Recently, I received a phone call from a reporter with WVIR 29 News.

When is the Virginia legislature going to wake up

What a joy to have had our summer Heritage Theater Festival back after last summer’s absence, and the new garage is a special bonus.

For the last eight years, the University of Virginia Health System and other local health care providers have fielded a unique and dedicated group of health professionals to the Remote Area Medical Clinic in Wise.

New candidates abound, but Virgil Goode is a proven, great Virginia legislator. Vote for him and be glad.

Calling for FEMA reform while ignoring its reality does Daily Progress readers a disservice.

I want to respond to the crime that has been happening in Charlottesville lately.

I am writing about the parking situation at the Uni-versity of Virginia Medical Center. It is, in a word, disgraceful.

In reporting U.S. senatorial candidate Mark Warner’s stump speech in Palmyra on July 19, The Daily Progress described listeners as “125 adoring supporters.”

Barack Obama served only two years in the U.S. Senate before he decided he was too important to be just a senator.

Many of us, born and brought up in America, nurtured in its schools taking part in its public celebrations, recite the Pledge of Allegiance as easily as our family names. Seldom do we consider the meaning of the words we so glibly repeat.

The planet on which Ellen Goodman lives sounds like a very dreary place. At least, that is the impression she gives in her column “Outsourcing labor ... to you!” (The Daily Progress, July 21).

Wild, native cougars do exist and are surviving in the Old Dominion.

In recent months, the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club has supported a reconsideration of dredging as a key mechanism for providing water storage capacity.

It is not an easy task to admit the futility of further treatment or repeated hospitalizations, but how many of us actually know we have other options?

Although it receives a paltry $1-$1.5 million a year on average, the county’s Acqui-sition of Conservation Easements program has protected 5,560 acres since 2000.

The political cartoon published in The Daily Progress, July 19 reaches a new low in tastelessness.

Land-use taxation and the ACE program are both touted by government as a way to preserve land. But for what purpose?

Is President Bush to blame for all our woes?

For many years Virginia provided the lowest compensation in the country for court-appointed lawyers.

So let’s see …

I would respectfully disagree with the author of “Protester needs to learn history” (The Daily Progress, July 18), who claims in his letter that Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with our Constitution because he was in France at the time it was written.

After reading the article in the July 17 Daily Progress (“County building’s green roof a tourist draw”), I wondered whether the County Office Building’s green roof success story might be applied to commercial buildings in Al-bemarle County — and whether Albemarle should incentivize builders to install green roofs.

Shame on the Charlottesville Police Department for its confused priorities.

In “Bush warps Jeffersonian principles by prosecuting a ‘war of choice’,” (The Daily Progress, July 13), columnists R.K. Ramazani and Scott Harrop display an impressive familiarity with Jeffersonian quotations — and even with Jeffersonian thinking.

I am a dog owner, and I accept complete responsibility for my dog.

I am pleased to write in response to a letter published July 7 (“County needs to build golf course,” The Daily Progress).

The author of “Liberal dismay for Bush in a nutshell” (The Daily Progress, July 11) employs specious sarcasm to castigate his “liberal” friends for their disagreements with President Bush.

On July 4 a letter writer expresses his opinion that George W. Bush is a “thoroughly good and decent man” deserving of our respect (“Writer’s attack on Bush insulting,” The Daily Progress).

President Monroe’s modest “Cabin Castle” — as he called Highland, later Ash Lawn-Highland — never attempted to compete with Jefferson’s Monticello or Madison’s Montpelier — except in the spring pea contest.