The recent passing of actor Burt Reynolds has left the nation celebrating the man Rolling Stone deemed “The Last Good Ol’ Boy movie star.” His career spanned decades and roles in films like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Boogie Nights” made him a household name, but in Appalachia, Reynolds is […]
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I find myself having to drag my fingers over to click a Twitter link to read Caity Coyne’s Aug. 30, 2018, Charleston Gazette-Mail story headlined “Number of fatal drug overdoses in 2017 surpasses 1,000 mark in WV.” The story is a grim check-up on how much worse the opioid overdose […]
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Gary Bentley is a former underground coal miner from Eastern Kentucky who writes about his experience working in the mining industry. Read more of his columns here. As I drilled the outside hole on the last row of roof bolts, I looked down to make sure that the air-sampling cartridge I […]
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It’s been more than five years since documentary filmmaker Sean Dunne of Peekskill, NY, released Oxyana. The IMDb description reads, “The ‘Hillbilly Heroin’ epidemic that’s slowly rotting the soul of rural America.” As the film begins, a harrowing mist rolls over the hillsides and wooded ridges of Oceana, WV , while […]
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Until we reclaim our language, we’ll have no clue who is setting our moral compass. 1. Inside every honest person exists a bombthrower. There’s an urge, small and undying, that drags us to destruction. This urge isn’t suicidal: We don’t want nonexistence as much as a resetting. We don’t worry […]
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On Saturday, West Virginia University’s men’s basketball team will host the Kentucky Wildcats at the Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia. It’s a matchup of two high-profile teams and two volatile, mediagenic head coaches, TV-made for a national ESPN audience. But the game will mean more to West Virginia and Kentucky […]
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