Birthday Wishes

Today my home state of West Virginia turns 145. Hard to believe - it seems like just yesterday you were setting up the rump legislature in Wheeling to spite the Tidewater folks. It's certainly been quite a ride.

I was going to try and come up with something clever, witty, or profound for the occasion, but I think I'll just send readers over to The Film Geek, who puts it very well. As he sums up:

Happy birthday, West Virginia. I may not always like you, but I do love you. You're family.

Film Geek also mentions a project undertaken by some of the WV bloggers on this day to:

definin[e] their vision for a new stereotype of West Virginia.

While I appreciate the effort and sympathize with the underlying motivation, I think that idea is a little misguided.

Stereotypes are bad and should be assailed with facts and counter arguments. But they shouldn't be replaced by new ones. They should be replaced by accurate portraits, which are sometimes difficult to convey, given their nuances and idiosyncrasies. To replace one cardboard cutout of our state with another (or a bunch of others) seems like a fool's errand.

Better, I think, is for the WV bloggers to simply be themselves - smart, passionate, funny, irreverent, talented, goofy - when out in the blogosphere. The best way to undermine stereotypes is to show, by word and deed, their falsehood. To confront the bigotry and ignorance inherent in those stereotypes with the humanity inherent in every one of us and show what type of children the Mountain Mama produces.

Having said all that, be sure and check out everybody's posts, collected here. I'm sure they'll be interesting (and probably prove me wrong!).