A staffer for a West Virginia politician with an office in Washington, D.C. recently referred to Crystal Good, as a “poverty profiteer”. Crystal is a poet and a thinker. A West Virginia girl, born and raised, she has lived around the country, but now makes her home in West Virginia. For the record, I’ve never met Crystal and I doubt she has ever heard my name, except that we are Facebook friends through some mutual connections.

This politician’s assistant suggested she profited from poverty and liked that West Virginia is “last in everything.” Having read some of Crystal’s work, my impression is the exact opposite. She isn’t afraid to talk about poverty or the things that are wrong in West Virginia, but I’m fairly confident she would much prefer to see her friends, family and fellow West Virginians doing well. And it is hard to imagine anyone suggesting a poet is a profiteer. It is the rare poet who actually makes a profit.

In reality, this attempted shaming (which really backfired) was about coal. Having seen what coal mining does to miners and coal mining communities, Crystal had the nerve (gasp) to suggest that something that politician spouted off about the coal industry was propaganda.

My friend Daniel Boyd’s new graphic novel Carbon has been labeled “controversial” in a couple recent news reports because it dares to portray the coal industry negatively. For the record, coal MINERS are the heroes of the story. Just not the industry itself.

We refuse to have a real conversation about coal. Our “leaders” want to blame the president’s policies for coal’s decreasing market share because he is unpopular in this state. Automation and heavy machinery have drastically reduced the number of people who work in coal mines. This isn’t something that began with the latest president.  Those same “leaders” won’t put any thought into job retraining or education or a plan for what to do after coal.

There is a general election coming up and a lot of people are paying lip-service to coal and being “for” West Virginia jobs. I want to hear what they plan to do to move West Virginia into the 21^st century—we should already be there. How about business start ups? Or economic diversity?  What about making sure another “water crisis” doesn’t poison the drinking water? How about protecting the quality of life in West Virginia that makes people from outside the state want to move here?

In the news business, a truism is to “follow the money”. Donations to political campaigns are public record. Find out who is donating to particular candidates and then ask yourself why. What does that company or industry hope to gain from those donations?

Another truism from the newspaper business is that you don’t start a fight with a person who buys ink by the barrel. In the modern world where words are digital, rather than ink-based, I would say you don’t want to start a fight with someone (like Crystal or Danny), who uses words, not just for a living, but because they HAVE to..

I’ve lived in California and North Carolina and traveled to six of the seven continents on this globe. I’ve seen enormous cities and I’ve seen small towns. Now that I’m back in West Virginia, I’ve found myself in Pinch, a tiny community north and east of Charleston. And I like it.

This weekend is the Pinch Reunion. The reunion is the “longest running community reunion” in the nation. It has been going on continuously since 1902. According to the website, the Pinch Reunion began to “raise the educational, religious, and family standards of the community of Pinch.”

Pinch today reminds me of Cross Lanes when I was a child in the 70s. Back then, everyone knew everyone else and that was a good thing. In the evenings, especially in the summer, everyone would be outside working in the yard, or relaxing and playing games. My dad built us a badminton court in the backyard and kids came from all over the neighborhood to play. We also had a chilled water fountain in our basement that my dad drug in from somewhere. When it was hot outside and everyone was sweaty from playing, there was nothing better than the water coming out of that fountain.

Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of extra money, but we camped at state parks and went to a lot of local festivals to hear music while my parents square danced. Those of are some of my best childhood memories.

In general, it seems like we are all busier and probably aren’t quite as social as we used to be back during my childhood. I hear kids out in my neighborhood playing, but it is just the younger ones. The older kids have too many things to do or they are busy with their phones and other electronic devices.

And that is where the Pinch Reunion comes in…for me anyway. I’m not from this area, so it isn’t like I’m going to see anyone I know there, but for me the reunion is a chance to hear some good local music in a really fun location (the “wigwam” on the Reunion Grounds is one of the coolest venues I’ve ever seen) and maybe reconnect with my own past and childhood. I’ll probably drag my girls along, too, so they can get a taste of what I’m talking about…if I can get them to put their phones down.

I’ll be there. Will you?

You can find the Pinch Reunion Schedule at: http://pinchreunion.webs.com/.

In a couple days, it will be my birthday. Not a big one or one of the magic number days that end in 0. Just a birthday.

For some reason, I always get a little bit moody around my birthday, though. It’s not about getting older. As they say, it beats the alternative. And I’ve never been one to think back on high school as my “glory days”. I had fun in my teen years and I’ve had fun ever since. A lot of the time, when someone tries to talk to me about what we did “back in the day”, I don’t have a clue if they’re telling the truth or not. I’ve put those days behind me.

Musical Side note: Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” is not about what many people think it is about. Great song, but it’s really fairly depressing if you listen to the lyrics. It is about people thinking their best days are behind them. And don’t get me started on “Born in the USA” from that same album… I’ve always liked the Jimmy Buffet song “A Pirate Looks at 40” about a man who feels like an “over-40 victim of fate” but I’ve never identified with it personally.

No, I think my birthday-related moodiness has more to do with having a summer birthday. I was born in the summer of 1967, known at the time as the “Summer of Love”. In school, summer birthdays sort of got forgotten. My school friends were always on vacation or doing something else when my birthday rolled around so birthday parties were not that well attended. On top of that, my older brother’s birthday is the day after mine so we grew up sharing birthdays. (Okay, it’s possible I’m still harboring some issues from my childhood, “glory days” or not…)

If I were a numerologist, I would think of this as my lucky year. Normally there are three sevens in my birthday, but I’m 47 this year, so there is a fourth. Realistically, on our birthdays, we should be celebrating our mothers.  It is the anniversary of our arrival in the world, but we didn’t do all that much. I just showed up, after all. On this impending birthday, I say “happy birthday” to my mom. She is the one who was working so hard 47 years ago.

Frankly, I think my best days are still to come. As a character in a movie from my youth said “What’s behind me is not important!”

I may go buy a lottery ticket…with a lot of 7s in it..

I love to watch fireflies in the trees behind my house at night. They make the poplars and oaks look like Christmas trees in the middle of summer.

I remember chasing fireflies late into the summer evening as a kid. We would catch them in Mason jars and “keep” them. I remember being fascinated to see them light up as if by magic when I held them in my hand. My friends and I would punch holes in the canning jar lid so the fireflies could breathe…at least for a while. Of course, we usually used a nail to punch the holes and it was always big enough for the fireflies to climb out when we turned our backs. Later, at a store, I saw plastic Lightning Bug jars for sale and a really gross Lightning Bug Ring where you were supposed to pull the glowing portion off of the beetle and place it on your finger. I hope that never caught on.

I was more astounded later in life to learn that the part of the beetle that made it special was a chemical reaction and the light was cold; my first exposure to natural phosphorescence. It is probably how fireflies communicate and seek mates and such. I would think lighting up at night would be a bad thing for the bugs, but they seem to survive and thrive anyway.

A few nights ago, after a storm blew through, I was sitting on the patio watching fireflies and thinking about summer days from 40 years ago. I said something about them and my wife’s immediate reply was “lightning bugs.” Hmmmm. I’m smart enough not to argue about that one.

Frankly I use both terms, but I thought it was interesting that she used lightning bugs even though we both grew up in the Kanawha Valley at approximately the same time.

An informal poll on Facebook yielded that my friends refer to them as lightning bugs by a ratio of 5:1. It turns out Jason Katz, a researcher at NC State University, wondered about the same thing and surveyed 10,000 people to create a series of interactive Dialect Survey Maps. It shows that Appalachia in general uses Lightning Bug while surrounding areas use the terms interchangeably. Firefly shows up in the west and for some odd reason in the far eastern end of New York state.

I’m still trying to figure out where I picked up “firefly”. Definitely not the first time I’ve been the odd man out in my life thought, so I’ll probably get over it. One Facebook friend noted that firefly sounds more “poetic”.

Regardless of what you call them, lightning bugs or fireflies, they are one more oddity in a long list of nature’s best. And they are fun to watch in the late evening when the sun is going down..

Friday is the Fourth of July, the day we honor the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Today, however, is the anniversary of when the Continental Congress actually voted for independence from Great Britain. It took them two more days to agree on the wording of the Declaration of Independence and sign it. At that time, the war had been going on for more than a year and it wouldn’t end until 1783 when the last British troops left New York City.

I wrote this last week. I have no idea how the US Men’s National Team (Soccer, Futbol) played yesterday against Belgium in the “Sweet Sixteen” of the World Cup. I hope we won yesterday, but if we didn’t it was still a tremendous run. I also just read an opinion piece by a national columnist who said that the rising popularity of soccer in this country is a sign of our “moral decay”. If you don’t believe me, Google it. I read the entire column thinking it was satire and waiting for the punchline. It never came.

I’m not sure what that columnist was looking at, but watching the game in Recife (and earlier ones in Natal and Manaus) I saw Americans supporting our team in droves. FIFA sold more tickets to Americans than any other country except for Brazil. Our fans were painted from head-to-toe in Red, White and Blue. They wore clothes, bikinis, hats and costumes made to resemble our national flag. I saw Captain America, Bat Man, Wonder Woman and Superman at games.

There is no question our country is struggling right now. We are more polarized than we’ve been in years, but through the lens of time we forget those rough patches. Even at times when we were all pulling together for a common purpose, things weren’t always rosy. I was shocked to learn recently that there were literally hundreds of work-stoppages and labor strikes during World War II. We have endured political scandals, unpopular presidents and divisive periods. Most people think of the 1950s as a golden era for the United States, thanks to “Happy Days”, but they forget about racial segregation and the Korean War among other things.

We like to think of ourselves as scrappy, come-from-behind, never-say-die people. When things get hardest, that is when Americans are at our best. And that is when we stand up for our country and support each other. So, on this Second of July, think about what makes America a great place to live and celebrate it. I don’t see “moral decay”. I see Americans who care for our country and want to keep it the best place in the world..