“I don’t see how I can make it work.” Right. It’s humiliating. Degrading. We are a region, not a state. How do you address poverty in West Virginia, and forget the states it borders. Haves and have nots all over again. Survival is ephemeral. Nothing works. I borrow the school computer. Everything said in this article has been articulated before. Heroin is relief. Meth is relief. Drugs are from heaven. I would say just shovel them into our mouths and arms. But you already do that. Addiction is escape. I want to die an overdose. Not starvation. Still AIDS. Still AIDS. Still AIDS. Is that too uncivil for the NYT. I drive an ancient dirt bike. Not a truck. Sold it for food that fit in a backpack. I have often written about Appalachia. People say: Just move. No, you move. We live here. In trailers. In homes. In cars. In the hollows. In shacks. I am humiliated. I never allow people past the front porch. We wash our clothes in a metal scrub tub in the kitchen. We hang the clothes outside to cardboard freeze. We hunt off season. We grub for herb money. We drive drunk. We gun the car, close our eyes, head for a tree. Crash. We burn oak to cook, to heat the house in smoke, even with tuberculosis and blood spray from your coughing mouth. Covid is nothing. We all sleep on the crowded floor in one room with blankets nailed to doors to keep winter out. Newspapers in cracks. We can only buy food from the gas station. Stores gone. Education did not help. What civility. I am humiliated.