Start your engines

This is my first attempt at blogging, so here goes. The reason for me starting this page is that I was reading Blue Commonwealth and noticed there were no articles under the "Southside" heading, so I figured I could be of some assistance. I want to talk about state & (especially) local/regional politics, because Southside seems to be underrepresented in the VA blogosphere. 

There are a lot of region-specific issues that are just getting lost in the shuffle--skyrocketing unemployment, a decade-long recession and youth flight have devastated Southside in general and my hometown of Martinsville in particular. I think there are solutions to the problems we face, but good ideas have to be exchanged before they can be implemented. I hope this blog will accomplish that; hopefully I can lend a new perspective to the dialogue about state issues and help put our area on the radar in the progressive online community. 

Cheers,

Max