I think family is very important in West Virginia and has long been so because the mountains made travel difficult in the past, and family members had to depend on each other.

Across Central Virginia, the traditions of Thanksgiving bring us closer together with those we love. We gather with family and close friends, we share memories and laughter, and we give thanks for the profound blessing of living in the United States.

I played college basketball in West Virginia for two years, and then I graduated from NYU with a sports management degree because I realized the NBA's not going to happen.

I'm happy that I have my family, and I'm happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing's changed, really.

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

When Brad and I got married in 2008, it got a lot of attention. And all the attention was over the fact that we were two men, but people were hardly conscious of the fact that we were entering into an interracial marriage. That's wonderful, because it was only 50 years ago with Loving v. Virginia that interracial marriages were made legal.

I pledged to put country before party and assert my independence when it reflects my principles or the needs of Central Virginia, and I have done that.

A declaration of the independence of America, and the sovereignty of the United States was drawn by the ingenious and philosophic pen of Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, a delegate from the state of Virginia.

A West Virginia 10 is a California 4. Or at least that's what legend tells us: The Legend of Dr. Feelgood. Plastic surgery has a permanent home here, which is why Nancy Pelosi loves our Botoxed beaches. Beverly Hills looks like a moving Madame Tussauds.

I hated baseball. I really didn't like baseball at all until someone decided they were going to pay me... Every year I played in the big leagues, the day the season ended, I called my buddies in West Virginia and said, 'I'll be home tomorrow.'

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

I've told so many stories to so many friends of mine. I have friends in Pittsburgh, in West Virginia, and in Indy. That's three different demographics of people, and they all laughed, so I assumed that if I find something funny and all my friends find something funny, I hope people everywhere will find it funny.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.

I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.

When Landon Carter, a Virginia plantation owner, read the Declaration of Independence two days after it was issued, he wondered whether its ringing affirmation of equality meant that slaves must be freed. If so, he confided to his diary, 'You must send them out of the country, or they must steal for their support.'

I was born on the 24th of September 1755 in the county of Fauquier, at that time one of the frontier counties of Virginia. My father possessed scarcely any fortune and had received a very limited education - but was a man to whom nature had been bountiful, and who had assiduously improved her gifts.

In Seattle, I soon found that my radical ideas and aesthetic explorations - ideas and explorations that in Richmond, Virginia, might have gotten me stoned to death with hush puppies - were not only accepted but occasionally applauded.

Virginia is a place that's so boring, you find friends and do cool things.

There's no telling how many guns we have in America - and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated.

Well, traditionally, my husband and I go back to our farm in Virginia but we do Christmas every day. We truly do. For us, it's about giving. We are of the Christian faith we believe that if people can see God in us, then we're actually doing our job.

Virginia State University gave me a chance to get out of my neighborhood and it showed me a different light for who I was in society.

People in West Virginia do have cars. We have indoor plumbing. We even use knives and forks.

Katherine Johnson is a shining example of what you can truly do with hard work and persistence. Under what had to be the most difficult of circumstances she persevered and stuck to her values. She is a real West Virginia and American hero. To honor her legacy every August 26th, on her birthday, is the least we can do.

In 2003, being Virginia Player of the Year was an amazing feeling because I think that was the moment I realized I could actually, really go far in my sport, and I was actually, really good at something. At that moment, I knew that I could play at a high level.