Grace Hill
LightNews LightNews
banner
gracehill.bsky.social
Grace Hill
@gracehill.bsky.social
2.1K followers 710 following 1.4K posts
not as good as I once was, but sometimes as good once as I ever was
#actuallyautistic #audhd
parent, caregiver, spouse, wfh

📍 central Appalachia, because I'm too stubborn to leave

matriarch, [redacted]
Posts Replies Media Videos
gracehill.bsky.social
This book is so good!

As someone who speaks one way at home, and another way in public, as someone who has chosen as Cliopher did, to let others mispronounce my name and modify the way I speak, to fit in, because I have been afraid to do otherwise—reader, I cried at this scene.
Cliopher paused, wondering how far he should go; but this was a small good, a small truth, upon which who knew what could hinge? He had never stopped before, regardless of whether something was uncomfortable, regardless of whether it was considered indecorous and uncouth to speak the truth one felt. “You do not waver here, Sayo Vawen, on the small matter of what you know is correct, what is true, what is right. It may not matter, seemingly, to me; though you do not know how many bitter tears I might have shed for this small matter. But I can see very clearly in your face how much it matters to you. “You are in a different situation—certainly than I am now, but also than where I was when I first entered the Service, when I was a little older than you. I fought to be taken seriously, as a young man with a funny accent from very far away. I modified my accent, and let people misspeak my name, and learned to fit in. You do not need to.” He looked around the room again, at Zaoul and Kiri, at Aioru and Lord Eldo, at the pages and the secretaries and administrators who formed the heart of the government. They were all watching him with odd expressions, serious and troubled and, here and there, uplifted. “The weight of general opinion is one of the strongest forces in the world. It is the current of human society. It is the motive force of change, the thrust of what gets done. It seems unstoppable, inevitable, immutable. “It is not.
November 14, 2025 at 1:38 AM
gracehill.bsky.social
Agreed. 40 years ago, my uncle, (who lived in Welch), told me a joke: “If you’ve got a brother in jail and a brother in Welch, get the brother out of Welch first.”

We’ve known, but we leave our elderly and our poor there as if it’s their own fault.

westvirginiawatch.com/2025/04/23/m...
Limited county funds, endless clean-up work Carol Lester, 73, stood on her porch in Bartley, overlooking her washed out, sandy yard. She'd survived the flood, having to be rescued by two young men as water rushed into her kitchen and living room. She recalled how 911 couldn't help her, then two men showed up and carried her husband, who is disabled, through the woods for five hours in the cold rain. "We've been through five floods. This was the worst," said Lester, who has been in her home for 51 years. "It seemed like you could hear the devil and his demons in that water." A destroyed sofa set was discarded in front of her house. It needed to be hauled away. She was waiting on a plywood delivery, hopeful that her family members could rip up her water-logged flooring. No one other than Tatum had been by her house since the flood, Lester said.
November 12, 2025 at 4:19 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Venn diagram overlap here:
You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out that what a country values can change over time. Sometimes, though, there's a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you've actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word - but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass - and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island - even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/11/britain-value-culture-striking-workers-a-british-library-zadie-smith
November 12, 2025 at 2:40 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
“Of the 16 U.S. counties that have experienced the most frequent federally declared flooding disasters since 2004, 11 of them are in Kentucky, … In three of those Kentucky counties, there has been an average of one federally declared flooding disaster every year for the past two decades.”
If there's a bull's eye to the Appalachian flooding hot spot, it's the hollers where Kentucky meets West Virginia. Share of single-family homes at risk of extreme damage from flooding 29% of homes in McDowell County, W.Va. face risk of extreme damage from flooding Flood risk data not available in Alaska or Hawaii. Central Appalachia includes South Central, Central and North Central regions defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Source: Cotality Of the 16 U.S. counties that have experienced the most frequent federally declared flooding disasters since 2004, 11 of them are in Kentucky, according to a Post analysis of FEMA disaster declarations. In three of those Kentucky counties, there has been an average of one federally declared flooding disaster every year for the past two decades.
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Case in point: “In 2023, there were 338 children delivered at GVMC. For comparison, in 2005, there were 557 children delivered at GVMC. But come April 2026, that number will drop to 0. “

From there, it’s an hour drive to the nearest hospital. A lot can happen in delivery in an hour.
Greenbrier Valley Medical Center reorganizes, will no longer deliver babies By Stephen Baldwin, RealWV https://therealwv.com/2025/11/06/greenbrier-valley-medical-center-reorganizes-will-no-longer-deliver-babies/
November 11, 2025 at 12:59 AM
gracehill.bsky.social
Great reporting here and a 🔥 quote:

"We're able to feed everybody that we can, but there is an end to that," he said. "We don't believe it's fair that we subsidize the government's failures."

mountainstatespotlight.org/2025/11/06/s...
On Oct. 29, Ciccolini said he saw firsthand how desperate people had become. A man rode his electric wheelchair to the pantry from a public housing complex almost a half a mile away to ask for food. "And the man said, I have $4 left for the month for food," Ciccolini said. "We gave him five bags of food, which if you stretch it, could last a week, week and a half. And then what is he going to do afterwards?" Ron Ciccolini, director of the Sacred Heart Food Pantry in Bluefield, shows goods being offered to people in needs. Photo by Henry Culvyhouse / Mountain State Spotlight Over the summer, Carlton said he had served dozens of families in need through a pantry he set up that relies on his own farm's revenue, local donations and labor. Since Nov. 1, that demand has shot up to 160 people. "We're able to feed everybody that we can, but there is an end to that," he said. "We don't believe it's fair that we subsidize the government's failures." While Morrisey hasn't publicly ruled it out, he has yet to tap the $1.4 billion Rainy Day Fund, or the $460 million sitting in another fund set aside to cover tax cuts.
November 10, 2025 at 3:02 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
SNAP is a political football, but making sure the USA ate used to be a national security issue: "up to a quarter of draftees called up via the Selective Service Act of 1940 were malnourished and unfit to serve"

Today, we can't even see feeding people as being in the national interest.
Art of children playing baseball behind a photo of a young white boy eating dinner. The big text reads: "Every child needs a good school lunch." The lower text reads: "The War Food Administration will help your community start a School Lunch Program." more details here: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/nutrition-on-the-home-front-in-world-war-ii.htm
November 9, 2025 at 11:50 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
I’m reading this self-published space opera, and every now and then something in it amuses me. Like this bit:
The optimal orbital altitude would be around four hundred kilometers, Dreamer said. Higher, and you begin to rapidly reduce the footprint. Lower, and you gain a little extra footprint, but begin to lose the outer regions due to terrain and obstructions. That would give about a nine hundred kilometer wide foot- print, Alex thought. Correct. Full coverage of your world from that altitude... ...would require over three hundred satellites, Alex finished for Dreamer. And orbits in that range are already overcrowded. Yes, Dreamer replied. I have seen the accounts of the failure of your multiple competing low-orbit satellite networks. Unfortunately they have left those orbits almost unusable. And there are clear signs that what you call a Kessler cascade has already begun. Alex nodded grimly, forgetting for a moment that Dreamer couldn't necessarily see him. Then a thought struck him. "You know," he mused aloud, "I'll bet we could clean those up. But that doesn't solve our problem right now."
November 9, 2025 at 3:58 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
this is a fun set of dialect maps:

dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/q...
the spread of "buggy" on a US map, where it primarily (but not exclusively in the South). For example, I'm from central Appalachia, and Appalachia is pretty solidly buggy, as are the locales on the Hillbilly Highway, a good bit of Eastern MD, and spots in FL, and curiously enough, southern CA.
November 8, 2025 at 5:17 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
tempted to buy this one:
www.etsy.com/listing/4374...
a T-shirt in light brown "espresso" says the option, that says, "Tylenol didn't give me autism but you're sure giving me a headache."
November 7, 2025 at 11:13 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Some additional background on the Mylan pharma plant shuttering (spoiler: the implication is that Manchin let 1400 union jobs disappear so his daughter with the fake management degree, the one who jacked up the price of Epi-Pens, could get a $30 million payout)

www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07...
Union officials believe that Manchin's silence can be traced to the fact that his daughter Heather Bresch, the former CEO of Mylan, walked away with a $30.8 million golden parachute from the Mylan-Upjohn merger. The resulting entity, which so swiftly targeted the Morgantown plant for closure, is led by Bresch's former Mylan colleagues, who were also exorbitantly compensated in the merger. "My father spent his whole life to make that company successful, and it took them less than 10 years to destroy it," Johanna Puskar said as she contemplated the impending closure. "They came and they robbed it blind till there was… But the plant Puskar built was no match for the predatory brand of capitalism embraced by the management troika of Bresch, Coury, and a scientist named Rajiv Malik, who'd spent almost two decades at India's largest drug company, Ranbaxy, before it collapsed in 2013 amid an immense data-fraud scandal. Together, according to numerous current and former employees, they emphasized global expansion over neighborliness, and speed and cost reductions over quality. They also allegedly escalated hostilities with the union in an effort to freeze wages and increase work shifts, even as their own compensation grew spectacularly. The Morgantown closure isn't just a tragedy for its American workforce. It's also a step backward for U.S. efforts to prepare for the next pandemic. "Did 600,000 people die in vain without us learning we couldn't get hold of sanitizer and toilet paper?" asked Barbara Evans Fleischauer, a Democratic member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. "Aren't medical drugs important? Wouldn't we want them to be manufactured in our country?" In fact, we do. America's urgent need to control the making of its own essential medicines is supposedly a top priority for the Biden administration. Last month the White House Meanwhile, a series of scandals trailed the executive team. In 2008, West Virginia University had to revoke Bresch's MBA after it was revealed that shed failed to complete coursework. The university had doctored her transcripts and awarded her the degree when Manchin became governor. There were allegations that Coury misused the company jet to fly his musician son to gigs. (At the time a Mylan spokesperson said that Coury's contract allowed for personal use of the company jet.) By 2017, Malik had been named as a defendant in a civil complaint filed by 47 state attorneys general that alleged 18 generic-drug companies, including Mylan, had colluded to keep generic-drug prices artificially high. (Both Malik and Mylan have denied wrongdoing in the ongoing probe.) In 2016, Bresch and her colleagues blundered into a massive public relations crisis after raising the price of Mylan's lifesaving EpiPen—needed by millions of Americans, including school children, to reverse fatal allergic reactions— by 400%. Bresch was hauled before Congress to testify, flying into Washington, D.C., by private jet. Blaming the price hike on a broken health care system, she declared in a disastrous CNBC interview, "No one's more frustrated than me." That same year Bresch earned $13.8 million and Malik earned $8.7 million in total compensation, while Coury netted $98 million, becoming one of the country's highest-paid pharmaceutical executives. The head-spinning sums led
November 7, 2025 at 6:32 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Good Old Fashioned Corn Bread Corn bread is indispensable, especially to a vegetarian diet, where its full flavor and slightly crunchy texture are welcome at any meal. And few dishes deliver so much for so little work. Recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. YIELD 6 INGREDIENTS 1 1/4 cups buttermilk, milk, or yogurt (or 1 1/4 cups milk plus 1 tablespoon white vinegar; see Step 2), plus more as needed 2 tablespoons butter or extra virgin olive oil 1 1/2 cups medium-grind cornmeal 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar, plus more if you like sweet corn bread 1 egg INSTRUCTIONS 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. 2. If you're using buttermilk, milk, or yogurt, ignore this step. If not, make the soured milk: Warm the milk gently-1 minute in the microwave is sufficient, just enough to take the chill off-and add the vinegar. Let it rest while you prepare the other ingredients. 3. Put the butter in a medium ovenproof skillet or an 8-inch square baking pan over medium heat; heat until good and hot, about 2 minutes, then turn off the heat. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the egg into the buttermilk. Stir the liquid into the dry ingredients (just enough to combine); if it seems too dry, add another tablespoon or two of buttermilk. Pour the batter into the prepared skillet or pan, smooth out the top if necessary, and put in the oven. 4. Bake about 30 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the sides have pulled away from the pan; a toothpick inserted into the center will come out clean. Serve hot or warm.
November 7, 2025 at 5:36 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Simpson's Meme: Don't Make Me Tap the Sign - All Unsolicited Advice is Criticism
November 7, 2025 at 4:59 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
meanwhile, in central Appalachian, an example of the way in which local journalism is beholden to the local gentry:
West Virginia Metro News "The Voice of West Virginia" article quote: ...SNAP funding for our families." The Republican majority in the U.S. Senate has called for stopgap funding for the federal government. Democrats have been holding out for a reversal of changes to Medicaid from the Big Beautiful Bill, an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies and greater congressional leverage on executive branch financial decisions. “Well, the hang ups are that we can't get the Democrats to open the government before we begin negotiating. That's always been the deal.” Capito said. “The leader in the Senate. the Republican leader, has said all along he's willing—and many of us have said this, including the President—to talk about the premium subsidy issue in health health care, but they're unwilling to open the government to begin those discussions.” Google search "which party controls the US branches of government" 2025-2027 YEAR SENATE R HOUSE R PRESIDENT PARTY R PRESIDENT TRUMP
November 6, 2025 at 11:59 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Resident Teen is taking an Appalachian history class, and I got this note:
Whyyy does a core part of being an Appalachian feel like this one meme [meme of Hawkeye driving, saying, "I'm not one for 'I told you so,' but..."] Just like It's this Oh, machines took your jobs? Yeah, that happened to us already, haven't you seen the mining machines? Pollution is rampant because of factories that tbh really don't need to exist or fuel what they do but they're fueling them anyway? So, I'm gonna hold your hand while I say this, [meme of angry woman in a black evening grown, saying, "it- it' the f- it -flam - flames. Flames, on the side of my face..."]
November 6, 2025 at 8:22 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Better than the original!
Chae! (ANTIFA Squad Leader) @smartcha... • 2h she/her Is this real?! Diane Levin @dianelevin.bsky.social • 2h www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/.. Sure is Opinion | Did Women Ruin the Workplace? @ www.nytimes.com
November 6, 2025 at 2:39 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Checking in from central Appalachia—given a choice between photo A and photo B, I will choose B every time
An aerial view of mountain top removal in central Appalachia. They have literally cut off the top of the mountain, leaving an ugly, dull brown scar on the landscape. An aerial view of a wind farm in central Appalachia. A series of wind turbines runs down the spine of a mountain. Almost everything is still green, except for a very narrow road between the turbines.
November 5, 2025 at 4:39 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Good morning! I am properly medicated, including pain meds, and I slept for 11 hours with my breathing machine on, and the sun is shining. Have a bit of local color:
A beautiful stand of deciduous trees in full autumn glory, mostly red leaves
November 3, 2025 at 3:03 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Sometimes I check my reading stats
Keep your 379 week streak going 2025 Reading Challenge You've read 370 books with Kindle in 2025. Set a goal
November 2, 2025 at 5:43 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Something to make you smile:
His interest in model railroading started when he was about seven. His great-grandfather worked as an engineer on the Norfolk Southern and his great-uncle had a model railroad collection. As a child his family would take him to see the "Cincinnati in Motion" display at the Cincinnati History Museum, which is a 2,000 square foot model of historical Cincinnati in 1940 designed by Clarke Dunham. "It's an amazing experience, he said. "That's where I got my lighting inspiration."
November 1, 2025 at 4:08 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Thinking about that news out of Utah. Everything old is new again:
Before welfare programs and social security, poor farms began appearing in Appalachia in the mid-1800s following the example of similar institutions in New England. Counties across the region sought a systematic way to care for the destitute. The first Appalachian poor farms appeared in Virginia and Tennessee by the 1830s, and spread through West Virginia, Kentucky and the Carolinas by the late 19th century. They reflected both charity and control, in an attempt to help the poor while keeping them out of public view and reducing the financial burden on taxpayers. Before that time, poor relief was informal. Neighbors, churches or local overseers of the poor provided food and shelter to those in need. As populations grew and poverty deepened after the Civil War, county governments began purchasing tracts of farmland and converting them into poor farms. These were meant to be self-sustaining institutions where the poor could live and work to offset the cost of their care but often became less of a place of rehabilitation and more of a prison.
November 1, 2025 at 4:03 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
You can see the original bandanna on display at the Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, WV. Worth the trip! (I did it earlier this month.)
A display wall at the museum. It is dark red, the color of dried blood. It's titled: The Battle of Blair Mountain August 25 - September 4, 1921 A rifle is on display. To the right, below the inscription, it says: The time has come for me to lay down my Bible and pick up my rifle and fight for my rights. - REV. John Milburn On the left, another inscription says: Two boys was killed. Both were just out of the service and had on their uniforms. They thought they'd go up around a machine gun and capture the gunner... Both of them were killed. One boy was hit six or seven times. - BERT CASTLE COMMANDER OF A MINERS' SQUAD NEAR CROOKED CREEK GAP In front, in a display case, is an original red bandanna.
October 30, 2025 at 5:51 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
Shame, shame for 1,000 years to the New Yorker for printing this drivel!
Zeman had a general neurology practice-Parkinson's, M.S., dementia —but he had also been interested in consciousness since he was a student. He speculated that one of the things that made humans different from other primates was their ability to mentally project themselves into the past or future, or into worlds that were purely imaginary. So he was fascinated to encounter, in Jim, a syndrome he had never heard of before, which appeared to be an excision of just this species-defining ability. And yet Jim was clearly very much a human—
October 27, 2025 at 2:33 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
tagine? Pass, I’ll stick with my Dutch oven. Soups, stews, and it bakes bread.
$35.97 Mainstays 4.75qt Oven-Safe Ceramic Enamel Cast-Iron Dutch Oven, Washed Stone Save with W+- Delivery as soon as 60 mins Free shipping, arrives tomorrow Free pickup as soon as 6pm Only 6 left Options
October 26, 2025 at 7:37 PM
gracehill.bsky.social
pepper mill? I own two, including a $$$ one, but look what Walmart sells 1,000+ of per day:
1000+ bought since yesterday BLACK PEPPERCORN GRINDER NET WT 1.24 OZ $ 2.47 $1.99/oz McCormick Non-GMO Black Pepper Grinder, 1.0 oz Bottle Save with W+- Delivery as soon as 60 mins Pickup as soon as 6pm
October 26, 2025 at 7:37 PM