It’s Ariella from Lioness. We are almost half-way through the week! (Unfortunately, this is not an invitation for you to flee to outer space with me, if that’s what you were hoping for. But, keep reading if you want more outer-space-related content!)
After my plans to move to New York City were derailed by coronavirus, through a series of events, I ended up in rural West Virginia for three months.
Though I never expected to find myself here, I am grateful that I got the chance to stay a while, for a few reasons.
For one, the landscape is gorgeous. Hawks gracefully swoop through lush valleys, deer and their fawns prance across fields. It’s not difficult to socially distance here - we are two people in a town of 500. When the clouds disperse we can stargaze, and listen to bullfrogs. It’s kind of a great way to wait out the virus.
But I’ve now been here long enough to see more than just scenery. I can’t help but notice that the beauty of the blue-ridge mountains is cut by a strikingly different economic and cultural landscape.
“Deplorables for Trump” signs adorn the dilapidated houses, warning potential trespassers that their owners possess a small arsenal of firearms. People who are high on drugs wander the streets, often missing teeth, talking to themselves in an opioid-induced trance. Elderly people, many of them obese, congregate at the local pizza joint, not wearing masks.
In the nearby town of Elkins, signs at local hair salons and schools tout the work of Governor Jim Justice in keeping coal a centerpiece of the economy. The local lake, Mount Storm, is overshadowed by an ominous power plant, as electrical lines powering mid-Atlantic cities hum loudly over the anchored fishing boats.
For years, people in rural Trump strongholds like West Virginia and other Appalachian states have been poisoned by chemicals, choked by coal, paralyzed by job stagnation. All but four counties in West Virginia have median incomes below the federal poverty line. Over one-quarter of West Virginians live on federal government aid, much of it disability aid as a result of work-related injuries or sickness.
West Virginia is also ranked the most obese state in the country. A lack of economic opportunity has transformed into a vibrant opioid industry, and resulting in debilitating addiction and death of young people who choose to stick around. The list goes on.
Many of us could look on and lament their conditions. But for West Virginians, none of this is deserving of pity, or constitutes being taken advantage of. If they get sick in the mine, it is because they are providing electricity to the eastern seaboard, not because they are being taken advantage of by a faceless corporation. If they are obese as a result of fast food, it is because they enjoy eating fast food, not because they don’t have enough healthy food options near them. If they become pregnant at 15, it is because God wanted to bring new life into the world, not because they had no access to contraception or sex-ed.
I can’t help but admire the grit. There is a widespread unwillingness to acknowledge any hardship (unless you’re campaigning on behalf of the Governor, whose campaign sign reads somewhat mockingly: Bringing WV from 50th to 1st! — a reference to West Virginia’s placement at the bottom of so many lists ranking the quality of this or that).
When you’re in West Virginia, it’s hard not to feel like everyone has given up on trying to address the problems here, or really the problems in any community in need of an economic lift.
The fact is, capital is needed to make investment in new industries that will bring growth and revitalization. And across the country, it feels like the priorities of private capital-holders have shifted.
Sure, government still plays an important role, and this is not to say we should only be looking to billionaires for solutions. But we would be remiss not to acknowledge the outsized ripple effect that even one person with a lot of money can have on a local economy (look at cities like Detroit).
In the past, the largesse of the ultra-rich could be a little more counted on to propel humanity forward. In accumulating their wealth, there is no doubt that the robber barons of yesteryear did much to harm the poor - but they also felt on some level a certain patriotism about making the country a better place.
Andrew Carnegie established an endowment for international peace, gave money to build more than 2,800 libraries and a college. His educational and other grants gave others the opportunity to be lifted up on the shoulders of his success. Henry Frick bequeathed his Fifth Avenue mansion to become a museum, considered one of the best in the world, and gave an endowment and park to the city of Pittsburgh. Carnegie advocated that the wealthy had a moral responsibility to contribute to the greater good of society.
In our day, Warren Buffet has given away $14.7 billion dollars. A handful of prominent billionaires continue to donate their wealth to charitable causes. But we have parts of the nation that need to be rebuilt from the ground up. New economies have to be recreated where old ones have died. Tech billionaires have never fared better than ever in the past half decade, yet in 2018 they gave half as much to charity as they did in the previous year. The wealthiest Americans just got $406 billion dollars richer in the aftermath of the Covid market crash. They’ll invest in rural West Virginia, right?
Perhaps back in their heydays, because there was no plan B, the ultra-rich of the past realized that investing their money back into the country and the planet meant in some respects giving back to themselves as well.
Nowadays, technology provides the hope of an exit plan. Some billionaires are turning their interests upward, to a different frontier: space exploration.
Of course, I get it. This is not to say that we shouldn’t look to space at all, especially in the face of climate crises. “Exploring space” is a sexier concept than “revitalizing local economies” (though, how sexy can one be in a spacesuit?). Conquering a new planet probably feels better to the ego and more burnishing to the legacy than refurbishing an abandoned warehouse, or answering for the underlying social conditions that caused the opioid crisis.
But - call me old-fashioned - despite the chaos and sadness, aren’t there so many earthly delights and surprises yet to explore? Or have we given up on Earth already? (Perhaps, this is why I’m not a billionaire.)
Exploring one day in Thomas, West Virginia, a town near where I am staying, I discovered a few dozen art galleries, antique shops, and restaurants along a river; a stark contrast to much of what I described above. This tiny, quaint community has rebuilt its aesthetic and created a micro-economy with the infusion of artists and makers, drawing in tourists and locals to partake in the culture. Drive by and you might hear the distant tinkling of trombone music, or see the reopening of a refurbished motel.
It’s not quite the conquest of a new planet. Rather, it seemed to me to be the reinvention and resilience of everyday humanity, transformed, perhaps, into something even better.
What do you think, readers? Am I crazy, and would you rather hop aboard a spacecraft and flee to another planet if given the chance? Send us your hottest takes - no judgments here.
What we’re reading…
Designers among us know best just how integral design is to almost everything we take for granted - including who we vote for. This WNYC spot gives a fascinating in-depth look at ballot design in New Jersey, where the political party in control gets to decide where on a ballot a candidate appears. The result? Frequent confusion, spoilt ballots and the perpetuation of political empires.
The Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013. Seven years later, what should we make of corporate America’s newfound support? As the Covid-19 pandemic is bringing economic pain that rivals the Great Depression, many of the same companies that signed the corporate responsibility pledge are furloughing employees and provoking labor complaints from workers - many of them disproportionately black. It begs the question of whether Black Lives are really what matter to companies.
In other stories...
Our Amplifying Black Voices campaign was a resounding success. Thank you to everyone who applied. We’ve chosen five of our applicants - a police officer, a yoga teacher, a construction CEO, an e-commerce entrepreneur, and a coding bootcamp - and are working to get their stories in the world. Stay tuned for more on those.
In the meantime, tell us your own untold stories by replying to this email.
We are also on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Visit us there for more up to the minute stories, and we’d love to have you share this newsletter with someone you know.
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Good Morning Readers,
It’s Ariella from Lioness. We are almost half-way through the week! (Unfortunately, this is not an invitation for you to flee to outer space with me, if that’s what you were hoping for. But, keep reading if you want more outer-space-related content!)
After my plans to move to New York City were derailed by coronavirus, through a series of events, I ended up in rural West Virginia for three months.
Though I never expected to find myself here, I am grateful that I got the chance to stay a while, for a few reasons.
For one, the landscape is gorgeous. Hawks gracefully swoop through lush valleys, deer and their fawns prance across fields. It’s not difficult to socially distance here - we are two people in a town of 500. When the clouds disperse we can stargaze, and listen to bullfrogs. It’s kind of a great way to wait out the virus.
But I’ve now been here long enough to see more than just scenery. I can’t help but notice that the beauty of the blue-ridge mountains is cut by a strikingly different economic and cultural landscape.
“Deplorables for Trump” signs adorn the dilapidated houses, warning potential trespassers that their owners possess a small arsenal of firearms. People who are high on drugs wander the streets, often missing teeth, talking to themselves in an opioid-induced trance. Elderly people, many of them obese, congregate at the local pizza joint, not wearing masks.
In the nearby town of Elkins, signs at local hair salons and schools tout the work of Governor Jim Justice in keeping coal a centerpiece of the economy. The local lake, Mount Storm, is overshadowed by an ominous power plant, as electrical lines powering mid-Atlantic cities hum loudly over the anchored fishing boats.
For years, people in rural Trump strongholds like West Virginia and other Appalachian states have been poisoned by chemicals, choked by coal, paralyzed by job stagnation. All but four counties in West Virginia have median incomes below the federal poverty line. Over one-quarter of West Virginians live on federal government aid, much of it disability aid as a result of work-related injuries or sickness.
West Virginia is also ranked the most obese state in the country. A lack of economic opportunity has transformed into a vibrant opioid industry, and resulting in debilitating addiction and death of young people who choose to stick around. The list goes on.
Many of us could look on and lament their conditions. But for West Virginians, none of this is deserving of pity, or constitutes being taken advantage of. If they get sick in the mine, it is because they are providing electricity to the eastern seaboard, not because they are being taken advantage of by a faceless corporation. If they are obese as a result of fast food, it is because they enjoy eating fast food, not because they don’t have enough healthy food options near them. If they become pregnant at 15, it is because God wanted to bring new life into the world, not because they had no access to contraception or sex-ed.
I can’t help but admire the grit. There is a widespread unwillingness to acknowledge any hardship (unless you’re campaigning on behalf of the Governor, whose campaign sign reads somewhat mockingly: Bringing WV from 50th to 1st! — a reference to West Virginia’s placement at the bottom of so many lists ranking the quality of this or that).
When you’re in West Virginia, it’s hard not to feel like everyone has given up on trying to address the problems here, or really the problems in any community in need of an economic lift.
The fact is, capital is needed to make investment in new industries that will bring growth and revitalization. And across the country, it feels like the priorities of private capital-holders have shifted.
Sure, government still plays an important role, and this is not to say we should only be looking to billionaires for solutions. But we would be remiss not to acknowledge the outsized ripple effect that even one person with a lot of money can have on a local economy (look at cities like Detroit).
In the past, the largesse of the ultra-rich could be a little more counted on to propel humanity forward. In accumulating their wealth, there is no doubt that the robber barons of yesteryear did much to harm the poor - but they also felt on some level a certain patriotism about making the country a better place.
Andrew Carnegie established an endowment for international peace, gave money to build more than 2,800 libraries and a college. His educational and other grants gave others the opportunity to be lifted up on the shoulders of his success. Henry Frick bequeathed his Fifth Avenue mansion to become a museum, considered one of the best in the world, and gave an endowment and park to the city of Pittsburgh. Carnegie advocated that the wealthy had a moral responsibility to contribute to the greater good of society.
In our day, Warren Buffet has given away $14.7 billion dollars. A handful of prominent billionaires continue to donate their wealth to charitable causes. But we have parts of the nation that need to be rebuilt from the ground up. New economies have to be recreated where old ones have died. Tech billionaires have never fared better than ever in the past half decade, yet in 2018 they gave half as much to charity as they did in the previous year. The wealthiest Americans just got $406 billion dollars richer in the aftermath of the Covid market crash. They’ll invest in rural West Virginia, right?
Perhaps back in their heydays, because there was no plan B, the ultra-rich of the past realized that investing their money back into the country and the planet meant in some respects giving back to themselves as well.
Nowadays, technology provides the hope of an exit plan. Some billionaires are turning their interests upward, to a different frontier: space exploration.
Of course, I get it. This is not to say that we shouldn’t look to space at all, especially in the face of climate crises. “Exploring space” is a sexier concept than “revitalizing local economies” (though, how sexy can one be in a spacesuit?). Conquering a new planet probably feels better to the ego and more burnishing to the legacy than refurbishing an abandoned warehouse, or answering for the underlying social conditions that caused the opioid crisis.
But - call me old-fashioned - despite the chaos and sadness, aren’t there so many earthly delights and surprises yet to explore? Or have we given up on Earth already? (Perhaps, this is why I’m not a billionaire.)
Exploring one day in Thomas, West Virginia, a town near where I am staying, I discovered a few dozen art galleries, antique shops, and restaurants along a river; a stark contrast to much of what I described above. This tiny, quaint community has rebuilt its aesthetic and created a micro-economy with the infusion of artists and makers, drawing in tourists and locals to partake in the culture. Drive by and you might hear the distant tinkling of trombone music, or see the reopening of a refurbished motel.
It’s not quite the conquest of a new planet. Rather, it seemed to me to be the reinvention and resilience of everyday humanity, transformed, perhaps, into something even better.
What do you think, readers?Am I crazy, and would you rather hop aboard a spacecraft and flee to another planet if given the chance? Send us your hottest takes - no judgments here.What we’re reading…
Designers among us know best just how integral design is to almost everything we take for granted - including who we vote for. This WNYC spot gives a fascinating in-depth look at ballot design in New Jersey, where the political party in control gets to decide where on a ballot a candidate appears. The result? Frequent confusion, spoilt ballots and the perpetuation of political empires.
The Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013. Seven years later, what should we make of corporate America’s newfound support? As the Covid-19 pandemic is bringing economic pain that rivals the Great Depression, many of the same companies that signed the corporate responsibility pledge are furloughing employees and provoking labor complaints from workers - many of them disproportionately black. It begs the question of whether Black Lives are really what matter to companies.
In other stories...
Our Amplifying Black Voices campaign was a resounding success. Thank you to everyone who applied. We’ve chosen five of our applicants - a police officer, a yoga teacher, a construction CEO, an e-commerce entrepreneur, and a coding bootcamp - and are working to get their stories in the world. Stay tuned for more on those.
In the meantime, tell us your own untold stories by replying to this email.
We are also on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Visit us there for more up to the minute stories, and we’d love to have you share this newsletter with someone you know.
-The team at Lioness