We live in paradise. I noticed it on May Day, songbirds and creekbirds flitting through my little woods, butterflies floating over the flowers, fat bumblebees bumping clumsily into each other through the blooming bushes.

Fans of country music in general and the Carter Family in particular will want to see Barter Theatre’s “Keep on the Sunny Side” during the month of May.  Written by Doug Pote, it is the most-requested Barter show.

Answer to Cogno’s Corner from Mountain Adviser 0419

Attention all law-abiding Virginians. Stop it. The state needs you to commit yourself to committing crime, preferably violent crime. If you don’t, prison beds here and prison beds to come in 2010, might have to be filled by more imported lawbreakers, or, worse, in the mind of the Department of Corrections, the state might have to scale back plans for prisons and close some of the ones that were built in the binge that promised to put a house of incarceration in every Southwest Virginia boy’s and girl’s backyard.

Senator Phillip Puckett reports from the state legislature

Narrows Livestock Reports March 5

Hello from Capitol Hill in Richmond!

This week was crossover, which always comes at the half-way point of General Assembly Session.  Crossover, which this year fell on Tuesday, February 12, is the day in which all House bills must be communicated to the Senate and all Senate bills to the House.  This meant a lot of work on the House floor.  The Session convened on Monday at ten a.m., and we did not finish debate and floor votes until just before eight p.m.

This has been a busy week.  Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and there were a record number of Virginia citizens, including hundreds of school children, visiting our beautiful State Capitol.  One of our most important visitors was Marco Leung, accompanied by Coach Marrs, of Graham High School in Bluefield.  Marco is the Model General Assembly for 2008 and was here to meet with Governor Kaine and be introduced to both houses of the General Assembly.  Model General Assembly will take place in April here at the Capitol.

Seventy-five years ago, a group of hungry actors stepped into the lights washing the stage and performed “After Tomorrow.”
Those actors were the first Barter actors. The play, the first the now-three-quarters of a century old theater produced.
Author Sherwood Anderson, then editor of the newspaper in Smyth County reviewed that first effort.
“The play itself wasn’t much… the acting much better than the play,” he wrote. “‘After Tomorrow’ gave us, and this is really the main thing, an honest-to-goodness evening at the theater. And Barter Theatre will surely give us more.”

We have just finished week two in Richmond.  All budget bills had to be in by 5 p.m. Thursday, and regular bills by 5 p.m. Friday. 
This week we passed several resolutions; I will highlight a few. 
The House designated Feb. 6, beginning this year, as Ronald Reagan Day.  We also designated March as Brain Injury Awareness Month.  Brain injuries have become a major concern in Virginia due to the increasing number of high impact car accidents and soldiers returning from war zones.  April 27 through May 3 has been designated as Plumbing Industry Week, and October as Dyslexia Awareness Month.