* * Attending the Roanoke Regional Writers' Conference

Early last week, I met with a woman named Lyndsay George who is a senior at Virginia Tech studying English.  She has offered as part of a student internship to do some work for me.  She left our meeting with homework.  She was to read my manuscripts and to become more familiar with my articles and other writing.  I hope she can help in several ways, including editing and research. I hope she can help me learn some new software.

Over the weekend, I attended the third annual Roanoke Regional Writers' Conference held at Hollins University.  Also in attendance were Mary Ann Johnson and Tracy Roberts who, along with Fred First, are in the small writers’ group I’ve formed. 

Mary Ann is retired from Virginia Tech where she worked in many aspects of writing and editing.  She has been a wonderful resource for me as an editor of my work as she has the time and expertise to evaluate my writing with a high level of experience and scrutiny.

Tracy has a Masters degree in creative writing and has taught in several states.  She is working to establish a higher presence for her writing.

I attended several sessions during the course of the day.  One that was particularly interesting for me was about social networking through the Internet.  The instructor was a woman who I thought of as being a total socialite, even before Internet-based media were available to her.  She discussed various ways for having a better presence on Facebook and LinkedIn.  It occurred to me that Lyndsay, with the experience that so many people have in their late teens and early 20s with social media would be a natural to help me figure out how to broaden my exposure on the Internet.

I attended a session taught by Janis Jaquith who is a Charlottesville-based essayist.  Janis was recently involved with critiquing a radio essay that I recorded for WVTF Public Radio.  Janis is interested in having our local radio station raise its bar with regard to the quality of essays that it produces.

Rex Bowman, a reporter for the Roanoke Times told us the secret of writing, which is to surprise the reader.  He said, “Say something new and surprising or say something old in a new and surprising way.”  He discussed at some length a series of rhetorical devices for surprising the reader.

Overall, I was struck by several different things.  In my third year of attendance, I have found this conference to have a nice mix of professional writers, aspiring professional writers, and hobbyists.  There always seems to be a surprising lack of superiority or pretentiousness.  Seemingly everyone feels that they have much to learn.  It seemed to me that while last year's session was hugely pessimistic, this year’s event was marked by, if not more optimism, certainly more resignation without the gloom.  Sixty years ago, America’s best writers were household names.  Today, rock stores and athletes have taken over that role.  Somehow, most of us who feel compelled to write are satisfied that although that era is dead, our craft still will have lasting value and significance.  I have made several friends at these events. I feel that my work is beginning to become more recognized.

* * Appreciating Stuart McGehee

I am in shock.

Yesterday I learned that Professor Stuart McGehee of Bluefield had died.  Stuart was introduced to me two years ago by Virginia Tech's renowned Civil War historian, Bud Robertson.  When I told Bud that I was working on a book about the formation of West Virginia and the relationship of that state to its parent state, Virginia, he told me that Stuart knew as much about it as anyone alive.  As Bud busily scratched out contact information for Stuart, something came over me and I asked Bud if he would be willing to call on Stuart personally with me.  I was delighted when he said yes.  So Bud and I made the trip to Bluefield together to see Stuart at the Bluefield Library, where he headed the Eastern Regional Coal Archives.  Stuart was so open and helpful, in many ways it was the easiest interview I ever did.

It is a severe understatement and a disservice to the word to call Stuart “interesting.”  Stuart was intelligent, insightful, loquacious, and energetic.  I can only imagine how much his students looked forward to his lectures.

It is also a severe understatement to say how indebted I am to Stuart as for the insights he offered so freely towards the formation of West Virginia, the information that laid the foundation for my book.  I couldn’t have written my book without him!

The thought I have had about Stuart sounds almost like a cliché.  Almost everyone I met along The Spine of the Virginias was more than willing to share their stories with me.  Occasionally, however, I would be rebuffed in my entreaties.  Whenever that happened, I would say to myself, It doesn't matter whether that person speaks to me because I got a great interview from Stuart McGehee and his was the only truly essential interview.  It pains me to know that I will never be able to hand him a signed copy.

According to news articles, Stuart committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to his head.  I am told by a mutual friend that Stuart had recently been diagnosed with fast-moving pancreatic cancer.  My understanding is that pancreatic cancer is invariably fatal.  I have often seen in obituaries as the phrase, “He fought a valiant battle against cancer.”  I cannot say that suicide is a valiant way to go.  However, it seems entirely fitting with Stuart's personality.  If faced with a similar situation, I would find the same solution tempting.  Nobody wants to die a morphine-laden, expensive, prolonged death in a hospital bed.  Stuart was 55 years old, the same age as me.

I mourn Stuart's loss.  I was only in his company two times, but he had a profound impact on me.  His loss takes some of the luster off this brilliant, warm winter day and much joy away from the scores of people he touched during his life along The Spine of the Virginias. 

The Bluefield newspaper’s article is here:          

http://www.bdtonline.com/homepage/local_story_013121346.html?keyword=leadpicturestory

* * Playing hooky on a frigid winter day

Last Tuesday, I played hooky.  My daughter is a freshman at Virginia Tech studying Animal Science and is on her holiday break.  My dad is now in his early 80s and he is retired.  The three of us went together on a little excursion along The Spine of the Virginias.  The weather was extraordinarily cold even for midwinter. 

Our first stop was the Confederate Memorial in Union, West Virginia which has provided inspiration for both of my books.  This monument is literally situated in a cow pasture just north of downtown.  Atop a 14 foot granite pedestal is a marble figure of a Civil War soldier, standing peacefully with his rifle held in front of him.  My goal was to get a high-resolution photograph of this monument using my dad’s camera.  Dad is an exceptional photographer, mostly of wildlife, specifically birds, and he owns several nice cameras.  He took several pictures himself and gave me the camera to take several of my own.

The scene was stark and chilling with a stiff, cold breeze from the west.  The temperature was perhaps 20 F.  The snow-covered pasture and the sky were both a featureless white.  Nobody had shoveled snow from the concrete walkway.

At one point, I jumped the fence to get the angle I wanted for my photograph.  Finishing up, I saw a tractor being driven towards us.  I scurried back and hopped over the fence, hoping not to have been noticed.  Unfortunately, the farmer had driven his tractor over specifically to scold me for my misbehavior.  I apologized profusely and swore to never do it again, not indicating the purpose of my indiscretion.  My daughter teased me about it, noting that I am in trouble more often than she.

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in town having lunch at the Korner Kafé with my friend Craig Mohler who is the editor of the Monroe Watchman, the weekly newspaper.  My dad worked for most of his career in the commercial printing industry and he enjoyed talking with Craig about printing and publishing. 

At one point in the conversation, I told Craig about my recent scolding.  He said, “I don’t know why that farmer should have been angry.  For decades, there was no fence around the monument at all and everyone who visited it simply walked across the pasture.”

After lunch, Craig took us to his mother’s farm where he fed her sheep.  My daughter has never met an animal she didn’t like so she was excited about this visit.  I spent time looking over Craig’s family’s collection of antique tractors.  One of them was a 100 year old wood-fired steam tractor.

Craig dropped us off back in town and we drove to Sweet Springs where we looked over the grand Sweet Springs Hotel.  We drove over Peters Mountain back into Virginia, and then though Paint Bank and New Castle.

Our next visit was with a friend who runs a farm in Craig County.  He is notoriously publicity shy so I will not mention location or real name.  Instead, I’ll call him “Peter.” By this time in the afternoon and at the higher elevation, the temperature was probably only 15°.  My daughter rode with Peter in his tractor and dad and I walked to the field where he unwraped a cylindrical bale of hay across the snowy pasture for the cows to eat.  We went inside to warm up and Peter served us slices of a delectable pecan pie he had baked that morning and a warm cup of tea.  Peter and Dad changed exchanged notes on birds he has seen on his property.  Peter spoke to us about his theories for living a healthy life and eating natural food.

Once bundled up and outside again, we trudged across a frozen field and wandered inside Peter’s calf barn.  The inner portion of the barn was built of logs and it predated the Civil War.  The bulk of the barn was more contemporary and was literally built surrounding the earlier construction.  We talked about the perils of farming in an era dominated by corporate agribusiness.

We also visited his enclosed chicken coop.  The chickens were all being kept indoors due to the extreme cold.  They generated enough heat to fog the coop’s windows.  Peter collected a dozen or more eggs in a basket and took them back to the house.  He told me via e-mail the next day that “Due to the continued confinement from the cold weather a couple of hens were aggressively pecking others.  The sentence is a quick neck wringing. No trial. But there is nothing better than good herbal chicken soup.”

Peter explained to us the process of helping a cow deliver a calf.  Sometimes the farmer must literally pull the calf from the tight birth canal by reaching deep inside.  He said the birth canal puts great pressure on the farmer’s arm, making the process very strenuous.  He invited us to visit again in March during the calving season.

The textures of the day were dominated by life images, of the beautiful auburn hair and wet, coal-black nose of one of his bigger cows, the striking plumage of the chickens, and subtle brown and green colors of the eggs. 

My daughter enjoyed her day as well.  She said, “I had a wonderful experience getting to see a small town and meet some very nice people. I got to see how a farm runs first-hand, like what breed of cows Peter had and what part he played in the integration of the beef industry.”

The textures and congeniality of the day were painted on a frigid white canvas.



* * Escaping the decade, just

This last year was a difficult one for my family financially as it was for millions of Americans.  I wrote this editorial that was printed last week by the Roanoke Times.

Nearing the end of the first decade of the new millennium, a decade we never decided what to call (e.g., the “Oughts” or perhaps the “Noughties”?), I’m reminded of that hilarious scene in the movie, Toy Story 2, where six wannabe hero toys make their way across a busy city street by shuffling along under traffic cones. Their skirmish ends on the opposite curb while destruction reigns on the street, as numerous vehicles crash trying to avoid them. Once safely delivered, they emerge from their transportable costumes, at which point Mr. Potato Head adjusts his black fedora and exclaims with obvious relief and optimism, “Ah, that went well!” In a perverse way, it is an apt metaphor for the decade.

Perhaps it could have been worse, but it was bad enough.  The attacks on September 11, 2001 precipitated the War on Terror and the subsequent invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Asia and in particular, China, experienced rapid economic growth and political assertion.  The Great Recession ensued, plaguing our nation.  The income disparity between rich and poor is growing rapidly.  It is hard to see the decade being remembered for much other than malfeasance, nonchalance, and misadventure in the face of profound changes.

Three interrelated stressors seem poised to dominate our political, economic, and social landscape in the coming decade.  None are being addressed effectively now.

First, our society will need to understand the fundamentals and limitations of credit and currencies, and make decisions underlain not by greed and self-interest but by respect and shared purpose. Second, we will need to grasp the concept of diminishing fossil fuel energy and deal with it constructively.  And third, we will need to understand the irrefutable ways in which the natural systems of the planet – global climate, species diversity, and resource use – impact our economies.  Solving each of these will depend on breaking the tight bond between corporate and political power.

Last year’s near-collapse of the worldwide financial system placed a serious financial hardship on millions of families.  The reckless, malicious actions of Wall Street and banks across the land must be prevented from happening again.  Demigod Alan Greenspan was befuddled.  He admitted in October, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”  The financial industry will not police itself and if allowed will repeatedly wreak havoc across the economy.

Recovery from our economic mess will become impeded by energy scarcity, something we’d be seeing already if not for the recession-induced reduction in demand.  Oil is peaking in extraction.  Natural gas and coal are perhaps only a decade or two behind.  Because so much of our energy comes from these non-renewable fuels, this impending crisis has the potential to dominate our lives in the coming decade.  Thus far, most of our actions indicate our utter failure to grasp this reality, as evidenced by plans for new coal-burning power plants, new highways, and more sprawl development.  We must immediately decentralize and diversify our energy mix and lessen our dependency upon the fossil fuels.

The bounty of our earth is the source of all prosperity.  Biological diversity allows for resiliency in the face of blights, weather-related disasters, and diseases.  Instead of protecting the earth’s biological diversity, we arrogate increasing chunks of the earth to ourselves and sacrifice countless species at the altar of human greed and growth.

These converging threats will come home to roost in the near future and the need to down-scale, re-localize, and de-globalize our activities will become urgent.

            The marriage of corporate and political power has provided a seemingly insurmountable barrier towards progress.  Food production in this country is designed not to provide nutrition to our citizens but to provide profits to corporate producers.  Health care is designed not to make or keep people healthy, but to provide profits to corporate providers.  Energy production is designed not to free us from dependency upon foreign suppliers but to enrich the profits of the energy companies.  Fundamental, productive changes in the way these and similar systems are delivered are unlikely in the current paradigm because our government has become a slave to corporate interests.

In this first decade of the 2000s, we have managed to pass to still another decade many elemental threats. Will we be reaching the same happy conclusion in the waning days of 2019, along with the ability to once again proclaim, “Ah, that went well!”? The “teens” will provide many more busy highways to cross.

* * Holiday greetings from The Spine of the Virginias

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Like most places throughout the Appalachians and into New England, we had a major snowstorm a week before Christmas.  The temperatures stayed cold enough to keep most of the snow around.  I have taken advantage of the rare December snowfall to do some cross-country skiing on the nearby Huckleberry Trail.

The evening after Christmas, my wife Jane, my daughter Whitney, and I attended a party held by our friends Tracy Roberts and John White at their home situated along The Spine of the Virginias in the Sinking Creek Valley in Craig County, Virginia.  Tracy is an old friend and one of the people I profiled in my book.  She is a beautiful woman, tall and slender, with a beautiful expression.  She shot several of the photographs I plan to use on the cover of my book on a trip we took together to McDowell County, West Virginia, last spring.  In addition to being an outstanding photographer, she is a great writer and an avid horsewoman.  John is a pulmonary physician with an office in my hometown, Christiansburg.

The house they live in was constructed prior to the Civil War.  It was made from bricks that were manufactured on the site.  The house has a magical, warm and enduring feel to it.  Tracy and John decorated it beautifully for the season with many inside and outside lights.  Several people in attendance were already familiar to me including a surgeon who recently checked on me for the condition of a hernia repair done by a since retired doctor three years ago and had operated on my father to remove his gallbladder since then.  I also saw an old friend who is a retired Aerospace Engineering professor at Virginia Tech and now works full time on his farm.  We also met many new people, one of whom was familiar with and complimentary towards the writing I do for the New River Current edition of the Roanoke Times.

Tracy, John, and their friend Rodney had built a bonfire on a small knoll up the hill from the house.  Warm air radiated from the fire and lit the faces of a dozen people standing around it in the cold evening air.  A nearly full moon shone through thin clouds and sent a diffuse light onto the neighboring hillsides.  In an area along The Spine of the Virginias renowned for beautiful, linear valleys, the Sinking Creek Valley is one of the most appealing.  Sufficient moonlight struck the white hillsides to illuminate the entire scene.  The view back towards the house was picture postcard wonderful.

This was an evening to remember, one that makes living along The Spine of the Virginias so special.

We will have entered a new decade by the time I write my next entry.  Good luck to the Virginia Tech Hokies in their bowl game against the University of Tennessee and Happy New Year to all!