How bout a poem?

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882

I can't say I'm a huge fan of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My closest brush with him was staying near his house for a few days in Cambridge years ago. His longer poems like Evangeline and Song of Hiawatha never tempted me, although I kind of like his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. He was even a character in Matthew Pearl's entertaining 2003 mystery The Dante Club, but I digress.

Anyhow, I somehow stumbled upon a charmingly retro poem of his that I think is worth sharing,  especially in times like these:

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

A poem for an indefinite time out period

In a time like this, I thought it might be appropriate to share this poem by Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). It might help a little.

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Is it starting?

No, I'm not talking about the impeachment of a certain elected official, although that would be fine with me. I'm asking whether it might be time to get the US to get serious about climate change.

I recently picked up a book of poems by Mary Oliver and opened it randomly. The first line that struck my eyes had this to say:

Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold."

The rest of the poem is here. I'm right there with her, although cold part doesn't sound too bad at the moment.

I really hope that the US is approaching a sea change when it comes to climate action. There were actions around the country last week. West Virginians are planning an awareness event tonight. A recent poll shows that more Americans are finally starting to view the issue as a crisis.

Earlier this week, there was an event I'd never have expected: Robert Hanshaw, the Republican Speaker of the WV House of Delegates, and Evan Hansen, a Democratic delegate who is a strong environmental advocates spoke to a group of students about climate change. As in it being real and all.

The Hansen part wasn't a surprise, but the Hanshaw part was, given his ties to the gas industry and the power of the extractive energy lobby in WV, especially but not exclusively with Republicans.

(In fairness, I've seen decades of Democrats grovel before the extractive overlords as well.)

I'm not about to give way to a fit of uncharacteristic optimism, but I think the way may be opening. It's probably already too late to undo some serious damage even if we started with a blank slate today. But I think we can still do some harm reduction if we generate and demonstrate the political will.

The alternative is disaster.

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.)

Taking a stroll

Santiago, here I come. I hope.

A while back I got bit by the Camino bug and it won't let go. The Camino de Santiago Compostela is a pilgrimage route across northern Spain to a cathedral devoted to St. James the Greater, brother of John and one of the 12 disciples. There are many routes but the one that bit me begins in southern France and crosses the Pyrenees.

(In reality, the one place where one is NOT likely to find relics associated with James is probably northern Spain, but reality should never get in the way of a good pilgrimage.)

Anyhow it's a walk of around 480 miles, mostly through rural areas and I'm hoping to start this coming Tuesday. I'll post some from the road if tech and time permit. I'll be back before election day. Being gone during all that will probably mean dodging a few hundred robo-calls anyhow.

 Meanwhile, here's one of my favorite travel poems, which has shown up here before when road trips beckon. It's a sample from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road:

AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them...

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also; I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles;
(My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road;)
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;
I think whoever I see must be happy.

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness...
From "Song of the Open Road," Walt Whitman

A poem for Memorial Day

Walt Whitman, one of America's greatest poets, volunteered as a nurse to soldiers during the Civil War. One of my favorite poems of his is titled The Wound-Dresser. It's about someone who once wanted to charge into battle but eventually devoted himself to helping the wounded and dying and remembering the dead. It's a good reminder of the cost of war to those who do the actual fighting.

Here it is:

1 

An old man bending I come among new faces, 
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, 
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, 
(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) 
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, 
Of unsurpass'd heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) 
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, 
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? 
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, 
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains? 

2 

O maidens and young men I love and that love me, 
What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, 
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with sweat and dust, 
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the 
rush of successful charge, 
Enter the captur'd works--yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade, 
Pass and are gone they fade--I dwell not on soldiers' perils or 
soldiers' joys, 
(Both I remember well--many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.) 

But in silence, in dreams' projections, 
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, 
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, 
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, 
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.) 

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, 
Straight and swift to my wounded I go, 
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, 
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, 
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital, 
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, 
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, 
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, 
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again. 

I onward go, I stop, 
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, 
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, 
One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you, 
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that 
would save you. 

3 

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) 
The crush'd head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) 
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine, 
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life 
struggles hard, 
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! 
In mercy come quickly.) 

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, 
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood, 
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side falling head, 
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the 
bloody stump, 
And has not yet look'd on it. 

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, 
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking, 
And the yellow-blue countenance see. 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, 
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, 
so offensive, 
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. 

I am faithful, I do not give out, 
The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, 
These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast 
a fire, a burning flame.) 

4 

Thus in silence in dreams' projections, 
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, 
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, 
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, 
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, 
(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, 
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.) 

Happy birthday, West Virginia

I've used this poem before to celebrate the day, but it still seems to fit:

Appalachia
By Muriel Miller Dressler
I am Appalachia. In my veins
Runs fierce mountain pride; the hill-fed streams
Of passion; and, stranger, you don’t know me!
You’ve analyzed my every move–you still
Go away shaking your head. I remain
Enigmatic. How can you find rapport with me–
You, who never stood in the bowels of hell,
Never felt a mountain shake and open its jaws
To partake of human sacrifice?
You, who never stood on a high mountain
Watching the sun unwind its spiral rays:
Who never searched the glens for wild flowers,
Never picked mayapples or black walnuts; never ran
Wildly through the woods in pure delight,
Nor dangled your feet in a lazy creek?
You, who never danced to wild sweet notes,
Outpouring of nimble-fingered fiddlers;
Who never just “sat a spell,” on a porch,
Chewing and whittling; or hearing in pastime
The deep-throated bay of chasing hounds
And hunters shouting with joy, “He’s treed!”
You, who never once carried a coffin
To a family plot high up on a ridge
Because mountain folk know it’s best to lie
Where breezes from the hills whisper, “You’re home”;
You, who never saw from the valley that graves on a hill
Bring easement of pain to those below?
I tell you, stranger, hill folk know
What life is all about; they don’t need pills
To tranquilize the sorrow and joy of living.
I am Appalachia: and, stranger,
Though you’ve studied me, you still don’t know.

Apropos of nothing again

For some reason, this cheery little jingle by William Butler Yeats has been going through my mind lately:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity. 

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

Perhaps you will remember John Brown

On this date 157 years ago, assuming I got the math right, John Brown and his band of black and white guerrillas began their raid on Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia. It was an epic fail tactically but a huge win strategically in that things got pushed to the point of no return. I'm not big on theologizing history, but sometimes it seems like Brown was God's monkey wrench that got thrown into the machinery of a sinful land.

Here's a poem about him by Langston Hughes:

Perhaps
You will remember
John Brown 

John Brown
Who took his gun,
Took twenty-one companions,
White and black,
Went to shoot your way to freedom
Where two rivers meet
And the hills of the
North
And the hills of the
South
Look slow at one another —
And died
For your sake.

Now that you are
Many years free,
And the echo of the Civil War
Has passed away,
And Brown himself
Has long been tried at law,
Hanged by the neck,
And buried in the ground –
Since Harpers Ferry
Is alive with ghosts today,
Immortal raiders
Come again to town –
Perhaps,

You will recall
John Brown.”

A poem for Independence Day

This poem by the great African American writer Langston Hughes talks about making America great again, even for those to whom it hasn't yet been great). It's shown up here before on this holiday. There's a lot of talk today about making America great again, but I don't think Hughes' vision is what a certain political candidate has in mind.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Of politicians, poetry, parasites and cicadas

The latest Front Porch program/podcast is kind of all over the place. It looks back at WV's primary election and weird political history, touches on the perennial issue of outsiders, and, most importantly, discusses cicadas in a scientific and poetic manner. Here it is.

Poetic interlude

I haven't read much of Seamus Heaney (aside from his Beowulf, which was great), but I think I need to read more. By accident yesterday I came upon this selection from his Cure at Troy, which is his rendering of Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes.

THE CURE OF TROY

Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hope
On the side of the grave,’
 But then, once in a lifetime
 The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea- change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles.
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
And lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

Obviously, we're not there yet, but it's good to recall that such moments sometimes exist.

Three more for the road...from the road

I'm traveling tonight but found a few things worth a look. First, here's an interesting item by Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter and Coal Tattoo blogger Ken Ward on the Blankenship verdict.

The NY Times editorial on the subject is here. Here's the first paragraph:

It was the rarest of news in the coal mining hollows of Appalachia: A once powerful executive, Donald Blankenship, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers died in an explosion six years ago. The very idea that a dominant baron of the industry called King Coal could be brought to justice and put behind bars shook the region, where miners have long complained that they face dangerous and illegal working conditions that routinely result in no punishment.

Kudos to federal judge Irene Berger, who had this to say to Blankenship:

 “You, Mr. Blankenship, created a culture of noncompliance at Upper Big Branch where your subordinates accepted and, in fact, encouraged unsafe working conditions in order to reach profitability and production targets.”

Finally, just for fun, here's a parody of a famous Robert Frost poem as Donald Trump might have written it.

Kind words

It's been kind of hard for me lately to say a whole lot of shiny happy things about the current state of West Virginia, so it was very nice to learn that noted "Affrilachian" (that would be African American and Appalachian) poet and professor Nikki Giovanni had some.

Verses for the Fourth: God speed the year of jubilee

To celebrate Independence Day this year, how about some verses by radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison:


God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th' oppress'd shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom's reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But to all manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I'll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive --
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

Ash Wednesday

So this is my favorite religious holiday and I couldn't make it out to get my ashes due to weather and roads. In lieu of all that, here's the last stanza of T.S. Eliot's poem about this day:

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated 

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Two liner

Yesterday, the Spousal Unit and I hiked a bit around the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in Vermont. Along the way, I found a two line poem I had previously missed called "The Secret Sits." Here goes:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows

I think he might have been right about that one.

ONE LINK FOR THE ROAD: It looks like the Affordable Care Act is reducing the deficit.

The human abstract

I have long been aware from personal experience and observation that being poor is not nearly as much fun as some people who aren't tend to think it is. This piece by Barbara Ehrenreich in the Atlantic points out that it's also expensive.

Ehrenreich's article reminded me of this classical sociological analysis by Herbert Gans of all the ways poverty benefits people who aren't poor.

Come to think of it, that reminds me of these lines of the divinely mad and inspired English poet William Blake from the poem "The Human Abstract" in Songs of Experience.

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

(Note: if you want more of Blake, search the Goat Rope archives in the upper left hand corner of the screen.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It all started on Facebook

OK, so today, when I was technically supposed to have be working, I accidentally checked Facebook to find the following hilarious post by a pal  in regard to the West Virginia coal/poetry censorship episode that officially didn't happen.

Here's what he wrote:

"Practicing for next year's poetry contest: Roses are red, Violets are blue, coal is from heaven, and it is awesome too."

This inspired me to invite my fellow West Virginians to take part in an Acceptable Poem Contest in which we write pro-coal poetry that would be permissible to read aloud in public places in West Virginia. Here's what I came up with:

Once upon a midnight dreary,
coal kept the lights on.

Any takers?

Short takes

I'm not always on the same page as the editorial writers of the Charleston Daily Mail, but I think they nailed it with this item on the passage of legislation creating the Future Fund from natural resource taxes.

Meanwhile, holy PR malfunction, Batman! Does anybody else wonder what really happened here? It gives a whole new meaning to the term "poetry slam."