John Douglas

Joe Herrmann will celebrate the release of Gather 'round, his new CD, with a concert at the Star Theatre at 2 p.m. this Saturday, November 14.

Gather 'round is the first solo album for Herrmann, who is known for his long career with Critton Hollow Stringband and more recently with The Percolators, a "super group" of old-timey musicians.

"If anybody ever saw a ghost, Belle Cross did," Eleanor Campbell told me more than 30 years ago.

And, she would have known.

A Berkeley Springs man was found not guilty last week of robbing The Country Inn and forcibly restraining the night watchman during a break-in on July 30, 2008.

A jury found Daniel Robert Lee, 29, not guilty after deliberating less than half an hour last Thursday afternoon, October 8, in Morgan County Circuit Court.

DNA tests showed no link between two families searching for lost relatives and an unknown redheaded woman whose body was found in Morgan County in 1950.

It took almost two years to get the DNA test results, which were recently provided to West Virginia State Police by a lab at the University of North Texas.

WVU Hospitals-East officials insisted on a public hearing about War Memorial Hospital's future because they wanted to ask questions about the proposed sale of the hospital and construction of a new facility, said Albert Pilkington, president and CEO of WVU Hospitals-East.

WVU Hospitals failed to bid when War Memorial's assets were up for sale because the hospital group had a different vision of what is needed here, Pilkington told The Morgan Messenger.

A lawsuit to establish who owns the former Pine Valley School property has been scheduled for trial on July 20, 2010.

Circuit Judge John Yoder set the date for the bench trial during a pretrial conference last week.

When gasoline prices were skyrocketing last summer, we suggested that one way of spurring the economy and cutting down on imported oil at the same time was a national effort to get gas guzzlers off the road and help put people into more efficient vehicles.

Last month, the U.S. Congress passed what has been called the "Cash for Clunkers" Bill, which is along those very lines.

The PATH electric line hasn't been a hot local topic since last fall when Allegheny Power announced the route wouldn't be coming through Morgan County. PATH, if you recall, stands for Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline and is proposed as a 224-mile high voltage line running northeast across West Virginia from Putnam County in the southwest corner to New Market, near Frederick, Md.

In Hampshire, Jefferson and a dozen other counties, the debate and protest aren't over yet. The State Public Service Commission has set a July 13 deadline for interested parties to announce that they want to intervene and participate in the PATH case.

The Morgan County Commissioners have taken steps to help resolve two nagging issues. At recent meetings, the commissioners gave their blessing to advisory boards that will look at the fairness of property assessments and at what the future may hold as far as land use regulations.

The Tax Evaluation Committee, which will study property values locally, was proposed by former commissioner Bob Ford. It's an outgrowth of an idea that Ford took to county officials in January. At that time, thousands of Morgan County property owners had received notice of higher tax assessments, despite declining real estate values due to the recession. Ford suggested that assessments be lowered across the board for everyone.

In April, we reported on the state's appraisal study in

Morgan and 18 other counties in northern West Virginia.