EDITOR/NOTES: Life After the MidTerms

Hampshire County WV walking path. | WestVirginiaVille.com artified photo

By Douglas John Imbrogno | Editor, WestVirginiaVille.com | November2022

NOTE: Before we go any further, I hereby drop to one knee with a brief plea for thee. If something you read in this November 2022 issue of WestVirginiaVille.com is something you really, really appreciate reading or seeing — and would likely not have found anywhere else — consider supporting this, free (so far!) monthly multimedia off-the-beaten-path feature magazine on West Virginia life, times, culture, news, and human beings. We aim high — to be a sort of hillbilly New Yorker, mixed with Slate.com, full of coverage found nowhere else, to ‘complicate the narrative’ about what West Virginia is ‘supposed’ to be like. Your support is welcome by clicking here or that red thing below.


It’s a Mid-Term Thing, Man


If you are not worried/fretful/alarmed/hopeful or ready to emigrate to Canada on Nov. 9, you may not be paying attention. Or you are channeling your Inner Ostrich. I get that. It goes without saying that you and I and every like-minded person who cares for governance and leaders who have functioning souls and beating hearts must, must, must get to the polls on Nov. 8. And if you are one of those alleged young human beings the media likes to chatter on about — who don’t see the point in voting since they are all alike — please, please don’t be that caricature.

The word ‘infuriating‘ doesn’t do justice to the utter exasperation with people who would vote for Trumpublican candidates and Republican chaos agents because they are told that since they are (momentarily) paying a quarter more for gas, what the heck — let’s ban abortion nationwide, channel our Inner Mussolini toward everyone they’re instructed to hate, and sucker-punch Medicare and Social Security. Meanwhile, those far right leaders newly in charge will make sure the richest corporations have more money, more rights, and pay far fewer taxes than your grandma down the road or up the holler.

All those politicians are the same, right? Begging to differ is Kevin Drum, my favorite common-sensical political blogger at jabberwocking.com. In a post this week, Kevin did a short list — it could be much longer — of direct changes that have come about in America these past two years via the Biden Administration and a (barely) Democratic-run Congress. These are changes that directly affect daily life in your and my town and state, whether West Virginia or beyond. I gathered up Kevin’s list and made it into an easy-to-read graphic:

LIKE ‘LIFE’ DEPENDED ON IT, TOO


Okay, I just had to get that off my chest. If you need a ride to the polls and live in Cabell County WV (Doug does that thing with two fingers near his ear that looks like a phone), call me. (Well, contact me here). And you do the same with a loved one, a neighbor or a young-person-who-wasn’t-going-to-vote. I remain disappointed my cats don’t have the right to vote. They are liberal, sensible cats, if a little on the lazy side.

As to this new November 2022 issue, it is quite the thing, I must say. I mean, how many West Virginia-centric publications feature — in the same exact issue — the following features and contributions:

  • A profile of the out-of-the-ordinary, underground/above-ground, cultural-and-artistic-and-musical-and-film-and-theatrical career of Charleston WV native Ann Magnuson.
  • A first-hand sighting of Yo-Yo Ma playing cello in the West Virginia hills, after which he goes and inspires a cadre of young West Virginians to be their best selves.
  • A profile of a kick-ass book by James Van Nostrand on the unflinching topic of “THE COAL TRAP: How West Virginia Was Left Behind in the Clean Energy Revolution.
  • A visit with a ‘cozmic’ Marshall University chemistry professor who reads Sanskrit (he says he isn’t fluent), plays the harmonium, had a Naval Academy posting, was a ski bum, and began yoga at the age of eleven.
  • A new installment from road warrior Joseph “Bily” Corduroy, on his granddad’s “prostitute pasta” and seeking way-out-there family restaurants in the West Virginia outback.
  • A story of the travails of wrestling one’s foul mouth to ground (ahem, um … that would be mine) while restocking a Buddhist outhouse on the grounds of one of the Western world’s leading Buddhist monasteries in the Hampshire County WV hills.
  • New poetry about our old friend Autumn and the honor of walking her Technicolor woods and what, exactly, all those falling leaves might be suggesting.
  • Plus, a round-up of killer photographs from hither and yon from across the state.

To answer the question posed above this bulleted list? I am pretty sure the answer is: Just us, for now. So, we are glad you are here.

Please. Read on.


FREE SUBSCRIBE to WestVirginiaVille’s e-mail newsletter:
WestVirginiaVille.substack.com


Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: