Multiculturalism, Long-Hair and Mountain People

Multiculturalism, Long-Hair and Mountain People

Roberts condemns the Pharisees and so-called Christian right wing Republicans (and Republicrats) with “How can you be living the way the Bible tells you to live when you are working cut off your mom and dad’s health care…that same Bible tells us that it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle.”

After Charlotte Pritt’s* eight years let us put Cecil Roberts in the Governor’s office.

As I have told the editor of this newspaper before, there is no such thing as multi-culturalism. Using the multi-cultural approach in schools is not an ism. It is not a religion nor a political philosophy. Multi-cultural education simply recognizes that there are different kinds of people in this country and that we should honor and respect their culture and background. Multi-cultural education is Christian and is an attempt to fight the racism of the right-wingers who would make everyone exactly like them.

We mountain people, of all people, should want other cultures to respect us and not turn us down for jobs because we speak a different accent of English. Outside these mountains there is a widespread prejudice against us. On TV they can still make fun of two groups—mountain people and midgets.

We should unite with other cultures and make sure our culture is taught to students all over this country. Do we all have to talk like we are from Indiana? What is it with these right-wing republicans who claim they want less government but want the government telling us we can’t honor or ancestral culture? Wasn’t it Hitler who wanted to get rid of everyone different? Anyway, worrying about multi-cultural education is just what the right-wing Republicans want us to do while they give away the store to the rich.

Speaking of tolerance and wise judgment—three more cheers to Coach David Kiser for not making a big issue out of hair style on his basketball team. Right wing Republicans and small-minded coaches want everyone to look alike—diversity threatens them and they need to lighten up.

My first run-in with the Board of Education was over the all-important moral issue of hair length. It was my first semester teaching at Duval. It was track season and the coach kicked a boy off the team for having long hair. He needed to be part of a group. He needed acceptance. He had had enough rejection already. I confronted the coach about it and told him my oldest son had long hair and wanted to be an athlete. He told me that he was boss and that my son wouldn’t play for him if his hair was long.

My wife and I wrote a letter to the Superintendent of Lincoln County Schools. We wrote as parents about the long hair policy of the coach. A week later I saw a copy posted in the men’s lounge at Duval High School. It was also posted in the coach’s office and in the field house. Our confidential personal letter was in rest rooms and offices. No doubt it was being used to ridicule and humiliate our oldest son, who by the way was a darned good athlete. (The coach is not one of our present coaches.)

Jesus could never play basketball for some coaches with all that long hair and those radical ideas.

And speaking of wise coaches, Kim Matthews and Richard McCallister are among the wisest and most compassionate coaches I have ever witnessed. They rank with the truly legendary Sammy LeRose, my football coach at St. Albans. Like LeRose, they are always positive, never blame, humiliate, curse or scream at anyone. When a kid made a mistake it was, “Hey, don’t worry about it and you’ll do better next time” or “Good try, way to hustle.” On the rare occasions when their teams lost they didn’t whine and blame the referees. I am so grateful that my son had them for his first coaches in football and I am grateful for Sammy LeRose.

*Charlotte Pritt was the first woman to run for Governor on either the Democrat or Republican tickets. She was betrayed by some Democrat leaders who supported her Republican opponent. The present (2009) Governor Joe Manchin was one of those Democrats who supported the Republican Cecil Underwood. They called themselves Democrats for Underwood.

Raising Dogs and Raising Kids: Which Do Politicians Care More About

Where do we get these senators? As the state cuts back on medical care for the poor, Earl Ray’s family gets money to raise dogs. As we are asked to bus our children four hours a day, the Tomblins get rich for contributing to the gambling industry. Perhaps that money could be given to people who have a hard time finding enough money to raise a human being. Seiler says the Tomblin dog money was “earned” right here in Lincoln County, at a puppy farm in Harts. Just trying to contribute to the local economy, I guess. A vote earl Ray is a vote for the dogs. Bark for Earl Ray.

*Marshall beat WVU in basketball. Most of the players on both squads were from out of state. My proposal again: Only West Virginia residents be allowed to play sports or coach at our colleges and universities. Play teams that are a short bus ride away and give no athletic scholarships. Our kids are being cheated when we hire these mercenaries from out of state. We have a history of letting outside interests ruin our fun. Look who owns most of our mineral rights and destroys our state with strip mining, pulp mills, clear-cutting and such. Perhaps we should all commit suicide and let the out-of-state rich have it. Maybe we already have.

*What is that rotten smell? Could it be the smell of the Mason County pulp mill? Or is it the smell of the tax write-offs Parsons and Whitmore will get? Caperton* has assured them that they qualify for over $700 million in super tax credits, and up to 41.1 billion in total corporate welfare. Add to that the $1 billion in tax write-offs West Virginia is already giving to big business in ten years. Why don’t we just give them the state Capitol? Maybe we already have. It appears to be for sale. What we have here is welfare for the rich. The Republicrats are at it again. There is no end to their trickery.

Two billion dollars is only three words, but how much is that? It is two thousand million! If you spent one thousand dollars a day and started when Jesus was born, you would finish spending the money in 5476! And we are so poor we have to consolidate schools to save money? Parsons and Whitmore will be the biggest welfare queen ever.

No wonder Caperton tried to stop the release of documents about the deals made with the stinking pulp mill people. One of his people wrote that the “Governor must support non-union activity…must get law enforcement people. Get local judge’s enforcement to ascertain if injunction can be implemented.” They are already planning to bust any union activity and hire scabs. How did we get this Republicrat, union-busting, air-polluting rich man as governor? Who was his campaign manager? **

Missiles Just Sit There

The Republicans do not care if they balance the budget a balanced budget is

being used as a smokescreen to hide what they are really doing. They are trying to erase all the reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. They want to destroy Medicare and Medicaid. They will go after Social Security if they get a Republican president. The environment means nothing to them but a roadblock to more profit. School lunch programs and other programs benefiting children are on their hit list. They want all that money for themselves. A tax cut for the rich shows how badly they want to balance the budget. If they really want to balance the budget, why are they giving the military $7 billion more than they wanted?

It was under Republican presidents that the budget deficit boomed to three hundred trillion dollars—mind you they had plenty of help from Republicrats in the Democrat-controlled Congress. Our money went down the bottomless pit called the military. Of the money Congress can allocate at its own discretion the military gets more than all the others combined. We have over thirty nuclear submarines that can each destroy all of the former Soviet Union. They cost five billion dollars to build and ten billion to arm—each!

Five billion dollars is enough money to solve all the financial problems of all the school districts in the country. One nuclear submarine less and all of our school financial problems are solved. Less a couple of more submarines and you have free medical care for everyone! We could still have twenty-seven submarines capable of destroying the former Soviet Union. Military spending has been a big boondoggle for military contractors.

When we spend our money on the military we don’t spend it on other things like hungry children and old people. Military spending is a dead-end street, it doesn’t generate any more money. A missile just sits there after it’s built. The same money spent on education causes individuals to earn more money, contribute to society, maybe employ other people, and buy groceries, cars, houses, gasoline. A missile just sits there. We’ve got a zillion of them just sitting there. Spending on peaceful items generates more money in the economy. Missiles just sit there.

If Hillbilly, Dickie and Snake*** get too cute on this one-school garbage they may end up with no high schools in Lincoln County. If the board doesn’t place the two schools in the areas we, the citizens, agreed to, the bond issue doesn’t stand a chance. If Hillbilly succeeds in sabotaging the bond issue election, the state just might send all of our kids out of the county. Chapmanville, Huntington, Hurricane, George Washington, South Charleston, St. Albans and Scott all make more sense than one school in Wiley world.****Lincoln County would become no-man’s land. Our children would become strangers in a strange land.

Is it possible for our board members to outsmart themselves? Can a snake swallow itself?

Sharing the Trough with Senator Tomblin

The only way two high schools would meet the “economy of scale” would be as grades seven through twelve high schools. The politicians called a secret meeting in Charleston minus eighteen of the Citizens’ Facilities Planning Committee. It turns out they were just kidding about “economy of scale.” It must have been kind of a joke to watch the Citizens’ Facilities Planning Committee squirm. They approved the 1990 idea of two nine-thru-twelve high schools with nary a word about “economy of scale.” “Economy of scale” was another one of those rules that only applied if it could be use as a roadblock to our efforts to stop one-school consolidation. They never really cared how many grades we had as long as they got the one-school at Wiley World. All of those meetings, trying to make the figures work were just a big hoax. They figured we couldn’t pull it off and they would win by default. When they saw they were beaten they had another of secret meetings, minus eighteen of the Citizens’ Facilities Planning Committee members, and did however they wanted.

Why must they do everything in secret? And the answer is: Republicrats don’t trust people. For the big shots, democracy is a messy business. They didn’t want us to taste victory. We might have gotten out of control and decided we didn’t need them. I was told their secret meeting allowed them to save face. To hell with their face. They should have been forced to come, hat in hand, before the people of Lincoln County and tell us they were wrong. They put us through a lot of agony. They just want to stay in power. They know that if we find out we can beat them they won’t be in power very long. I do want to thank them for uniting us and giving us the opportunity to find out we have real power if we stick together.

I am very glad we aren’t, sorry, they aren’t going to build two high schools with junior high students mixed with senior high students. I still think we should have complete vocational schools at the two high schools.

Having two giant middle schools is a mistake. Those young children are still going to be on the buses for a long time, and they will be going to unnecessarily large schools far removed from their communities. And don’t tell me it is because of the “economy of scale” that we must have two middle schools. Economy of scale lives with the tooth fairy. And don’t tell me it is because we don’t have enough money—millions are going to coal companies for laying off coal miners, to pulp mills who will terrorize our forests, to politicians who raise racing dogs, and on and on. How about a super tax credit for people to build schools.

Maybe we can get in the back door on some of that money. How about a giant greyhound puppy farm at the vocational school. The school system could suck from the same trough as Earl Ray Tomblin.*

It is a common practice to blame the schools for whatever is wrong with our children. If the students at schools are “violent” it is not because of the schools. The kids don’t learn violence at school. The few that are violent were violent when we got them. Schools don’t cause societies problems, rather, we have the difficult job of trying to correct those problems, and it ain’t easy. Any situational ethics they have they already had when we got them. It is as silly to blame the schools for society’s problems as it is to blame the churches. Many of the students with behavior problems go to church, play football or belong to other groups, none of which should be singled out as causing the behavior problem. The churches, schools and other institutions aren’t to blame. In most cases, the problem is at home where parent or sibling abuse has planted the seed of violent behavior. If children are abused they will abuse others. They learn that abuse is normal before they have anything to compare. Abuse seems normal to the abused child. A person is pretty well determined by age five, and that time is spent at home, not at church or school.

No more than two to five percent of the students at Duval have problems that are so serious they can’t function within the expected school behavior. Most parents have done a good job with their kids. If we teachers are firm, fair and present a class that is interesting, we will have few problems. The students want reasonable limits on their class behavior, and they want us to help them to learn.

However, those children who seem to have been raised by wolves, create for more problems than their numbers warrant. If the class size is reduced to no more than fifteen students, most behavior problems disappear. It is hard for the abused child to abuse others if they can’t hide in a crowd. With smaller classes, it is easier for the teacher to minister to the needs of the individual student. It is especially important to have small classes in the lower grades so that healthy patterns of behavior can get started early. Younger students are less mature, and more inclined to disruption if they already have serious problems like home abuse.

Up to a certain point the main indicator of success in school is family income. Families that don’t have to worry about where the money is going to come from to pay for school clothes, medical bills and other necessities of life are less frustrated and less angry and abusive.

So what are our rulers trying to do? That’s right, they are trying to make it harder on poor families and easier for the rich. In general, children from low-income families score lower on standardized tests.

Thoughts on a Friend’s Life

The News from Sam’s Branch

The Lincoln Independent, February 21, 1996
John Maxwell died two days ago. John was an old friend of mine. He was a professor of history at West Virginia University. John was a nice guy. He was popular with his students, and a very effective and demanding teacher. One student commented that he didn’t like to take notes in John’s class because he enjoyed the lectures so much he just wanted to listen. John was one of those warm souled people that everybody liked. He always took interest in what you had to say, and seemed to exude a love for people.

I called John’s wife, and during the conversation, I told her of one of the most incredible coincidences that I ever experienced. It involved John many years ago.

When President Kennedy announced he was forming a Peace Corps, I was a chemical engineer at American Cyanamid in Wallingford, Connecticut. A bunch of us had been transferred from Willow Island, West Virginia, to help start a new plant making socially useless melamine plastic. The day after Kennedy’s announcement, I called Washington and volunteered. My application went unanswered for five months. I figured they didn’t want me so I headed to Washington, D.C. got a job in the Naval Propellants plant near there and got accepted to Georgetown Law School for night classes. After a month of being trained to supervise the making of Sidewinder missiles I heard from the Peace Corps—I was in.

We trained at UCLA for three months, and were then sent to Nigeria in West Africa. In Nigeria I taught in a high school. We had three-month terms with a month vacation between each term. During one of those monthly vacations, my seven-month pregnant wife and I along with another couple who were also seven months pregnant, decided to go to the Cameroon Republic, next door to Nigeria.

Crammed in our Volkswagen bug the school gave us, we headed for the border. On the way, still on a hardtop road, we passed a bearded white man hitchhiking. We had four adults and two almost in the tiny bug, so we couldn’t help. Later that evening, after a day on deeply rutted dusty roads, we arrived in the city of Bamenda. Bamenda had an old German fort on top of a plateau overlooking the city in the valley.

The Cameroons were captive to the Germans until they lost all of their colonies after World War I to Britain and France. Britain and France each took half of the former German colony. This kind of colony loss brought Hitler to the rescue. The Cameroons had a split personality. They had grown accustomed to the rule of the Germans and their language, and suddenly half of the people had to learn French and the other half English.

At the border between the British half and the French half, the rules suddenly changed. In the British part you drove on the left side of the road, and abruptly at the border you had better get used to driving on the right side with the French. Adjustment to that sudden lane change caused more than one head-on collision.

In Bamenda, we stayed at a government rest-house, which was similar to a motel but much nicer. The next morning, we met the bearded hitchhiker at breakfast. He was an American. He had recently been discharged from an Army Intelligence unit in Germany. A buddy of his drove him down to Gibraltar and waved goodbye as he crossed the straits to Africa. His goal was to hitchhike around the perimeter of Africa.

We finished our vacation, which included having a machine gun pointed into our car window right at my face by a soldier who thought we might be members of a rebel group they were after. Anyway, we got back to our school, welcomed our daughter into the world and headed home. We detoured through Egypt, Greece, Russia and France. The trip to Russia is another story—John Kennedy, who sent us to Africa, was murdered while we were on our roundabout way home. We were on a Russian ship going from Greece to Odessa, Russia, when we learned of Kennedy’s murder.

Back home in West Virginia I got a job as foreign student advisor at West Virginia University. John Maxwell got a job teaching history there at about the same time. We had been freshmen at WVU together in 1954. I went to see him. We talked all night and finished off a fifth of bourbon. While I was telling John about Africa, he suddenly said, “About the time you were in Africa, I had a buddy who went to Africa. When he got discharged from our Army Intelligence unit in Germany, I took him down to Gibraltar and saw him off on a hitchhiking trip. His goal was to hitchhike around the perimeter of Africa.”

I loved John Maxwell. I am very sorry he is gone. He was magic.

[Editors note: Maxwell was an excellent teacher and a good man. I can attest that he helped at least one freshman make it through. TLH]
In the Cameroons we met a despicable old German who gave a group of local people a large bag of salt if they would perform a dance for us. I felt shame watching those poor, hapless people go through the motions of drumming and dancing for us American tourists.

I was driving in Lagos. It was the capital of Nigeria at that time. It suddenly appeared that I was going to have a head-on collision with a Nigerian taxi. In former British colony Nigeria, cars drove on the left side. It suddenly appeared that I was going to have a head-on collision with a Nigerian taxi. I instinctively swerved to the right to avoid the collision. That is the way I would have swerved had I been in the U.S., driving on the right side of the road. The taxi driver swerved to his left which was right towards me. We both stopped in time. In the nearby formerly French colony of Dahomey, they drove on the right side of the road. The taxi driver assuming I was from Dahomey, yelled angrily out the window of his car, “French!”

In government rest houses we were awakened for coffee around 6 am and later for hot tea. This was something the British colonists introduced for their servants to treat them to comfort and pleasure. This was not something they experienced at home where they had no dark skinned people.

Censorship

The stuff on television is awful for children to be watching. The cartoons are full of horrible characters doing horrible things to other horrible characters. What happened to sweet, innocent stories for sweet innocent children? Why should children be subjected to such harsh scenes? What kind of people are deciding to send such negative images into innocent minds? What companies are sponsoring such fearful stuff? Why?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure highly possible connections between things like smoking and lung diseases, heavy drinking and liver diseases, violence and mental disease….

To preserve our freedoms I don’t think there should be any censorship of anything for adults. Adults should be allowed to do anything they want to do if it does not harm anyone else or their property. I don’t like the idea of crimes with no victim. If an adult wants to destroy their mind and body with alcohol they have the right. Outlawing alcohol didn’t work and outlawing other drugs isn’t working. A certain number of people will be alcoholics no matter what the law. A certain number of people are addicted to drugs no matter what the laws. You just can’t stop people from putting things in their mouths or veins or lungs—it is an impossible police job to watch everyone all the time.*

Love will cure most need for self-destruction. The most effective love is a parent for a child. Love them when they are young and they can survive most anything. Help them feel important and worthwhile when they are babies, and they usually don’t want to destroy themselves. I see happy looks on the faces of teenagers that are the result of happy childhoods.

Good-looking people are often not really good looking, if you take away the sparkle in their eyes. Elizabeth Taylor never seemed good looking to me because there didn’t seem to be any twinkle of happiness in her eyes. But short, strange looking Danny Devito is beautiful. I see physically unattractive people who are beautiful because they radiate happiness. That is very attractive no matter where it is coming from. Those happy looks are usually a result of loving parents early in life.

Adults should be free to destroy themselves, but somehow we have to protect the delicate minds and emotions of children. The difficult problem is how to protect children without putting adults in chains. If the V-Chip bans violence from television, will it mean that Shakespeare’s great works of art will be censored? Would the Vietnam War reporting have been censored as too violent if the V-Chip had been around then?

Who will decide what gets a violent rating. Is the answer to allow anything to be on television and Internet, and put the responsibility on parent to regulate what their children see? Or do we introduce the very dangerous idea of censorship because some parents won’t do their job? Do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Do we give up our freedoms to censors because some cannot be responsible parents? Are we so helpless that we must delegate our moral responsibility to government censors? Is the V-Chip more or less government on our backs?

* Such laws cannot be enforced against every violator. Selective enforcement has been used to imprison people who are “trouble makers.” A young African-American at Texas Southern University was a leader in civil rights and anti-war activities. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison for possession of one joint of marijuana.

Buchanan, Wallace and other Populists

Be proud to be a redneck. Red-neck started back in the coal mine wars on Cabin and Paint Creeks, when the union miners wore red bandanas around their necks so they could recognize each other. I was started by a wonderful, far-left union called the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblys. The Charleston Gazette—then the Republican businessman’s friend—denounced the “rednecks” as ignorant hillbillies. I like to think of my twenty-year old grandfather Charlie Barker and his brother Kin being rednecks in the coal mine wars.

Dole, Alexander and Forbes are all in touch with the rich, but way out of touch with the working people. As a demagogue will do, Buchanan has grabbed hold of the real issue in our country—jobs here and now. A right-wing Republican has made the rest of them talk about our unpatriotic corporations going overseas for slave labor and right to destroy the air and water. What we need here in West Virginia is someone who will galvanize the same anger toward the super tax credits or Republicrat legislature give to large corporations.

Buchanan has just fired a guy who loves the militia stuff, and another who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. KKK wizard David Duke is a Buchanan supporter and says that if Buchanan becomes president the KKK will have to get some of the credit. Buchanan lamely claims that he can’t check everyone who wanders into hi campaign. But why are these sleazebags that “wander in’ attracted to Buchanan? Buchanan attracts haters with his own hateful attitude.

If we had a Democrat Congress to moderate him, Buchanan might be fun to have in the White House. With the radical right-wing Republican Congress we have now he would be free to the racist, Nazi dogmatist that he seems to be. National columnist Molly Ivins figures Buchanan would be a lot more fun “to have a beer with” than Dole or Gramm, and I add Alexander and Forbes. Those other guys are stuffy and afraid to be who they really are. They wouldn’t say poop if it was in their mouths, to paraphrase my aunt. They are such stiff, predictable nerds—no one to have a good time with at all. Very uptight, Clinton isn’t able to reveal his real self either, but I see him as our only chance to block the total destruction this country by the Republicans.

Buchanan is right on the money when he rails at companies that move their plants overseas to avoid paying Americans a living wage. But I’ll bet my ’79 Chevy that Buchanan used to blame union wages for forcing companies overseas. So I wonder if he believes what he is saying, or just wants to use the American worker’s fears to get in power. Maybe he just enjoys a good fight. Buchanan used to be for free trade, and drove around in a foreign-made car. How does he explain that Mercedes to the autoworkers? His conversion to a popular cause, a cause that politicians on both sides choose to ignore, is indeed suspicious. I think he is a demagogue. He feeds on the people’s fears for his own power.

If Buchanan is a populist he has to take the rest of it. He must be for a higher minimum wage, for unions, collective bargaining, expanded Medicare and Medicaid, strict environmental laws, women’s rights, minority rights, and education for working class kids. I suspect he will gag on most of these. The working class isn’t going to cheer him for bringing the factories home at a dollar an hour wage. He won’t be supported for allowing industry to choke our air and poison our water.

As Molly Ivins points out that it isn’t the immigrants and homosexuals who send the factories overseas, it is the greedy American business people. Minorities are easy to pick on and blame, Hitler understood that very well. Buchanan also knows how to scapegoat.

Suddenly someone has pointed out that the American people are far more worried about how they are going to feed their families than they are about the budget. The rest of the candidates, who like Buchanan, are for whatever will get them elected, will jump on his bandwagon, condemn him and rework his ideas into their speeches.

Buchanan is a God-send for the Democrats. He will be easy to beat. He has been too crazy in the past, and it will effectively be used against him. Some of his advisors are racist kooks who would love to bomb a courthouse, and there is the embrace of David Duke. Buchanan even suggested selling nuclear weapons to South Korea. Boy, that’s all we need, more bombs in the hands of crazies. Buchanan makes fun of Mexicans by referring to immigrants from Mexico as all being name “Jose.” He exaggerates the pronunciation of Jewish last names and he speaks to white supremacists in code words they understand. The minorities he dislikes might constitute a majority of the voters. Haters never know when to stop.

Like George Wallace, Buchanan has a good chance of getting shot—so far, just about everyone who has aroused the emotions of the working class on a national scale has been shot. The rich may not let Buchanan live if he gets too close.

In a letter to the editor last week, Lyle Stowers made much of being a Democrat. I offer this column to Mr. Stowers to tell the people of Lincoln County what the difference is between a Republican and a Democrat in Lincoln County. Mr. Stowers’ ideas will be printed without negative editorial comment from this writer.

A Mother’s Place is in the Home

• 
  A man in Charleston was sentenced to life in prison for being a habitual criminal. He was a pimp. So far, none of his customers have been judged habitual criminals.
  
• 
  On Sunday, the Charleston Gazette printed an article from the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. The article was about parenting. It said that since a book called “Parent Effectiveness Training” was published in the early 1970s that the bottom has dropped out of child behavior. Author John Rosemond points out that since that book and some so-called left-wing parenting ideas “…every single indicator of positive mental health in children has been in a state of precipitous decline.” This book evidently advised parents to be democratic in their child rearing. Rosemond cites this as “a sharp turn to the left in parenting practices.” Obviously it was the book and those left-wing parenting ideas that caused all our problems with children. What logic! I have never heard of the book and I doubt if one percent of the parents in this country ever read it.
  

In most families both parents have got work to make ends meet. The children get left with someone else to raise them. Mothers feel this awful pressure to go back to work and leave babies without their mommies. Economic disruption of the American family is causing our problems, not some book hardly anyone has read. The right-wing Republicans want to blame everything but their own greed for our problems.

Mothers should be paid to stay home and raise their own children—it would save us a lot of money in the long run. Raising children is the world’s most important job, and should be done by parents and not strangers. The most important job in the world deserves an important salary. When I was growing up (dinosaurs were three for a dollar back then) every home in our neighborhood had a parent home with the kids. The jobs then paid a living wage. Teenage or child crimes of robbery, murder, rape or mugging were unheard of among the thousand or so kids who lived in that large government housing development called Ordnance Park in St. Albans in the 1940s. We were free to roam and play happily without fear because our mothers were home and our dads were making a living wage.

The radical right-wing of the Republican Party claims to be pro-family, but I hear nothing from them about the low wages that are destroying the American family. If they are pro-family, how about universal health coverage for all families? Or will that cost the rich too much? Or how about extending free education beyond high school level so that poor families with bright kids can get out of the cycle of poverty. How about a children’s Bill of Rights that promises education for as far as your talents will take you and health care when you need it? The G.I Bill of Rights after the Second World War turned this country around. My uncle got a college degree on the G.I. Bill, and went on to become a plant manager for Ford Motor Company. Without the G.I. Bill he would probably have been a casualty of the coal industry.

• 
  A belated public thanks to Greg Collard for having the courage to expose the conspiracy by our beloved Republicrats to put our children in one giant concentration camp. There is a statue of Chuck Yeager for his courage and the hope he gives to young Lincoln County people that they too can conquer the world. I propose a statue of Greg Collard for showing the young people of Lincoln County (and us older ones too) a courage of spirit. It’s too bad he ran into a judge name of Joe Bob, who was good ol’ boys with our Republicrat rulers. Greg can always count his worth as directly proportional to the scum-like character of his enemies.
  

Not in our lifetime is the State Board of Education nor the School Building Authority going to build four high schools in Lincoln County. If the four-school candidates backed by the evil empire win, we might just get no high schools with students bused out of the county in all directions. Or still worse, the county board will be forced to consolidate the present Duval and Hamlin buildings. One would be the high school and the other the junior high. In this last nightmare, Harts and Guyan Valley would probably be put together at Guyan valley or bused out of the county.

My votes go for the Bowman-Farley combination. Both these men worked long and hard to defeat the one-school plan. They deserve a chance to see if they can straighten this mess.

Just a reminder—this whole consolidation mess is with us because of the super tax credit. Our Republicrat lawmakers give one hundred million dollars a year to big coal companies, Wal-Mart and others. This is one billion dollars every ten years. The Republicrat solution is to take it out of the hi8des of our children. Coal operator Gary White is on the State Board of Education. I am told he is Buck Harless’* boy. I don’t guess we can expect Gary White to see the problem.

The State Chamber of Commerce is ecstatic that more people are moving into Putnam and Jefferson counties. Two more places that are being ruined and trashed by over-population and concrete everywhere. In a world that is being ruined by over-population, why does anyone want more?

What about that stock market? It goes up when AT&T lays off forty thousand people and it goes down when employment goes up. Rich people get richer when working people lose their jobs and rich people lose money when working people get jobs. The stock market is just a big gambling casino for the rich. It has no connection to the welfare of the people. Decisions that control the stock market are not based on what is best for the country. Short-term profit controls the stock market and the stock market controls the country. A bunch of rich gamblers decide who gets what and how much and they aren’t on our side.

I am really upset with the non-story about violence being a growing problem in our schools. Duval High School is a very peaceful school. The students are happy and fun to be around. There is no gang violence. Our biggest problem is the opposite of violence. They want to get a bit too familiar with their sweethearts and often have to be reminded to back off a little. In the spring of the year there are usually a couple of fights between boys with raging testosterone levels.

Duval was raided by the State Police a couple of years ago, with dogs and all. No drugs were found. The police missed the chance to presume innocence and congratulate our students. Instead, they said that the drugs were there but they didn’t find them. So our students were guilty no matter what the search showed.

Duval is the last place on earth that needs cameras to spy on students. I hate those cameras. They insult my dignity and they are a waste of money

And what about that $313,000 bridge in Griffithsville? Somebody has some pull.

The State Giveth

And The County Taketh Away

The News from Sam’s Branch

The Lincoln Independent March 27, 1996
I read the dreaded words “open up southern West Virginia.” A proposed airport would do that. Southern West Virginia has been opened up many times by outside hucksters who stole our mineral rights and then raped the land as the John Prine song says “al in the name of progress.” When they say “open” up they mean exploit, make profit, get rich and get out, pollute the air and water and destroy the land. Watch as corridor G gets “developed”—that Southridge thing looks like a painted whore. The pimps who call themselves “developers” will trash it all if given the chance. They would have back to back mass the world over. They are like locusts and they are legion.

Jobs is the war cry. Open up for jobs, develop for jobs—yet jobs at McDonalds for minimum wage and no medical care. The so-called developers always use jobs to get their foot in the door and then they make our beautiful land ugly and give us starvation wages. Why make rural West Virginia like South Charleston or Nitro or Institute—that’s development, that’s what you get when you “open up” an area. You get short future. A bit of prosperity for permanent ruin. It is another form of strip mining. Quick profits, foul air and water and devastated countryside.

A cousin, who had the misfortune if living next to a strip-mine on Coal River, said that strip-mine companies are like cats—What they don’t tear up they poop all over—only she didn’t say poop. So-called developers are the same. They promise jobs and prosperity and in a few years we all live on the longest street in the country. It runs coast to coast and it is just one big neon sign with fast-food joints. “Development” wipes out small business and trashes the environment. It has become almost unpatriotic to talk like this. We have to figure a way to have jobs for people without destroying the future.

Let’s give everybody forty acres and start over. We could get the forty acres from out-of-state land owners who own 90 percent of some counties. In the land of the free and the brave it is the land of the rich and the slave.

The board of education got way behind and spent a whole lot more money than they have. Their solution is to cut supplemental contracts. Athletic trainers will be expected to be at every senior and junior high football game, both home and away. They will be paid nothing. The best speech and debate program in the state will be ended. Is the superintendent taking a pay cut? Not likely.

When it was suggested that the superintendent take a cut equal to the one he is asking of principals and assistant principals, he laughed. And how about the board members donating their pay to the cause—after all, they were on guard when the budget went down the tubes. Is their only job to terrorize us with one-school concentration camps and mismanage money? Remember when you vote this is the Stowers-Jackson faction at your service—not exactly first class service.

What the state giveth the county taketh away. I will get about $800 in salary increase from the state next year. The county is taking away $500. I end up with a $300 pay raise. About a dollar a day take-home pay. Factor in inflation and I took a pay cut. I don’t mind giving up the $500 for being the science department head. I wish those who have led us in such a miserable fashion would find the humility and generosity to share some of the burden and cut their own pay. Hell hasn’t frozen over, has it?

Mindless Destruction

Hobet is going to destroy two thousand acres of West Virginia hills, forever. They will do their so-called “reclamation”, but neither oaks nor hickories will ever grow on that land again. With the rock strata below the surface destroyed the long tap roots of hardwoods can’t find water. Trees that have shallow roots and drink surface water might grow on land that the soil has been turned upside down. We have about three inches of top soil in these mountains; there is no way the topsoil can be skimmed off and put back as it was. The so-called “reclaimed land” is hard as concrete. They have these plants that make it appear the soil is healthy, but when you get close the soil looks barren and rocky in between the plants.

This is the only planet we have to live on, and it is being destroyed at an alarming rate. Our grandchildren are going to inherit a stinking cinder. I would like to inside the head of the people who can permanently destroy these hills. I would like to know what they are thinking about when they push those hardwoods over and gut the land until it bleeds like a stuck pig. Jobs? Money? We got to eat. But what about the future> Will our grandchildren eat? Will they have jobs when the coal is gone? We get the electricity, the miners get a wage, the companies get millions of dollars and a super tax credit and the mountains are gone. The coal is gone, the jobs will be gone, the electricity will be use dup, and what do we have but a stinking cinder for an earth. The stink will be provided by the pulp mill in nearby Mason County, or the chemical plants in the Kanawha Valley; take your choice.

If we think coal is the answer to our problems, take a look at McDowell County…and Mingo…and Logan….Coal has ruined those places. They have the worst of everything--the worst roads, the worst schools, the worst environment, and the worst poverty. If coal is so great how come places that have it are so awful? I wouldn’t live in those counties for all the tea in China.

When the coal companies get through with us they will return to their mansions and beautiful scenery, nice roads, and good schools, and leave us with a stinking cinder. Our children will inherit the gom. With their technology, the coal industry provides few jobs anymore. No jobs, no mountains, and no hope--they get it all.

Jerry Alford tells me he resigned from the board so that he could feel free to campaign for the bond issue and BOE candidates. Alford is willing to speak to any PTO or other organization about the bond issue.

The two board of education candidates who seem aligned with the Stowers-Jackson gang are nice people, I just think they are being use to get one large high school. Kim McCoy was my student, and I coached her in basketball. She is a good person, and I don’t think that will ever change.

On the Make A Difference endorsement committee I was strongly opposed to endorsing Charles McCann. McCann spoke for the one high school consolidation plan in Hamlin and in Charleston. His campaign signs appear with those of the Jackson-Stowers faction. McCann does a good job as principal of a school. I found it easy to work for him at Duval. I just don’t agree with his politics.

Pennzoil is trying to destroy the union by selling out to another company. The buyer will probably lay people off and contract work out to non-union companies. Some of those non-union contractors are big-time Democrat party leaders. How do those guys have the nerve to call themselves Democrats? They are Republicrats. If you want to help the Pennzoil workers, call the Public Service Commission in Charleston and tell them not to allow the sale. The toll-free number is 1(800)344-5113. Ask for the Consumer Advocates Office and/or the Chairman’s office.

The Perfect School

It costs as much to fly from here to Columbus as it does to fly to California from Columbus. A friend says this is because U.S. Air has no competition out of Charleston. Competition is about all that makes capitalism work for the average person.

Let’s talk about schools! Schools are backward and upside down. The way schools are set up now the superintendent tells the principals if they are doing a good job or not. The principals drop into our classes once or twice and tell us how we are doing. We give students tests and tell them how they are doing. It is an upside down pyramid. In the rest of life whoever is using something tells how well it works. The customer decides if the product is any good. The customers in the school system are the students and parents. Students should be grading teachers, teachers should be grading principals, and the principals should be grading the superintendent.

The students are there every day. They know if they are learning. They know if the teacher is trying to do a good job. The students with a committee of parents should interview prospective teachers and decide on the hiring. The teachers should interview applicants for the principal and assistant principal and hire the best they can find. The principals should hire the superintendent. The user would do all the deciding, not the other way around. The user of the product would decide if it is any good. As it is now teachers are told how well they are doing by someone who is in their class a few times a year. It is a political system with the few controlling the many.

After a student learns to read, write and cipher, all classes should be electives. Schools should have the money to offer courses for everyone. Everyone is interested in learning something.* If we don’t provide the opportunity for all types of interests we are just a boring, babysitting service. Without the super tax credit of $100,000,000 a year to large corporations the money would be no problem. With that money we could have labs in every school for woodworking, metal working, ceramics, computers, physics, chemistry, biology, visual arts, dramatic arts, dance, music, electronics, building construction, physical education, language, radio and TV communication, and on and on. There would be something of hands-on nature for everyone. Students could choose what they wanted to study and what teacher they wanted. Teachers would have to be good.

Teachers’ salaries would have to double to fill the highly technical positions in this wonder school. Many highly-skilled people would like to teach but they can’t raise a family on a teacher’s salary. To be effective class size would have to be cut in half—to no more than 15 students in a class. Teachers and students would be tested to see if learning can and is taking place. You can’t have teacher competency testing if you pay low salaries. If you fire a teacher who fails a competency test who will be seeking the job? There are some exceptions, but most highly-skilled people want more than what teachers are paid.

To make a long story short, we can have it all, if we are willing to pay for it. But we can’t pay for it if we continue to let the rich rob us. Down with the super tax credit.

* A teacher told me about losing patients with students and telling them that they should just put on jump suits and go out and help someone fix their roof or build on a room. The students exclaimed that they would love to do that.

“

“The City” and Phoenix

I just got back from California and Arizona. Hugged those grandchildren and tried to keep my mind off troubles in Lincoln County. Except for being so far from my children and grandchildren I’d rather be here than in most of where I was last week.

Columbus, Ohio was the first stop. You can save $300 in airfare by driving down there and staying with your aunt. My parent’s siblings all fled to Ohio in the first hillbilly migration in the early fifties. Jobs! It is always jobs. Times were rough here and jobs looked more plentiful over in Ohio. So four of mother’s sisters moved with their families to the land of the Shawnee. I’m like the guy from Kentucky when it comes to Ohio. I would rather be dead in West Virginia than alive in Ohio.

Where my Columbus aunt lives there are wall-to-wall malls. They’ve got every franchised, fast food outlet I ever heard of and then some, in triplicate. The place is lit up like a strip-mine at night. They waste more light in one night than we use all year in West Virginia. You can’t see the stars. Family warmth and generosity hasn’t been destroyed by the mega-culture. Somehow my aunt and uncle have held on to their humanity and family is always welcome.

Bernoulli’s Principle explains why an airplane flies. It is easy to demonstrate. Hold a piece of paper by two corners and blow across the top. The other end of the paper will rise. Air goes across the top of the airplane wing faster than the bottom, which decreases the pressure on top of the wing. The pressure on the bottom then pushed the wing up. I know that, many times my students have done that and other activities that prove Bernoulli’s Principle. Air goes across the top of an airplane wing faster than the bottom, which decreases the pressure on top of the wing. The pressure on the bottom then pushed the wing up. But when I sit in a huge metal airplane I am still amazed that it floats through the air. And it floats so smoothly that at over 500 miles per hour you can’t tell you are moving. Anyway Bernoulli’s Principle got me to San Francisco, one of two cities I love. The other is Vancouver, British Columbia.

San Francisco is another word for tolerance. There you are free and at peace to be however you really are or want to be. All types of individuals and groups co-exist in the city by the Bay. San Francisco is so special that it is simply referred to in northern California as “The City.” It is no accident that San Francisco was the center of that great cultural revolution that I call the hippie wars. In San Francisco they cherish diversity and individual expression. New, good ideas find fertile soil there. The City is only seven miles by seven miles, which is 49 square miles, which fits nicely with the Forty-Niners. You can travel all over the city in buses, trolleys and cable cars. You don’t need a car. With all the beautiful parks and ethnic restaurants to discover, walking is the best way to get around.

It is expensive to live there but cheap to visit if you are lucky enough to have a daughter just fifty miles to the north. I can get to my daughter’s home from here for about $300 round trip. It is four dollars by bus and ferry from my daughter’s place to the city and for six bucks you can ride public transportation all day. There are a zillion great and cheap restaurants. Golden State Park is fifty blocks long, stopping at the ocean. You don’t have to buy anything to have a great time in the city. People watching is artful there and the average annual temperature is sixty-eight degrees.

I was walking from a cable car stop to a trolley stop when a large crowd of people in a suddenly dingy, dirty neighborhood feared me around that block rather than test my love of diversity. San Francisco is so small that you can go from an almost heaven of beautiful houses and views of the Bay to hell itself just two or three blocks away. The good and the bad stand close together there. In one or two blocks you can change from wealth to poverty. Like all big cities they pay a big price for their prosperity. It reminds me of what the late great Eddie Gillenwater said to me one time—“Martin, prosperity isn’t worth the price you have to pay.” The beauty of the city was built by working people for the rich. So no matter how much I enjoy San Francisco I know it was stolen from the labor of the working people and few of them can afford to live here. And I know I am lucky to be able to save enough money to make an annual trip out there and enjoy what my people built for the rich.

Next to Phoenix. My daughter-in-law said people shouldn’t be living there. It is a desert. The temperature is over 110 degrees in June. No one but mad-dogs and I are ever seen of foot in that environment. People go from air-conditioned houses to air-conditioned cars to air conditioned work places. April there is a mild 85 to 90 degrees. It is a dry heat but in June and July, when it stays above 110 degrees, dry doesn’t matter, it is just too hot to live. In the old days the natural environment probably supported a thousand native people along the river. Now there is a population of millions. The Salt River was dammed up under Teddy Roosevelt. The water no longer flows through Phoenix. There is just a dry riverbed. The Salt River is diverted for irrigation and some electricity. Without the dam, Phoenix would not be there. Flash floods during the brief rainy season would destroy the “progress”. They just made one of the dams higher to allow for more “progress”. My daughter-in-law says that Phoenix is a labor camp. People live in miles and miles of expensive adobe brick look-a-likes ten feet apart. It is a fancy work camp with parks and malls. Company-owned towns of West Virginia come to mind except in Phoenix you own your own house. But you really don’t ever quite own it or you are too old by the time you do that you really rented all your life. Mankind doesn’t live very well on small postage stamp pieces of territory.

My grandchildren go to a beautiful, well-equipped school. Parents and family were treated to a musical program at the school that celebrated the cultural diversity of the students in the school. Brown and White and Black sang together of the land we all love and that we all came from somewhere else. I was impressed.

Despite a continent separating us we have managed to remain a family. I wish my California and Arizona branches were here in relatively undeveloped West Virginia. It would be nice to see my little hillbillies running and playing in the woods.

Stay tuned for an article on the American flag—I went to an art exhibit in Phoenix that featured the flag in art and on some people’s underwear.

1884 Tax Commission Report

“The wealth of this state is immense; the development of this wealth will earn vast private fortunes…The question is, whether this vast wealth shall belong to persons who live here and who are permanently identified with the future of West Virginia, or whether it shall pass into the hands of persons who do not live here and who care nothing for our state except to pocket its treasures which lie buried in our hills.

“If the people of West Virginia can be roused to an appreciation of the situation, we ourselves will gather this harvest now ripe on the land inherited from our ancestors. On the other hand, if people are not roused…the vast wealth will have passed from our population into the hands of non-residents and West Virginia will be almost like Ireland and her history will be like that of Poland.”

Those two paragraphs were written in 1884 in a West Virginia Tax Commission report. Back then the tax collectors appear to have been on our side. Today they let the coal companies have it all and give them nearly $100 million a year in super tax credits.

Hobet’s* boss said that they like to reclaim the land they destroy and leave it in better condition than they found it—rather God-like arrogance. Try to grow hardwoods on those so-called reclaimed mountains. Dense forests of hickory and oak with ginseng, mayapple, bloodroot and molly-moochers will never grace the ruins of a strip-mine. Reclaimed ground will bounce a steel pick. Hobet can put it back looking better than God made it. Almighty Hobet.

Every mountain that is destroyed will give us some temporary electrical pleasure and the mountain will then be gone forever. They can’t put it back anywhere near what it was and definitely they can’t make it better than it was.

The first stage of destruction of the land and culture of upper Mud River was the watershed dam. It is now obvious that it will serve as a secondary settling pond for Hobet’s destruction. If they had their way they would destroy every mountain and write it all down as the progress of man. If there were no restrictions just where would they stop? As Eddie Gillenwater said, “Prosperity isn’t worth the price you have to pay.”

Candidate for Governor Joe Manchin tried to make doctors and hospitals richer and state employees poorer. In 1989 he led the fight to make us pay the doctors and hospitals all they wanted to charge. State employees insurance says they will pay only so much for each procedure and that is all the doctors and hospitals are allowed to charge. Joe Manchin was going to let them charge us for the balance above what our insurance said was a fair price. Guess who gives him money? Why is it I think he is against minimum wage increases? Is he the candidate of the rich or what? Look who supports him in Lincoln County? Pick up your free gift if you guess the Jackson-Stowers gang.

It is spring and the spring green is again amazing but probably not as amazing as Hobet can make it. My neighbor has tilled his garden and mowed his forty-five degree yard and will probably be repairing his roof again—it takes three ladders to get up there. Not unusual except Rome Hale is in his ninety-sixth year. His hair is not as gray as mine, his mind is clear as
April sunshine and his eyes twinkle like a man in love with life.

In about four weeks I am going to cry at graduation. I have never understood crying at graduation. It was silly to me. Now I feel why people cry when their kid graduates. I don’t know why they cry but I feel why they cry. My roommate, friend and son will graduate and go on to college and he won’t be around much after that. I’ll miss him a whole bunch.

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.” Ralph Waldo Emerson goes on to point out in his essay “Self Reliance” that if you believe something deeply others probably believe it as well and you should not be shy about expressing your thoughts, “Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.” I think Emerson is telling us to speak our opinion because it is probably better than we think.

The election draws near—a vote for four schools is a vote for one giant concentration camp in WileyWorld.** Look who is backing the four-school plan—the very people who brought you the one school scam. We need to cooperate, compromise and recognize our common enemy.