Editor’s Desk: Issue 7
Dear reader,
After a two-year hiatus, I am SO excited to say that Mustard Seed Mountain, West Virginia’s first Street Paper, is back!
My name is Niamh Coomey and I ended up in Wheeling a year and some odd months ago through a series of pretty random circumstances and decisions – just as any of us end up anywhere, I suppose.
I was bartending in Minneapolis when my cousin told me she was moving to Wheeling for grad school and would have an open bedroom in her apartment. On a whim, I applied for a job in town. A few weeks and many bittersweet goodbyes later, I found myself driving a U-Haul across the seemingly endless fields of Indiana, scream-singing ‘Born to be Wild’ while flanked by my cat, Dr. Popcorn, who was also screaming.
As I wove through the last few hills on the Ohio side of the river, the only light illuminating my way was the biggest full moon I’d ever seen. Then, the glow of the suspension bridge came into view and I immediately felt there was something really special about Wheeling, a place I couldn’t have pointed out on a map just a month prior.
Through my (albeit brief) time as a reporter at the Intelligencer, I quickly learned that people here experience life very differently because Wheeling, like anywhere in the U.S., is incredibly economically stratified.
There is a Wheeling that is a seemingly constant stream of ribbon cuttings and glamorous benefit galas; a sect of Wheeling that raises money for the “underprivileged” but doesn't really seek to understand them. This is the Wheeling that only ventures downtown for brunch and Nailer’s games and calls the city “dirty” and “dangerous” – but does not dig deeper into the societal issues that got us to where we are.
This Wheeling seems to think a new parking garage that sits empty and inexplicably blasts yacht-rock 24/7 will launch Wheeling into a bigger, brighter future while overlooking the fact that Wheeling’s leadership – and local media – largely uphold the status quo and neglects its most vulnerable community members.
While new builds and benefit dinners are of course good things, I can’t help but feel that they’re often a bit out of touch when they’re not paired with a true understanding of the other Wheeling and their needs.
This Wheeling consists of people who know they have been failed by the system and often, by their community. They have grown accustomed to being dehumanized. They are victims of exploitative Ohio Valley slumlords and skyrocketing gas and grocery prices and struggle to make ends meet. Those who have been left behind because of mental health struggles or addiction that they can’t find adequate support for. LGBTQ+ people who are still called slurs in the Facebook comment section every time Channel 7 posts a story about pride.
What many of the people in the former Wheeling don’t know is that there is a really powerful – and growing – counter-culture here; people who see that there is work that needs to be done and parking garages are the least of our concern when people are fighting every day to simply survive.
It is my hope that the revived Mustard Seed Mountain can tap into that momentum and continue to amplify the voices of our Friendly City neighbors that are often overlooked – and at times regarded with outright disdain – by public figures and private citizens alike.
This paper is meant to humanize the dehumanized and increase understanding of the misunderstood, a crucial step in the broader mission of making Wheeling, and our world, a better place. If you’ve wondered what the solution to homelessness is; or bigotry, or inequity, I invite you to leave your privilege at the door and check into the conversation that many of us are already having every single day.
While there isn’t one, single theme for this first issue of MSM back, I think you’ll find there are a lot of through lines.
A big part of Mustard Seed Mountain’s mission is giving a “hand-up” rather than a “hand-out,” which echoes sentiments from an interview with Libby Horacek, an Ohio Valley Mutual Aid organizer.
Our relaunch party is a sober event; an intentional step towards fostering a culture in Wheeling where sober can be fun and addiction recovery can be championed, which MoJo staff Ashlie Howard discusses in her column while local chef Melissa Rebholz writes about her experiences with sobriety in the food industry.
And of course, art is used throughout this paper as a means of expression, community and healing, like for all of our talented community contributors and for incarcerated West Virginia artist Mike Idle whose art, a lifeline for him, was recently gifted to the Pope. A similar redemption arc can be found in ‘Finding Common Ground,’ a story about the character growth and unlikely friendship between a convicted felon and a former prosecutor.
These are all stories by and for the poor, the misunderstood, the underrepresented; the heart and soul of this wild, wonderful place I now call home.
With all that said, please enjoy this first issue back – the MOJO staff is a team of really special people and they worked hard on it. Stay tuned for three more issues this year and, if you take anything away from this rambling, let it be that the stories from those you don’t like or understand are probably the most important ones you’ll ever read.
Thank you!
Niamh Coomey
Niamh Coomey