by Laurence Hammack | Jan 31, 2022 | Miscellaneous (mostly animals)
The following is an article about sex-crazed gypsy moths. For those of you who are still with us, the U.S. Forest Service is taking public comments on a program — which it more discreetly describes as a “mating disruption treatment” — to eradicate an invasive species...
by Laurence Hammack | Jan 30, 2022 | Courts/legal issues
On an April afternoon in 2017, Roanoke police officer Kimber Hughes was driving through the Lansdowne Park public housing complex when something caught her eye. A man, known by authorities as a suspected member of a street gang, was standing outside, surrounded by a...
by Laurence Hammack | Jan 30, 2022 | Courts/legal issues
In March 1974, Roger Trenton Davis was sentenced to 40 years in prison for 9 ounces of marijuana, an unusually harsh punishment that would make him nationally known as the “marijuana martyr.” Today, possession of small amounts of marijuana is legal in Virginia. Davis...
by Laurence Hammack | Jan 30, 2022 | Environment
On an overcast October afternoon, clouds cloaked the top of Poor Mountain as a construction crew worked to string a natural gas pipeline across the highest point in the Roanoke Valley. At 3,720 feet above sea level, this is one of the places where concerns about the...
by Laurence Hammack | Dec 16, 2018 | Environment
PEMBROKE — The clear, cold waters of Little Stony Creek cascaded over granite bedrock as Rick Sizemore watched from the banks and wondered. How could a natural gas pipeline run through this wild trout stream, on a piece of wooded property so sacred to Sizemore that...