Of Vets, Monks and Bad Boys
What's Going on Around WestVirginiaVille | april17.2021
Welcome. If not subscribed, receive twice-monthly heads-up on stories & multimedia on West Virginia life, news & culture at: westvirginiaville.substack.com. Or hit the button below. Forward the newsletter to fellow travelers! Be well, stay safe. Mask up! This thing’s not over yet. Douglas John Imbrogno, editor & co-founder
1 | EDITORS/NOTE: ‘It’s a 90-something Thing’
A short video from the frontlines of a West Virginia Spring
It was only after I got the "Q-and-A" back from a 93-year-old Buddhist monk in the West Virginia outback that I realized I was running an inadvertent theme issue with the new April 2021 edition of WestVirginiaVille.com. Known worldwide as “Bhante G,” the abbot of a Buddhist forest monastery near Wardensville WV turned 93 in December. Meanwhile, at the other end of the state, Korean War veteran and Huntington resident Earl Goodall — featured in our new short documentary “When Earl Went to War”— turned 90 that same month. I swear I don’t go seeking out people that old in West Virginia. But these are some interesting characters well worth knowing (see below). They wear their nine decades well.
Cool, wonderful people are part of the charm and sustenance of toughing it out in West Virginia, a badly run, much-caricatured place currently in detention in the national psyche of America. That’s what you get when 7 in 10 of your voters, not once, but twice, decide The Former Guy’s shame-proof strategy of lies, lies, and yet more lies was just the thing to rescue the state from its long doldrums.
Yet if you only know West Virginia by how it’s depicted by helicopter journalists, who rappel into coffee-splashed diners and onto rural porches and are gone by dinnertime, you’d think the state should really be renamed the state of Hate. Maybe. Or maybe not. Yet enough about politics. We come not to bury The Former Guy (although I look forward to the eulogies) but to praise the non-hateful, soulful people of West Virginia.
READ ON: EDITORS/NOTE: A ‘ninety-something’ issue
2 | COVERSTORY: “When Earl Went to War
Earl Goodall of Huntington WV spent several weeks on the frontlines of the Korean War on “Christmas Hill.”
American men of Earl Goodall's generation are famously not forthcoming on their psychological states or what it's like to go to war, people dying in front of and beside you. But this Korean War veteran communicates all you need to know about that 'Forgotten War,’ if you hang out long enough. Plus, he has pictures. And ribbons. And heart — and soul. Earl’s a character. West Virginia is full of them. Don’t ever forget that truth, dear local, state, national, and international media, when you start painting your caricatures of people in the Mountain State. Meet this dear man in the 16-minute short documentary at the link. You’ll also learn about ‘The Forgotten War,’ a pretty devastating conflict that should not at all be forgotten.
READ ON: COVERSTORY: CHARACTERS: “When Earl Went to War”
3 | CLIMATE: “Why care about the climate crisis, anyway?”
A short WV Climate Allliance video tasks a pertinent question.
The West Virginia Climate Alliance is a recently formed umbrella group that includes many key players and groups in West Virginia on the front lines of addressing climate change. Why care about the climate crisis, anyway? In a video produced by our AMP Multimedia Production shop (above), some Alliance members answers’ get up close and personal. Check out the many groups under the Alliance umbrella at the link below. And head to an Earth Week celebration event at 5 p.m. Sunday, April 18 on Facebook, hosted by Corazón Latino, Moms Clean Air Force, and the Climate Alliance. The program will include reflections from West Virginia leaders on the current historic opportunity for climate action along with special musical performances by Fletcher’s Grove and The Lords of Lester.
READ ON: CLIMATE: “Why do you care about the climate crisis?”
4 | 5 QUESTIONS: One Breath at a Time
Bhante G takes a stroll after his mid-day meal — the last of the day at the West Virginia monastery he co-founded in the early 1980s.
It is perhaps not as well known as it should be that a beloved 93-year-old global figure in Buddhism has called West Virginia home since he founded the Bhavana Society forest monastery and retreat center in Hampshire County in the early 1980s. We check in with him to talk about his live, popular ZOOM guided meditations, broadcast from the hills of West Virginia to the world. He also shares his is thoughts on facing death while being wide awake. And learning from our own difficult and challenging experience of life: “I think if we don’t learn from our life and just die, we are utter fools. We must learn from our life.”
READ ON: 5 QUESTIONS: Bhante G on meditating via ZOOM, daily mindfulness and facing death.
5 | Recalling a “bad boy of publishing”
Giancarlo DiTrappano: “I think being made uncomfortable is a good thing if it makes you think about exactly why you were made uncomfortable.”
Charleston, West Virginia native Giancarlo DiTrappano died recently at 47, leaving a hole in the publishing world. The founder of Tyrant Books, which he ran out of his home in Hell’s Kitchen, he occupied a space that once earned him the title of “the bad boy of publishing” by The LA Review of Books. “He dedicated his life to literature — lifting an entire generation of writers shunned by traditional publishing,” one writer recalled of him. “He was fearless in the way he pushed for writers on the fringes and now he’s gone. The hole this leaves is terrifying, tragic.” I did a Q-and-A with Gian for the Charleston Gazette way back in 2013. The interview has not been seen since then because of a server issue. I am happy to reprint it to shine more light on the legacy of yet another intriguing, real character from the West Virginia hills.
READ ON: IN MEMORIUM: Giancarlo DiTrappano
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6 | SPOTLIGHT: To pass or not to pass?
House Speaker Roger Hanshaw watches the House of Delegates’ unanimous rejection of the Senate’s proposal to abolish the personal income tax. Photo by Perry Bennett/WV Legislature
The West Virginia Legislature has concluded its 60-day session after passing nearly 300 bills. (And a sad and sorry lot some of them were, although some of the worst didn’t make it over the finish line.) West Virginia is blessed to have Mountain State Spotlight on the scene these days to cover politics and news with … um, some spotlight intensity. We’re glad to be able to reprint this Erin Beck roundup of what the Legislature did — and did not not do — in its 2021 session.
READ ON: What the 2020 WV Legislature passed—or didn’t
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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, editorWestVirginiaVille.com