When you are suffering from an overdose of dire news, may we suggest spending a minute with a happy dog tooling down the road, a koto-fueled Japanese fire, and bird upon a Buddha's head?
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EDITORIAL: Shelley Moore Capito Remains Missing-In-Action
It is Dec. 4—28 days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election was called for Biden/Harris. Yet WV Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has yet to formally recognize Joe Biden as President-Elect or repudiated Donald Trump's dangerous lies about election fraud lies.
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MUSIC VIDEO | An “Over the Rainbow” Primer and Duet
"Let the boys have the damn song." How "Over the Rainbow" almost didn't make the cut for "The Wizard of Oz." A look back at a "sacred" song in the American canon, on the occasion of creation of a down-and-dirty music video version.
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JUSTICE PROJECT | “Pills & Suits” & Patrick Morrisey
In an illustrated excerpt from Pulitzer-winner Eric Eyre's "DEATH IN MUD LICK," he describes WV Attorney General's Patrick Morrisey's entanglement with one of the huge pharmaceutical companies that helped spawn the opioid crisis, and the devastation that continues to affect families.
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OP-ED LIMERICKS: “Toady,” “Move Quickly,”“Fauci,” & “ Canary Meet Coal Mine”
When all else fails in trying to understand the current American political regime, there's always the art of the Op-Ed Limerick. A new collection of four recent animations.
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A LOOK BACK: When Elephants Walked in West Virginia
You may not believe it. I would well understand should you not. The querulous mind dances lightly upon the phrase—and then rejects it utterly. There have never been elephants in West Virginia. But you would be wrong. Oh, so wrong.
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Pandemic Memorial Video Project: may7.2020
A couple of weeks ago, they began appearing. Brief, heart-wounded, heartfelt memoriams on Twitter. They note the passing of mothers, fathers, grandparents, kids. I began to screen capture some of them. I wasn't sure why.
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IT’S A LAMB THING: Sheepish Thanks to an Old Friend
I spent the day before my birthday making a ridiculous music video that shows only lambs, sheeps and rams for three minutes. Here's why
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SONGS of COMFORT, SONGS of HOME: May John Prine Awake in ‘Paradise’
John Prine has passed on. Here's a video homage to one of America's greatest singer-songwriters—a video version of his tune "Paradise." May he awaken in his paradise.
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VISITING ITALY IN SPIRIT: ‘The Key To My Grandfather’s House’
Take a trip to Italy in spirt and in solidarity during this time of global pandemic and lockdown. What unites us is that we are all immigrants of one kind or another. Here is one family's tale out of Calabria. What's yours?
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OP-ED LIMERICKS: “Fauci,” “Mother Jones,” & “To Be Kind”
I am doing my bit to man the barricades by helping to Illustrate the op-ed limericks by a sister-in-arms in West Virginia. Baby Trump balloons feature prominently.
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Ten Years After: Remembering the Faces from Upper Big Branch
It is has been ten years since the Upper Big Branch mine Disaster in West Virginia, which killed 29 miners, from their 20s to their 60s. Here is a video remembrance of their faces, as still-grieving families brace once more for Don Blankenship to rub salt in their wounds.
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“TAKING TO WING”: A Pandemic Diversion
If you can't fly away from the Covid-19 pandemic, take this diversion into the skies, set to a 4th grade flute thingie, two guitars, and a whole lot of birds.
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SONGS OF COMFORT, SONGS OF HOME: “Till There Was You”
They were young idealists picking up trash across America. One of them could nail a tune from "The Music Man." (NOT "76 Trombones.") Enter a ponytailed, cigar-chomping Cincinnati jazz pianist in a Parmesan-wedge of a club in the hazardous part of town.
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Take a 10-Minute Trip to Havana & Back
You couldn't have a better traveling companion than to head to Cuba with Susan Werner. Needing a trip out of quarantine? Take a ten-minute jaunt down south to Havana.
