Novice Blogger Celebrates Inaugural Post

Welcome to the first publication of The Pidgeon Courier! This is a blog I started because I wanted to keep in touch online with a large group of friends, but found myself more and more dissatisfied with the state of social media. I hope to be able to preserve some sense of online community without the algorithms and the stealing of my data and the propaganda. I will post a new blog every Thursday, as long as I am able to.

The people I have redirected here know me in many ways, and by many names. Most people I know in person refer to me with my real name, while most people I know exclusively online know me by several different usernames and monikers. Here, I am Thomas, from the Forestpunk website. Please refer to me as such in the guestbook. I would rather that my personal information remains private to those who I do not know personally.

But no matter how close I am with you, I would like to thank you for visiting my site today! I do this for you guys! Please visit again soon.

⁠—Thomas

Introductions In Order, Editor Agrees

Hello! Call me Thomas. I’m a young college student living in the southern United States. I grew up as the youngest child in a large fundamentalist Christian family. Though we haven’t lived under the poverty line, we were never especially well-off. I have never had dental insurance, for example. Like many families, mine was a bit dysfunctional. I was constantly compared to my siblings, and I was often the “golden child” due to my good academic performance through elementary school. My scapegoated brother did not like me very much, and I did not like him. When I reached middle school, I joined the legion of gifted-kid-burnouts as my grades began to slip. I did manage to hold on to my “honors” status into high school, and performed good enough, though I seemed to struggle worse each year. It was not until after I started college that I finally got diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication.

My middle school years were crucial in shaping who I am today. It is where I started making friends and learning how to live. I learned awesome stuff like “I am not perfect” and “if you’re nice to people, they will like you” and “empathy is probably the most important thing ever.” It was a long and arduous process, and there is still more progress to be made. But dear God, am I so much better off now. I shudder thinking about my past actions… some things I cannot speak about. Progress was certainly necessary. I also gained awareness of my mental health and my queerness and class consciousness, so that’s pretty cool.

I love nature and the outdoors. I try to go on a walk at least once a week, and I like to hike, bike, camp, and canoe when I have the chance. I also try to get involved with community service, volunteering with local groups to clean up garbage and do yard work and such. I do try to read. It was hard after puberty, but medication makes it a lot more convenient now. Often, I dabble in community theatre, though I do not consider myself a “theatre person.” I do spend too much of my time in the theater…

January 30th, 2025

First Edition ~!

This Day in History: Daring Rescue Celebrates Centenary

1925 photograph of Sand Cave entrance, with several men

Sand Cave, 1925.

In my short tenure as a hobbyist thespian, one show that has fascinated me is Floyd Collins, a musical by Adam Guettel and Tina Landau from 1994 that will finally be on Broadway this year. It tells the true— if sensationalized— story of a great American cave explorer. In south central Kentucky, where Floyd Collins lived, the karst limestone geology is ideal for cave formation. There are hundreds of cave entrances in the area, many of which have been connected, forming the more than four hundred mapped miles of the Mammoth Cave System, the longest known cave system in the world. When Collins lived, competition was fierce between local landowners to capitalize on cave tourism (the cutthroat tactics during this time were dubbed the Kentucky Cave Wars). Floyd Collins had discovered Crystal Cave, a large and beautiful cave that was unfortunately far from the beaten path. In an attempt to find a better entrance (or better cave) to attract more visitors, Collins explored a hole on the property of a family friend. This hole would later be known as Sand Cave.

One hundred years ago today, on January 30th, 1925, Collins entered Sand Cave without issue. On his way out, however, he knocked over his lantern, and in the darkness, accidentally dislodged a twenty-seven-pound rock hanging from the cave ceiling. It caught his left foot and dislodged other rocks and gravel, burying Collins to his chest. The next day, his family and friends arrived to look for Collins. What happened next was a media frenzy of unprecedented magnitude. The plight of Floyd Collins and the brave attempts to rescue him were scooped up by dozens of journalists and syndicated across the country— one of the first nonpolitical events to reach national attention.

I am thinking a lot about Floyd Collins lately. I will be making a trip to Mammoth Cave National Park in a couple weeks to visit his home and gravesite. But I am also so impressed by the power of hope in the story. By most accounts, there is simply no way he could have been saved given the technology at the time. And yet, everyone tried. Floyd’s brother, Homer, and friend, Johnnie Gerald, continued to spend hours in that hellish hole making no progress until the National Guard removed them from the site. And Henry Carmichael, under authority of General Denhardt, continued to dig the rescue shaft even as the rain poured down and the volunteers thinned out. Today, I am often overwhelmed by our cruel and chaotic world, and I sometimes wonder if my hope is in vain. If, in the end, Floyd’s final words will ring true for all of us: “You’re too slow… too slow.” And so, I press on, as fast as I can. And I hope. I hope I’m fast enough.

The book Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins by Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker served as reference for this section, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the Floyd Collins story.

Lyric of the Week

...We're finally together; here, in the unknown...

"The Dream." Floyd Collins.