Making Connections: Community Radio In Appalachia

Making Connections reporter Sylvia Ryerson

By Rachel Beth Rudi, Digital Contributor

This week from the Rural Arts and Culture Map, we bring a story that's floated to us on the airwaves from atop Mayking Peak in Letcher County, Kentucky: a service of Appalshop, WMMT is a radio station broadcasting a wide range of music and news throughout communities in Central Appalachia. The writing of this piece, for instance, is being fueled by volunteer DJ Old Red's early bluegrass and country show, "First Generation Bluegrass." 

One WMMT program, Making Connections: Diversifying our Future shares with its listeners stories and commentary promoting a self-sufficient, multifaceted Appalachia. Making Connections has been posting PlacesStories updates since 2010, giving voice to regional agriculturalists, artists and policy workers and exemplifying just what a group can do with the digital mapping tool. From the "About Us" website:

While coal mining will play a role in the central Appalachian economy for many years to come, the industry continues to mechanize creating a dramatic drop in jobs – it currently represents less than 2% of employment. Analysts also project that recoverable coal reserves in the region could run out in 20 years.

Now is the time to develop a more diversified and sustainable regional economy that supports the current generation of coal miners while creating new jobs in new fields. We have no shortage of strengths to build upon, including our rich cultural traditions, unparalleled natural landscape and strong sense of family and community. To move forward we must honor our past while focusing on a future that provides healthy and productive lives for our children and grandchildren.

 

Making Connections' coverage frequently highlights Appalachia's especially high rates of residents without high-speed Internet; a recent audio story entitled "Like A Car Sittin' on Bricks – Broadband in Appalachia" was created by Sylvia Ryerson and Mimi Pickering to further examine the problem. Reads the description:

The Federal Communications Commission's Eighth Broadband Progress Report finds approx. 19 million Americans, mostly rural, lack access to high-speed Internet. In Central Appalachia the digital divide is stark: in West Virginia's McDowell and Mingo Counties, upwards of three-quarters of the population do not have access; in East Kentucky over 50% in Leslie and Breathitt Counties are without it. So why is it so hard to get a good connection in the mountains? What will this mean for the future of our communities? And what can we do to change this situation?

 
An essential part of the answer is that, as with many disputes over political policy, there is significant disagreement between the haves and have-nots in a thing's true worth or function. In this case, access to high-speed Internet is still largely regarded by those who have it as an earned luxury, our heavy reliance on it an addiction by which we're jokingly embarrassed. But as Ms. Ryerson points out, quality Internet service is a vital utility of everyday information dispersal, not a superfluous iPhone app, whether combed for a student's homework assignment or used to relay local safety concerns.

As artists who try to push against traditional, institutionalized limitations on accessibility, education, and diversity of art, and who place our critiques, our manifestoes, and our subversive work onto the Web, "Like A Car Sittin' on Bricks" hits home and keeps this important issue on the table. We highly encourage readers to listen to Ms. Ryerson's reporting (if you are able), and to then expand on this conversation in your own communities. Please also explore Making Connections' other PlaceStories installments, as many fine productions come from these folks.

Weekly Feed: Rural America Contemporary Art, Poor Kids, The Changing Face of America

Each week we share selections from our Rural Arts and Culture Feed on Facebook and Twitter. What are we missing? Please drop us a line, and we'll add your links and connections to the Feed.

By Rachel Beth Rudi, Digital Contributor

• Setting a tone of thankfulness, we have this Wendell Berry interview with Diane Rehm via The Boiled Down Juice. "I think people don't take care of things they don't have affection for. And so affection, for me, begins all the arguments."

• Great news: the first issue of Rural America Contemporary Art is now online – art, fiction, essays, and the work of Norwood Creech, artist/painter/printmaker/photographer:

Beans, Corn, and Clouds by Caraway, Arkansas

• Via Harry Smith's Old, Weird America: "The Carter Family recorded twice "Single Girl, Married Girl," the first time at their very first recording session in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee, and the second time a few years later, in 1936, in New York City. It's striking to hear the differences between the two 

versions."

• Poor Kids is an unflinching and revealing look at what poverty means to children. It broadcasted last week on FRONTLINE. Full documentary below:

Watch Poor Kids on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

• Seminal art critic Dave Hickey decries the affluence and self-indulgence plaguing much modern art: 

"Art editors and cirtics – people like me – have become a courtier class. All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It's not worth my time."

Hickey says the art world has acquired the mentality of a tourist. "If I go to London, everyone wants to talk about Damien Hirst. I'm just not interested in him. Never have been. But I'm interested in Gary Huge and have written about him quite a few times."

If it's a matter of buying long and selling short, then the artists he would sell now include Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan. "It's time to start shorting some of this shit," he added.

• Some thoughts, via The Association of American Cultures (TAAC): "Culture at its best should be about the dialogue by which diverse strands of thought become relevant to diverse people, and that is a matter oc actively connecting art to the realities of people's diverse lives. Right now our cultural sector seems to be failing at that mission, to its own detriment."

• MSNBC has reported tremendous news: "One of the nation's top coal companies, Patriot Coal, has just announced it will stop all of its mountaintop removal mining operations following a historic settlement with activists and environmental groups."

• Sonya Kelliher Combs and her students, in collaboration with the Alaska Native Heritage Center, recently displayed these new multimedia works created at her recent master artist workshop at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center

• From Toner's Bog to the Nobel Prize, Irish poet Seamus Heaney reading his ars poetica of agricultural practice, "Digging." Find more links to Heaney material at the Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine.

On The Map: Preserving Appalachia

Photograph by Giles Ashford

By Rachel Beth Rudi, Digital Contributor

In this week’s update from the Rural Arts and Culture Map, we wish to turn your attention toward Preserving Appalachia, a branch of Appalachian Mountain Advocates. Through public law and policy, AMA supports Appalachian communities’ health and well-being, and fights the coal industry that has jeopardized same.

As most of AMA’s work occurs in the policy realm, Preserving Appalachia was developed by Dan Radmacher to celebrate and promote the rich heritage, past and present, of the mountains and reveal the beauty of an oft-misunderstood region. Writes Mr. Radmacher:

Preserving Appalachia probably had its origins in the first donor appeal letter I wrote my second week on the job. In that, I said this:

I’m writing to you today to talk about a new focus for the [AMA]. We will continue our successful legal battles that help stop the worst abuses, but we recognize that the fight for Appalachia cannot be won in the courtroom alone. This is a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of this region, and those outside it who enjoy the benefits of cheap electricity without considering the unseen costs. We need to engage in the court of public opinion as well as courts of law.

As I said in my final column in The Roanoke Times before coming to work for the Center, ‘The debate is about coal, climate change, state and federal regulations, the fragile economies of states like Kentucky and West Virginia, and the mountains, rivers and forests of Appalachia. It involves complex, emotionally powerful issues involving people's jobs, their health, their homes and their children.’

Writing that, I realized that one of my main goals needed to be helping those outside of Appalachia understand what is so special about Appalachia – to see both why it's worth saving and why moving away from it is simply not an option for so many residents. 

The notion [of Preserving Appalachia] is to supplement our work opposing mountaintop removal mining with educational and entertaining videos highlighting Appalachian art and artists as part of an effort to show why Appalachia is so worth preserving.

Mr. Radmacher has added to our videos to the map that feature the old-time music of the Black Twig Pickers and the fiery poetry of Crystal Good. As the project is still in its beginning stages, he also is eager to receive names of others whose work aligns with that of Preserving Appalachia and AMA. Much more is to come, and the artistry Preserving Appalachia is curating is fortifying a strong, and far more understood, Appalachian voice.

Revisiting The Dreams of Appalachian Youth

Self-portrait with the picture of my biggest brother, Everett, who killed himself when he came back from Vietnam; Freddy Childers

A new project has appeared on the USA Artists crowd-funding site that will no doubt interest our readers: Portraits and Dreams: A Revisitation, directed by filmmaker Elizabeth Barret, in collaboration with Wendy Ewald. Included below are two excerpts from the detailed project description:

Over the past three decades a growing number of artists have worked as collaborators with people from outside the art world. Photographer Wendy Ewald is one of the pioneers in this approach to artmaking.  During 1975 – 1982 in the coalfields of Letcher County, Kentucky, where one-third of all families were living below the poverty level, Ewald worked as an artist in the schools.  She encouraged her young students (ages six to fourteen) to use cameras to record themselves, their families and communities, and to articulate their fantasies and dreams.  Material from that artistic and educational initiative was collected in the groundbreaking 1985 book Portraits and Dreams.   It was named one of the 10 best art books of that year by the American Library Association and will be republished by visual arts press Steidl Verlag.  Ewald was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1992.  Her work has been included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and her fifth book, a retrospective documenting her projects entitled Secret Games, was published in 2000. 

Ewald was inspired to take on this new project when she initially reconnected via email with one of her former elementary school student collaborators Denise Dixon.  She worked with Ewald during the time she was nine to twelve years and is now a reading teacher who also operates her own video business recording local events.  The two realized how much their lives and work had been affected by their early encounter. Ewald then became interested in creating new work that draws on her former students’ experiences as children and adults as a vehicle to explore memory and reality across the passage of time.  

Ms. Barret, whose films have been the recipients of numerous awards, is working with Wendy Ewald to help provide context to the reunions and remembrances the film seeks to document.  As their USA Artists site outlines, the story of these children-turned-adult photographers becomes the story of a whole generation of Appalachian youth who seeked to navigate their cultural and regional inheritance alongside their own evolving identities as young people raised in the national milieu of the late 1970s.

FINAL USA PROJECTS PORTRAITS AND DREAMS from Robert Salyer on Vimeo.

[The earlier 17-minute Portraits and Dreams "sound slide," directed by Andrew Garrison, can be viewed in its entirety on Vimeo.]

Please follow the links to explore Ms. Barret's Stranger With a Camera, an award-winning film that considers how contentious the rural - urban, outsider - insider relationship can be when pitched in Appalachian communities. This is an extraordinary piece of place-based art, and we highly recommend it to our readers [a copy of this film will be sent in thanks for support of Portraits and Dreams: A Revisitation].

Jetsonorama And The Moving Planet

We are back today, after a few days away from the site to take care of arts and site-related tasks, with some exciting new work by Jetsonorama, an artist based in the Navajo Nation in Arizona (see our related articles below). Jetsonorama, working in collaboration with 350.org's global Moving Planet gathering last week, has just released a new series of wheat paste murals that express the cultural and environmental costs of the coal industry in the Navajo Nation. Here's the artist writing about the project, from his site:

i started getting ready for this project about 6 weeks ago. thanks goes to friend and co-worker rena yazzie and her brother who provided a big, beautiful lump of coal from the kayenta mine. thanks to josey and jameson for letting me photograph their adorable 5 month old daughter, j. c.

it's been an insightful period for me. if the navajo people and coal were to declare their relationship status on facebook, they'd have to chose the "it's complicated" option. i informally interviewed 16 co-workers and asked them to share with me the first thing that comes to mind when i say "coal." everyone i talked with was raised on the reservation. they all identified coal as a cheap source of fuel, especially for the elders. it's readily available to all tribal members. by way of comparison, a pick up truck full of wood costs $200.00. that same pick up truck loaded with coal would cost only $60.00 and the coal would burn longer.

Jetsonorama continues, reporting that his community recognizes the clear effects of their use of coal in her homes (he cites many instances of respiratory illness) and also remains cognizant of the brute economic facts of the coal extraction industry--that the majority of the power (literal, figurative) and the profits are sent out from Navajo lands towards the metropolises of the West. This movement stands in the face of a series of undeniable statistics about the region, its size and its potential wealth, that suggests that the orb of coal floating over J.C.'s head is a remnant of many older structures of oppression:

the reservation is home to 170,000 people who live in an area that is 27,500 square miles. it's larger than 10 individual states within the u.s. over half of the population lives below the usa defined poverty line despite having land that is rich in coal, natural gas, uranium and water. the unemployment rate is 40%. mining operations on the reservation provide work for a small segment of the population who are able to realize a middle class lifestyle for their families. however, the cost to the families who burn coal in their homes and to the environment is great.

Jetsonorama's site features many more images from this project-- in a larger, high-resolution format. Folks can read more about his work on Brooklyn Street Art as well as The Huffington Post, both of which have reported on Jetsonorama's project with 350.org. Folks may also want to pay a visit to this organization, which was founded by writer Bill McKibben five years ago; 350.org has orchestrated a number of global actions and discussions that have engaged a range of people on the issues of climate change.

Related Articles:

Jetsonorama and Wheat Paste Art on the Reservation
New Art From Jetsonorama's Rez
To New Year
Saturday Portfolio: New Work From Jetsonorama

The March On Blair Mountain

Photograph by Paul Corbit Brown

As many of our readers know, this week marks a historic evolution in the Appalachia Rising movement against Mountaintop Removal, as many citizens have begun The March on Blair Mountain. While we've been sharing information and links on our Facebook page, I wanted to make sure that folks who don't check that site can learn more about this march.

While many of us may not be able to join in the march as it reaches Blair Mountain on Saturday, June 11th, we can help from afar in many ways. The most imperative: these individuals need any donations we can spare to help with a logistical snare that could threaten to stop their progress towards Blair. Whether this is politically-motivated or just case of obscure county ordinances (or both), the march has met with a complication:

last night after setting up our campsite, Boone County Officials showed up and told us that we no longer had permission to camp in the park, and that if we didn’t leave we’d all be arrested.
 
We’re determined to carry on the march. We didn’t come here to stand up to the police in a county park, we are marching on Blair Mountain to stand up to the coal industry, preserve the mountain and its history, and end MTR coal mining.

We’re arranging alternative camping arrangements, and ensuring that we have walkie-talkies and safety equipment to keep everyone safe and secure. Bottom line, we need to raise $5000 to keep the March moving safely and securely.

As the organizers suggest, if their supporters can all spare $5 to this cause, then this problem can be quickly side-stepped.

There is much more information on this march and Blair Mountain's place in Appalachia's history at The March On Blair Mountain site. While this is grass-roots activism, it is also a project that has integrated music, writing, and oral history into its narrative--promising that this conversation will not fall silent the morning after the march concludes. 

Below we'll feature a short film on the importance of Blair Mountain, and a recap from the first day of the march, followed by the opening to the official press release. Folks can follow the progress at the above links, and also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/marchonblairmt [@marchonblairmt] and http://twitter.com/#!/app_rising [@App_Rising]. 

While here at The Art of the Rural we work to recognize that our readers share a diverse range of political and philosophical views (and thus refrain from much editorializing), we feel that this issue is an exception. I know that I speak for my fellow editors and contributors when I say that Mountaintop Removal is an environmental and human rights issue, a spiritually-damaging practice that threatens the very culture of Appalachia. There simply is no coherent political or philosophical argument in defense of the strip mining of these mountains.

The Battle of Blair Mountain from jordan freeman on Vimeo.

Upwards of 500 marchers from across Appalachia and the United States will participate in a 50-mile march from Marmet, W.Va., to Blair, W.Va., calling for the preservation of Blair Mountain and the abolition of mountaintop removal mining, in an event dubbed Appalachia Rising: The March on Blair Mountain. Blair Mountain, located in Logan County, W.Va., is currently under threat of destruction by mountaintop removal. 

Marchers will follow the same route as the coal miners who marched to Blair Mountain in 1921 in an effort to unionize mines in southern West Virginia. The ensuing battle between 10,000 coal miners and the coal industry’s hired gunmen is remembered as the largest armed uprising in United States history since the Civil War, and a landmark event in the labor struggles of the early 20th century.

“Ninety years ago, Blair Mountain epitomized the struggle of working men everywhere who sought a better quality of life,” said Chuck Keeney, a history professor at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College and the great-grandson of famed UMWA leader Frank Keeney. “Today, Blair Mountain’s meaning is very similar, for we march to honor the past and provide a vision for a better quality of life for both mountaineers and all Americans.”

Day 1 of the March on Blair Mountain from jordan freeman on Vimeo.

Related Articles:
Wendell Berry Joins Sit-In In Kentucky Governor's Office
Mountaintop Removal: Humor and Sincerity
Coal, The Media, And The University
Filming The Coal War
Appalshop And The Mine War On Blackberry Creek

Remembering Hazel Dickens

As most of our readers know, Hazel Dickens passed away about two weeks ago, on April 22nd. Amid the many remembrances, here are a few sites that add to spectrum of praise. 

I'd first recommend the Southern Folklife Collection's upcoming series of features on their Field Trip South blog. They are linking to a number of other articles, as well as using their rich archives to offer another view into this remarkable woman's life:

Over the next two weeks, Field Trip South will pay tribute to Hazel Dickens by sharing a variety of materials from her life and career that appear across numerous collections at the SFC.  We hope these glimpses–highlighting her struggles starting a music career while working a day job, her wicked sense of humor, and her truly remarkable music–contribute to the continued appreciation of the living legacy she leaves behind.

Also, as posted on our daily Facebook updates, the aforementioned Dust-to-Digital record label has started an online radio station via Soundcloud--and it features many of the finest vernacular music programs streaming online. Nathan Salsburg's excellent Root Hog or Die radio show is included; last week's show focused on Ms. Dickens's music. Please follow that link to the radio show, as I can't embed it below, and make sure to enjoy the other programs on Dust-to-Digital's Soundcloud page. We can't go wrong being led through the tradition by folks like Mr. Salsburg or Joe Bussard or Art Rosenbaum.

As the Southern Folklife Collection also mentions in their piece, please also consider Appalshop filmmaker Mimi Pickering's Hazel Dickens: It's Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song. Here's an excerpt from Ms. Pickering's film:

Related Articles:

Appalshop and the Mine War on Blackberry Creek

Root Hog or Die

Dust-to-Digital

Hamper McBee: The Good Old-Fashioned Way

Holler to the Hood & The Thousand Kites Project 

Dancing the Dust to Digital

Wendell Berry Joins Sit-In in Kentucky Governor's Office

photograph via the Kentuckians For The Commonwealth

At this hour Wendell Berry has joined a group of about 20 Kentuckians, who are engaging in a non-violent sit-in, requesting a meeting with Kentucky governor Steve Beshear. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth  is offering this site with a live video stream, and also with near minute-by-minute updates via Twitter. Mr. Berry is refusing to leave until their group has been granted a conversation with the governor. 

The group's press release is below. The Louisville Courier-Journal has coverage here; Jeff Biggers has an article here about the sit-in and the "Kentucky Rising." Also refer to the always-wonderful Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky for more information.

Press Release: Group of Kentuckians Demand End to Mountaintop Removal Mining in Governor’s Office Sit-In

11 February 2011

Contact: Silas House/Jason Howard 606.224.1208

FRANKFORT – A group of twenty Kentuckians has gathered at the state Capitol in an attempt to meet with Gov. Steve Beshear to discuss the issue of mountaintop removal mining. They plan to remain in his office until the governor agrees to stop the poisoning of Kentucky’s land, water, and people by mountaintop removal; or until he chooses to have the citizens physically removed.

Among the group are Wendell Berry, 76, the acclaimed writer who has decried mining abuses for the past fifty years; Beverly May, 52, a nurse practitioner from Floyd County; Erik Reece, 43, who has written extensively about the coal industry; Patty Wallace, 80, a grandmother and long-time activist from Louisa; Mickey McCoy, 55, former educator and mayor of Inez; Teri Blanton, 54, a grassroots activist from Harlan County; Stanley Sturgill, 65, a former underground coal miner of Harlan County; Rick Handshoe, 50, a retired Kentucky State Police radio technician of Floyd County; John Hennen, 59, a history professor at Morehead State University; and Martin Mudd, 28, an environmental activist.

While these Kentuckians realize they are risking arrest by refusing to leave the governor’s office, they say they have repeatedly petitioned Gov. Beshear for help, yet their pleas have been ignored. This action is a last resort to seek protections for their health, land, and water.

In a letter to Gov. Beshear, the citizens expressed their desire to communicate “respectfully and effectively” with the governor about the urgent need to stop the destruction of mountaintop removal mining. Among their requests were the following:

§  Accept a long-standing invitation to view the devastation in eastern Kentucky caused by mountaintop removal mining

§  Foster a sincere, public discussion about the urgent need for a sustainable economic transition for coal workers and mountain communities

§  Withdraw from the October 2010 lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, in which the Beshear administration partnered with the coal industry to oppose the EPA’s efforts to protect the health and water of coalfield residents

“The office of the governor must be held accountable,” they citizens explained in a joint statement.

Coal, The Media, And The University

photograph via The Rural Blog

On Wednesday The Rural Blog shared the above image and it's story: this week a coal industry golf event in Prestonburg, Kentucky was adorned with this billboard-size reproduction--paid for by "an anonymous donor." It's in response to Ms. Judd's comments to The National Press Club last month, when she described Mountaintop Removal practices as "the rape of Appalachia." The Rural Blog's discussion of both this event and her preceding comments also features video links to her speech, as well as local media reports of Kentuckians' reactions. 

The site-specific nature of the billboard is in reference to a comment made by Judd (a self-proclaimed hillbilly) about the very golf course hosting the event, which was built upon ground reclaimed and reshaped after a mining operation. Ms. Judd told the assembled journalists "I'm not too keen on reinforcing stereotypes about my people, but I don't know many hillbillies who golf." As someone who has golfed a few times on a reclaimed golf course near my hometown, I'm less sure about that: I prefer those manicured sloped to the unreclaimed gaping strip pits which moat our family farm on three sides. Yet, this much is true of the reclamation ground in my home county: very little other than fairway greens and shallow pastures can be sustainably grown on them. 

The more universal regional issue here, if you read through The Rural Blog's analysis and peruse online comments, is to some extent an argument of outsiders vs. insiders that permeates so many issues in rural arts and culture, from the debate over extractive industries to the field recordings of John Cohen. Is Ms. Judd really a "hillbilly," really a "Kentuckian?" Does her acting experience give her any purchase to criticize an industry that is providing jobs and services to local economies? Why should people who live far from the hills of Appalachia (and reap the benefits of Mountaintop Removal everyday) feel as if they can impose their politics and their philosophical standards upon these communities? 

To argue against Mountaintop Removal and ignore the regional, cultural and economic dynamics of this debate is to propagate a such an insider - outsider binary that only ensures that the practice will continue. This is an instance where the rural communities devastated by this practice need their urban counterparts to not only help them, but, even more importantly, to understand them. Ms. Judd seems to speak to this in a recent blog post from OnEarth, a news site for the Natural Resources Defense Council:

The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest in North America; they may well be the oldest mountains in the entire world.  Peaks and ridges so ancient that geologists call them - rather poetically, I think - "deep time."  Mountaintop removal only happens here; on no other mountain range in the United States would it be allowed to happen.  Indeed, it is utterly inconceivable that the Smokies would be blasted, the Rockies razed, the Sierra Nevadas flattened - that bombs the equivalent to Hiroshima would be detonated every single week for the past three decades.  The fact that the Appalachians are the Appalachians makes this environmental genocide possible and permissible.

The emphasis here is my own: as a country we would be well-served to examine our relationship and dependence on Appalachia. Though part of the most powerful democracy in human history, so much of mainstream America's relationship to this place is of a nearly-colonial nature--we extract it's resources while avoiding commensurate investments in the region, and we obscure Appalachia in either a media blackout or in ugly and abiding stereotypes. You can read this between the lines of the online commentators arguing that Coal Keeps The Lights On!: they resent the opinions of folks from the outside urban (and, for the sake of the analogy, imperial) centers. 

The first step forward should be recognizing that the people from the Appalachian region have good reason for this resentment. The second step: think about how we can begin to invest in communities, how we can propagate sustainable local economies in place of this extractive industry. We can visit I Love Mountains, No More Moutnaintop Removal, the Coal Tattoo blog and Appalshop to learn more this about this facet of the discussion.

Wendell Berry has for many years been arguing that our investments in the environment only succeed when we are equal caretakers of our communities and our families. The sad companion piece to the ugly bit of billboard above is this news, also reported on The Rural Blog, The Daily Yonder and elsewhere, that Mr. Berry is removing his archives from The University of Kentucky. His decision comes a few months after UK announced that it would name its basketball dormitory Wildcat Coal Lodge, thanks to a $7 million dollar gift from the CEO of Alliance Coal. Mr. Berry's decision here suggests that--if this region of rural America is looking for good ideas that can link the environmental, social and cultural spheres together--the University (and not just the one in Lexington) is abdicating its responsibility to the citizens it has a mission to educate. In this era of state budget shortfalls, and the evolving trend towards specialization and away from a "well-rounded education," the argument in favor of naming a state-owned structure Wildcat Coal Lodge begins to resemble--to eerily resemble--the pragmatic arguments in favor of continuing the practice of Mountaintop Removal.

Below is a brief selection from an excellent conversation between Charlie Pearl and Mr. Berry published  last week in The State Journal. As always, we can count on the Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky site to offer the latest news and commentary on this controversy.

CHARLIE PEARL: Talk about what has happened regarding the decision to pull many of your personal papers from the University of Kentucky's archives.

WENDELL BERRY: I’m sad about it. The ideal thing would have been for my papers to be there. William Marshall was the archivist when the university made that purchase of my papers before I began to deposit these on loan and he asked at that time if I would donate them. I said I have two children farming and these papers have a value, and if I come to feel that the university is really serving the interest of people like my children who hope to prosper on small farms, then I may consider donating them.
 
But until they’re secure and I’m assured of the university’s interest in people like them, I’m not going to do it. And I’m not naïve. I was not at all inclined to make an issue of the university’s manifest lack of concern about surface mining in Eastern Kentucky and it’s ecological implications, it’s implications for the forests, for the survival of the wild creatures and maybe preeminently for the rural people there that a land grant university is mandated to look after and help. This form of mining is literally hell for the people who live near those mine sites. I know some of them and I’ve heard the testimony of many others and I’ve seen with my own eyes what they’re going through.

I understood that it was probably too much to expect, even a land grant university, to take an interest in those things. But when the university accepted that ($7 million) gift and agreed to name their basketball dormitory after the coal industry, that meant they had passed over from indifference to a manifest alliance with the coal industry. I don’t think a university ought to make an alliance with any industry. I know that’s going on at other universities, and I think it’s always a breach of intellectual integrity and reputability and a breach of public obligation. That is a public university. It ought not to be allying itself with a private interest of any kind. When that happened, that made it impossible for me to tacitly accept that in terms of my own relationship with the university. So the question I had to answer was whether I wanted to be associated with the university on its terms, and the answer I had to give is that I don’t.

Two Documentaries We Should Consider While Oil Flows In The Gulf

a film still from Sludge

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on the agrarian and appalachian responses to the Gulf oil disaster, here are two documentary films which expand the discussion further to reveal how what's occurring off-shore right now is actually endemic to the rural communities across this country. Tucked away from urban media coverage, these towns have endured the same corruption, lack of oversight and outright acts of reckless arrogance that have found a confluence in the Deepwater Horizon. 

Sludge is a 2005 documentary produced by Appalshop and directed by Robert Salyer. It's the culmination of a four year project that follows the after-effects of the Martin County, Kentucky slurry pond spill. It's a phenomenal film that balances investigative journalism with local storytelling to reveal both the troubled science and the politics behind this wide-reaching environmental disaster:

Shortly after midnight on October 11, 2000, a coal sludge impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky, broke through an underground mine below, propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a ten-foot wide stream became a 100-yard expanse of thick sludge. The spill polluted hundreds of miles of waterways, contaminated the water supply for over 27,000 residents, and killed all aquatic life in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek. The spill was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States, according to the EPA.

Gasland is a current documentary that has been receiving an increasing amount of media attention after it landed Sundance Film Festival's Jury Prize for Documentaries earlier in the year. The film is directed by Josh Fox; after a gas company offered him $100,000 for the rights to drill for natural gas on his land in upstate New York, he decided to learn more about the process of "fracking" these operations use in order to release the natural gas from the underground layers of shale. Gasland is the documentation of his process of discovery, a journey that takes him to all corners of the country; what he finds is frightening, especially given that, due to changes made by the Bush Administration, these drilling operations were not required by law to report to the EPA. Mr. Fox is currently touring with the film to communities in New York and Pennsylvania (where large gas deposits are currently being pursued) to spread the word on his findings:

Here also is an informative interview with Mr. Fox from the NOW program on PBS:

An Appalachian And Agrarian Response to the Tragedy in the Gulf

photograph by The Associated Press

The people of the Appalachian Mountains and Louisiana bayous have a lot more in common than fiddle tunes and distinctive accents. More than most, they are called on to sacrifice to satisfy this nation's appetite for fossil fuels. And more than most, they are economically dependent on energy production.

Last week The Rural Blog posted a link to an editorial (quoted above) from the Lexington-Herald Leader that articulated what many folks, especially those in the Appalachian region, may have been thinking since the early days of the explosion in the Gulf Mexico. In the words of the editorial staff, this latest tragedy has "a familiar ring" to it. It follows the metric of all extraction economies in that it is tremendously lucrative and yet vastly destructive on all levels: the environmental, spiritual, and social. And especially in an "economic downturn" its oversized fiscal footprint disarms innovative and sustainable ideas in the region. Throw in lax regulatory oversight and a lack of political will in the statehouses and Congress, and what we see in the Gulf is Mountaintop Removal's first cousin. 

Certainly, the anger and resignation that our nation is working through this week--as officials warn that the oil may leak into the ocean for many more months--is of a kind similar to what many of us who may be from the Appalachian region are well acquainted with: that complicated and tortured understanding of how we all are linked, all implicated, to an industrial model that is destroying the structure of our communities all the while it puts on a show of setting up a few beams to hold things in place. 

This line of thinking has led me back to the work of Wendell Berry, and to the absolutely prescient short essay he wrote in the weeks after the September 11th attacks--Thoughts in the Presence of Fear. What Mr. Berry saw in that piece, and in the national conversation that followed 9/11, was an opportunity to engage in a kind of reappraisal of how, as a nation, we are carrying ourselves in our world, in our environment and in our local places. As an agrarian argument, it's worth revisiting in light of the events in the Gulf. Here are the first three sections: 

I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day.

II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a “new world order” and a “new economy” that would “grow” on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be “unprecedented”.

III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percent of the world’s people, and to an ever smaller number of people even in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labor of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous.

Continue reading Thoughts in the Presence of Fear at Orion Magazine, and as always, make sure to visit Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky for more insight.

Going Deep Down

Deep Down: A Story From The Heart of Coal Country had its broadcast premiere last night on Kentuck Educational Television. It's a film by Jen Gilomen, (Delta Rising) Sally Rubin (The Last Mountain) and produced by David Sutherland, the filmmaker behind two absolutely outstanding documentaries: The Farmer's Wife and Country Boys. Here's their eloquent description of the context behind the project, which premieres at a moment when the EPA is taking many long-overdue steps to halt the spread of Mountain Top Revoval:

Any exploration of power production in America will lead to Appalachia, a region that has supplied our nation with coal for over a century. As America’s energy consumption rises, the extraction and burning of coal to meet these demands has dramatically altered the Appalachian landscape, economy, and culture. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, is assessing the potential of mining an estimated 82 million tons of coal from the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area. (By comparison, only 3 million tons were mined in the entire state in 2002.) In Appalachia, coal is the number one industry, with an enormous influence on local economies and people. At the same time, few Americans know about mountaintop removal mining (MTR), nor have any knowledge that their own demand for power is directly impacting the mountains, water, and sky. As we increase our energy usage, we also become more and more removed not only from the natural places that have provided this energy, but from the human beings whose lives we dramatically alter by consuming those resources. The crossroads we find ourselves facing as a nation is one that pervades our land and sky, and it can only be addressed by the cumulative efforts of millions of tiny personal changes. Therein lies the potential for a human story, like the stories we have found in Appalachia, to make a million tiny changes, to reconnect us as humans to the suffering we have caused as well as our own power to prevent it in the future.

Simultaneously, Appalachia as a region deserves our attention as a place of history, complexity, and change. A century of Appalachian scholars and journalists have attempted to eradicate the persisting stereotypes of the Appalachian “hillbilly.” In a society where making fun of a person’s way of speaking or ridiculing their poverty is normally considered unacceptable, mainstream television programs and films continue to portray stereotyped and homogenous images of Appalachia, if they portray them at all. As our advisor Dr. Chad Berry of Berea College so eloquently puts it, “there is not an Appalachian culture, there are Appalachian cultures.” Similarly, we pride ourselves as Americans in being a diverse society, but often neglect the rural poor in the study and depiction of that diversity. It is time for us to look back to this “forgotten” region, to allow its people to teach us and to teach each other about these cultures that the mainstream media has almost entirely overlooked.

By asking us to trace the power lines from our homes to people far removed from our daily lives, Deep Down inspires Americans to preserve Appalachia and our shared legacy.

Here's a trailer for the film:

There are many more aspects to explore on the Deep Down site, including their People Power series of video vignettes--where folks engaged with this issue can tell their own story, in their own words. Here's one example about life underneath the power plants, told by Elisa Young of Racine, Ohio:

And don't forget the music:

For the more technologically-savvy, the producers also established a Virtual Mine on Second Life, where participants can explore a Mountaintop Removal site and learn more about the issue. Also, as always, visit Coal Tattoo for more on these issues and to hear more about the latest in the ongoing investigation in Montcoal.

The Tragedy in Montcoal

photograph from Coal Tattoo

I'm sure many of us have been following developments in Montcoal, West Virginia, as rescuers have worked relentlessly to find the miners trapped inside the Upper Big Branch Mine. News has come this morning that the rescue efforts are being delayed due to methane levels inside, and that twenty-five of the twenty-nine miners known to be inside at the time of the blast have died--making this the worst coal-mining disaster this country has seen in twenty-five years. For updates throughout the next few days, visit Coal Tattoo, an outstanding blog by Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. 

This devastating news also came during the same week that the EPA released new guidelines that would, as Mr. Ward reported, virtually eliminate mountaintop removal mining. While we rejoice at this news, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families in Montcoal. 

There's a rich artistic tradition dealing with coal-mining and all its social and political meanings. In this space we've highlighted the gorgeous music of Nimrod Workman and the groundbreaking work of Appalshop. But I'd like to offer here a bit of Lee Sexton's music, as it speaks to the sense of community and goodwill that is just as much a part of Appalachia as is coal. Mr. Sexton is a former miner himself, and he is, without argument, a national treasure. His Whoa Mule, released by the June Appal label, is essential listening.