The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports

AUTUMN floated into our hills this week as softly as milkweed floss on the air. Blue asters are hanging over the creek bank with their yellow eyes staring at the brown leaves floating downstream. Cool, clear nights and warm days are slowly painting the leaves on the hillsides in shades of autumn.

Hills mellow in fall to a season of gold, gentle breezes

AUTUMN is entering our hills with soft footfalls, bringing a day touched with gold and gentle breezes. Yesterday's heat has disappeared, to be replaced by a balmy September day just made for reminiscing.

Karin Fuller

Smell the coffee: When the tradition won't burn

We have some unusual traditions in our family. If you glance away from your food, someone takes it. Clothes left on the stairs get tossed onto the porch.We delay starting the washer until someone's in the shower. And we occasionally wave goodbye using only one finger.

You're getting verrrry sleepy

According to a news release issued by "America's best-known hypnotherapist, John Morgan," it's now possible for dog owners to create the perfect pet through hypnosis thanks to Morgan's "inexpensive, easy-to-use CD that provides a safe and effective way for any dog of any age to reach the essential first step in training, which is calmness and relaxation."

Phil Kabler

Bars, clubs recovering from county smoking ban

As predicted here weeks ago, bars and clubs around Kanawha County are continuing to regain business lost when the countywide public smoking ban was imposed July 1, based on the only available objective figures to track their business.

Monday's debate to feature hot topics

Hard to say which came as more of a surprise last week: That West Virginia's economic growth is outpacing the rest of the nation, or that the West Virginia Education Association failed to endorse Gov. Joe Manchin for re-election.

Lobbyists spent $30,316 from May through August

Lobbyists reported spending $30,316 on legislators and state officials from May through August, raising their total spending since Jan. 1 to $318,203, according to disclosures to the Ethics Commission.

Dog group opposed to tracks for training

It's been more than three months since the Legislature rushed through a special session bill directing the state Racing Commission to spend up to $2 million from the Greyhound Breeder Development Fund to construct and maintain two greyhound training tracks in the state - and so far, nothing's come of it.

Smoking ban not choking business, as many claim

Headline of the month: "Business is up, so racetrack to hire 100," regarding Tri-State Racetrack and Casino's job fair to hire new workers. Hold it - how can business be up at Tri-State, when it is subject to the same smoking ban that is allegedly killing off bars and slot parlors in the rest of the county?

Rick Steelhammer

Ig Nobel prizes: laugh and think

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The 2008 Ig Nobel prizes were announced Thursday night at Harvard University, honoring scientists from across the globe whose achievements "first make people laugh, then make them think."

We'll all scream about this ice cream

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals pulled off their most effective publicity stunt ever last week when they urged ice cream magnates Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to replace the cows milk they use in producing their gourmet ice cream with something a bit less, well, bovine.

Another great week on the campaign trail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Joe Biden marched through the Rust Belt of the Midwest last week, talking tirelessly and endlessly to anyone who would listen, and giving nearly 80 interviews to his counterpart's two.

A familiar tune plays at ABBA Museum

The West Virginia State Museum is not the only historical interpretive center in the world having difficulty opening on time. Back in the Steelhammer clan's mother country of Sweden, promoters of the ABBA Museum, in the works since 2006, have postponed indefinitely a planned 2009 opening.

Sandy Wells

Longtime photographer reflects: 'I couldn't have laid my camera down'

Even as a small boy, Earl Benton knew he would make his living taking pictures. Was there anything else?

Innerviews: Body shop whiz leads crash course at Carver

You could say he teaches a crash course - literally. Jerry McIntosh heads the collision-repair program at Carver Career Center. He's a painter and body man like his father before him, an old-line hammer and torch practitioner who progressed comfortably into a high-tech world of sophisticated equipment and keen thinking.

Innerviews: Body shop whiz leads crash course at Carver

Innerviews: Dance teacher filling her late mother's shoes

She danced almost from the time she could stand. Dancing is the soul of her, as natural as breathing or blinking. She inherited the gift from her mother. In 2003, Kelle Boggs died knowing that her lovingly mentored daughter would step into her tap shoes to continue the dance school she started in 1979. Today, Deana Boggs McNeil shares her passion for dance with more than 200 Putnam County students as director of the Kelle Boggs Dance Studio.

Essays on Faith

Essays on Faith: By Evelyn R. Smith

"All I want is reality," a young woman explained. "Show me God. Tell me what He is really like. ... I don't want the empty promises. I want the real thing."

Peggy L. Horton

While I was passionately professing my love for October to a friend, she said, "Talk about waxing eloquent! I thought I was listening to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for a minute there."