Op-Ed
By David Verhey, President, Friends of Paxson-Airmont Supervisor Caleb Kershner (Catoctin) is advancing a proposal to remove key limits on so-called “agri-business” uses in rural Loudoun, allowing effectively unlimited event activity with real consequences for nearby residents and family farms. Kershner’s industry-favored concept reflects a broader push to commercialize rural Loudoun at the expense of…
By Ken Falke When I first became a coach with USA Hockey, I thought I was signing up to teach kids how to skate faster, pass better, and score more goals. What I didn’t realize was that I was stepping into a laboratory for life. Ice rinks are cold, loud, and unforgiving. They are also one…
By Charlie Houston The Drudgery of Research Back in the pre-Google and pre-artificial intelligence times, research could be torment. Some questions could be answered through encyclopedias; others required hours in libraries, poring through tome after tome. Either way, information had to be gathered, sorted, edited, and finally shaped into something readable. It was time-consuming, sometimes…
By Madeline Skinner The Philomont Horse Show Grounds have been demolished. Only the cook shack remains—for now. For more than 60 years, this space served as a gathering place for the community and as the home of one of the area’s oldest horse shows. Today, it has been permanently erased. Trees have been cleared for…
By Ken Falke I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s—a time of big cars, long summer nights, and childhoods spent outdoors. We played until the streetlights came on. We scraped our knees, argued with friends, lost games, and learned from failure. Confidence wasn’t handed to us—it was earned. Look at kids today and the…
By Charlie Houston This month I’m channeling Roman mythology, specifically Minerva, its goddess of wisdom, and tackling the County’s fiscal tendencies. Lord knows, wisdom is needed there. As a reminder, “fiscal” simply means governmental taxation and spending. Though fiscal applies to governments, it affects you in a sacred place – your pocketbook. Maslow and His…
By Ken Falke I recently sat through a suicide prevention seminar designed for school children and their teachers. I expected compassion. I expected hope. What I didn’t expect was a steady drumbeat of fragility. The language was saturated with risk, warning signs, vulnerability, crisis, trauma, triggers, and pathology. Students were told to monitor themselves and…
By Charlie Houston “Houston’s at it again with the mythology stuff,” you might declare, and ask, “What in heck is Momus?” [A note on readability: My words are in italics.] Momus is a demigod from Greek mythology. Momus was the minor god or spirit of mockery, blame, ridicule, scorn, complaint and harsh criticism. Zeus finally…
By Ron Rise Sr. When government is healthy, its laws are simple: general rules, openly debated, applied evenly, and restrained by due process. When government is sick, its laws grow clever: written for a moment, for a place, for a conflict—and justified by urgency. Senate Bill 648 looks like the second kind. Thomas Paine would…
By Ken Falke Over the last several years, I have noticed a peculiar verbal habit spreading through meetings, podcasts, classrooms, and news studios across America. It sneaks in quietly, usually at the end of an otherwise complete thought. It sounds harmless. Even friendly. But it’s not. It’s the reflexive, unnecessary, credibility-eroding habit of ending sentences…