The incendiary, heartbreaking "Coal Country," a play drawn from interviews with survivors and family members of the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, made a splash Off-Broadway. Here's a reaction to its staging for the first time in the Mountain State, 35 miles from where the tragedy fueled by corporate malfeasance that killed 29 miners occurred.
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FIRST/PERSON: On the streets in “the capital of pain”
There are mayapples unfurling on the banks of the Kanawha River in the darkness of West Virginia's capital city. There are humans sleeping there, too, on this cold and rainy April night, and we are among them.
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FIRST/PERSON: Choice words on Ukraine, Putin, Navalny & Zelensky
J. Michael Willard worked for Sen. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller then went on to international career that landed him for years in Ukraine, where he raised a family. Excerpts from his thoughts on Putin's brutal invasion of the country where two daughters still live.
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Buddhist daily life in backwoods West Virginia
A picture show and video of an unexpected place in the West Virginia woods. In the face of often overwhelming challenges of daily life, and horrors like the current attempted mugging of Ukraine, places that strengthen the spirit such as the Bhavana Society Buddhist forest monastery deep in West Virginia's hills are vital.
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Thich Nhat Hanh in the West Virginia Hills
The great Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died this week, once led a retreat in the West Virginia hills in 1993. I was there with some friends, finding myself at one point serenading the beloved monk. Thirty year later, the retreat continues to resonate in the lives of those of us who went.
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10 Illuminated Thoughts About Life on Manchin Island
The stakes are high in WV senator Joe Manchin's Build Back Better gamesmanship. What happens now that he blew up negotiations — and now it looks like they're coming back together?
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The sink as a refuge of sanctuary & solidarity
'I am at one with a long line of the faithful, monks of Ireland, or Tibet, or France, silently preparing or cleaning up from the day’s meals, mindfully caring for community, or in readiness to offer hospitality.
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Teach your children well — but not what to think
'Your children are not your property. They belong to the future. You cannot make them duplicates of your opinions, values and habits. And if you did, life would soon break them, teaching them that the ideas and understandings of the last generation do not serve the next.'
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MEMOIR: ‘Memory of a Waitress’
One night in West Texas, taking refuge from a motorcycle ride through buckets of rain, fleeing a broken heart, an empty diner ahead. A beaten-down waitress finally appears ...
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REVIEW: Channeling Dorothy Parker in West Virginia
Dorothy Parker was a figure out of a Dorothy Parker story. Fleshing out the life of the critic, poet, short-story writer and screenwriter after seeing her depicted in a fine new production of "You Might As Well Live" in St. Albans, W.Va.
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PICTURE/SHOW: 36 Ways of Looking at Thomas WV
Thomas, West Virginia, is a bump in the road several thousand feet up in the mountain air. With a storied past, small-town European feel, and humming creative scene it's a special place in the hills. A photographic encounter.
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FIRST/PERSON: How COVID concerns ate my homework and (maybe) saved my life
Had I just been infected? Was he sick? It's a question we've learned to ask ourselves in this year and a half of plague. I had let my pandemic guard down.
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RE/PRINT: ‘Almost Heaven ’Til We Get There’: Black Miners and Blair Mountain
"I’m a sixth-generation West Virginian. My children are seventh-generation. My generational claim to Appalachia is subversive. It talks back to cavalier anti-Black stories of poor white redneck hillbillies and to the white people who claim an entire region as their own."
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MEMOIR: ‘The Garden and the Grief’ by Connie Kinsey
Gardens usually signify growth and the boundless, restorative invention of Nature. Yet what happens when they fall into tangles as life's misfortunes overwhelm and distract us from turning their soil? Connie Kinsey's short memoir on on the dance between her garden and her grief.
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IN/PROGRESS: From “The Air My Flowers Breathe: A Love Story”
"It is a life-long struggle for all of us to stave off the disruptive, destructive forces of chaos and try to maintain order. The struggle is especially grueling for a person with autism."
