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Mustard Seed Mountain is West Virginia’s first street newspaper, bringing you stories from and for the poor, working, and misunderstood.

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Wheeling’s Homeless Ban: A Three Year Retrospective
Wheeling’s Homeless Ban: A Three Year Retrospective

This fall marks three years since Wheeling’s city council passed legislation banning eating, sleeping, cooking food and storing belongings in public spaces – effectively making it illegal to be homeless. As many have observed, homelessness is perhaps more visible now in Wheeling as the ban merely displaces but does not alleviate homelessness, just as several dozen homeless service providers warned. 

Mustard Seed Mountain’s staff looks back on the past several years of local anti-homeless legislation, which can be closely traced back to the national political climate and rhetoric about unhoused communities.

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Editor’s Desk: Issue 9
Editor’s Desk: Issue 9

Dear reader,

I’ve opened up a blank google doc countless times over the last several weeks and just stared at it. I’m doing it again now. Hopefully, this time, words will fall from the sky and land on the page so I don’t have to keep agonizing over its blankness and what it says about me – Am I blank? Google: is “blank” an adjective I can use to describe a person? Have I already emptied out all of my thoughts? Will they ever replenish? 

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Director’s Desk: Issue 9
Director’s Desk: Issue 9

Turning on the news and hearing concerns that there is a 1 in 10 chance AI and computers could destroy the world in the next 10 years feels like stepping into a sci-fi movie. Compound this with news of war, children being killed by it, the rise of climate-related disasters, the cost of living and increased poverty, and the future can feel very bleak. What makes this feel even darker is the realization that, intended or not, each of these things is a product of someone’s work. It is easy to think of “work” as something we just have to do to make money to pay the bills – but in reality, our work creates the culture, community, and world we live in.

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Faith Leaders and Our Homeless Neighbors - A Walk that Continues
Faith Leaders and Our Homeless Neighbors - A Walk that Continues

With the convening of Wheeling’s new clergy-led Homeless Taskforce, we reflect on Wheeling’s long and active tradition of faith-based accompaniment with our homeless neighbors. It gives us hope that the City is now adopting this time-tested approach.

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Local Artist Spotlight: Mel’s Alternative Images
Local Artist Spotlight: Mel’s Alternative Images

Located on Chapline Street in Wheeling's Centre Market is a small 10 foot by 20 foot photography studio. It is the “home base” of Melody Rae Petras’ artistic passion – specifically analog photography. Melody works with film, VHS, and tintypes.

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Get your fresh, nutritious foods at the Public Market, and make it SNAPPY!
Get your fresh, nutritious foods at the Public Market, and make it SNAPPY!

Hey you! Did you know that you can get 50% off your produce and grocery items when you pay with SNAP at the Public Market, Wheeling’s premier nonprofit grocery store downtown? 

The Public Market, a project of Grow Ohio Valley, partners with local and regional farmers to bring fresh produce, eggs, meat, and dairy products to Wheeling. The Market receives funding through the WV Food and Farm Coalition as well as a private donor for their SNAP Stretch program, which allows them to offer extensive discounts for SNAP/EBT customers on a wide variety of grocery items and produce. 

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Street Stickies
Street Stickies

Community members answer the question ‘what makes a good neighbor?’

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📢 Subscribers! 📢 Watch your mailboxes! 📢 The spring issue of MSM has been sent to our subscribers outside of the Ohio Valley area. Local subscribers can expect paper deliveries soon! THANK YOU for your support and patience! 💛
We asked the community 'what makes a good neighbor.' This is what they said. 🤝
Finding community and healing through art is a huge part of what we do at the Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community and Mustard Seed Mountain. Thank you to Robin, Christine, Cheryl, Heather, Ryan and Eko for submitting these pieces for our sp
Hey everybody! We wanted to share a few updates. As we continue to distribute our spring issue of MSM we are also looking ahead to our August issue. If you have a piece of art, poetry or a story idea to pitch, don’t be shy! For now, you can
In late March, Dr. William Mercer planned on visiting L.A. for a long term care symposium held by a society he has been involved with for the last thirty years. He decided to take full advantage of the trip and use it as an opportunity to connect w
I cried when I first saw and spent time with the Saint John’s Bible. It was the resurrection illumination (the pictures that accompany the biblical text) with Jesus telling Mary Magdalene, and all of us, “don’t hold on to me...&rdqu
Ryan was a 31-year-old convicted felon who ran the streets of Wood County as a kid, abandoned by a father he never knew and weighed down by a legacy of family addictions and dysfunction, along with the institutional racism he endured as one of the on
Mustard Seed Mountain’s editor sat down for an interview with Ohio Valley Mutual Aid (OVMA) volunteer and organizer Libby Horacek to discuss mutual aid: what it is, what it entails, and how you can get involved. Read about it at the web link

ISSUE 8 AVAILABLE NOW