Tag: WV
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Late Edition
This story was originally published in the September/October 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. Around 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, the newsroom staffs of the Charleston Daily Mail and Charleston Gazette were called to the front lobby of their shared headquarters at 1001 Virginia Street East in downtown Charleston. Employees immediately knew something […]
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A Boy and His Bird
This story originally appeared in the February 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. For more than a millennium, people in Japan and China have used aquatic birds called cormorants to help them catch fish. Fishermen tie hemp snares around a trained bird’s throat so that, when the animal dives into the water after its […]
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Blackout: Scenes from a Coal-Dependent Economy
This article was originally published in the Jan./Feb. 2016 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. One day Bill Thompson, 76, decided to just sit and wait by the front door of his Boone County home improvement store. Thompson bought Danville Lumber from his uncle after he left the Army in 1963. Business was strong back […]
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Mind the Gap
This story originally appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus. The great virtue of West Virginia workers was never that they were the smartest in the world—although they have proven to be plenty smart. West Virginia workers also never claimed to possess superior strength, although their backs were always strong enough to complete […]
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Happy Hour
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus. West Virginia’s secret government warehouse isn’t quite what I thought it would be. It was easily visible from the interstate, although I suppose that could be part of a hiding-in-plainsight strategy. Driving past on a two-lane road, I could see two sides […]
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Rumors surround Golden Horseshoe artifact
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday, May 7, 2010. This morning, State Schools Superintendent Steve Paine will dub more than 200 West Virginia eighth-graders “knights and ladies of the Golden Horseshoe” for their knowledge of state history. But there’s one question none of these adolescent history aces, or anybody […]