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Viral Videos to National Moonshine Day, here's what's up in the Village | june7.2020
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1: Reverberations
George Floyd’s murder continues to roil America. I didn’t know what to expect when videographer Bobby Lee Messer and I hauled cameras to a Huntington WV rally May 30. An African-American woman thanked me and some other white faces for being there. I asked to interview her, looking for a quote, but when 64-year-old T.C. Clemons, finalist for 2019 W.Va. Teacher of the Year, began to speak, Bobby Lee and I were riveted. We didn’t interrupt. When she stopped speaking 7-minutes later, we knew we had to share her words as soon as possible on what it’s like having black skin in white America.
With nary any promotion, the video has been viewed on Facebook more than 116,000 times. It’s been shared almost 2,500 times with comments by 200 or so people ( I think T.C. has responded to almost every one). It’s up to 6,000 views on Youtube with 9,000 more on our site. I note this not to toot the site's horn (well, maybe a tiny 'tweet-tweet!'), but to highlight something: What T.C. has to say needs to be heard.
“What Needs to be Said About George Floyd’s Murder.” | A WestVirginiaVille.com video
2: ‘They know who the thugs are!’
We did a longer video on the rally and march—peaceable and well-monitored by the Huntington police department—which you can see here. I especially direct your attention to remarks by Charleston pastor Matthew Watts (seen in this 1-minute video). Racism, he said, “is woven into the fabric of the culture of the American quilt, inside of every institution. And that’s why you must use your influence and your power to eradicate it from every institution.
“And we all need to go and sit down with our mayors and with our chief of police, and with our city council representatives. And we must call for the police to police themselves. 99 percent of the police officers are solid citizens— men and women of integrity and character. And they went into the profession to serve and to protect. And within the police department itself, there are some thugs and gangsters! And the police have to police themselves. They know who the thugs are! They know who the gangsters are!”
3. Happy Moonshine Day
Celebrate National Moonshine Day Responsibly.
On May 23, we sort of inadvertently soft-launched WestVirginiaVille with this multimedia story on Covid 19 testing in an African-American neighborhood. (My Covid-19 test nostrils are immortalized on the video—I was negative, and so was Bobby Lee). But we’re not completely serious here at wvville World Headquarters. Our new Minister of Paragraphs, Connie Kinsey, flagged us to June 5 being National Moonshine Day. No, really.
Did you KNOW:
The term “moonshine” comes from Britain, where it was a verb—“moonshining”—referring to jobs done late at night. Because illegal still operators had to conduct their business out of the sight of authorities, they became known as moonshiners and their product as moonshine.
Faking a funeral was a ruse to move moonshine to market under the nose of the Law. Out of respect for the dead, authorities were reluctant to stop a procession.
The X’s on moonshine jugs supposedly represent the number of times a batch was run through the still. If marked XXX, the moonshine was pure alcohol.
That Part 1 article set up Part 2 of our extensive moonshine coverage. Moonshine stills were run by women as well as men. Our Minister of Paragraphs recently had an evocative, charming short fiction anthologized titled “The Plum,” about the real-life concoction of plum moonshine:
“We call it The Plum. It’s the prettiest moonshine we make. The shine is made from my PawPaw’s PawPaw’s recipe in a copper still just like it was a hundred years ago. In each jar, we put 13 sweet plums from the trees my great-aunt planted after the ’37 flood … | READ ON
4. The Art of the Op-Ed Limerick
If you’ve not yet read any of Colleen Anderson’s Op-ed Limericks (or seen our collaboration in which I animate these Molotov word-bombs), a few words of caution. If Donald Trump still occupies a place of affection or acceptance in your voter’s heart, avoid clicking this link AT ALL COSTS. You also DO NOT WANT TO LOOK AT THE VIDEO below. You have been warned. Everyone else? Proceed:
5. Look West
If you’re reading this before 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 7, 2020, and are within broadcast distance of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, we heartily recommend you tune into the 7 p.m. WVPB debut of “What Will You Do for Your Hills? The Legacy of Don West.” If you don’t know about the life and times of the poet, educator, and labor activist (1906-1992), our preview coverage of the documentary will fill in part of the portrait.
Don West was “a Primal Ancestor of Appalachian hellraisers,” says Rick Wilson. | WestVirginiaVille photoillustration
West was a controversial figure. In the 1950s, he was a non-cooperating witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee, once remarking: "I have never been a card carrying, dues paying member of the communist party... But I have worked closely with people whom I knew to be communist. And I would never red-bait.” West and his wife, Connie, came to West Virginia in the early ‘60s, founding the Appalachian South Folklife Center, which exists to this day. We feature two recollections of him:
“I knew him to be an agitator, in the best sense of the word,” recalls Tim Mainland, current Folk Life Center Program Manager. “When I met him he challenged me directly and offensively to explain why I was there. I did not enjoy that. But the result was that I had to supply my reasons—and had to think about them. That was his role: to set up good and meaningful programs and force you to justify your inclusion in them. He was not a creator of comfort.” | READ ON
Rick Wilson describes West as “a Primal Ancestor of Appalachian hellraisers… Long before it became fashionable, West fought the passive hillbilly stereotype by pointing to mountain labor’s traditions of struggle and solidarity.” | READ ON
6. Like Us. Really, Like Us
As I mentioned above, I’d not intended to launch WestVirginiaVille just yet, until Bobby Lee pleaded with me to help do interviews for shoots of the virus testing and George Floyd rally. (Actually, to RE-launch the site, which I’d attempted a few years ago to little viewership). But now that we’re, like, re-born, we’re adding outfits to our social media closet. Subscribe to this free newsletter. (We put it out no more than 2-3 times per month.) Plus, since a good portion of the human population age 50 or above now homesteads on Facebook, we have a page there: facebook.com/wvville. If Twitter is your bailiwick, follow us at twitter.com/wvville. PS: As a dweebchild, who grew up reading dictionaries for pleasure—and with the complicity of our word-drunk Minister of Paragraphs, we’ll be allowing the publication to traffic in multisyllabic, hoity-toity words like ‘bailiwick’ and ‘transect.’ We believe in dictionaries.
PS: Be a Masked Woman/Masked Man
If you haven’t a clue what we’re doing, help us out and read the pages below and let us know if you get it, so we can get it better. Be well, stay safe. Wear a mask in public like a superheroine or superhero. No, really. We’re all letting down our guards way too early. Don’t take my word for it:
“The WHO has new guidelines on face masks to fight Covid-19 The general public should wear cloth masks in public spaces where physical distancing is impossible, the agency says.”
ABOUT: A selective, opinionated guide to some of the best writing, photography, video, and news on the life and times of West Virginia
EDITOR’S NOTES: This is not so much a labor of love as a labor of craft.
CONTACT: Use the website form. Or e-mail me at douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com
Douglas John Imbrogno | editor-n-chef | WestVirginiaVille.com