Baby in the Sun - 2011

 Note to readers old and new.  Before Dave in the Shack I wrote a weekly blog at work, as the director of a youth service/child welfare agency, Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley (YSB).  I wanted to explain to board members, donors, referral sources, staff, and the community what we did, why we did it, and how we felt in the process.  Writing that blog became all I wanted to do.

I wrote this eleven years ago, two years before I retired.  Besides Dave in the Shack, I have begun writing for the local newspaper.  I'm limited to 550 words.  Here's a short version of an old YSB blog post that appeared in the newspaper.  Still relevant today.  Thought I would share it with you.

Baby in the Sun – 2011

She’d be eleven years old now.  

Jackie showed up in my doorway on her way out the back. 

“You should come see this baby.”

“What baby?”

“We have a newborn in foster care.”

I followed Jackie out the door. 

It was hot.  There were no clouds.  Jami was standing by her van holding an infant carrier. 

“Look,” she said.

We looked at the baby without speaking.

The baby was wearing a lime green onesie.  Her feet were bare.  There were wisps of toenails on each miniature toe.  Her legs were tiny, short shins and knees the size of thimbles.

She slept with her arms folded across her chest. When she breathed her nostrils flared.  Her skin was paper thin and white.  I thought I could see through her eyelids. Each fold in her ear was perfectly formed.  Her dark hair held a barrette with a lime green bow. 

She breathed in, held her breath, and then sighed, her mouth moving.  When we talked, we didn’t look at each other but at the baby.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.  “What’s her name?”

“Doesn’t have a name yet.”

“Why not?”

“The mother hasn’t chosen one.”

“How old?”

“Three days.”

“She seems so small.  Premature?”

“Full term and healthy, just little.”

I didn’t want to learn the rest of the story.  There is a dark side to babies in foster care.

“Her mom?”

“Drugs in the baby’s system at the time of birth.”

“Where is she?”

“With a boyfriend in the shelter.  They were evicted.”

The baby made a fist and touched it to her cheek.  I saw a faint smile.  I thought of my own beautiful daughter, now 28.

“Heroin?”

“Yes.”

It seems like its heroin so often now.

“Mom is afraid she can’t quit.  Said she’s tried before.”

I looked at the baby’s toes.  They moved a little.

“But her mom will name her right?”

“We think so.  She has another day.  If she doesn’t the hospital picks a name.”

“Mom needs to name her.  It may be the only thing she ever gets from her mom.”

“I think she will.  We’ll help.  She talks to us.  She wants drug treatment now, but we’re afraid she’ll change her mind.”

Finding an inpatient bed when you need it, when the addict is ready to go, is a crapshoot.  Successful treatment and months and months of clean random drug tests is the only way mom will regain custody of her baby. 

“The father?”

“Not yet identified.”

“Family?”

“Not coming forward and mom isn’t helping.  The baby went to the doctor and is going back to our foster home.  It’s tough.  She didn’t sleep well last night.  She has a tiny tummy and seems agitated.”

Help us I thought.  Help our social workers say the right things and help the judge make the right decisions as this baby begins her life.

Help her mother and father find the strength to be parents.  Help her foster parents love and care for her but not break their hearts when or if her parents prove able to fill that role.

But most of all help this tiny human.  May she know family, friends, and all the good that exists in the world.  Help us all. 

Minutiae

 I changed my computer equipment in the shack.  A young guy came from out of town to help me set it up.  He’s a whiz at hardware and software and helps me remotely through a program called Team Viewer.  He upgraded my computer to increase its operating memory and fixed me up with a much better monitor.  It makes a big difference.  I’ll share his name and contact info if you message me.  Boomers need all the help they can get.

In preparation of his visit, I cleaned off my desk.  I’d planned to clean the shack, or at least the desk, for quite a while.  Things get dirty more quickly in the shack.  That or they don’t get cleaned as often.  The jury is out on that, though not according to my wife.  When she visits the shack she looks all around, pointing out things like cobwebs.  Her eyes are better than mine. 

I put everything from the desk in a cardboard box.  My desk and the nesting table under it holding the keyboard are made from the same slab of hickory.  I hadn’t seen it by itself, uncluttered, for years.  It was a custom-built gift, like other things in the shack, handmade by a person I know.  It’s a handsome piece of furniture.  When I washed it off and polished it, it looked even better.

After the new computer was set up, I slowly took things out of the box only as I needed them, with the hope that my desk remain relatively uncluttered.  It’s not working because clearly, I don’t need all these things. I want them.  Big difference.  Some things must be there.  Speakers, my web cam, the Alexa puck.  From there it gets fuzzy.

The first things I brought out of the box, tissues, was in response to clear need.  My nose was running.  I brought out one of my mom’s old custard cups that holds paper clips because, you guessed it, I needed a paper clip.

But when getting that out of the box, I saw the cool wooden pencil cup that our old neighbor on the farm, Henry Dunlap, turned on his lathe in his basement.  He gave it to me one day when I was a kid.  I rode my bike down the blacktop to his house to visit him.  I looked at the wooden cup in his woodshop, taking it off a shelf and turning it this way and that in my hands. 

“You like that?” Henry said.

“Yeah.  I like the rings around it.  The different colored wood.”

“It didn’t turn out the way I wanted.  How about you take that home?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  Consider it a gift from your old neighbor.”

When I left on my bike, I put it the pouch of my hooded sweatshirt for the ride home.  I’ve had it ever since.

I keep binder clips, just another type of paper clip, and a nail clipper in there.  Could I put those things in the custard cup?  Sure.  Why not do that?  Because I like looking at Henry’s wooden cup.  Reminds me of home and him.  And that’s the way it starts.  Not a necessary object.  Desired.  Different standard.

I needed a pencil, so I fished around in the box and got one.  As I did, I saw my single pencil holder.  Everything has a story.  I’ll try to make this brief.

I was cutting up a skinny stick of spruce for my wood stove, and as I did, I saw it had a very small hole running through the center of the stick.  I thought the lead of a sharpened pencil might fit in there perfectly.  And it did.  I cut a short section of it off, stuck a pencil in it, and it fell over.  I made the next one a little taller. It stood up fine with the pencil inserted.

Perfect for keeping your often used Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Soft pencil handy and standing up.  It became a fixture on my desk.  I looked at it for weeks and thought it was missing something.  I looped a rubber band around the stick several times, gathered small feathers I had found in the yard over years and brought into the shack, and stuck them in the rubber band. 

There were the oriole feathers, the cardinal feathers, a very nice Blue Jay feather, and then some nicely striped gray and black feathers I can’t identify.  Maybe from a barred owl.  I stuck them in the rubber band, sticking up like the pencil.  They looked good.  A straight up yellow pencil backed by various colored and similarly positioned vertical feathers.  Hard to keep a thing as good as that hidden away in a box.

Soon after that I brought out my Waffle House coffee mug that holds more pencils, pens, scissors, the magnifying glass, the wrench that adjusts the gizmo that holds up my computer monitor. Think of it as a toolbox.   And where do you want your tools?  Handy.  Right on your desk.  And what better thing to hold them than a Waffle House cup?

Days went by.  I brought out the little wood cone I’d glued to a small piece of walnut.  I have some sturdy plastic toothpicks in there and a good straight pin.  Always good to have those on hand, toothpicks, and a pin.

That’s about it for useful desk items unless you count the paperweights.  I don’t find the need to weigh down paper often, but by God when that need arises, I have three of them.  Together if lying flat, which paperweights are designed to do, they take up too much space.  I want to see the grain of the hickory too.  So, I’ve decided to rotate them.

I’m starting with the heavy glass dome given to me by a family friend named Kerem.  The glass catches light and magnifies a very detailed painted scene plastered to the bottom of the dome depicting five Turkish bigwigs at what is possibly an important meeting in a room with mosaic tiled walls.  Maybe an ancient Turkish castle or mosque.  Very pretty shades of blue.  Seems as if I always see something different in there. 

Kerem is a Turkish man who studied in Chicago and went on to become a successful engineer specializing in metals.  He and my daughter Moe were a big help building the shack.  I don’t see him anymore, but when I see that paperweight, I think of him. 

The other two paperweights are a gorgeous, polished geode and a beautiful piece of green glass which was pressed into an old New Orleans water meter and bears its imprint.  You can’t hide these things away for good.  At least I can’t.

The last thing out of the box is the least necessary and most frivolous.  It’s a cupped piece of red glass that I bought on Bainbridge Island in Washington State from a woman who made various things and sold them in her yard.  She made the cast concrete image of her mother’s face with a bird’s wings wrapped around it which hangs on one of my oak trees.  After I bought that face, I bought a little piece of red textured art glass that reminded me of the tractor seats we sat in on the old Minneapolis-Moline tractors on our farm.

Those seats were mounted on a piece of steel like a diving board between the rear wheels.  When you drove over ridges in the field, like going across corn rows the wrong way, that seat tossed you up and down like a trampoline.  We stood most of the time.  I don’t know why that design caught my eye, but it did.

Today I was washing that piece of red glass (don’t know how it got so grimy) and saw it had cursive writing and a date etched on the back.  It was important to that woman on Bainbridge Island, or she wouldn’t have signed it.  And it’s also important to me or I wouldn’t still have it. 

But in this case, it’s not only the glass, it’s what I keep in the glass that I value.  I have a bunch of little rocks, tiny seashells, various found objects.  Anyone can spot and save big things they see on the beach or in the woods.  Little things are harder.  They’re small treasures.  Here’s a partial inventory.

A dried, beautifully tan, long dead, and complete June bug, a tiny worry doll from Guatemala, a small mottled piece of granite, a rock that looks all the world like a pinto bean, a tiny shard of green glass, a tiny solid metal top (maybe a dreidel) that doesn’t spin very well, various shells, an even tinier shard of white glass, a shell with a hole in it I was going to make a necklace with, a very round blue rock, what I thought was a rock that looked like a piece of wood which turned out to be an old dried half of an almond.  (Upon further review, I threw that away.)  Also in the mix is a miniature grey solid piece of metal that looks like a box and says “Altoids”, a broken piece of a metal gear of some kind, and to top it all off a splinter of wood with a hole in it that makes it look like the profile of a long beaked bird’s head.  An egret.  Maybe a heron.

I had a shiny buckeye in there too, but it was large and out of place, so I put it beside the piece of glass.  We had a buckeye tree in our timber when I was a kid, and I always carried one in my pocket.  You don’t come across a good buckeye like that very often. 

Buckeye and all, that little display is no bigger than your hand.  Lots of things in a small space. I like it.

While I was at it, I also brought out the very neat owl pellet I found under one of my oak trees last year.  I found it fits perfectly on top of a computer speaker.  And aside from the stuff that constantly changes; various notes, scratch paper, miscellaneous mail, scraps of paper kept to remind me of upcoming things, and bills I intend to pay, that is what’s on the desk.

Still in the box are two paper weights awaiting their turn on the desk, a checkbook, other bills I may never pay, and a small number of things headed for the waste basket and not worth mentioning.    

In the end my desk is nearly, though not quite, as cluttered as it was before.  What’s happening here?  What would Marie Kondo, the Japanese woman who wrote a book on tidying up, say about my approach?  She would say everything I keep should bring me joy.  It does. I hope your stuff brings you joy too.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

 

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

You’ve heard it right?  Ancient Chinese saying, from Confucius perhaps?  That would be wrong.

Modern use of the phrase is generally attributed to advertising executive Fred Barnard in a 1921 trade journal article promoting the use of images in advertising on streetcars. Fred Barnard is later quoted in 1949 as saying, after the phrase had gone as viral as it possibly could before the internet, that he made it up and called it a Chinese proverb so people would take it seriously. 

But like Trump winning the presidential election of 2020, the myth lives on.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  Sounds deep and prophetic, doesn’t it?  Certainly not something made up by a twentieth century advertising exec getting ready for color printing and television. 

I never believed it myself because you can do a lot with a thousand words.  But then, I’m an English major who’s partial to print.

On July 17 my granddaughter June will be 17 months old.  It’s been a wonderful time for our family.  All of us have learned a lot about child development.  The main lesson is that June changes with every day that goes by.

As early as 3-4 months of age, babies recognize the faces of their caretakers and close relatives.  In fact, babies can process faces long before they recognize other objects.  But the experts say it takes about 18 months for babies to recognize their face as their own.  I think June is slightly ahead of schedule. 

If June had an extensive vocabulary now, which she doesn’t, she might look in the mirror, or into that inset panel on the Face Time call, and say to herself “Oh my God, it’s me. June.”  While she can’t put those words together, I’m pretty sure June knows it’s her. 

June’s grandmother and I Face Time with June nearly every day.  Sometimes June’s Mom calls in the morning before nap time, when June is prone to being fussy.  Seeing her grandparents on the little I Phone screen apparently distracts her and calms her down.  She’s all smiles.  She waves.

We do a lot of waving.  June prefers the flat hand, palm out, moving back and forth like a windshield wiper kind of wave, paired with a big smile and the word “Hi”.  A word and a motion combined. The beginning of something big.  That wave, along with the smile on her face, is pure beauty. 

June shows us things during these short video calls; pictures in books, toys, the two cats that live in her house, flowers, and other things in her recently acquired yard.  And when June comes to our house, we return the favor.  Call it mutual discovery.

In this amazing time when everyone with a smart phone has become a photographer, videographer, and publisher, pictures are everywhere.  I take more pictures now than at any time in my life.  But still, I prefer observing the world head on, unobstructed by a lens and a screen between me and reality.  I lean to making memories not photographs.  And then I try to capture those memories, remembered visions in my head, using words. 

I have a little sign below my web cam with these words.  Wait. Instead of me writing it, let’s communicate with a picture.

 

Was that worth a thousand words?  I think not.  Somewhere between six and fifteen at most I’d say.

Now let me write a thousand words, with a few pictures thrown in.  You judge which is worth more. (608 words of set up.)

 

Sometime in early morning, my daughter, June’s Mom, took June from the portable crib at Papa and Goggy’s house into bed with her, the bed in the room where June’s Mom used to sleep as a little girl.

June’s Dad left the night before, so he could be at work in Chicago early, and June’s Mom could spend time with old friends in Ottawa.  Papa was in the kitchen making coffee when he heard June fuss.  Upon opening the bedroom door, Papa smiled at June.  June sat up and smiled back.

“Stay in bed,” Papa told June’s Mom.  “Sleep longer and I’ll feed June breakfast and entertain her a while.”

Papa and June split a bowl of steel cut oats with raisins, honey, and some milk to cool it down.  June especially liked the raisins.  Because June is not yet proficient with a spoon, she had oatmeal all over her face.  Papa wet a paper towel and came in quickly for the cleanse.   June turned her face away and tried to dodge it.  Papa prevailed.  It was over quickly.

“Let’s go outside,” Papa said.

June responded with a string of sounds that sounded for all the world like a sentence.  Papa, however, could not pick out one word.  Undeterred, Papa kept talking.

“Let’s see what we can find,” Papa said.

Papa opened the patio door with June in his arms.  The back yard stretched from the house to the shack and the ravine beyond the shack.  Morning sunlight made its way through the ravine and fell in streaks across the green lawn.

Now that she can, June prefers to walk.  She squirmed. Papa let June down but kept hold of her hand.  They walked up to one of the big oak trees.  Papa took June into his arms again.

“Look.”

June waved.

“Hi,” she said.

“She can’t talk back June.”

June, her face inches from Papa’s, responded with a string of syllables that rose in the middle, fell, and then rose again at the end.  Like uptalking.

“I don’t understand your question, but she’s not alive if that’s what you’re asking.”

June accepted that. But she wanted down.  Papa walked her to the next oak tree.

"Look."

Papa picked June up and pointed at the tree's face parts; eyes, nose, mouth, then pointed to June’s corresponding parts and named them.  June seemed interested and said so.  At least Papa thought she did.  June touched the side of her head.

“You’re right.  No ears.  Poor tree can’t hear a thing.”

June looked deeply into Papa’s eyes, as if to agree.

Papa put June down, took her hand, and walked her up the shack porch steps. June takes steps straight on, lifting her feet way up, making big strides.  Papa took June in his arms again.

“Look.”

“Hi,” June said, waving.

“What does the bear say?”

June made a fair approximation of a bear’s roar.  "GRRR!"

“You’re right June.  You’re darned smart, you know that?”

Papa walked into the shack with June in his arms.  Her eyes grew wide.  There was a lot of visual stuff going on in the shack that Papa forgot about.  June reached immediately for the thing on Papa’s stereo speaker.

“Don’t touch that June.  Papa found that on a trail in Buffalo Rock years ago.  He thinks coyotes made off with the rest of the deer and left that behind.”

June’s eyes went up and immediately found another face. 

“Hi,” June said, waving.

“That’s Howdy Doody’s head, all that’s left of a ventriloquist doll Papa got for his birthday very long ago.”

June’s eyes went to the gable end of the shack.

“Hi,” June said, waving to the mask at the top of the shack.

Papa turned around.  June’s eyes found another mask.

“Hi,” she said, waving to the mask on the opposite wall.

“Let’s look at the floor June.”

Papa put June down next to his water bottle.

“Watch what happens when Papa pumps this thing.” 

Papa pressed the pump three times and water fell into a stone crock below for a few seconds before stopping.

June put her hand in the stream.  Then in the water in the crock. 

Next, June touched the clenched fingers of both hands together several times.  Papa remembered.

“Oh. You want more.”

Papa presses the pump three times again.  Water falls out.  June signs.  Repeat.  June signs again.  Repeat.  This could go on for a long time, Papa thinks.

June’s Mom and Dad taught her that sign.  It means more. Two weeks ago, June ignored it.  Now she understands.  Soon she’ll learn the word.

Papa’s small crock was filling up.  He picked June up and took her outside.

The sun was higher, shining through the oaks.  A breeze swayed their branches. Shadows and patches of light danced across the lawn.

Papa saw something.  He pointed across the lawn.  June looked and saw it.

“Look June.  There’s a baby bunny.” 

June sees bunnies in books and likes them.  But as far as Papa knew, this would be her first look at a real bunny.

“Hi,” June said, looking at the bunny and waving.

Papa stood June up on the grass. 

“Go pet the bunny June.”

June looked back at her Papa, her eyes wide, then ran towards it. 

The bunny froze.  June never slowed.  Now closer, June waved again.

“Hi.”

Finally, the bunny ran.  But not far.  It stopped.  Froze again.

June ran on, waving.  When the bunny ran, and changed direction, so did June.  Papa became uncomfortable with the distance between himself and June, and he scurried behind them.  

A baby bunny on a morning in its first summer, running from baby June in her second summer, followed by Papa in his seventy first.  A short parade.

Oh, to once again be a baby in a world where every face is worthy of a wave and every new image a discovery.  And thank you God for the moment when an old man lives to once again see the world through the eyes of a child.

 

That was a thousand words.  What’s worth more?  The pictures or the words?

Metz and Mannington

 Leaving Cameron West Virginia, heading east on Route 250, I had a lot on my mind.  I kept the radio off and the CDs in their brown paper bag.  Driving is good for thinking.

Solo road trips are usually good for long deep thinks but driving Route 250 through the West Virginia hills requires a lot of attention.  I paid close attention to rectangular speed limit signs, those diamond-shaped signs with a drawn arrow describing the shape of the curve, and all the warnings about slope.  I’m usually not that cautious, and my caution soaked up more of my brain’s bandwidth than usual.  Thankfully, there was some left.

I began thinking about the Buick.  Between turning it on, twisting a key the old-fashioned way rather than carrying a fob and pressing a button, and twisting the key back to turn it off, I confess to ignoring the Buick’s engine and drive train entirely.  I check the oil when I fill up, and change the oil regularly, but that’s about the extent of it.  But talking with Bob in the café about his cars and extra wear and tear from the hills made me wonder how the Buick was doing.  I tuned in.

The transmission was shifting all the time, gearing down to take the rises, gearing up when it leveled off, back down to help control the speed on steep descents.  I thought of how different that must be from Illinois driving.  If the Buick were a person, it would say “where the hell have you taken me?”

I tried to remember the details of the transmission work I had done before the pandemic.  I’d had an intermittent check engine light I blamed on the gas cap being loose.  But after buying a new gas cap the light still came on.  I asked the guy at my go-to independent garage in Ottawa to plug the computer into the Buick and tell me what it said about that warning.  Turned out to be two faulty speed sensors in the transmission.  I blogged about it.  Tonight, in the hotel I should get out the laptop and reread that blog.  I did remember the guy at the transmission place in Morris, also independent (no warranty but cheap) pointed out the check engine light went off after replacing those sensors.  That was good enough for him. 

I used to notice a lag when putting the Buick in Drive from Reverse, along with a clunk.  It happened often when I backed out of my driveway and headed down the hill.  I knew it couldn’t be good, and I thought it went away after I had that work done in Morris.  But I wasn’t sure.  I have to listen more closely for that clunk, I told myself silently.  See if I still felt that lag.  So many thoughts go through your mind on a road trip.

Then my mind took me to Metz, a town I would come to up the road.  I’d researched the towns on Wikipedia.  There wasn’t much information on Metz, but what was there stuck with me. 

I remembered the town was founded as Bee Hive Station in the early 1800s by Jacob Metz, a German guy who was a beekeeper.  When the train line came through there in the 1850s the railroad approached Jacob to buy land for a right of way they needed at the time.  Jacob told them he wouldn’t sell them the land but would give it to them on the condition they put in a stop, build a station, and name it Metz Crossing.  He figured the stop would be a boon for his honey business.  The railroad took the deal but soon after the word “crossing” was dropped, and the town became known simply as Metz.

And then the train stopped running in 1959, they tore up the tracks in 1975, and in 2011 they closed the Metz Post Office.  It’s been downhill from there.  I took this picture because it best represents Metz today.

For all we know that could have been Jacob’s house.  It appears Metz is now best known as the name of a portal, or access point to the Marion County Mine, formerly Leveridge Number 22 Mine, an underground coal mine.  It used to belong to the Marion County Coal Company, now a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corporation.  That mine produces 6.1 million tons of coal a year.

The sign is at the intersection of Jonny Cake Road and Route 250.  I wanted to drive back on Jonny Cake to the mine entrance but decided to press on.  It was mostly because I liked the name of the road anyway.

I learned later that the Marion County Mine was one of three mines for which the previous corporate owner, CONSOL Energy, agreed to build a combined $200 million wastewater treatment system, and pay the state and federal governments $6 million to settle hundreds of alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.  The fines included payment to the W. Va. Division of Natural Resources for damage to Dunkard Creek.

Those violations remained alleged because, under the terms of the settlement, CONSOL Energy denied responsibility for a 2009 toxic bloom that killed countless fish, salamanders, mussels, and other aquatic life in Dunkard Creek, a tributary to the Monongahela River.  Yet they paid the money.  Coal and the mining of it does more than foul the air.   

Metz was a short stop.  There was little to see.  Neither a hive nor a honeybee in sight.  Jacob Metz would hardly recognize the place.

The road was changing.  From Metz, the Buick and I found ourselves following Route 250 between the hills in a small valley formed by Buffalo Creek.  The road flattened out.  Mannington appeared, population 2,063, and with it came a noticeable change, the appearance of national brand businesses, Dairy Queen, CVS, BP, Dollar General, and hallelujah, McDonald's.  If the town of  Cameron could have but one of those businesses, it would be such a boost to their community.  But someone somewhere has run the numbers and it is not in the cards.  I kept going.

 As the Buick and I approached Farmington this sign appeared on the outskirts of town. 

Such a big national figure from such a small town.  I thought Farmington was bigger.  Population 369.  Sadly, Farmington’s claim to fame is not Joe Manchin but a tragedy that still haunts the community.

On November 20, 1968, at the nearby CONSOL Number 9 mine, an explosion killed 78 miners, one of them Joe Manchin’s uncle.  Annually, Joe Manchin and members of his family attend a memorial service held on that day.  The pain and trauma of the Farmington Mine disaster never go away.  Most families of the victims killed in the Number 9 mine accepted final settlements of $10,000 per miner offered shortly after the explosion by the mine owners.   However, the catastrophe in Farmington led to the 1969 consolidation of safety laws for various industries under a single agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Act Administration, or OSHA. 

The Farmington Disaster is but one of many mine disasters that haunt the people of West Virginia.

On December 6, 1907, the largest West Virginia mine disaster in history, an explosion and collapse in the Monongah mine south of Farmington, took the lives of 362 miners, nearly all of them recent immigrants to the United States. The largest ethnic group among those killed were 171 Italians. The list of coal mine disasters is long.  I describe here only four among scores of catastrophic events. 

On January 2, 2006, an explosion in the Sago mine near Buckhannon, West Virginia trapped thirteen miners for two days.  One survived.

At the Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, West Virginia a coal dust explosion 1,000 feet underground took the lives of twenty-nine of thirty-one miners on April 5, 2010.

As I learned these facts, my new friends Bob’s words as we were eating banana cream pie rang in my ears. 

“We’ve had to fight for everything we ever got in West Virginia.  We fought to form unions…fought for safety in the mines…fought for years to get Black Lung recognized as a disease.  We’re tired of being ignored.  It’s like we’re being thrown away.” 

From pain comes determination.  I think I get it now. Not only does the coal industry contribute to climate change and pollute rivers and streams, but it also kills the people who work in it.  The experience of working people in West Virginia with the American Dream is hollowed out by death and sadness at the expense of a country hungry for energy at any cost.  Why can’t we find a way to take care of each other in this country?

By the time the Buick and I got to Fairmont, a big town of 18,400 on the Monongahela River, I decided to give the Buick a break and put it on a big multi-lane road with gentle rises and falls, gradual curves, and long straightaways.  I found an entrance to Interstate 79 South and took it, hoping to make it to Beckley, a soft motel mattress, and a good restaurant before it got dark.

I hope I get back to those hills.  Maybe I’ll find another way to get to Fairmont and take Route 250 on up to Cheat Mountain and into Virginia.  I’m sure if I do, I’ll meet more good people along the way and understand them even more.  

The Talk Turned to Politics

There in the Bridge Street Restaurant, I had a feeling my new friend was about to send me to school on West Virginia politics and while I had asked for it, I was a little wary about the next part of our conversation.  I thought maybe dessert would help the conversation remain civil.  Besides that, I saw a sign when I walked in saying they served homemade pie.  That doesn’t happen in America much anymore, and when it does, I do all I can to support it.

“I think I’m going to have a piece of pie and coffee.  Want to join me?”

“I shouldn’t.  But I will.”

“How is their pie.  It’s homemade I see.”

“It’s all good, but my favorite is the banana cream.  Great meringue if you like that kind of thing.  They zap it in the microwave before they give it to you.”

I flagged the waitress down and ordered two slices of banana cream pie and two coffees.  He leaned forward.  I kind of wished we’d kept talking about the best route west.

“There is a lot to say about Joe Manchin, but I’ll start with this.  It’s not the party that matters when it comes to him it's where he’s at in the Senate that matters.  You remember Robert Byrd?  Former senator from here?  He was in the Senate for 51 years, served in the House 3 years before that.  Died in office at age 92.  Byrd had clout.  Just like Manchin does now.  A state like us needs politicians with clout.” 

“West Virginia only has three electoral college votes you know.  Nobody cares about us much.  We know that.  So, when we get someone in Washington with seniority, heading up committees and such, we hesitate to start over.  I don’t care what party he’s from.  Know what I mean?  Manchin is Chair of the Energy Committee.  That means a lot to us.”

“It means a lot to everybody.  I think the decisions we make now about energy use in this country, and the world, are going to end up meaning what kind of world our grandkids live in.  I think climate change is the most important issue in politics.  And whether to stop burning coal is at the top of the list.  It’s the dirtiest fossil fuel there is.  So, Joe Manchin makes big money selling coal to power plants, still does, and he’s in charge of the committee reviewing and approving legislation about it.  Does that work?  You really think he can be impartial?”

“Do you think I don’t worry about my grandkids’ future?  I worry about climate change too.  And most everybody knows coal is on the way out.  But it’s a matter of speed on this switch to green energy.  You can’t do it fast.  Nearly all our power is made from coal.  We generate more electricity than we need from coal plants and sell it to our neighbor states.  You gonna shut down the coal business in West Virginia and leave us with nothing?  It may not matter to you but it damn sure matters to us.  You gonna make us turn around and buy electricity from someone else?  That’s not right.  We’re a poor state man.  Besides that, what are we gonna accomplish if America shuts down fossil fuels and China and India don’t?  I’ll tell you what, nothin’.  Fixing climate change isn’t just up to us.   Do you think the world revolves around the USA?”

“No.  But they look to us.  I think we have to show them how it can be done, do it, and then help finance the change, along with Europe.  It would be a great investment.  China doesn’t need our money, but other countries will.  It’s a global problem, and it’s in our interest to be a part of fixing it.  In our grandkids’ interest more than ours really.  And when you ask where are the incentives for West Virginia to drop coal and go green, they’re probably in the climate change proposal the Democrats are pushing that Joe Manchin, a Democrat, is holding up.  I bet he could get you what you need.  What’s his problem?  He’s acting like a Republican.”

“He’s acting like a conservative.  He’s always been a conservative.  He represents a conservative state.  He hasn’t changed, the Democratic party has changed.  He walks a fine line.  He voted twice to impeach Trump. You think that went over well in West Virginia? You know how big West Virginians voted for Trump right?  He made it through the 2018 election when Trump was President, won by a few percentage points.  Got just less than half the vote, which isn’t like him, but still won.  And he runs again in 2024.  We’ll see.  He’s got to play his cards right if he wants to stay in office.  And if he’s anything like Byrd he’ll stay till he dies.”   

The waitress brought the pie, and I had a bite.  The meringue felt like a sugary cloud in my mouth.  The banana cream was rich and warm.

“You know anything about Manchin besides his politics?”

“I feel like I do.  Maybe that’s why West Virginians like him so much.  His granddad went to work in the mines when he was nine years old and his uncle was killed in a coal mine.  Joe started out in the carpet business with his brothers, ran into trouble there, went into politics. Started out selling gob coal to power plants and went on to get rich as a coal broker.”

“Gob coal?”

“Yeah.  Gob coal is waste coal more or less.  It's what’s left lying around when they close down mines, when they clean up coal yards.  They scrape it up with all the dirt and crap laying around and sell it cheaper than regular coal.  It all burns up in the power plants.  Some people say gob coal is better left in the mines and on the ground than burned and released into the air.  It’s dirty stuff.  Manchin’s a complicated guy.  He’s from just down the road you know.”

“I knew got rich in the coal business but didn’t know he grew up here in the hills.”

“He’s from Farmington.  You’ll go right through it on Route 250.  Not a fancy place.  But you don’t need me to find out about Joe Manchin.  There are smarter people.  Hell, look him up on the internet.  It knows more than both of us.  But I’m telling you it’s not his party that matters.  It’s who he is.  We know him. He’s been in politics a long time.  Started out in the state legislature and worked his way up.   He’s a pretty straight shooter.  And he knows us.  Here’s what I think he’s doing.  He’s holding out to get investment in the state that will help us live through the change to green energy.  You can’t just pull the rug out from under West Virginia without making up somehow for the loss of the coal industry.”

“Have the feds started making up for it at all?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Did Trump do anything in his four years to get that going?”

“No.  But neither did Obama and he had eight years.”

“What about Obama?  Wasn’t Obamacare a big help to West Virginia?“

“It may have helped some people afford care.  But it sure as hell didn’t help us get more medical providers.  It’s a damn thin health care system out here.  Especially mental health.  And the amount of substance abuse treatment is just pitiful. 

“You can say that again.  Speaking of health care, can you figure out why our health care system isn’t talked about anymore?  Rural health care is a mess.  But it’s dropped off the radar.  Except for drug prices, it’s like health care doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I think the health care lobby shut down that discussion.  But I don’t know.  I was hoping you could tell me.  Why aren’t the Democrats bringing it up.”

“It disappoints me that they don’t.  I think you may be right about the health care lobby.  And I’m sorry I don’t have more answers for you, but I do have a few more questions.  Like this one.  I can see why West Virginia might have gone big for Trump the first time, because he made coal an issue, said he’d save the coal industry.  I don’t think that was ever going to happen, but I can see the attraction of the coal mining community back then.  But he never made good on that promise.  Why would West Virginians vote for Trump even more in his last campaign than his first?” 

“Because we want to raise a stink however we can till things change.  Mayor of Cameron here in the ’30s was a socialist.  Don’t think we didn’t catch hell for that.  But people noticed.  We’ve had to fight for everything we ever got in West Virginia.  We fought to form unions.  Then we fought for safety in the mines.  Had to fight for years and years to even get Black Lung recognized as a disease, let alone get money to treat it.  We’re tired of being ignored.  It's like we’re being thrown away.  I got a mother living here to take care of.  I got kids and grandkids here.  You can’t just walk away from these little towns and the people in them.  We won’t let you.”

“You’re saying the Democrats are no better?”

“Democrats did a lot for us in the past.  But that came to a grinding halt.  I think they’re all for the cities now.  They figure that’s how they’ll win elections.  To tell you the truth Republicans have done damn little either.  But Trump is like neither one.  He’s like a third-party candidate running within the system.  He runs as a Republican but he’s not really one of them.  Sort of like Manchin and the Democrats.  I think Trump has the GOP's nuts in a vise, and he'll use it to help people like us.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know really.  And then he pulled that January 6^th shit.  Not sure I should have voted for him the second time, and not sure I’d do it again.  But who else is there?”

“Young people.  Let’s turn it all over to them, vote out everybody over fifty.”

He laughed. 

“You may be on to something there.”

I finished my pie and had a swallow of coffee. 

“How’d you like that pie?” he asked.

“It was wonderful.  Reminded me of my mom’s.  Who do you suppose baked it?”

“The cook here.  Bakes them at home in her kitchen, brings them in every day.”

He looked at his watch.

“I got to get going.  My grandson’s ball game is going to start soon, and he’ll be looking for me in the bleachers.  Hate to eat and run, but it was nice talking to you.  Be careful on the road.  And keep asking us hillbillies about politics.  Maybe we’ll figure ourselves out that way.”

He smiled, shook my hand, stopped at the cash register to pay, and left.  I finished my coffee, collected my atlas, and walked over to my waitress standing at the cash register.

“You had a Reuben and milk, right?”

“Yeah.  With two pieces of pie and two coffees.”

“Bob paid for the pie and coffee.”

“Is that right?”

See?  We can still talk to each other and get along.  And we didn’t even know each other’s names. 

Bridge Street Restaurant

Bridge Street Restaurant in downtown Cameron, West Virginia isn’t much to look at, but I wasn’t going there for ambiance.  I needed food and a table to spread out my Rand McNally Road Atlas. 

You may think you don’t need paper maps anymore but try planning a route across several states using the screen on your I IPhone.  I needed to see how far east I wanted to go before heading south.  Along with that, I needed to figure out where I might end up at dark and if there would be a place to stay when I got there.  Why didn’t I have these things planned before I started?  Because that’s not how I travel.

It is not hard for a small restaurant to get busy fast.  There were only a few old guys sitting around having coffee when I walked in.  But soon after me came two groups of men who looked to be work crews of some kind.  They wore those bright vests and serious work boots.  They pulled tables together.  The waitress came to take my order but kept looking up at what they were doing.  I think she was counting them under her breath.

“I’ll have the Reuben sandwich and a glass of milk.”

“It comes with fries.  That OK?”

“You got any slaw? Could I maybe trade fries for an order of coleslaw?”

“Sure.  You want that milk when you bring your meal?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

When she left I opened up my atlas.  I hadn’t come very far, and it was going on 12:30. I was only about 28 miles past Wheeling and going slowly.  It was 75 miles to Elkins.  Trouble was, I didn’t know how long that would take me.  Depended on the road.  And then there was that local Dave warning me about the road past Elkins.

I looked around at the walls.  They were fairly empty save for stuff about Cameron Schools.  Cameron’s team mascot is the Dragons.  That made me smile.  The school mascot in my hometown, Danvers Illinois population 800 (then, 1,044 now but without a high school) was also the Dragons.  They had a Cameron football jersey on the wall, probably the number of some young local hero, along with athletic schedules and a group picture of the cheerleaders.  It was good to see some hometown pride.  But back to the map.

I could take a bigger, no doubt straighter and faster road when I got to Fairmount.  Make it to Beckley.  I’d stayed somewhere by Beckley last time in that 2016 West Virginia snowstorm. 

My food came.  The cook had toasted the rye bread which I like, and there was plenty of shaved corned beef and Swiss cheese.  Little skimpy on the sauerkraut, but plenty of thousand island dressing.  The slaw was good, but the waitress forgot my milk.  I flagged her down.

“I have a glass of milk coming.”

Shoot, I do that all the time.”

She saw the atlas open beside me.

“You’re not lost, are you?”

“Not exactly.  I just don’t know where I’m going.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yeah.  I know where I am.  I just don’t know where I want to go next.”

“Well, if you need help, let us know.”

“Thanks.”

I was working on the second half of my Reuben while figuring out where I might cross into Virginia when the table of old guys drinking coffee slid their chairs back from the table and started leaving.

“You need help?”

I looked up to see a man with a nice smile.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Where you headed?”

“Florida in the end, but for now I want a good route out of these hills that will put me somewhere with a place to stay when it gets dark.”

“Where you coming from?”

I hate to even say where I’m coming from because people look at me like I’m crazy.  Hopelessly lost at a minimum.

“Illinois.”

While his face took on a blank look, but before he could ask another question, I followed up.

“I swung out here on purpose to see how you’re doing in West Virginia small towns.  I come from a small town myself.  West Virginia has been in the news a lot because of your Senator.”

“Yeah, Joe’s soaking up the spotlight all right.  So, what are you finding out about our small towns?”

“I haven’t come to any conclusions, but it looks like things have gotten tough out here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  It’s always been fairly tough living in these hills.  Matter of degree.  Want me to tell you what I know about that map?”

“Sure.  Sit down.”

I don’t judge age well, but I figured him to be a bit younger than me.  He seemed relaxed, it was the middle of the day, and he was in no hurry to leave.  He had all the characteristics of a retired guy.

“I’m trying to figure out if I can stay on Route 250 on into Virginia and make it into a hotel somewhere by dark.  Guy in the grocery store parking lot told me the road gets a lot harder to drive after Elkins.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that.  I usually don’t take it past Elkins, but I have and don’t remember it as being so bad.  It’s different.  You’re up on Cheat Mountain and the national forest.  Longer climbs and bigger drops than what you’ve done to get here.  Mostly though, there’s little out there.  Beautiful.  But not much for towns or services.  You could google it, but I’m thinking you wouldn’t find a hotel till Staunton, Virginia. Let me see that map.”

He ran his finger down the line that was Route 250. 

“Yeah.  From Staunton you could get on 81 going south or cut over to 29 and head to Lynchburg.  Slow going.  What are you driving?”

“2006 Buick.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“No kidding.  Got that big V-6?”

“Yeah.”   

“How are your brakes?”

“Seem to be OK.”

“Yeah, well I’d be careful just the same.  Driving these hills can be hard on cars.  When we were kids, we bought stick shifts so we could work on the trannies.  We were always burning out clutches.  It was all about clutches, trannies, and brakes.  If you didn’t learn how to put in a set of brakes back then,+ you’d go broke.”

I didn’t respond, but I was thinking of the transmission work I had done on the Buick.  When was that?  Before the pandemic for sure.

“Should be a nice drive though.”

“So have you lived here your whole life?”

“Yep.  Started in the coal mines when I was 18.  Just retired, took my pension.  Feel damn lucky to have made it through.  I was lucky to never get hurt bad.  I’m afraid I might be among the last bunch to retire out of the mines.  Coal mining is drying up.”

“If you don’t work in the mines, where else is there for work out here?”

“Hardly nothing.  You gotta drive.  Wheeling or Fairmount if you’re lucky, maybe farther.  Clarksburg, Parkersburg.  Hell, at the end there I had to drive a long way to get to a working mine.  My last mine was nearly a hunnert n’ twenty miles round trip.  And with the price of gas now?  Straight loss of spending money for people stubborn enough to keep living in these towns.  You can buy a house cheap, but you can hardly afford to live in it now with this damn inflation.  And then you can’t sell it for much.  It’s a shame to watch it happen.”

 “How’s retirement?”

“Best job I ever had.  I have grandkids.  That’s what I’m doing here today.  I live out of town, and I came to see my oldest play a ball game down to the school.  Figured I’d come early and have coffee with my friends.  We don’t see each other much anymore.  I don’t miss work, but I miss the people I used to see there.  Well, most of them anyway.”

He paused, then went on. 

“What did you do?  Seeins you’re on a trip in the middle of the week I figure you’re retired too.”

“Yeah.  I retired as early as possible.  I ran an agency that helped troubled families.  We did counseling, foster care, daycare, stuff like that.”

“That’s important stuff.  Heartbreaking though I bet.  Did you do much with substance abuse?”

“Yeah.  Not many problems are more destructive to families than addiction.  Hard to be a decent parent well when your full-time job is figuring out how to get more drugs.”

“We for sure know that here in West Virginia.  Lot of people my age are raising their grandkids.  My wife and I aren’t, thank God, but we have friends who are.  Hell, we have good friends that lost a kid to an overdose.  I don’t think they know to this day if it was an overdose or suicide or what.  First, it was Oxycontin, now it's Fentanyl.  I can’t keep up.”

“You know, this isn’t a clinical term, but when that kind of death happened in the families we were trying to help at the agency, I used to think of it as accidental suicide.  They may not intend to die, but their lives put them so close to the edge that death is always close by.  It’s awful to watch.  Addiction and mental illness both.  They don’t commit suicide, they die from their disease.”

“Awful for the ones that are left behind I know.”

We were both quiet for a moment.  I changed the subject.

“I just had my first grandchild.  Little girl.  Turned one in February.”

“Oh man, that’s a wonderful age.  Mine are all older than that now.  But heck every age is wonderful.  Look at this.”

He got out his phone, poked it a couple times, and turned the screen towards me.  On it were three smiling blonde kids on a bridge with mountains and a huge gorge in the background, their heads like stairsteps.  Little girl in front, two boys behind.

“That’s a handsome group there.”

“Lucky for us they live close.  They’re my son’s kids.”

“Does he work in the coal mine too?”

“No.  They both work retail in Wheeling.  He’s trying to work himself into regional sales.  We watch the kids for them when we can.  His Mom didn’t want him to work in the mines.  I wanted him to go to college, but he didn’t take my advice.  He had kids young.  The money is tempting in the mines but I’m afraid there’s no future in it.  Not sure there’s much future in what he’s doing now either but it’s safe and healthy.  They’re making it work.  We help as much as we can.  No pension in his future though I’m afraid.  I’m hoping I can leave him something.”

I looked up a picture on my phone.

“Here’s my granddaughter June.  First trip to the grocery store with her Mom a couple weeks ago.  Her Mom is my daughter.”

“Oh boy, she’s going to be a heartbreaker.”

“She already is.  When I saw this, I thought, first trip?  How’d they swing that?  But the pandemic you know?  Our daughter went through her whole pregnancy worried about catching the virus.  June’s Dad did all the shopping early in the morning before work.  They were very protective.  Still are.  We’re seeing her as much as we can.  We take a COVID test before we spend time with her. We live about 90 miles away.”

“Yeah.  These last two years were a hell of a time and COVID’s not over yet.”

“God, I hope it is.  I don’t know how much longer I can put up with living like I’m scared of my friends and neighbors.  Or a threat to my own family.  It’s a bad way to think, let alone live.”

“I feel the same way.  I got all the shots I could, but lots of people didn’t.  Some of ‘em paid for it too. 

That shut us both up.  COVID is a sobering topic. 

“So,” he went on, “if you want to know about Route 250, I can tell you you’re going to see a lot of trees and mountains, and towns like this one.  Some smaller than this, a few bigger.  It’s not a pretty picture.”

“I scouted them out some.  Phillipi?  Belington?  Pruntytown?”

“Pruntytown?”

He laughed out loud.

“You’ll be lucky if you know you drove through Pruntytown.  It’s pretty much just a prison.  Philip-eye, the way you’re sayin’ it, is in the bible.  Phila-pea is in West Virginia.  It’s got some size, maybe 2500 people nowadays.  Got a college there.  Floods bad though, Phillipi does.  It’s on that Tygart Valley River.  You’d find a hotel there.  Belington too.  They’re both better off than Cameron but not by much.  What are you really looking for?”

“Let me see if I can figure out how to answer that in a good way.”

“I’m trying to figure out West Virginia politics.  And your politicians.  Especially Joe Manchin.  We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but I don’t understand how he’s a Democrat and is still being elected when West Virginia has voted for Trump in such a big way.  Twice.  And even more the second time.”

He sat back in his chair.

“I try hard not to talk about politics around here.  But then, I likely won’t see you again after today.  So, I don’t suppose I’ll be making an enemy I got to live with anyway.”

“I’m not out to be anybody’s enemy.  I just want to learn that’s all.”

My Brain was Interrupted

 

 

I don’t know how writers, particularly nonfiction writers trying to compose essays about real and perhaps current events, stick with a topic when a more pressing one emerges.  I was in the middle of writing about my recent road trip through West Virginia, a short account about people I met and things I learned when I was completely interrupted by national news.  Emotionally ripped away by the slaughter of fellow Americans in an upstate New York supermarket and an elementary school.  It’s been hard for me to think about anything else.

I read a New York Times account of the newest classroom tragedy, after hearing earlier reports from news conferences held by local officials at the scene.  The news comes at you in so many ways these days.  I was listening to an NPR interview in my car in which an expert of some kind was talking about nineteen children killed in one classroom.  The NPR interviewer, to his credit, asked this question.

 “Do you know for a fact they were all in the same classroom?”

“No, I don’t.  I assume so because Texas mandates no more than 22 kids in one classroom.  It just makes sense to me.  But no, I don’t know.”

It made sense to me, and I accepted his assumption.  Until my brother called.  My brother, older than me and as tuned in as anyone I know to the news, was the first to suggest otherwise.

“I couldn’t sleep the other night, got up, and tuned in to cable news.   Now they’re saying he was in more than one room.  The rooms are adjoined.  There were more than nineteen kids who went through that hell. Some lived through it.”

I had been grieving for nineteen kids, and two teachers (team teaching perhaps?) all of whom died.  Now my grief expanded to include the lifelong impact that experience would have on those who were in those rooms but live on.

For thirty-some years I was the director of a youth service/child welfare agency that expanded its expertise and programming from troubled teens, including runaways and those caught up in the juvenile justice system, to include services for those suffering neglect and physical and sexual abuse.  It was the sexual abuse that was most chilling, although it is open to debate as to which experience is most devastating.

Physical abuse and neglect are at least understandable to the public.  Sexual abuse was a taboo rarely considered until the mid-80s.  In the early days when Americans first felt able to openly talk about the sexual abuse of children, after a network news show called “Something About Amanda” starring Ted Danson, my staff couldn’t make a public presentation about our sexual abuse treatment program without some adult coming up after the talk and divulging their own traumatic experience.  The lid came off the dynamics of sexual abuse, most often familial, and the specter of its damage, the sheer extent of the trauma suffered by those abused and not believed, or never sharing their secret, was breathtaking.

It was my job as director of a child welfare agency to read and sign unusual incident reports, familiarize myself with court reports being submitted by my staff, to understand the problems confronting both the children and families we served but also the depth to which our staff and foster parents were affected by hearing their stories.  It was as simple as taking the material from my inbox, mail received and information from staff, walking back to my office, sitting down, and reading it.  What I read was often horrific.

And confidential.  Children and families involved in our child welfare, juvenile justice, and family court systems have a right to privacy.  I could talk to my staff who were involved about what I was reading, and I did often, but not to family and friends close to me.  It was hard.  I knew things about my community that others did not, and I couldn’t talk about it.

I retired over ten years ago. Things have changed. Privacy laws and confidentiality measures have remained the same, but we have changed our attitudes about volunteering information about ourselves.  Social media has made us all reporters.  Both journalists and everyday people are giving us more information than ever before.  You must look at it closely for accuracy, but there is no shortage of material to review.  In fact, I sometimes feel we’re drowning in it.

After the initial press conference following the mass murder in a Uvalde Texas elementary school, in which the Governor of the state flanked by its ranking U.S. Senator and others told the world a school resource officer confronted the gunman and brave law enforcement officials ran towards the deadly attacker, we learned otherwise.

The school resource officer was not on school grounds.  Upon returning to his post, he drove past the alleged killer who was in the vicinity of his wrecked truck, and never challenged the alleged killer’s entry into the school he was hired to protect.  (I’m dropping the alleged adjective.  To my attorney friends, I admit I’m wrong to do so.)  The killer entered the school through a propped open side door.  He shot his way into a classroom before the teacher could lock it.  That room adjoined another classroom, and methodically, over time, he killed both teachers and students in both rooms with an AR-15-style rifle he’d purchased legally days earlier on his 18^th birthday.  He was armed with more rounds of ammunition than is supplied to U.S. soldiers in battle, clip after clip of deadly merciless bullets.  Shell casings at the scene told police he had fired 142 rounds of that ammunition.

A law enforcement official in charge, commanding 19 or so armed policemen inside the school, delayed engaging the killer who was inside the classroom for nearly an hour until proper equipment and additional personnel arrived.  Even after they arrived.  His rationale was that the threat of further death was over, and the shooter barricaded in the room was no longer a danger.  He was wrong.

Journalists have helped us reconstruct the scene inside that classroom by conducting sensitive interviews in which survivors and their families agreed to participate.  CNN reporter Norah Neus interviewed Miah Cerrillo, age 11, who was wounded but survived in her fourth-grade classroom where so many of her classmates died.

Present at the interview was Miah’s mother.   Miah was scared to speak on camera, or to a man, because of what she experienced but told CNN she wanted to share her story so people can know what it’s like to live through a school shooting.  She hopes that speaking out can prevent a tragedy like the one she experienced from happening to other kids.

There was a time when journalists would never expose children to this type of coverage.  Again, times have changed.  Miah and her family freely consented to allow her voice to be heard.

Click this link, and click the redirect notice to view the video

Norah Tells Miah's Story

The story recalled in the video is hard to hear.  It’s a memory that will never be erased in her mind.  Hopefully, it can be dealt with in therapy and its impact blunted, the damage contained at some level.  The video speaks for itself.  If Miah is brave enough to share her story, I think we should listen.  It’s 6 minutes and 47 seconds out of your day.

Near the end of the tape, CNN reporter Norah Neus mentions something that struck a chord with me as a former supplier of therapy to survivors of trauma in a rural area.  You can hear Norah’s words in the video about the question of therapy for Miah.  They go something like this.

“Miah’s parents are trying to get her some kind of therapy help, they’ll probably have to drive to San Antonio for that.  They’re starting a Go Fund Me page.”

Excuse me, but it’s bullshit that the parents of victims should be left to their own devices to get help for their kids.  There should have been social workers in that community starting to gather resources and bring help to that community the day after the shooting.  San Antonio is 83 miles away from Uvalde.  Google maps says it’s an hour and twenty-minute trip.  It’s not just Miah that needs help.  Parents and students throughout the school need help.  Teachers need help.  Extended family members need help.  And police and first responders will need a whole lot of help after this one.

Some will require good debriefing, an assessment, and a limited amount of follow-up sessions.  Others will require medication and ongoing psychotherapy for years.  They deserve great care, and they deserve to have it delivered to them in their own community.

I’m not a trained psychotherapist by any means but I could write a budget for a project like this.  I’d start with staff: a team of well-trained and experienced therapists, supported by consulting psychiatrists including a child psychiatrist.  I’d give them a good case manager (maybe more depending on the numbers) that can visit kids at home, with their families, and in the community.  Included should be community education about trauma, and integration with natural supports in the community like churches, police, and whatever exists to support kids and families.

And rather than choosing which resources to provide from a fixed number of dollars picked out of the sky, I would budget whatever it costs to make this happen.  Is there an existing building that can be remodeled and furnished as an inviting, comfortable place for therapy to be delivered?  Then rent it and get that done.  Is there nothing suitable?  Then build one.  There is work to be done in Uvalde, Texas for years and years.  And Buffalo.  And on and on and on.

Come to think of it, it’s not just victims of mass shootings that need this kind of help.  Victims surviving daily gun violence in cities and towns across the country suffer from trauma.  In our data-rich world, I think we could map the incidence of gun violence and find neighborhoods and communities that need a large amount of mental health treatment but have no local source of help.  Let’s set up centers there too.

And for God’s sake let’s not depend on Go Fund Me as the way to pay for this help.  Our states and the federal government should provide comprehensive and ongoing treatment for their citizens as long as it persists in allowing such senseless violence to occur and until it stops it.  If it proves expensive, I suggest a healthy tax collected from gun manufacturers and sellers.  It’s an industry you know.  They should bear the burden of the havoc their products wreak out of the profits they enjoy in our capitalist system just as oil companies fund the clean up of petroleum spills that foul our environment.  Money should not be the issue.

Helping Miah and her family and others like them should be the issue.  We should be guided by what they want and need to be whole and healthy once again.   And we shouldn’t rest until that job is done.