There's a wheelchair and a guy in it at the end of the sidewalk. It's an old chair, not those fancy Millenium Falcon chairs you see. An old guy, with skin weathered like an ancient saddle...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?"
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ELIZABETH and GEORGE: Part 3: A long-sought reunion, but with whom?
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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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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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.