Tallman: One of our own speaks for us in The Gaurdian (UK).

In a rather long and eloquent article for The Guardian (UK), Ed Tallman who lives in Pocahontas County and is the editor of the Pendleton Times, which apparently has no website that google can find (and that's a shame), writes about an article that immediately intrigued me with its title "Winning over West Virginia: Why are Appalachians different from other working-class whites? It isn't that they're more racist."

The article is here if you would like to read it.

I find his approach refreshing. I wonder if it's being run anywhere here?

He brings up that Senator Jim Webb book again. You know, I've railed against that damned book when I probably should've railed against the quoters because I haven't read the damned thing and I'm going to have to do it now. It's just going to keep coming up in "how people define us." Maybe I'll do a review when I finish reading it.

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Mourning doves are perhaps the stupidest creatures on this earth. They've been around a lot since we moved in here eight years ago, but this year some of them chose to nest around my house.

Old-timers say it's a sign of good luck if a bird nests on your house. It might spell good luck for me, but it doesn't seem to do much to help them. The babies are tres stupid. I have to physically get out of the car to shoo them out of my way. Every morning I expect to look out to see the buzzards cleaning up what's left of one that wouldn't move out of the way of a car.

The top of our garage is kind of level with the breakfast room windows. Mama mourning dove stands on the pitch top of the roof feeding a Baby mourning dove (who is nearly Mama's size). I don't know if you've ever watched baby birds eat, but they shove their little beaks and as much face as they can into Mama's open beak and while she cheep-cheep-cheep's up the grub, Baby kinda rocks all over while making a staccato whistle twit of pure joy each time his noggin bumps against Mama's face. It sounds almost like they're having an argument, but one that makes them somehow happy. So, standing on the very tip-top part of the roof where the two sides join isn't so easy for excited while blinded by goo baby bird. It's such a chore for him to stay up there. I just know one day I'm going to see him tumble down the side.

Curmy hates them. I think it's because he's really soft-hearted when it comes to animals and the stupid ones tend to die pretty easily.

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Saturday I went to a blogger meet-up in Huntington where I got to see Maura and meet Oncee and his lovely lady, Blair. We had a really nice time. We ate at Flapjack's, and the food was good. I love a place that serves a good breakfast, especially if they serve a good link sausage.

For those of you who double-dog dared me to wear the "Religions of the World/Shit Happens" shirt, it was worn. I figured that in a college town the locals would've been desensitized from so many shirts that say "Fuck ______" or worse that they'd barely pay attention to my shirt. We'd already been there about an hour or so before someone did say something about it.

There was a table of three older men seated beside us (and the tables are eversoclose in there). I can't remember what I'd just said to Maura that made vocal old dude feel like piping up. All I remember is catching the phrase "wearing a shirt like that." I said something to him and I can't remember what it was now. It was neither venomous nor penitent, so it stoked neither anger nor a desire to talk to me further (I win). Then I noticed the gentleman sitting beside him was wearing a colorfully breezy old-fashioned summer suit and had some kind of pin on his lapel. The whole vibe he gave off was "old country preacher." If he would've started quoting lines from the Robert Mitchum role in The Night of the Hunter, I would've run out of that place screaming.

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From Chip Collis, an addition to our "Queen of the Hillbillies" theme about which I'm only allowed to say:

"I got an e-mail from that amazingly funny, so-handsome-that-if-it-weren't-for-Curmy [Buzzardbilly would be a pile of long-forgotten dust beside the highway of bad decisions]... Chip who is in the Obama fellows program in Toledo and who has bestowed on himself a new title...." He has "taken the liberty of dubbing [him]self a knight in [my] service." (Can you tell he wrote all of that, except for the editorial notes I added?)

And he signs his e-mail:

Sir Chip Collis, ROBBERY
Royal Order of BuzzardBilly, Empress Regnant, Y'all

Isn't that a hoot!! I guess if people wanted to become beknighted I could come up with a graphic to display your Sir or Ladyship. What do you think?