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Do you think your local golf course, public, private, would allow a group of well meaning folks to set up a picnic in the middle of the 16th fairway one Saturday afternoon? Do you think the golfers would be concerned to find a mother and small kids building sand castles in one of the sand [...]

Recently I was talking with some runners who had done a variety of marathons and half-marathons but no one single race of the shorter distance type. In addition, they had only run races, and only expressed a desire to do so in the future, those of the mega-marathon variety. You know the type: ones with [...]

Dear EarthTalk: Are there any health hazards associated with the use of the new silicone bake ware and cooking utensils?  I have found information associated with the hazards/benefits of Teflon and other cookware but nothing on the use of silicone.                               – Jean McCarthy, Sebastian, FL With all the negative press about Teflon and [...]

Road bikers have to be on alert at all times for idiot drivers, but it’s true that some road bikers, due to vast bad experiences, are on hyper-alert. Hyper-alert=hyper-defensive=chip on shoulder. I was driving down a narrow road through my neighborhood today when I met a hyper-defensive road biker who practically flung himself into a [...]

This past weekend we were out on The Green, and a friend of ours had to swim from his kayak.  We all take a swim from time to time, and it is important to know how to react when the inevitable happens. Here is a basic list of actions to take: 1.  Get the swimmer [...]

Skiing is dangerous, right?. You’re strapping into a set of hard plastic boots and stiff, sharp boards and flying 20 mph down an ice and snow covered mountain. And you’re doing it with about a thousand other people, while surrounded by trees. That’s a recipe for disaster, right? Wrong. A new study published in Sports [...]

As we enter hunting season in Virginia, BRO is currently asking readers in our Switchback forum, “Should hunters and hikers share the same trail?” Unfortunately, as a timely coincidence, a 23-year-old girl was just killed by a hunter in Franklin County. The girl, a student at Ferrum College, was in the woods working on a [...]

Residents worry about impacts of a quarter-million Scouts on water quality