How do other counties
manage nicer roads?
After numerous calls to the Division of Highways, both local and district offices, and letters to the paper about the huge potholes on W.Va. 73 South and Halleck Road they were finally filled.
It took nearly a year of weekly calls. Well we now have what the people out west call “Rodeo Roads.” Yes, the potholes are gone replaced by suspension-jarring humps and bumps that bounce you nearly off the road at the speed limit.
Why can’t the DOH fill a hole without overfilling it to make a mound? I have traveled on many other counties’ repaved roads, regraveled roads and even on obscure back roads, and potholes are filled smoothly. They even have those things called ditches which you cannot see along W.Va.73 or Halleck Road and most other county roads. Our roads would last so much longer if storm water run-off drained off the road’s surface and did not find its own path — undercutting the edges of the road surface.
As a recent photo in the newspaper picture plainly shows (DP-Monday) the Interstate 79 bridge passing over Halleck Road looks ready to fall any day.
They keep shoring it up with steel supports, but it clearly needs to be redone. It is not the only bridge in Monongalia County that needs work. Meanwhile, the DOH is looking to put another interchange on Interstate 79. There seems to be a greater need to make the roads we have safe before thinking of building another interchange.
There is also the subject of new roundabouts. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the roads approaching these intersections smoother? I am not against these projects, let’s just get our priorities right.
I don’t know who makes the decisions on what road work is to be done in Monongalia County but it’s clear they do not drive the roads or listen to county residents when they decide what to do.
How do other counties with a lower income per capita and less industry manage to have nicer roads? Are their tax dollars spent more wisely?
Susan Hall Witt
Morgantown
Magic of science camp
not so easily defined
National Youth Science Camp. Four words I had never imagined would be strung together, and four words that, when I Googled them, a lack of search results almost convinced me were a scam. Regardless, I applied; and, as they say, the rest is history.
People also say that you don’t truly appreciate what you have until you lose it. After camp ended no longer did I wake up bright and early to the Rhododendron Song to prepare for a day full of lectures, laughs, group projects, more laughs and activities that differed wildly day to day. And yes, I did miss it.
But I also grew to appreciate camp more, because I realized how blissfully happy I had been during those nearly three weeks at Camp Pocahontas. The thing is though, that there’s something that no one tells you: You never truly lose everything. I’ll always have the memories, the lessons I learned, and, most importantly, the friends I made.
It took me a while after camp to write this, but the truth is I was having trouble trying to explain how camp changed me, as well as what it, and the people there, came to mean to me.
But now, I’ve come to accept that I don’t have all the perfect words to describe camp. And maybe that’s okay — because part of the magic of camp lies in its inability to be defined. Maybe that makes it fitting that, even as camp has ended, I still find myself unable to define the full effect it had on me. The best way I can think to describe it is that camp felt like mine. The people felt like my people and camp turned into home.
From the moment I stepped out of the Dulles airport, to the countless neuroscience lectures, watching a sunset after hiking all day, snacks at night while talking about everything, modifying bacteria DNA, swimming under the stars, crying and saying goodbyes as I again stepped into Dulles, and every single moment in between — camp was one of the best experiences of my life.
Taleigh Adrian
Hill City, S.D.
