Martha Woodroof

Math Professor Laura Taalman talks about the joy  (really?)  of higher mathematics and Sudoku.

As mentioned in an episode of The Spark, here is a phone interview related to the historic Koinonia Farm. 

Unpeopled unremarkable places exude irony or pathos or deadpan humor when pictured by Harrisonburg photographer Jeff James.  He finds the scenes during weekly long walks. 

Inman Majors, who lives in Waynesboro and teaches creative writing at JMU, is a member of the fabled football Majors clan. His latest novel, Love’s Winning Plays is a comic riff on the culture of college football. 

A sample of Inman's book:
(Reprinted from Love’s Winning Plays by Inman Majors. Copyright © 2012 by Inman Majors. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

In the locker room after practice one of the quarterbacks had coined a new song and was performing it to the clapping delight of the others. It went like this:

Coach Love rollin down the street

Got that Mack Daddy grin

Gal so fine, she got to be kin

He stepping high, stepping low

Charlottesville writer Jane Barnes worked on the PBS miniseries THE MORMONS. Jane, who describes herself as a quester, became enamored of the young and bumptious Joseph Smith.  She talks about her near-conversion to the Mormon Church and the writing of her latest book, Falling in Love with Joseph Smith: My Search for the Real Prophet.