Commentaries & Essays

For many families, weekends are a time to catch up with relatives who live someplace else. 

As North America looks ahead to Monday’s solar eclipse, Charlottesville writer Betty Joyce Nash looks back to a time when the world seemed smaller and easier to comprehend.  

Betty Joyce Nash was a newspaper reporter when the Klan came to town in Hendersonville, North Carolina 28 years ago.  As Charlottesville prepares for its own visit from the KKK, Nash, who now makes her home in central Virginia, remembers covering the Klan in 1989.

For most of their lives William and Bessie Hudnall, lived in Northumberland County in the tiny village of Ophelia on the Chesapeake Bay. They've been married for 79 years. He's 102 and next month she'll be 98. For Valentine's Day they look back on their lives, beginning with a card sent by William to Bessie's sister.