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Time for planning tree planting

After setting up 100 Christmas trees to celebrate 100 years since the Kump House was completed, we are starting to think about a better landscape plan outdoors. When the house was built, it was on an eleven-acre farm that stretched from Seneca Road to the railroad high on the hill that is now south of highway 33. Soon a white wooden fence encircled the whole farm to protect cows and horses from cars on the highways. There was a wide rolling pasture and lots of room for an apple orchard, barn, chicken house, dog pen, garden, pig pen, and smoke house. However, after 1937 when highway ...

State of confusion

Donald Trump has managed to plunge the United States into a state of confusion on both the domestic and international fronts. In Venezuela, the quick “victory” is rapidly losing its allure. In Minneapolis, the shooting of a citizen by ICE agents has added to the perception that the administration simply makes up its narrative without a concern for truth. This is perhaps a reflection of the divisions within the White House staff. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem have engaged in bombast and misstatement. The situation in Minneapolis was made infinitely worse by Noem’s premature ...

Primary

With the start of the new year, the 2026 election cycle is just around the corner. The May 12th Primary Election is now 4 months away, beginning with the candidate filing period on January 12th. For just over 2 weeks, West Virginians seeking their party’s nomination to the General Election must file certificates of announcement to officially become candidates. Elections are the voices of the people. Elected officials make decisions at the national, state, and local levels that affect our daily lives, future, and our next generations. Perhaps some of the most important decisions we ...

Lions and lambs of the Senate

The West Virginia Senate is losing two giants with the resignation of Senate President Pro Tempore Donna Boley, R-Pleasants, and the retirement at the end of 2026 of Senate Minority Leader Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell. Boley, 90, has been a state senator since her appointment by the then-Gov. Arch Moore in 1985 and has remained there for 41 years and through 11 elections. She has been a force in West Virginia Republican politics and played a large role in slowly turning West Virginia into a red state. She’s the longest serving state senator in West Virginia history and at one point was ...

The moral blackmailing of the American people

In Springfield, Illinois, in 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful speech decrying the “ravages of mob law” throughout the land. Lincoln warned, in eerily prescient fashion, that the spread of a then-ascendant “mobocratic spirit” threatened to sever the “attachment of the People” to their fellow countrymen and their nation. Lincoln’s opposition to anarchy of any kind was absolute and clarion: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.” Unfortunately, it seems that every few years, Americans must be reminded anew of Lincoln’s ...

Tragedy and reality in Minnesota

Renee Good died on Wednesday in Minneapolis. She had been attempting to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents engaged in federal law enforcement activities. Along with other protestors, Good involved herself in what federal agents were doing and used her car to block them. Confronted by federal agents, Good accelerated with an agent in front of her car. He pulled his gun, she accelerated and struck him, he opened fire and shot her. She died. Watching the video footage, it is clear she accelerated with an agent directly in front of her car and struck him. Close observers ...