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The Day Grandma Swore Off Eggs
What began as a simple rural experiment on the old Joseph Compher Farm quickly became a chaotic lesson in chickens, honeybees, and country life. Mail-order chicks arrived screaming at the post office, bees…
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First Grade in a Coal Patch Town: Inside a 1950s Rural Schoolhouse
What was first grade like in a rural Appalachian school during the 1950s? At S.J. Miller School in Shaw Mines, children learned beside roaring coal stoves, drank water pumped by hand from a…
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How Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape the Teaching Profession
Artificial intelligence is changing education in ways that feel both disruptive and strangely familiar. As AI tools become capable of explaining lessons, generating assignments, and assisting students instantly, the teacher’s role begins to…
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The Poetry of a Teaching Life
Teaching today carries an emotional weight that often goes unseen. Beyond lesson plans and classrooms, many teachers navigate constant demands, shifting expectations, and a sense that the work never truly ends. This reflection…
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The Driveway Cure
One winter evening during the Christmas holidays, I looked out my grandparents’ living room window and saw my grandfather sitting alone in his car in the driveway. The engine was running. The windows…
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Clint Dimbrel’s Window of Opportunity
Clint Dimbrel wasn’t the kind of man you’d call refined. Unless you were talking about moonshine, cheap motor oil, or the stories he’d polish up after a few drinks and a long sit…
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The Crow’s Nest Walkabout
This story was passed down by my father, who had no problem in relating humorous tales about himself. In the mid-1930s, most residents of Shaw Mines did not own automobiles. My father was…
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Marbles were for Keeps: A 1950’s Recess Ritual at S.J. Miller Elementary
In the schoolyard of S.J. Miller Elementary during the 1950s, marbles weren’t just for fun—they were for keeps. While the girls skipped rope nearby, the boys crouched in the dirt, fiercely protective of…
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The Day Grandma Became a Flyboy
In the 1980s, three generations of my family piled into the car for a day at the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Virginia. What started with popcorn, biplanes, and a WWII pilot turned…
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Peaches and Pressure
Long before she became involved in a Virginia winery, a fifteen-year-old girl in a Southern Maryland trailer park attempted to make peach wine using decorative liquor decanters, July Elberta peaches, and a dangerously…
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Hog Days Explosion
I was visiting my grandparents one weekend many years ago. My grandfather asked if I wanted to take a walk and see the place where he was born. I was amazed to learn…
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The Great Dynamite Caper & Peach Wine Debacle
Walt & I Were Up Behind the Mines I blame the whole thing on my friend Walt. Not because he was the one who found the dynamite, though he was. And not because…
Writing that's Rooted in Truth, Memory and Myth
