Heartbroken Hillbilly ISO a Little Piece of Land

 I have never gotten over the sale of my grandfather's property on Polish Mountain. I couldn't afford to buy my cousins out. And the house would have needed upkeep. I'm no starry-eyed romantic when it comes to unattended homes in the middle of nowhere.

Still I have grieved. That's the Land of My People -- seven, eight generations -- and I've felt adrift since the property passed out of my life.

I've been looking at the real estate listings in that neck of the woods, and the prices are astonishing. I had pretty much given up ever buying even a little shard of ground in the zip code where I grew up. (It's about 100 miles from DC and Baltimore, which explains everything.)

But now I spy a glimmer of hope. It is just a glimmer.

There's a slip of land for sale by owner. Sitting right smack dab in Land of My People Central. A really small lot covered with rock and hardwood saplings, bordered by a wildlife refuge.

If I am able to acquire this land, I don't plan to build on it. I'll just take a folding chair and go sit in the woods there. It'll be the largest ancestor shrine in the region, but no one will know because I don't intend to disturb one single rock. I'm not going to hang one shiny bauble from a tree limb. I'm not going to pester the bears or the rattlesnakes. It's woods now, it'll stay woods. But it will be my woods.

Well, y'all know that buying and selling even the simplest piece of ground is a mammoth undertaking. So I'm not putting a lot of emotional investment in this. I'll go up and see it this summer, if it's still available, and then I'll decide.

Did you know that one cannot build a good ol' outhouse in PA anymore? What is the world coming to?

I'm not a huge or even medium Woody Allen fan, but this clip is short and apropos of the situation.

Say a little prayer for me to the deity of your choice. It would be wonderful to be a card-carrying hillbilly again.

The Gods Are Bored Premiere Podcast!

 Blogging is so 2008, you know? So here's the first episode of The Gods Are Bored Podcast!

Let me know what you think! It's 4 and a half minutes.

The Gods Are Bored Epic Podcast #1

Pandemic Jean Jacket Done!

 I should have been out walking. I should have been working on my memoir. Instead I slid into the comfort of cross stitch, a talent my dear grandmother gave me back in the 1970s.

Mr. J gave me a jean jacket for my birthday. A nice one. And then, just a week afterward, we were in lockdown.

So I went to work.

EXHIBIT A: GRITTY IS THE CENTERPIECE

I actually got permission to use this design from its creator.

It says "No Grit No Glory." The green strip just above the bottom is my name, with a snowflake. More about the Phoenix in a moment.

After I finished Gritty, I thought, "It would be really cool to make this jacket monster-themed." And that's what I did.

EXHIBIT B: RAT FINK

I'll bet some of y'all remember this hot rod mascot from the 1960s. This is an iron-on patch, and I must say they adhere better than they did in the past. Technology isn't totally a waste. To the left of Rat Fink you'll see more snowflakes. They are buttons I sewed down the front.

EXHIBIT C: PHOENIX

Iron on patches are kind of cheating, but I could never have done this amazing Phoenix on my own, on a jean jacket. I have plans to add some words above it, but other projects come first.

EXHIBIT D: MOTHMAN

I really enjoyed working on Mothman. Above him is my WVresist button I got from the Women's March on Washington and my "My Heart, My Soul, and My Grave Are In Appalachia" pin. Under the arm is a pin that says "Tax the Rich."

EXHIBIT E: MURDER HORNET AND CTHULHU

My daughter The Heir drew the murder hornet. It is straight-up embroidery. Above it is a pin featuring Otter the River God (long story), and a Jersey Fresh pin. Cthulhu is a patch. And I've never been able to spell his name without looking it up.

EXHIBIT F:  FRONT OVERALL

So this jawn has pins and more pins on it. In no particular order, Union Yes, NJEA PAC, BLACK LIVES MATTER, SEPARATE CHURCH AND STATE, and the others previously mentioned.

When my daughter The Fair was snapping these photos, we totally forgot to take a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster patch I sewed on the back at the top.

There's one last monster, and it's the absolute worst of all.

EXHIBIT H: HORRIBLE MONSTER

This says, and I quote, "Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, losers or lowlifes who are going to OKLAHOMA please understand you will not be treated like you have been in NEW YORK, SEATTLE, or MINNEAPOLIS. It will be a MUCH DIFFERENT SCENE."

Followed by the monster's name, the date, and #notmypresident.

Counted cross stitch and embroidery had gone by the wayside, being considered an obsolete granny-driven art form based on platitudes and pretty flowers. But a new generation has taken it up and given it a whole new direction. I'm so glad, because it never would have occurred to me to bend such a floofy hobby to novel ends.

I haven't done this one myself yet, but it's on the radar. Don't you love it?

And fuck the Smithsonian Institution too. To me this post screams "pandemic diary."

The Magic Boost

My friends, I sit here every day doing more or less the same thing, which is next-to-nothing. My state is open, but I don't go anywhere except the grocery store and the pharmacy.

That will change when September rolls around. I will be expected to report to my classroom. There have been no plans revealed about what that classroom capacity will be and how my students and I will be protected from the novel coronavirus.

Having worked in a school for 15 years, I'm here to tell you it's a swirling miasma of contagion. In January, just before Covid, I had a virus that had me coughing for weeks. My English department colleagues all caught it too.

I listen to the news obsessively, so I know what I can do to protect myself: masks, hand-washing, face shield, hand sanitizer, don't touch face, social distancing. I'm prepared to do all of that.

But one never wants to leave any tool on the table, so I have turned to magic for a boost in my protection. Magic doesn't replace the mundane safety measures, but it can enhance them.

If you're looking for a good place to start learning about a magical practice, I highly recommend John Beckett's new online course Operative Magic. John is a Druid and a very reasonable, approachable person. His course is six sessions, homework optional (mostly to get his very helpful feedback). John gives a nicely-done history of magic, the philosophy of magic, and then concrete information on how to create a spell. The course is $50, which I call money well spent. I only have one session left to complete, so I've gotten a good view of it.

There are also two books I will recommend if you feel any affinity for organic magic stemming from Appalachian traditions. The first is Staubs and Ditchwater by Byron Ballard. Byron is a hedge witch working as a Pagan. The other book is Backwoods Witchcraft by Jake Richards. Jake works through the Christian tradition, which is to be expected -- generations and generations and generations of Appalachians have been Christians. But what's interesting about Backwoods Witchcraft is how ancient and British Isles it feels. Both of these books show you how to do spells using items you have all around you in your house and yard.

Skeptics might say, "Why turn to magic? Isn't that just a bunch of superstition?"

My answer is, "Why not? And what you might call 'superstition' I call 'covering the mystical bases.'"

This pandemic is the most dangerous existential threat to my existence since I was a blithe teenager doing stupid, reckless stuff. I'm not leaving tools on the table. That would be foolish.

When the Battle's Lost and Won

In the freezing cold, in the relentless heat, in the broad daylight and darkest night, people have been protesting new natural gas pipelines all over the place. And after being arrested and tear-gassed and shot at and half-starved, they have won.

On June 5 came news that the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline and the contemptible Dominion Energy's Atlantic Coast Pipeline are both now in no-go mode.

Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project cancellation is particularly welcome, in that the Supreme Court ruled quite recently that Dominion Energy could put the damn thing under the Appalachian Trail and through two national forests. But the company had already thrown tons and tons of ducats at legal fees and was facing yet more environmental impact statements.

What kind of name is "Dominion Energy" anyway? Sounds like something that would be run by Galactus or Magneto. Fuck domination! You wanna put your pipeline under the Appalachian Trail? I can tell you better places to put it. To shove it, actually.

The Dakota Access pipeline is better known because it runs through Native American lands and is strongly opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. This pipeline had been ordered to shut by President Obama in late 2016, but then the Orange Menace got elected and ordered the damn thing back into business.

But much of what the Menace has done to scuttle Obama's legacy has been done so stupidly and shoddily that it doesn't stand up in court. The DAPL is just another of these dumb-ass deals ... same as DACA.

Oil and natural gas are finite resources. Extracting them is costly and damaging to the environment. Wind and solar are infinite resources with much less environmental impact -- and it's not like these industries don't need workers!

Of course some fat cats won't rest until the last drop of oil is potentially sucked from the fossilized ground, but there is some dim hope that gas and oil are becoming as passe as land line phones.

And this hillbilly right here is rejoicing that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline won't wreak its devastation under the Shenandoah National Forest, the Monongahela National Forest, the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and even the Chesapeake Bay. For the love of all the Gods and Goddesses, busy and bored, can we just leave those mountains alone?

Free Advice about that Farm in the Mountains

One thing you learn, growing up in Appalachia: The land and weather aren't as sacred as they are savage. There just aren't enough bored gods and busy gods in the universe to make everything run smoothly when you call the mountains home.

Ask anyone who tries to farm this land. If you can't find that person (which wouldn't surprise me), visit the graveyards and look at the ages of the deceased. Also round up the folks like me, who, although they love the mountains with the white hot passion of 10,000 suns, can't live there because people gotta eat.

And yet you'll find a passel of starry-eyed optimists who seize upon a plot of mountain farmland, give it a pretty name, and commence to building a utopian community on it. This one will do "sustainable agriculture." This one will have bee hives and make mead. This one will grow artisan apples. Oh my, there's nothing more inspiring than a quiet evening in the country, when nobody's around and the whippoorwills are serenading one another from ridge to hollow! A modest living for a few people can surely be had, right?

This is where the utopian vision comes in. The optimist invites his friends to a gathering, often on a Pagan festival day, and the next year the friends bring their friends, because the property with the pretty name is so gorgeous. Within a decade, as the bees die and the apple blossoms take a frost and the groundhogs eat the peppers, the optimist has luckily happened upon a way to self-sustain: the paid festival. Okay, the land gets a little crowded, hectic, and trampled. But it's worth it. The money pours in, and the rest of the year things are so quiet and beautiful for the optimist and his small nucleus of companions.

All might be well in these cases, but it's really hard for the optimist not to become a capitalist. After all, isn't it nice to be able to make a genteel living in such a benign way? What's a festival? It's a chance for people who don't live in the mountains to come to a property, link elbows with like-minded naturists, and have a heart-warming and safe time. Word of mouth brings more and more folks each year, keeping the entrance fee quite affordable. So the optimist invests in sound equipment and heavy duty lawn mowers. He contracts port-a-potties and lines up hay bales in case it's rainy. And then he has festivals.

Here's where it goes one of two ways. In the first way, the optimist has one festival a year, upon which he stakes his whole budget. It's only held once a year, and that makes it very special, and -- again word of mouth -- numbers of attendees just keep climbing. In the other way, the optimist devises many festivals of different sorts and different sizes, flings them out across summer weekends, and waits for the customers to find the event that suits their tastes.

I personally know two such optimists who are finding out now that the land isn't sacred, it's savage. It will punish your ass no matter how lofty your intentions happen to be.

Case number one features the nicest optimist you would ever want to meet. His big once-yearly festival was hit by torrential rain. Cars skidded out of control on the parking hill, and people couldn't stand on their feet in the slippery muck. At a devastating financial loss, he had to close down a day early. There's just no way he can recoup that day of receipts at another event. This was his event. Chances are, next year, the sun will shine and the people will return. In the meantime, it's gonna be one bloody lean year.

The other case features the optimist with multiple festivals. This dreamer has invested more: bigger parcels of land, permanent bathroom facilities, even a dining hall. But as he increased the number and size of events, health problems surfaced. On two recent weekends, hundreds of festival attendees became violently ill with an aggressive and highly contagious stomach flu. And of course the Internet is blowing up over it, which has led at least one person I know to cancel her plans to attend a festival there next weekend. Nor does this person I know expect to get a refund, because you know that bottom line is going to be threatened.

The multiple-festival optimist will also recover and persist, but he's going to take a financial beating for years, and perhaps forever. Word of mouth works both ways. When people have fun, they bring their friends. When they get sick on your land, they tell all their friends who weren't there. It's a hole that's hard to climb out of, and in the meantime the optimist still has to eat and pay the notes on the parcel of land he bought for bigger festivals.

The one unifying factor between these two optimists? They both grew up in the city and lived in the city for a long time before taking up residence in the lovely rural spaces.

So here is Annie's free advice for anyone and everyone who wants to live la dolce vita on some bucolic rural farm: The land is untamed. It is untranslatable. It does not love you back. And the harder you work it, the worse it will treat you.

It's too late to ask my great-grandfathers if I am right about this, because they are all long gone. You'll just have to trust me. Would I lead you wrong? Of course not, I'm straight-up.

The economy has improved, so this free advice is really free. Heed it, though, and you'll always eat.

More Marching Philosophy

The March for Science, being ... well ... scientific, asked everyone who has committed to march to explain why they are doing it. No doubt this is data gathering for further targeted political activity, so I was only too glad to do it. Besides, the George guy paid me $200, again. Talk about the gift that keeps giving!

I am participating in the March for Science because my grandfather and father were scientists. Two of my uncles were doctors. I have a cousin who is a doctor as well, and another who is a chemical engineer. (All male, which for me is another issue.)

Science runs deep in our family. My grandfather grew up in a tiny house on a farm in Appalachia. He was the first to attend college, and he was only there two years. All the same, he learned to use a microscope. He went on to design microscopic drill bits for a company called American Celanese. The synthetic fibers he helped to create went into gas masks that were used during World War II.

Dad taught high school chemistry. He loved teaching. I've posted his closed-circuit t.v. lessons on YouTube, and they are still being watched!

For me, going to this march is rather (believe it or not) a Pagan practice. My ancestors were scientists. If they were alive, they would be appalled by climate change and by efforts to squelch research and data. That would infuriate them. Ancestral work is part of the Pagan path. This fits the bill. Dad and Granddad aren't here to express themselves, so I'm going to do it. I'm going to take one of my photos of Dad in his classroom and tape it (gently ) to a sign. So he can be there.

Dad and Granddad both voted Republican their whole lives, because Lincoln won the war. I fervently believe that neither one of them could have pulled the lever for Donald Trump -- Granddad because of his deep and genuine Christian faith, and Dad because, well, science.

I'm going away for a few days but will return in time for the Science March in Philadelphia. You'll see the photos here.

Anyone who tries to undermine science is a villain. In the Shakespearean sense.

Crossing the Delaware

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm Anne Johnson, and this is my safe space. Come on in. Weep with me, or have a cup of tea. Extra credit if you admire the upholstery on my settee.

My three readers know that I grew up in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, out where you can throw a stone right across Maryland and into West Virginia. I spent a lot of time along the Potomac, and what a beautiful river it is. At this very moment it is much cleaner than it was when I was a kid, and much wildlife has returned to its shores.

Rivers are funny things. They can sometimes be forded on foot (I'm thinking of the upper Potomac) and yet they so often serve as boundaries. They separate states and nations. In our culture, they also separate mindsets.

In September I went home to Appalachia and took a long walk along the Potomac. I was on the Maryland side, which is a national park. But I couldn't help looking across to West Virginia, literally a stone's throw. I could see little vacation cottages and even hear snippets of conversation over the still water. I thought, for the 10,000th time, how wonderful it would be to retire to West Virginia and buy a little cottage along the Potomac.

Then I got in my car, and I was almost forced off the road, quite intentionally, by a monster truck carrying two males and flapping a Confederate flag. They flipped me the bird as they roared around me at a no-passing part of the road. My sin? Pretty sure it was the New Jersey tags on my car.

Look at this pretty stretch of river! It's not the Potomac. It's the Delaware. This is the Delaware Water Gap, and I beheld it for the first time last weekend. Yes, I live 100 miles from the Delaware Water Gap and have never been there. Boy, have I seen the error of my ways!

The Delaware River separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. I've traversed it hundreds of times, riding the train between my home and Philadelphia. Never gave it a second thought, really.

It deserves a second thought.

Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I am intensely glad to live on the eastern bank of the Delaware River.

Gone, with the swoosh of a rebel flag from an over-sized pickup truck, is any last vestige of nostalgia I might have had for the homeland I have cherished all these years. Gone, with this presidential election, is any expectation that I could live among the generations of mountain people who have succeeded my grandparents and parents. I'm not painting with a broad brush in any glib way. This is painful to me. How can you do anything but mourn when a state that was created because of its anti-slavery population turns blood-red?

Well, one way is to embrace a whole new river. Like George Washington, I have crossed the Delaware triumphantly, and it turns out to be a swell waterway.

More about water in future posts. There will be future posts. Lots of them. Written and published on the eastern bank of the wet and wonderful Delaware River.

Teardown Times Three

There's a tenet of Paganism called the Threefold Law: Any harm you do comes back upon you threefold.

Today I am sending the intention of the Threefold Law against the developer who built this hideous mess:

This mess of McMansions sits on land that was once a farm. The land is about five miles from Antietam Battlefield.

Sitting in the midst of this heinous assault upon the rural countryside was this:

A Regency Era home (just ditch the porch and you'll see it) with the original cellar, flooring, and kitchen cabinetry. In 2008 I toured this home, because the developer of the McMansions expelled the tenant and left the place unlocked, hoping it would be vandalized.

There are all sorts of rules and regulations about tearing down houses that are on the Historical Register. Houses that probably served as hospitals during the Civil War. Houses that retain their original architectural elements.

Rules don't mean squat.

Today on her Facebook page, my sister lamented the overnight destruction of this property. It has been completely razed.

I tried to alert the county Historical Society to the plight of this home. I also fruitlessly searched for an old friend who was once a preeminent historian in the county. Sis, who lived within 200 yards of the house, did nothing.

There are three abandoned McMansions in Sis's neighborhood. The grass has grown up around these houses, and it's not clear if they are even up for sale. The families just stole away in the night, probably after being unable to make the mortgage note.

This is rural disaster. This is the character of a region being sucked down the drain.

I feel guilty. I should have done more to try to save that house.

But worse, I feel furious. This is a historic area, prime valley farmland, full 70 miles from Baltimore and Washington.

Threefold cursed be they who ordered the teardown of this house. Threefold cursed be they who carried out the act. And may the owners of the McMansions on the tract, one and all, face the reality of modern home construction. What do you think my sister's house will look like when it is as old as the one that was just razed?

Visit West Virginia: Harper's Ferry

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," offering free advice, and I pay you to take it! Send me an invoice after you visit Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.

There's not a single image on Google that begins to capture the beauty and majesty of Harper's Ferry. I've been around a little bit (not much, I must admit), and I have never seen a place more magnificent. Three states and two mighty rivers converge there, amidst roiling white water and sheer cliffs, with a quaint hysterical little town on the West Virginia side and pretty much rugged hiking/climbing on the others. I chose this modest photo as a teaser.

EXHIBIT A: HARPER'S FERRY FROM THE WEST VIRGINIA SIDE

My sister, who never left home, taunts me regularly with photos from one or the other clifftops of Harper's Ferry, usually accompanied by commentary on the local, abundant vulture population. Her husband popped the question on one of those cliffs. He knew what he was doing: No one could take in that vista and say no to anything.

My first job was in Harper's Ferry. I worked for the Park Service, as a visitors' guide in the general store exhibit. And here is that very store, by golly! But you can't smell it, which was the best part. We kept seasonal produce there, and a barrel of biscuits, and sides of cured ham, and coffee beans.

 My employment was part of a federal initiative called the Youth Conservation Corps, which was axed with great glee by Ronald Reagan a few years later.

Oh, happy summer so long ago, spent in blissful contemplation of the most stunning mountain scenery east of the Mississippi River! There is just. Literally. No describing this place. I'm not even going to try.

Harper's Ferry is about 50 miles west of Washington, DC. These days you park your car in a big lot outside the town and take a bus into the hysterical part. At first I was appalled to hear this, but when you visit and see how wonderful the town is without all the traffic congestion, it makes abundant sense. And of course, that's the easy, touristy way. You more rugged types can park at various places below the cliffs and hike your way around. Honestly, the climbs are steep as hell but not very time-consuming. When you get to the top, you are literally in the realm of the Sacred Thunderbird. You can look down upon them as they ride the thermals and bathe from the rocks in the rivers.

As for the rivers, they are, in no particular order, the Shenandoah and the Potomac.

I know my three readers, and you are all far away from Washington, DC. But if you ever do find yourself in that area, know this: Just 50 miles away is one of Gaia's utmost wonders. Go there. Remember the John Denver song, "Almost Heaven?" Ditch the "almost."

Saving West Virginia

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Do you have bumper stickers on your car? I have one on the rear bumper. It says "I (heart) Mountains." I bought it in West Virginia.

There's been a great deal written about West Virginia in the past week, some of it by Pagans who see the Mountain State as a microcosm for our rape of Gaia. Well, they are dead-on correct about that. And it's nice to see the collection plate going around to buy water and supplies for the thousands of people affected by the recent chemical spill. But sending packs of bottled water to residents of the Elk and Kanawha watersheds is akin to doling out broth to starving kids in Africa. Until the root reasons for environmental disaster are addressed and remedied, West Virginia is a region where calamities can happen and will happen.

Why would anyone want to live in West Virginia? It's a mess, isn't it?

I can answer both questions.

As an expatriate Appalachian, I can tell you exactly why people want to live in West Virginia. It is beautiful. If you can step out on your back porch and lose your breath in awe of the vista beyond your house, you live in West Virginia. Many of the people who live there have ancestry going back centuries. I could wax poetic, as some bloggers have, about the ecosystem, and the sense of place, and the grounding in tradition, and all of that. I'm not a poet. I tell it like it is. West Virginia is beautiful. If you live there, you don't want to leave ... especially for some big city in some flat tidewater state.

But West Virginia is a mess, isn't it?

West Virginia has been ruled by big monied interests since the first tunnel was dug into the first mountain in the pursuit of coal. The politicians are on the payroll of Big Coal, and they have been since that first tunnel was dug. The current crop of Democrats are only Democrats because Lincoln won the war ... they act like Republicans and are often the serious movers and shakers behind efforts to squelch the EPA. How do they get by with such antics? By persuading their constituents that the EPA will raise the jobless rate, and environmental activists are by and large replants from other areas of the country. (That is certainly not true in either case, I'm just giving you the politicians' talking points.)

Today's Sunday New York Times reports that only 4 percent of West Virginians are employed in the coal industry. Seem low to you? Be advised that you need far fewer workers to rip the tops off mountains with bulldozers than you do to go deep into the underground and blast the coal out. Nor is there a great need for a vast workforce to sink natural gas wells. The extraction of coal for our nation's energy needs is more and more done efficiently with machinery and a few people who know how to work it.

Fracking is also coming to West Virginia, big time. Once again, people who love the mountains will be convinced that they will have good jobs that will keep them in the mountains if they extract natural gas, and never mind how safe or unsafe it is, who cares?

So, Anne. Do you have any free advice on how to save West Virginia?

I sure do. Go there.

The whole state doesn't look like the picture above. Most of it is gorgeous. Do you love Gaia? Do you love the outdoors, the majesty of the land, the joy of exerting yourself on a hike, on a bike ride, on a raft? Would you love to spend an afternoon having a spa treatment at a mineral spring? Do you live in that great megalopolis on the East Coast, or in the Rust Belt? Take your tourist dollars and spend them in West Virginia. Heck, if the one-percenters can do it at The Greenbriar (to which I could not successfully link you *conspiracy*), you can do it at Spruce Knob.

Most of the Appalachian mountain states have vibrant tourism industries, but West Virginia lags behind, possibly due to the ridiculous and insulting notion that the entire state is an environmental wasteland peopled by violent, inbred, three-eyed hillbillies. What utter nonsense! By the same line of reasoning, New Jersey is nothing but gun-toting mafia dons plotting murder over plates of linguine.

Visit West Virginia, reader. Make your vacation plans. You'll find that, if you avoid the above-mentioned one percenter hideaway, you'll make a dollar holler. My personal favorite part of West Virginia is Berkeley Springs, pictured at the top of this post, and the adjacent Cacapon Mountains. If you're more of the rugged type, try hiking in the Alleghenies.

Pagans, if you want to help the Earth, West Virginia should be a pilgrimage destination. Every dollar you tip a waitress, every campground you reserve for a Ritual, every piece of original artwork or crafting you bring home, will help the state far more than a package of plastic water bottles, shipped and forgotten when the next disaster hits elsewhere.

But Anne ... I live thousands of miles from West Virginia. What can I do?

Turn down your heat, turn off the lights when you leave the room, power off your electronics when you aren't using them, live close to your workplace, take mass transit, use the laundromat, eat local and seasonal produce, have a small family. Notice I don't say write to your Congressman. That is whistling in the wind. I visited a coal-burning power plant this past summer, and I heard it right from the foreman's mouth. The plant burns less coal when there's less use of consumer electricity. Vote with your thermostat.

I moved away from the mountains when I was 18. I have lived in big cities or their suburbs ever since. But the lion's share of my tourist money has gone back to Appalachia. I will move home some day, either as a live person or in an urn. Either way, the mountains are my final destination. Fourteen generations of my ancestors are waiting for me there.

Dad's Bugs

There's nothing like a good Vulture Festival to perk one up. I was so blue in the previous months that I had no enthusiasm for the event, to the point where I almost forgot to order the costume. Ahhhhh. Feathers restored. All's well in the roost. Wherever it may be.

When my dad was in college at the University of Maryland (G.I. Bill, Class of 1948), he took an entomology course. No doubt he was inspired by my grandfather, who also took one (Shippensburg Normal School, 1923).

Prior to beginning the entomology course, Dad got a note from the professor. This was in the spring, for a class beginning in the fall. His assignment was to collect and mount a few insect specimens from where he lived and bring them to class the first day of school.

Well, Dad lived in the Appalachian mountains. It was sort of like letting a hungry kid loose at the candy kiosk in the mall. With very little effort, he filled two 18 X 18 boxes with the local six-legged buzzers, clickers, biters, chewers, and fliers. He had the Dobson fly in every stage of its existence, all chronologically in one corner of one box. He had a Luna moth the size of your hand and the minty-green color of a J Jill t-shirt.

The professor wanted to keep Dad's collections, but he wouldn't let her have them.

Dad was very protective of his insect collections when he was alive. Even though insects are tough and skeletal, they're also delicate if one bustles them about. However, as Dad got older, he got a little more adventurous. In his last visit to my house in Snobville, he brought both boxes and showed them to Heir's kindergarten class.

When he died, I brought the insect collections to Snobville for good.

My motto is "production for use" (which is why I don't own a firearm). Several times I have brought Dad's bugs with me to school to show my students. Mind you, I teach English. It just happens that there are several stories about insects in the English textbook.

Have you ever noticed this phenomenon? Every time I open those insect boxes, it's as if I'm immediately transformed back into my childhood, looking at them for the first time. Since I don't open the boxes very often, the novelty has never worn off. I still go "AhhhhhhAAAHHHHHH." So do my daughters.
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Well, there's no denying it. The insect collections are starting to show their age (which is in excess of 60 years, after all). The Luna moth is gone, replaced with a newer Monarch butterfly. There are a few basement crickets from Snobville that he added way after the fact for his granddaughters. Still, with the lugging to and from school, and the tendency for viewers to want to touch, legs are starting to slide across the interior, antennaes are bent or gone, some pins have become unmoored.

What am I going to do, sit the closed boxes on a shelf and say, "Don't ever touch those?" Forget it! People wear their diamond rings! Bugs on display, whether or not they can withstand the onslaught.

At the end of his life, Dad expressed regret about collecting insects. He felt bad that he had killed them (chloroform in a box or pill bottle). This, to me, shows his drift toward Druidry. He began to consider the fact that he had violated Nature for no good reason. This is why his collection will stand with no further additions. "Live and let live," is what I say -- even to that pesky yellow wasp that stung me five times after it had the bad judgment to crawl up the inside of my pants leg.

Seems like most people must take the "live and let live" philosophy these days, because insect collecting pins are themselves collectible. You can't find them anywhere. Not that I'm looking. Maybe you have a big box of them at home. If you do, hang on to them ... bugless and benign. The Dobson flies will thank you.

Taking Dad's bugs home from school now. See you soon.

Better Go Give Blood, Because ...

Okay, so I know we are all supposed to be rational, thinking beings, able to calmly and rationally think away everything that makes us feel bad. It's called the Power of Positive Thinking or something like that.

What I want to know is this: Who thought up all this "rational" business? Did that person ever feel anything at all? I'm not Mr. Spock, and damn it, I don't want to be! The pox take rationality! A plague upon its house!

My sister and cousins decided to sell the family farm in Appalachia. I can't stop them. This isn't some George Clooney movie.

And yes, you kind readers have reminded me that I will always be an Appalachian, even if my name isn't on some parchment in the  Bedford County Courthouse.

And yes, the man buying the property has called me multiple times (mostly on weekends at happy hour, when he's feeling particularly garrulous) to assure me that I will always be welcome to come and walk the land.

And YES, Bedford County long ago named the road where the farm is JOHNSON ROAD, so never mind that there's not a single Johnson left on it now ... it used to be nothing but Johnsons. Ergo, the name, Johnson Road. With all the Johnsons gone.

I am a raging beast over this.

What makes me rage is the fact that most rational, educated Americans are just that -- Americans. They may know what country their ancestors came from, but it's a dim memory. So they tell me to ground, center, grieve, and move on.

Trouble is, the rational Americans have gone unglued from their origins. They are blissfully unaware of the agony their ancestors must have felt when leaving the parent country behind. Let me tell you, being a first-generation expatriate is one agonizing haul. The Israelites were Psalming about it back in the Old Testament, when they got carted off to Babylon!

I am happiest now amongst my students, many of whom are expatriated from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and most of them not completely. They still identify as "Dominican" even if they have citizenship. It's great to be around them, because they have the same pride of place that I have, the same white-hot links to a home land. Make no mistake, Appalachia is the Dominican Republic within America. Many of the people who live in Appalachia consider themselves part of another nation, same as the Native Americans. Same as my Dominican students. Same as the Israelites, who wanted to dash their captors' children's heads against the trees.

I'm not going to dash anyone's head against a tree, but I can understand the passion that propels such feelings in an expatriate. In short, I feel like an exile. Maybe I'm not Dante, banished from Florence upon pain of death. But that's how I feel.

Therefore, I, Anne Johnson, do hereby plan to have the Zip code of Artemas, PA tattooed onto my back. I'm going to use part of the ill-gotten gains from the sale of the property to have this done.

Go ahead and be rational if you like. You might devise a method of purifying water ... but you won't write Inferno.

Almost Heaven, West Virginia

As always, howdy howdy howdy from "The Gods Are Bored!" How are y'all?

Well, I think I'm a day behind the bell-ringing black magicians who want to void our Constitution and declare American dependence upon Jesus Christ. But that's okay! Consider me the cute little janitor who mops up after Mr. Peabody's and Sherman's big parade!

Whoa, sports fans. That sure dates me, doesn't it?

West Virginia is the state that needs cleansing today. To this I am firmly dedicated. You see, my conversion to Paganism became official in West Virginia. And when I need to meditate with the Salmon of Wisdom, it is to West Virginia that I return.

Little U.S. history here: When the Civil War began, Virginia seceded from the Union. But fully half the state consisted of rugged mountaineers who farmed difficult terrain for a subsistence living, using only themselves and their children as the workers. These people did not support slavery. So they didn't want to secede. Magnanimous President Lincoln declared them a state all unto themselves. And if ever a division of territory was meet and just, this was the occasion.

As for my conversion to Paganism, it was a slow process, beginning with connection to the Divine Feminine through the Blessed Mother of God. Which of course has no place in Methodism, except for the teenager who gets to dress up like Mary for the Xmas pageant.

More and more I began to pray to the Blessed Mother. More and more I began to feel Faerie all around me. I read up on Discordianism (a real favorite) and began to explore the Druid path. But slowly.

Then it hit.

My dad broke his hip. He was in end stages of Parkinson's Disease. When I went to see him in the nursing home, he told me he saw Peter Pan in the doorway of his room, "just standing there, with his hands on his hips."

Shaken by the sight of my dad in his last days, I got in his car and drove to Berkeley Springs, WV. For years I had been dreaming of a sacred spring that would heal my sorrows. Literally, readers. Years. In my dreams I was always looking for it. Little did I know that it was Berkeley Springs, a town near where I grew up, but just far enough away that I only went there at night, for away football games.

By day I discovered that Berkeley Springs is a warm springs (charming place), and for twenty bucks you can bathe in a huge tub of heated springwater.

It's like that tub of Berkeley Springs water just washed away the Fertile Crescent god entirely. What was already eroding just plain exploded. I went into that bath house one person, and came out an entirely different person.

And when I emerged into the air, the whole universe had expanded before me. I felt Divine from a hundred thousand sources. Not just one pantheon, not just one vulture in the sky. Everywhere.

I felt Faerie too. Major Faerie. And yes, I could see Them at that moment. Some were in the spillway, some were playing with the children, and Some were across the street in the window of a store. (Jules Enchanting Gifts, see Sidebar.)

Three months later, this blog was born. It is dedicated to any and every deity that can or could be called "Pagan." I once told Isaac Bonewits that I'm not a polytheist, I'm an omnitheist. Show me your deity, and I will praise Him/Her/It.

I follow the Druid path, somewhat. I say somewhat because I even believe in the Fomorians and Fir Bolgs and all the deities displaced by the Celtic pantheon. None of this matters, though. Divine is everywhere. It cannot be quantified, reified, or understood with our limited brain function.

Thank you, thank you, West Virginia. State of my heart. Love of my life. Forget the "almost." The place is Heaven. Ask any bored deitiy. Ask me.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

--Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution
"When I die, won't you bury me in the mountains? Far away in my Blue Ridge Mountain home."

The Appalachian Mountains Must Dress Sexy and Ask for It

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored." Usually we're just riotously funny here, and it's been a minor hit. But there's a new danger on the horizon, and it's not a Weeping Angel.

This danger is hydraulic fracturing. Better known as fracking.

Just when you would think that Appalachia has been f***** enough for centuries, there's a new kid on the block. Well, actually it's an old bully -- Big Energy, with a new agenda: fracking (yeah, I know, even Puck couldn't have picked a better name).

Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from shale layers up to and exceeding a mile beneath the surface of Appalachia. And this time we're not talking about just West Virginia and Kentucky. This time we're including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland.

The way fracking works is, they drill a hole into the shale layer, and then drill a horizontal hole along a part of the shale bed. Then they pump chemical-laden water into the drill hole. The water causes pressure that releases natural gas, which is captured and piped to ... oh hell, to wherever they make the power that's driving this computer.

I went to a lecture last month at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences. One of the speakers said that there's a minimum of $1.3 trillion worth of natural gas just in the Marcellus Shale. Other shale layers beneath the Marcellus layer also have gas in them.

Well, I love sitting here using electricity to power my computer. So I'm not going to come down hard on fracking, even in the face of this early indication of what's to come:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/pennsylvania-fracking-spill-gas-blowout-2011_n_851637.html

Here's my take on it. We know the gas is there. Could we just possibly stop, take a cleansing breath, and create safe technology for extraction?

What's the frackin rush here? That gas has been in those rocks for eons and eons and eons! Could we be patient for 50 years and put our best minds to work on getting it out cleanly, and without so much disruption in the form of tanker trucks, refineries, and toxic waste?

Oh, of course not. It doesn't work that way. Big Energy wants to grab, grab, grab.

To which the bored gods say: "Frack you."

When the watershed that may be polluted is the Delaware River, rest assured that B.E. will have to move cautiously. What's in that fracking fluid? Are the citizens of Manhattan going to wake up one day, turn on the shower, and have flames (or radioactivity) come pouring out?

Patience is a virtue that is not often cultivated. Therefore, we at "The Gods Are Bored" inaugurate a new theme with a new slogan: "Don't pass gas fast."


It begs the question: What next for Appalachia? How many times can these mountains be raped, in how many ways? Oh, my dear friends! The mighty Appalachians are not "just asking for it." They are ancient and sacred ... and how we treat them will show just what we're made of.

Where Pilgrimage Takes Me

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Everything's hunky dory here today ... so far. Alpha is curled up in her cat basket, Beta is out under the tree waiting for a baby bird to fall from a nest, Decibel the parrot is unusually quiet. Heir is at work. Spare is puttering about the kitchen. And I, Anne Johnson, am here to entertain you! Good times, good times.

Since America is such a melting pot, people tend to think of themselves as being "from" somewhere, even if their families have lived here for generations. Until recently, I've been as guilty of that as anyone else. I've always loved telling people I'm "Scotch Irish."

Then one day recently, I found myself by a pretty little stream with nothing in particular to do, and I began to consider where I'm really from and what I should call myself based on my ancestors' "points of origin."

I'm Appalachian.

So far back as I can trace, three lines of my dad's ancestors were living in Appalachia a dozen generations ago. Long enough to outlast an Old Testament curse! So far back as I can trace on my mom's side, a German named Peter Mittelkauf arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Morehouse from a place called the Palatine in 1740. He moved straight to Western Maryland, not stopping first in Chester County, PA as Mom's Scotch-Irish ancestors did.

Dad's kin probably win the prize for longevity of occupancy in Appalachia. And what rich names appear in the family tree! There are Mountains and Kennards (sure sounds French to me), Tewells, Imeses, Bennetts, Martins, and (of course) Johnsons. There are Lashleys, which back in the day would have been pronounced Locks-lee.

Conservatively, if I were to book intercontinental, I would have to visit France, Germany, Scotland, and England. And in none of these places did my ancestors have anything going for them -- otherwise they would have stayed put. Where they did stay put was Appalachia. Ten generations. Twelve generations. Fourteen generations (the hardy Bennetts).

I am the first of my family to leave home and live elsewhere. Even my sister still lives in Appalachia.

Therefore, when I think of connecting with Ancestor, my thoughts do not wander to Stonehenge, but rather to Hopewell Township, PA. I like kilts and bagpipes excessively, but given a choice I'll go with a basement bluegrass band first. In fact, bluegrass music bears out my point. It is a coherent melding of African, Scottish, Irish, and English rhythms, melodies, and instrumentation. It is uniquely American music.

You could argue, of course, that probably a thousand generations of my ancestors lived in Scotland. Maybe they fought with Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. Well, that would be a point of pride indeed. But still I would have to return to one fact: At some point, recognizing the immense danger and strong possibility of death, my ancestors climbed on little rickety wooden ships and braved the fierce Atlantic. Then, although life was no bowl of cherries in the fortress hills of Appalachia, they settled in and stayed. And loved it.

Where are my ancestors from? Appalachia. Where do I pilgrimage? Appalachia. Hail the hills and valleys, hail the creeks and cliffs. Hail the spot that will be my grave among my people.

Now, you say, "Anne. Wait a minute. You're chucking the whole of history and settling for a mere 14 generations?"

Okay, scrap that! Let's get serious about this ancestor piece!

Come, all of you reading this. We are all siblings. Let's do the deep ancestor crawl! Off we go to East Africa, to the Afar Valley, to Kenya and Tanzania. There to meet the bored gods that unite all humankind in the cradle of Homo sapiens.

Is that too far back? I don't know. I like thinking of all of us as one big family. It's true, they say. Still, I think I'll let someone else sort out that family tree. And once they do, they can find me on Polish Mountain, sticking little American flags around Joseph Bennett's marker. To me, that's pilgrimage.

My Awesome Solution for Better Living and Working Conditions in West Virginia and Kentucky

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Should be grading papers. Blogging instead. I'll just give all my students A's, and everyone will be happy!

See how easy it is to be a teacher?


Today's sermon: Improving the economy of West Virginia and Kentucky

Why do men (and a few women) go deep into mountains and labor under dangerous working conditions that could get them killed at any time? Emm, I dunno ... maybe for the money? If coal mining was the only decent job where you lived, and you were hired to do it, would you say, "Oh, no, I think I'll work at Wal-Mart instead," and then go toil at pennies on the dollar? Not me. I'd strap on the helmet and spend my days in the dark.

You might say, "Anne, coal miners could move somewhere else and work in another occupation." To which I would reply, "Yes, many West Virginians emigrated to Detroit and Akron and such places to be auto manufacturers. But gosh. Hard as it is to imagine, people who live in the mountains love the mountains and want to stay there."

Cutting to the quick, here's my handy solution to the unemployment problems in two of our nation's most beautiful and scenic states.

First, you pass a law legalizing marijuana growth and use in West Virginia and Kentucky. All marijuana must be grown, processed, and used within those two states. Voila! An instant and ongoing economic stimulus! You'd have farming, processing, and that perennial moneymaker, tourism. You'd need border guards and extra law enforcement. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs. And none of them underground!

I suggest this sensible solution because it has worked in The Netherlands. The tourist industry there has boomed with the legalization of weed. Turns out that very few natives smoke the stuff. It's sold primarily to tourists.

So we fire up the farms and the processing plants (jobs), we designate some fine resort areas for pot cafes (The Greenbriar springs to mind -- you reading this, Al Gore?), and we step up border vigilance (jobs). All of this would lead to an influx of tourists spending money on food (jobs), pot (jobs, as above), lodging (jobs), and souvenirs (jobs, but probably in China).

The only downside I can see to this is that some people in the western states might say it's not fair that they would have to fly to Charleston or Louisville to visit a pot cafe. Oh well. You have Yellowstone. Deal with it.

To those who would object to pot use on moral grounds, here is my response:

1. Which makes a person meaner, a doobie or a fifth of Jack?
2. Marijuana use was legal until the 1930s, was supported by the pharmaceutical industry, and was only vilified by William Randolph Hearst because hemp was used to make paper, and Hearst had bought scads of forest to cull for paperwood.

Hemp! Oh, for the love of fruit flies, I forgot all about hemp! Fabric! Paper! And the manufacture thereof. More jobs!

Yes, I know this will never happen. But a lot of sensible things never happen. Doesn't mean they aren't sensible.

This advice is offered to the citizens and lawmakers of West Virginia and Kentucky free of charge as a courtesy of "The Gods Are Bored." But, folks in those parts ... if you decide to do it, can I get some comps?

Need Cheer

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," blue as the Wild Pacific on a rainy New Jersey day!

Since I got a full-time job, I've been pondering the possibility of buying out my family members and owning the family property on Polish Mountain outright. Just now the 76 mountainous acres are one-sixth mine.

My uncle and cousin are living there right now. My cousin had a realtor come out from Cumberland, Maryland. The gig is up, dear readers. The farm is worth almost $200,000. Why? The views. The size. The location, just a two-hour drive from all those deer-blasting Washington lobbyists.

I can't afford to buy the farm. I will never be able to afford to buy the farm. Well, let's never say never, but let's say BIG FAT PROBABLY I'll never have the dough to buy the farm.

Okay. So there are two things I could do. I could wallow in self-pity, weep and wail, or I could ask the faeries to help me devise a Plan B.

ATTENTION ALL FAERIES: ANNE NEEDS A PLAN B TO EASE THE PAIN OF LOSING HER BELOVED FAMILY FARM! FRONT AND CENTER!

Puck: Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Take the money and go on a spree! Why should I have to say anything more? You're 55 miles from the Jersey Shore!

Anne: (weeps) The Jersey Shore? That's my consolation prize? @#$@##@$!

Princess: Trees and stones, bucks and does... that place is a dump. Buy some new clothes!

Anne: Geez, no wonder the fairy tales always make faeries look flip. Come on, faeries ... I'm crazy with grief!

Puck: Crazy with grief. She needs some relief! Let's go to Wendy's. Where's the beef?

Princess: She wants a barn full of rusty old tools. With her share of the booty she could buy a few jewels!

Anne: For the very first time in my life I'm actually looking forward to an afternoon of teachers' meetings. Gosh. I think I'll go early and sit in the auditorium. Puck. Princess. Thank you ever so very much for your help ... NOT!

Host of Faeries: We want chocolate! We want chocolate!

Some days, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Ah well, according to my handy Mayan calendar, this is the week of the Vulture.  Flap, flap. Self-pity is crap.

Rat Fink Envy

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," the biggest, baddest, boldest blog on the block!

Sorry. Teaching alliteration today. Sticks in the brain.

When it comes to keeping stuff, there are hoarders who keep everything (like my spouse), and pitchers who toss everything (like me).

My sister is a selective hoarder. She has kept everything from her childhood that made her happy. Since her childhood was extraordinarily unhappy, she really clings to the stuff that gave her solace.

Thus has she clung to several vintage Rat Finks.

I'm still on my netbook today, so I don't have the pictures of Sis's Rat Finks that I published in previous posts. (Ah! "published in previous posts!" Alliteration!) But such is the power of the Internet that someone trolling for Rat Finks emailed me about one of the best ones in Sis's collection. Big bucks for a little plastic leering rat, small enough to stand on a quarter.

Back in the day, you could get a Rat Fink from a gumball machine for the lavish investment of a nickel. Some Finks had whiskers. Some didn't. Most were blue, but there were other colors too. I had a magenta one and an orange one (with whiskers) that I was fond of. They fell off my key chain in 8th grade, never to be seen again.

I'm 100 percent sure Sis will not part with her Rat Fink for the $75 offer she received from the interested Fink fan. I can almost see her chuckling at the thought of putting her childhood treasure into a postal mailer for that paltry sum. (postal ... paltry .;. getting the alliteration drift?)

We all take solace in something from our childhoods. And while the Rat Fink collector may envy my sister for having an orange, whiskered Fink, I envy her for having portable plastic happiness.

Because the thing that gave me solace as a child was the 75 acres of Appalachia from which my great-great-great grandfather marched to the Civil War. You'd need a massive vat of whiskered Rat Finks to buy my childhood treasure. Better to love the ugly little gumball machine toy than the mountain property that you want to keep hold of but probably won't be able to, given the rapacity of relatives, realtors, and now the new demon, Columbia Gas.

Sometimes I wish I could bring back my joyous memories by holding a tiny Rat Fink in my palm, At other times -- most times -- I think it's better to embrace a whole mountainside, the country of my blood, my soul in landscape form. Maybe I'll have to watch my farm get sold out from under me, but at least that doggoned mountain isn't going to fall off a key chain and be lost forever.

Passing Gas

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," ranting and raving and generally misbehaving since 2005! I'm your host, Anne Johnson. From a long line of Artemas, Pennsylvania Johnsons.

Seriously. If you write "Johnson" and "Artemas, Pennsylvania," and the Zip code on an envelope and send it, the letter will fall into the hands of someone related to me.  Probably my uncle Foggy. They send all the weird stuff to him. He drew this picture of our homestead. Isn't it nice?

This past week there was a meeting in Artemas, Pennsylvania at the community center for all the residents of that area. The topic: drilling for and storing gas from the Marcellus Shale Deposit, a repository of natural gas that sits about 2 miles underground deep beneath Pennsylvania, mountain Maryland, and West Virginia.

The meeting was held so that residents could talk to a representative of Columbia Gas Transmission and Geokinetics USA Inc., the company that has been browbeating and misleading ... errrr ... trying to browbeat and mislead locals into allowing it to do seismic tests for natural gas on peoples' properties.

I don't think Columbia's hired hack was quite prepared for the reception she got in Artemas (permanent population, 7). Sounds to me like the entire lower half of Bedford County turned out to give the corporate shill a butt-kicking, richly deserved.

First, the good people of Artemas demanded a "town hall"-style format. Then they let fly. I'm sure that shill was surprise to find herself among a hostile crowd that would rather have pure drinking water and a nice view of the sunset than pockets full of Big Oil money.

The last time I posted about Marcellus Shale drilling, I was on the fence about it. No more.

First of all, I'm grateful that this process is occurring in Pennsylvania, because the Philadelphia Inquirer has been covering it. Today, in a pro-business article meant to ease fears that the drilling would foul local watersheds and personal wells, the newspaper printed a graphic of how the drilling process works, what is sent into the ground, and what comes out.

Thanks, Inquirer. This gas drilling looks to me like just the latest creative rape of Appalachia. NIMBY, bitches!

Second, this corporate entity, Columbia Gas Transmission etc. etc. etc. USA Inc., has used tactics that were based on a snobby certainty that Appalachian people can be easily fooled and manipulated, lied to with impunity, and otherwise trod upon.

CGT, etc. etc. etc. sent letters to residents of Bedford County and its neighboring Maryland county, Allegany, basically telling people that they had to sign on for seismic testing on their properties, or it would be done without their consent under an eminent domain kind of thing.

With the rich history of corporate greed all around them, the residents of southern Bedford County said, in essence, "Take your briefcases and lawyers and go back to Texas." There's a recession on, and no one's buying boondoggles anymore.

Thank goodness, because based on these drawings in the Inquirer, the earnest collection of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale Deposit will create a wasteland and call it progress. Yes, there is a lotta gas trapped deep beneath those craggy mountains. But it's not nearly enough to make a serious difference in our country's energy needs.

It's kind of whacked when you think about it. The sun beams down every day. The wind blows every day. And yet we've got to drill miles and miles deep into ancient mountains to get the power to cook our grits?

Am I missing something?

In conclusion, as a taxpayer in the township for which Artemas serves as community center, I put down my dainty foot and say ... no. The only thing that will be drilled on my property during my ownership will be a new well. For baths and drinking and such. That kind of well.

Not. In. My. Back. Yard. Bitches.

And I'm glad my neighbors and kinfolk agree.