Learning from the news and updating a story we shared

I devoured the weekly issues of Time magazine that came in the mail and the daily newspapers, first the Washington Star, then the Washington Post. I delivered the latter briefly as a teenager to help my neighbor, whose family passed the delivery route on to several siblings.

That’s why I was pleased to hear that The Roanoke Times was among the first 10 digital news organizations selected by our parent company, Lee Enterprises, to host a new edition of what was formerly called Newspapers in Education.

News for Students offers digital subscriptions to teachers and their students in the Roanoke area. Educators in the Roanoke and New River Valleys can apply for a classroom subscription, which is funded by community and corporate donations and is free to educators.

The offer includes one year of access to our website, roanoke.com, including a login opportunity for each student, and access to the e-edition – a digital copy of the print newspaper – as well as thousands of news and sports articles, videos and podcasts.

Our journalists based in the Roanoke and New River valleys work hard to cover our communities and present articles, photos and videos in a format that is engaging and readable in print and online.

The idea is to give students in the region the opportunity to read and view the work of our journalists, work that is reported, edited and reviewed on the ground.

To register, visit this website: http://go.roanoke.com/NFS

Speaking of local reporting, a woman profiled in the Roanoke Times on Dec. 31, Lhakpa Sherpa, is the subject of a documentary that hit Netflix in late July.

Photojournalist Heather Rousseau and I hiked with Lhakpa and her daughter Sunny in Giles and Craig counties in October as they visited sponsors of her 2023 climb of K2. Rousseau, who was completing a two-year reporting fellowship on refugees and immigrants, wrote an article about Lhakpa’s groundbreaking life as a Nepali mountaineer – the first Sherpa to successfully climb and descend Mount Everest, and who climbed the world’s highest peak, called Chomolungma by her people, nine more times. Both Rousseau’s reporting fellowship and Lhakpa Sherpa’s 2023 expedition were sponsored by the Blacksburg-based Secular Society.

Lhakpa Sherpa and her children live in Connecticut, and her life story is the subject of British-born director Lucy Walker’s gripping film, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It documents her ascent of Everest in 2022 and tells her story of overcoming a culture that discouraged women from climbing, as well as domestic violence later in life. Netflix has acquired the rights to broadcast the film, and you can stream the hour-and-44-minute documentary now. I highly recommend it.

Heather and I went on a day hike to Kelly Knob on the Appalachian Trail with Lhakpa and Sunny on a beautiful fall day. As I led the hike on a section of the trail that I have been managing with my family for 25 years, she joked, “Today you’re the Sherpa.”

When a young black bear crossed our path on the way back from the hill, Lhakpa sang Nepali songs along the way so that the bear knew we were there.

It is a great gift to get to know them and to be able to share stories like theirs with our readers.