I never get good news from my hometown.
A county commissioner, on Facebook, announces the cessation of funding for "the Art Center, the Actors Guild, a historic theatre, the Veterans Museum, the Homecoming Festival, the West Virginia Interstate Fair and Exposition, the Belleville Homecoming Festival, the Mid-Ohio Valley Multi-Cultural Festival, the Half-Marathon and others".
The reason is that a hotel tax used to pay for that stuff and the hotel business has died.
The reason it died is they completed a multil-multi million dollar road project that completely bypassed the damned city! People told them at the time, "This is bad". They replied, "It will be good for business. Trust us."
They had a hard enough time with tourism as it was.
Parkersburg: We were really something before the trains came and caused the river traffic to die off.
Parkersburg: It's not a sandbar over there. It's an island where people plotted to overthrow the government once. And it has arrowheads and stuff.
Parkersburg: If you can navigate the bypass to reach us, good on you!
I could go on at length about that town but I will spare you.