Claire Marshall Watkins, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
Fredericksburg Free Press
Fredericksburg Councilor Holmes to run for Virginia House of Delegates
By Jonathan Hunley 09/19/2026
Jannan Holmes is ready to trade Fredericksburg City Hall for the Virginia State Capitol.
Holmes, in her first term as an at-large member of Fredericksburg City Council, announced this week her intention to run for the House of Delegates’ 65th District seat next year as a Democrat.
The 65th District, which covers Fredericksburg and parts of Spotsylvania and Stafford counties, is now represented by Democratic Del. Joshua Cole.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger announces data center ‘accountability’ act
By Jonathan Hunley 09/19/2026
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, derided during Virginia budget talks earlier this year as a “data center diva” by state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, announced Friday what she called the most comprehensive and aggressive data center accountability effort in the nation.
Spanberger, in a Richmond news conference, said her Data Center Accountability Framework will give communities transparent information and a voice in local approval, protect Virginians from higher energy bills, and enforce the country’s strongest environmental standards for data centers, which have been proposed all around the Fredericksburg area.
A dogged pursuit: Puppy’s adoption marks 10,000 rescues for Old Dominion Humane Society
By Abigail Freehling 09/20/2026
In 2013, Chrissy Hamilton had little more than a love of animals, a few jobs at veterinary clinics, and a couple of dog crates.
Thirteen years later, the Old Dominion Humane Society has become an impactful force in the Fredericksburg area, hosting popular adoption events, rescuing countless dogs from neglectful circumstances, and in turn providing unmatched loving and permanent homes for dogs in need.
Fredericksburg Area Museum names Svetlana Legetic president & CEO
By FPP Staff 09/21/2026
The Fredericksburg Area Museum has announced the appointment of Svetlana Legetic as the organization’s new president and chief executive officer, following an extensive national search led by Good Insight.
Legetic is a Fredericksburg resident who spent most of her professional life in Washington D.C. and New York City. She brings nearly two decades of leadership and engagement experience across cultural institutions and community-driven enterprises, with a career focused on organizational growth and transformation, as well as strengthening the relationship between organizations and the communities they serve.
Free Lance-Star
Slave Dwelling Project explores Fredericksburg’s history
By Pilar Davis 09/19/2026
Voices of the Past: A Slave Dwelling Project Weekend was a series of events held last weekend in Fredericksburg to honor and educate about the lives of enslaved people in the area.
The events were part of the America 250 programs taking place across the country. Some of the programs took place at the University of Mary Washington’s Gari Melchers Home and Studio at Belmont and the James Monroe Museum.
Fredericksburg museum welcomes Green as operations manager
By Pilar Davis 09/19/2026
Some people may have seen Marnie Green dressed in colonial attire, taking visitors on historic tours. Or perhaps working at the Rising Sun Tavern, which is a part of the museum’s tours.
Now, Green is taking on a new role as operations manager for the Washington Heritage Museums.
Green is a member of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), where she volunteers at the national headquarters. She also worked as an interpreter at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. In addition to a background in finance and marketing, Green says she gained valuable skills while working around the properties in various roles.
Mimi Mitchell knows what affordable housing truly means
By Pilar Davis 09/20/2026
The old saying, “never judge a book by its cover,” is the perfect adage for Maerine “Mimi” Mitchell, the executive director of the Fredericksburg Habitat for Humanity.
Mitchell took over the position in February 2026 after leaving a pivotal role as volunteer coordinator at Volunteer Hampton Roads. Her departure was covered in an article in The Virginian-Pilot, where just years before, she’d struggled to make ends meet as an assistant.
Mitchell leads an organization that builds houses for people struggling to afford housing, but she, too, struggled with housing for much of her adulthood.
ADVANCE READS
Steve Watkins, Drew Gallagher, Steve Rabson, Phil Huber
Wedding Day
Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
When Amazon Web Services invited me to the groundbreaking ceremony for a $460 million wastewater treatment upgrade they’re building for Spotsylvania County—it’s a data center thing—I was expecting hard hats, work boots, and shiny new spades. Not Jeff Bezos gold-plated shovel heads, necessarily, but not Amazon Basics either.
That didn’t happen. The 100 invitation-only guests were steered instead to 87 manicured acres just off Courthouse Road and ushered inside the swanky Stevenson Ridge Lodge—a safe and sanitary 12 miles from the Massaponax Wastewater Treatment Plant.
A flock of Amazon factotums greeted us there—perfectly-coiffed young women and men plying us with nametags and drinks and Sharpies for autographing ceremonial sections of purple sewage pipe. They gave us half an hour to mill around and socialize before directing us to a self-serve lunch line for roast beef, green beans almondine, and key lime mousse.
Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood
Drew Gallagher, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
Another person who was not invited to the biggest wedding of the summer was Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who recently revealed his theory on why people like my wife absolutely hate him, and could be why he never got an invite to the Swift-Kelce nuptials.
Rodgers opined that people detest him with a white-hot passion not because he is a liar (he lied about getting his Covid vaccine which put opponents, teammates, and fans at risk) or because he is incapable of throwing a 15-yard out and keeping it inbounds. Rather, Rodgers says that he is largely detested because he was right about the Covid vaccine being unnecessary. To him, it was a worldwide psychological operation to see how many people would blindly follow the advice of medical professionals instead of a washed up quarterback who was smoking ayahuasca in a Costa Rican villa to learn more about self-love.
Up South
Steve Rabson, GUEST COLUMNIST
The expression “Up South,” the title for this essay, dates from the early days of the Great Migration when African Americans found much-improved conditions in the northern states where they settled, but still encountered some of the same barriers they thought they had left behind “Down South.”
The first time I lived in a place that had segregation was Yellow Spring, Ohio, where my father was hired to teach mathematics at Antioch College in the summer of 1953. Two barbershops and one restaurant in this small village, population 3,000, refused to serve Black customers. The movie theater had only recently ended a policy of forcing Black people to sit in the last rows of seats. Black people owned homes in the village, but the local bank refused to finance their mortgages, so they had to secure loans from a bank in the nearby city of Springfield.
Power Has a Price: What Are We Willing to Give Up?
Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
A reader recently challenged something I wrote about Donald Trump, Congress, and the Supreme Court. He largely agreed with my argument but thought I stopped before reaching the hardest question: What are citizens supposed to do about it?
Voting matters, he argued, but voting alone is not enough. Neither are letters to Congress, occasional demonstrations, or complaints about elected officials. He raised an even more personal question: What about relatives, friends, and neighbors who continue to support things we believe are damaging the country? Why aren’t we confronting them? And if talking, voting, and protesting are not enough, what comes next?
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”