Posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The State of Virginia was recently recognized by the Center for Digital Government with a third place ranking in the Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards. The recognition came largely for Virginia's new syndication and alert services. In accepting the award Governor Mark Warner said, "Our real-time online live help customer service continues to set the pace for the nation, and the portal's desktop alerts via live RSS feeds ensure that Virginia.gov users always have access to the most current information." The VIPNet portal and its RSS feeds are managed by the Virginia Information Providers Network. There are currently at least 34 feeds. Virginia uses RSS feeds not only for alerts, but also as a monitoring service that keeps citizens informed of new resources and services added to the portal.

Bobby Maddex, the Director of Digital Media for Ancient Faith Ministries speaks with Hieromonk Fr. Basil and Hieromonk Archdeacon Sergius of Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, West Virginia USA. They are here today to tell us about the new church the monastery is building and how you might be able to help. If you would like to help please go to; Church donation page: https://www.holycross.org/pages/new-church Video #1, “Let the Walls of Jerusalem Be Builded”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjDsuvUIPec

Matthew interviews Nicholas Chapman, the Managing Director of Orthodox Christian Books, about an 18th-century Orthodox convert from Virginia named Philip Ludwell III. Ludwell gave George Washington his commission in the army and was a cousin of George's wife Martha. Learn more HERE and HERE.

Virginia Tech starting quarterback Kyron Drones has been ruled out of Saturday's game against Syracuse with a lower-body injury.

The NCAA Tournament field is set, and some college basketball fans in the D.C. area will be paying close attention to the First Four games. The First Four games in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday feature the Howard Bison, the District's lone representative in the tournament, and the University of Virginia.

As one series with Virginia ends, another begins for Maryland. The Terrapins and Cavaliers have announced a renewal of their men's basketball rivalry, to begin next year.

Here's a campaign event of note, set for Monday in the great state of Pennsylvania and featuring a lovely and personable pooch. "Join West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and Babydog for food and fellowship at a Team Trump Road Trip Event in Erie, Pennsylvania," the Trump campaign noted Sunday in the briefest of brief written notices.

Virginia's marquee matchups for U.S. House races in Tuesday's election feature tight contests in a district being vacated by three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and a district known to flip between Democratic and Republican control.

A judge in a rural Virginia city has ordered two officials there to certify the results of the election after they filed a lawsuit last month threatening not to certify unless they could hand-count the ballots.

Two swing seats in Virginia, both key Democratic targets in the party's bid to reverse Republican control of the U.S. House, remained up in the air early Wednesday morning.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia won reelection to his third term Tuesday, defeating Republican challenger Hung Cao.

Democratic House candidate Eugene Vindman was victorious Wednesday over his Republican opponent for Virginia's 7th District.

Triangle, VA — United Mine Workers of America President Cecil E. Roberts recently called proposed legislation that would reduce the scope of mine safety inspections in West Virginia and amend the state’s underground ventilation laws “one of the most outrageous attempts to slash critical protections for miners’ safety and health on the job that I have ever seen.”

Washington — Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is threatening acting Labor Secretary Julie Su with a subpoena over her “failure to provide the requested information” on the Department of Labor’s independent contractor rule.

Falls Church, VA – Virginia will become the first state in the nation to codify the Voluntary Protection Programs so that it becomes a permanent fixture of the state's workplace safety program, once recently approved legislation is enacted July 1.

Washington — The House Steering Committee has selected Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to serve as chair of the renamed Education and the Workforce Committee for the 118th Congress.

Richmond, VA — The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry has issued a hazard alert warning of the potential dangers of unsafe materials handling and storage in the beverage distribution and retail industry.

The agreement eliminates the need for additional Requests for Proposals (RFPs), allowing public bodies to bypass lengthy procurement processes and acquire essential equipment faster and more cost-effectively. 

Blacksburg, VA — The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab is planning to venture outside of sports and recreation to create ratings for safety helmets.

"We're thrilled to showcase our new booth design, which reflects the evolution of Virginia Dare and our dedication to being a flavor-first innovator,” says Philip Caputo, Virginia Dare’s marketing & consumer insights manager. “Our new facility has significantly expanded our capabilities, and we can't wait to give visitors a taste of what we can achieve together."

Officials praise the new location as more efficient with state-of-the-art equipment upgrades. Moreover, they said it’s designed to accommodate future growth, expansion, and increased output—all without sacrificing lead times.

The Verona facility has the capacity to produce more than 100,000 pounds of product a day using high-pressure processing, a cold pasteurization technology that retains the flavor and nutritional benefits of CAVA’s fresh ingredients, with no preservatives.

Rob Menefee wants to continue to grow his business. Considering he already has three locations and $12-plus million in annual sales, that is no small task. 

In a move to reshape flooring distribution, Transom Capital Group has announced the formation of Artivo Surfaces, a new parent company that brings together distributors Virginia Tile and Galleher. This strategic consolidation creates a multi-regional powerhouse with 48 locations across 18 states, offering an extensive range of flooring solutions from coast to coast. 

TV host Mark Bowe brings his "Barnwood Builders" expertise to life with Barnwood Village, a trio of guest cottages in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. These 400-square-foot cabins blend rustic charm with modern amenities, featuring Bowe's signature Bruce BarnwoodLiving flooring.

The company has opened a $300 million fully-cooked food production facility in Danville, Va.

Shamrock Farms is investing $59 million into the project, which includes adding additional equipment, cold storage space and a new production filling line.

With renewed attention on mining gold at both new and historical sites in Virginia, the state’s regulations and practices should be updated to protect against the potential environmental and health impacts of gold mining — though the risk of adverse impacts cannot be eliminated completely, says a new report.

For the past five years, Carter has been fulfilling his dream as an instructor at Gar-Field and currently has 80 students enrolled as first- and second-year students. 

Mrs. Virginia Grace Rooney is a retired banking manager and assistant treasurer whose career spanned more than 40 years and who, at the age of80 years, earned a black belt in Taekwondo.

Fast Guard Service looks toward assistance customers in the aftermath of multiple tornados plaguing the Midwest.

Defense attorney Cody Villalon Discusses Self-Defense Laws in Virginia in the Event of an Attack.

Continuing Medical Education for Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants & Physicians

Continuing Medical Education for Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Registered Nurses & Physicians

Insights from Jeffrey MacBride: Operational Overhaul for Design & Manufacturing: Driving Efficiency and Growth for Virginia-Based Company

Law firm to sponsor 'Veteran of the Race' and 'Caution Flag' warning as a premier partner

Bringing Art and Garden Installations to Global Beneficiaries

The highly competitive national award recognizes a state Chief Administrator for their passion, outstanding service, leadership and commitment to state government.

Seven of the awards include funding specifically for HVAC-related projects.

The bill significantly reduces the cost of a geothermal installation, spurs job creation, and hopes to inspire more contractors to tap into the geothermal market.

While the presidential result might take time, many local offices will be tallied and recorded quickly.

The post With polls closed in Virginia, there are some election results we’ll probably know tonight appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

What is known of marriage in early Virginia Indian society is limited to the observations of Jamestown colonists, visiting English observers, and later American historians, and is mostly applicable to the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans of Tsenacomoco, a paramount chiefdom of twenty-eight to thirty-two groups living in Tidewater Virginia. Marriage was crucial for survival in Indian society, because men and women needed to work as partners in order to accomplish their many daily and seasonal tasks. The man initiated courtship and looked for a woman who would perform her assigned tasks well. The woman could decline a marriage offer, but if she did choose to accept it, her parents also needed to approve the offer. The groom's parents, meanwhile, paid a bridewealth, or marriage payment, to the bride's parents to compensate them for her lost labor. Men were allowed to have additional wives, so long as the husband could afford to provide for them; for chiefs especially, these wives served as symbols of wealth. It is estimated that the paramount chief Powhatan (Wahunsonacock) had as many as one hundred wives during his lifetime. While a man's first marriage was expected to last for life, additional marriages were likely negotiated for shorter terms. Unless a woman was married to a chief, she was allowed to conduct extramarital affairs, provided she had her husband's permission (which was usually given). Punishment for dishonesty on this score could be severe, however. Virginia Indians held onto their marriage traditions long after contact with the English, and marriage between Indians and the English was rare.
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 17:44:08 EST

Early Virginia Indians spoke dialects of Algic, Iroquoian, or Siouan, three large linguistic families that include many of the more than eight hundred indigenous languages in North America. Among Virginia's Algic-speakers were the Powhatan Indians, who lived in the Tidewater and encountered the Jamestown settlers in 1607. Little is known of their language—a form of Algic known as Virginia Algonquian—although Captain John Smith and William Strachey both composed influential vocabulary lists. The Nottoways and the Meherrins lived south of the James near the fall line and spoke Iroquoian. Although the Meherrin language was never recorded, it has been identified as Iroquoian based on geography. In 1820, John Wood interviewed the elderly Nottoway "queen" Edie Turner and created a word list that eventually was recognized as Iroquoian. Virginia's Siouan-speakers, meanwhile, largely lived west of the fall line and included the Monacans, the Mannahoacs, and the Saponis. Many Virginia Indians, encouraged by the requirements of trade, diplomacy, and warfare, spoke multiple languages, and when the English arrived, they and the Powhatans eagerly exchanged boys to learn each other's language and serve as interpreters. By the twentieth century, most if not all Virginia Indian languages had become extinct, meaning that no native speakers survived. In 2005, the Terrence Malick film The New World presented a form of Algonquian based on the Smith and Strachey lists and the work of the linguist Blair Rudes.
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:20:19 EST

The record of women in colonial Virginia begins with Native Americans and gradually includes European and African women. The experiences of these women differed widely depending on their ethnicity, their status, and the gender roles defined by their culture. In the colony's early years, survival, not tradition, influenced the roles of men and women, whether white or black, free or unfree. Planters' wives, indentured servants, and slaves labored in the tobacco fields alongside one another, while an unmarried woman with land could engage in business the same way a man might. As Jamestown grew from a fortified outpost into the capital of a permanent colony, colonists began to envision a stable society based on the patriarchal system they had known in England, where men held authority over their wives, children, and other dependents. But the uneven sex ratio, the scattered nature of settlement, the high mortality rate, and frequent remarriages made the transfer of such ideas difficult, if not impossible. Historians agree that a society with less emphasis on gender roles gradually ceded to the traditional patriarchal system, but the exact timing of this change is not entirely clear. By the mid-seventeenth century, the colony's lawmakers began to use ideas about gender and race to codify two distinct roles for Virginia women: the so-called good wife, typically free and white, who performed domestic work in her home and raised her children; and the agricultural laborer, typically enslaved and black. By the end of the seventeenth century, members of the planter elite had separated themselves from the rest of Virginia's residents with their landed wealth, enslaved laborers, and wives who managed their homes. Although middling women (women of moderate means) continued to work alongside their husbands in the fields and operate taverns and other businesses well into the eighteenth century, all classes of women became relegated to the private sphere while their husbands increasingly dominated the public world. By the end of the colonial period, women, whether rich or poor, urban or rural, were expected to skillfully manage a household and provide an example for their children—acts that bolstered patriarchal authority in colonial Virginia.
Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:30:23 EST

Much of what is known about towns and town life in early Virginia Indian society is drawn from archaeological investigation, the observations of English settlers, and the work of Captain John Smith, who between 1607 and 1609 explored and mapped the Chesapeake Bay area. Through a combination of these sources, we know that most Virginia Indian towns were located close to fertile soil and along waterways, which were both a source of food and drinking water and a means of transport. Towns generally conformed to one of two layouts: a dispersed settlement pattern, in which the houses were scattered according to which fields were being cultivated at the time; and a nucleated settlement pattern, in which a palisade surrounds a tightly packed group of houses. The latter layout was usually found in frontier areas, where the threat of attack by enemy tribes was greater. Indian towns were busy, intensely social places and each resident, regardless of age or sex, was expected to play a particular role. This resulted in a tight-knit community that could be supportive, but constricting. Privacy was limited, so great emphasis was placed on manners and politeness and on releasing tension through a nightly group activity like singing and dancing. The quality of life in Indian towns declined in Virginia after the English arrived and began to encroach on Indian land.
Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:08:31 EST

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" was the official state song of Virginia from 1940 to 1997. Written in 1878 by the famed Black minstrel performer James A. Bland, it was one of a number of popular minstrel songs that sentimentalized life in the Old South and perpetuated a myth of Black nostalgia for life in slavery on plantations. Legislation to replace "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" was introduced every year between 1988 and 1994. From 1994 to 1997, the Virginia General Assembly made lyric changes to remove Black dialect and references to slavery in an attempt to make the song less offensive. In 1997, the General Assembly demoted "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" from the official state song to "state song emeritus." In 2015, the General Assembly designated two official state songs: "Our Great Virginia," based on the folk song "Oh Shenandoah," was named the official traditional song, and "Sweet Virginia Breeze" was named the official popular song. 
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 09:11:41 EST