. Oh, it’s awesome. This is the best job ever. I’ve never considered this a job. It’s a way of life,” said Bev Roach, a 32-year veteran at Churchville Elementary School and the ‘08 Augusta County Teacher of the Year.

Authorized Personnel Only: Behind the scenes with the part of health care you never hear about
You’ve probably never thought about what happens when doctors orders tests done in the lab. You might assume that they take them back to wherever the testing is done and do the work themselves.

I don’t know what I thought before, but now that I know what the real deal is, I can admit that I had no idea what really goes on, just that the work was done, and that I wanted to believe that whoever did it knew what they were doing.

A negative into a positive: Staunton woman’s gift from God inspiring others
Rev. Elaine Rose’s cell phone melodically announced an incoming call six times in the span of about two hours – enough interruptions to tax the average person’s patience – but she didn’t fuss, or even indulge in a sigh. But then again, when you are the CEO and founder of Jericho and Damascus Road Outreach, a local youth ex-offender and reintegration program still in its infancy but gaining a tempo, there is precious little that’s average about you or your day.

After all, there are a lot of questions to answer, a lot of people to talk to, and a lot of work that needs to be done before Jazzy T’s Café on Beverley Street in Staunton can offer local diners a good meal, and local at-risk youth a job and a second chance.

The Second Battle of Lexington
Visit almost any small town in America, and you will likely hear about an effort to revitalize its downtown. That’s because small towns have become the hole in the doughnut, a 19th century hole in a 21st century doughnut.

So why spend money on life support if the patient is dying? Around the doughnut, where those in charge of the hole have no say, are the ugly commercial strips, the shopping centers with no center and all those acres of free blacktop parking which is the real attraction. Sam Walton has been dead for years, but his supercenters are still sucking life out of old downtowns.

Your Guide to the Holidays - 2008
It’s a yearly dilemma: We want the holidays to be festive and cheery, filled with a generous spirit; at the same time, the crowds at the mall, rising prices, a stressed environment and an uncertain economy may leave us feeling demoralized.

The statistics don’t help: In the few weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, our trash burden goes up an extra 25 million tons, mostly discarded packaging. We go into debt, putting more than half of the almost $5 billion we spend on our credit cards. Even worse, a quarter of the people on our list will “regift” our presents; others will return them. Those shirts, ties and sweaters we carefully select in just the right colors and sizes will disappoint 40 percent of those who receive them, according to statistics compiled by The Center for the New American Dream.

Remember when … downtown had a grocery store?
OK, so technically the new grocery store on West Beverley Street isn’t in Downtown Staunton. “Downtown is two blocks that way,” Brian Wiedemann said, pointing east toward City Hall from just outside the new George Bowers Grocery, which is opening Nov. 1 at 614 W. Beverley St. in a location that might as well be downtown, it’s so close.

More importantly for residents of the packed residential area just west of downtown, it’s within walking distance - which is probably what attracted George Bowers to the location back in the 1880s.

“Close application to his customers’ interests is the foundation of Mr. George Bowers’ great success,” reads an entry in the 1901 edition of Staunton’s Business Men of Note on Bowers, a New Yorker who opened his grocery on West Beverley in 1881.

Wiedemann is one of four partners in the grocery, and is the link to the Bowers past, as he is, like Bowers, a transplanted New Yorker. Wiedemann, for his part, is a self-described “victim of the recent economic downturn,” who lost his job as a project manager for a big architectural and design firm in New York City before deciding to settle in Staunton.

Photog aims to capture Faces of Waynesboro
Kevin Blackburn is searching for an answer to the question, What is Waynesboro? And being a professional photographer, Blackburn has engaged his trusty camera to help him out.

“We’re all in this weird transition for what Waynesboro is. That’s the best way I can say it. The headaches and craziness and politics aside, the town itself is growing in this really weird way. It’s like a teenager going through puberty. We don’t know where it’s going to go. The city is in that phase right now,” said Blackburn, who has initiated a project that he is calling Faces of Waynesboro to tell the story of the River City in its, ahem, awkward phase.

Blackburn is a native who, as he describes it, “was born here, raised here, moved away, came back, moved away again, came back, got married and went into the military, came back,” so he brings a most unique perspective to what Waynesboro has been, is and is on the way to becoming. Which probably puts his idea at the outset about how to approach Faces of Waynesboro in an interesting light. “At first I said, It’s going to be people who have been here in Waynesboro at least this long. And then I realized, That’s really stupid. Because a person could be here only 48 hours, and they’ve brought something to the community,” Blackburn said.

The rise and fall of kings: Richard II at The American Shakespeare Center
Most of us with even a cursory knowledge of William Shakespeare’s works recognize his genius for revealing the range of human experience. From unabashed naughtiness and foolhardy love to strains of hopelessness, ruin and madness, the bard covers it all. That the world’s most famous wordsmith also inspires a fickleness in his audience remains lesser known.

Yet, fickleness happens.

Shakespeare fans often apply the highest acclaim to whichever play we’re currently seeing. “This one is clearly the most soaring, the most ranging in its wit and wisdom, its human touch and divine glance.” Or maybe that’s just when the American Shakespeare Center performs them.

So it was in seeing the ASC’s Richard II, a play superlative in its poetically fluid language, pithy in its revelation of life’s vagaries. Though this reviewer knew little of Richard II going in, within moments found a way into its world through Shakespeare’s unerring gift for drawing life into fullness in the tiniest turn of phrase, or drawing life back onto itself in soliloquies of contemplation, admission and ultimately, mortification.