Photo courtesy www.huntiful.com
By Clark Davis/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A group of Huntington residents are spearheading a local storytelling web site. It’s an idea that’s spreading all over the state.
Huntiful, that’s the name of a new site based in Huntington telling unique and positive stories about the Huntington area.
Jessica Pressman works for the federal government during the day and along with a group of others helps run and provide material for the new site. She said it’s about showing that there are other things going on in the town that aren’t related to being the unhealthiest or having some of the worst problems with drugs.
“It’s basically a forum for us to tell our stories in our own voices,” Pressman said. “It’s just people who live here who have a passion about Huntington writing and telling their stories about their lives.”
The site is just the latest branch to grow from a state-wide, local story-telling endeavor that first sprouted in Wheeling.
In May there will be one more, SyNRGetic, which serves the New River Gorge region. Jason Koegler, along with others, started Weelunk.
“We don’t want to stop at the five number, we would like everywhere to have their own site, because we feel that the great thing about these sites and what’s proven successful is that we’re not sending someone from Charleston to somewhere else to do a story,” said Koegler. “We’re collecting the stories from the people, from the souls of the town’s themselves and they’re bubbling up if you will…”
I think this is a great idea. We have many great people here. We have the best location in the USA for manufacturing. We must focus on good things if we expect good things to come to us. I am running for mayor because I was tired of all the negative energy coming from our leaders.keep talking about the good things.
Ken