Thumbs up to community volunteers across the area who have spent countless hours organizing parades, decorating contests, and other events to celebrate the season and make Christmas brighter for residents.
Access to quality health care is a consistent concern and more than a passing conversation when assessing the quality of life in southern West Virginia – or any rural outpost
Circling Eloh: A Meditation
First the war, thousands of miles to the east. No. First other, older wars with forgotten names, unhousing and unhoming the Apache Nation. The Arapaho Nation. The Cheyenne Nation. The Pueblo. The Shoshone. The Comanche. The Kiowa. The Navajo. There is a river run red, there is a lake, there is a world on fire who can never be regained. How can we reclaim when name and place are lost? When even ponderosa and lodgepole are uprooted for maple and elm?
There is water. There are a hundred years. There is not enough water. There are fifty years. There is the town of Stout, and then there is not. First the young couples leave for Fort Collins, over the hill, or for Wyoming, forty miles north. Then the families. Then the Bureau of Reclamation comes with letters and phone calls and men in uniforms and there is no choice left but to move. Some bring their homes, some fall into sheds provided five miles to the south.