While Shenandoah National Park is open to the public, only a few bathrooms are open and no services or help would be available if someone gets hurt or stranded on the mountain. Volunteers and park-related groups are trying to fill in the gaps with clean-ups and paying for portable bathrooms.
As the General Assembly gets down to business, Del. Tony Wilt has introduced a bill to undo an inadvertent hassle that one of his bills from 2018 has imposed on Virginia public college campuses.
The Elderly Aunt offers her thoughtful responses to your questions about this wild ride we call life (just please, no financial questions). Her column will run on the second and fourth Monday of each month. To get the Elderly Aunt’s advice, email your question to harrisonburgcitizen@gmail.com with the subject line “Elderly Aunt question.”
Rummaging through a bright yellow bucket filled with kale scraps, orange rinds and coffee grounds, Nidhi Vinod gives the go-ahead to dump the contents into a compost bin tucked into a corner of the parking lot by the Turner Pavilion downtown. She hands the bucket to Amelia Morrison who cleans it and places it back on the trailer which is attached to a bicycle. They grab the next bucket and check it for non-compostable items before adding it to the mix of kitchen scraps, fruit peelings, bio plastics and paper napkins.
“Sometimes the forecast is a big bust, like the horrible snow we got in December,” Urbanowicz recalled. “There was a 15-inch difference in the snow totals within forty miles. That’s the humbling part of being a meteorologist. You’re still trying to predict the future.”