By Lyn Widmyer
I consider myself an environmentalist with one major exception: brown marmorated stink bugs. I don’t care about the circle of life and ecological balance when it comes to these marauders. I say kill them all.
I am like the Terminator when it comes to brown stink bugs. The difference is I am armed with [...]

By Debora Harding
This year’s CATF play “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon inspired a nostalgic glance backwards. The play’s protagonist, 25-year-old Stephen Bellamy, serves as national press secretary to a governor running for president. He becomes snagged in a quagmire that shatters his political idealism and puts his professional survival at risk.
Beginning when I was 18, [...]

Renowned folklorists/muscians/storytellers Michael & Carrie Kline visit Jefferson County August 21–22 for an outdoor concert in the country followed the next day by a workshop called Chronicling Family Stories. Both events take place at CraftWorks at Cool Spring, the craft school and center for creative learning near Charles Town.
Spurred in part by a wildly popular [...]

Compiled by David Lillard
A story in the July edition of The Observer contained email exchanges between Jefferson County deputy clerks and organizers of the petition drive to force a referendum vote on the new Zoning Ordinance. Over the past few weeks there has been a lively online dialogue on this Observer story and the release [...]

Petition Organizer Paid By Anti-Zoning Firm
Recently released documents reveal financial dealings between Lee Snyder, the owner of Jefferson Utilities, and Ronda Lehman, who spearheaded a petition drive on the county’s new zoning ordinance. The documents include a detailed itemization of expenses made by Jefferson Utilities since October 2008, including four payments to “Ronda Lehman Consultant” [...]

As rehearsals began in mid-June for the 2009 Contemporary American Theater Festival, each writer shared thoughts with Nelson Pressley about the work coming to Shepherdstown and the working lives that brought them here.

What’s the best way to categorize this year’s crop of playwrights at the Contemporary American Theater Festival? The five faces are largely new: one returning writer from 1996 and four rookies (including an esteemed 65 year old). Their themes are topical: one brutal dissection of marriage and four dramas that feel torn from the headlines. The demographics are, well, retro: one black woman and four white men.

A simple way to sort this year’s slate, which runs from July 8 through August 2, would be between the bluntly political works in the Frank Center—Beau Willimon’s campaign drama “Farragut North” and Steven Dietz’s 9/11 conspiracy thriller “Yankee Tavern”—and the romantically oriented duo in the Studio, Michael Weller’s marital slugfest “Fifty Words” and Eisa Davis’s era-hopping “The History of Light.” [...]

 
New documents released by the Jefferson County Clerk’s office reveal for the first time how close the deputy clerks worked with zoning referendum petition organizers Ed Burns and Ronda Lehman. The documents were released following a Freedom of Information Act request by The Observer, and are part of a wider drive to shed light on [...]