Mountain Blog

Quote of the week ...courtesy of a friend

"In my Father's house are many mansions...But not nearly as many as there are in Marion County."

posted by Dave Peyton @ 10:32 AM 2 comments

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President

posted by Dave Peyton @ 11:24 PM 1 comments

Butterflies are free

Why do butterflies gather on a single moist spot in the gravel?

I found these in the gravel along old U.S. 60 today in Fayette County.

I'm glad I met them.

Thanks, God.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 10:44 PM 1 comments

Just another intermittant stream.....

There's a special place along the New River, just before you get to Anstead, where a mountain stream tumbles fromk the mountain into the river. In the summer, the falls are nearly dry, but in this wet month of April, it roars and tumbles. This is the way it appeared today as my wife and I drove Old U.S. 60 to see spring in all its splendor.

Because it dries up in the summer, I suppose you could call it an intermittant stream. That means the strippers could destroy it if they found coal on the mountain above it.

May that never happen. This picture is imprinted forever on my memory if it does. And it's why I love West Virginia.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 10:36 PM 1 comments

Make me look like Matt

I told the barber to cut off most of my thinning and graying hair and make me look like Matt Lauer.

So, what do you think?

posted by Dave Peyton @ 10:32 PM 3 comments

Maybe it's the smirk

My first reaction to Don Surber's Blog telling me I, and most Americans, are wrong about George Bush was anger. How dare anyone tell me that I am wrong? How dare anyone say that the vast majority of the American people are wrong about how they feel about their president?

But I didn't react immediately. And I'm glad I didn't.

I asked my wife to read the blog and she did. She said it's not that she has lost faith in the president because of his botched war in Iraq, althoiugh she has (and so have I). It's that smirking smile he wears when he addresses the press, the people and apparently everyone. I wonder if he has what we West Virginians call that "shit-eating grin" when he talks to his cabinet behidn closed doors.

I had teachers in high school and college who had that same smirk. I never trusted them either. I learned little or nothing from them. I couldn't. I was always wondering why they smiled that way? Did they think they were better than I? Were they thinking how dumb I was? What were they hiding? Nothing good, I was sure.

But back to Bush.

First and foremost, I am not a fanatic about anything. Despite the fact I am a columnist, I do not rage against every news story that I read. Heck, I don't even rage about Bush every day of my life. People who shouldn't be dying in Iraq are dying because of his intractable path. We need to get out of that country because it's not in our interest or the world's interest for us to be there. In due time we will get out and we will chalk the war up to another mistake, one of the many this coiuntry has made in the last 200-plus years.

I am not alone in the way I feel. About 60 percent of the American people feel the way I do and we believe Don Surber is wrong. Some of us scream that belief in the streets and on Internet blogs. Others just believe it and wait till the next election to let our feelings be known. It will all work out, perhaps not soon enough, but eventually.

Meanwhile what about the smirk and what it represents? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. A documentary I recently saw on TV said that, during the era of the robber barrons, one-eighth of the population controlled seven-eighths of the wealth. I wonder what it is now? Maybe not as out-of-kilter as that but it's getting there.

I see Bush and his ilk as enabling the rich while hobbling the poor. History says that America won't put up with this forever. We'll change it. We have to. Equality has what has made this country strong. Not unbridled capitalism. Not fear. And certainly not smirking politicians.

So tell me I am wrong. No problem. If I go down beause I am wrong, I can be cheered by the fact that the vast majority of Americans are with me. For some, it's just an uneasy feeling that things are not the way they should be. For others, it's a certainty that a smirking president is not what we want or need.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 4:59 PM 4 comments

Take that , you local retail a**holes

The told us when the big retailers replaced the mom and pop stores, we'd have a better selection of merchandise in Huntington.

They didn't tell us that even the big guys run out of things, even with their high-tech re-stocking protocols.

This is a story about a certain kind of face cream my wife likes and how it wasn't avaiable in Huntington, at least not at CVS or even Wal Mart.

We are both under the weather. And we don't need to spend $15 worth of gas and four hours going to every damn drugstore and cosmetic counter in the Tri-State looking for Dove Face Care Sensitive Essentials Day Cream.

So when we got home, I went to Google and put Dove Face Care Sensitive Essentials Day Cream in the search box. I found at least four places on the Internet where it could be purchased.

I ordered a jar from Amazon.com. It will be here in three to five days. My wife has enough to last that long.

I've done this a dozen times before and each time I get this wondereful warm feeling that no longer am I at the mercy of local retail stores.

I'm sorry, but that that's the kind of a**hole I am.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 7:06 PM 0 comments

Damn WalMart Anyway!

I went to WalMart yesterday and bought groceries and spring gardening stuff.

When I went to check out, the clerk said the bill was $78.97. I responded that I was in a financial pinch and I would pay only $50.00 for the merchandise. A manager was called and he refused the offer. So I left the goods on the checkout counter and walked out.

Well that didn't happen. But something similar happened at the South Charleston Samping Plant where uniokn workers said no to a plan to reduce their pay and benefits by the owners of the plant, ironically named Union Partners LLC.

If I truly tried to negotiate a price with WalMart, folks would think I was crazy. But I suspect there are those who believe the workers at the plant are too strident if not downright economically suicidal. We may even hear that from some in the right wing who think the only thing blue collar workers shoiuld says is "Pleas, Sire, May I have some more?"

Why didn't the stamping plan simply declare the cost of doing business at the plant incompatible with the future of the American auto industry and just shut it down? Probably because they thought they could put the blame on the workers.

Well, the workers as well as most other folks in West Virginia who know what the company is trying to pull won't fall for that.

As one employee told a tevivision news crew, if she doesn't accept the wage and benefits reduction, she'll lose her home. If she did accept the offer, her pay wouldn't be enough to pay the mortgage, so she'd still lose her home.

The union workers made the right decision and the owners should be ashamed they asked in the first place.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 10:24 AM 1 comments