Wearing Masks to Making Moonshine
Latest News & Features from Around the Village of WestVirginiaVille | june19.2020
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1—when will it ever end?
You must admit he has amazingly good karma. His entire life he has never been fully called to account. "Trump's Good Karma" is the first in our video series "Unscripted,” in which our chief video-guy Bobby Lee Messer puts someone in his viewfinder and asks them to riff or respond to prompts. Bobby Lee harassed, cajoled, and hectored me to try this for six months. I finally relented. Here’s the result:
2—who’s that masked man/woman?
Yes, you should still be wearing a mask in public. A second wave of infections? We're not through the first. Here are masked inspirations, followed by their unmasked selves. Nonchalance to masking means we may be un-symptomatic, yet infected—and proceed to infect our child, grandmother or best friend. (Don’t be this guy, an authority figure who resisted lockdown and is now you-know-what.) Here’s a new phrase: ‘caution fatigue.’ It comes when we tire of being in a state of heightened alert and let down our guard. Let’s not do that. View more unmaskings from our Pandemic Photo Project.
3—marking moonshine day
We’ve got you covered if you missed National Moonshine Day. It was June 5 and no, we’re not kidding. Check out Minister of Paragraphs Connie Kinsey’s lovely short story, “The Plum.” It channels the life of a female moonshiner from back in the day. Her “prettiest moonshine” is made with sweet plums from trees her great-aunt planted after the ’37 flood. Below are moonshine facts to know & tell from a companion article:
THE NAME: The term “moonshine” comes from Britain, where it was a verb—“moonshining”—referring to jobs or activities done late at night. Illegal still operators hid out out from the law, so backwoods brewmasters became known as moonshiners and their handiwork as moonshine.
THE NICKNAMES: white lightning; mountain dew; homebrew; hillbilly pop; rotgut; firewater; hooch.
THE X’s: The X’s on jugs supposedly represent the number of times a batch was run through the still. If marked XXX, the moonshine was pure alcohol.
THE FAKE-OUT: Faking a funeral was a convenient ruse to move the product to customers. Authorities were reluctant to stop a funeral procession.
4—make it so
There were balloons and streamers. There were rainbow flags. And many, many hello-honks. A short video/photographic portrait of a literally moving Pride and Black Lives Matter parade in Huntington WV on June 6, 2020.
Organizer Ally Layman, founder of Huntington Pride, on the vision behind the parade:
“We’ve gone from a place of love to a place of it being okay for people to be bullied. And that’s not okay. When you have a bully that inspires other bullies, it’s going to be a toxic environment. And that has to change. We have to have our voice heard through elections to do that. And to have someone in the White House that shows love. And shows that diversity and inclusion is important for the black community, for the LGBTQ community, for the city of Huntington.
PS—Other recent WestVirginiaVille.com posts
THREE NEW ANIMATED, OP-ED LIMERICKS: “An Absolute Artist At Failing”—from a Trump-centric collaboration between the Queen of Molotov Limericks, Colleen Anderson of Charleston WV, and wvville editor Douglas John Imbrogno
KYLE VASS JOINS SITE AS MINISTER OF SOUNDWAVES: The West Virginia native will offer insights on the best soundwaves to feature. Here’s his collaboration with Trey Kay’s “Us & Them” podcast, as Kyle takes us into a St. Albans homeless camp at the heart of a fight over its riverside existence.
ANCESTORS: DON WEST’S LEGACY: Long before it became fashionable, labor activist and poet Don West fought the passive hillbilly stereotype by pointing to mountain labor’s traditions of struggle and solidarity. P.S. DON WEST WAS NOT A WARM & FUZZY GUY.
A JUGGLER’S GUIDE TO COVID-19: We believe this will be the first—and the last —of those you’ll see during the current pandemic, courtesy Zach Warren.
POETICS: Doris Fields (a.k.a. ‘Lady D) had an an Almost Heaven/James Brown upbringing: “I was raised on Almost Heaven and Hee Haw/Taught to love God and the UMWA/I was an odd little Black girl/Growing up in the coalfields of West Virginia ...
WestVirginiaVille.com photo-illustration of photo from CBS Photo Archive
Be well, stay safe. Wear a mask in public like a super-heroine or superhero. | Douglas John Imbrogno, wvville editor | CONTACT: heythere@westvirginiaville.com
If you were forwarded this free WestVirginiaVille.com newsletter, subscribe at: westvirginiaville.substack.com| pls ‘like’ our new Facebook page: facebook.com/wvville| And if you’re part of the twitterverse: @wvville