What's That You Say?!?
A few words on the why, the how & the wherefore of WestVirginiaVille | July 22, 2022
‘Are you sure that metaphor works?’ wonders WestVirginiaVille’s feline adviser.
By DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | editor, WestVirginiaVille.com
Greetings. I sometimes use the royal ‘We’ when writing Official Pontifications from the WestVirginiaVille.com newsroom. Yet I should come clean that the ‘newsroom’ is, at this very moment, an easy chair near Huntington, West Virginia. And this chair is hopped onto routinely by beloved tuxedo cat and feline adviser, Luna, seeking admiration for her vast black-and-white fuzziness.
And the sole, full-time staffer is myself as founding editor, a thankfully decommissioned feature writer, editor and multimedia evangelist of some 35 years. (Here is my journalism archive at Muckrack).
Then, there is Jeff Seager, our patient-as-Job and speak-truth-to-Doug’s-rough-drafts copy editor and uncompensated verbiage consultant. And WestVirginiaVille’s Minister of Paragraphs, the essayist and memoirist Connie Kinsey (visit her lively blog, W.VA. FUR AND ROOT: A Hillbilly Diva’s Blatherings.)
Our content comes by way of a rotating, ever-expanding cadre of contributors, co-conspirators, and collaborators, including fellow upstart publishers such as the inimitable Crystal Good, founder of Black By God: The West Virginian. I cajole, wheedle, petition, and plead for contributions to a monthly publication whose catchphrase I’ve decided should be something like:
‘Culture, cranky commentary and multimedia creativity from deep within the West Virginia hills.’
Sometimes, when I use that word “culture” to refer to our coverage concerns, I add:
“Yes — we have some.”
It’s (Always) a Hillbilly Thing
Little-known fact: Rotate the state of West Virginia 90-degrees and you get a caricature of Richard Nixon’s profile. You’re welcome. | WestVirginiaVille.com illustration
Right out of the box, any attempt to publish serious, thoughtful, nuanced work rooted in West Virginia — literary or commentarial, biographical or multimedia — runs head-long into lowered expectations and tired, toothless hillbilly tropes, which have dogged the state since its birth in 1863. It’s a familiar booby trap set by boobs, many of whom have never set a toe in these actually complicated hills, hollers, and deer-strewn ‘burbs.
As for me, I spent decades hunting the best features and coolest humans in the hills and hollers of West Virginia, for the small, but legendary, kick-ass and name-and-shame newspaper called The Charleston Gazette, based in the state’s capital.
I felt it was my charge to offer vivid, humanistic storytelling, to balance the ledger of the paper’s unflinching, uncompromising hard news coverage and take-no-prisoners investigations. (There is a reason the Gazette was called ‘The Morning Sick Call’ by wary political golddiggers trying to scurry out of sight beneath the Capitol’s golden dome.)
From my point of view, the purpose of such storytelling was — and continues to be — to portray why life is worth living while living here. My aim has always been to lift up world-class people rooted in the hills, who draw spiritual nourishment, insights, and their own rooted character from those hills and hollers, vales and ridgelines.
Enchanted
A three-minute musical walkabout along the backroads of West Virginia.
I do not presume to put my storytelling in the same league as masters like Vladimir Nabokov. But I will share something fundamental about storytelling that Nabokov shared in a 1948 lecture titled “Good Readers and Good Writers.”
“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three — storyteller, teacher, enchanter.”
~ Vladimir Nabokov
We live in a seriously dis-enchanted world. This has a lot to do with our obsessive-addictive, 24/7 news and social media habits. These feeds serve up the worst behaviors, delusions, and felonious actions, by the worst humans in your town, city, province, state, region, country and world.
This seriously messes with the head and heart.
So, a chief goal in 21st century storytelling — whether it is traditional storytelling, feature writing, blogging, substacking, podcasting, Twitter-threading and beyond — is this: the re-enchantment of daily life.
That is to say, re-focusing our attention on a larger, more substantial, more lasting story about the lives we lead, wherever we lead them. Even, by God, in West “By God” Virginia (which is how long-haulers in “the Mountain State” refer to the place sometimes.)
This is why I felt that my nearly 40 years of storytelling at the Gazette — whose righteous investigations were what the paper was lauded for — were equally weighted bookends to all of that hard news. Such work was not fluff to fill out the rest of the paper, which is how not a few hard-news warriors view storytellers and feature folk.
Yet we renew ourselves by retreating from headline horrors into stories. They literally revivify us. (A lovely word whose dictionary definition is: “To restore to life; give new life to; revive; reanimate.”)
Even some of our binge-watching is a kind of deep dive into Nabokovian enchantment. Your mileage may vary and your favorites may be different. “The Queen’s Gambit,” for example, plus my current obsession, “Chloe” — an atmospheric, pitch-perfect tone-poem of wounded obsession — leave me more wakeful and charged up at the other end of the binge.
Which Way’s the Highway?
It would be dishonest to say I have not sometimes dreamed of exiting stage left out of West Virginia and it’s too-often depressing tales, if we binge on just them. To become a constituent of climate-conscious Washington State governor Jay Inslee, say, rather than a disgruntled vassal of West Virginia’s part-time bill-skipping governor Jim (“Let’s See How Many Trump Voters I Can Get To Like Me”) Justice.
That desire grows especially strong when things go off-the-rails in atrocious, literally world-altering ways. When, say, a certain self-satisfied WV senator again shoots the future in the foot, if not the face. (“10 Things to Say About Joe Manchin After He Kills Off Biden’s Climate Initiatives for Good.”)
But, to paraphrase Mitch McConnell in a completely different context:
Nevertheless, we storytellers have persisted …
Just this week, I submitted a grant application to something called the Google News Equity Fund, as I seek ways to pour financial footers for WestVirginiaVille’s continued existence and growth. (I would really like to able to take folks like Mister Seager out for a fine-dining thank-you, and to pay writers decently for work produced exclusively for this publication.)
Below is part of what I had to say in my application about how I might use Google’s greenbacks. And why it might aid our mission, even as Luna the Cat hops onto my chair, pads across the keyboard, and her paws change the site’s name in my application to ‘Wootvorjeanyavale' (which makes it sounds like a cool Danish death-metal publication):
“The fact of the matter is that West Virginia needs independent publications that can speak to the complexity, depth, and richness of this place. This not only serves as an antidote to countering the cartoon caricatures of the state. It also demonstrates that in our current wired world, good living and rich lives can be found anywhere — even in this supposed (in the media's kneejerk portrayal) 'hellscape' of West Virginia.
“The actual on-the-ground truth is that despite the state's caricature as the red-hot center of Trump-zombie voters, scratch every third family in the hills and their grandfather was an early member of the UMWA. Or the family DNA includes a long-ago relative thrilling to Mother Jones' labor organizing. Or family members voted for John F. Kennedy, helping usher him into the White House. Beyond that, the quality of life here can be very high and is an antidote to nature-less, crime-soaked places elsewhere.
I should admit right now that WestVirginiaVille.com is a sort of media art project. And time-limited. I give it five more years, maximum, that I have the mojo, life-force, and patience to produce, constantly promote and evangelize an offbeat, curious, impertinent, and esoteric publication, perhaps absurdly focused on life, art, culture, politics, photography, videos and more, all with some West Virginia connection.
Yet, for the near future, we — the royal ‘We’ — persevere.
It’s a Donation Thing
Should you wish to support this quixotic, fanciful venture, press the red button below. Or click this DONATION link.
You will join the following friends, fellow travelers, loons, dreamers, allies, compatriots and compadres. A deep namaste and thank you to the following supporters:
Ellen Allen; Susan A Bouldin; James Cochran; Sue Dietterle; Barbara Frierson; Karen Tauscher Fuller; B.K. Haley; DL Hamilton; Marc Harshman; Pam Hawley; Kirk Judd; Barbara Leonard; LLynium Entertainment; Grace Imbrogno McKeown; Douglas Arthur Minnerly; Barbara Nicholson; Devonne Parsons; Julie Pratt; Thad Settle; Ron Sowell; Barbara Steinke; Nancy Tyler; Dawn Warfield; Sherrell Wigal; Janet Zerbe and Gary Zucket.
PS: West Virginia Double-take
One pleasure of publishing on substack is finding a community of fellow travelers and people thinking out loud online in productive, enlightening ways. In light of what I’ve written about today, I point you to Heath Racela’s substack publication, “Quarantine Creatives Newsletter,” a newsletter and podcast exploring “creativity, art, and big ideas as we continue to live through this pandemic.” In a July 17, 2022 post, Heath writes about a brief, but revelatory ‘a-ha’ visit into West Virginia. By God, it wasn’t a hellscape! So, what was it? To read his post (and subscribe to his substack) click here or the image below.
Be well | Douglas John Imbrogno | editor, WestVirginiaVille.com