Hazel Dickens

The setting: a going-away party for musicians Bob Webb and Heidi Muller, who are headed West to Oregon, exiting stage left from West Virginia. Dozens of  friends, many armed with instruments, had gathered at a Memorial Day going-away party at Ron Sowell’s house, to sing them off. A request was made to Becky Kimmons — one-third of the a cappela trio Bare Bones — to sing the old song, “Pretty Bird” by the great West Virginia singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens. Ever the trooper, Becky, who had not sung the song in awhile  launched in. Here was the result. I missed the very opening so one small chunk of the song is missing. Below are the lyrics she sings which are slightly different from a set of lyrics I found for the song on the web. But printed lyrics on the web are often untrustworthy. Plus, great folk songs get slightly revised versions all the time, if that is the case here. I recorded this on my iPhone and added a few filters in Final Cut Pro X.

“Pretty Bird” by Hazel Dickens

Fly away little pretty bird
Fly Fly away
Fly away little pretty bird
And pretty you’ll will always be.

Love’s own tender flame warms this meeting
And love’s tender song should sing
But fly away little pretty bird
Cold runs the stream.

I cannot make you no promise
For love is such a daily good thing
Fly away little pretty bird
For I’d only clip your wings

Fly away little pretty bird
Fly, fly away. Fly away little pretty bird
And pretty you’d always stay
Fly far beyond the dark mountain
To where you’ll be free ever more

Fly away little pretty bird
Where the cold winter winds don’t blow

VideoPeek

A year ago, Benji Willis, 16, ran off 102 pounds, on his treadmill in the family living room in Ripley, W.Va. He has kept it off, fueled by daily encouragement from his family, his youth group at church, the volunteer fire department, his teachers, and his school friends. Every day, he runs between six and ten miles. He’s already burned up one treadmill. Watch the video to find out why Benji runs. And read Benji’s story in the Sunday Gazette-Mail at www.wvgazette.com. ~ (blurb from YouTube.com/thecharlestongazette)

So, this is an experiment, an experiment in pre-publication social media promotion. The video above is a collaboration between myself and Charleston Gazette colleague Kate Long, which I shot on a Canon video camera and edited in Final Cut Express. It goes with a Kate story on how Benji, a high school student in Ripley, W.Va., lost more than 100 pounds via a combination of true grit and treadmills. Thankfully, his parents have allowed him to fit the latter into their small living room. Benji supplied the former.

Screen grab of Benji running in his living room, with Charlie Brown the Dog looking on.

Normally, you would not see the video until the day the story ran, which will be tomorrow: Sunday May 20. But because I do the videos for these stories, and my work-week ends Thursday, I had to upload the video in advance to YouTube. Kate had the idea to promote the Sunday story by spreading word of the video widely in advance — via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter etc. The goal was to see if we could  get viewers in advance for the video while drumming up readers for her Sunday story, titled “Benji, You’re Such an Inspiration!” (At least, that was the headline when I left the office Thursday. Things change in newsrooms faster than Lady Gaga haberdashery.) So far, so good. It is 1:07 a.m. on Saturday and last I looked the Benji YouTube video had 340 views.

For a newspaper video only online since about 3 p.m. this Thursday, that’s not bad, I will tell you. Admittedly, it’s not nearly as many views as the TMZ video of Kim Kardashian getting flour-bombed (379,408 hits, as of this moment). Or, for god’s sake, this talking dog video (1,117,708 views). Or — you realize these are the end times? — the Gummy Bear Song (198,359,588 views). But we’ll take what we can get.

The video and story are part of Kate’s ongoing, wide-ranging series “The Shape We’re In,” which takes a long look at the roots of West Virginia’s dismal chronic health numbers, for both young and old, from diabetes to obesity, heart disease to school nutrition. Yet unlike so many newspaper series that give you yet another reason to defenestrate yourself faced with the hopeless, hapless human race, Kate has also been searching out people, programs and institutions that are changing things for the better, either within their own home and town, or in a school district or county somewhere in the state. Check out the entire series so far at the Shape We’re In WordPress site. To peruse our video work, there’s a special ‘Shape We’re In’ video playlist at the Gazette’s YouTube channel devoted to the series. Here’s a recent video, featuring another success story — and genuine West Virginia character:

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The Frederick Hotel | Huntington, W.Va. | April 2012 | westvirginiaville.com | click bigger

My wife and I attended the recent “Mountain Stage,” held at Huntington’s palace of rococo ornament, the Keith-Albee Theater. We both walked away new fans of Paul Thorn, whose songs have been memorably described as the equivalent of taking a six-pack to church. We were already fans of Arlo Guthrie, who topped the bill. It would have been a close call, had this been Funny Singer-Songwriter Idol, who would have won — Guthrie or Thorn? My vote: Thorn, edging Guthrie out by a randy joke or two. I won’t even try to reproduce the joke about his girlfriend’s butt. Thorn looked off-stage to host Larry Groce and wondered whether they’d have to cut that story when  the show finally airs on radio in September 2012. Very very likely. (Note to Larry: Let us run it here on WestVirginiaville?)

Afterward, wine,  roasted vegetables, hummus and other fingery foods at the Penthouse & Piano Bar, run by Huntington Prime on the 15th floor of a building overlooking the Ohio River, just down the street from the theater. I am wary of introducing myself to stars: what have I got to say they haven’t heard a thousand times? But Thorn held out his hand to greet me. “Enjoyed it!” I said. And left it at that. He had just come from the corner of the room, where some well-meaning fan — no doubt eager to run and upload the shot to Facebook — had just asked to pose with Thorn, holding up a can of Spam beside the singer-songwriter’s face as a friend snapped the shot.

Back down on terra firma, headed to my car along Fourth Avenue, the lights of the Frederick Hotel beamed.

The spring-loaded ResQME device can crack a car window or cut off a seatbelt. (www.resqme.com)

NOTE: This is a story I ran in the Gazette this past weekend. It contains one of those bits of advice you see in a newspaper that it’s easy to bounce right over and ignore. But if your car ever did go in the water, you’d be glad you read this professor’s advice and got one of these devices. I am buying several for my wife, self and kids.

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By Douglas Imbrogno | Charleston Gazette | May 13, 2012

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — John Damron’s tragic death after his car plunged in the Kanawha River on April 29 was possibly due to a medical condition, although autopsy results have yet to be released.

But the frightening specter of driving one’s car into water through a missed turn, accident or flash flooding in a state full of roadways near rivers raises the question: What should you do if the unthinkable happens?

One Canadian professor’s study of the matter is compressed into a useful acronym — SCWO — by the web page www.wikihow.com/Escape-from-a-Sinking-Car. The motto stands for the immediate sequence the professor advises in the short time available before a car sinks: Seatbelt; Children; Window; Out.

In short: undo your seatbelt; undo your children’s seatbelts, starting with the oldest who can help with the others; open a window; and then push any children out followed by yourself.

Gordon Giesbrecht is a University of Manitoba professor of “thermophysiology,” who studies human responses to extreme environments, including immersion in cold water. While a Web search will pull up lots of advice on what to do if your car hits the water, Giesbrecht has studied the matter in-depth.

As part of his research, he has submerged more than 100 cars in water with test subjects in some of them, once even placing himself in a sinking car (lowered by a hoist) to test his theories.

Along with graduate student Gerren McDonald, he published a 2006 paper, “Automobile Submersion: Lessons in Vehicle Escape,” a study that estimated that up to 400 North Americans die each year in sunken cars.

In a telephone interview, Giesbrecht said that one thing he strongly advised against was scrambling for a cellphone to call 911 once your car is in the water, thinking the car will float long enough while you call for help.

“Basically, we know a vehicle floats for about one minute,” said Giesbrecht. “Do not touch your cellphone because you will waste that one minute of opportunity to get out.”

Obviously, panic and fear are going to challenge one’s attention, which is why Giesbrecht wants to keep the advice simple and straightforward.

Some TV shows and Web sources suggest you wait for the car to fill with water, then open the doors to escape. That strategy worked less than a third of the time in his studies, and Giesbrecht discourages the idea of opening the doors as it will ensure the car fills with water and sinks like a stone.

“The window is your exit — period. Not the doors, the windows,” he said.

Giesbrecht recommends buying a center-punch device, like the $10 ResQME tool, a small key-chain-size tool that can be used to shatter windows and cut seatbelts. He keeps one hanging from his rear-view mirror in plain sight though it can be used as a keychain, too.

But stashing the tool or others like it (such as the $20 Lifehammer — www.lifehammer.com), in a glove compartment or under the seat may make them impossible to reach in the fraught conditions of a car in the water. It is important to get a window opened or broken open quickly, he said.

The Lifehammer can crack a window or cut your seatbelt off. (http://lifehammer.com).

“The reason you need to do this quickly is electronic windows will only work for a short period of time. The sooner you engage those the more likely you will be able to open them.”

Giesbrecht also offers some advice for a common situation encountered on the back roads of West Virginia — the risk involved when a driver tries to drive through or across a flooded road.

“This is a particular disaster because the other scenarios are accidental and this one you do on purpose.”

It’s important to note, he said, that a car will float in as little as 20 inches of water.

“The issue with floating in water is crucial because if you have 20 inches of water over a road usually what happens is the water is flowing. If your car floats even an inch off the road the current moves you off the road and over a ditch and now you’re in 5, 10, 15 feet of water.  And now you’re in a deadly situation.”

Even people familiar with their local roads when they flood can misread the situation, he said.

“We had a case here a year ago in southern Manitoba where it floods every year in the Red River Valley,” said Giesbrecht.

A farmer who grew up in area died after his car was washed away on a familiar road, he said. “Everybody drives over this road when it gets flooded — only this year the water was six inches higher and it fooled him.

“It doesn’t have to be raging torrential flooding. We actually went and did a test at same spot — the water was not as deep and the current not as strong and it was remarkable. We pushed the vehicle out there and it just barely floated. The car has only got to move over 10 feet and it’s over the road and you’re dead.

“We’ve even told the folks out there — take a stick and mark 12 inches on it and walk along the road and confirm that water is 12 inches or less deep and then maybe you can consider it.”

Otherwise, he advised area residents to “turn your truck around and go home a different way.”

When Your Car Goes in the Water

1. Brace yourself for impact as soon as you know you’re going into the water. Place both hands on the steering wheel to prepare for the possibility the airbags will inflate.

2. Unbuckle your seatbelt.

3. Unbuckle the children, starting with the oldest, who can help with the others.

4. Open a window, either electronically (if you have power windows) or manually (if you don’t).

5. If you can’t open the window, break it with a small hammer or small punch. If you don’t have one, buy one soon like the ResQME or Lifehammer tools. If you don’t have a glass-smashing tool or heavy object handy, use your feet.

6. Push the children out first then swim out through the window. It is possible to escape through a window, even with a flood of water coming in.

7. If you’re unable to open a window or break it, let the car begin filling with water. When the water pressure inside the car is equal to the pressure outside the car, you should be able to open a door.

How I Do | What I Do

by douglas imbrogno | As a multimedia journalist, someone who has evangelized for years that newspapers need to spread out their mission and deliver news and features in multiple broadcast forms, I have to wonder sometimes. Video is still in its infancy for most mid- and small-size newspapers and is still in the process of finding a niche and becoming a regular revenue source. Many papers have given up on it. Also, many folks, especially here in West Virginia, still have trouble with slow bandwith and are gone as fast as the Roadrunner — meep! meep! — when a video hitches when they try to view it and you get the spinning ball of death as it loads and loads and loads….

Then sometimes, when I view anemic hit counts for some of the videos we produce, I wonder if maybe I should have gone into flower arranging instead. There will always be flowers…

Yet I persevere, waiting for the day newspaper video finds its own growing audience. So, as a newsroom video proselytizer, when a colleague calls me into the fray to suggest one, I take it under serious advisement if I can get to it. Plus, I like to try and juice the form where possible. So, when fellow Charleston Gazeteer, sport editor Mitch Vingle, suggested I take the newsroom Canon out to the West Virginia state high school tennis tournament going on this week around Charleston, W.Va., I set to it. Yet when I assembled a smorgasbord of clips of tennis players and crowd scenes, it felt like it needed something beside the pleasant thwack! of tennis ball on racket . A soundtrack, say? A state tennis tournament music video, of sorts!

That’ll do it.

I turned to a guy whose music I like a lot — a performer named The Flow. And it’s not because, well, I helped birth him into the world. Or that he lets me use his music for free (for now!). The Flow is the stage name of my 22-year-old son, Lucas Dulio Imbrogno McKeown. I have used his work as soundtracks in a lot of my video work because it’s chewy and tasty and goes a lot of places. Judge for yourself at my YouTube page or the Gazette multimedia page.

The song I chose for the tennis tourney video is a relatively new one by The Flow, titled “Outlaw.” I like it a lot and hope you take pleasure in it, as well. You can check out more of his music at the following links, with this added note straight from The Flow: “Soundcloud is more remix-oriented material; icompositions is more for sharing my original material.”

http://www.icompositions.com/artists/Flow

http://soundcloud.com/the-flow

PS ~ The Flow is one of the opening acts at Huntington’s V Club on Friday, May 18, 2012, on a bill that includes The Bad Employees and Blood Ghost.

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Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde controls the humidity and temperature in his galleries to bring real clouds into being for a few minutes. This is his 2012 work Nimbus II.

by douglas imbrogno | Life in West Virginia, for those of you who don’t know the place except for the shoe-less, toothless, married cousin stereotypes, is generally good. Almost anywhere you stand, even in the center of its largest cities, you can be strolling in deep woods within 10-15 minutes. Roll down the windows while driving its curvy mountain hills at night and the cool, invigorating air feels like silk caressing the face. The people are for the most part friendly and considerate to a fault. There was the time recently my salt-of-the-earth neighbor, Brenda, mowed my front lawn when I let it grow too long after I became more focused on my guitar than my grass. (I paid her back with a CD of my music, which seemed appropriate. She delivered a Ziploc bag of fresh radishes from her garden the following week. I can’t keep ahead of the woman).

Then, there are the days when living in West Virginia is a chore. Like today, the day after 41 percent of registered Democratic voters cast their ballots in the West Virginia primary for a convicted wanna-be-Rastafarian felon rather than for Barack Obama. I will leave for others the analysis of this depressing scenario– here at the Atlantic and at WashPo.  Outside the state’s borders, the vote will be yet more verification of the Mountain State’s helpless, hopeless politics and its increased valuation on the national Laughing Stock Index. If not, as well, the burbling into view of a racist wellspring that belies the roots of the region’s birth in resisting the Confederacy, standing apart from Virginia to become a separate state in 1863.

I will certainly spot others their right to vote for ‘anyone-but-Obama’ and who had no idea who they were springing for (except for a stray story or two, there was next-to-nil coverage here of the inmate who would be president). I will, though concede nothing to those who voted because of outright visceral hatred of the president, infected via the plague-borne, fever-swamp of Fox News, epicenter and seed-bed of Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS).

Then, there is the rear-guard resistance of the state’s many  coal-fired, corporate bought-and-paid-for DINO politicians. Given the anti-Obama pirouhettes in this state,  many of West Virginia’s leaders – with heads lodged firmly in the 19th century, if not elsewhere — might as well give up the dance and just re-register as Republicans, especially when it comes to fundamental matters like climate change. (Or, to borrow some lines from a Salon story today headlined “Republican Climate Folly”: “As temperatures break records, the GOP holds firm: The less we know about global warming, the better.”)

The less we know, the better, indeed. Irony is not a strong suit of those afflicted with ODS. So, it is impossible to make any headway by pointing out how deeply cautious and non-revolutionary a president this pragmatic, centrist, only occasionally progressive president has been. For every day in which he announces his support for gay marriage — like today — there is another that he continues to lob drone missiles at Afghanistan and Yemen, accidentally and routinely killing women and children along the way. I have my issues with the man, too, you see. But he’s still my man. And a good man, at that.

But it is straight out of Cloud Cuckoo land to cast his cautious presidency as a cabalistic revolution. Or to portray as some sort of evil socialist takeover the modest but welcome revisions Obamacare made to American’s massively warped, screwed-up health care system. Every time I have to pay the better part or whole part of another medical bill because my $5,000 personal yearly deduction and $10,000 family deduction has not yet been met, I wonder what ODS sufferers think Republican overlords would do to begin to fix this mess of a system where they to slip into the White House?

In a word (well, two words): exactly nothing.

Noam Chomsky sums it up in an interview titled “On America’s Economic Suicide”: “The Republican Party has pretty much abandoned any pretense of being a traditional political party. It’s in lockstep obedience to the very rich, the super rich and the corporate sector.”

I will take our flawed, only occasionally progressive, yet attentive and alert president, on any day. Even this one — no, especially, this one.

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“The news is bad, but it always seems to be / It’s even worse when you take it personally …” ~ “Such a Night”

I claim the prerogative on this, my own blog of quoting from one of my songs (above) to point the way through this day, trying not to take the news personally. When I know I won’t be able to bear my usual news sites or the links that shout ‘West Virginia votes for a con’ that my pals post to Facebook, I look farther afield. I turn to a favorite blog for emotional upkeep, Ingrid Fetell’s “The Aesthetics of Joy.” It’s a blog which looks out on the world with an eye to joyful certitudes in art, design and daily life, things that will last longer than the day’s baleful, soul-muddling headlines.

And, oh, my. Clicking on her blog today brings me to a post titled “Craving Wonder” and photos of the work of an artist who creates actual clouds inside of galleries.  The indoor clouds lead Fetell to ponder the significance — the essentiality, so to speak — of the emotion of wonder. I will leave those of you un-infected with ODS with her words. And I cast a wish for those in the throes of ODS that one day wonder may break the fever someday. Because it is the mystery of wonder that points us beyond our differences:

I believe we have wonder because it lets us know when the laws and limits of our world have been transcended, and opens the way to new frontiers of possibility. Wonder is a signal that there has been magic in our midst. It pokes a hole in our worldview, and tempts us to investigate, becoming a powerful spark for curiosity that paves the way towards new discoveries.

As a culture we tend to undervalue wonder, but the craving for it is deeply valid. It is not a distraction from purposeful work – it may instead be the catalyst for starting it. A desire to witness magic is an impulse towards the expansion of the mind, towards the improvement of the human condition. At the root of our love for rainbows, comets, fireflies, and miracles is a small reservoir of belief that the world is bigger and more amazing than we had dreamed it could be. And if we are to be creative and hopeful, then feeding this reservoir is vital.

So go look for impossible beauty, implausible joy. Seek it out even if it doesn’t seem to have an immediate purpose. And then just be curious. You don’t have to control wonder; you only have to seek it, and be open to what it shows you.

Read the rest of Ingrid Fetell’s post

Click here for more on Berndnaut Smilde’s work.

In order to cope with the trauma of turning 55 this May, I asked a bunch of players and pals to come to The Cellar in downtown Charleston, W.Va., on May 2, the day after the day — 55 turns of the Earth ago — I checked in. I was more focused on playing music, listening to music and greeting the good friends who came than on my usual task of hoisting a video camera.

But then I heard a musical saw playing. And it’s just not that often in this mortal coil you hear a musical saw playing. Especially a folk-rock musical saw, matched to a flaming gypsy-style guitar. So, I flicked on my iPhone camera. Later, I pulled the footage into Final Cut Pro X, where I am still poking around and learning new filters. And, well, see for yourselves.

Hence, in Episode 3 of WVTV, the web channel of WestVirginiaVille.com, we introduce the debut of Third Eye Cabaret w/Saw at The Cellar (‘Like’ the WestVirginiaVille Facebook page or The Cellar Facebook page for news of future cabarets). Manning the saw — if that’s what one does with a musical saw — is Mike Waldeck Jr., and on gypsy guitar is Christopher Harris. The two are bandmates in one of West Virginia’s more interesting bands, Qiet. Mike also plays accordion, homemade electronics and the phonometrician (which I really should ask him what that is next I see him).

The second segment in this WVTV episode is a series of up-close video ganders at animals I have met in travels around the state. Nice animals. The rooster and his backyard friends were shot while on a Charleston Gazette assignment, profiling the tiny town where Robert C. Byrd was born: Sophia, W.Va. I ran into the horses coming over a mountain in Hampshire County. This segment is part of my belief that the feng shui of YouTube videos should include ambient outdoor noise from the great outdoors of places full of the outdoors — like wild & wonderful West Virginia. | douglas imbrogno

PS: It’s always a crapshoot which image YouTube throws up for a thumbnail for a new video (it grabs them algorithmically from three different locales in the video). I really like the moment it picked for this one.

by douglas imbrogno | I have never counted myself among the cadre of brave or bold writers writers or singer-songwriters when it comes to personal revelation under my own name. (It’s true, I did once release a song called “I Never Slept With Allen Ginsberg.” Weed is even lyricized.) But I must confess to looking over my shoulder most of the time, wondering — while they were alive –  how my mother and father would react. Or how my brothers and sisters and the large municipality of relatives scattered hither and yon might take it were I to crack open the Pandora’s box of angst from the trials and tribulations of family life growing up. I usually strike a comic tone when it comes to family tales. Or an elegiac one. In my more hyper-critical moments (which is most all the time), I think I am really a bit of a writerly wimp on that score.

Yet when my friend Elizabeth Gaucher, in pursuit of male voices for her ongoing ‘Essays on Childhood’ series at her Esse Diem blog, solicited a contribution from me, I thought I would edge out a bit onto the ice. My recollection, “Happy Again,” is the first out of the box in her guys-on-childhood series and you can read it here. I still rather hope that my older, old-school relatives not discover it, if only because I think they would think you should not be airing such personal laundry like this for all the world to see and, Great Scott, Douglas! How do you think your mother and father would react were they still alive?!

A rock.

My mother would absolutely hate this peek behind our door at 707 Waycross Road in a leafy Cincinnati suburb, I think that is obvious. My dad, too, would blanch. Yet my mother dreamed all her life of being a professional writer. Under the tutelage of her books and magazines that burst the seams of our home  and which I eagerly devoured in her wake, my so-called life as a writer and journalist was fed, nourished and stimulated. And, what the hell, my essay is not all that revelatory, given some of the balls-out (literally), no-holds-barred memoirs that have earned so much buzz in recent years. Her writerly self, separate from her personal self, I like to think, would respect, even esteem, the effort.

Plus, I have been trying — well, the Muses who run the shop in my subconscious have been trying — to get a handle on recounting the far more dramatic and messy conflagations that ensued in my life about eight years after the evening described in the Esse Diem piece. I don’t know whether I have worked up the mojo to tell that bloody tale in full yet, at least under my own name. But it will be told in one way or another, if only to get it done and fully processed, at last. To finally have it properly situated and understood on the knick-knack shelf of my life.

Then, I can move on to some more comic, elegiac pieces, which are so much easier to write.

My mother and father, Dulio and Joanne Imbrogno, in a photo taken in 1958, eight months after I was born. My mother did not normally wield a sword, although she once chased me with a spatula.

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I have been lax in posting some of the other video and slideshow work Kate Long and I have done for her excellent ongoing Charleston Gazette series, “The Shape We’re In.” This one above may appeal to folks with a bent for historic images of West Virginia and Appalachia. The slideshow and Kate’s related article trace how the literal shape of things — of people themselves  — has changed in West Virginia, through comparing old photos and contemporary ones and contemplating the diseases West Virginians used to die from and what they grow sick from these days.

But the slideshow, like the series itself, is not just a depressing  litany of doom, gloom and despair. Kate’s series has done an estimable job of showcasing people, institutions and programs at the forefront of turning the corner on unhealthy life choices and finding the way to wholesome ones. It’s full of what Kate has dubbed “hometown heroes,” people down the street or in the next town over who’ve taken charge of their health and, in so doing, their lives. I recommend the series to anyone in or out of the state. These are not just Appalachian issues.

PS - The soundtrack is an excerpt from a recording of a jam one night last winter at The Room Upstairs in Princeton, W.Va., featuring a roving, ever-transmogriphying band of musical mates, who — when we produce some listenable improv — are dubbed The Silent Gondoliers.

Finley Taylor photo | courtesy imagesbyromano.com

Word of the Day: in·ter·loc·u·tor [in-ter-lok-yuh-ter] noun
1. a person who takes part in a conversation or dialogue.
2. the man in the middle of the line of performers in a minstrel troupe, who acts as the announcer and banters with the end men.
3. a person who questions; interrogator (from dictionary.com)

I have been a poor interlocutor of late in maintaining this, the official publication of the free state of the Commonwealth of WestVirginiaVille. Partly, I have been focusing on this other project, rehearsing, revising, crafting and honing the sound of The BrotherSisters, with my fellow brother, Albert, and guest sister, Marylin. I am also moving towards the launch of TheWebTheater, an experiment in multimedia online (and real-world) storytelling and production. Watch for the first outliers of WebTheater tales to come via Digiso, a new media collaborative based in Charleston, W.Va., full of confréres with much talent and mojo and a highly cool workspace, to boot.

Partly also, I have stepped back into the shadowed eaves of the actual woods, idling my Facebook account starting March 1 — and finding that I enjoy the lowered digital volume in the headset of my life.

On the other hand, I am still shooting video, taking notes, eyeing things. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow old. I have also been trying to do some slightly more intensive — and intense writing — than a FB status update. Witness one of the fruits of that effort sometime soon over at Elizabeth Gaucher’s “Esse Diem” blog, where a piece I wrote from one of the less pleasant nights of childhood existence is part of her “Essays on Childhood 2012″ series.

Meanwhile, I continue to play with the Mac video editing program Final Cut Pro and video scenarios. Here’s a new episode of  WVTV, broadcast channel of WestVirginiaVille.com. Kick the video into gear to view the debut of the occasional hyper-short walkabout series, ‘Out & About: West Virginia,’ a less-than-two-minute-long program for the Short-Attention Span Age. | douglas imbrogno

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