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  • Stories
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  • Essay,  Stories

    GUEST POST: Weeping, Wailing & Wonder

    February 13, 2025 /

    TODAY'S GUEST POST BEGINS: This is about us, not me, but let me begin precisely here: I am an old white guy who is sick and tired of other old white guys telling everyone what to do, how to live, who to love and where to go.

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  • 5 Questions,  Books,  Stories

    5 QUESTIONS: Going deep & writing wild in West Virginia

    January 17, 2025 /

    A Q-and-A conversation with Laura Jackson on her book "DEEP & WILD," about mountains, opossums, coyotes, writing, ramps, and that confounding state of mind known as West Virginia

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  • 5 Questions,  Books,  Stories

    EXCERPTS | From ‘DEEP & WILD’ by Laura Jackson

    January 17, 2025 /

    Some excerpts from Laura Jackson's debut essay collection, 'DEEP & WILD: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia.' SEE RELATED '5 QUESTIONS' with the author

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  • Essay,  Profiles,  Stories

    GLORY DAYS and POETRY

    January 7, 2025 /

    Remembering a longtime colleague on the long and crazy march through a newsroom career — one who brought the poetry to the frontlines while on deadline, as we sought to reinvent the American newspaper feature section at the outset of the 21st century.

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  • Essay,  Photos/Video,  Picture/Show,  Stories

    WEST VIRGINIA in COLOR | Series 1

    November 27, 2024 /

    Take a breather from political anxiety. And for those of us who dearly love this place called West Virginia — and for out-of-staters willing to be swayed from tired cliches — let's color outside the lines for a few minutes. Please consider the debut of 'West Virginia In Color,' a new, occasional series on people and places in the towns, hollers and hills of the Mountain State which feature a blast, a blaze, or notable burst of color.

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  • Editorial,  Essay,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    BLACK-AND-WHITE REFLECTIONS: Where will it all end in the end of it all?

    November 19, 2024 /

    In times like these, especially in times like these, when words are just upchucked by annihilationists, institutional arsonists and a world-historic, nihilist-narcissist whose much-kissed ring gleams with saliva, only poetry makes sense. And a few well-chosen images, quotes, and quatrains.

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  • Music,  Music/Video,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    A little bit of wonderful, courtesy of a John Ellison ‘Friendly Neighbor Show’ jam

    October 17, 2024 /

    It was some kind of wonderful happening as John Ellison, host of the long-running "The Friendly Neighbor Show" picked up a guitar to lead a harmonic convergence in a Huntington tattoo parlor one night recently.

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  • Essay,  NewsoftheDay,  Readings,  Stories

    8 DAYS AFTER 9-11: At a Buddhist Retreat in the West Virginia Hills

    September 11, 2024 /

    Eight days after the frightening, world-shaking events of 9-11 in the year 2001, I was at a long-scheduled retreat at a Buddhist monastery deep in the West Virginia hills. Osama bin Laden was there, also.

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  • Characters,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    Saying goodbye to Earl one last time

    July 13, 2024 /

    Earl Goodall, my neighbor, friend, and an amiable human being, passed on at age 93 on July 5, 2024. Earl was the subject of my 2021 16-minute documentary, "When Earl Went to War", about his Korean War service, while also portraying the man's sweet, down-home character. Here's a look back at the kind of guy who never gets lifted up into the spotlight. But he has stories and adventures worth telling.

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  • First/Person,  Stories

    FIRST/PERSON: Prostitute Pasta & Way-Out Family Restaurants in West Virginia

    May 20, 2024 /

    'I am dreaming of a plate full of fluffy, cheesy scrambled eggs, streaked with a couple of red skid marks of Tabasco and a side plate of triangles of buttered toast. Preferably, wheat. But I will take white, if it is all Minney has got ...'

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  • Music/Video,  Photos/Video,  Poetics

    PROSE-POEM: ‘Lost Girl Elegy’

    April 17, 2024 /

    He digs into his wallet. Hands over a $20 bill. God bless you, she says. But where's the god for lost girls in a squalling storm? She turns to go back into the Taco Bell. He shuts off his car. Gets out. Do you have a phone? No. She says. Anyone at all to call?

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  • Stories

    POST-ECLIPSED: Some final notations on a cosmic experience

    April 13, 2024 /

    Post-eclipse, thrilling with fellow humans at what we had just witnessed, it was a stark reminder of how few and precious are the sweet collective experiences we now share in an America riven by engineered dispute. And how utterly important it is to be reminded of the significance of shared wonder.

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  • 5 Questions,  Music,  Music/Video

    5 QUESTIONS: Susan Werner on going long, Texas tuneage, and the art of the song

    April 2, 2024 /

    For folks who know the upper echelons of songwriting, 'No Depression' magazine once awarded Susan Werner some high praise indeed: “When it comes to crafting a song, Ms. Werner’s only peers are Jimmy Webb and Paul Simon.” Study up on her songcraft in our '5 Questions' with her in advance of an April 6, 2024 show in Charleston. W.Va.

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  • Essay,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    QUOTABLES: Luminous skies, mucky alleys & chiaroscuro evenings

    March 23, 2024 /

    Photographs from around the neighborhood, allied with some quotations worth quoting and notations that may or may not align, but it's all good.

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  • Music,  Music/Video,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    A RECORD RUN: After a legendary half-century, Budget Tapes & Records to close shop

    March 2, 2024 /

    Budget Tapes & Record will close Sunday, March 3, 2024, in Kanawha City, W.Va., after a half-century in operation. Here are two personal takes on the role this long-running establishment played in the life and times of West Virginia as an alternative, hippified haven for generations of folks.

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  • Characters,  Essay,  Photos/Video,  Profiles,  Stories

    Saying Goodbye to Bill | In 3 Parts

    February 13, 2024 /

    Bill Hart, a dear traveling companion through this vale and holler of light and darkness, passed from this mysterious world on Friday evening, on Feb. 9, 2024. Here are some thoughts and images about a notable human being, artist, and world-class craftsman. And, to be sure, a genuinely offbeat, unconventional, and bohemian soul.

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  • Essay,  Nature,  Photos/Video,  Stories

    One night, out strolling in the cool, high air of Appalachia

    December 30, 2023 /

    Take a break from worrying about the fate of the Republic, beyond the locked gates of a forested park where the pine trees offer fine company and conversation and the view from on high poses some good questions.

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  • Essay,  First/Person,  Music,  Stories

    Where Walden meets West Virginia

    October 15, 2023 /

    Recently inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, Barbara Nissman has a story to tell about how her globetrotting career as an acclaimed pianist landed her deep in the West Virginia hills, where she faced deep loss and artistic renewal.

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  • Photos/Video,  Picture/Show,  Stories

    It’s a Black-and-White Thing

    September 28, 2023 /

    Here are some snapshots, hipshots and night shots, from wandering the highways, byways, and lifeways of the world through which my iPhone moves, in the small towns, small cities and hills of West Virginia.

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  • Photos/Video,  Stories

    ‘HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS’ launches with a pretty classy shindig

    September 25, 2023 /

    I date dating myself using the word ‘shindig.' Yet the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as: ‘A large, lively party, especially one celebrating something.” That well describes the buzzy premiere of “HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS: The Artistic Life of Robert Singleton” on Sept. 17, 2023, in West Virginia’s capital city of Charleston, W.Va.

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