The long-sought reunion between the three sisters and their long-lost sibling was set to take place after a quarter-century apart. But who would they be meeting: Elizabeth? Or George?
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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?
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Accompanying your mother as she prepares to leave
She had the greenest of thumbs, a bright intellect and always dreamed of being the kind of writer that Toni Morrison, a contemporary, became. What to do when your mother — in the late stages of Alzheimer's — is moving mutely toward her departure from this life.
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BELFAST DIARY: 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.
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The night the house came crashing down around me
A portrait of the artist as a skinny kid attempting the impossible task of fixing the most important relationship in his life up to that point. While standing there in his pajama bottoms and t-shirt as the house began to shake.
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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.
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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.
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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 the racism that likely defused a pro sports career.
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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.
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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.
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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?
