Helen Mosher, editor-in-chief of Northshenandoah.com is a gen-x urban refugee, but also native enough to this area that she appreciates the changes it’s going through. A 1995 graduate of Lord Fairfax Community College, Helen lived in Winchester and then Middletown during the early 90s, and during those years, also worked part time at a couple of local-owned businesses, Handy Mart (with locations all around the region) and Better Thymes Natural Foods (in Front Royal).
With this site, Helen aims to take a little bit of her background as an arts and entertainment journalist for various urban alt-weeklies, and put it to work for the region. Believing in new media and social networking’s ability to create a community that’s a little different from what has come before in this region, she hopes to pay forward what she got from the community in her younger days.
As she writes:
“You’ve seen the bumper stickers that say “Don’t Fairfax [insert community here].” That’s not what we want. You don’t need us to tell you about the wack chain development with their convenience and bottom-line savings. You can get that anywhere. You don’t need us to tell you about the breathtaking beauty of our natural attractions such as Skyline Drive and Luray Caverns. They rather speak for themselves. But we know you’d like to experience the charm of this region and see (and taste!) more of its unique flavors. We hope this site will allow you to do that.”
Simply put, there’s more to the Northern Shenandoah Valley than meets the eye. While our site mostly focuses on the five counties that comprise our region—that is, Page, Warren, Shenandoah, Frederick and Clarke counties, you might hear about things from Fauquier, Rappahanock or western Loudoun counties, or the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia, if it catches our attention.