Taking a break from the grayscale political scene to color outside the lines
SEEING RED
‘RED BARN ON THE RIGHT’ | Barbour County, W.Va. | theSTORYistheTHING.com photo | august2020 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
Photos & Text by Douglas John Imbrogno | november26.2024
We could spend a long while lamenting the political state of the State of West Virginia. We have a guy headed to the U.S. Senate who is like a bad boyfriend version of a major politician, not showing up when he’s expected or not showing up at all. Politico devoted a whole story to his lousy attendance and ghosting of the gubernatorial mansion as a two-term governor. As for Jimbo’s replacement-elect, it’s as if a C-List actor got bumped up to an A-list movie role while a D-list underling was hired to fill his spot. That would be the ‘political chameleon’ named Patrick Morrissey, who, like Justice, just can’t stop believing in Donald Trump (or acting like he does, which is far, far worse because both of them certainly know better.)
But, nah. Let’s take the longer view and ditch the progressive/Democratic post-election teeth-gnashing. In the tough-love words of Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall, one of the keenest of political observers, let’s all “get off the floor and keep it simple.” He underscores that it’s time to gather our wits, forces, and numbers and form a solid, unwavering, unified opposition. The mission statement and action list to meet the many threat vectors of ‘Trump 2.0’ head on? “It’s to hold the people in power accountable,” says Josh.
THE WONDER OF IT ALL (Click to Enlarge)
‘FOUR VARIATIONS ON CHARLES JUPITER HAMILTON’S ‘WONDER MURAL” | Charleston, W.Va. | theSTORYistheTHING.com photos | CLICK TO ENLARGE | MORE ON THE ARTIST
So let’s take a breather from political exasperation and anxiety. And for those of us who dearly love this place called West Virginia — and for you out-of-staters willing to be swayed from tired cliches — let’s color outside the lines for a few minutes. I introduce to you the debut of ‘West Virginia In Color,‘ a new, occasional WestVirginiaVille.com series. Consider it my Thanksgiving invocation for why it’s worth being thankful for living in this place.
The focus is on people and places in the towns, hollers and hills of the Mountain State which feature a blast, a blaze, or a notable burst of color. Because the squishy empty suits fronting soulless political movements will rise, peak, and pass one day, but the mountains, the good and better folks, and the colors that awaken us and revive our spirits will outlast them all.
GO LONG
‘GAME DAY’ | Poca High School football field, Poca, W.Va. | theSTORYistheTHING.com photo | september2021 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
Sometimes a shot is an obvious one. Contrasted above are the belching, grayscale towers of the John Amos Power Plant as it heats up the planet, juxtaposed against the Valentine-red Poca High School ‘Dots’ football team at the scrimmage line. (Yes,they are indeed ‘the Poca Dots‘.) I’d name the other team, too, but I forgot to record it, so I trust some local football-frenzied fan can I.D. them. (Leave your best guess in the comments).
Sometimes, though, I just lift and click my cellphone because the light at the end of the room looks cool framing that guy reading a paper. When I check my photos, I find that this one below has the look of one of Norman Rockwell’s narrative paintings framing a person or group in a vivid, yet muted palette. I am not claiming Rockwell-esque powers of artistry as I am but a hobbyist cellphone shooter with a roving eye. Study this page of Rockwelliana, though, and tell me the shot is not somewhere up in the bleachers of Norman’s ballpark.
BREAKING NEWS
‘ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS’ | Charleston, W.Va. | theSTORYistheTHING.com photo | march2022 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
OUT & ABOUT
Any self-respecting photo roundup of West Virginia in all its Pantone magnificence should include landscapes. The shot below of cows enjoying a grass salad in a pumpkin-colored dusk is what I encountered across the road one day after exiting into the parking lot from my own meal at Lost River Grill in Hardy County, W.Va. And ‘The Road Goes Ever On‘ photo is one view you may see coming down from the sinuous ridges above Lost River. Travels in this area are a delight to those of us invigorated by sojourns along solitary back roads in sparsely populated hill country. (For more, see this Lost River photo/video homage, from which I’ve recycled ‘Bovine Sunset‘).
And while it may not seem like it, the colorized photo of my cigar-toting hand in a favorite flee-the-human-race getaway spot in Greenbottom, W.Va., shares a sort of kinship with the wonderfully aged Appalachian barn found up a Lincoln County road. Correct me if I’m wrong, you natives and longtimers and back-to-the-landers in the rural wayback, but I believe one of this barn’s uses was to dry tobacco? And, yes, I concede, cigars are one of my operative vices, much to my dear spouse’s chagrin.
‘FOUR VARIATIONS ON WEST VIRGINIA VIEWSCAPES’ | theSTORYistheTHING.com photos | CLICK TO ENLARGE |
WHEELS UP
A nice thing about being a cellphone-ographer is that you’re not lumbering about with loads of gear or a lens as long as a 12-inch pepperoni sub. Of course, the pros who do are able to sell their photos to Der Spiegel and National Geographic, while I troll for attention at an obscure website just shy of its one-thousandth subscriber (free subscribe and it could be you!).
As a result, though, my hand is quick. And since I now only buy pants with cellphone pockets, I am fast on the draw when cyclists cross my line of sight, about to line themselves up in a shot that I absolutely must snap in the next few seconds or the moment will be lost. Here are two instances of urban West Virginians on a roll. Click them up big.
‘TWO VARIATIONS ON ITINERANT CYCLISTS’ | theSTORYistheTHING.com photos | CLICK TO ENLARGE
PEOPLE GATHERED & GOING
I fret that I’ve dressed this webpage with so many large photos that some of you have had time to make a grilled cheese sandwich as the page loaded. Or you gave up and went to the Mall to watch ‘Wicked’ (or maybe you’re more a ‘Gladiator II’ moviegoer who can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire?). Let me know either way. And I also love a good grilled cheese sandwich.
To close out the first in my ‘West Virginia in Color’ series, below is a roundup of various strata of folk in various locales, either enjoying themselves or leaving it all behind as they move on to the next thing in their lives, however luxurious, workaday, or hard.
‘FOUR VARIATIONS ON HUMANS TOGETHER & ALONE’ | theSTORYistheTHING.com photos | CLICK TO ENLARGE
P.S.
Why I Live Where I Live
There are several reasons one might consider fleeing West Virginia. Its ‘Stepford Wives’ Republican supermajority. Its current Trump crush. A fossil fuel industry whose destructiveness now takes the form of slow-walking the pressing climate crisis transition to a post-carbon economy. Its new governor. (True Confessions: back when Patrick Morrissey was at the apex of his carpetbagging unctuousness as the state’s attorney general — he’s a New Jersey native — I began referring to him on Twitter as a ‘Leprechaun Gone Bad,’ while tagging him. He blocked me later that year, one of my signal social media achievements. Feel free to borrow my branding for Governor Patsy moving forward.)
Yet speaking as someone who has chosen to stay, it’s because these ancient hills and valleys contain a surety about them, a lasting depth that far surpasses the word ‘beauty.’ As I often do to jigger my brain into other ways of seeing something, I looked up that over-familiar word in my Oxford English Dictionary app. Some of its thesaurus alternatives point to what makes West Virginia a worthwhile place to grow old: heavenliness; gorgeousness; comeliness; splendour; grandeur; blessing. Or just take a long breath. Take two long breaths, and click the photo below to enlarge it and live within it for one long minute.
‘FALLING FOR IT’ | Blackwater Falls State Park, Davis, W.Va. | theSTORYistheTHING.com photo | october2023 | CLICK TO ENLARGE
Thanks to Jeff Seager for his editing mojo on this piece.
A NOTE TO READERS:
Please help expand the reach of this publication by free subscribing to its companion newsletter and substack site at: WestVirginiaVille.substack.com (and/or my companion writing and imagery site at thestoryisthething.substack.com) and recommending the links to friends and fellow travelers in your world and on social media feeds. I’d greatly appreciate it. And thank you for the comments, feedback and faithful readership. It means the world to hear back from the otherwise vast, echoing spaces of the Interwebs. We live, perhaps as we ever have, in dangerous times. But good ones, too, if we keep our wits and equilibrium about us. Let us manage the challenging years immediately ahead in solidarity. Peace outwards. | DJI
