In the final day of diaries about working the back wards at Huntington State Hospital in 1983 for nearly three months, an aide tells me the hospital population is far below what it was about a decade ago when more than 1,000 patients lived on The Hill, as patients and staff call the hospital. “There’s a low patient population here. But they’re a mess—the patients.”
-
-
WORKING the WARDS | Part 2
'I take two patients, Frank and Elton, to the canteen, where everyone seems to be smoking, including Frank who bums a cigarette in addition to the one he smokes. He smokes two-handed, resting one while drawing upon the other. Smoke seems to powder the air of any room at the hospital where two or more patients gather. It seems as if there is one continuously lit cigarette at Huntington State Hospital. When it burns down, another is lit off its butt and then another and another, like a daisy chain …’
-
WORKING THE WARDS | Part 1
In advance of a documentary look-back at moving people with developmental disabilities out of West Virginia's worst institutions, here is what daily life felt like on the backwards of Huntington State Hospital in 1983, written as part of a week-long series I did on efforts to improve or shut down West Virginia's worst psychiatric instututions.
-
SONGS IN THE KEY of RON
On the occasion of the release of his first full-length studio album in more than a decade, WestVirginiaVille had some questions for Ron Sowell, one of West Virginia's most prominent singer-songwriters.
-
A SERMON FOR THESE TIMES: ‘The Politics of Truth and the Sin of Silence’
How does an individual, how does a spiritual institution like the Christian Church, how does anyone who invokes the name of Jesus, respond to a state bent on enforcing its will via violence and subjugation? Here is a pointed sermon by a West Virginia reverend for the times that we are living out all across America.
-
‘TO THE GULAG, WE GO!’: Riley and Carol’s Excellent Adventure
Here is a detailed look at what West Virginia's two obsequious, Trump-uber-alles congressional representatives Riley Moore and Carol Miller are spending down their political capital to support: A concentration camp-for-hire and gulag in El Salvador described as "the worst prison in the world."
-
RAMPING UP: The day Rampa Claus came to my house in the West Virginia hills
Let's stipulate for the record that the home delivery of fresh, free and pungent West Virginia ramps — a wild onion species that is cousin to leeks, scallions, and shallots — is a rare and good thing in one's life.
-
CEREMONIAL NOTES: A snapshot of one Earth’s most eclectic events in little old West Virginia last night
It’s just not often that Luke Bryan; Jeff Tweedy with his post-Wilco band; the Womack Sisters of the lineage of Bobby Womack and Sam Cooke; Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel; John “Some Kind of Wonderful” Ellison; Ann Magnuson; Lionel Cartwright; and Tim O’Brien, among other acts, all perform on the same stage. The 2025 West Virginia Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony yesterday in the Mountain State’s capital city was the very definition of eclectic.
-
POEM of the DAY: A Few Moments with Jesus at a West Virginia beer joint
It is not well known that Jesus Christ once hitchhiked across West Virginia, landing one evening at a beer joint populated by fading hippies and aging miner out at the edge of an old coal town. Here's a first-hand report by Greg Clary.
-
THE PARTY’S CALLING: When the Party wants to buy your West Virginia county for your own good: A Frontline Report
“You just ask the party-platform a question — ‘Where does the VPX stand on this?’ — and it tells you exactly the response that you most want to hear.” | A report from the front lines.
-
HALLOWED STREETS of LIFE: My West Virginia and Jack Kerouac’s Lowell
As I did a deep dive into the multifaceted, and often convoluted, life of Jack Kerouac I came to see West Virginia as my version of Kerouac’s Lowell. He knew that Lowell was an integral part of his identity, which at times he embraced and at other times sought to cast off. I know that territory well.
-
PASSAGES: In Praise of Paul Flaherty
I don't usually post obituaries in this occasional publication devoted to the life and times and the notable people in the villages of WestVirginiaville. But the lovely remembrance and acknowledgment below of Paul Flaherty's rich life, written by Rebecca Kimmons, pays homage to a notable person who for decades played key roles in the cultural, creative, and musical life in West Virginia's capital city.
-
THE LATITUDE of NOW: Looking for real things in unreal times
I should be writing about the dire state of the country since it appears our old America is lost, even as a cohesive resistance begins to coalesce and get its act together. Or maybe I should go touch grass. (Or snow, depending.) A soul just needs to depart Dodge and try to find real, touchable things to look at, ponder or admire before returning to the exhausting front-line fray.
-
GUEST POST: Weeping, Wailing & Wonder
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.
-
5 QUESTIONS: Going deep & writing wild in West Virginia
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
-
EXCERPTS | From ‘DEEP & WILD’ by Laura Jackson
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
-
GLORY DAYS and POETRY
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.
-
WEST VIRGINIA in COLOR | Series 1
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.
-
BLACK-AND-WHITE REFLECTIONS: Where will it all end in the end of it all?
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.
-
A little bit of wonderful, courtesy of a John Ellison ‘Friendly Neighbor Show’ jam
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.
