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.

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.

Is our country truly full of dangerous people who are better locked away?

As ideas started forming in our minds, we realized there were more than enough stories about women to fill an entire paper.

Looking in a mirror and recognizing our own humanity is hard enough. We ask ourselves, “Who am I? What am I? What is the purpose of me, of this world?”