Pinto Bean Politics!

When I was growing up in a country store on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky, we sold pinto beans by the pound, weighed from a galvanized barrel that sat under the main counter in the store. We bought the beans in 100 pound bags, dumped them in the barrel which also held a pretty nice blackjack carved from a piece of wood to a shape just like a miniature baseball bat, about a foot long with a nice handgrip and about a 3-4 inch circumference on the head which was drilled to about three inches down the handle to include a nice round cylinder of lead. To my knowledge the blackjack was never used in the long period my parents operated the store. Our customers came in, usually talked small talk for a short while, bought whatever they needed, maybe even a pound or two of pinto beans, and left without ever needing to be knocked out with the blackjack in the bean barrel. I no longer own that blackjack but in today's world of the most corrupt politics in the history of the nation, and the worst living example of a human being working on a daily basis from the White House to destroy the entire nation and our democracy, we sure need a good metaphorical political blackjack. On a recent check of the price of pinto beans, I found that WalMart is charging $14.94 for a 20 pound bag of pinto beans. That boils down to about 74.7cents a pound for bulk pinto beans. WalMart is now selling the one pound bag of pinto beans for a dollar. When I was often helping my parents behind the bean barrel, I don't think we ever charged more than 10cents a pound and we were making a decent profit in those days. The point to this focus on pinto beans is important because there are millions of Americans of all stripes and cultures who are eating pinto beans on a daily basis. Several different cultures are highly dependent on pinto beans as a staple source of protein. Most people of moderate to poor means in the American south depend on pinto beans as a major portion of their diet. That includes both Caucasian and African American citizens of the deep south. Most members of the various Hispanic cultures in America are also largely dependent on pinto beans. Frijoles, in many forms, are a common sight on Hispanic dinner tables. Nearly every person who ever grew up in Central and Southern Appalachia grew up, in large part, on pinto beans. We even had pinto beans once a week in the high school lunch room at Knott County High School at Pippa Passes, Kentucky, when I was a student there. Pinto beans may well be the answer to help us solve our ongoing attempted tyranny by TRAITOR Trump and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party.

One of my favorite memories about pinto beans goes back to about 1992 when I was working for a short while, between human services jobs, at a horse farm in Central Kentucky. I was salesprepping several brood mares which were headed toward a November Breeding Stock Sale at Keeneland. The mares were actuallly owned by a man who was contracting for the sales prepping with the owner of a farm I was working on at the time. I was sent to the owner's farm to do the work. One day, the owner who was born and raised in Quito Ecuador, a Mexican immigrant blacksmith, and I were standing in front of a barn in a conversation and found ourselves talking about how we had grown up in three very different locations and cultures. We suddenly discovered that all three of us had grown up eating pinto beans, one in Mexico, one in Ecuador, and one in Eastern Kentucky. It was an educational moment for me for sure. What is the point to all this and politics? What the Democratic party needs to do to win all the next upcoming elections in this country is to locate, educate, register, and guarantee the turnout to vote of the great majority of the pinto bean cultures in America. If we do that we will be back in control of our country, our Democracy, and our future. We will no longer be facing the horrible situation in which we finid ourselves today. We can begin the next 25 to 50 years of necessary work in order to save our country after all the political, moral, and ethical damage which has been done over the last ten years by TRAITOR Trump and the other TRAITORS who facilitate most of his crimes against the government, the country, the world, and the planet. The answer is all about pinto beans.

Why Do Blogs And Bloggers Become Defunct?

 Recently, I scrolled through the rather long list of blogs on my "Reading List" on this website and found that many of the blogs on that list had not had a new post in quite some time, some of them for even a few years.  When a blog and blogger go that long without any new content it is safe to assume the blog is now defunct.  But why do they become defunct?  I'm not even sure I know all the answers but a lot of possible answers are seemingly obvious.  Some of the bloggers simply die.  Other bloggers might find new interests which they enjoy more and simply quit blogging.  Others could even have found themselves in prison.  Who knows?  I have published this blog since April 15, 2011, and it has grown steadily both in the amount of posts I have created and in the number of people who have become interested in it.  In the nearly 10 years I have written this blog, it has slowly grown from a few dozen followers to more than 150 followers.  But, I have no way of knowing how many of those followers actually actively follow the blog to the degree that they read most of my posts, read some of my posts when they are bored, or simply return at irregular times to see if I have posted anything in which they are interested.  

Over the last couple or three years though, this blog has ballooned from about 50 followers to more than 150.  This blog averages about 3,000 page views a month and has had a little over 362,000 page views in the ten years it has been active.  But, interestingly, the two highest months in page views came in September 2014 and March 2015 when it received 18,917 page views and 20,917 page views respectively.  At that time, I probably had less than 30 followers.  I have no idea why the blog received such high numbers in those two months.  The roughly one year period from February 2014 to March 2015 had consistently higher numbers than the blog average.  January 2015 was the lowest month in that period with 5,262 page views.  I repeat that I have no idea why the numbers ran so high for that period and why now, with at least three times as many followers, I usually get lower page views.  If any of you readers can explain why, I would love to hear it.  

Now, to discuss the reason which prompted me to write about this in the first place.  Over the years, I have added 32 blogs of fairly varied subject matter to my reading list and have not ever deleted one from that list.  My primary areas of interest have consistently been Appalachian Studies, Auctioneering, Travel, and Disability Issues since my wife, Candice has been in a wheelchair for more than twenty years.  Of the blogs on my list, I clearly know less than half a dozen of the creators and have only ever met one of them in person.  I have probably corresponded with a dozen or so either via e-mail or the comments sections on either my blog or theirs.  The one person I know, have met, correspond with regularly, and expect to see again in the future is Mike Brandly who is an auctioneer, real estate broker, auctioneer trainer, and expert witness in matters of auction law.  His blog is called Mike Brandly, Auctioneer Blog, and has had more then 1.4million page views due to his national prominence as a multi-faceted auctioneer.  I have actually taken my required continuing education for my auctioneer license from Mike and we are Facebook friends.  We have a couple of Facebook groups in common, two of which Mike runs and one run by a friend of mine to which I referred Mike. 

I also know, in a less personal way without any face to face contact, a woman named Heather Johnson who writes a wonderful blog called Paralyzed With Joy and has done so since November 2009.  Heather is a full quadriplegic due to a horrible car accident, not her fault, when she was 17 years old.  If she can maintain a blog for 12 years, anybody can.  And her is one of the most interesting blogs I read.  Heather, one of her sisters, and I are all Facebook friends.  

Another blogger with whom I have had extensive contact beyond his blog is known to the world as either Greenbrier Jim or Wayfarin' Stranger which is also the name of his blog which he operated regularly from February 2011,  to March 2014, and then ceased to produce it which is a damn shame since it is a wonderful blog of both his own high quality photography and Appalachian History.  Jim grew up in Morehead, Kentucky, where I attended Morehead State University years after he left town.  I suspect that Jim may be having health issues which have kept him from continuing.  But his blog is still worth exploring for the quality of his work in both areas. 

Another blog and blogger which I appreciated a great deal was called Dave's Cupboard and focused on unusual foods.  Dave, who I do not know from Adam, ran his blog consistently from January 2, 2006, until June 26, 2015.  I suspect that Dave might have either passed away or suddenly suffered a major health crisis.  His daughter was listed as a co-author on the blog and I sent a message of inquiry but never got an answer.  I love odd, unusual, even strange foods, and I miss Dave's blog a lot.  It is also worth visiting for the past reflections on many things a lot of people claim they never eat.  

Only two or three blogs on my Reading List can be said to still be active with posts having been created in the last few months at the latest.  I miss the work of every one of the authors who created those blogs and wish they were still active.  And I have to repeat, I have no idea why some of them stopped.