Tag: Tobacco

  • Finishing West Virginia, Day 3

    Flatwoods Monster As I mentioned in the previous post, we spent the night at a nondescript hotel along Interstate 79 in Flatwoods, West Virginia. I’d never heard of Flatwoods although my son registered a flash of recognition. “Isn’t that the home of the Flatwoods Monster?” he wondered as we pulled off the highway. What Flatwoods…

  • Name That Smell

    Smells have a way of sticking with people. Everyone knows when they drive past a petrochemical factory, a paper mill, a landfill or a sewage treatment plant. The geographic location becomes lodged in one’s mind with a full set of highly-charged negative associations. I’m going to toss all of those aside. Instead I’m flipping the…

  • Green River Island

    Green River Island is one of those places that seems to belong to the wrong state. In this instance it feels like it should be part of Indiana but it’s actually part of Kentucky. It hardly seems like an island either although vestiges of its old topography continue to remain visible. Rather, the “island” has…

  • Virginia Smoking Ban

    A smoking ban in Virginia restaurants will begin in a few days, on December 1, 2009. Virginia does not allow standalone bars — an establishment must attribute a significant percentage of sales to food in order to maintain a liquor license — so the ban extends broadly and deeply across the state. It includes several…