Another plus

Believe it or not, there are a lot of good things going on in West Virginia (he said, to reassure himself). One of them is the growth of the local food movement and the spread of community gardens and farmers' markets.

Disclosure: we have a garden and I actually planted a good bit of it and it actually grew, but working in it is not my favorite thing, I'm sad to say. I like them better conceptually than when you have to do weeding.

Anyhow, this story from WV Public Broadcasting tells how some folks in Charleston are using community gardens built on vacant lots on the West Side to build their entrepreneurial skills.

I'm all for that and wish them well. But based on my experience at Goat Rope Farm, I wouldn't advise anybody to quit their day job.

YOU KNOW IT. If there's a news story about Neanderthals, you'll find it here.

One good, one bad

I've tried to blog a good bit lately about good things happening in WV. One such is the growth of community gardens and local food in former industrial areas such as Wheeling.

AS FOR THE BAD, libertarian delusions cover that pretty well.

Two more good things

For the sake of my own sanity, I've been blogging lately about things that are going right in West Virginia these days. One has got to be Medicaid expansion and the growth in health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

I was informed by a friend in the know that over 129,800 people have been covered through Medicaid expansion alone. Around 25,000 have coverage through the exchange and around 15,000 were found to be eligible for other programs. Prior to passage of ACA, folks I know estimated the number of uninsured in the state to be around 240,000. The number of people who gained coverage this year alone is equal to 70 percent of that.

MORE GOOD. Mingo County in southern WV has its share of economic problems, but it has become a leader in promoting child nutrition, physical activity and wellness generally. Mingo just got an award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in recognition of its progress. Read more here.

Leaving it on the table

El Cabrero has been an inconsistent blogger lately, but it's been a hard winter so far and I've been running around a lot.

On Tuesday, I attended a conference organized by the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition. I'm glad I did, because it reminded me that, despite all evidence, there are good things going on.

The local food movement in this state--which touches on things like health, poverty, education, economic development, reducing carbon emissions, energy efficiency and most other things that matter--really has made some strides in recent years.

Here's one statistic tossed around today worth keeping in mind. West Virginians spend around $7 billion per year on food. Less than $1 billion of that is produced here. This means we're leaving a lot on the table as far as meeting local needs is concerned, and even more as far as we think about exporting.

So far, so good, but there's a lot more progress we can make.

North Dakota dreaming

West Virginia legislators often get lots of flack for going on junkets to interesting places on the public nickel. However, when the destination is North Dakota, the flack factor seems to disappear.

That state in fact is going to be the destination of state lawmakers, where, among other things, they will study North Dakota's Legacy Fund, a permanent trust fund created from the revenue collected from industries extracting natural resources.

This will probably ring a bell with regular readers. For some time, I've been working with allies to drum up support for something similar here, where we tend to call it a Future Fund. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a political shakeup in the WV House may have helped move that issue along.

In the meantime, here's a view from North Dakota.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, here's President Obama's statement on the George Zimmerman verdict.

GREEN SHOOTS. Here's an encouraging story on the local food  movement in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED