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Coming to My Fathers’ land
Read MoreMy Fathers’ Land book is a sweeping memoir and family history covering nearly 250 years of Feathers in America and West Virginia.
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Chewing the fat at the mill
Read MoreSpend an hour or two shelling corn and chewing the fat with Larry Mustain at his Reed’s Mill, and the conversation eventually comes around to instances of sex in the mill. “We heard a bunch of splashing by that little bridge (over the mill raceway),”…
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Virginia furnace glows for a split second
Read MoreThe stone pyramid stands between Route 26 and Muddy Creek in Preston County, an imposing artifact from the county’s nascent industrial era. The iron furnace was built by Levi Kennet for Harrison Hagans, Brandonville’s foremost entrepreneur, merchant, and promoter. Historian Reardon S. Cuppett claimed it…
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The Truth about taxes
Read MoreTax season. That time of year when we settle up with the U.S. Treasury, via the Internal Revenue Service, and scratch our heads at where it all went. Local, school, personal property, municipal, state and the big one, federal, all chip away at our earnings…
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disjointed clips imitate life
Read MoreIt came to me as 400-foot reel of 16mm, silent, black-and-white film a decade ago. A friend had purchased it at an estate sale, but lacking a projector, passed it on to me. I love old film. It is like getting a gift from the…
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Decoration Day
Read MoreIt is Memorial Day weekend in the United States, but in Appalachia, particularly West Virginia, it is more commonly referred to as “Decoration Day.” My parents, Carl J. and Cossette (Watring) Feather, seemed to have a standing engagement in West Virginia each May, for the…
