In Richmond last week, the General Assembly wrestled with a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, and another that would declare that life begins at conception. In Annapolis, the state Legislature narrowly approved a measure legalizing same-sex marriage. Read full article > >

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Hill agenda thin on social issues as Republicans remain patient

Virginia is poised to lift a 19-year-old limit on handgun purchases, with the Republican-controlled state Senate expected to do away with the one-gun-per-month cap in a final vote Friday. With the purchase limit likely headed for extinction, Richmond appears to have grown friendlier to gun rights since Republicans took control of the evenly divided Senate last month, pro-gun and gun-control activists agree. Read full article > >

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Virginia expected to lift one-per-month limit on handgun purchases

A 2-year-old boy who authorities say was abducted following a home invasion robbery and double homicide in Richmond, Virginia, was found late Saturday, police said.

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Boy, 2, found after double homicide

Tina Fey and her husband, Jeffrey Richmond, have a brand new baby girl. People reports that Fey gave birth on Wednesday to her second daughter, who was given a very strong name: Penelope Athena. Fey, 41, and Richmond, 51, already have a five-year-old daughter named Alice. Read full article > >

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Tina Fey welcomes baby girl

Thomas Haynesworth was free at his mother’s home in Richmond on Monday after 27 years in prison for crimes prosecutors now say he did not commit.

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Man freed after 27 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit

A Richmond couple transformed their home-improvement hobby into a full-time job, thanks to their wildly successful blog.

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Blogging Young House Love

Photographer Arthur Drooker’s haunting infrared images of the bygone U.S. While photographer Arthur Drooker’s ruins aren’t the castles and shrines that usually come to mind, his infrared images of prisons, mansions and other sites of U.S. decay evoke all the moody history and past lives of their tourist site counterparts. The Santa Fe, NM-based artist’s upcoming “American Ruins” exhibit culls these haunting photos from from his award-winning 2007 book of the same name , featuring luminescent images that with each crack and chip reveals just a bit of the America’s former splendor. To learn about how he achieves his otherworldly effects, what to expect from the show and what’s next, read our interview with Drooker below, and see more images in the gallery . If you’re in Richmond, be sure to check out the opening of American Ruins on 9 September 2010 from 5:30-7:30pm, or visit before it closes 28 November 2010. You can also get a glimpse of the work in his current show at Santa Fe’s William Siegal Gallery (through 3 September 2010), and look out for Lost Worlds , his large-format book collecting images from 33 sites in 15 countries that’s due out Fall 2011. What was the selection process in choosing photos for the exhibit? Are all of the images from the book? All the images are from the book. There are 50 prints, representing each of the 22 sites I photographed for the project. The exhibition is organized geographically, the same as the book—the geographic regions are the South, the Southwest, the East, California and Hawaii. what is it about ruins that inspires you and has kept you photographing them for years? Photographing ruins merges my passions for history and photography. I’m drawn to these sites to make a spiritual connection with those who came before us, preserve the visual poetry of what they left behind, and restore what they’ve built to our collective memory. In making these images, I confront my own mortality and become most alive. After the success of the American Ruins book, what led you to work on Lost Worlds? I wanted to continue photographing ruins. Going beyond the U.S. borders seemed to make the most sense, but not so far away that it would take too a long time to complete the project. Hence, Lost Worlds: Ruins of the Americas. In every way it is a more ambitious project: The research, trip planning, and the photography. By the time I complete Lost Worlds at the end of this year, I will have been to about 30 sites in 15 countries. That’s a lot of miles in a little over two years. How does your subject matter influence your technique or vice-versa? I photograph ruins in infrared. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye, but I use a specially adapted 35mm digital camera to record it. The ethereal effect illuminates the otherworldly atmosphere that haunts ruins, allowing a photographer to transcend mere documentation and capture the mystery and elegiac beauty of crumbling walls, weathered facades and broken arches as no other format can.

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American Ruins

Mathematician Jason LaFerrera’s digitally-manipulated maps depicting birds and beasts Combining two of the nerdiest disciplines out there, ornithology and cartography, former music producer Jason LaFerrera creates curious collages of birds and beasts by recasting old maps into quaintly colorful still-life—of the kind more commonly seen on postage stamps. “I digitally manipulate cartographic materials to create fauna, mostly birds, in poses reminiscent of field guides from a similarly early era of publication,” the Richmond, VA native’s site explains. “The patterns of forests and shores often become an animal’s feathers or fur, while the rings of topography often trace out wings or antlers.” By posing the beauty of maps themselves with idealized depictions of nature, LaFerrera (who currently studies Mathematics at Columbia) is a kind of eco-Duchamp, drawing on readymades, upcycling and clich