Tradition runs as deep as the Valley in communities nestled in the shadows of the Blue Ridge. The annual Augusta County Fair that began Tuesday is an example.

Wading into the dog days, the two campaigns for president wear the look of panting, sun-beaten hounds longing for the solace of shade.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Clouds of faux economic doom hover, their presence perpetuated by factors real and perceived.

John McCain, like Bob Dole before him, is a Republican senator seeking to win the presidency in spite of himself.

Between gasps and breathless tittering over Barack Obama’s Middle Eastern and European forays and the exhilarating prospect of the junior senator’s election as president, television pundits and the Washington press corps are waving their tongues in Pavlovian fashion over speculation that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine might fill the No. 2 position on the Democratic ticket.

The unfamiliar sound of harmony drifted from Waynesboro’s City Hall on Monday, when Vice Mayor Frank Lucente announced plans to push the Economic Development Authority from beneath the city umbrella into the bright light of independence and self-sufficiency.

Treading along a conceptual trail worn to a furrow by bureaucracy’s thundering hooves, Virginia educrats endeavor to gallop where others have stumbled. The state Department of Education wants to increase high school graduation rates by linking them to accreditation, adding teeth to mandate by employing a data management system that tracks students from prekindergarten to 12th grade, or from educational cradle to compulsory grave.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Mark Warner is either disturbingly facile, an easy mark for a group that can’t hit one, or he thinks you are.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a startling observation Wednesday, startling because he seemed so freshly aware of something acutely known by those of us among the rabble who, paraphrasing George Bailey, do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this country.

Like Shakespeare’s Leontes, Americans amid crisis are inclined to believe “all’s true that is mistrusted,” and so to the fore stride politicians with false villains in tow, this time, oil speculators.

In a classic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man of science seeks to enhance his wife’s beauty by removing from her cheek a singular imperfection, an offending birthmark.

None of us knows when our time is up, but the passing of two people in the past week offered me a chance to reflect.

Bill Hausrath gazes upon a vacant structure on West Main Street and sees the Waynesboro of his youth and the one of succeeding generations, a hub of life in a place where most of life’s energy has migrated slightly west.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Councilman Frank Lucente’s reaction to word that an Outback Steakhouse will join the retail ranks in the bustling West End intrigued us

Its touch perceptible on all points of Americans’ person, the federal government seeks to extend its reach in literal fashion.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, fancied by some as a running mate to Barack Obama, has met a qualification expressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson via the hot mic.

In the lingering glow of test missile launches in Iran, presumptuous Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama proposes anew a change in American foreign policy which can hardly be believed.

Mayor Tim Williams announced that he had selected Councilwoman Lorie Smith to serve on the finance panel along with him and Vice Mayor Frank Lucente. Smith’s addition to the committee would complete a rudimentary mathematical sum, bringing to three the number of council members on the committee and thereby the committee itself into compliance with city code.

An ostensible mark of conservatism is resistance to change, and so the Shenandoah Valley resists, preserving perfectly its distinct political hue.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Hubris nibbles at rituals and fervor, and misnomers arise in their place, producing a distortion.

Political ceremonies are choreographed events, meaning that attempting to cull substance from them can be like trying to pull pulp from a hollow oak.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Inclinations to invite Kim Jong Il for Fourth of July hot dogs and hamburgers should be considered with skepticism.

In an historic fit of cogency, government in 1951 produced a sound tonic for a spreading urban malady.

In the practice of ancient Rome, a triumphant general, apt to forget his mortality amid adulation, heard a reminder in cant, uttered by a slave standing over his shoulder: “Look behind. Remember that you are a man.”

At the height of fervor over an acronym, WWJD, evangelical leftist Tony Campolo asked a pointed question: “Is Jesus a Republican or a Democrat?”