Free Republic

Christiana Briganti-Dunn is a civil engineer who oversees design-build projects for the Virginia Department of Transportation, but two years ago, she found herself holding a set of paint swatches up against a wall like a homeowner planning a kitchen renovation. The wall was at Chapman Mill, a five-story stone gristmill built in the 18th century near Broad Run, Va. Christiana’s job was to pick colors that would be painted on a set of bridge abutments on nearby Interstate 66. Everyone wanted the bridges to look pretty. “When we were meeting with the communities of Haymarket and western Prince William County,...

Dread. Usually not a word one associates with the New Year… well, provided one is not a glass half-empty sort. Hopeful, encouraged, positive… that sort of rot is what travels the aural circuit in the week or so following clean-slate day. But ‘round these parts – and near the nether regions of other state capitals – the newly-birthed year is greeted with a level of enthusiasm rivaled only by the anticipatory feeling derived from the possibility of a TSA cavity search. And that point of comparison is frighteningly accurate; given said cavity is the only place our local legislators have...