Looking Back & Ahead on a Pandemic Year
What's Going On in WestVirginiaVille.com | dec30.2020
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1| The COVID Family Project
It has been … a year. COVID stalks our neighborhood streets as vaccinations trickle into communities across West Virginia. Not fast enough. But let’s set aside the many failings of the current administration’s catastrophic handling of this pandemic. The most important thing right now is to take this virus seriously 24/7, in all we do. It is everywhere and is sweeping people and families away. A friend of mine posted to Facebook from a hospital bed in Ohio on Christmas Day that he was grappling with COVID-triggered pneumonia. “I will never take breathing for granted again,” he wrote. He died 48 hours later. His mother had died from COVID two weeks prior.
I report this as a shock to wakefulness. Terry was a dear high school friend, who opened my ears to a wider world of music and inspired me to become a musician. His passing feels like a hole blown through my fabric. He was a father to two kids. A doting husband. A beloved granddad. A loved son. A good friend to many. Now, multiply such a loss 340,000 times in America and more than a million times globally.
WestVirginiaVille will soon launch a multimedia series, “The COVID Family Project.” We’ll focus on loss and recovery. This includes our own Minister of Paragraphs, Connie Kinsey, just now recovering from a mild, but intensely challenging bout with COVID. We’ll also showcase front-line workers who’ve witnessed far more than their share of illness, grief, and loss. The goal is to make the toll from this virus personal, so that both foolhardy and awake people do everything they can to protect themselves, their loved ones, and the greater community. Big numbers are easy to ignore. Personal stories are harder to shrug off. (And if you or your West Virginia family has wrestled with COVID death or illness or are a front-line worker wishing to share your story, e-mail us at: heythere@westvirginiaville.com).
Below is a video I created in honor of my friend, set to a piano/guitar piece I recorded. Every image in it is of Nature and the natural world in West Virginia from 2020. I post it here as it has its own peacefulness even in the midst of a wrenching farewell. I post it also as an encouragement to anyone viewing it. Let’s do the daily work of preventing more such farewells from happening in your family, your life, and your community.
CLICK VIDEO TO VIEW. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com Media
2| Slip Sliding Away
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, family life goes on. WestVirginiaVille’s chief videographer, Bobby Lee Messer, lives to shoot video narratives that depict daily life in all its challenges, pleasures, and joys. After a delightful Christmas snowstorm struck western West Virginia—where the world headquarters of WestVirginiaVille.com are located—Bobby Lee headed out to one of Huntington’s primo sledding hills in Ritter Park. See if you can tell which of his shots feature our new photography drone.
CLICK VIDEO TO VIEW. | A production of Bobby Lee Messer/MesserMedia.com and TheStoryIsTheThing.com Media
3| Deer Me
Nature, too, goes on. In the start of a new WestVirginiaVille video series, "Animals in Appalachia,” a mother deer momentarily loses track of her fawns. A dramatic two minutes on the lawn! Fawns on the loose appear in my yard, bouncing about like breakaway pingpong balls. Baby Fawn No. 1 bounces into the cul-de-sac! Mama Dear appears—WHERE ARE THE FAWNS!!! Mama Deer puts her foot DOWN! Don’t mess with her. She locates Baby Fawn No. 1. She leads her young-uns back to the woods. Uh-oh! Baby fawn Number 2 bolts—THE WRONG WAY! See the dramatic conclusion to the film in the final seconds!
CLICK VIDEO TO VIEW. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com Media
4| A Moving Picture Show
We last featured Mountain State artist Sharon Lyn Stackpole in a ‘5 Things’ post, which included her vibrant portrayal of Autumn. Then, we ran her touching illustration about why drawing was essential to a young girl’s soul. Plus, another ‘5 Things’ appearance depicting a COVID Queen of Hearts. I asked if she would send a folder of favorites we might turn into a video showcase. Sharon is a clinical mental health counseling grad student at Marshall University, a disability advocate, and writer, as well. See more of her work at sharonlyn.com and on Twitter.
She writes of this showcase: "I always had a female character in my drawings either in illustration form or comic and I'd have her acting out whatever I was also living in my drawings. For some reason, this was reassuring and helped me to feel less alone."
CLICK VIDEO TO VIEW. | TheStoryIsTheThing.com Media
5| Lady Gaga’s Grandma Pick-me-up
One of WestVirginiaVille’s missions is to republish work with a West Virginia connection found elsewhere in the sprawling Internet-O-Sphere. We recently profiled documentarian and former Wall Street Journal reporter John W. Miller’s documentary on Moundsville, WV. (See our “5 Questions” with John on that work and his career.) We’re happy to reprint his recent Moundsville.org piece on Lady Gaga's West Virginia roots. It tells how her Northern Panhandle WV grandma lifted her up at a low moment, sending her packing back to New York with instructions to "kick some ass."
READ ON: The West Virginia brain drain made one of the world’s greatest popstars
Lady Gaga at the 2018 premiere of “A Star is Born” in London. Courtesy of Wikimedia.
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