It’s Justified

The crazy wall in action. I told you this was relevant to my interests. Check out the headlines:

“Aliens Attack Kentucky Town” “Harlan Mayor Hides Alien Body in Basement” “Ancient Astronaut Proof Found in South Kentucky”

The Bitter Southerner: Kentucky Gets Hip to Hemp

For Kentucky, for Appalachia and for small-scale agriculture, hemp could be another step in the move away from the mono-economy of coal, a volatile industry that is everything hemp is not: single-use and dirty. Hemp roots are literally pulling these mountains back together, bringing hope for farmers and the entire region. Whether it fulfills that hope remains to be seen.

After all the strip mining and slurry spills and mountaintop removal I’ve talked about during Justified, a different side to that story is long overdue. This is a great photo essay. If you’re interested in the region, it’s worth checking out. Maybe, just maybe, a tentative hope for the future isn’t all fiction. 

On the contrary, I am happy to welcome you to crazytown! In my unofficial sourcing, where Blanton’s runs $60 a bottle, I would bet Art Mullen has the highest bourbon budget per capita.* But then, who needed it more?

*Well, save for Quarles sipping Pappy like iced tea.

For all you non-bourbon-nuts out there, the coolest thing to know is that each bourbon tells a story. When Art’s drinking Blanton’s, or when I’m writing up a Bourbon Watch, it’s because what they’re pouring is also informing who these characters are. The bourbons they drink define them not only personally, but sociologically and financially, as Taylor Elmore has said. It’s something the writers and crew took great care to do.

Actually, in Elmore’s books, Raylan is a Marine who then joined the Marshals, so he went the military route just like Boyd. But TV Raylan makes no mention of that, nor what Raylan did study once Aunt Helen got him out of Harlan and on his way to a college eduction. (You’re probably remembering Save My Love, where Boyd tells Carol Johnson how they knew each other growing up: “Until the age of 19, when Raylan went off to college and the Marshals, and I went off to Kuwait.” It gets referenced a couple times throughout the show, though Raylan is ever cagey about details.) 

Knowing Raylan, and knowing Raylan’s defiance of Arlo and early great love for Rawhide and Have Gun — Will Travel, my guess is that he went straight for the law enforcement track: criminal justice, criminology, anything that would give him a leg up on the gunslinging career he wanted.

“Look. I got people maybe out to kill me, Derrick. You came just to get back together you’re a damn fool.”

My summer reading: Elmore Leonard’s Glitz. Raylan and Tim should just start a book club already, because I give you Givens and Gutterson in Alive Day: