Our modest effort at Joe-collation and sprawling, sometimes grouchy commentary is not just too belittle the man, alhough there are roundhouse punches and cranky cartoons, but to appeal in dire days to what's left of the better angels of Joe Manchin’s nature. Unless they’ve been laid off due to inflation. His — into the Prime Minister of America.
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FIRST/PERSON: Traveling West Virginia’s backroads in the Byrdmobile
"I once worked for a man who had been an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan — and I’m proud of it. Not because he was a Klan member more than three-quarters of a century ago, but because of what he became afterward ..."
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REFLECTIONS: Ted Boettner on “Status Quo Joe”
“I don't think Manchin thinks there is anything fundamentally wrong with business as usual and that the inequality we see today is just and acceptable. Byrd, at least partly, seemed to believe in a higher purpose beyond himself. I don't see that with Manchin, who seems mostly motivated by financial interests and political gamesmanship.”
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FIRST/PERSON: Lessons learned from the Roman to the U.S. Senate
MARK FERRELL: "A big part of his identity in Washington was being a poor, orphaned son of the Appalachian coalfields, largely self-educated, who rose through the ranks to the world's most august deliberative body and could match wits with any man in Washington of privileged background and Ivy League pedigree.
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Q&A: Author Denise Giardina on comparing Robert C. Byrd and Joe Manchin
Byrd had "a quality that is too rare in human beings: the ability to continue to learn and grow over time." With Manchin, "it’s a story as old as Greek tragedy — hubris, hubris, center of attention, power, power, money, money. It won’t turn out well for anyone, him included."
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‘HEY JOE’: Harmonically urging Joe to take climate action
In late 2021, a harmonic convergence of West Virginians came together on the statewide music video "Hey Joe," urging Joe Manchin to take decisive action on the climate crisis.
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MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word inside of West Virginia
“Assuming Manchin does not come home to his party on Build Back Better, voting rights, and Roe (a safe assumption at this point), he’ll have lost many more votes on his left side than he could ever hope to pick up on his right … If he doesn’t come back to his own party in really stunning fashion soon, you can expect Joe Manchin will be driving his Maserati to K street, instead of the Capitol, come 2025 ..."
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MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word outside of West Virginia
"When confronted by his coal industry ties, "Manchin argued the country needed 'dependability' in its sources of energy. In sinking the bill, he has frustrated efforts to definitively move beyond coal."
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CARTOONERY: Black By God acidly sketches Joe Manchin’s life & times
'BLACK BY GOD: The West Virginian' revives in the state a formally potent tradition — the zinger, draw-truth-to-power editorial cartoon and Joe Manchin has been a favorite zingee of this “storytelling organization centering Black voices from the Mountain State.”
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DOGGEREL: The Ballad of Bobby & Joe
'Joe turns out to be, right now, / the guy who stops all bills, / to bring more billions back to West Virginia / and its rolling hills. / And maybe there’s a Byrd somewhere / who’s spinning in his grave, / as Joe keeps sucker-punching bills / the world needs to be saved …'
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EDITORS/NOTE/June2022: The Persistence of Meaning
I used to think once you got the words right they could change the world. I don't believe that nearly as much as I used to. Yet, still, we persist in the face of oligarchs, wannabe autocrats and media lapdogs who wish to tan men's testicles.
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‘HERO OF THE OPEN HEART’: A WV native’s global humanitarian life showcased in documentary
When "The Wake Up Call" make its West Virginia debut June 23, 2022 in the state's capital city, the documentary will train a lingering spotlight on a remarkable global humanitarian life which ranged far beyond the Appalachian hills where Dave Evans was born.
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“It Ain’t More Damn Guns” by Chris Haddox
Chris Haddox's Muses (they seem pretty pissed off and maybe you know the feeling) produced the song "It Ain't More Damn Guns," in response to the latest American gun catastrophe in Uvalde, Texas.
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PICTURE/SHOW: A taste for solitude & forests in West Virginia hill country
'Have I cared enough about the water? Have I left the eagle to soar in freedom? Have I done everything I could to earn my grandchild's fondness?'
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A first-hand story about an elephant’s birth in West Virginia
They had dreamed of an elephant for the parade that capped off All Together Arts Week in Mercer County. But where do you get an elephant? A group of artists and elephant enablers decided they must do what they had to do: manifest one.
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POETICS: “Appalachian Marie Kondo” by Crystal Good
I live in the disorder of a missing mother. / I sit in the middle of my mess. / I hear my mother’s voice: / You don’t need this. / This doesn't fit. / When was the last time you used this? ...
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A native Russian classical guitarist strums up a Ukraine benefit
A Russian classical guitarist, newly christened an American citizen and living in West Virginia, hosts a June 1 benefit for Ukraine, as he works passionately to counter an invasion he abhors.
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How the Russian army helped to nationalize my country of Ukraine
A Ukrainian exchange student who studied in Charleston WV, reflects upon the devastation he finds all around him and his family in Mariupol after the Russian invasion of his homeland.
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The heart-rending and oligarchic view from ‘Coal Country’
The incendiary, heartbreaking "Coal Country," a play drawn from interviews with survivors and family members of the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, made a splash Off-Broadway. Here's a reaction to its staging for the first time in the Mountain State, 35 miles from where the tragedy fueled by corporate malfeasance that killed 29 miners occurred.
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EDITORS/NOTE: May 4, 2022
A few words — indirectly via Bob Dylan — about the reason why life in West Virginia can be sweet. Plus, what's up in the jam-packed May 2022 issue of WestVirginiaVille.com
