Shepherd’s pie, garlic bread, green beans with parmesan, fresh veggie salad and cookie bars was the menu last Thursday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Abingdon. Each glass plate was garnished with a sprig of rosemary from the church’s garden. And the whole meal was free.
The dinner was the third monthly We Care dinner the church has held.

Not many small businesses get to make to too far past their grand opening, especially in today’s economic climate.
Janet Woolwine got a full year in with A Likely Yarn, a knitting and yarn store inside Zazzy Z’s Coffee Shop. She recently closed up shop there, but not to the tune a of funeral dirge. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Former E.B. Stanley Middle School Assistant Principal Scott Allen is excited about his new job.
Allen, who started his Washington County school career as a teacher with the special education department at Abingdon High School in 1998, is taking over the reins from retiring Glade Spring Middle School Principal Sharon Rainey.

It was 1979 and Cathy Lowe was 22-years-old and six months out of cosmetology school. She had two kids and needed a job.
“At the time I either had to have a job in cosmetology or I had to go back to the Martha Washington Inn to waitress,” Lowe said. “It was either sink or swim.”
So she took a chance. She borrowed $4,800 from a friend, bought used equipment, rented the closed down record shop on the east side of town and turned it into a salon.
Thirty years later, Male Ego’s appointment calendar is still steady.

Just weeks after last year’s Coomes Recreation Center Fourth of July Celebration, James Agner was on the phone planning the 2009 celebration. Agner, who is community events coordinator at the center, said the annual fireworks show, sponsored by the Town of Abingdon, has been dazzling audiences for the past 14 years.

Rail Solution has launched a grassroots campaign urging Gov. Timothy Kaine to overturn a decision by his commerce secretary that blocks the Virginia Department of Transportation from accepting federal grant funding for a Steel Interstate study.Rail Solution retained the Virginia Organizing Project to distribute a bulletin asking recipients “to urge Governor Tim Kaine to overrule his Secretary of Transportation.” The bulletin said VDOT Secretary Pierce Homer last month blocked the agency’s receipt of “a federal grant for the study even if Congress were to authorize one.”

Jensen Apparel began its second week in its new, expanded location Monday as sewing machines whirred inside the former Acme Market in Chilhowie where three positions remained to be filled.

By the middle of next month, the anticipated six-month-long construction of the Saltville Dental Clinic should be under way on the second floor of the T. K. McKee Hospital in Saltville.

They were found between some hedges on the north side of the public library, Abingdon Police Chief Tony Sullivan said Wednesday. The wolves were part of 27 handpainted statues placed around Abingdon that will be auctioned in October as a fundraiser for Advance Abingdon, the town’s organization to revitalize Main Street.

The horses’ home will be at the Abingdon Market Pavilion.
A decision by Abingdon’s Town Council to keep 10 Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses at the site where the farmers market normally takes place pushes the farmers market vendors and customers into the street on Tuesday, Aug. 4, and Saturday, Aug. 8. The Clydesdales are coming as part of the Virginia Highlands Festival. It just so happens that those August dates are during the farmers market’s popular Tomato Fest, a time when many vendors make the lion’s share of their money.