NOVEMBER 2021 ISSSUE of WestVirginiaVille.com
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1) EDITORS/NOTE: Allen Ginsberg & Bonfires | The Sky & Eternity | Manchin & Byrd
2) CHARACTERS, PART 1: A music video about how I never slept with Allen Ginsberg
3) CHARACTERS, PART 2: Allen Ginsberg speaks up in West Virginia
4) Q&A: “Where Sky Meets Eternity” documents an extraordinary artistic hand-off
5) POEM FROM DOCUMENTARY: “A Year of Few Apples” by Kirk Judd
6) POEM FROM DOCUMENTARY: “Almost” by Marc Harshman
7) DOGGEREL: “The Ballad of Bobby and Joe“
8) CARTOON: A funny thing happened to Joe Manchin on his way to Heaven …
9) CLIMATE CRISIS: Taking the measure of climate change in three short videos
10) MEMOIR: “Memory of a Waitress“
11) SPOKEN/WORD: “The Cold Visitor,” n Multimedia Poem by Bobby Lee Messer
It’s art, I tell you. Plus, the above cartoon by Shawn Allyne for the publication Black By God is funny, pointed, and offbeat — everything we look for around these parts in 21st century digital publishing. Black by God is one of the new breed of online digital publications out of Appalachia doing notable things. The effort is the brainchild of Crystal Good and a very creative crew, who recently announced they will now publish an ambitious two newsletters per week, “keeping you informed on Black news from the Mountain State”:
“We will continue to release editorial cartoon content on Sundays, along with spotlight interviews and updates from our community. In addition, we’ll dive deeper into Black By God’s reporting and maintain our recurring sections while curating coverage across news and social media sites on Tuesdays.”
~ Crystal Good, Black By God editor
RELATED : DOGGEREL: The Ballad of Bobby and Joe
And, notably, earlier this year Black By God spun off an actual print publication — you know, the kind you hold in your hand that reminds you paper pulp still exists and feels really good when turned into an actual newspaper? Another print edition is coming soon.
FOLLOW (and LEND FINANCIAL SUPPORT): BlackByGod.org
FOLLOW ON TWITTER: twitter.com/BlackByGodWV
RELATED
RE/PRINT: ‘Almost Heaven ’Til We Get There’: Black Miners and Blair Mountain: sep10.2021: “I’m a sixth-generation West Virginian,” writes Crystal Good. “My children are seventh-generation. My generational claim to Appalachia is subversive. It talks back to cavalier anti-Black stories of poor white redneck hillbillies and to the white people who claim an entire region as their own.”
SPOTLIGHT: Of Black Hair & Confederate History in the WV Legislature: march18.2021: Legislation is moving quickly to allow Confederate monuments to remain on the West Virginia Capitol grounds while the Crown Act to ban Black hair discrimination stalls.
