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.