Ross Gipson - Wounded Town

 

This is my best friend Ross. He's got an amazing voice and an unparallelled talent for rhyme and verse. He wrote a song for Joplin after the storm called Wounded Town. You can buy this from Reverb Nation, Amazon or iTunes. All proceeds for the purchase of this song go to helping rebuild Joplin and Joplin schools after the tornado. My friend Aaron Moore plays on Wounded Town, also. Check him out. You should buy some of Ross' other music, too. All proceeds from the sale of his other songs go to helping Ross buy food and shelter.

I was actually with Ross during the Joplin Tornado. He and my wife and I hid in an interior bathroom in our house and waited as the storm passed. We were fine, and our house wasn't damaged, but the devastation started just a few blocks over. It was surreal. We get tornados a lot around Joplin, but they very rarely do much serious damage. We expected this one to be about the same. We had no idea we were sitting less than a quarter of a mile from such a powerful, historic storm.

Time To Start Listening to that Voice in My Head...

The one that warns me about things. I've been ignoring it for a while, even though it's never steered me wrong. Sorry, little voice, I should have listened to you months ago. Instead, I believed what I wanted to believe, instead of what I should have believed. But the worst way to correct a mistake is to keep making it. So, my eyes are open now. I won't be so bold as to say I won't ignore your corrective influence again, little voice, but I can promise I'll be far less likely to do so in the future.

While we're on the subject of stuff people should do, you should listen to this song written and performed by my best friend, Ross Gipson. All proceeds of the sale of this song go to the restoration of Joplin tornado damage.

Eric Cantor (R-VA) Can Suck It

Really, you son of a bitch? They are already taking the money from a fund to support alternative fuel development--which is important--and you still want to make this about your stupid Neo-Con agenda against public services and your hard on for giving tax cuts to the rich? I would invite you to tour the damaged areas of Joplin, but you'd probably never be seen again. Go and fuck yourself, Cantor. Fuck yourself HARD, you fascist piece of shit. I WANT MY CITY BACK!!!

Please sign this petition. Thank you.

Joplin Tornado, May 2011

Hey, everyone. I don't have a lot of time to spare but I wanted to let everyone know that my family and I are fine. Our house was not destroyed or damaged in the tornado. Many others were less fortunate. Please remember them in your thoughts, prayers, or however you do those things. It has been a very stressful, tragic, and sometimes frightening experience. Joplin has been ripped literally in half by the storm, but the entire community (and much of the state) has come together to help those who lost everything. I'll talk more about this later, but here are some of the photos of the damage. This is only a fraction of the devastation, and it's important to note that Joplin is known for being a heavily forested town. Most of our streets, even busy ones, are canopied by trees. If I took photos of these same places days before, you'd have seen homes and businesses surrounded by big, powerful trees with spring leaves. Now, you see only destruction.

This used to be a high school