BE THE CHANGE: A world premiere
Here's what's up in the March 2021 Issue of WestVirginiaVille.com
Welcome. With this issue, WestVirginiaVille.com inaugurates a new monthly format, with a COVERSTORY (or “lead story,” if I were drop into newsroom-speak) and several other monthly features. We also debut our first ‘supporter/sponsor’ content, featuring WVPure, high-strength CBD hemp oil, organically grown in a great-grandfather’s field deep in the West Virginia hills. (Here’s the backstory which is cool.) As this magazine approaches a one-year anniversary of all-free content on May 1, we must figure out some visible means of support, short of rolling lightly defended bingo halls and Girl Scout cookie tycoons. (We also see an Indiegogo campaign or something like it in our future, a chance to show if you like us, if you really like us.)
COVER STORY | “Be The Change,,” a music video, a song, and a partnership
CLICK TO VIEW the premiere of“Be The Change,” an original WestVirginiaVille.com music video of a song by Ron Sowell and Jon Wikstrom. The video was shot by WestVirginiaVille’s Chief Videographer Bobby Lee Messer.
Our COVERSTORY is a twofer: Watch the debut of an original WestVirginiaVille music video of "Be the Change" — and hear songwriters Ron Sowell and Jon Wikstrom talk about the roots of their song and their long songwriting comradeship. A sampling:
WVVILE: Given the fractious, aggressive, and divided lay of the land in America and the world, what are your hopes for what a single song can do out there on the troubled waters of the world? And how did you guys come to work together?
Ron Sowell: As Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Our sincere hope is that injecting this song into the greater conversation might help influence people to be a little more compassionate, understanding, and less judgmental. Maybe we could learn to listen to each other. Is that crazy?
Jon Wikstrom: It’s shocking to say this, but we’ve been working together for thirty years! I grew up in Charleston WV, and was a huge Putnam County Pickers and Stark Raven fan, but never knew Ron till 1990. I had moved to Nashville to write songs and was home visiting my mom. I wanted to use Triangle Audio to record some demos, but Ron had it booked that week. I called to ask if he’d let me have one of his days — and he gave me a flat “No.” But we did get to talking and one thing led to another.
READ ON | The Tale of A Song and Its Two Songwriters
SOCIAL/MEDIA: The Tale of a Tweet
The word 'gobsmacked' should be used sparingly. It derives from the Irish/Scottish word for mouth — 'gob' — so might be transliterated as 'smacked in the mouth.' But in slang usage it means to be flabbergasted, astounded or made speechless. I am sure I wasn't the only West Virginian gobsmacked by a tweet posted by HD Media headman, Doug Reynolds (above). Here’s the story of that tweet, the backlash on Twitter, and the apology that resulted — which is, let us all pray, us white folk, not the end of it.
READ ON: ‘Wait. Doug Reynolds said what about what on Twitter?!?’
PHOTOSHOW: After Everyone Has Clocked Out
Hooked.’ |Huntington WV | feb2021 | WestVirginiaVille.com photo
What is it about abandoned industrial spaces that make them so compelling to the inquiring eye? Maybe it's the forlorn, yet intriguing glimpse of past workaday lives — the lunches, the labors, the left-behind tools and flotsam of work — in a place now emptied of human activity. I visited for a few hours in a decommissioned warehouse in downtown Huntington WV last week. Here’s what it loked like to see what a thrumming warehouse looks like, caught as if in a freeze frame from another era.
READ ON: A warehouse after the workers have gone
GUEST COLUMN: When the Hills Aren’t Alive
What will it take to attract more people to West Virginia and Appalachia? Why not ask someone who has already made the move with his wife and three kids. He's an analyst, she's an employee counselor and in 2016 they moved to New Cumberland, WV, from the Philadelphia suburbs. In this reprint of a piece first published at Moundsville.org (a site whose writing and related documentary we recommend ), Andrew Kefer speaks tough love to a region whose amenities he has come to appreciate — even as his kids still yearn for Wawa and an easy bus jaunt into New York. He advocates sending the welcome wagon out to new immigrants while emulating ‘relocation incentive programs,’ such as Tulsa Remote or Relocate to Vermont. He is unsparing in urging the passage of The Fairness Act in West Virginia:
Currently, in West Virginia it is legal to be fired from a job or removed from an apartment due to the person that you love. This is discrimination at its most basic form. Folks will not come here if this behavior is tolerated. To their credit, 14 West Virginia municipalities have updated or created their own equal rights and protection laws on their own. This must be done on a state level to benefit all current and future residents.
READ ON: GUEST COLUMN: How to Draw People Back to Appalachia
SPOTLIGHT: Profit Uber Indepdent Contractors
“Spotlight” is a new feature highlighting some of the hard news, legislative, and investigative work by the non-profit newsroom Mountain State Spotlight. They wisely hired former Gazette-Mail Erin “take-no-prisoners” Beck, who has been training a laser focus on the WV Legislature. (Which, if you haven’t been paying attention, has been taken over by a Republi-Borg organism, which may have been hatched in a laboratory at ALEC). A new article lays bare the implications of a bill supposedly seeking ‘clarity’ for businesses, but which will likely turn many state employees into independent contractors. The effect of the bill — moving like a spooked deer through the Legislature — would be "a dramatic increase" in people working as independent contractors, without unemployment coverage, workers compensation, and other protections, says a West Virginia employment lawyer.
READ ON: West Virginia lawmakers push to turn more employees into independent contractors
PS: Hoofing It
Spring is coming, at last, at last. Which may mean more horses on porches in the West Virginia hinterlands. A friend and I had to shoo this one off a summer or two ago. We bought his forbearance with a bag of carrots and some wild pears.
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Send feedback and suggest stuff to: heythere@westvirginiaville.com. Leave comments below. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, receive twice-monthly heads-up on stories and multimedia on West Virginia life, news & culture at: westvirginiaville.substack.com. To contact us about features, share feedback or become a supporter/sponsor, e-mail: heythereATwestvirginia.com. Be well, stay safe. Don’t let your mask down until we get the all clear! | Douglas John Imbrogno, editor WestVirginiaVille.com