Funeral for a friend

Like a lot of other people I know, I was hit pretty hard by the news of the Charleston Gazette-Mail's bankruptcy and its possible buyout by Wheeling Newspapers. In the past, when I was trying to explain the impact of the Gazette's reporting in WV, I sometimes joked that without it, we'd be living in detention camps.

That doesn't strike me as so funny now.

It remains to be seen how much the new owner will retain of the old Gazette, including staff. But there's no way around the fact that this is a huge loss for West Virginia.

At a personal level, I'm grateful to the Gazette first for letting me know what was really going on in WV for over 30 years. I'm also grateful that when I was just a low wage worker in a public library, editor Jim Haught gave me the chance to be a contributing columnist. And my current editor Dawn Miller still puts up with me.

When I first started doing that in 1988, it paid $20 a week, which, believe it or not, was a lot of money to me then, buying a good sized bag of groceries at a time when my family lived in poverty.  My pay was eventually reduced to zero, but the chance to rant about the issues I cared about was invaluable to me. I probably wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing today if not for it.

We often really don't realize how lucky we were until things change.

Hill people

Note to email subscribers: I hit the wrong button and accidentally published an earlier draft that may have wound up in your mailbox. My bad!

Several years ago, a friend loaned me a copy of James Webb's Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. El Cabrero is himself a member of that bellicose tribe, as are many of my fellow Appalachians.

(This was before Webb launched his political career and I remember thinking at the time that I kind of liked this guy--too bad he was a Reaganite. That issue has since been resolved.)

While I am normally averse to ethnic generalizations, our people do have a pretty long and deep combative heritage. After all, the Roman emperor Hadrian built his wall to keep our kind out--and I can't say I blame him all that much.

Looking back at my own family, it seems like I had ancestors in every major American war going back to the Revolution (generally although not always on the side of the United States). They probably invented some of their own as well.

When I came of age, I felt the tug of that tradition. The main reason I didn't enlist was that this was the beginning of the Reagan era and I didn't think that killing poor Latin American workers and farmers in the interests of the wealthy--a realistic possibility at the time--was just or legitimate.

I had to get my hillbilly ya yas out in a different way. But they didn't go away.

More along this line to come...

SIGNS OF THE TIMES. It's no surprise that bankruptcies are on the way up.

THEN AND NOW. Here's a look at the Great Depression and some lessons from it that could apply now.

THIS COULD GET INTERESTING. From the Charleston Gazette:

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday to hear an appeal of whether West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin should have stepped aside in a case involving Massey Energy, after Massey's chief executive spent millions of dollars to unseat Benjamin's opponent in the 2004 election.

As sheer random chance would have it, Benjamin tends to rule in Massey's favor. In an editorial last week, the NY Times had this to say about tainted justice. Here's hoping the court ends this disgraceful fiasco.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH, here's the latest on the lawsuit filed by the widows of the 2006 Massey Aracoma mine fire.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Getting in isn't the problem

Nice puppy! William Blake's version of Cerberus, the dog that guards the realm of the dead.

Goat Rope is trailing the journey of Odysseus these days and the next stop is the underworld. If you scroll down, there are also links and comments about current events.

One of the pivotal moments of Homer's Odyssey is the visit its hero paid to the land of the dead. Only a few others in Greek and related myths were able to get there and go back again.

One such was Theseus of Minotaur fame, who went there with a buddy as part of a hare-brained scheme to capture Persephone, wife of Hades, the lord of the dead. That didn't work out so well and he was stuck in a chair there until rescued by Heracles, who visited the land of the dead when stealing Cerberus as part of his 12 labors.

The musician Orpheus visited the underworld after the death of his beloved Eurydice. His musical talents were such that Persephone allowed him to bring her back to the land of the living if he didn't look back on the way out. He did and she didn't. Another mystery cult (see yesterday's post) developed around Orpheus which also promised to provide advantages after death and seemed to include ideas of reincarnation.

Toward the end of his Republic, Plato tells the tall of Er, a soldier who dies and tours the underworld before returning to life. He saw various kinds of rewards and punishments being dispensed as well and learned about the process of reincarnation

In the Roman epic the Aeneid of Virgil, the hero Aeneas has to visit the underworld to consult the shade of his father and learn about the destiny of Rome which he is fated to found. As with Plato, souls destined for rebirth on earth had first to drink from the river of Lethe or forgetfulness so they wouldn't remember their previous lives.

Early Christian converts from paganism were fascinated with what happened to Jesus between his death and resurrection and developed charming traditions about "the harrowing of hell," in which the victorious Christ liberated the souls of Adam, Eve and other figures from the Hebrew Bible before rising on Sunday morning. According to 1 Peter 4:6,

For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

One line from the Apostle's Creed states of him that "he descended into hell," which helped to inspire speculation. The harrowing of hell was the subject of some apocryphal gospels.

Last but not least, the Italian poet Dante's Divine Comedy tells of that poets tour through Hell, Heaven and Purgatory (check Goat Rope archives for an earlier series on that).

The consensus of the ages seems to be that getting there isn't the problem for most folks--getting out again is.

ON A RELATED NOTE, a report from the World Health Organization calls social justice a matter of life and death.

WORST DAY ON WALL STREET since 2001. Let's hope tomorrow's headlines don't say 1929. Thought for the day: isn't it a good thing we didn't let President Bush privatize Social Security?

THE RIPPLE EFFECT. From the Sept. 22 print edition of Business Week:

Losing a job isn't just a career setback, it can be a permanent blow to the community, a recent study finds. Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked 4,000 high school graduates over 45 years, researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan studied the community involvement of workers aged 35 to 53. Their finding: After being laid off, employees were 35% less likely than before to participate in community or church groups, charitable organizations--even bowling teams. And few returned once they got new jobs. Instead, they focused their energies on professional and political groups--in the belief, hypothesizes UCLA sociology professor Jennie Brand, that both could have an impact on finding and keeping work

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HOLY KARMA, BATMAN! After years of lobbying--to the tune of $40 million--for tougher bankruptcy laws, lenders are now starting to feel the pain of getting what they asked for. My heart breaketh...

THIS CAN'T BE TRUE because it would be inconvenient for the coal industry. QED.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOOD SONG, BAD ADVICE

Caption: This man went down by the riverside but didn't know when to quit.

On the fifth anniversary of President Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq, like thousands of other Americans, I attended an anti-war gathering. It was a good event. The previously threatening skies cleared up and the weather was warm. At one point, someone sang "Down by the Riverside."

As you no doubt recall, Gentle Reader, the chorus says "I ain't gonna study war no more." It's catchy, easy to sing and easy to plunk out on a guitar for those so inclined.

The only problem is this: if you take it at face value and think about it, it's really bad advice for people who want to make the world less violent and more just.

I've ridden this hobby horse before here, but here goes again. I suspect that many people involved in peace or anti-war movements have felt this way: war and violence are bad and therefore not to be studied. That may be Reason # 59385 that such movements haven't exactly set the woods on fire (metaphorically speaking).

Again, can you imagine what the current state of medicine or public health would be if people didn't study diseases and injuries because they are "bad"?

That is one of two kinds of popular magical thinking. It involves ignoring things we think are bad and don't like. The other kind, as in The Secret, a New Age idea taken up by Oprah a while back, holds that if we think about things we want, we just might get them.

(Note: the second of these is preferred by the animals at Goat Rope Farm. When they want something they stare at it--and sometimes it works.)

Both kinds of magical thinking have their problems, but at least the second one might actually work every once in a while. At least if you think something is possible you might be more aware of opportunities for making it happen. But ignoring unpleasant realities has a much worse track record.

One of the best chances we have for reducing violence, warfare, killing and the conditions that contribute to them is to try to learn as much as we can about them and creatively apply that knowledge as we seek their reduction and--one can dream--eventual elimination.

BREAKING THE BANK.James Surowiecki, financial writer for the New Yorker, has some interesting things to say about the credit crisis and ill-advised changes in bankruptcy laws.

JOBS TANK. Dean Baker analyses federal data on the drop in employment here.

STRESSED OUT. The stress of repeated tours of duty in Iraq is causing concern in the Army.

OH GOOD. Blackwater got its Iraq contract renewed. That should win some hearts and minds.

EVERY MOUNTAIN SHALL BE BROUGHT DOWN. The United Mine Workers of America may be open to the long term goal of ending mountaintop removal, according to this article by Ken Ward.

COURT FIASCO. Here's the Wall Street Journal legal blog on the Blankenship/Benjamin WV supreme court mess. Also, check out ABC News today. At last word, they were planning on showing the video of a scuffle between a reporter and supreme court I mean Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

CHIP. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on the need to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED