Vance: How Everything and Anything is Possible in the New Year
By Roger Vance Traveling from vision to reality can be a long and arduous journey, as if on an unmarked
Read moreA View from the Gap
Vance: Thankful and Ever Hopeful
The mere fact that a day after a big snowstorm–with roadways still dicey—some 350 people turned out for a “Rural Summit” hosted by Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall and joined by Supervisors Tony Buffington, Geary Higgins and Kristen Umstattd, speaks volumes about the importance Loudoun residents attach to the subject. Even more impressive was the level of the discussions, the composition of the attendees—including old farm families and young rural entrepreneurs—and the sense of urgency that permeated the summit.
Read moreVance: Neighbors Helping Neighbors
By Roger Vance An important story is being written that could have profound impacts on our region’s health and quality
Read moreVance: If Not Now, When?
By Roger Vance With the dawn of each day we are all offered a fresh opportunity to chart our course,
Read moreVance: Future-Making History
We are making history on July 1 in Hillsboro. We are also making our future. And that is something to celebrate indeed. But more than that, as we celebrate our nation’s birth and pay tribute to our democracy on this day, we are holding high an example of good governance—when a grassroots vision for the future was perceived and embraced by politicians and officials at the federal, state, regional, county and local levels.
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Vance: A Call for Rural Renewal
Loudoun County is approaching a fork in the road. The path we choose to follow, as we near the end of the second decade of the 21stcentury, will determine the future that awaits generations to come. On the horizon in one direction the outlines of some of the shapes of our future are coming into focus. But what we cannot yet see is what awaits us behind that next curve, beyond that next ridge.
Read moreVance: Diamonds in the Rough
Sometimes we see liabilities when in fact we are looking at real assets. We see something that is old and perhaps worn around the edges as old-fashioned, out of step, not up to snuff, inefficient and thus ineffective. We believe that something new and bigger must be, will be, better. When this happens, we often don’t see the treasures hidden in plain view.
Read moreVance: Recognition is the Foundation for Dialogue
I am glad the silence is in fact not deafening and that my January View From the Gap has prompted much dialogue and discussion in this newspaper and elsewhere. The confluence of recent events that prompted my commentary—anti-immigrant fervor, local Klan activity and the juxtaposition of holidays honoring Confederate heroes and civil rights leader Martin Luther King—seemed to me to beg for some contextual bearings that might help lead us toward reconciliation.
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Vance: When Silence is Deafening
The coincidence and timing of events can sometimes serve to focus our attention, heighten awareness or offer us a different perspective—and challenge us to raise our voice or to be silent.
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Vance: Building Bandwidth
As I sit in Hillsboro’s Town office in the Old Stone School to write this column, I’m marveling at the lightning-fast internet access speeds we are now getting within the landmark’s 143-year-old stone walls. And, I’m feeling confident this level of service will soon be available to all of our residents in town and in the surrounding area. A long time coming and—as with many of the challenges in this small and historic town—the internet solution has arrived with a quixotic twist, helped along by a widening bandwidth of community activism that is driving a series of exciting initiatives about to bear fruit in the New Year.
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