Inspired by the Michael Vick dogfighting case, the Virginia state legislature earlier this year passed a bill that tightens penalties for animal fighting across the board.
That includes cockfighting, which had been technically legal — but only as long as it didn’t involve attendance fees, gambling or the transfer of any sort of money. The new law, which takes effect July 1, does include exceptions for hunting and farming situations but increases penalties otherwise.

The Tennessee legislature has also been considering making cockfighting a full-blown felony. Last month, an FBI agent told a Senate committee that the activity is still “relatively common” across the state:

Thomas E. Farrow, a Johnson City-based agent who supervised the Cocke County operation known as “Rose Thorn,” said there are “still quite a few pits” operating in Tennessee, “pretty much throughout” the state.

Beyond the large, somewhat organized cockfighting pits, he said there are smaller and more informal “hack fights” that amount to “a circle of pickup trucks and bails of hay.”

Sometime back we reviewed Burkhard Bilger’s Noodling For Flatheads: Moonshine, Monster Catfish and Other Southern Comforts (a fantastic book which I heartily recommend), which looks at underground Southern subcultures. Many of the activities Bilger covers are dwindling or dying.
With the recent activity in Virginia and Tennessee, cockfighting appears to be well on the way to becoming — at best — even more underground.

UPDATE: I had a feeling I’d been sitting on the Tennessee cockfighting blurb too long. Earlier this month the bill went to a budget subcommittee in the House, dubbed in the story as “‘the Black Hole’ because many bills go there, but few emerge.”

And it looks like the bill to make cockfighting a felony didn’t emerge.

From columnist Tom Humphrey’s Sunday column:

Most effective unseen lobby: The state’s cockfighting crowd, which managed to quietly derail an effort to make it a felony to watch roosters fight to the death.

Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, who has lately made a career out of his reputation as a moonshiner, has been arrested and jailed for making untaxed whiskey near Parrottsville, Tenn., about 50 miles east of Knoxville.

According to The Asheville Citizen-Times:

Undercover agents with the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission said they bought large amounts of moonshine from Sutton in February and March before making the arrest last week, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office affidavit.

They seized three 1,000-gallon whiskey stills, more than 850 gallons of moonshine and hundreds of gallons of mash and other ingredients used to make the liquor Thursday, while also confiscating firearms and ammunition, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

I worked for a newspaper covering Maggie Valley for a little more than a year, and while I heard plenty of “Popcorn” stories, I never met the man.

A writer over at Democratic partisan site Raising Kaine suggests that “Appalachia is the absolute KEY area to electoral victory for [Democratic presidential candidate Barrack] Obama.”

The writer claims that by swinging Appalachia, Obama could win West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and maybe even Kentucky and Tennessee. The entry goes on to analyze voters in the relevant congressional districts in each state (the 6th congressional district in Virginia is omitted, and while I’d argue it should be included the reasoning for why it isn’t is included in the comments portion of the entry), as well as what Obama needs to do to win.

The number one thing? “Go there.”

I also like this final point which the writer emphasizes:

It is more than simple demographics that sets Appalachia apart from the lowland south. The Appalachian political system is a distinct one. It is more complex than that of the “solid” south, and entirely more unique (and mysterious) than it is given credit for.

An article by Christopher Leinberger in The Atlantic posits that, with a one-two punch of the housing slump and skyrocketing fuel costs, suburban housing communities built fairly recently could become the nation’s next wave of slums:

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

The story is lengthy, but well worth reading.

I first heard about it in this entry at Virginia policy blog Bacon’s Rebellion, where Jim Bacon has posted his own analysis. That’s worth reading too (and it’s much more concise than the Atlantic story.

The New York Times picked up an eastern Tennessee story about local politics Monday. One might wonder, “Why is the ‘Gray Lady’ writing about the Knox County Commission?”

The answer would be that there’s so much color in local political bodies, particularly in Knox County, that it allows writer Dan Barry to pen passages like this:

… on Jan. 31, 2007, a day soon dubbed Black Wednesday, the commission violated the first rule in the Handy Handbook of Backroom Politics: It conducted its hack cronyism in public.

Before an audience of hundreds, the commission staged a political version of a bedroom farce, with its members calling repeated recesses, retreating to a back room, shouting at one another and even swearing in one appointee during a break.

[snip]

At curtain’s close, the 12 appointments included the son of one outgoing commissioner, the wife of another outgoing commissioner, the father of a sitting commissioner, a top aide to the politically muscular sheriff, and a businessman who years earlier had come out on the wrong end of a sexual harassment suit. It seems a catfish could have been appointed if properly connected.

Barry goes on to document the political and judicial backlash to the meeting, driven largely by the editor of The Knoxville News-Sentinnel.

It’s a great yarn, and talks about what happens when meetings that often go unobserved come into public view.

I’ve been reading former Sleater-Kinney guitar player Carrie Brownstein’s NPR blog semi-regularly the last few weeks.

On Monday she mused on the sound of “local” bands, and how that relates to where they’re from. In particular she wrote about Bob Mould from Husker Du, and that while he hailed from Minneapolis, a performance from Portland, Ore., included seeming references to Kurt Cobain and the old ’90s Northwest music scene.

And she goes on to eloquently nail the appeal of local music to me. I’ve always kind of understood this intuitively, but never have translated it into words as well as this:

Great music transcends the spot on the map from which it springs forth. But music also captures the nuances and sensibilities of people’s lives in a specific place or even becomes a reflection of the city or State itself. Our local bands might be the best example of who we are right now or of who we want to become, or maybe not at all. They might live in Portland and sound like they’re from Manchester. So, it’s not just the bands who reside in our cities and towns, or who transplant themselves there, that make up the noises that represent our topography or our internal and external landscapes. After all, the chainsaw distortion of Husker Du’s guitar sounds conjure the felling of trees as much as Soundgarden embodies our half lit winter months or The Thermals bring to mind a restless frontier.

[snip]

The sonic or lyrical exploration and insinuation of place is one reason that music speaks to me. Either it transports me to distant shores, or reminds me of all the reasons why I stay.

Evan Eisenberg write an interesting spiel for webzine Slate that looks at what “Into the Wild” has to say about the concept of wilderness. He writes not only about the differences between the book and movie, but also factors a William Cronon essay into the mix. The result is fairly short and worth a read, especially if you’re like me and maintain an Ed Abbey-inspired wilderness fixation.

An excerpt:

Harrowing in spots, the book nonetheless came as balm to a nation eager to believe that its newly revived interest in nature was overdone and it should probably just kick back with a six-pack and relax. Equally soothing, for some, was an essay by historian William Cronon published the year before in the New York Times Magazine. Titled “The Trouble With Wilderness,” it argued that wilderness is “a human creation,” and a recent one; in the wild, there is no such thing. Nearly every hectare of nature has a human history; to idealize untouched nature is to evade that history. “As we gaze into the mirror [wilderness] holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.”

Both Krakauer’s book and Cronon’s essay put a spike in the romantic notion of wilderness, but the spikes pointed in very different directions. Cronon said wilderness was not real. Krakauer said it was so real that it could kill you. The political upshot (with Newt Gingrich doing much of the shooting) was the same: Neither a mirage nor a monster needs protection. Neither is worth seeking out. Consign Muir, Thoreau, and Jack London if not to the flames then to the upper shelves, where they are less likely to lead environmentalists to foolish zeal or youngsters to a cold doom.

I especially like this nugget near the end, which serves as the essay’s nut graf:

The myth of wilderness can be dangerous, to the individual as well as to society as a whole. The problem is, the absence of that myth is more dangerous still.

I hadn’t heard about this court case until today, but I’m not surprised it’s happening. In Galveston, Tx., the founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, who operates a bed-and-breakfast catering to birders, is charged with animal cruelty for shooting a cat last November. The New York Times story is here.

James Stevenson admits to taking a .22-caliber rifle to kill a cat he says was picking off the endangered piping plover, which is an endangered shorebird. When I was a college student in Rhode Island, portions of the beaches there were regularly closed off for nesting sites of the same species.

Mr. Stevenson’s lawyer, Tad Nelson, admitted in his opening statement that his client went to the San Luis Pass toll bridge with “an intent to kill.” but that he had planned to kill a wild animal that was preying on endangered piping plovers. “This man has dedicated his whole life to birds,” Mr. Nelson said, pointing at Mr. Stevenson.

The case has prompted emotional commentary on the Internet. Cat enthusiast blogs have called Mr. Stevenson a “murderous fascist” and a “diabolical monster.” Birding blogs have defended his right to dispense with a “terrible menace” and have set up funds to help pay for his defense.

In an interview in a courthouse elevator during a break in the trial, Mr. Stevenson said heatedly that cat fanciers who have condemned him and sent him hateful correspondence “think birds are nothing but sticks.” “This is about wild species disappearing from your planet,” he said, adding, “I did what I had to do.”

One wrinkle in this case involves the cat’s ownership, or lack thereof. To convict Stevenson, state prosecutors must prove the cat belonged to someone. (That law has since been broadened to include all cats, in part because of this case.) The lead prosecutor says the cat had a name (”Mama Cat”) and was cared by a toll collector who worked on the bridge under which the cat lived.

The trial is expected to take about a week.

We wrote briefly about the ecological roles of feral and house cats in our Do the Evolution! series.

Sean Penn’s new film Into the Wild hit Roanoke recently, and I went to see it. The book was a popular one among members of my wildlife crew when I was in Big Sur, though I never read it. The movie brought back many memories from the days of my exile from Southern Appalachia, when I spent time in Rhode Island, Colorado, New Mexico and California before finally returning east in late 2001.

The main character, Christopher McCandless, is a young man raised in the upper middle class who, after college, shucks off careerism and an easy life as a young professional to pursue his beliefs Out West. He reminds me of quite a few people I met during my years out West, only more extreme. I met a lot of folks who believed in living on the street and abandoning society. Most of them — particularly among the Rainbows in New Mexico and the general populace in Big Sur — picked up nicknames they preferred to their given names. I met a lot of Condors and Laurels and Eagles and such. A lot of them were fixated on the idea of one particular place (Alaska was mentioned frequently, but also Australia, Colorado, Montana) as a paradise they wanted to reach.

It seems like most of them were fresh-out-of-college kids who reached satisfaction after a couple of years and returned to regular jobs. In a lot of ways, I did the same thing: Running away to Rhode Island for college, getting out west via seasonal jobs in the Forest Service before graduating and heading out there full-time. After a few years of that I switched over to journalism and managed my return to Southern Appalachia.

So the movie paints the picture that McCandless was headed in the same direction. The big epiphany comes late in the movie, when he realizes he’s been heading the wrong direction and that true happiness comes from interactions with other people. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but that’s the idea bantered about. The problem is he’s kind of stupid and didn’t realize that melting snow swells up rivers, thus blocking his passage back to society. That bit, at least, reminded me of this movie Silent Running, where the world’s leading botanist doesn’t realize plants need sunlight. Anyway, McCandless’ mistake is one that could easily be made in the giddiness of initially getting away.

I think the movie does run a little long. And it doesn’t leave me with much empathy for McCandless; I feel more for his sister and parents, and that’s probably what director Sean Penn intended. I do think Penn could have cut several scenes without affecting the film. And it’s a little over-directed, with him going for weird effects when a more minimalistic shot could have achieved the same thing.

But overall it’s a good film, and I think it represents my years out West pretty well. I identified with a lot of the scenes (there’s one with a flash flood that hit home for me; the exact thing didn’t happen to me, but something kind of similar) and even, to a certain extent, with McCandless’ callousness towards other people; that sort of thing tends to happen sometimes when you’ve been on the road a while. It makes you tough and less thoughtful towards others. I see that in myself looking back, and I certainly saw that in others with whom I interacted. The loneliness stripped down etiquette and desires & motives became more naked and apparent. In a lot of ways I think that experience has served me well with my current life, where etiquette and folkways tend to obscure things a bit more.

I’m generally not a big fan of sequels -> not in movies and even less so in good books.
But I did want to post this week’s “Slowpoke” comic, which is a sequel to one we published in an old issue of TNTDH! I especially like the zinester in the lower-left panel: