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Guest Columns

Coming apart where two rivers join

As a writer born and raised where two rivers join, three states touch and several American centuries commingle, I was fated to a creative life of complex metaphors. The Shenandoah and Potomac rivers that converge at Harpers Ferry, I viewed early on as an unlucky wishbone. My mother was like the ...

People of faith calling for LGBTQ civil rights legislation

As a faith leader in Shepherdstown, I hope our U.S. senators, Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito, will come together to find common ground, ensuring fairness and equality for all Americans. With both political parties now offering proposals to add LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections to the ...

Thankful for community support in flattening the curve

As we have waited with baited breath to see the flattening of the curve in relation to COVID-19, it is ironic to me that I, too, am flattening the curve in relation to my healthcare career. With 41 years working as a nurse at Jefferson Medical Center, my career has truly peaked, or one might ...

Tourism Development District Act will benefit Jefferson County

Recently, the West Virginia Senate passed the Tourism Development District Act.Sponsored by Senator Patricia Rucker, the act will help expedite large tourism projects within smaller municipalities that might lack the resources and expertise to handle them themselves. For the project to qualify, ...

Licensing reform benefits all West Virginians

Despite all of the good news about West Virginia's economy over the past few years, we still have one of the lowest labor force participation rates in the country. If we want the state's economy to continue to grow, we need to focus on increasing our labor force participation. One of the ways ...

Safeguarding American history in our backyard

Someone once said that Shepherdstown's most significant contribution was when local men met at Morgan Spring, and marched from there to join up with George Washington, in what is today known as the Beeline March.The comment was spoken in 2012, at a Fourth of July "wayside" dedication, placed in ...

Teachers discover Jewish culture in the Eastern Panhandle during NEH institute

The chances of two traditional, Hebrew-speaking Jewish men, one from Rhode Island and the other from Arizona, winding up in West Virginia for the National Endowment for the Humanities' "Voices from the Misty Mountains and The Power of Storytelling" July institute for teachers is surely quite ...

Fresh berries — pick ’em while you can

The spiders spin their webs above fruit-laden vines. Watch out for wasps and bees. Gnats could invade your space. And so could mosquitoes. The foliage could hide ticks, chiggers or mites. Worst of all, you could stumble onto a snake or invade the privacy of poison ivy vines.All that nastiness ...

The root cause of tree problems

Whether it be insect pests, fungal diseases or simple decline, many tree problems can be traced to the tree's root zone, to what's happening beneath the soil surface.We tend to overlook this fact, first because the root zone is hidden and it's only natural to focus on what we can see and, ...