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