Where the Woods Are

The first time I came home from Chicago in the spring, after spending most of a year among gray limestone and very little green, I was overwhelmed by plants that seemed to be taking over.  The Woods Hole Institute has analyzed satellite data and produced this image of where the woods are in the United States.  Having grown up in the midst of the large swathe of dark green in the East, which is the Appalachian mountains and foothills, I think of the woods as normal.  Looking at the map, it is clear how unusual it is.

The Appalachians are a billion years old.  There are more kinds of plants and animals here than anywhere except the tropics.  I am so privileged to be here for another Appalachian spring.

Almost Heaven – It Takes a Village

I’ve been looking again at the National Survey of Children’s Health. One of the questions West Virginia scores lowest on is “How many children live in neighborhoods that contain a park, sidewalks, a library, and a community center?” Only Mississippi has more children who live where there are none of these, and only Mississippi have fewer children who live in neighborhoods with all four.

But what does this really mean? Doesn’t it mean that whoever wrote the survey was thinking only of city children? West Virginia is in some ways the most rural state in the country. If children have large yards, a garden, a creek in front and woods out back, do they need a park, sidewalks, and a community center? We already saw that West Virginia parents are more likely to read, sing, and tell stories to their children. If the kids get taken to the library every week or two, does it need to be in their neighborhood?

And our children live where
“People in my neighborhood help each other out.”
“We watch out for each other’s children in this neighborhood.”
“There are people I can count on in this neighborhood.”
“If my child were outside playing and got hurt or scared, there are adults nearby who I trust to help my child.”

More West Virginia children lived in caring and supportive neighborhoods than all but 8 other states, all of them rural (Utah, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska). More of our poorest children live in supportive neighborhoods than in all but 4 other states. And more parents feel their children are always safe in their neighborhood than all but 7 other states.

We may hear more often about the things we and our children don’t have and don’t achieve. But we have healthy children, in neighborhoods where neighbors still care, and where we don’t need city parks because we have not “paved paradise.” West Virginia families have held on to many of the values and ways of life that people in other places are now trying to regain or rebuild.

Almost Heaven – Families

My husband and I are both librarians, were read to by our parents, and read to our children.  Robert read James Thurber and other funny stuff to our children before they were born (I enjoyed it, too) and they are both bright, literate, and have a certain dry wit.  I’ve been looking again at the National Survey of Children’s Health.  Of all the parents in the country, West Virginians are the most likely to read to their preschool children, and 9th in reading to them every day.  57% of West Virginia pre-schoolers are read to every day and almost 90% are read to most days.  Even in the poorest households, more than half the parents read to their children every day.  We’re good at singing and storytelling, too – 9th in the country, and two-thirds of all parents sing or tell stories to their children every day. And 40%of school-age kids spend less than an hour a day watching television and playing video games. Our pre-schoolers see more television and videos than most, but not in the poorer households.  Preschoolers in our richest households watch more television than anywhere else in the country.

Sadly, most families no longer eat dinner together regularly, but West Virginians do better than most; almost half of all families have a meal together every day, but only about a third of our richest families.

Almost Heaven – Healthy Children

Here is a report on a grant to “fight obesity” among kids in Kanawha County. When I saw “47% of kids, predominantly those in families with low incomes, are considered overweight or obese” with no source cited, I went looking.  I haven’t found where those numbers came from, but I found some other encouraging facts.  Somehow, the media never report the good news.
The National Survey of Children’s Health compares the overall health of West Virginia children to children nationwide, at different incomes.

At every income level, West Virginia kids are healthier than the national average, and the poorer children are farther ahead than the richer ones.  On overall health, West Virginia ranks 20 among the 50 states plus DC – and Texas and California are 50 and 51.  On almost all of the measures in the survey, West Virginia scored higher than average. West Virginians are taking care of our kids – all of our kids.

A Previous Lack of Crows

When we were in Texas, I missed the crows.  Cawing in the distance had always seemed as integral to early morning as the dawn, until it was gone. I was pleased to hear one occasionally, especially early morning on our camping trips. I thought it was just that they didn’t come in to town.  But now, in our house on the edge, but still surrounded by town, they are often in the yard, especially in the spruce trees behind the house.

Today, following up a mistaken story about crow migration (they flock, and may move south up to a few hundred miles, but don’t really migrate), I found a map which explains why they seemed so few.  We grew up in some of the darkest areas on the map, I in West Virginia, my husband, in corn (and asparagus and pea) country in northern Illinois. We lived on the thin pink edge in central Texas.

American Crow Summer Range, courtesy of Crowbusters

American Crow Winter Range, courtesy of Crowbusters

Letter to the President

Mr. President:

I am sure you are aware of this editorial by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070203022.html

It outlines what you can do immediately to enforce existing law and regulation and end the travesty of mountaintop removal coal mining, and touches on the consequences it has had for the people of the southern coal fields.

I am a West Virginia native who left in 1978 to attend the University of Chicago and have only this year returned.   West Virginia, the only state completely within Appalachia, has suffered the fate of a third-world country for a century.  Even though coal mining is now a much smaller part of our economy, the coal companies do not have to pay the full cost of extracting the coal, and can spend a great deal on politicians and judges to keep it that way.

I was shocked by the conditions in the South Side of Chicago when I moved there; the southern coal fields of West Virginia are more shocking, because the people can be helped only if the land is not irretrievably destroyed.  Please go and visit southern West Virginia.  Visit the grade school threatened by sludge.  Fly over the devastated mountains.  Visit a “restored” mountaintop mine and listen to the silence of a destroyed ecosystem.  Walk the streets of the communities.  Then go visit the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, in the heart of the untouched mountains, and see what was and could be.

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You can write President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Almost Heaven (8)

Morgantown is number 9 in the Small Cities Rankings – 2009 New Geography Best Cities for Job Growth, of 173 small cities in the country, and 13th among all cities.  Charleston has moved from the small to medium cities category, and is 37 of 103 medium-sized metro areas, and 114 overall.  Smaller job markets  like Clarksburg and Parkersburg aren’t included.

Toledo, Hickory, NC, Sarasota, and Dayton, all places West Virginians long went in droves, are the bottom four medium-sized cities, and near the bottom overall.

Almost Heaven (7)

Pleasants County, West Virginia, was recently ranked as the 6th best county to raise a family in the Southeast by the Progressive Farmer.

Almost Heaven (6)

While discussing public records and identity theft with a friend, I discovered that West Virginia has one of the lowest identity theft rates in the country.  In 2006, the top five states were:

Rank	State	Victims/100,000 Population	Total Victims
1	Arizona	1427.8	9,113
2	Nevada	120.0	2,994
3	California	113.5	41,396
4	Texas	110.6	26,006
5	Florida	98.3	17,780

The bottom five were:

46	West Virginia	30.3	715
47	Iowa	34.9	1,041
48	South Dakota	30.2	236
49	North Dakota	29.7	189
50	Vermont	28.5	178

Almost Heaven (5)

West Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of active oil and gas wells in the country.