11/28/2025
Weather and Traffic
November 28, 2025 8:30 a.m.
Good Morning! Today is FRIDAY, November 28, 2025. It’s Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas rush and a day when, before the internet, people would to cue up at the front doors of stores at insane hours to get the best deals. It’s also National French Toast Day.
The latest issue of the INNformer is out for distribution today. The Short Line and Hundred areas in Wetzel County got theirs yesterday.
Advertise with the INNformer! We will also be offering some locally themed products in the next few days for your Christmas stockings.
On this day in 1745 the French and 600 of their Indian allies raided and destroyed the village of Saratoga in the New York colony, killing 30 and taking 60 to 100 villagers prisoner. The attack, part of King George’s War, was typical of the conflicts of the time as it was led by French officers and a handful of French soldiers with the Indians providing the bulk of the fighters.
The attack on Saratoga led the British to abandon all of their settlements north of Albany.
The northern British colonies suffered a heavy toll during this conflict, the third of the French and Indian Wars and the British relied heavily on their colonial militias, instead of regular troops, to fight the battles. As a result Massachusetts, for example, had eight percent of it’s adult male population killed.
As we gear up for the 250th anniversary of Independence, this dependence of colonial militia to fight for King and Country, instead of being protected by British regular forces, helps to explain the colonial reaction to the taxation and army deployment policies that the colonies found so galling ten years later. London wanted regular troops in the colonies only after the French threat was eliminated and wanted the colonies to pay for the European wars.
In 1878 American artist James McNeill Whistler (you may have heard of his portrait Whistler’s Mother) sued British art critic John Ruskin for libel.
Referring to Whistler’s painting, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, Ruskin wrote: “I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
It wasn’t Ruskin calling Whistler “Cockney,” basically the British equivalent of white trash, or the crack that he was coxcomb- silly and vain, that pi**ed off Whistler. It was the implication that his artwork was worthless.
Whistler, who sued for 1,000 pounds, about $131,000 in today’s dollars, and won. However, he didn’t get the 1,000 pounds, he was awarded about ten cents for his effort. With the high court costs he was forced into bankruptcy.
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, the painting at the heart of the lawsuit, is worth a minimum of $2.4 million today.
Weather:
Cloudy today with highs around freezing. Tonight, cold, low in the upper teens. Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy with highs in the upper 30s.
Traffic:
The Sistersville Ferry is scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. They have for sale Christmas bulbs with the ferry theme.
Take the Ferry and avoid New Martinsville! It is, after all, annoying.
Currently at our Downtown Sistersville News Command Center it’s 28 degrees with some flurries.
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