The Dancer In the Hills
The back-to-the-land movement brought hosts of wannabe farmers and dreamers to West Virginia. It also brought a dancer who brought big dreams into the deep hills.
Read MoreCategory: Uncategorized
The West Virginia Disaster that Changed Coal Mining Forever
A half-century later, one of the worst labor disasters in American history still reverberates in the courts and in the lives of families of the 78 lost miners from a conflagration for which no one has ever been held responsible.
Read More
Categories
Uncategorized
800 Miles to go before I sleep
What happens when you embark on a Parental Mission of Mercy to rescue your son's broken-down car 800 miles away and bring it back in the same day without obliterating a schoolbus-load of church kids. NOTE: Don't try this at home.
Read More
SHORTSTORY: The Catholic Boy and the Five Dollar Bill
An extremely short story about an encounter with Abraham Lincoln and a pudgy Catholic boy on the streets of West Virginia's capital city. With a cameo appearance by Greek philosopher Diogenes.
Read More
Categories
Uncategorized
PARADIGM SHIFTING: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Life in the Trenches of Poetry
In this 1995 profile, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti forecasts "the revenge of the white man" taking place in contemporary politics in 2018 while reflecting on an epochal career as a poet, artist and essential figure in the rise and spread of the Beat movement.
Read More
ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 1: A life on the streets
She called herself Elizabeth and she was a woman of the streets. But Elizabeth was also — or had been — named George. And she had a surprising former life. | PART 1
Read More
ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 2: He was a musician on the go and then gone
George was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who had connected with Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Then, George was gone like the wind. Ocasek turned to Rolling Stone to find out: "Where's Geo?"
Read More
How the pawpaw was found, got lost and was found again
Pawpaws have been rediscovered and celebrated in a host of products from pawpaw beer to pawpaw popsicles. But how did the custardy fruit get forgotten since a pawpaw patch today might have been one cultivated ages ago by American Indians?
Read More
Hanging with the Dalai Lama after the bombs fall silent
Getting close-up and personal in Belfast, Ireland, with the Dalai Lama and Christian monk Father Lawrence Freeman as they talk peace after the bombs between Catholics and Protestants fall silent.
Read More
Rounding up a father’s life in bits and pieces
Fathers can be mysterious guys, especially if they were members of the Greatest Generation who didn't talk about things like their ships being torpedoed in the Atlantic and whose go-to form of anger was volcanic utterance. But in the bits and pieces of a father's life, I find the man he was.
Read More
How Mount Hope lived up to its name when desegregation came to town
The black kids went to one school in tiny Mount Hope. The white kids went to another. But when the court order came to desegregate, a funny thing happened in the hills of West Virginia. The white kids were sent to the black school instead of the other way around. Historic things ended up happening.
Read More
You didn’t go one-on-one with the One-Armed Bandit
The life of a journalist is filled with mundane daily tasks. Get the calendar edited. Rewrite a press release. Track down a source who isn’t returning e-mails. Then, you get to talk to Gary Mays. The West Virginia native, had his left arm shot off at age 5. What happened next was the stuff of legend and lore, complicated by…
Read More
Documenting the opioid crisis in numbers and film
The numbers of deaths, shattered families and communities are grim when it comes to the opioid crisis. But what happens next? In her Netflix documentary, "Recovery Boys," Oscar-nominated documentarian Elaine McMillion Sheldon takes a look at the attempt by four young West Virginians to kick opioids by working on a farm in the West Virginia hills.
Read More
Categories
Uncategorized
A surprise encounter with a shrunken replica of the Vietnam War Memorial
What happens when you shrink Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial down to a third its size, making a replica featuring all 57,661 names and then ship the thing across the country and bolt it together, say, one day beside the Ohio River? Oddly, the exact same thing that happens with the real thing in Washington, D.C.
Read More
Categories
Uncategorized
The Curious Case of the West Virginia Mystery Paintings
There is this old farmhouse in the heart of West Virginia. No one lives there anymore, but why is the door locked? That's because there is an artistic and mysterious surprise upstairs on the second floor. And, wait... what's that you say about a Dalton Gang connection to the work inside?
Read More