The day Earl rolled over for a visit

So, I'm on my front porch yesterday, taking a Nicaraguan cigar break, as one does. I look up and there's my 92-year-old neighbor Earl, trundling my way with his black wheeled walker, three small photo books stacked on the seat. What was up with that?

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Categories Photography

Looking in on the old grain silos upriver, before they go down

The only sounds I hear while standing at the foot of the silos is the whip and whoosh of occasional traffic on W.Va. 2, a trail mix of various birds charting out their personal space in song, and now and again the wind whistling through the portals of these abandoned legacies of a pre-industrial rural heartland.

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Categories Photography

‘CRAZY DAYS’: ‘The Shot’

“You know ... ” the doctor says, leaning to speak into the young man’s ear as the song proceeds. “The bodhran was first used by Irish clans as a battle drum. It gave a steady rhythm for Celtic warriors facing conflicts. Warrior time.”

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Categories Memoir

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 a down-and-dirty music video version by the boys.

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Categories Songs Video

When bulldogs take on Big Pharma

What do you get when you mix a relentless avatar of sustained outrage with epic bad actors in pursuit of money over lives? An American journalism hero in West Virginia, is who.

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Categories News