Guest column/Fixing Hancock Schools a marathon, not a sprint

February 7, 2026

By now nearly everyone has most likely seen the dire financial situation that the Hancock County school system finds itself in. Years of inadequate personnel management, overspending and a lack of thorough financial oversight finally caught up with them when it was recently announced that the school system is facing a budget shortfall of approximately $8 million. All of this occurred during the stretch of multiple superintendents and numerous county board members, and was finally brought to light this past fall when then-Superintendent Dan Enich notified the West Virginia ...

If you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them

February 7, 2026

There are some days when the world feels unbearably heavy, days when the headlines seem to blur together and the noise of everyday life makes it hard to hear anything at all. And then, in those rare, quiet moments, the ones where we finally sit still long enough to feel something … a single sentence can change everything — change our perspective on how we see the world. For me, it was the Dalai Lama’s gentle reminder, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” Such simple words, and such a simple ...

Guest column/Life on the region’s frontier could often be difficult

February 7, 2026

It’s going to snow — a lot … Our ancestors did not have the advantage of modern weather warning systems to prepare for things like bitter, raw, sub-zero temperatures, blizzards and ice storms. The Upper Ohio Valley was settled during some of the coldest winters of the Little Ice Age. The wintry weather that could be remembered might have been blended from the stories told in front of a hearth with a roaring fire and a black bake kettle and a bean pot, from a forebear of my mother’s side of the family. It was a time when youngsters were put to sleep in their feather beds to ...

Guest column/Beware of naive educators who promote socialism

February 7, 2026

First of all, you must understand that the vast majority of educators at all levels do not have a clue as to what it is like working in the real world. Once they acquire tenure, K-12 teachers and higher education professionals have a job for life unless they do something really stupid. In the real world of business, one can be fired at a moment’s notice. I’m reminded of a teaching colleague (yes, I was an educator) who took a year’s leave-of-absence. He told us, “Now I’m going out to work in the real world.” It was sort of a put down and quite condescending to the rest ...

We had been warned

January 31, 2026

There are many things that you can say about the snowstorm that hit our area last weekend, but one you can’t is that no one told us it was coming Reports started to come in more than a week before that the potential existed for a major snow event the weekend of Jan. 24-25. Many of the predictions came from sources that didn’t seem to have much credibility, but some came from the meteorologists across the Tri-State Area who almost always advised that “the conditions are there, but it’s too early to know anything for sure.” Depending on where you live in the region, it’s ...

Having to say goodbye never gets easier

January 31, 2026

There is a silence unlike any other when a certain heartbeat stops. It is a specific kind of quiet. One that seems to settle into the floorboards. And it remains a part of our home forever. It is a quiet so heavy that it feels as if it has its very own weight to it. How can air feel so heavy? We tell ourselves when we bring them home — those tumbling little balls of fur who trip over their own paws — that we are ready for the end. We tell ourselves that we understand the math. We convince ourselves that we realize there is not a lot of time when it comes to the life ...