You have heard the rumors and now a county zoning sign goes up on the vacant property behind your house. What is going on here? Neighbors start to talk and you check at the planning department at the county offices. It is a shopping center, you tells your neighbors. As you and a few of your neighbors pass out flyers, you discover that only one person in your 49-home subdivision does not care about the proposed development. Some widen their complaint to many things that have already happened near them and you have to keep them on topic. Not in…

When we leave the bosom of education, whether it is university, technical or high school, we enter the real world – employment. Some of us use what we have learned, some of us explore vocations unrelated to our education and some of us slide by not knowing what to do with our employment life. During our career, climbing the ladder in the corporate world or forgoing the gray flannel suit to enter the entrepreneurial world, we reach for the gold ring, stretching to find a pension or gambling that we will make enough green to see ourselves through our golden…

Work: it is something we have to do, whether we want to or not. Some of us do it not for money but for for satisfaction and self worth. Some jobs afford us a way to change things, but that involves patience. Slow and steady wins the race as they say. Art can make it more interesting and accessible. I purchased book in 2010 called “Local Motion: The Art of Civic Engagement in Toronto,” by Dave Meslin. The city of Toron certainly cannot be much different in its structure than Chesterfield County. But as I pulled the book off of…

I was 12-years-old when I rode a train for the first time – Cincinnati to Morgantown, West Virginia. Not only was it my first but I was alone. Although I do not remember how long it took, if I ate railroad food or if the train was clicking and clacking. All I remember was that I had the time of my life. I believe my mother must have told the conductor to keep an eye on me. There are no conductors on freight trains nowadays, but they still roam the isles of passenger trains today. Old movies make train travel…

Bill said to his neighbor, “Did you hear Jonsey’s place, down the street, was broken into?” “Yeah, I read it in the police blotter, but they never got in, they only cut a screen,” his neighbor, Clyde, said. Bill, who lives on the cal-de-sac, bought the latest alarm system, complete with motion detectors inside and out. It included a sign that read “Protected by Electronic Alarm System” stuck in the landscaping at the entrance to his home. His system also included five security cameras that monitored everything on the outside of his home even the squirrels and Bill’s cat that…

We at the Village News have decided that we will not continue to cover Donald Trump’s run for president. Not that we do not like him, but we, like other media outlets, have been taken in by the day after day shenanigans of this guy. Sometimes we work so hard to get his latest speech in the paper that blood runs out of our eyes, we dream about building a 1,954-mile-long wall along the border with Mexico. I am a former builder, could I get that contract? We dream about refugees fleeing Syria only to be stuck in refugee camps.…

Other than the movie, where did the term “pay it forward” come from? The concept is old, but the familiar phrase was coined by Lily Hardy Hammond in her 1916 book in the “Garden of Delight.” Lily said “you don’t pay love back, you pay it forward.” The term has been around since the great years of Athens, in 317 B.C. Other scholars have used the expression throughout history. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom but the benefit we receive must be rendered…

Where were you when you heard about the September 11, 2001 attacks? I was at home getting ready to go to work. The Today Show was on in the background when I heard Katie Couric say something about a plane crash. I turned and watched the report, which said no one knew what had happened other than a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I had a bad feeling and called to my daughter to watch the coverage. You know the rest of the story. That event started a series of events, highlighting organizations and terms that we had…

It all started when… It is a lead (newspapers typically spell it lede) that really bothers me. And although I do not particularly like it, some leads start with the date that a particular event will take place or took place. The Village News has just started year 18, covering news, not just Chester to areas such as Bensley, Enon, Ettrick, Matoaca the Courthouse and as much of southeastern Chesterfield as our limited staff can muster. “Your Neighbors, Your Community, Your News.” Although I have been writing articles and opinion since the paper was put together in our dining room,…

I was feeling especially spiritual last week when I was riding through Chester. Something in the distance looked like angels wings. No it was Bozo the Clown’s bald head with hair splayed on each side. I thought I was losing it until, getting close enough to figure it out, I realized it was a willow oak tree that looked as if it were a bust carved like Mickey Mouse in Disneyland. I was so fixated on the carved tree that I almost ran into a sign that read “MEN WORKING.” The bucket truck and the limb grinder – it is…