WestVirginiaVille

New in ‘Blogalachia’: I didn’t want it to go cheaply. I didn’t want it to pay for dinner or even for the start of my new life. I wanted it to perhaps find its way to a new hand, a new marriage and a new start | By Bill Lynch from ‘Ring Cycle’

In the summer of 2007 I had already wanted my tattoo for four years. I could close my eyes and imagine it a part of me, but when I tried too hard to see it, it would slip away into the underbrush like a deer who senses your gaze.

Bishop Nash sits down to have a heart-to-heart chat with some of the spam received at the ‘Meanwhile in West Virginia’ blog.

So, one of the missions of WestVirginiaVille is to scope out who’s doing interesting work on the Web. ‘Meanwhile in West Virginia,” a collaboritve blog by four Marshall students, passes muster.

Is Pittsburgh cooler than Austin? Are cookie tables the next hipster find? Is Weirton, W.Va., a jerkwater town or the next undiscovered gem? Or both? A Blogalachia re-post poses a few timely questions.

“The Last Mountain” screens in Charleston and here are some thoughtful observations about a movie that has gotten widespread buzz in its depiction of the devastation caused by mountaintop removal mining.

Attract young people to West Virginia? Sure, says today’s Blogalachia commentary, but what kind? “Get the most hard-core world-changers we can. No one needs self-absorbed “what’s in it for me” types right now …”

‘One might be tempted to say that we’re poorer today because of Hazel’s Dickens passing, but a trip to YouTube will show that her spirit enriches the repertoire of musicians all over the world.’

A charming found video, even if the camera is a little shaky and the subject is how a Calhoun County bull lost its jewels.

“My tic used to infuriate my old boyfriend. The first time he hurt me was, perhaps not coincidentally, the first time my hand shook this way.”

“As we awoke on the morning of November 5, 1985, none of us could imagine the changes that were being wrought upon our world …”

“November 4, 1985, may just be another day to most of you,” writes Matthew Burns, “but it will forever be imprinted in my psyche as the day that defined my life.”

An entertaining essay by Charleston, W.Va., native Elizabeth Gaucher, who manages to muse her way from a childhood game to issues of authoritarian manipulation.

The blogger known as ‘Karan-a-go-go’ has been having blogging interruptus issues. She issues a daring challenge to WestVirginiaVille to get her back on the blogging straight and narrow.

When Bayer CropScience announced the company would stop storing locally methyl isocyanate (MIC), the media and activists were blamed for harming the economy. A vivid animation shows the larger stakes.

The faces in this video pose the most pertinent and pressing question to the legacy of Don Blankenship.

However Don Blankenship’s career ends, “his story is a deeply tragic one,” says Rolling Stone in a profile of the Massey Energy CEO titled “The Dark Lord of Coal Country.”

Raising the right questions, as some in the Navajo Nation are undertaking to do, would go a long way toward kick-starting the conversation about the future of coal in Appalachia.

Should you ever get the bright idea to drive 800 miles to Chattanooga down-and-back in one day to rescue your son’s burned-up Honda, think again. A first-person cautionary tale.