WestVirginiaVille

What is that sound? Descending into the Grand Street subway station in Chinatown in New York one cold day in March 2013, we hear a flute and something else. What is it?

I offer you this gander down a long road in the Zumwalt Prairie in northeastern Oregon. Where I hear tell, the gods — the good Old Gods (and the Goddesses) — still live.

Leaving the Oregonian Rivendell of the Fishtrap writers workshop experience, a vast wasteland presents itself, full of cattle drives out of the 19th century, bearded wanderers on bicycle and the dry tang of the Empty Quarter.

So, since my friends will ask, and family, too, what was it like, I fire up the MacBook Pro and sit down with a one-third glass of dark-red wine and set to put some words upon the screen. | A pictorial essay from the Zumwalt Prairie, Joseph, Oregon.

Crossing west to east across the swooping West Virginia hills, a watery pilgrimage I always make is to stroll to the midst of the arching bridge at Seneca Rocks.

A few photos from around the world and some words from a connoisseur of Blue Rooms. The first I noticed were rooms turned blue where people went to hide in the sure glow of the TV talking.

It’s last year’s Milton corn maze but it’s fun to watch a wise-cracking Bill Lynch get confused and a corn maze is a corn maze. This video will give you an idea of what to expect at this year’s maze.

Being inside the historic Keith-Albee Theater in downtown Huntington is sometimes like being on drugs without the drugs. Photos of the interior on the way to seeing the unreleneting ‘Biutiful.’

Depressed and demoralized by reading up on Republican candidate debating points, what is a blogazine editor to do but take a break and turn to soothing photos of flowers, cats and rainbows.

If you’re looking to chill out in an organically sound and sweet fashion, we cannot recommend more highly picking blueberries as the morning mist rises off the Appalachian hills in the West Virginia outback.

Is Pittsburgh cooler than Austin? Are cookie tables the next hipster find? Is Weirton, W.Va., a jerkwater town or the next undiscovered gem? Or both? A Blogalachia re-post poses a few timely questions.

Huntington, West Virginia stars in one of Harvey Pekar’s final books in his lifelong project of chronicling the average moments in an average – if rumpled and depressed and obsessive-compulsive – guy’s life.

A charming found video, even if the camera is a little shaky and the subject is how a Calhoun County bull lost its jewels.

An elephant cuts loose on the streets of southern West Virginia and our video cameras were there to cover the action, start to finish, front to back.

They had dreamed of an elephant, an elephant for the parade each Spring that capped off All Together Arts Week in Mercer County, West Virginia. But where do you get an elephant?

In WestVirginiaVille’s ongoing quest to find the coolest, most interesting and/or diverting videos across the Commonwealth, an offering by Rick Lee of clouds in a rush.

International adventurer Bear Grylls rode the Gauley River rapids in West Virginia for a deoderant ad. Some fans just weren’t buying in.

See how West Virginia rated in a map of ‘The United States of Shame.’ At least we’re not the porn capital of America like Utah. Plus, a low-rent fire alarm and Nellie the Wonder Horse.

A video tour of the multi-hued skies of West Virginia, with mountain-and-sky cheesecake shots from central to southern West Virginia.