Ghosts

I let Halloween come and go without picking up on the theme. Until, that is, I saw this article in the Gazette about ghosts and how people reconcile belief in them with more conventional religion.

I take no position on whether such things exist, but it seems that West Virginia has more than its share of if not ghosts then at least stories about them. I guess our history--what with the Civil War and other armed conflicts, feuds, industrial disasters, and other mayhem--is a good climate for generating them.

I think it's interesting that in most ghost stories that I know about, the apparitions don't tend to be free rangers. Rather, they seem to be tied to particular places where certain things happened.

Sometimes I do think that events can leave a mark on places. Some places I've been to seem to be more loaded than others. I'm thinking about places like Harpers Ferry, the old state mental hospital at Weston, the old state prison at Moundsville, and an old family farm in Tazewell, Virginia.

There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

NOT ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING. It looks like the stimulus helped pull the US economy back from the brink--up to a point. Here's another argument for another one.

SELF DESTRUCTIVE HABITS. Gazette columnist Perry Mann ponders unbridled capitalism here.

SEALING THE DEAL. Here's E.J. Dionne on the future of health care reform legislation.

SPEAKING OF HAUNTED PLACES. Here's an item about a scientist who artificially designed one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A "GHOST" STORY?

Today is the last day of Haint Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

Haint, by the way, is Appalachian for that which haunts. In addition to comments on current events, posts this week have deal with the belief in ghosts, the allure of "haunted" or sacred places, the feeling of weirdness, and the Day of the Dead. It seemed a fitting theme for Halloween.

El Cabrero has refrained from taking a position on the existence or non-existence of such things but I will tell about something that happened to me.

A dear friend and co-worker of mine died a little over two years ago. We fought a lot of battles together and did pretty good for a while there. But what I most miss were our conversations. When not in predatory mode, we talked about all kinds of things: life, literature, philosophy, religion, science, you name it.

One thing we disagreed about was death and everything after. She tended to think it was the end and I was never able to convince myself that was the case. Not that I was particularly happy about that; at times, total extinction sounds pretty good to me.

A while after her death from a debilitating and cruel disease, I had a strange experience. I was not asleep but not completely awake, in a kind of liminal state between the two. I had the clear and unmistakable experience of her passing right through my core. It was like a very warm greeting. There was nothing visual or auditory about it, but as far as I'm concerned it was her and it was good.

Was it a sleeping or waking dream or an example of wish fulfillment? My official statement is the same as Hamlet's:

"O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound."

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE WEATHER. A powerful coalition of religious groups, including evangelicals, is pressing congress to take action on climate change.

HEALTH CARE. Here's a NY Times editorial stating the obvious: we need universal health care. Note: stating the obvious is a virtue these days.

MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH UPDATE. The Student Government Association at WV State University plans an anti-hate rally for Nov. 17. The student group joined the NAACP, Black Ministerial Alliance, West Virginians United for Social and Economic Justice, the Logan County Improvement League and others in not endorsing a Nov. 3 march organized by out of state groups. Here's more.

Meanwhile, the Logan County prosecutor has urged Williams to refrain from making public statements as it may damage the case, as the AP reports.

Here's the latest on the march. And here's background on hate crimes law from the AP.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HOODOO

Caption: Hills have hoodoo.

Welcome to Haint Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit please click on yesterday's post.

For flatlanders, haint is Appalachian for things that haunt.

El Cabrero takes no position on the existence or nonexistence of haints. However, I am prepared to assert that some places have hoodoo, which is just as good.

They say that Appalachians have a strong sense of place, although we obviously don't have a corner on the market. But when I think of hauntedness, I think less about spectral beings than about places.

It seems to me that some places just seem to have hoodoo and others don't. Hoodoo, like the Oceanic term "mana" means some kind of weird immaterial force or quality that has been called "the stuff of which magic is formed."

Some places seem to have hoodoo because of things that happened there. Harpers Ferry is a prime example, almost as if events have left some kind of scar or imprint. So do the nearby battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg.

Other places, like the sacred New River, seem to have it naturally, although the history probably helps. I tend to doubt whether flatland has any hoodoo, but I'll try to keep my mind open on that point. Maybe if there's water around...

Hoodoo is hard to define but who feels it knows it.

BLOWING UP THE BUDDHAS. Here's an op-ed from yesterday's NY Times about the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban. This is pretty un-Buddhist, but El Cabrero is still mad about that.

DEATH PENALTY NEWS. This Reuters story is interesting:

The American Bar Association said on Monday it was renewing its call for a nationwide moratorium on executions, based on a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states that found unfairness and other flaws.

The lawyers' group said its study identified key problems, such as major racial disparities, incompetent defense services for poor defendants and irregular clemency review processes, making those death penalty systems operate unfairly.

UPDATE ON MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH. Here's the Daily Mail on the controversy caused by a march planned by outside groups. And here's the latest from the Gazette.

POVERTY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. Low income Americans are likely to suffer most from the effects of climate change and from higher energy costs. Here are suggestions about dealing with this from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, the world's oldest living animal as far as anyone can tell is a 400 year old clam.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: SUPERMUNDANE