Washington Post: Route 11 Potato Chips

It's crunch time!

Make sure that you pick up today's Washington Post and check out my Sunday Business feature on the Route 11 Potato Chip company in Mount Jackson, Virginia.

(I had to do a lot of very thorough journalistic-type research on this one, folks -- bag after bag of dedicated journalistic-type research. I do it because I care.)

The story begins:

     Being a small fry can have its advantages. Take the Route 11 brand of sweet potato chips. The snack-food giants — Frito-Lay and such — haven’t taken up the challenge of this more fragile of the tubers, which tends to caramelize and burn during mass production.

     But for a snack food maker that’s used to taking its time, this is a sweet and profitable niche.

     Welcome to the world of Route 11 Potato Chips, a small Virginia chippery in the rustic Shenandoah that has been cooking up Kettle-style cult favorites for more than 20 years.

You can read "Route 11 Finds Success..." by clicking right here.

And for more on Route 11 Potato Chips, go to this spot.

Photo by the mighty Jahi Chikwendiu!

Virginia Living Magazine: The Last Bison

Virginia Living Magazine doesn't normally post my regular Virginia Music column online -- it's one more reason to subscribe! -- but one of the installments from last year is now available for net perusal.

It's my column on the Chesapeake-based folk group, The Last Bison, titled "Journey to Inheritance."

In an eye-grabbing video for their song, “Setting Our Tables,” members of The Last Bison are shown dreamily cavorting in bucolic forests and shimmering lakes, moving in reverse, emerging ghost-like from splashed waters and leafy fields, armed with cellos, violins, banjos and xylophones. It’s an apt pastoral setting for a woodsy, seven-piece folk ensemble that is truly in its own little world.

But that world is getting larger fast.

Click here to read "Journey to Inheritance."

Click here to read some of my other Virginia Living Magazine pieces available online.

For more on The Last Bison, go right here.

Writer of the Year Nomination

This doesn't happen everyday.

I've just learned that I have been nominated for the 2014 "Writer of the Year" award by the National City and Regional Magazine Association. 

This is for work published in Hampton Roads Magazine -- now Coastal Virginia Magazine -- last year.

Special thanks go out to my editor, Melissa Morgan Stewart, for not only putting up with me, but for having the confidence to nominate me. Thanks Melissa!  To read some of the articles I have written for HR and CV, click right here.

The National City and Regional Magazine Award winners will be announced in May at their annual conference.  I'm going to be impossible to live with now.

Coastal Virginia Magazine: Rock of Ages

The latest issue of Coastal Virginia Magazine is where you'll find my feature article on Norfolk's The NorVa. 

The former Vaudeville house and movie theater became a rock club 13 years ago and was recently celebrated by Rolling Stone Magazine readers as the best live music venue in America. 

The story begins:

At an age when most buildings are getting torn down or argued over by preservationists, The NorVa theatre has been reborn as “the best live music venue in America.” Not bad for a 96-year-old brick old-timer with a wraparound balcony, a history of good times and many stories to tell.

In the 13 years since it became a music venue, the sounds of many of the world’s most popular and influential performers have reverberated around these acoustically padded walls. But embedded in the exposed brick and rustic corners of the place Rolling Stone magazine readers named the best live music venue in the country this past July, you might also hear the faint ghost yells of kids at a matinee screening of “Captain Midnight,” the tip-taps of old hoofers doing a dance routine for a half-filled house or the phantom squeaks and grunts of a heated racquetball match.

Read the rest of "Rock of Ages" by clicking right here. 

Coastal Virginia Magazine: The President's Analyst

Coastal Virginia Magazine -- formerly Hampton Roads Magazine -- has posted my feature article on former CNN political analyst and Portsmouth native Dr. Bill Schneider. 

The professor, author and commentator (now with Al Jazeera America) talks about his forthcoming book on national voting trends, how demographics have changed Virginia's politics, the future of the Tea Party and much more.

It's always been hard to tell if Bill Schneider is a Republican or a Democrat.

The veteran TV personality, author and educator likes it that way. “I take pride in the fact that people are always saying to me that they aren’t sure what my political views are,” says Schneider, a Portsmouth native.

During his 19 ½ years as CNN’s senior political analyst, Schneider won a Peabody and an Emmy, among other awards, for his thorough and nonpartisan television reporting. His ability to read deep into polling data and to forecast voting trends spurred The Boston Globe to call him “the Aristotle of American politics.” The bespectacled analyst has a new book coming out next year that charts his own personal journey through politics while documenting what he calls an emerging new coalition of American voters.

“I got the heat from both sides when I was at CNN,” he says. “I would get complaints whenever I would say anything critical of President Bush or of President Clinton. I would get complaints from one side or the other that I wasn’t being fair. When I got complaints from conservatives, they called me a rotten, filthy scoundrel, and if the complaints were from liberals, they would say, ‘Oh, it just breaks my heart to hear you criticize Bill and Hillary Clinton.’”

Read the rest of "The President's Analyst" by clicking right here.

Style Weekly: Don Harrison's 12 Discs of Christmas

I know you are sick to death of Christmas music by now. 

But if you want to celebrate the season with some stellar holiday sounds that won't make you want to strangle a relative or tackle an inflatable reindeer, the long-playing albums on this list (compiled for Style Weekly a few years ago) will warm you up quicker than a mug of steaming spiked cocoa and all 19 of those Snuggies you got LAST Christmas.

Read "Don Harrison's 12 Discs of Christmas" right here.

Have a safe and happy one out there. And watch out for those "Blue Christmas Lights."

Sifter: The New Flying Squirrels Experience

Nutzy Unchained!

"The Sevens," my column for TV Jerry's new Sifter site, takes a look at how Richmond Flying Squirrels games might change if the new Shockoe Bottom baseball stadium and slavery museum gets built.

Read it right here: http://www.tvjerry.com/the-sevens/