What's humming in WestVirginiaVille
What Bob Dylan said. Plus the view from the streets, the mic & the hills | may4.2022
I’ve given up trying to change the minds of folks who post predictable, contemptuous unpleasantry about West Virginia on social media. These usually involve some variation of inbred hillbillies, sharing meth smoothies while the sun goes down on Daisy Dog, scratching her mange in the back of a skeletal ’57 Chevy on cinderblocks in East Godforsaken County, in the Hopeless Hills of Appalachia.
I’ve not given up on editing a multimedia magazine called WestVirginiaVille, brimming with words and images which confound and complicate this knee-jerk riffing on West Virginia as epicenter of America’s riff-raff. But as to why there is this not-always-heralded, heartful vibe to daily life in the Mountain State, well …
We need fresh words and new phrases.
One candidate showed up in the recent Vanity Fair profile “Mr. Dylan’s Dream House,” on the upcoming opening of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum will house a huge archive of recordings and artifacts of the singular singer, now 80, “who spent 60 years changing minds and changing the culture.” Yet why Tulsa, when Dylan could have placed it in some Great City Destination like NYC or LA? Here’s his response to interviewer Douglas Brinkley:
“There’s more vibrations on the coasts , for sure. But I’m from Minnesota and I like the casual hum of the heartland.”
You could do worse in describing why some of have chosen to live, work, and likely die in West Virginia, and why we love it so. Most certainly, it is “the casual hum” of a so-often captivating heartland.
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~ WestVirginiaVille.com founder/editor Douglas John Imbrogno
WHAT’S IN THE MAY 2022 ISSUE
ESSAY: On the streets in “the capital of pain”: There are mayapples unfurling on the banks of the Kanawha River in the darkness of West Virginia's capital city. There are humans sleeping there, too, on this cold and rainy April night, and we are among them.
5 QUESTIONS: The Art of the Guitar: Spencer Elliott’s instrumental guitar persona is two-fold: as a genre-defying solo player and in the burning-down-the-house trio SE3. Based in Charleston WV, he has kept his day job as an attorney, while growing a fanbase spread across hemispheres.
CHARACTERS: ‘The Hobo Girl’: She had many names and left many stories. The night ‘The Hobo Girl’ wandered into St. Albans, WV, like a footloose traveler from another time, stealing hearts and then wandering off. What exactly was her story?
LISTEN UP: Artists & Podcasters worth noting: From hip-hop innovator Shelem, based in Charleston WV, to a lineup of podcasts worth checking out, a heads up from BLACK BY GOD: The West Virginian on performers and podcasts to watch and hear.
FIRST/PERSON: On Ukraine, Putin, Navalny & Zelensky: J. Michael Willard worked for West Virginia politicians Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, and went on to an international career that settled him for years in Ukraine, where he raised a family. Excerpts from his unvarnished thoughts on Putin's brutal invasion of the country, where two daughters have been hunkered down in Kyiv.
5 PHOTOS: Mountains, Bubbles, Lightshows, Deep Forests & Fresh Faces: West Virginia photographs worth lingering over. By Water Light, Douglas John Imbrogno, Al Peery, and Rafael Barker.
POETICS: Two by Colleen Anderson: Clean music. The notes fall one upon the other, / transparent. Closing my eyes on this city concert,/ I hear water, the song of melting snow on a hill / in Braxton County, in spring ...
MAN/MADE: A brief meditation on ‘Reflected Glory’: West Virginia is not just rolling hills and shady hollers. A brief meditation on a shiny object in the state’s capital. Part of a new series on the Mountain State’s built environment.
NOTE TO READERS: Since its May 2020 founding, WestVirginiaVille.com (a project of AmpMediaProject.com), has been a free online magazine of lively, opinionated & alternative writing and imagery on West Virginia. Help us stay in the business of offering ad-free, worthy content. CLICK HERE OR THE 'Donate' BUTTON TO SUPPORT THE CAUSE:
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