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
By Douglas John Imbrogno | WestVirginiaVille.com | november2021
The climate crisis is, at its heart, a communal call to action. The Earth’s atmosphere and oceans — the planet’s bloodstream — are heating up as if with a killing fever. Its million-fold species, of which we are just one, face a massive die-off that is well underway. What to do?
1) VIDEO: “Climate Common Sense”
Things will grow worse unless we join forces to counter the powerful alliance of politicians and financial interests determined to delay action by throwing up roadblocks to keep mega-profits flowing. By seeking “further study.” By dividing the climate movement from within.
“The tactics exercised by the fossil fuel industry and its allies of outright climate denialism are no longer effective, and have been replaced by a much more subtle and insidious battle plan. This is according to Dr. Michael E Mann in his recently released book, The New Climate War, a fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality.”
~ Tristan Bove, Earth.org
Earlier this year, my AMP Multimedia partner Bobby Lee Messer and I began shooting videos for the West Virginia Climate Alliance, which is how these videos came to be. But spend a few minutes with them and you begin to see the commonality behind the climate crisis that extends far beyond these Appalachian hills. The issues are the same across hemispheres and continents.
The three videos on this page are a good snapshot of where we are in late 2021. The climate crisis deepens every day. Yet planet-wide, more and more people awaken daily to the reality of what must be done to turn back the fever. These videos were shot from within the perspective of West Virginia’s rolling hills, but speak to the global need for collective, massive, immediate, and ongoing action.
2) VIDEO:”In Pursuit of Climate Justice”
Yet as “In Pursuit of Climate Justice” shows, the deadly effects of a polluted, overheated world often fall first and hardest on communities of color and low-income areas. For many of these frontline communities, the climate crisis is an inescapable fact of life, right outside a front door or in the backyard.
What to do? Get engaged. Get involved. Speak up and out. Find a group or climate action community where you may invest your energy, your vision, your particular gifts.
At last Saturday’s ‘Halloween Rally for Climate Action’ in West Virginia’s capital, the Rev. Ron English, president of the the NAACP chapter in Charleston WV, issued a series of key questions all of us should be asking ourselves. Key political leaders like WV Sen. Joe Manchin must be held to account for how they answer the most significant question of the day when it comes to the climate crisis. Are we doing what we need to be doing right now?
Or, as Rev. English puts it:
“In times of decisive action as this, cowardice asks: ‘Is it safe?’ Vanity asks: ‘Is it popular?’ Politics asks: ‘Is it expedient?’ But conscience asks: ‘Is it right?’
3) VIDEO: “The 2021 Halloween Rally for Climate Action”
