What a week

Is it over yet? I'm kind of over this session of the WV legislature.

It hasn't all been bad. Ending the lifetime ban on SNAP was a great win that will help thousands of people. Some other promising criminal justice stuff may be in the pipeline.

The good guys won a huge fight this week in defeating a bill that would impose Medicaid work requirements, really a way of taking away health care from as many as 46,000 people.

Teachers, school service workers and allies helped defeat the ominous omnibus education bill, which would have been bad news for public education.

But there's also stuff like this, as if the image of the state hasn't been tarnished enough already by stuff like this.

As if all that wasn't enough, the house passed a bill that would allow firearms on campus. What could possibly go wrong?  At the same time, the senate passed  a bill raising the age to purchase tobacco products to 21 at about the same time.

Several commentators have pointed out that, if both these bills go through, 18 year olds will be able to bring guns to class but couldn't buy cigarettes.

As I've often said, it's time to change the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up."

Two roads diverged

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. ...” So begins Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.”

Ever since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the power of crossroads. They have been the subject of poetry, song, myth and folklore.

Examples range from Robert Johnson’s classic blues song of the same name back to the days of ancient Greece, where they were sacred to Hermes, god of boundaries, borders and exchanges, and to Hecate, a witchy goddess associated both with magic and the home.

The image shows up in both the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and the gospels. In Jeremiah 6:16, the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Metaphorically, I think most of us have come upon crossroads where a choice must be made that can have lifelong consequences.

I think West Virginia is at a major crossroads now, one that will have a lasting impact on its future. It has to do with the face we present to the world: will it be one of narrow-mindedness, fear, hatred and bigotry or one of openness, hospitality, solidarity and basic fairness?

Let’s just say that if the West Virginia Legislature is any indication, the jury is still out. We’ve had one delegate embarrass the state by comparing people who identify as LGBTQ to terrorists ... and worse.

The leadership of the majority Republican Party has condemned these remarks, yet they refuse to move legislation ending discrimination — and some have even attempted to pass legislation that would undo local anti-discrimination ordinances.

Still other lawmakers have sought bills that would keep out refugees and immigrants in a state largely composed of the descendants of refugees and immigrants that is also rapidly aging and losing population.


That kind of thing sends a message loud and clear both to young West Virginians who feel they have no place here and to other bright and energetic people who will think two or three times before moving here.

It discourages the kind of employers and investments that would provide good jobs while promoting a good quality of life.

That degree of closed-mindedness says that education isn’t valued here and that we are proud of what — and who — we don’t know.

That kind of thing sends a message that we should continue to be nothing but a sacrifice zone for extractive industries, whether they are those that take away our natural resources or those that strip-mine our public schools.

It doesn’t have to be that way. To paraphrase the last lines of Frost’s poem, we could take the road less traveled by, and that could make all the difference.

(This appeared as an op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)