Maiden Voyage

Beginnings are awkward.

I've found that when I tell other people that I'm an amateur writer, they inevitably respond with, "Oh, I wish I could do that..." or, "You're so lucky, I'm a terrible writer myself." Usually, I want to respond by telling them that any person of reasonable intelligence can write if he or she is stubborn enough to wrestle out the first sentence. After that it's butter. Mostly. The point is that it sometimes helps to just start something, even if it feels unnatural. There will be time enough for greatness at some later time, and beginnings are meant to be humble.

So now we have it, a beginning. I've delayed entering the wide world of blogging for quite some time. In my cantankerous and anachronistic way I usually try to subscribe to a trend when it's glory days are past. Just yesterday, Kim deftly pointed out that I don't listen to much music unless it's older than I am. I'm sure she immediately regretted saying so since she had to listen to the ol' "they don't make rock and roll like they used to" speech. Let me go on record right now and say that not even Steely Dan could make records like Steely Dan made back in the seventies. They'd probably be sucked into some cosmic wormhole to a dimension where it's 1972 for all eternity if they even tried to write something like "The Boston Rag" or "Midnight Cruiser."

I wish I could tell you, dear reader, what to expect from this blog if you're so inclined to review it with regularity. Some have political blogs or literature blogs. Others have sports blogs or faith blogs or rant blogs. Stick around long enough and you might get a bit of all of that. My interests are so varied that even I sometimes forget about one or more of them from time to time.

Currently, Kim and I just got back from a weekend vacation at Cave City. As well as providing an opportunity for some some well deserved relaxation, the trip allowed me to sate some of my curiosity about the South-Central/Western region of KY. I've really been into Robert Penn Warren (early 20th century author from Guthrie, KY) this summer, and as a result I've been taken away by the history of the Western KY region, including the Black Patch Tobacco Wars of the turn of the century and the "Cave Wars" that came a little later. Both of these conflicts sprang out of the same kind of struggle that seems to beget all other wars; the striving of ordinary people to achieve some level of prosperity and the pushback from the elite who simply want to stay atop the pile. Cave City and some of its surrounding communities were able to pull themselves out of the mire of poverty and squalor during the 1900's, and tourism can be credited for it. Unfortunately, it appears that the area is in for a period of decline, or as Ignatious Reilly would call it, a downturn of Fortuna's wheel. Tourism has plummeted, and many of the oddball roadside tourist traps that define the Cave City landscape spend much of their time empty of visitors. It makes me wonder if desperation will once again give birth to conflict and tragedy among these people.

Much of our attention was pointed in the direction of Floyd Collins, a cave explorer who was trapped and perished while surveying a previously uncharted cave in hopes of discovering a new tourist attraction. Collins, though he died over 80 years ago, in many ways represents the price that was paid for the prosperity of the region. I certainly won't take up the space telling his tale here, but I recommend Trapped!, Robert Murray and Roger Brucker's excellent account of the rescue attempt. The story has captivated us, and going to see the Sand Cave site made it all the more real to us. The place had an almost surreal peace about it. There were scant traces that anything horrible had happened. In fact, as we making our way over the trail to the cave, a blue and yellow butterfly seemed to lead us to it, flying ahead a short ways, and then alighting on the trail almost as if waiting for us to catch up. We of course ignored the signs that forbid venturing down to the cave itself. I didn't feel that examining the site would be any slight of respect to a man as adventurous as Floyd Collins. As far as tourism goes, I would rate our visitation to this small, humble, little sinkhole to be far more meaningful than the extended tour we took through Mammoth Cave or our numerous visits to the other attractions.