Street and trail signage, bike lanes, parking and traffic flow were discussed at a meeting with a handful of Damascus residents, businesses owners, park service and Mount Rogers Planning District representatives last week at the Town Hall.

A 46-year-old Washington County woman on Wednesday was charged with animal neglect after law enforcement officers seized seven horses and 10 dogs.

Officials still don’t know what might have killed Gunner, the Damascus Police Department’s 5-year-old German shepherd drug dog who died mysteriously last month.

A 46-year-old Washington County woman was charged Wednesday afternoon with animal neglect after law enforcement officers seized seven horses and 10 dogs.

Matthew Pape rubs the knot on his forefinger then opens his palm, out from under the awning.
“Yep,” he said. “Seems like it’s raining harder.”

Discussion of financial problems dominated the Damascus Town Council meeting this month.
“I want people to realize that we do have a financial shortfall and problem,” Council member Jim Cartwright said.

At its regular meeting last week, the Washington County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to appropriate $532,631 of leftover school money to the school system’s capital improvement fund, which is controlled by the supervisors. It’s an amount less than half of its leftover money from the 2006-20007 fiscal year.

When people interested in environmental protection come face to face with people who extract natural resources from the environment, the scene is frequently characterized, charitably sometimes, as confrontational. Think northern spotted owl proponents facing down loggers in the old-growth Pacific Northwest and the stories about saw-foiling chains locked around targeted trees.
But in Abingdon last week, people working with endangered species spent three days with coal mining officials and while positions were clear and goals delineated, what emerged was not confrontational but largely cooperative. One speaker early in the presentations Thursday understood the dynamic that would not lead in the direction of conflict. The gathering was of the 80 percent of moderates on all sides of the issue. Absent was the 20 percent holding extreme views.

It was Gobble’s chili that won at last week’s Abingdon High School chili competition and brought the life skills class to the Washington County Fair Chili Cook-Off competition Monday night, marking the opening of the Washington County Fair held through Sept. 15 at the fairgrounds.

It’s been called “the big one.” They’ve been called “The Greatest Generation.”
The two, World War II and the men and women who lived through it, are the focus of Ken Burns’ seven-part, 15-hour long PBS special “The War.”