Preview events for the seventh annual Charlottesville Pride Festival began over the weekend.  WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

There’s a honkytonk bar outside of Winchester, VA, that defines rural America, country music, and old time tradition.  It’s called The Troubadour Lounge and was owned by Jim McCoy, a local country music legend who was the first radio DJ to play Patsy Cline on the air.  When author John Lingan went there to find Jim what he found was a town searching for itself.  John’s book

Virginia biologists have their eyes on a number of problems in the state, such as giant hogweed and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer. Another problem on the rise – mange in black bears – might have a new treatment, as WMRA’s Christopher Clymer Kurtz reports.

More than 50 years ago, race riots swept across the United States during what became known as the “long, hot summer of 1967.” Historian Steve Gillon spoke at the Miller Center in Charlottesville Thursday to discuss his new book about the Kerner Commission and the investigation into the unrest. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

Hospital food gets a bad rap, but Augusta Health in Fishersville is trying to change that. The hospital has harvested roughly 10,000 pounds of fresh produce so far this year from an on-site farm. It’s part of an initiative to improve the quality of food inside the hospital and raise awareness that good nutrition is the best medicine.   WMRA’s Jessie Knadler reports.

A recent USA Today report named Harrisonburg as the Virginia city “hit hardest by extreme poverty.” City officials say that report is misleading.  And advocates for people in need point to other measures of poverty. WMRA’s Christopher Clymer Kurtz reports.

Across the nation and beyond – and now in Harrisonburg – local choirs have formed to sing at the bedsides of people in end-of-life care – patients who are at the “thresholds of life.” The singers are part of “threshold choirs,” as WMRA’s Christopher Clymer Kurtz reports.