Hillbillies & President-Elects
What's Going On in the Village of WestVirginiaVille | nov24.2020
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1 | All Lit Up
WestVirginiaVille.com photo of Albert Jenkins home. | Cabell County WV | nov2020
It’s an auspicious place, this former plantation of Confederate raider Albert Jenkins, beside the Ohio River just north of Huntington. It was once home to more than 50 slaves on a 4,000-acre estate before West Virginia ever came to be. On a recent Autumn Appalachian afternoon, the ginkgo biloba trees recall a more illuminated, almost electrified, present moment.
READ ON: NATUREGRAM | 10 Variations on a West Virginia Ginkgo: nov20.2020
2 | It’s a Shelley Thing
CLICK VIDEO TO VIEW “Counting the Days of Shelley Moore Capito’s Snub of Biden-Harris.”
WV Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R) tried out the whole gravitas thing yesterday in a communique: “At some point, the 2020 election must end.” And then: “Vice President Biden will be our next president and Senator Kamala Harris will be our next vice president.” We Capito scholars note that she never uses the Trump-disturbing-phrases “President-elect” and “Vice President-elect.” Yet Capito is surely—finally—noting the electoral toast popping up across America: “It’s done!” She knows she had better butter some bread: “As with any administration, I will look for common ground in the best interests of our state and of our country.”
Ha! Good one, from one of Donald and Mitch’s most loyal grunts these interminable four years, who has stood down or stood mute at all Trumpian crossroads—impeachment, ACA assaults, Russian bounties. Gun control. Etc. Our media shop had just posted the video (above) hours before Capito’s attempt to method act as an elder stateswoman. As I noted in a tweet—joining a stream of exasperated tweets responding to Capito’s attempt to win herself a “Profile in Courage”: ‘I will leave our video posted this morning up. Point still holds. Why does it take this much effort to get the right thing done?’
RELATED: EDITORIAL: A Shelley Moore Capito Reader
3 | ‘It’s a Hillbilly Thing’
The “hillbilly” is strong in American culture. Meanwhile, J.D. Vance keeps raking it in.
Today, Netflix debuts “Hillbilly Elegy,” Ron Howard’s star-studded treatment (Glenn Close, Amy Adams) of J.D. Vance’s controversial best-seller, on how he rose above his hillbilly roots. Or did he? Teresa O’Cassidy takes the author to task in her consideration of the history of "hillbillies” in American culture. At best, Vance can claim status as "a hillbilly twice-removed," writes O’Cassidy, who earned a communications master at Marshall University and whose study partly focused on stereotyping and ‘hillbilly’ portrayals:
“J. D. Vance, author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy” is not a hillbilly. He’s a venture capitalist, which in no way is to say capitalism is bad. It’s more to be able to show that the man knows how to make money and has no qualms about going all-out for top dollar. He knows the notion of hillbillies sells.”
READ ON: ‘Hillsploitation’: Things to know before you watch “Hillbilly Elegy”: nov23.2020
4 | Street-Level View
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
One aim of WestVirginiaVille is to spotlight work from elsewhere deserving of a wider audience. Douglas J. Harding, editor of The Parthenon at Marshall U., wrote the piece below on the homeless folk who gather out back of his Huntington apartment complex. He posted it to Medium.com where we read it. It’s an unvarnished, compassionate, street-level look at the difficulty and challenge of homeless life in urban Appalachia. It puts a face on the usual faceless statistics:
As I scribble into my notebook, the man tells me that the struggles of being homeless and extremely poor are endless, making even life’s most basic tasks seem impossible. “It feels like a trap,” he said. “We don’t have any money. We can’t get a job. We can’t buy food. We can’t pay for anywhere to sleep at night. What are we supposed to do?”
READ ON: Homeless in Huntington WV: A View From the Street: nov21.2020
5 | A Hindu Hillbilly Upbringing
Photo-illustration by WestVirginiaVille.com
The hillbilly stereotype reveals another hidden in its gap-toothed midst. Do a Google image search on the word and it will show itself: all the results depict a white, Anglo-Saxon face. But West Virginia and Appalachia contain multitudes in these hills from “Affrilachians” to Hindu-Appalachians. In a piece reprinted from Longridge Review, Neema Avashia looks back on growing up as "a motley crew, this band of Hindus, gathering once a month to pray in southern West Virginia in the mid 1980s."
I grew to love the wild and wonderful aspects of West Virginia, even as I struggled with the religious and racial elements. Its natural beauty settled into my sensory memory right next to the Hindu puja. West Virginia is the only home I know, though it is not a home that always loves me back.
READ ON: READINGS | Looking Back on a Hindu Hillbilly Upbringing: nov10.2020
PS | “Bark This Way”
May we all greet our own car rides with as much enthusiasm as this good boy. Plus, this is how we feel about the certification of the transition of the Office of the President-Elect—and of the date Jan 20, 2021. | A WestVirginiaVille.com world film debut of a 39-second production minutes in the making. STARRING: A Passing Dog.
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Send feedback and suggest stuff to: heythere@westvirginiaville.com. Leave comments below. Subscribe for free: westvirginiaville.substack.com. | Please wear a mask in public like a superhero or superheroine. Be well, stay safe. | Douglas John Imbrogno, editor & co-founder, WestVirginiaVille.com