DOWN MEMORY LANE
Sept. 15, 1999
Artist Michelle Powell of Woodville left for Colorado on Sept. 11. She took with her a tribute to those who survived the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. last April.
“The flowers of Columbine” is a color pencil drawing depicting three young ladies, students at Columbine High, and the horror they experienced on the afternoon of April 20. The original picture was taken by photographer Mark Leffingwell from behind police lines just after the ladies had come out of the building.
While in Colorado, Mrs. Powell plains on visiting those people plus the principal at Columbine High School. She plans to present him with a limited edition print, and would like to talk with some of the students there. She will also meet with a counselor who worked with some of the children after the shooting. This counselor knows the three girls in the painting, and also has a print.
While there, Mrs. Powell hopes to speak with the Governor of Colorado to try and gain some publicity for the drawing. She wants to put the drawing in a public place, but she also wants it to “have more influence that just sitting on a wall.”
Washington Mayor Stu Willis proposed to convene a special meeting on Sept. 29 to air Peter Kramer’s appeal of the ARB’s Mercantile Building/Clopton House decision. In a letter to County Administrator John McCarthy on Aug. 31, Kramer appealed the decisions of Aug. 12 and Aug. 27 by the Washington Architectural Review Board for Historic Resources that approved “the demolition of historic buildings and interesting architectural treatments to historic structures located on the Kramer property and the Clopton House.” The Mercantile Building/Clopton House complex is to be used by Sunnyside Farms products and offices, and plans were presented to the Town’s ARB in August.
In a related activity, the Town Council heard and approved the application by Sunnyside Farms for a Special Use Permit for a retail expansion of the Mercantile Building that would exceed 1,000 square feet (to a total of 1,500 square feet).
Nov. 13, 2003
If God gave everyone a sense of humor to put things in perspective, as Rev. Jennings W. Hobson III says in a letter to the editor in today’s Rappahannock News, it hasn’t kicked in for some of Rappahannock’s clergy.
Far from thinking there is anything humorous about a calendar of naked men as Hobson suggests, some Rappahannock County pastors, mostly Baptist, find it offensive, to put it mildly.
In a random survey of the pulse of the pulpit — in a county that has 31 churches, more than half of which are Baptist — some feel the “Men of Rappahannock County calendar is downright “pornographic.”
“It’s nakedness isn’t it,” says one Baptist pastor. Another gave a sermon on “public nudity” entitled, “Living in a Brave Nude World.”
The Rev. Phil Bailey of the Washington Baptist Church feels differently and gave his personal views on the calendar from the pulpit: “Modesty is something that should be held high. That’s just my personal opinion. I was shocked when I first heard about the calendar.
Jon Heddleston, pastor of Reynolds Memorial Baptist Church in Sperryville, also gave a sermon of “Living in a Brave Nude World” on Oct. 26.
Cathy Kreyling, organizer of the calendar, was asked to comment on what the pastors have been saying.
“I’d like people to look at it before they decide,” she said. “If after having seen the calendar they find it offensive, don’t buy it.”
High in the hills of the Blue Ridge mountains, the innovative sculptures and drawings of Robert E. Kuhn have been shrouded in obscurity for more than 30 years.
The almost forgotten works of his father are once again available for public viewing at the new Toyy-Kuhn Fine Art Gallery on Gay Street in Little Washington.
During the 1950s and 1960s, he gained national acclaim for his lyrical and figurative welded steel sculptures of American life. During his lifetime he had 28 one-main shows and was the recipient of almost 80 awards and prizes.
But Kuhn did not measure his worth through established institutions and the accolades of others. In 1967 he removed himself from the art world, where in pursuit of personal freedom he retired to Tanner Ridge in Stanley to work in seclusion until he death in 2000.