Sunday, November 16, 2008 - Clarksburg WV
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Stormy weather ahead, Nov 16, 2008, Hazleton PA
This has been a mild fall in upstate New York
The mild fall in Columbia County lulled me into thinking I would escape the east snow free this year. But that wasn't to be. Not quite anyway. Some darned fool had to press his luck and head over the Allegheny mountains today. Ah well, it's not far over those beautiful mountains and my time up there where the rain turned white was short lived and only slicked up the road for a few miles.
Still heading for Kentucky
Tomorrow I'm going to continue on down I-79 to Charleston WV and catch I-64 west across Kentucky. That hopefully will put me west of the cold snap this area is experiencing.
When did Wal-Mart become Walmart?
I guess it didn't. I was going to make the switch but in looking around http://www.walmart.com I find the simplified spelling seems to apply only to Wal-Mart's online presence and on their register receipts. As an old hunt & peck typist (typer?) I was all set to drop the extra hyphen and cap. Darn.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clarksburg WV
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #1544, 550 Emily Dr, Clarksburg, WV 26301 - (304) 622-1954
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone service- good signal
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - none but 1x dialup speed is reasonable
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
When Hope Dies
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no.