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.”
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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.
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‘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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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8 DAYS AFTER 9-11: At a Buddhist Retreat in the West Virginia Hills
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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FIRST/PERSON: Prostitute Pasta & Way-Out Family Restaurants in West Virginia
'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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QUOTABLES: Luminous skies, mucky alleys & chiaroscuro evenings
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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Saying Goodbye to Bill | In 3 Parts
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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One night, out strolling in the cool, high air of Appalachia
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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Where Walden meets West Virginia
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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GUEST ESSAY: Sermonizing on what Joni Mitchell said
Spinning up a sermon from how Joni Mitchell's song “Passion Play (When All the Slaves are Free)" speaks to the mandate to reach out to those the powerful and mighty consign to huddling in the darkness—just as stories of the life of Jesus show him doing constantly.
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GUEST ESSAY: ‘Dad, Donald Trump and My Mountain Mama’
"As limited as his formal education was, dad was a smart and insightful person. I think he would have seen through Trump’s use and manipulation of a religious faith that was the sustaining factor in my dad’s life ..."
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FIRST/PERSON: Finding Yo-Yo Ma playing cello in the West Virginia hills
Who was that man bowing a cello against a tree in the New River Gorge? Why, it's none other than one of the world's best known and loved instrumental maestros. And he has something to say as well as to play.
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READINGS: “THE OUTHOUSE: When you have to go, you have to go”
Over there sits a narrow, tiny, upright building of loosely-fitted, weathered boards painted Theravada Buddhist orange. It has a peaked roof covered with black shingles. It is a monk’s outhouse in the Appalachian hills. I know who built it. He’s a friend of mine.
