Dear Virginia,
I am proud to be a Virginian. I’ve not been a full time resident for a while, but I miss it immensely. Many of my family and friends are there, and I have so many fond memories of my childhood, youth and college. It’s a beautiful state, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains, and it has a rich history. Jamestown was the first permanent English Colony in the Americas, Revolutionary and Civil War Battlefields dot the state from border to border, Northern Virginia remains an important center of national government, as the Pentagon is there, as well as number of Federal Agencies, NGOs, lobbyists, and similar organizations. The map of the state is dotted with institutions of higher education to the point that it looks more like New England than the South: The University of Virginia, William and Mary, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University… The state does not do enough to highlight it’s artistic heritage, which is rich. Among those born in or who hail from Virginia are Ella Fitzgerald, Sandra Bullock, Jason Mraz, Ruth Brown, Patsy Cline, Dave Matthews Band, Wanda Sykes, Shirley MacLaine, Perry Ellis… No less than 8 presidents were born in Virginia, including some of the most influential. Where would the US be if not for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Woodrow Wilson?
And yet my state has a dark history, as well. It’s ironic that Stephen Spielberg is filming so much of the movie Lincoln in Virginia when the Richmond, VA was the Capitol of the Confederacy for part of the Civil War! Virginia was solidly on the wrong side in that one. We’ve been on the wrong side a lot! And when it was, it was often in a big way, as a recent post from BuzzFeed by Matt Stopera graphically illustrates with “five maps that show which states had the right idea, and which ones had the very, very wrong one.”
Here, for your consideration, are the first and last.
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Tag Archives: Richmond
Ruffles and Flourishes
A quick addendum to my post on schools refusing to carry Obama’s speech. Back in the 1980s I was a student at a Catholic military High School called Benedictine in Richmond, Virgnia. We were taken to some sort of rally at which Ronald Reagan was speaking in Richmond. The rationale we were given was that Reagan was the President of the United States and it was important that we take this opportunity to hear him speak. But, unlike your getting viagra in australia chronological age, which cannot be altered, how old you are biologically is fundamentally under your own control,’ Kenton says. On the other hand, the physical treatments are much more effective to induce penile erection, viagra prescription canada if taken in the presence of the sexual stimulation. Therefore, the long-term solution is not in generic viagra http://pamelaannschoolofdance.com/aid-1253 the product but in knowing how to market the product. Making love can usa cheap viagra put the heart on strain; therefore it should not be overdosed just like other regular medicines. We went as a group in our JROTC uniforms, we sat together, and we cheered in unison.
Some people were critical, but our local newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch praised us. I remember the last sentence to this day. We were the Benedictine Cadets and the article ended with the line, “Let’s have some ruffles and flourishes for the cadets.”
Now that it is Barack Obama speaking via video directly on education, a non-political subject, they don’t want to expose students to it? Go figure.