News, Notes, & Notions: How Is It August Already Edition

Updates, Feedbacks, and what has been, is, and is coming for Heard Tell

Folks, thank you so much for supporting us from the start of this Heard Tell SubStack. Really appreciate the support, subscriptions, and the higher-than-SubStack average reading and sharing you are doing. It means a lot.

If you would really do us a solid, appreciate you sharing this SubStack with your friends, family, and whoever else and let them know that free subscription would get them the writing, media, Heard Tell episodes, and everything else you enjoy for themselves.

We are working on getting the entire archive of Heard Tell shows ported over to the SubStack, 600 plus episodes worth. Also, we are going to slowly be re-upping some of my writing from before, especially the Yonder & Home stuff that folks have been asking for. If there is something you specifically would like highlighted and re-upped, let us know in the comments or email and we will get it up for you.

So, some of the latest writing:

For Ordinary Times “Quibbling Over Nomenclature Regarding the Atomic Bombings”

I strive, though probably fail, to have some consistency to such things. I hate war, HATE IT, in a personal way, while understanding the utopian unicorn of peace and pacifism at any cost always ends up with a worse war at the hands of worse leaders because of it. I know evil violence requires a less evil but greater level of violence to stop it. I also know without really tight guardrails and leadership the lesser of two evils never evolves past just being the evil it always was once the mitigating circumstance passes.

Maybe the “Baptist and bootlegger” in me is just so utterly engrained that I cannot call the difference between those things and doing the one to not have the other out and out sin. But I do know it is not “good.” Long before the economist started using that “Baptist and bootlegger” term for regulation, the folks where I come from understood it to be more of a test of hypocrisy without using that word. I tell you from experiece, as I is one, Baptists calling out sin in others is a common occurrence. We are all sinners, as part of Baptist doctrine, thus the need for a hypocrisy test. Which we as Baptist mostly ignore. Which is self-identifying, really. We can justify it, but even at our most hypocritical most of us would never dare claim it as “good” to the Lord or anyone else.

The TL:DR on the practical application of “Baptist and bootleggers”, whether for running shine or dropping nukes: Sometimes you just do your duty, do the right thing as you best understand it, and hope when you stand in judgement for it that was enough.

From Yonder & Home archive “Blue Cola Blues: The Ups & Downs of Life and RC Cola”

It’s a shame RC Cola didn’t revolutionize the cola industry with such innovations as diet cola, canned cola, national advertising, local distribution, the first 16 oz. bottle, the first celebrity endorsement campaigns…

Oh, wait. They did.

What happened, then, that RC Cola has long been an afterthought behind Coke and Pepsi? Similar to many businesses, and food businesses in particular, there is tragedy, and incompetence, and bad decisions, and a big ball of human emotions and hurt feelings. How is it when I proclaim my fond memories of RC Cola on social media, the Coca-Cola Calvinists descend to decry my total depravity for daring to exercise a free will beverage opinion?

Reader’s Digest Version: it’s complicated.

For The Fayette Tribune “Its All About Infrastructure”

Recently the debate has begun on how to allocate funding for the long-promised, long-overdue, and badly needed broadband expansion in West Virginia. Infrastructure. 

There is ongoing debate over the West Virginia power grid, of the past of power generation and the future of better ways to do things that aren’t ready to implement quite yet. Infrastructure. 

The constant, never-ending, always complicated funding and fixing of U.S. highways, state byways, and every kind of road from the Gorge Bridge to the remotest holler. Infrastructure. 

There is the way, way past-time-it-was-solved problem of safe, clean, and readily accessible water to all of the Fayette area homes, businesses, and tourist areas. Infrastructure. 

One thing the current summer season and just completed 4th of July long weekend has shown to anyone who was out and about during it, is folks are coming in droves. The New River Gorge’s ascension to a national park has folks visiting, and the other wonderful things about West Virginia and the Fayette area have them talking to others and planning on coming back. That means more folks, God willing and the creek don’t rise, are going to be coming in greater and greater numbers. 

West Virginia in general and Fayette in particular don’t just need infrastructure week, they need an infrastructure decade.

My Review “Ten Things I Think After Watching Oppenheimer”

[3] Oppenheimer is visually amazing.

Nolan has his “dream” sequences and effects scenes galore, including the perfectly done “big bang” that is at the heart of the matter, but with just the right amount of accentuation without becoming overbearing or distracting as he sometimes has a habit of doing. For all the praise of Nolan pushing boundaries with films like Tenet, the use the landscapes in Oppenheimer shows the director’s total mastery of cinematography. New Mexico’s windy deserts, crowded government meetings, the halls of academia, and the period design of the film are all characters as much as the actors. Nolan eschewed CGI here for mostly practical shooting and it benefits the film. Historical films have to get the “feel” of the period right to tell the story, and the production here is lush and full and brilliantly executed.

[4] For all Oppenheimer ‘s greatness, there are flaws.

Oppenheimer goes all in on being epic, and mostly gets there. The film is so good in most areas the flaws stand out. There is one line of dialogue juxtaposed to a rather intimate moment between Murphy and Pugh’s characters centered around the first utterance of Oppenheimer’s famous quote foreshadowing when the bomb does go off, that brought an audible groan from the audience and eye rolling from me. The underlying relationship between Murphy’s Oppenheimer and Downey’s Strauss needed more on the front end to really lay in the delivery of latter part of the film. Using black and white for some of the time jumping, but color for others, then not using it, while no doubt intended as emphasis seemed heavy handed and confusing.

Latest Media

My Appearance on Indisputable w/ Dr. Rashad Richey on TYT

Jim Lokay of Fox5 DC re-upped our conversation last year on aged politicians

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