Laughing at Death

My family has a dark sense of humor.

I think that is typical in families that have had a high level of dysfunction. It's kind of a coping mechanism.

My father was the model for us in this, even though he was also the source of much of the dysfunction.

The last time I went to see him in hospital, he wore an oxygen mask and I had trouble understanding him. So he had my brother Mark relay a joke he'd heard:

A nurse walks into a patient's room at the hospital. He's wearing an oxygen mask and she's having trouble understanding him but finally makes out, "Nurse, are my testicles black?"

 She tries to ignore him, but he persists his questioning through his oxygen mask, "Nurse, are my testicles black?" 

"Mr. Smith," she says, "that is really not a polite question." The man looks puzzled.

"Nurse, are my testicles black?" he asks again, gasping for air through the oxygen mask.

Finally she walks over to him, lifts the cover and answers, "Mr. Smith, your testicles are fine."

He looks at the nurse very strangely and then takes off the mask. "Nurse, are my test results back?" he enunciates clearly.

My dad couldn't stop laughing at that joke, in the face of the pain he was in, or perhaps because of the pain he was in.

Or maybe it was the fear.

I've had some experience with fear in the last few years. I can say, without a moment's hesitation, that fear is the worst emotion there is. It is crippling. When you are in the grips of fear, there is virtually nothing else you can do.

Except laugh, strangely.

When you are standing toe-to-toe with the unknown, the Big Bad that's finally come knocking at the door, laughter is the only life-affirming response. All of the "focus on the positives" and "all things work together for good" and all the rest don't amount to a hill of beans from a practical standpoint, not for me at least. They give no comfort against the evidences you've witnessed of the indifference of the universe toward your own pain.

Therein must be the origin of gallows humor. It probably also explains why horror-comedy is such a popular genre.

My mother was the ultimate straight man. It wasn't that she didn't have a sense of humor. She did, she just also said some ridiculously funny things without realizing it, often at what others might judge to be very inappropriate times.

I went with my mother and brother to the funeral home after my dad died last January. When it came time to discuss the obituary, she said that she wanted donations made to Hospice of Southern West Virginia, because they'd been so good to my father. Then she says, "Of course, Don's brother Eldon didn't care for them. He wasn't expected to live long but finally sent them home after eight months because he said they kept getting in the way. Of course, I guess that's what happens when you don't die on time." She delivered that last line as straight-faced as Bob Newhart.

When she died, just ten days ago, it was harder to find laughter. We didn't make pancreatic cancer jokes. We were too much in the grip of absolute fear. Instead we became centers of activity, taking care of things, making arrangements, making lists, moving things around, doing something — anything — to keep ourselves from imagining our lives without her.

It was the trip to the funeral home that finally changed that for me. If you've never had the chance to sit in the mourner's chair at a funeral home and gotten the sales pitch, you don't know how ridiculous human beings are. They sell thumbprint jewelry. Like, they take a thumbprint from the corpse and then you can buy cuff links or whatever. And pendants made from your loved one's ashes. I am not making this up.

I started to lose it over a mix-up with the disposition of her body.

We were brought a form that bore a notice across the top: "CREMATION IS IRREVERSIBLE AND FINAL."

I got the giggles. We questioned this clause with the funeral director, who sought to explain it in hushed, soothing tones. Apparently there is no process for the reversal of cremation. Who knew? I couldn't stop giggling.

My mom had specified in her will that she was to be cremated, but according to the good folks at Blue Ridge Funeral Home, West Virginia code does not allow an individual to select cremation: it is done only upon agreement of all next of kin. This simultaneously sounds like something they just made up and something dumb enough for the West Virginia Legislature to have enacted, so I'm not sure where I am with that.

My initial thought was, "Just leave her then. You guys can decide what to do." It's hard to explain why this made me laugh, but it did. I was just imagining the mortuary stuck with this body and no way to get rid of it, just moving it from room to room to accommodate new arrivals, it becoming a fixture there in a sort of Weekend at Bernie's way. Maybe they'd dress her up for the office Christmas party or the funeral director would find himself talking to her about problems at home.

I just heard you cringe.

Yeah, I know: it's my mother. How can I, blah, blah, blah . . .

But fuck you if you think that means I don't love my mother enough or don't love her the right way. For all of the mistakes they might have made, my parents didn't raise me to cower in reverential fear when Death entered the room. We never whispered the word "cancer," or used florid euphemisms to avoid speaking Death's name.

There at the funeral home, I had to call up my siblings and ask all of them to come sign the release form. They arrived about twenty minutes later.

It was just the five of us us there and it was probably then that I realized that this might be the last time we would all be in a room together.

We were making jokes and laughing. Some of us took photos. Sarah had noticed a Keurig and began dispensing coffee like a barrista trying to set a record.

I did not witness my mother's passing. Sarah did, and told me about it. I will admit: it sounds frightening to me, standing there at the abyss, looking into the blackness and wondering what, if anything, is beyond.

How can we possibly face moments like that?

I promised my mom I wouldn't tell a dick joke at her memorial service. I suppose I will keep that promise, but I will laugh. It's the only thing I can think to do.

Let It Bleed

My mother, Dora Leigh Deskins, died last night, December 7, 2014, after discovering last month that she had pancreatic cancer.

There was a book that came out several years back called On Death and Dying. The author offered that there were five distinct stages of grief. There hasn't been much research since that time to support that assertion. My own experience seems to indicate that grief can vary widely.

My father died on January 27 of this year. I grieved for him, but I can tell you already that the quality of that grief was very different. He had lived a very hard life — drinking, smoking, generally being a rough character. He'd had three heart attacks and quadruple by-pass surgery. I had been anticipating his death for many years.

I had never even considered the fact that my mother would die.

Her death was very sudden. She was 75, but she never seemed elderly. She never drank a drop and smoked only briefly in young adulthood.

I'm feeling and thinking so many things at once that it is hard to even notice each one.

I'm struck by how casual death is. She sat in hospitals, talking to doctors about dying and now she is dead. It seems like it should be more elaborate, accompanied by more pomp and circumstance.

Death is dehumanizing, in the most literal sense. When someone is sick, you watch them gradually lose those things that attach them to their humanity. It robs us of our dignity.

I'm confused. It seems like this is all a terrible mistake, as if someone else was supposed to die. She was supposed to retire. Her paperwork got mixed up with someone else's. She paid her fees, she talked to the guy. We need this corrected, as soon as possible. This cannot be right.

If I think about her voice, it is almost more than I can bear. I cannot believe that I won't ever talk to her again. It's only been a day and I miss it more than I can stand.

I spent today at her house with my siblings and some of our families. We walked around this house where we all once lived, but now the owners are gone. It's not our house. It felt weirdly like we were trespassing. When I think of all the times I walked through that door and heard Mother or Daddy call me from another room, happy to see me, glad I was there . . . that is gone. The house is nothing now. There is no more warmth or love to be had in it, and it will be sold and others will live there or maybe even tear it down.

What do I do now? What do I do now that I don't have parents? Who do I go to when I fuck up?

Death Without God

I write this at my mother's bedside. She is at the Bowers' Hospice House in Beckley, West Virginia. She came here after being diagnosed just last month with pancreatic cancer and spending the last few weeks in and out of hospitals. Her last words to me were yesterday afternoon, whispered "I love yous" to me and to my infant son. She has been mostly unresponsive since then. Her family is now relegated mostly to watching her die.

My mother is a deeply religious person, with a belief in a personal God, the reality of the devil, and an afterlife spent in the eternal peace of Heaven or the eternal torment of Hell. I shared those beliefs until about seven years ago. Mine has been a gradual process of losing faith, part of what could be called a midlife crisis, I suppose.

I haven't discussed this very much with my mother. I think it would cause her too much distress. That is, after all, one of the things that makes religion so very successful. It is near torture to imagine yourself and your loved ones facing eternity separated from all comfort, your bodies being burned with a "fire that is not quenched," and subjected to unspeakable torments for eons. The alternative, by contrast, is a promise of life eternal, a life without pain or even emotional distress, where God Himself "wipes every tear" from your eye. The only price to be paid? Believe. It is that simple, we are told. The price of Heaven has been paid for us by another if we only believe.

That sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?

Only it isn't. Not really. Because belief in this instance means subjugating one's mind to the teachings of others, abandoning critical thought, waiving one's right to question. It means accepting as truth that which goes against reason and to do so without evidence at all, because "faith is the evidence of things not seen." It is to completely surrender one's life, the only one we are certain exists, for the promise of another that no one has seen.

It took me some time to reach this point in my own thinking and I'm well aware that most of you reading this will disagree quite sharply. As I was relaying to someone today, the question turned for me on a spiritual level, not on matters of science, as is the case with so many. It's a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that it did not happen overnight.

To have won the right again to question all received wisdom, to reject anything that comes without evidence, to organize your morality on human reasoning rather than 3000-year-old tribal ethics, to marvel at science and human understanding, and to again be humbled at how little we truly know − well, that is liberty. As was said, "The truth will set you free."

Yet I have expressed to many my reticence to abandon all that I once knew. For all they lack if understood literally, Christian scriptures are rich with metaphor for shaping life's meaning. Eating forbidden fruit does bring knowledge of good and evil, a loss of innocence but growth in wisdom. We have witnessed our own Davids slay mocking Goliaths. We know the power of grace in our lives and that forgiveness exceeds vengeance in every way.

I still think in those terms and truly long for the experience of the "holy," not something supernatural but the setting apart of times and spaces as sacred to the human spirit. I relish Christian mythology without being beholden to its cosmology or ethics.

It is at times like right now that I long for it the most. I'm at my dying mother's bedside, the scene of dozens of bluegrass songs, where those old-time mothers say, "I've just seen the Rock of Ages − Jacob's ladder coming down!" I want something of that experience, without needing to abandon reason. I long for this to be a sacred time, a time to reflect on a life well-spent, a time to ponder life's hardest questions and construct meaning for the dying and those that remain.

A few short years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine meaning apart from God. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever," I would have told you. To reject Yaweh, whose very name suggests that He is the ground of all being, is to have no meaning at all.

It's not like that for me any more.

I suppose I'm "apostate," to use the old-fashioned term. Even as I type that, I realize it is likely to land me on more than one church prayer list. That's okay.

The meaning I make at this passing is one that acknowledges what we know of this cosmos and re-imagines those tropes that served to comfort me in the past.

I look at my mother and I hear the Apostle's words, that hers is a body "sown in corruption, but raised in incorruption; sown in mortality, but raised in immortality." Then I think about what might become of her body after her death. It will be returned to the earth, sown in one sense, and provide life again to plants and animals and again to generations after us. And her DNA we now know was sown in the five children she bore and again in her grandchildren, and will continue on as long as her progeny continue to reproduce. The words she spoke, at home and in the classroom where she taught, were sown in the minds of her children and students, and will bear fruit long after she has perished. This, then, is true immortality. This is immortality rooted in the cosmos as we know it.

I look at my mother and I hear the words of the Preacher: "As one dies, so dies the other . . . All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Then my mind turns to what astrophysicists tell us of our origins some 13.8 billion years ago, and the fate that awaits us many eons from now. Because every atom that is in us − every bit of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon − was there at the big bang. "We are made of star dust." And when the cosmos cools, all that is shall return to star dust, including those atoms in her body now.

It is a triumph of the human spirit that we even know this, that great women and men asked questions and questioned assumptions and made these discoveries.

So as I sit with her here, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, these things are a great comfort to me. They are the meaning I make in the face of death.

I meditate on them in the knowledge that my mother does not share my beliefs. That is okay, too, because there is no Hell for the unbeliever in a world of reason. There is only love for her and a great sadness, knowing how much I will miss her.

Nana

Dear Monkey,

I took you today to see your Nana. That's my mom. We saw her in Beckley, where your old man is from and close to Nana's house. We didn't go to her house, though. We went to a place called the Hospice house. We went there because your Nana is dying.

I really never imagined having to write this. I always thought you'd grow up knowing Nana and spending lots of time with her. In the one year you've been on this earth, she has loved you very much. You spent a few days with her just a week before she went into the hospital. She told me that you've brought enormous joy to her life. It causes me more pain than I really thought was imaginable to know that you will grow up without her.

Here's what's happened. Nana hasn't felt well since your Grandaddy died, about 10 months ago. She's a teacher. She's 75-years-old, way past the time most people retire from teaching, but she started the school year just the same as she has the last 25 or so. You see, Nana didn't start teaching school until she was 50. Anyway, she called me about a month ago to tell me that she was quitting. She was going to take a leave of absence for some minor medical problems and then retire.

That was on a Monday. That Thursday or Friday she went into her doctor for some tests. She told me that next Monday that she had to go to the emergency room because there were some irregularities in her blood. At the hospital, they discovered a growth on her liver and pancreas. It was something called pancreatic cancer.

I'm not as knowledgeable about medical science as a lot of people, but a cancer is a type of growth that sort of takes over your body. It wants to reproduce itself just like all living things do, and pancreatic cancer is really good at that. Unfortunately for us, it uses our bodies the same way we use food and land and all sorts of things to stay alive and grow.

Nana went to a lot of hospitals, but there wasn't much they could do for her. By the time you are her age, they may have found a way to fight that type of cancer more effectively. I sure hope so.

So I guess I'm writing this letter to you so that you will know and remember what your Nana was like after she is gone.

First of all, she is really beautiful. She's an old lady now, of course, but I remember when I was just three and four years old thinking my mother was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She used to wear kind of bright red lipstick when she got dressed up and she put something called Oil of Olay on her skin every day. She never looked her age. Even looking at her now in her bed, she doesn't look 75. She had almost no gray hair till she was about 60, I think. She smiled a lot, too. I suppose if you remember anything about her, that will be it, because she always smiled when she saw you.

She is also really smart. She was voted "Most Studious" in high school (Man High School, Class of 1956) and she always read. When I think about the number of books she devoured, it's almost unreal. That was her real passion in life and it's something she passed along to me. She read everything, too. She read the Bible regularly, of course. She read history books and historical fiction. She liked novels, too. I remember her telling me that she read Song of the Lark by Willa Cather almost entirely by flashlight under her blanket when she was young. When I was a child she read trashy romance novels, but she gave that up eventually.

She loved learning, which I guess comes along with the love of reading. She'd gotten married when she was 17 and had to quit college when she got pregnant with your Uncle Don. But the entire time we were growing up she concerned herself more with our education than anything else, I think.

She took us to the library all the time. I remember once that the librarian at the Raleigh County Public Library refused to check out more than three books to me. Well, your Nana got so angry that she marched herself up to the desk and told that woman that unless there was some formal policy that applied to all library patrons that I was allowed to check out as many books as I wished.

She went back to college herself when she was 45. She got a degree in library science, because she thought she wanted to be a school librarian. She got her masters in special education with an emphasis on gifted education and became a gifted teacher instead.

She always talked to us like adults. This is something I remember from my earliest childhood, and I hope I have the good sense to do the same with you. She insisted on using an intelligent vocabulary and correct English grammar all of the time.

Oh, and she hated obscene language, which is really pretty funny considering she married Don Deskins. Once when I was in 8th grade, I was playing music with some friends at the Ghent Fair. Just as we were about to take the stage, I discovered that I'd left my sheet music at home, which was some 15 minutes away. I let loose repeating a single expletive ("shit") about 50 times in a row. I didn't know she was standing behind me. Oh, goodness. That was one of the few times I think your Grandaddy saved me from your Nana, instead of the other way around.

She and I happened to teach at the same school for a few years. It was called Beckley-Stratton Middle School and she taught gifted and I taught music. One time a group of students who had both of us in class told on me to her because I'd used the word "crap" in class. They told me that my mother said that was the sign of a limited vocabulary.

You know, when we worked and taught at that school those years, she ate lunch with me almost every single day. I say this because it wasn't like a chore for me. (I hope it wasn't for her.) It wasn't a case of feeling obligated to spend time with her because she was my mother. She was a really interesting person to talk to. She talked about politics and religion and education and the books she was reading.

She is a good cook, too. She grew up in that generation where the mother did all the cooking in the family and your Nana had to cook for five children, her husband, and herself. Every meal was a big meal. Her style was a blend of what I guess could be called traditional mountain cooking, 1950s housewifery, and experimental cuisine.

Sometimes we ate beans and cornbread; in fact, we ate cornbread almost every meal it seemed, and hers was the best. She made cornbread dressing for Thanksgiving, which is the best kind of dressing. But she also made really great lasagna, even though we aren't Italian. Every Christmas Eve, we ate fried fish, fried oysters, shrimp, and scallops. Potato soup, chili, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, lima beans, deviled eggs, pork roast, peas, corn, mashed potatoes, cheeseburgers on grilled bread, homemade "pronto pups," hot dogs with her own chili, pepperoni rolls . . . it was all so good. And chicken chow mein, which while not tasting very Chinese still was very good. Oh, and cherry pie. I make cherry pie like she did, or at least I try.

You Nana is very devout, after her own fashion. She grew up a good Methodist but became a Baptist sometime after the family moved to Raleigh County. She went to church regularly for many years, without your Grandaddy. She was probably less regular in that as time went on, but she still read her Bible, read theology, and listened to preachers on TV. (Not the holy rollers, but the ones that had lots of notes with their sermons.) We always said "grace" before every meal, but I wanted to hear her pray: she sounded more sincere than everyone else.

That didn't mean she believed every thing she was told by preachers hook, line, and sinker. She didn't see anything wrong with rock and roll music, so we played it at home, in spite of what the preacher and the holy joes down at Daniels Missionary Baptist thought.

She played piano at the church, for the choir and for services. She loved to play hymns in the evening, too, and she made sure we all had music in our life. She had played soprano saxophone in the Man High School Band. (It was a Selmer they had bought used from "someone in New York City" for $125 in the early 1950s. It kind of makes me nuts to think what it might be worth if she had kept it.) She made sure we had piano lessons (and saxophone lessons and guitar lessons and flute lessons and voice lessons and anything else any of us ever wanted to do).

Nana and Grandaddy liked to listen to music a lot when I was younger. She liked a lot of Glen Miller and pop singers from the 1940s and 50s. I don't know what her favorite song was, unless it was "Too Young," by Nat "King" Cole. She and Grandaddy both sang that one a lot.

She thought a lot about the "extras" in life, things other parents might not bother with. Your Aunt Sarah and I took watercolor painting lessons for several years from Chris DellaMea's mom because Nana thought we should expand ourselves that way.

Nana did most of the day-to-day discipline at home, with Grandaddy brought in for the bigger jobs. If you got in trouble with her, she'd make you go cut your own switch in the woods. If she didn't like the one you brought back, she'd send one of your brothers or sisters to get one. You did not want that to happen.

Once she was whipping me for something in the kitchen and your Aunt Sandy Jo (who was an older teenager at the time) began laughing at my tears. You know what Nana did? She turned right around and whipped Sandy Jo, quite against her loud protests, for being so mean.

She had this kung fu move, too, that she used in the car. If you were sitting in the passenger seat while she was driving and you said something smart aleck, she'd flick the back of her hand lightning fast and smack you in the mouth without even looking. It was pretty impressive.

But really, she didn't spank us very much. In fact, she was the first to take your part against a teacher or bully at school, sometimes to a fault. I once called the gym teacher at school "stupid" (I wrote it actually) and she defended me because she thought he was. She'd never let the preacher or another parent or anyone correct us: that was her bailiwick.

She defended me against others clear on into my adulthood. I think her love for me sometimes blurred her realization of just how much I screwed up sometimes. As a grown-up I found myself confessing horrible sins to her, over the phone or sitting on her couch back in Daniels, only to have her assure me that what I did was perfectly understandable and no one should fault me for it. She thought I set the moon.

When I was about seven or eight-years-old, I got ahold of a book of poetry that belonged to Nana. It was called The Best Loved Poems of the American People. It had all kinds of stuff in it like "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" and "Song of Hiawatha," and it was divided into sections with titles like "Home," "Faith," and "Humor." I think one section was called "Family," and I read a bunch of those poems. A lot of it was maudlin stuff. There was one poem that I liked though, and I memorized it. It was really saccharine and sentimental and silly in a lot of ways, but it was sentiment I finally loved, I guess. The final stanza went:

My friends be yours a life of toil or undiluted joy,  

You can learn a wholesome lesson from this small, untutored boy.  

Don't aim to be an earthly saint with eyes fixed on a star,  

Just try to be the fellow that your mother thinks you are. 

I don't know how I'd ever live up to that, because she loved me, loved all of us, so unconditionally.

And she loves you, very, very much. She told me you were the prettiest baby she'd ever seen. (Don't tell your cousins.)

But now I sit here with you in this room and her in a bed just a few feet away, you at the start of this whole journey and she at the very end of hers. It makes my heart hurt. A lot. And it hurts even more when I think of your brother that she will never meet.

I'll tell you this monkey: it goes real fast. Before you turn your head, the ones you thought would be there forever are gone from you. Try to live your life with that knowledge. Love your own mother as much as I love mine, because yours is beautiful and brilliant, too. Read and learn about everything you can, and you will honor her memory. When you eat the cherry pie we make or a piece of cornbread, know that those are tastes that have been brought to you through generations. And sing your song, because you have a song for this world.

I love you very, very much.

Daddy

Pontypool Changes the Way I Think About Horror

Being both a horror fan and a list maker, I get really sucked in when people begin talking about their favorite horror movies of all time. Inevitably, I suggest one that very few people have seen and when they do see it, they are much less enthusiastic about it than I am. I wanted to write about that movie to maybe explain my great enthusiasm for it.

The movie I am thinking about is Pontypool, based on Tony Burgess' novel, Pontypool Changes Everything, and directed by Bruce McDonald. It's from a few years back, but I know very few who have seen it. (There are lots of spoilers ahead.)

Pontypool is essentially a zombie movie. Some of the most used zombie tropes don't really apply in the movie (the "zombies" aren't actually dead and you don't have to be bitten to be turned, among others), but it follows the now-familiar story arch of a single victim infecting others until the central characters are left hiding from the zombie hoard. 

What makes Pontypool different is the central conceit of the movie, which centers around the way the infection spreads.

From the outset, it's obvious that the movie will be centered around language. We hear Grant Mazzy, a talk radio host and protagonist of the story, telling a curious story about the name "Pontypool," the town that is the setting of the film. He quotes Norman Mailer about the power of certain coincidences before major events and we know that "something big is about to happen."

I think it is safe to say that if you are not drawn in by that opening monologue, this movie is probably not for you. It's not artsy or intentionally snobby in any way, but it's smart, really smart, in the way that very few horror films are.

Any horror story worth it's salt addresses important themes, and zombie films are some of the most conspicuous examples. In my opinion at least, zombie films tackle the question of what it means to be a human being, and when are we least in touch with our humanity. Two of the most notable examples of this are from George Romero, the grandfather of zombie flicks. 

The original Night of the Living Dead was set in 1968 at the height of civil unrest in this country. The climax of the film comes when the hero, Ben, the sole African-American character, is gunned down by the police who have mistaken him for a zombie. The police officers are immediately transformed into the movie's villains, with almost as little to redeem them as monsters they were hunting.

Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, dealt similarly with the mindless consumerism that was fast becoming the norm in the mid-70s. The film's zombies return to a shopping mall where they had spent senseless hours when they were living, only to continue their old habits. 

Pontypool likewise engages us through metaphor about the way we use words in our culture. AM radio — that bastion of shock jocks, right-wing fear mongers, and conspiracy theorists — serves as the backdrop of a world gone mad with language. Words have lost their meaning, they are tossed about carelessly, and used thoughtlessly. Language, which is at the core of our humanity and separates us from much of the other life on the planet, has become the vehicle of dehumanization. The virus isn't passed through biting, it's passed through words.

Like I said, it's smart stuff.

The film's climactic scene occurs when the station manager, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle), becomes convinced Mazzy is about to kill her and becomes fixated on the word "kill," indicating she is becoming infected. Mazzy saves her by telling her, "Kill means kiss," (yeah, do your own armchair psychology on that one) and they do kiss. Once they've discovered the tool to save others — talking nonsense on purpose, turning the meaning of words upside down — they go to the airwaves to help save the town. They are halted by a voice from outside (presumably police or national guard) demanding they stop broadcasting. There is a countdown and the screen goes black, leading us to believe the pair have been killed as the town is razed.

The epilogue features news broadcasts from around Canada (Pontypool is a real Canadian town) indicating the infection has spread.

The movie is a slow burn, with most of it taking place in the radio station studios, located in a church basement. So much of it takes place there, in fact, that I think it could be adapted quite successfully for the stage. There are only eight actors in the film, including those who are heard on the radio but never seen. The strongest performance is by Stephen McHattie (Watchmen, A History of Violence) as Mazzy, as boozy and washed-up of an anti-hero as you could want.


Pontypool does not shy away from the blood, but it is used only at critical points in the movie. The gore is truly disturbing, as McDonald uses it to show the victims' gradual deterioration into sub-human existence. The scares are more centered around mood, although there are a few jump-out moments. The true horror, however, is existential.

So much of the film is on-the-nose in terms of social critique, especially as regards the manner in which large groups of people become infected by words — words that have become stripped of their actual meaning and now just serve infect our minds. Dozens of these words and phrases come to my mind — "national security," "job creators," "family values" — words that are used to obfuscate rather than illuminate, words used to convey the very opposite of what their plain meaning might suggest. The mobs infected with these words are a cannibalistic horde, seeking to either infect others or destroy those who offer resistance.

Pontypool will not appeal to those groups, because it requires the viewer to engage with complex ideas. I don't mean to suggest that you are an idiot if you don't enjoy the movie; it will be too slow for many horror fans. But I think it's appeal lies in the way it stays with you and rolls around in your brain, long after you've seen it. You can't ask for much more than that in a movie.

Some Tips on Life for My 10-month-old Son

Dear Monkey,

When you finally figure out how screwed up I am, you may decide to never take advice from your old man. Nevertheless, there are a few pieces of advice I want to pass to you. I hope they will make you happier, or if they don't make you happier, I hope they make you more true to yourself.

1. Don't worry about coloring in the lines. For that matter, avoid coloring books generally. Draw for yourself. And don't worry about getting the colors "right" either: grass isn't always green and the sky isn't always blue.

2. Don't worry about sitting in chairs "correctly." There is no such thing. If someone tells you there is, s/he is just trying to get you to sit in a chair the way s/he thinks you should. As a matter of fact, try to sit in chairs as many ways as you can.

3. Sing a lot. And dance a lot. If someone tells you, "Now isn't the time for singing and dancing," they just don't know what time it is.

4. Make friends with the weirdos, the freaks, the geeks, the losers, the queers, the drop outs, the nerds, the fatsos, the ugly kids, and the outcasts. Those are just labels someone else has given them. That's not who they are.

5. Play like it is your job. Because it is.

6. Don't be afraid to ask, "Why?" If someone gets annoyed when you ask, it's because they don't know or they don't want you to find out. If they don't know, go find out for yourself.

7. Get an education. That's not the same thing as school, though you might be accidentally educated at school sometime. Try to learn all the time.

8. Read lots and lots of books. Don't be scared of books. Don't get the idea that reading a book can hurt you. It can't. Not reading books can hurt you a lot though.

9. Think for yourself. Don't get the idea that because you are a certain type of person that you have to think a certain way. Don't get the idea that because you think one thing, you must think another.

10. Avoid following people. I won't say that you should never follow others, but do it with an open mind and the knowledge that they are human, too.

11. Listen to as much music as you possibly can, and when the man gets you down, listen to a lot of rock and roll.

12. Be brave. This is the hardest one. The problem with being brave is that you really need to do it when you least feel like it.

I already think you are the bravest person I've ever met. You were brave to even come into this world and you meet every day, every person, and every challenge with a openness that I admire so, so much. I hope you are able to keep that.

Love,

Daddy

No One Laughs at the Ice Bucket Challenge

This morning as I lay in bed, avoiding rising for the day, I opened my Facebook to see news of the world. My feed was filled with friends and celebrities taking the "ice bucket challenge." For the unaware, the ice bucket challenge is a viral sensation designed to raise awareness (and money) for research into ALS, a.k.a., Lou Gehrig's disease. Friends challenge each other to donate to the cause or else dump a bucket of ice water over their heads and record it. Or maybe it's that they challenge them to donate to the cause and dump a bucket of ice water over their heads. I'm not entirely clear on this point.

I'll admit: I find the thing a little silly. Not the idea of raising money to fund research to prevent what is, undoubtedly, a horrible disease (although I'll get to that in a bit). It's more the bandwagon mentality that bugs me.

And so, I posted this as my Facebook status: "I can't find anyone with Lou Gehrig's disease to dump ice on."

A couple of my Facebook friends took umbrage with this, and I thought I'd address that for a couple of reasons. One has to do with the whole idea of social media moral indignation. The other has to do with the issue at hand.

1. Let me begin by saying that I do not question the motives of any of my friends who have participated in the ice bucket challenge. I think most of you do it from a good place. Even Charlie Sheen, who is something of a role model for me, has joined in, and I would never question his motives. The ALS Association says that donations are up over a 1000%, so it's doing some good. It does raise the question about why no one was donating last year. Many undoubtedly are trying to help. Then again, if you do your good works to be seen by men, I say verily, you have your reward.

2. One friend commented that she hoped I was joking. Um . . . yes? I wasn't actually up at 7:00 in morning looking for ALS sufferers to douse with cold water.

3. The joke was actually about the ice bucket challenge, not ALS. That seems pretty clear to me, but I suppose it's worth noting. In fact, the joke (which I've found only gets funnier the more you have to explain it) is about someone who doesn't understand the point of it all but wants to jump on the trend.

4. I was told the joke was "in poor taste." Perhaps. But you are speaking to someone who told a dick joke at his own father's funeral, so appeals to taste will largely fall on deaf ears.

5. Likewise, should you be one of those social media lurkers who has never liked a photo of my child, never sent well wishes on a birthday, or never engaged me in discussion on the myriad topics about which I obsessively post, I'm probably not gonna give a shit that your moral sensibilities were offended by my mild jest.

6. I don't know anything about the ALS Association. They're probably great -- I haven't looked into it. But controversies surrounding the Komen Foundation and our own local Dirty Girl Mud Run should teach us to use caution before throwing our full support behind any charitable work. Too often the money raised goes disproportionately toward salaries and administrative costs with only a small fraction benefiting the intended recipients.

7. Does anyone besides me have a problem with the whole "celebrity disease" phenomenon? I was listening to a podcast of This American Life last year that featured a mother whose child was struck with a very rare and fatal disease. She noted that her best hope for a cure was that some celebrity might be diagnosed with it. It struck me as amazingly cynical and also spot-on. And let's be honest here: Lou Gehrig's Disease was the very first celebrity disease. I mean, it got full-on Hollywood treatment in Pride of the Yankees in 1942, which still runs regularly on Turner Classic Movies.

8. Which brings be to the issue of funding medical research. "How can you be against fundraising for medical research?" Because I don't think we should be having bake sales for something so essential. (This is identical to my feelings on fundraising in arts education, by the way.) In my opinion, there should be tax-funded medical research that is not determined by the popularity of a disease.

9. Lastly, I'm not sure how adding levity to the issue hurts the cause. Michael J. Fox frequently jokes about his tremors from Parkinson's, but no one imagines that Parkinson's isn't a serious issue. The Onion even had a go at the ice bucket challenge. And it would seem that the ice bucket challenge itself is done to have fun in the name of something that absolutely isn't. I suppose I don't buy into the idea that people are actually offended or hurt by that sort of mild jest. Closer to the point, I think others just enjoy being scolds.

I have no time for that sort of thing.

For that matter, please: don't let me stop you from dumping ice water over yourself on camera. It looks fun. If it helps someone else, all the better. But you don't need permission from me -- or from any celebrity for that matter. Life is too short and we should look for joy wherever we can find it.

Lady Sofia and the Passive-Aggressive Dragon

Once upon a time there was a king. Now, most stories go on and on about how the king is really good and brave and handsome, or else wicked and ruthless and has a crooked mouth, but this is not a story like that.  The king's name was Steve. Some people would try to call him "King Stephen," but he would always answer, "It's just Steve, thanks." Steve was king of Duringia, a kingdom of sort of middling size that had some hills and rivers and such, nothing too dramatic. There were farms, I suppose, but mostly they were known as the chief exporters of synthetic polymers used in manufacturing.

There came into the kingdom one day a gallant lady named Sofia. Now Sofia was what we would probably call a knight, except that in historical chivalry the term "knight" is reserved for men. Of course this is a fairy tale, so I suppose we can call her a knight if we wish. In any event, she was brave and fierce and rode atop a black stallion named Thunder. She carried a shiny broadsword she called Hellslayer and went about from kingdom to kingdom seeking to do good.

Lady Sofia went at once to see the king and found him in his throne room, looking somewhat vexed. So she imparted him, "Good King Stephen —"

"It's just Steve, thanks," he interrupted her.

"Yes, well, King Steve: my name is Lady Sofia and I am a knight pledged to do good wherever I go. Tell me, please, is there some way I may be of service to you and your good people?"

"Well, as a matter of fact," began Steve, "I suppose there is. You see, we have the matter of this dragon."

"A dragon, you say?" Sofia became very excited at this point, for like most knights, she longed to best a dragon on the field.

"Yes," continued the king. "His name is Smug."

"Smug?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" she asked again. "Perhaps you heard it incorrectly. Dragons have difficult names sometimes."

"No. His name is Smug. That's how he signs his name."

"I'm sorry," she said, "did you say he signs his name?"

"Yes," answered Steve, "in the letters he sends."

"He sends you letters?" This was quite a different sort of dragon than Lady Sofia had ever encountered.

"Yes. I have his latest here with me. Take a look." So saying, the king handed Lady Sofia a piece of paper.

She began reading the missive which was written in a rather terse hand.  "Dear King Stephen," it began. She looked up at the angsty monarch and then continued:

I hope you are having a good time up in that palace of yours, if that's what you call it. You and your so-called subjects should probably just be thankful that I've got a good sense of humor for a dragon. I mean, I'd hate to see what might happen to some of the villages in "Dull-ingia" if something pissed me off.

Any-hoo, you guys have fun. Try not to think about me, a dragon, who lives in a cave and could potentially burn any village in the kingdom to the ground in just a matter of seconds. Oh, and don't worry about trying to appease to me or anything. I doubt you could find any virgins in this kingdom anyway.

Ciao,

Smug, The Dragon

"What the hell is this?" asked Lady Sofia.

"It's a letter from the dragon," said Steve, "a threatening letter."

"Well, he didn't come right out and threaten you, did he?" she asked.

"Not in so many words," said the king, "but you can read between the lines. Trust me, I know this dragon."

"And has he killed very many of your subjects, King Steve?" asked the Lady.

"Well, no, not yet —but I wouldn't put it past him. He just seems so irritable all the time."

"I see. And how many have you sent to meet the dragon, to slay him?" she inquired further.

"Well, none, of course! I mean, we don't want to upset him."

"But he's threatening your people!" she exclaimed.

"He is and he isn't," answered Steve. "As you said, he didn't come right out and say 'I'm going to start killing your people.' That's not really his style, which makes him even more frightening, I think."

"How is that more frightening?" the knight asked.

"You know, you just can't tell what he might do. I mean, we don't really know what he is capable of doing."

"So . . . you want me to go slay him, get him out of your hair, that sort of thing?" Lady Sofia was a bit confused.

"Yes. I mean, no — maybe not. I mean . . . you can see how he is. If he knows you're here, he'll probably be pissed at that. He's so testy."

"Have you tried talking to him?" she asked.

"There's no talking to someone like that. My father was that way growing up. Everyone was always walking on eggshells around him. I feel he's really the reason I haven't been able to become a fully actualized person. And mom just never would stand up to him. I mean, he wasn't a bad guy, I loved him, but maybe things would have been different for me —"

"Sorry — what does this have to do with the dragon?" Lady Sofia interrupted.

"I'm just saying my father and me, the dragon and me, it's all kind of the same thing, don't you think?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," she replied.

"Like, the way my father kept me from realizing my potential, it's a lot like the way the dragon is keeping me from being the king I want to be."

"How is he keeping you from being the king you want to be?"

"You know, by using what he knows about me. He knows I like to avoid conflict."

Lady Sofia was quite frustrated by this point. "So — do you want me to do anything or not?" she asked.

"I guess not," the king sighed. "Maybe you better go for now, before he finds out you were here. I'll message you later if I need anything, ok?"

So saying, the king said goodbye to the Lady Sofia, who again mounted Thunder and rode with Hellslayer to the next kingdom.

And King Steve and the people of Duringia lived okay ever after. I mean, they weren't really happy-happy, if you know what I mean, but their lives were fine. And the dragon would occasionally send more vaguely threatening letters to the king, but as long as they didn't do anything to piss him off too bad, he didn't bother them too much.

THE END

Summer When I Was a Boy

Dear Monkey,

Yesterday I was making a delivery for my job at the music store and I visited an elementary school.  All of the kids were outside playing and having a picnic. It was the last day of school. This triggered a near-overwhelming wave of nostalgia in your dear old Daddy-o that he was not expecting. It got me to thinking about what things were like when I was a boy, and I thought I would write you a letter to tell you about it. I realize I could just tell you in person, but I'm not sure how much you'd understand right now, and I wanted to capture some of my thoughts.

When I was young, it was always summer or Christmas. I'm not sure how that happened or when it changed, but it is a fact. We didn't have autumn until I was in 7th grade, and thinking about that triggers a whole different set of emotions. And spring. Well, forget about spring. The very first spring happened when I was 13 and it was straight to adulthood after that. But when I was a young boy, all I remember were warm summer days and playing in snow drifts.

Maybe I'll tell you about our months-long Christmases another time, but I want to tell you about the summers we had, because it's summer now. Or it's close anyway.

Summer days in the 1970s were different than summer days now. There were only two types of weather: hot and thunderstorms. On the hot days, we would play in the woods or maybe go to the pool in town. Sometimes we would go to the lake — ours was called Little Beaver.

The woods behind my house — that's where your Nana lives now — held some of the most fascinating treasures back then. There were fossils, impressions of scaly dinosaur skin (indistinguishable from snake skin, except we knew it came from tyrannosaurs) and flora from when the Earth was young. There was a giant rock that we called Table Rock that had a small cave of sorts you could crawl into if you weren't too big. There were bits of wrecked automobiles from ancient civilizations and maybe pieces of an old house. I'm not sure where all that junk came from. We chewed tea berry leaves and peeled bark off of trees and dressed like red Indians and shot bows and arrows and cap guns.

Sometimes we'd go into the woods in front of the house that aren't there anymore. One time we took an old sheet and made a shelter by hanging it between some laurel bushes and we'd hide treasure there where no one could find it. Sometimes we'd go down to the creek or this little spring that used to come up in front of the house. There were giant crawdads under the rocks, as big as a man's hand, and big bullfrogs that were a foot around.

One time Daddy, your grandfather, discovered a bird's nest and showed it to me. He told me not to touch it and not to show it to Ricky Powers, our next-door neighbor, because he thought he would break the blue robin's eggs that were in them. Well, I did what any self-respecting five-year-old boy would do and immediately told Ricky about it. The next day I heard Daddy hollering for me in the yard and when I came to him, he pointed to the nest. All the eggs were broken. Then he took a belt and beat my ass with it.

I was spanked every other day when I was a child, but looking back, I should have been spanked every day. One time, when I was about three, I was playing in the house with my twin sister, your Aunt Sarah. She took an orange crayon and drew a large man on the wall in the hallway. Daddy found it and asked who did it and I told him the truth. I was a very honest boy, as you might well imagine, and quite righteous, too. I thought it was my duty to tell on your aunt. But do you know what she did? She said that I had drawn the big orange man on the wall! Can you believe that? Daddy said he didn't care who did and whipped us both with his leather belt. The lesson of this story: adults do not care about justice. Lesson #2: don't trust your Aunt Sarah.

Your grandfather made a swing set for us when were young. He built the frame from some sort of industrial pipe, sawed treated lumber for the seats, and hung them with heavy rope. Those swings lasted years. He also built a basketball goal, but since the property was on a hill, and the ground was grassy, the court wasn't much to speak of. I blame this for my foundering basketball career.

Daddy kept a slingshot and an air pistol beside his chair on the front porch, where he would sit smoking King Edward cigars. He would shoot at bluejays and cats, but I never saw him kill one. My bedroom window looked out on the porch and I could smell the sweet smoke and see the orange glowing tip of the cigar when I fell asleep on those summer nights.

There were a lot more stars back then. Scientists would probably tell me that I just can't see the stars as much now because we live in a city. I'm not sure about that. The moon seemed more intimate in those days, almost like it belonged to us. You could lay on the grass in the evening and look for four-leaf clover until it was too dark and then count hundreds of lightning bugs all over the yard. Then you stare up at the sky and pick out your favorite constellations. When I was a boy, everyone had a favorite constellation. Mine was Orion.

We also had these little worms in the grass that don't exist anymore. They looked like pale-green threads without any features at all. You would only see them if you stared into the grass for a long time. No one has seen them in years, because of course we are much too busy now to stare at grass.

Sometimes we would play games with the whole family. We played croquet, which is something people did in the 1970s. It was fun, but my favorite was lawn darts. These were very large steel darts that you would toss like horseshoes to try to land in a ring. When I was a boy, I loved to throw them high in the air above me to see how far they would go, then they would zoom to the earth and stick about six inches into the ground. I think they got banned because of little boys throwing them high into the air to see how high they would go and planting them in their sisters' heads.

Life was much more unpredictable back then.

Your Nana had to cook for Daddy, my four brothers and sisters, and me, which was a lot of food. On Saturdays, she would make big plates of hot dogs and cheeseburgers. Sometimes the cheeseburgers would come on buns, but usually they were on white bread that was grilled in butter. They were really delicious. And the grown-ups would put humongous slices of tomato and onion on theirs. They put onions on their hot dogs, too. Now that I'm a grown-up, I have to eat onions on my hot dogs and hamburgers, too.

Every summer Sunday after church, we always ate fried chicken. We all had special seats at the table and your grandfather sat at the head. I sat at the "foot" of the table, or opposite him. Mother sat to my right. We all had our favorite part of the chicken and that's what we got to eat. Mine was the leg. Your Nana ate the short leg. Somebody got the back, which your mom says isn't even a real piece, but she doesn't know about fried chicken because her people are not chicken people. We would get buttery mashed potatoes and deviled eggs and rolls and corn on the cob and either peas or lima beans, which were also really buttery. We also had cantaloupe and watermelon every day in the summer, and I would eat the watermelon down to the rind until I had a belly ache. Watermelons back then had seeds and that's how you grew new watermelons. I don't know how they grow new watermelons now.

We would pick blueberries or raspberries or wild blackberries to eat during the day. Or we'd pick strawberries that Mother and Daddy grew. Those were juicy, sweet berries as big as an apple. You can't grow strawberries like that anymore.

We ate candy back then, too, but our candy was different. During the summer we ate little candy dots that were stuck to paper and you had to pull them off and the paper would stick to the dots so you had to suck the paper off before you could really enjoy it. We ate push ups and dream sickles and wonderful grape popsicles.

The last day of school was officially the beginning of summer in the kid year. School was a lot more fun back then. We didn't have as many tests as they do now, and our teachers read stories to us everyday, and there was always time for crafts, and we played war ball. (Remember that life was much more unpredictable back then.) Because it was the 1970s, we also drew a lot of pictures of a rock band called Kiss, though none of us had ever heard any of their songs.

On the last day of school when I was in first grade, I tripped on the rubber mat going into the school and crashed my face into the metal post between the two front doors. Your Aunt Sandy had to take me to the hospital and I got stitches. The stitches were made of black thread and the doctor sewed them into my lip just like Nana would hem a pair of pants. Then Sandy took me to Burger Chef and then we hung out at Little Beaver for a little bit and then she finally took me back to Daniels Elementary, and I got back just in time to get ice cream before we all went home for the summer. The ice cream at school was always vanilla and it came in a little Styrofoam cup and you ate it with a little wooden paddle that tasted like a tongue depressor at the doctor's office.

The other time I got my lip busted was at summer recreation, which was this program they had at Daniels Elementary during the summer. I went for a couple of summers. One time I was hanging out with one of my friends, Chris Rissuci, and he was pretending to play guitar with an aluminum baseball bat, I guess because we didn't have any tennis rackets. He swung it behind himself and caught me right in the face. It chipped a tooth — a permanent tooth — and when Mother took me to Dr. Cincy, he mixed up a compound and made a bit of fake tooth to go on the chipped one.

Sometimes in the summer we would go see relatives, which meant a big car trip in the Cordoba. We drove over really curvy mountain roads to get to Logan or Mingo County. We would listen to music on the 8-track player and sometimes it would be rock and roll, like David Bowie, but sometimes it would be the Statler Brothers or Hank Williams. We would sing a lot during car trips, too, and your grandfather would sing songs from when he was a boy, like "Smile," or "The Little White Cloud That Sat Right Down and Cried." He loved to sing and I did, too.

If we went to Logan County, I always knew I was close to my grandmother's house when we rounded Three Mile Curve. There would be long-haired uncles there, wearing sleeveless undershirts and bell-bottom jeans, and there'd be more fried chicken, but they ate three-bean salad, which Mother didn't make at home. One of the uncles who didn't have long hair because he was older and worked in the mines had an above-ground swimming pool which was really something.

People looked different then, not just uncles. Everyone had long hair, but the men's hair was longer than the women's and the men had thicker sideburns. In the summer, we all wore tennis shorts that went up to your butt cheeks and long white tube socks to your knees that had colored stripes on them. All of the boys my age had haircuts like the Beatles unless their parents didn't believe in rock and roll and then they had crew cuts.

We would got to the city pool sometimes, but your old man doesn't swim very well, unlike your big brother and sister and your mom. But I still liked going, partly because of the smell. It smelled like chlorine and sun tan oil and this pizza they made that had crust that was like cardboard. I loved that pizza. I never went off the high dive because I was scared. Everyone was always playing their radios at the pool and you'd hear Olivia Newton John and the Steve Miller Band every time you went.

We'd go to the lake a few times in the summer, to fish and catch blue gill and throw them back or to feed stale bread to the ducks.  If we were with someone older, we might get to take a paddle boat onto the lake, which seemed like a real adventure.

Sometimes in the summer, if we couldn't go to the lake or the pool, we'd just put on our swim suits and spray each other with the garden hose out in the yard.  And we would run, really, really fast for a long time, just around the yard and around the house until we were too tired and then we would go inside and Mother, your Nana, would give a big glass bottle of Pepsi Cola.

A few times a week during the summer, there would be a great thunderstorm, nothing like the thunderstorms we have now. The rain would come in giant drops that sounded like drums when it hit the trees and the roof of the house. Sometimes we'd watch it from the porch and you could smell the rain, which smelled like 1970s rain that was warm and comforting, and sometimes we would run out in the rain and splash our bare feet in puddles in the yard. Everyone was barefoot in summer during the 1970s.

Just now I am thinking that I would like to see one of those old thunderstorms, and I would sit with you on the porch and you would smell it and could tell your son about it some day. But it's a warm, cloudless day, and you're down for your nap in your crib, so I am writing you this letter, so you will know why your old man acts the way he does and sometimes gets sad when it rains in the summer.

Sleep well.

Daddy.

Why Han Solo Is Cooler Than Luke Sywalker

1. Han wears a white shirt open to mid-chest, a black vest, tight black pants and black boots. Luke wears a bathrobe.
2. Leia: “I love you.” Han: “I know.”
3. Han hangs out with a wookie. Luke hangs out with droids.
4. The Millennium Falcon can do the Kessel Run in 12 Parsecs. Luke drives a “speeder.”
5. Han shot Greedo first. And then left a tip.
6. Han is good friends with Billy Dee Williams.
7. Han is frozen in carbonite for a year and thaws into an even bigger smart ass. Luke spends a few hours on the surface of Hoth and needs Han and the carcass of a dead taun-taun to last the night.
8. Han Solo’s next feature? Raiders of the Lost Ark. Skywalker’s? Corvette Summer.
9. Han kicks ass without the force.
10. Han probably tagged Leia. So did Luke.    

Buffalo Creek

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

42 years ago today, my grandparents lost their home on Buffalo Creek in Logan County to a flood created when a coal slurry impoundment dam burst. 125 people lost their lives. A federal inspector found the dam "satisfactory" just four days before it burst. 

The flood could not occupy a more prominent place in our family mythology. My family speaks of "The Flood" as I imagine Shem and Japeth might have at 4th of July cookouts and such.

My mother and father had left Logan County by this time and were living in Wyoming County. My father was familiar with the "dam." He'd visited it several times and once told me that everyone knew its burst was imminent. The slurry water, black and mucky, rushed down the hollow that February morning, taking some houses off their foundations and washing cars downstream. By the time it reached Amherstdale, where my grandparents lived with their children who were still young enough to live at home, it filled homes more slowly. The water covered Granny's ankles when she left the house. Mother says she shut the front gate behind her, out of force of habit.

Grandaddy stayed behind. He escaped to the house's top floor and then made to the roof. The water eventually took the house with it, and he rode the house until it caught on a train trestle, where he climbed off. There he saw a neighbor's boy, face down on the ground, praying as hard as he could. He took off his coat and covered him with it.

My mother says that my father was the last person they "let in the hollow" before the National Guard shut off all traffic. He found his in-laws and he seems to have taken some of my younger uncles to stay with relatives. At least one of them stayed with my parents for several months.

My Uncle Joe played tenor saxophone in the school band and Mother says he was going that morning to a county band practice. One of his best friends, a boy who played saxophone with him, died in the flood that morning. Mother always thought Joey acted very different after that. He still went into the mines though.

Grandaddy, my father, his father, several uncles on both sides, and other assorted relatives worked for coal companies up and down that hollow and in places like it in the southern coalfields. The companies had names like Ameagle, Amherst, Winco, Aracoma, Guyan Eagle, and Pittston. The communities their workers lived in bore the same names. Sometimes one coal camp would be right across the narrow road from a coal camp of another company, their tipples occupying opposite hills and churning out the black stuff around the clock. Most of them lived in "shotgun" houses or, if they were a lucky, in a "bosses" house. My grandfather Paul was a tipple foreman, so their house was probably a little better than many of the others at Amherstdale.

The companies built the housing, even the churches, and ran stores than originally dealt only in company-issued scrip. It would be a mistake to believe that life in coal camps was only hard. If you speak to those who grew up in one they will tell you about playing at the pool, going to the Wesley House for youth group meetings, and dances. But they will also tell you about men covered in coal dust from head to foot, looking, even after they bathed, like they wore eyeliner and mascara. They will tell you about the way their gut wrenched when they heard the company siren blow, a signal that something was wrong in the mine, something that might mean their husbands and fathers might not come home that night. And if they lived on Buffalo Creek, they will tell you exactly what they were doing on February 26, 1972.

My grandparents settled quickly with the company and never regretted it. They moved up to McConnell on Three Mile Curve, closer to Logan.

Pittston Coal called the dam break an "Act of God." They argued that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the loss of life on that rainy Saturday morning. Everyone knew that was bullshit. The "dam" was really just settled sediment from the coal slurry, not a proper dam. There were no controls, no regulation, and millions of gallons of water were building up the pressure behind it. Everyone knew that Pittston was saying that to avoid the enormous payouts that might be owed families. But what could you do? The company was your benefactor, your employer, the one to whom you owed allegiance. 

In the end, the company lost that argument, a rare instance in the coal fields. Settlements were paid, legal precedents set. But after the slurry settled, little changed. Life continued much as it had, though savvy companies learned to rely more on developing technologies to take coal from the ground. Men were a liability if courts insisted you value their lives.

I was born that same year, just a few months after The Flood. Hearing about it as frequently as I did growing up undoubtedly influenced my thinking about a lot of things.

It's easy to imagine a grand legacy to the Buffalo Creek Flood. It's easy to imagine that in the coming years, West Virginians were protected by a more responsible coal industry and state and federal governments who worked together to ensure their safety. Yet that is not the case.

Instead, I sit at home in Charleston, miles away from Buffalo Creek, and I'm afraid to drink the water. I'm even more afraid to give it to my three-month-old son. I'm afraid because a coal-cleaning agent called MCHM was poured into the water source where my drinking water comes from. I'm afraid, because I know that our state's leaders have been bought by the coal industry, and rather than protecting us, they are frantically working to minimize damage to the purses of billionaires who live out of state.

I'm afraid. But I am also angry.

West Virginia, indeed all of Appalachia, is a violent place. It's violence is not only against the body though. It is the violence committed against human dignity. Until our leaders regard her citizens more highly that the wallets of their patrons, that legacy of violence will continue. 

Claims (and Evidence) about the Common Core

This morning, while laying in bed watching the snow come down, really wishing I could just sleep in, I got a text from a teacher friend of mine. It said, "Take time to read," and included an image entitled "The 8 Most Important Things You Need to Know About Your Child's Teacher and Common Core."

First, let me say that I'm sure this friend is a good teacher, though I've never seen her in action. (We went to college together.) Let me also add that I think there are legitimate concerns with the Common Core, student learning standards in English language and mathematics that have been adopted by most states. (I would encourage you to read what Diane Ravitch has to say on the subject, though I would disagree with many of her assertions as well.) Yet I also think there is a great deal of disinformation being given to parents and teachers, too. In my previous work, I learned a lot about the Common Core and even had to occasionally present on the topic.

Since part of the Common Core is evaluating claims with evidence, I thought I'd take a few minutes to address each of these "eight important things." I'm no expert, but I may have a little bit of insight.

1. "Your child's teacher did not create the Common Core standards, politicians did." Well, this is kind of true, depending on what exactly you mean by the word "create." The Common Core was created by a joint initiative of the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- "politicians." Used this way, you may also say that politicians "create" public schools, road systems, and the space program. But the standards themselves were written (i.e., "created") by teachers of English and math. I personally believe that higher education was over-represented in this process, but it is a mistake to believe that Congress may have debated whether i would still go before e, except after c.

2. "Common Core aligned instructional materials (books) are not provided to your child's teacher. Teachers are creating their own curriculum. Daily." This is also kind of true. Most textbook companies have struggled to keep up with the Common Core and states have been wary of adopting materials that claim to be aligned and are not. But my main response to this complaint is, "So what?" As a teacher of music, I actually never had a book that was aligned enough to my standards to simply teach from the book. I taught multiple subjects from year to year, including band, chorus, music appreciation, AP music theory, piano, and guitar and I wrote my own curriculum for every single one of these. You want to know a secret? This is what all good teachers do. Because teachers who just open up the book, read from it, and then assign the questions at the end are not really effective. I would also note that #1 above complained of lack of teacher input and #2 complains that teachers are given more autonomy.

3. "Teachers are being pulled out of their classrooms to learn about the common core [sic]. Teacher absences directly affect student performance. Negatively." This may be true in some areas, but it has nothing to do with the Common Core. If school districts reduce instructional time for teacher professional development, that is a local decision. The alternatives are to schedule professional development during non-instructional time (which is what most school districts in the nation do, contrary to this claim), not offer professional development when new standards or pedagogy are introduced in the classroom, or never do anything new.

4. "Math is new again. In order for your child's teacher to say your child as [sic] a successful math student, your child must explain - in writing - their [sic] thinking. Even if your child has a communication disorder like Autism [sic]." This one is just wrong. Math is not new, though the Common Core does expand approaches to the teaching of math. This is a good thing and allows more students, including those with learning disorders like autism, to succeed. Sometimes they may be asked to communicate their understanding in writing, sometimes they may do it verbally. I fail to understand why this is a bad thing. When a student has the opportunity to explain his or her process, the teacher is better able to understand student thinking.

5. "Your child is supposed to 'dig deep' into the standards, even though the foundation has yet to be laid." Firstly, the child is never meant to dig into the standards themselves; that is the work of the teacher. Secondly, the standards certainly do not ask teachers to dig deeply into their subject without foundational teaching. Actually, the standards are not prescriptive as to pedagogy at all. This one is just nonsense.

6. "Your child will be tested on the new standards before the teachers are trained, before instructional materials have been purchased (if they're ever purchased), and before adequate technology is available to facilitate test administration." Wait, I thought you just complained that teachers were being trained in the new standards (see #3). The two assessments that are being used for the Common Core, from the Smarter Balance Consortium and PARC, have not yet been administered, though the Common Core was released in 2010. That means that there will have been five years from release of the standards till the administration of the first assessment. There may be bumps along the way, including technology issues. This is just how change works, in any area. The alternative is to never change.

7. "Your child's teacher is becoming an alcoholic." Let me buy you a drink.

8. "Your child's teacher is looking for another job." There are numerous problems in public education right now, including an undue emphasis on standardized high-stakes assessment, the narrowing of the curriculum in some districts, the continued politicization of our schools, the charter school movement and the inequitable comparisons made between schools, school voucher systems that favor private schools, teacher quality due to filling positions with untrained "professionals," and much, much more. Anyone leaving the field now may be perfectly justified in doing so. But the Common Core is not one of these problems.

To hear what one talented teacher has to say about the Common Core, read here.

The Myth of the Appalachian

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

I was able to catch all of the U.S. Senate hearing about the chemical leak. I heard just a bit of the House hearing that was conducted here in West Virginia, but I filled in the missing pieces via Twitter. I found little of either to be enlightening and much to be angry or saddened about. The most interesting remarks in the Senate came from Jay Rockefeller, who started speaking off the cuff: "I came from outside of Appalachia, so sometimes I see Appalachia in ways that are different than others."  He started talking about what he called a mythic Scotch-Irish fatalism, ". . . the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them. Not true. Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it."

I've been thinking about that Appalachian myth for a very long time, even obsessing over the idea. I suppose it is natural. We spend a good deal of our lives trying to figure out just who we are. If we are lucky, we are raised in a family that gives us a secure sense of our own identity and encourages us to be ourselves. Even so, there are powerful cultural ideas that can be hard to shake.

Here in Appalachia, we have always struggled to define ourselves. Even before Europeans got here, the place we call West Virginia served as a sort of borderland between tribes and was used as common hunting area. Some of the "tribes" who inhabited the area, such as the Mingo, probably weren't tribes at all, but smaller bands of native people who had left their tribal lands and lived in mixed groups of Cayuga, Seneca, and others.

The Europeans who finally settled were a mixed lot, too. Some were farmers, some were trappers, other were probably criminals hiding in the forest. There probably were a lot of Scots and Northern Irish, but also English, of course, Welsh, some Germans, and a smattering of others. They were Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, but some other lesser-known sects like Dunkards, too. I'm guessing there were probably a good handful who were happy to be living in the wilderness out of reach of church and minister.

There weren't large numbers of slaves, mainly because the land didn't lend itself to the large plantations they had in the deep South. But there were some, and Reconstruction brought more African descendants, including those working on the railroad.

When someone finally figured out how to start making lots of money from the coal in the ground, recent immigrant groups came in large numbers to the mountains: Greeks, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, even some Russians. They were mostly Roman Catholic or Orthodox and brought with them different ideas about family and culture.

Even this brief narrative is an oversimplification, of course. There were Jews from various places, small numbers of Asians, and more. Though perhaps not as diverse as America's port cities, it is a mistake to believe in the homogeneity of Appalachia. And even given the large ethnically European make-up of the region, there is no reason to imagine a general uniformity of opinion. There were secessionists and abolitionists, modern industrialists and farmers, Democrats and Republicans, Klansman and Communists, and everything in between.

Despite this, there has persisted in the mountains a romantic idea about exactly what it means to a true Appalachian. We've heard it in recent weeks since the chemical spill, in the form of our leaders heaping left-handed "praise" on their constituents: the people of West Virginia are a poor but noble race, hearty Scots-Irish stock, who love God and their families, are fiercely independent, and thrive in harsh conditions.

It's nonsense, of course. Some of us are rich. Some are wicked or servile. Some of us aren't Scots-Irish at all. Some are atheists. Some abandon their families. Some are extremely dependent on others. Some are soft.

I'm not saying they're all this way. I'm just asking that our leadership stop patronizing us.

The myth is useful to political and industry leaders. It is how they have justified taking land and mineral rights for a pittance for over a century. It is how they justify polluting our air and water. It is how they justify denying us economic opportunity. It is how they justify denying us basic civil rights.

As I watched the hearing today of the House Transportation Committee, I realized it was how they justify dismissing our voices, too.  Chairman Bill Shuster, R.-PA, had not called representatives of citizen's group to speak, but reluctantly gave those assembled two minutes apiece to voice their concerns. I listened with increasing disgust as it became clear that he was not interested in what these everyday people had to say. He answered most by dismissing them paternally and assuring them they were being taken care of.

The same way industry and government has taken care of us for decades.

Many of us are uncomfortable with the myth.

I might be Scots-Irish; no one in our family is completely sure. It's true I come from a family of farmers and coal miners, and they sure have been poor for a long time. A few have been god-fearing and loyal to family; others have been irreligious scoundrels.

But I am not an Appalachian of myth.

It's true, I like fiddle music and eating beans and cornbread. I can sing all the verses to "West Virginia Hills" and know the state flower, bird, and animal.

But I don't work in coal; I play saxophone. I think before I vote. I have read books --  a lot of them -- not just the Bible. I like films with subtitles sometimes. I like jazz and punk music. Thai is my favorite cuisine. I have my ears pierced and my hair colored. I like to travel.

I have lots of "Appalachian" friends. Some of their families go back generations; some of them just arrived. Some of them are Buddhist or Muslim. Some are gay or lesbian. Some are from Pakistan or Nigeria or Venezuela. Some of them have never been hunting, fishing, or mud-bogging. Some like Broadway shows more than football.

It doesn't make any of us less "Appalachian."

We live here.

We have a right to demand clean water and air, as much as anyone else.

We pay taxes, just like everyone else.

We're tired of being told we're not being true to our "heritage" because we do not kowtow to the wishes of the power brokers in this state.

We're not the "noble poor." Some of us have been (and are) poor. We can tell you that it sucks.

Some of us think that working all day entitles us to healthcare and decent wage. We're sorry if that spoils the image you have of us "simple folk."

I'm Appalachian and I demand that my voice be heard.

My Open Letter to the West Virginia State Legislature

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

Dear Delegate:

I am writing to you today as your constituent, as a father. and as a sometimes-proud West Virginian to ask you to support the "Water Bill" that came from the Senate (SB373).

I say "sometimes-proud West Virginian" because frankly, there are times I am deeply ashamed at the leadership of our state. Following our legislature can be a depressing exercise at times. The body seems reactionary at best and plagued by political pandering. I remember that there were over thirty bills introduced last year designed to protect our "gun rights." I cannot remember a single piece of legislation discussed related to water quality, though every member of that body knew that chemical plants dotted our river valley and that there had already been major chemical incidents in the last three years.

Disheartening, too, has been the rush by our leadership to defend the coal industry's connection to this incident at all costs.  As I am sure you are aware, MCHM is used in preparation plants for the cleaning of coal.  That alone makes this issue "coal-related."  But apart from that, the question on many of our minds is, "Why do 300,000 residents of a rural state like West Virginia use the same water source?"  The answer, at least partially, has to do with the fact that coal slurry has polluted the water table in many rural areas.  Coal companies have done this with impunity as our leadership has kowtowed to every demand from that sector.

Also of concern is that many of us now get water from for-profit corporations like American Water, instead of traditional public service districts. While it may be that privately-held companies can provide more efficient service, it is also obvious that they will put profits ahead of serving West Virginians. Clean water and air are basic human rights. It is clear from the actions of West Virginia American Water that they do not believe this. Our water bills this month have increased significantly, in spite of the fact that WVAW has been unable to provide a safe, quality product.

Many of us are further angered that it appears that Freedom Industries will be given chapter 11 protection to "re-organize," rather than simply liquidating and ceasing business in our state. As has been seen by their continued failure to safely store MCHM in Nitro, this company will seek to skirt any regulation they can. If a foreign power did to our water supply what Freedom had done, we would call it an act of terrorism. Instead, our laws will protect them and their leadership from any criminal penalty.

The attitude regarding this incident, as with most industrial catastrophes in our state, has been, "Privatize the profits; socialize the liabilities."  Although I hope you will support the "Water Bill," it is bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. We need leadership in our state that does not simply react to crises, but anticipates the needs of our people. We need leadership that puts our people above the profits of the fossil fuel industry, much of which leaves our state.

I urge you to act and I urge you to be part of the change we need in the Mountain State.

Regards.

My Open Letter to Natalie Tennant

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

I was unable to find an email address on the Secretary of State's website. I am publishing this letter openly and will share the link with her via Twitter.

Dear Madame Secretary:

I'm sure you do not remember me, but I have been an admirer of yours for years. I went to West Virginia University with you actually, and occasionally traveled with you during your tenure as the Mountaineer. I played with the basketball pep band, and I was immensely proud to see you serve as the first female mascot of our beloved Alma Mater. I continued to loosely follow you when you worked in broadcast journalism and when you began your political career. I've admired you and voted for you in the race for Secretary of State.

When you announced your candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated by Jay Rockefeller, I was hopeful. You have been a breath of fresh air, a departure from the "good ol' boy" politics that plague our state, and you seem committed to your principles. I looked forward to casting my ballot for you.

I live in the Kanawha Valley, on Charleston's West Side.  Like 300,000 of my fellow West Virginians, my water was contaminated with what we learned was something called Methylcyclohexanemethanol, a "foaming agent" used to clean coal. My water had the now-familiar licorice scent and I refrained from its use for weeks, finally using it to bathe and flush toilets, but not ingesting the water itself. To date, I am still using bottled water to drink, cook, and brush my teeth.

I do not work in the coal industry, though like many West Virginians, my family comes from coal.  My maternal grandparents lost their home during the Buffalo Creek Flood, my paternal grandfather lost a leg to the Winco Coal Company in the 1930s, and my father passed away just days ago from complications related to many ailments, including black lung disease.  He was a coal preparation plant foreman for many years, in fact, a "tipple boss."  I imagine he had regular contact with MCHM in the work that he did for several coal companies.

In the early days of the water crisis, you tweeted, "Today just showed again how when the worst hits West Virginia, the best in West Virginians come out. #ProudofWV #WVWaterCrisis."  I've heard this sort of thing my entire life.  West Virginians are a proud people, fiercely independent, etc., etc., etc., and they really shine the most during a crisis.

I will be frank: I think this is complete bullshit.

It's bullshit because it is a story that has been sold to us for over a century now, a story that tells us that it is our lot in life to suffer, to be the object rather than the subject, to be the victims rather than the actors in the story of our own lives. It's part of the Appalachian myth that imagines us as a band of noble Scots-Irish savages, with pure motives and a love of family and God above all things. It's sentimental and patronizing.

Nevertheless, I was willing to pass by this trite sentiment, expressed as it was when the crisis was fresh with us and when we were all seeking to encourage one another.

Then this week, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address.  I will be clear here, too: I'm not a great fan of the president. He's certainly not the worst executive we've had, but I take issue with much that his administration has done that has infringed upon our liberties. If you had spoken against his defense of the National Security Agency, federal persecution of whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, and the federal government's continuing use of cyber-security laws to imprison so-called "hacktivists," I would have applauded you. Loudly.

Instead, you said this: "If the president wants to promote opportunity, he needs to rethink his energy policies. The president is wrong on coal and I will fight him or anyone else who wants to take our coal jobs. At the height of our water crisis, no one could tell us how harmful the chemical was or what levels were safe. But the EPA has time to go after our coal jobs in West Virginia? That doesn't make sense."

In just a few sentences, you continued to propagate the nonsensical assertion that the president is waging a "War on Coal," and attacked the federal agency charged with regulating air and water. You did this in spite of knowing that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has primary responsibility for regulation of the state's water and that the EPA has been hamstrung in recent years by an anti-regulatory Congress, including four-fifths our own state's Congressional delegation.

I can only guess that you did this in hopes of increasing your chances of success in the race between the presumed Senate nominees: yourself and Ms. Capito. You know of our state's distrust of the federal government, their suspicion of our president, and the firmly held belief that without coal, West Virginia would cease to exist. Most importantly though, you pandered to potential fossil-fuel interests that you may need to bankroll your chances for a successful Senate race.

Like other prominent political voices in the state, you seem loathe to associate our recent water crisis with the dominance of the fossil fuel industry, in spite of the fact that both the chemical itself and the unregulated business environment created by the fossil fuel industry allowed this to happen. You continue to perpetuate a defense of an industry that has never treated West Virginians fairly, from the taking of mineral rights from unsuspecting farmers, to child labor, to unfair working conditions, to environmental hazards, right down to the lackadaisical safety attitudes at Upper Big Branch and the recent larceny by Patriot Coal.

There is no "War on Coal." According to the West Virginia Office of Mine Safety and Health, there were 119,568 coal jobs in 1950, leading to the production of 145,563,295 tons of coal. In 2012, there were 53,934 coal jobs, leading to the production of 129,538,515 tons of coal. In other words, we now use about half the work force to mine about a tenth less coal. What could be the explanation? Is it the fault of President Obama? That seems unlikely, since according to the WVOMSH there has been an increase in coal-related jobs during his presidency, though coal production itself has slowed.

The answer is simple: automation. It takes fewer people to mine more coal from the ground. This is not the fault of President Obama, it's the natural result of the market and the development of technology. Likewise, increasing use of alternative cleaner energy sources around the world may explain the slight decline in coal usage in recent years.

The fact of the matter is this: coal companies are taking billions of dollars of minerals from West Virginia ground each year and sending the profits mostly out of state, while employing fewer and fewer West Virginians.

There is more to West Virginia than coal and gas. Our people are our greatest natural resource and we could become a center for wind and solar energy, technology, or even the arts. This will not happen while our state's leaders offer corporate welfare to the fossil fuel industry. Our elected leaders are not able to ensure clean water and air for our children because of their pandering to coal money. We stand idly by while polluting industries are deregulated and given tax breaks, while our schools are prevented from teaching climate change lest our corporate overlords be angered, while our economic opportunities are increasingly narrowed, and while we listen to our leaders tell us just how good we are in times of crisis.

I am sick and goddamned tired of listening to it.

So it is with regret that I tell you I will not be voting for you in your campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Some have told me that I am "wasting my vote" to cast it for someone who goes against the coal industry. I'm guessing that your tenure as Secretary of State has taught you the same and you're playing the odds. This saddens me more than you can know. I had hopes that you would serve us well.

Warmest regards,

John A. Deskins
Charleston