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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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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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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Saying goodbye to Earl one last time
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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‘HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS’ launches with a pretty classy shindig
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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‘KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED’: Inside the chaotic week when West Virginia Republicans’ efforts to ban abortion stalled
“I can’t hear,” Senate President Craig Blair repeated from his dais. The body had just passed a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in West Virginia. The remaining pro-abortion rights protesters had packed themselves into the hallway beside the chamber in their 10th straight hour of demonstrations. “No justice! No peace!”
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10 Things to Say About Joe Manchin After He Kills Off Biden’s Climate Initiatives for Good
Has WV Sen. Joe Manchin finally locked his legacy into place as the guy who doomed the planet to an existential climate crisis just because he could?
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INTRODUCTION: Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?
However complicated his life, Robert C. Byrd left a legacy of accomplishment that benefited the state and nation. His career's end game also set the example of what a senator looks like when they object when America runs off the rails. So, a key question about Joseph Manchin III: Is he the Anti-Byrd?
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REFLECTIONS: Ted Boettner on “Status Quo Joe”
“I don't think Manchin thinks there is anything fundamentally wrong with business as usual and that the inequality we see today is just and acceptable. Byrd, at least partly, seemed to believe in a higher purpose beyond himself. I don't see that with Manchin, who seems mostly motivated by financial interests and political gamesmanship.”
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Q&A: Author Denise Giardina on comparing Robert C. Byrd and Joe Manchin
Byrd had "a quality that is too rare in human beings: the ability to continue to learn and grow over time." With Manchin, "it’s a story as old as Greek tragedy — hubris, hubris, center of attention, power, power, money, money. It won’t turn out well for anyone, him included."
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MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word inside of West Virginia
“Assuming Manchin does not come home to his party on Build Back Better, voting rights, and Roe (a safe assumption at this point), he’ll have lost many more votes on his left side than he could ever hope to pick up on his right … If he doesn’t come back to his own party in really stunning fashion soon, you can expect Joe Manchin will be driving his Maserati to K street, instead of the Capitol, come 2025 ..."
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‘HERO OF THE OPEN HEART’: A WV native’s global humanitarian life showcased in documentary
When "The Wake Up Call" make its West Virginia debut June 23, 2022 in the state's capital city, the documentary will train a lingering spotlight on a remarkable global humanitarian life which ranged far beyond the Appalachian hills where Dave Evans was born.
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A native Russian classical guitarist strums up a Ukraine benefit
A Russian classical guitarist, newly christened an American citizen and living in West Virginia, hosts a June 1 benefit for Ukraine, as he works passionately to counter an invasion he abhors.
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How the Russian army helped to nationalize my country of Ukraine
A Ukrainian exchange student who studied in Charleston WV, reflects upon the devastation he finds all around him and his family in Mariupol after the Russian invasion of his homeland.
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The heart-rending and oligarchic view from ‘Coal Country’
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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A West Virginia hero’s life to be showcased June 23 at 2022 FestivALL Charleston
"The Wake Up Call," a documentary about the remarkable and heroic international life of West Virginia native Dave Evans, will be screened Thursday, June 23, 2022, in West Virginia's capital city as part of the citywide FestivALL Charleston 2022.
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The barriers to Black West Virginians getting the mental health care they may need
barriers that impact mental health for Black West Virginians include a scarcity of Black mental health professionals and mental health resources, stigma, lack of proper mental health education, poverty, racism, substance abuse, and incarceration.
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‘Day 34 of Russia’s Cowardly Invasion of Ukraine’
'The Ukrainian fighting force has bested the Russians in every category. All the big bear can do is cowardly lob cruise missiles from a distance that destroy towns and kill innocent citizens.'
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Multifest still a beacon of the need for the Black press
Like many injustices Black newspapers fought head-on, solutions arose only when the Black press first drew attention to them. A look at the West Virginia Beacon Digest and the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta.
