Welcome to Mustard Seed Mountain’s website! My name is Niamh Coomey and I am the new editor of the Wheeling, West Virginia street newspaper working to destigmatize homelessness one story at a time. After a two-year hiatus, me and a team of awesome volunteers and nonprofit workers with the Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community are working on bringing regular editions of the paper back into publication.

The White House Historical Association recently opened a new, cutting-edge education experience in Washington, D.C., a first-of-its-kind, immersive center telling the story of the Executive Mansion, its inhabitants, and the people who have dedicated their careers to its functions.

“Like in most cities, transportation is part of the heart of our city."

We must be constantly telling the stories of those we love and are in community with to advance everyone's understanding of this problem as one that the community must bear—and not a failing of any particular individual.

“I started to learn that my addiction was just a symptom of a much deeper problem. I didn’t realize how sick I was until I finally got away from all of the sickness—and I would have never gotten away from all of the sickness on my own.”

Timothy Harriman is the kind of person I can listen to for hours, giving full attention—in fact, I have. But storytelling is only one of Timothy’s many talents and passions.

If you don’t involve yourself with poor people, with people of color—if you live in that secluded subculture that doesn’t interact with these other cultures—then you just don’t understand.

In the early 2000s, the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child coined the term “toxic stress,” explaining how ACEs trigger biological reactions from the excessive activation of stress response systems on a child’s developing brain, as well as the immune system, metabolic regulatory systems, and the cardiovascular system. Toxic stress from ongoing, high doses of adversity can become embedded in a person’s traits and behaviors.

In the mid-1990s, there was a landmark study conducted by the Center for Disease Control that revealed that 12.5% of individuals who experienced four or more ACEs before their 18th birthday had a 390% increased risk of COPD, a 240% increased risk of hepatitis, a 460% increased risk of depression, and a shocking 1,220% increased risk of suicide.

Although we love a good book, sometimes, a short message is what we need. Language is magic in the sense that just a few words or sentences can move us. Each issue, we pose a different question to our community and ask for answers written on sticky notes. These words of wisdom can be seen strewn throughout the paper!

As dawn broke over the city of Wheeling on Thursday, January 18, on the heels of a statewide emergency declaration related to a massive winter storm, city officials mobilized dump trucks and bulldozers to a hillside in the neighborhood of East Wheeling.

Put simply, the city’s shutting down of the East Wheeling encampment and its forced evictions of dozens of residents who were not provided with any practical alternatives has been wholly unnecessary, senselessly destructive and totally unjustifiable.