New face
The Beacon welcomes a new addition to its editorial staff. Reporter Eric Voorhis, a native of Long Island, New York, is still settling in and trying not to get too sunburned while exploring the territory. After some snowy winters in recent years, while working for the Lake Placid News and Adirondack Daily Enterprise in northern New York, he couldn’t be happier to be here, and he looks forward to writing about all the happenings in the Virgin Islands. He said his first three weeks have flown by, and that he fit in plenty of adventures: snorkelling in Brewers Bay, hiking around Sage Mountain, a few trips to the beach, and a day of speeding around the island on a rented scooter. “About a week after I got here, the Virgin Gorda Easter Festival was in full swing,” he said. “I couldn’t have come at a better time.” Mr. Voorhis will cover courts and crime, among other topics.
Good on paper
A Beaconite who has a passion for public information and teasing interesting stories out of documents has been very pleased to see the growth of this newspaper’s collection of public documents posted online. She knows that at least some people have been visiting the Beacon’s online documents and downloading them. She hopes readers are finding them as useful as she herself does. She even holds out a little hope that some careful reader will spot something Beaconites haven’t in the reports, and will send in a tip that will lead to a great story.
Wrong place, wrong time
Civil court proceedings often follow a predictable routine, but a Beaconite was surprised on Friday when an attorney rose before the magistrate to address an issue that was bothering him. The attorney asked the magistrate to advise an elderly man that he should refrain from urinating in the parking lot outside the court. The alleged urinator denied the attorney’s accusation. “He said I was urinating there. I was just adjusting my clothes,” the man said. The magistrate was not amused by the man’s argument and told him to use the court’s bathroom in the future. “I don’t want you urinating, pulling down your pants or doing any of that behaviour in the court yard. It’s an offence to the court,” the magistrate said.
Wrong Varlack
A Beaconite who wrote about a man of Anegadian heritage who said he plans to run for president of the United States made a mistake in a Reporter’s Notebook entry last month. The Reporter’s Notebook, titled “Anegadian president?,’ described the candidacy of Carlyle G. Varlack, the son of Anegada residents Gustavus and Lynda Varlack. Unfortunately, the reporter mistakenly attributed the presidential aspirations of Carlyle Glenfield Varlack Sr. to his son of the same name. Mr. Varlack Sr. wrote to the Beacon to correct the misidentification. In his e-mail, he also noted that a ticket of Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney and himself as vice-president would be an “interesting development, since the Romney-Varlack names were once linked in marriage in the BVI.”
‘I know who you are’
On Monday more than 150 fifth-form students gathered at the Eileene L. Parsons Auditorium for Right Start, a programme aimed at equipping them with skills they need when they graduate from high school. Karia Christopher, human resources manager at the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, was a featured speaker. Ms. Christopher asked for volunteers to join her on stage, but the students were a bit shy at first. So she started calling surnames, a tactic that quickly got their attention. It’s not easy to remain anonymous in a community as closely knit as the Virgin Islands, a Beaconite noted.