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Wrapping up one season, beginning another

This weekend, for all intents and purposes, served as the end of the summer season – at least when it comes to local events. Friday saw the final installment of the City of Weirton’s inaugural summer event series, with a performance by Let’s Groove Tonight, an Earth, Wind, and Fire tribute group. The concert had been scheduled for earlier in the summer season, but was postponed out of concern for potential weather that never really arrived in the area. Saturday (today for some of you reading this) brought us the final Second Saturday event of the year, organized by the Top of ...

Guest Opinion: Presentation will remember a witch’s Halloween

I am not sure how many families in the Upper Ohio Valley can claim documented proof of a witch’s spell being cast. This Halloween Thursday, Oct. 30, between astronomical twilight and midnight, the veils between the spirit world are thin in the darkness. The apparitions that make their way into your home can be found in stories told in front of ancestors’ hearths that date back centuries. I will be presenting a program at 5 p.m. in the Vincent Room of the Brooke County Library in Wellsburg. I am under a generational witch’s spell cast under the celestial clock of the late 18th ...

School attendance matters — much more than you may think

There is no “secret sauce” when it comes to performing well in school, but a good place to start is the data that tells us students who show up tend to do better. An increased focus on school attendance in West Virginia would likely have positive results, as we work toward the further development of economic diversity in the state. We have many contributing factors to low educational performance, but we need a solid starting point. With the new school year here, a focus on attendance could be the momentum we need to address those other issues. Attendance is a particularly ...

A reminder of what you don’t hear enough of

This week, I would like to tell you something you do not hear enough of. Something that perhaps no one ever bothered to ever tell you. Or, something some of you may already know. Today, I want to tell you … the world is a good place. Yes, you can go back and reread that sentence again, if you’d like. The world is a good place. You see, we always talk about, think about and hear about the negatives. And there are a lot of negatives. But, for the most part, the world is a good place. Think about what is our source in discovering what is going on in this world? For the ...

History in the Hills: Happy birthday, baron

As a historian, I enjoy commemorating the past. Events such as anniversaries, birthdays, dates of battles and the like, always have grabbed my attention and have been of particular interest to me. These events give us a good excuse to bring to mind our past. I am sure if one tried hard enough, every day could be a day that has some special historical significance. The very first commemoration one celebrates, is none other than a birthday. This month, we celebrate a very important birthday of an American hero and the namesake of the city of Steubenville, Friedrich Wilhelm August ...

A good man: Remembering Tim Armstead

West Virginia is a small state, and state government is not large, so the longer you cover certain politicians, the more chances you have to see the human side of the people you cover and even become friends. That’s the way it was with Tim Armstead, the late justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the former minority leader who rose to become the first Republican speaker of the House of Delegates in nearly 83 years. I attended the visitation for Armstead last Tuesday in the chambers of the House of Delegates, not as a news reporter but as a friend. I have a ...