Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 15, 1993 TAG: 9310150250
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Care to venture a guess where that catchy slogan, in what sort of advertisement, might appear? I'll tell you down below.
Sleeze? Is that what we're going to be best at? Not our music, or our mountains, or our schools?
Patrick Michaels, Virginia's climatologist, says the Shenandoah Valley - and, to a lesser extent, the Roanoke and New River valleys - may be the sleeze capital of the Eastern United States.
Sleeze in climatological terms is SLeet and frEEZing rain.
Michaels cites three decades' worth of information on damaging storms. We've endured more sleeze storms than most areas.
Michaels suggests in his party organ - the Virginia Climate Advisory - that the layout and height of our mountains may create the circumstances that lead to our dubious distinction.
Trapping 3,000 feet of cold Canadian air, the mountains are just tall enough to chill rain but not tall enough to cool it enough for snow, he suspects.
Sleeze. Just our luck to be noted for our sleeze.
Ha! The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but the whiners get the rest areas.
The Virginia Department of Transportation, undoubtedly moved by the persuasive arguments appearing here, does have plans to build a rest area along the northbound lanes of Interstate 81 between Tennessee and the Canadian border.
Late this month, department brass will meet to float a few suggested locations in Rockbridge County.
Sandy Myers of the Transportation Department's Staunton district says $8.8 million for a Rockbridge area is in the district's six-year plan.
Don't load up on coffee just yet. The schedule calls for advertising for bids in July. Of 1998.
What's that? Not interested in being known as the Sleeze Capital of Eastern North America?
Try this on for size: Home of the World's Largest Sculpture Made of Recyclable Garbage.
Roanoke is, and word is getting out.
Cycle Systems in June unveiled a 30-foot-high stainless steel sculpture and fountain to observe the company's 75th anniversary.
Floyd County sculptor Adam Cohen picked through Cycle System scrap yards for his materials to build the piece off Wonju Street near the Roy L. Webber Highway. "Recycling in Motion" is featured in the current issue of Sculpture, the bimonthly magazine of the International Sculpture Center.
How far will news of this distinct piece of Roanokana spread? The cover price of the magazine tells that tale - $6, or six British pounds, or 1,800 yen.
Neither sleeze nor garbage art turns you on?
How about home to the world's most successful heart transplant? That's how Roanoke boasts in a full-page ad in Virginia Town & City, the magazine of the Virginia Municipal League, about the Hotel Roanoke project.
Figure that one out. Meet you in the atrium!
by CNB