Lisa HamiltonAs astonishing as it is that this tiny hick town in #Appalachia would even know what pi is, but our grocery store is selling their bakery pies for $3.14 on March 14th! #food #pie #pi #math #SmallMiracles
Yes I will be buying one :-)
Michael Kinder@3x10to8mps Where is this hick town? (Coming from a fellow hillbilly math nerd, of course...)
@michael This is in the northeast dog ear of West Virginia, close to the rural part of Maryland that wants to defect to be part of WV 😂
Poor semi-dying ex-coal mine and ex-paper mill town with a high of 5000 people because we have a junior college. Very insular.
Nearest Chick-fil-A or Pizza Hut or movie theater is 30 miles up the valley. Nearest Costco or Starbucks or Red Lobster or Target is 2.75 hrs over mountains to either east or west. Nearest really educated population is 1-2 hrs farther in Baltimore/DC
What's your town like?
@3x10to8mps No way! My town is pretty similar here. I'm in Southwest Virginia (near that little pointy bit on the left of the state) right next to KY, WV and TN. Town used to have a booming coal mining industry. Now we have a handful of restaurants, a 3 story Walmart (because we didn't have room for a big parking lot), a law school and an optometry school. Only about 1200 people living in the town itself, most people live outside the town limits.
@michael Hahaha I know where that is. How does a little town merit a law school? I thought those were all attached to big universities?
Having professional schools must give you a better class of amenities- is there a coffee house where they study? And a book store? Colleges bring lovely interesting services :-)
@3x10to8mps The law school attracts many people from across the country due to it's lower tuition rates, so you'll see people from all walks of life out and about here.
As for amenities, unfortunately we don't have very many. We have a pretty nice public library. There's the typical fast food, but we've got a Chinese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant. People like to go to the local interstate park during their spare time. Scenery is beautiful. It's one of the reasons I choose to stay. 😁
@michael That's so beautiful. Is it visible from where you live or do you have to drive to that vista?
A public library is a gift! Your local people probably don't realize the benefits that having students from all over is bringing them.
We have a one room library but she only lets Christian books in it, so not useful at all.
I hope to find somewhere else to live sooner than later. But the low cost of living here makes it hard to leave :-)
@3x10to8mps I'm about a 5 minute drive away from the park. I love going hiking there, so many great trails!
Our county is trying to pivot to tourism, so they've added a lot of things like ziplines, rock climbing, biking trails and a mini water park.
There's also another venue on top of a nearby mountain where they host events. A couple years ago one of the largest ATV events in the country decided to use that spot for their event and it was super packed! People came from all over to visit.
Paul Anomaly@3x10to8mps Viva Pi Day! This will be my first year since 2003 not celebrating it with a classroom of students. But the past month living in a rural Appalachian village has definitely taught me to never underestimate what folks in The Hollers know about; I know quite a few K-pop fanatics around here, one of whom has taught herself to make restaurant-quality Korean and Japanese food from YouTube.
@PaulAnomaly Haha you're lucky. When I moved here, the grocery manager didn't believe me that there were pickles other than dill so I showed him a jar. He still refuses to carry any
The nurses at my hospital didn't know there were different types of "orientals"
This community, actually the whole state, doesn't understand there's more to the Internet than Facebook- even government offices only have Fb pages (so I am out of the loop)
And churches keep anyone from getting vaccinated bec it's the "mark of the devil and you'll go straight to hell"
Oh and they're sure all Jews have horns
So hollars vary widely :-)
@3x10to8mps Oh, the information penetration is definitely uneven all around. I'm always surprised to see how few businesses and government offices in my county have functional websites. And I was truly shocked to find out my daughter had to opt out of weekly Bible study class in a public school. My wife, a nurse, definitely had to fight hard against anti-vax propaganda; our family lost at least one unvaccinated member to COVID, but I expect we would have lost many more if not for her tireless and stubborn "Nobody gets to hold the new baby unless they're vaccinated and masked" rules.
@PaulAnomaly Thank goodness she held that line! Every nurse in my (former) emergency room (all locals) quit rather than get vaccinated so we went through the pandemic with traveling nurses passing thru. It was probably better actually- in this area a CNA is considered a nurse. There are almost no RNs. It's not good for the surprisingly high level of acuity of the patients we would get.
One candidate for county judge is running on how many guns he has, with ads showing him hunting and fishing. The other is trying to impress with his knowledge of Old Testament bible quotes. I wouldn't vote for either 😱
@3x10to8mps And yet, one of those candidates is what you'll get. Ouch. The curse of democracy: MOST people get what they deserve.
Living in a health care desert is taking some getting used to. Thursday my wife and I drove six hours to the nearest branch of my HMO; Friday I had surgery and drove six hours home. We're working on finding child care so we can do the trip again in a month for follow up.
While travel nurses are awesome, I'm sure they wrecked the budgets of those hospitals; they're much more expensive. The most immediately obvious thing to do would seem to be firing any employee not following basic contagion prevention, but of course that's not a realistic option if you're already running a hospital in a location where no qualified RN would want to (take a pay cut to) work (in appalling conditions).
Most people in America have no idea what life is like in most places in America. And so the people in most places feel invisible and neglected, and they ain't wrong...
@PaulAnomaly Six hours is a lot. I've had to drive to Altoona and to Baltimore for medical care. Gets expensive.
I think some people retire to small towns not realizing the choice to be far from cities means they will have a 3-hr transport by a basic volunteer ambulance to a critical access hospital or maybe end up paying for a helicopter ride when they get sick or injured. And it should be a conscious choice. I think that's why those retirement villages spring up near medical facilities