As many as 100 pets -- mostly dogs, but also a couple of chickens and several cats -- were the special guests for a spiritual ceremony at Monroe Park in Richmond yesterday.

Visitors to the State Fair of Virginia said goodbye yesterday to the place that has hosted the event since 1946.

The economy may have slowed, but a plant in Dinwiddie County that turns out at least 40 pieces of 45,000-pound precast concrete a day, mostly for parking decks, is expanding.

Reborn in the '70s, the wine industry has matured into a $347 million economic catalyst.

The fourth annual celebration on Church Hill continues today.

Just 28 years old, the Country Vintner has grown steadily over the last decade and hit full speed this year.

Mary Louise Page Richardson was a generous-spirited woman who pursued her goals with determination. "Anything she did, she did well. She was serious about what she did," said a sister, Virginia Perram of Royal Oak, Md. Mrs. Richardson worked as a window designer at Woodward & Lothrop department store in Washington after earning a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1949 from the Women's Division of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, now Radford University.

Defending state rooster crow champion Emmett Gover danced his way into this year's finals at the State Fair of Va. by doing about every goofy thing he could muster in the three minutes of the preliminary round.

By the end of a long Virginia summer, I get to feeling hemmed in by all the heat and humidity. In November, I'll appreciate the cool nights all the more, because they were earned in July and August.

Pretend play is the focus of the new Town Square exhibit opening this weekend at the Children's Museum of Richmond.