Book Review: Wild & Wonderful (and Paranormal) West Virginia

FTC disclaimer:  I purchased this book myself.  All opinions are my own.  This post contains affiliate links.

I went to school for a couple years in Tennessee having grown up in West Virginia.  As is typical of college kids, we would sometimes sit in a dark room and tell ghost stories.  (Even at a Christian college!)  There was one friend of mine who would leave the room when I would tell a story because she said they were so frightening.  I adapted most of my tales from Ruth Ann Musick's books.  So of course, when I saw this book, I was curious.

Wild & Wonderful (and Paranormal) West Virginia exceeded all expectations I had.  Unlike other books, it didn't just deal with one subject, but included The Moth Man, Flatwoods Monster, UFOs, ghosts,  Sheepsquatch (which I had never before heard anything about it) and also included other strange phenomenon and cryptozoological mysteries from across the Mountain State.

The thing set this book apart from others in this genre is that the author tried to give multiple explanations when possible, and some of them seemed quite plausible to me.  For instance, there have been reports of kangaroos getting loose from zoos and other places, so who is to say some of these monsters might not be part of a pack of kangaroos that live in a remote part of West Virginia? Obviously, he also leaves open the possibility for paranormal occurrences, but I really enjoyed reading the different theories.

Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio Book Review

When I was a child, I remember meeting someone who had been crippled with polio.  She was the first person I ever met who was in a wheelchair, and as children are apt to do, I was extremely interested in the fact she was in a chair that rolled around.  Of course my parents were embarrassed at the attention I was giving her chair, but she showed it off to me and told me about how she did different activities that many of us take for granted.  Of course, this is a great way for children to learn about handicaps.

I remember coming home and telling my mother I hoped I never got polio.  She told me I never would and reminded me of the little cup of liquid I didn't like the taste of but was required to drink.  She explained that would keep me from getting polio.  Of course I asked why that lady didn't drink that liquid and it was explained when she got polio there was no vaccine.

Polio was a very real -- and very scary -- part of life before the vaccine was developed.  The iron lung, a machine that helps patients breathe was developed in the 1920s.  In 2017, there were still three people alive living in an iron lung.  Polio was highly contagious -- and when she was twelve years old, Peg Kehret had a twitching thigh muscle in chorus, then went home for lunch.  She collapsed, and was diagnosed with polio.