Appalachia and My Politics

Not a popular subject but an important one. I will be publishing my Civil War series of stories later this week but I just went to the Grassroots gathering of Virginia Organizing. I rested all week to get ready for it but still gave out with this illness. I had also forgot, ye old brain fog, I scheduled two places to be at the same time. I went with the first commitment, gave it my all and survived.

Photos of the event are here. It was a great event in spite of me being sick and I thank those that got me there. I could not have gone without help.  It also made me realize I have another blog I'm neglecting called, Life under the Virginia Way, that was suppose to deal with issues of politics.

I just realized I don't need two blogs. Just one. As often as I don't write, I can put another page link up at the top on politics. First of all let me say this...I hate politics. But how we live is decided on a political plane in a political arena and you can't avoid politics especially in Appalachia.

Policies all of us live under are usually determined by the politics at the local, county, state and federal level. Even if you want to just ignore politics, people's politics create how you live in this country. So one may think one is avoiding being involved in political decisions by being apathetic, or by not discussing them, but you are not avoiding anything. Apathy is its own form of participation. By not participating you are letting others determine the policies you live under. You can't live here, or anywhere without politics effecting your life.

I didn't used to be so involved. Life was much simpler when I wasn't and just lived under whatever happened to be. I used to be a housewife and happy to be so. I raised children, a garden and took care of the home.  In the late 80s early 90's my ex husband became ill, lost his railroad job and we lost everything we had. Went bankrupt and actually became homeless.

It's amazing how watching your children go through something like that will politicize a person. I couldn't get a job at that time. It was as bad as is it today.  I remember I counted 18 applications I filled out in just one week with nothing to show for it. While searching again, I stopped in at the local community college to see if training would help me get a job and ended up getting a degree.

Eventually we pulled ourselves up, but not without help and though the marriage did not survive, my desire to make this place a better world for my kids and grand kids is still strong.

View from the gallery at the Virginia State house...yep been there a few times. 

Virginia Organizing is a group I have volunteered with since it's beginning. It is non partisan, though it's accused of not being so by those that don't understand the organization. Just because the organization is backing things like immigration reform and health care issues, doesn't mean a thing. It truly is non-partisan.

Hey, I've voted for Republicans and we have worked with Republicans, Democrats and anyone that will work to solve problems. I just don't know about the new breed of politicians being produced these days. It's got many baffled. You know, the ones that act like a two year old and won't even meet with their own constituents? Yep...pretty weird and some really weird times in our political processes.   I'm for good ideas and solutions and I don't care which side it comes from.

Every year I've tried to volunteer for at least one VO project. Since I've been ill...well, I'm doing better than I have been the last few years. At the grassroots event I was asked a series of four questions. I thought I would post them and my answers here. I've watched participation grow across the state, from a few people sitting in a library or at a McDonald's talking about what kind of community and state they want to live in to where it is today.

1. How did you get involved in Virginia Organizing. 

I got involved with Virginia Organizing at the very, VERY beginning, before there was a Virginia Organizing. My family had just survived going from middle class to being homeless and losing everything we had. In that experience my family dealt with so many issues trying to survive. I was looking for a way to change the way the system works and responds to people when they get sick or lose a job, or need education. I was looking for a way to make it better for my children, so they would not have to experience that ever again. 

2.  What has been the high point of your involvement?

Learning so much, watching people get involved, and how they learn so much and watching it work and the organization grow. It was a different kind of model, no membership, but a great diversity of people across the state and their relationships to one another. Hard for me to understand at first. But the high light is... it works.

3. What have you learned since you became active with Virginia Organizing?

That change comes slowly because all issues are connected. That issues like race, gender, LGBT, immigration, heath care, the economy, the environment, energy, every single issue you can think of are community issues and connected to one another. I have learned I can’t be single issue oriented if I want to make my community better for my people.  I have learned I have to stand up for others and with others all across the state working on solutions to the issues they are having to deal with in order to make my own community better for my family and my children. 

4. What excites you most about being a Virginia Organizing member?

The future. I’m seeing it work!!  People learning that we have to work together to find solutions and make the changes needed. I've seen Virginia Organizing giving us the vehicle to do just that.

Is this sounding Utopian? Well it's not. It's a lot of hard work. The work of coming together and finding what we can agree on and finding solutions to problems.  Do I believe the same as everyone in the organization...NO...I definitely have some views on different issues not like others. But you have to have an open dialog and an open mind. A respect that not everyone believes everything the same as you or yours. But where we can agree, change can happen.

What I have seen happen over the last twenty years is that we all have, all across Virginia, more in common than we do differently and if you don't let the differences stop what we can agree on, we solve problems and get things accomplished that help us all. It's amazing how that works.

The organization was even working with Governor Bob McDonnell on the restoration of rights issue. Every Virginia Governor, long before McDonnell, has been concerned with this issue in Virginia. How people who have been involved with a crime, did their time and paid their fines, and not in any more trouble get restoration of their rights. It goes right along with Christian beliefs to restore and forgive people.

The only way was for the Governor of Virginia to sign off on each and every case by petition. So many cases exist every year, that if that was all a governor did, it would be all they would get accomplished while in office.  It's estimated there are close to 400,000 returning citizens right now in Virginia in need of restored rights. It's been a problem for DECADES!! Someone told me try over 100 years but I haven't looked that up yet.  Bob McDonnell was actually working with us trying to help find a solution for it.

Restoration of rights just restores things like voting rights and rights to get a passport, even become a notary. It doesn't restore gun rights, not in Virginia. For that you have to petition a court separately. If people have made mistakes and paid for them, it just makes sense to forgive and restore them to be complete productive citizens again.

There are many people I realize who have been hurt in the past by actions of other people. They don't care the situation or the crime. They say if anyone makes any mistakes that hurts others in any way, even though they have made amends....tough, they made their bed and have to lie in it. In my mind and my belief system, that's not exactly a Christian way to be. To skip over the restoration and forgiveness clauses in the Bible as if they don't matter is a big no no in my religion. Those people who are not willing to forgive have a big problem they will have to come to terms with and to answer to God for.

On Governor Bob McDonnell and his fall from grace...I feel very sad. Who in the world would ever rejoice at this? It's ironic he may need those restoration of his own rights one day.  When he was either a state delegate or the Attorney General we were working with him on another issue and I can't even remember the issue. With this organization I have volunteered to work on so many over the years. Next year is the 20th anniversary.

But at that meeting, we were hopeful because he had a plaque in this office with a quote from St. Francis. Can't even remember the quote but we thought if he believes in this, then maybe he will see how desperately the particular issue we were working on needed addressed in Virginia. I remember he was a politician that would at least listen and try to explain why or why not he thought a solution was good or lacking. I understood him to be a politician willing to allow the bringing together good ideas and find solutions regardless of where they originated from. Rare these days especially in Virginia or in our national Congress.

So I see his fall from grace, as something changed and very sad indeed and highlights a big problem we have always had in politics.....controlling money's influence in the political process.

I think we can all agree that we hold our elected officials accountable to using public office for any private gains as a bad thing.  The McDonnell's scenario played out like a really bad soap opera and we don't know what goes on behind closed doors. But I think it's a part of a culture in politics today to think that they thought what was occurring wasn't wrong. Which to me is most disturbing.

Part of their defense was that it didn't matter they received all these gifts or special favors. It is questionable whether the giver of those gifts would have gained the level of access to using the Governor's executive mansion or access to those specific state officials through the Governor's office he received, if he hadn't given those gifts. So I don't know the solutions but I hope we find it soon.

People's lives depend on decisions made in the political arena. That's why no one can avoid politics even if they wanted to.

I hope to do what I can and volunteer some more for Virginia Organizing. That just depends on this crazy illness that I have come to just loath!!! I am hoping they will have a Restoration of rights workshop in our area. For more information click HERE. I would like to try to volunteer for that. I know a couple of people who have worked hard to make amends, worked to put their lives on the right track, who deserve to be forgiven and restored.  It shouldn't take decades to get that accomplished. 

Gentrification of Appalachia

Appalachia is changing. Has been for some time.  I know there is no one stereotype of Appalachain people. But lately I've noticed this dogged undercurrent of a big getting away from any mention of the old ways especially about outhouses and the way we lived and referring to it as being so substandard. People, especially those new to Appalachia, wanting to see our history distanced from a past that frankly was just the way it was before they brought money here and a demand for good plumbing.  A tweaking of this ideal life for what Appalachia is or isn't for folks.  It just depends on who you talk to.
The Appalachia my family knew was just different. We were not rich people, we were salt of the earth people. We used an outhouse because there was no septic system or city sewer system. Many places the ground was so rocky with so much clay they couldn't have put a septic system in even if you wanted to.

Just within the last ten years I have hooked the old 150 year old house to a public water system. We finally disconnected the old well. This was not just a matter of rich or poor but more of what was available. But in my lifetime I've been in some fancy houses that had lousy plumbing in Appalachia.

I can remember carrying good water in jugs from a spring when I was younger in the early 1970s. The house we lived in, though it had a well and a bathroom, it was IRON water. Turned all your clothes orange!!  And the bathroom froze up in the winter despite Dad's best efforts. He put in an outhouse for emergencies.  It was not a bad way of living just different and we coped with it. Some folks had sulfur water that smelled like rotten eggs and would clog up pipes for the same results. But an outhouse built character is what my grandmother said. Some homes didn't have well water they had gravity flow water off a hill and went into a cistern. It was not only the monetary resources of the people but the geography of the mountains that produced the stereotypes of living conditions.

But I went to a meeting the other day and it was among people who are trying to save the heritage of our Appalachia and create a tourism market in Appalachia.  What struck me the most is here were people talking of the mountain music, arts, crafts, history and wanting to celebrate that by speaking of wanting to change the stereotype of Appalachia such as everyone lived in a house with an outhouse in the old days. They wanted to change the perception of Appalachia from the barefoot children going to school and the backwoods downtrodden folks to one of gentility instead. I kept thinking every community I have researched family history in had barefoot children pictures in school. So now we don't want to show "that part" of Appalachia, even though they existed and it was real. OK.....mmmmm   And it's because we are trying to "sell" the Appalachian experience. Ok.... what the heck is that?

Well see now there are artisans now taking up the Appalachian crafts, (I applaud those folks for that) and are creating a semi quasi mythical way of life, creating art studios and art trails. But the wonder of it is very few of these folks I have talked to are people actually from Appalachia.  Many have Ph.ds and just want this simple way of life that they think Appalachia of the past represented. Yet they have changed Appalachia by coming into the mountains. Mainly because they are not content with doing without modern amenities. So they moved on a mountain top and then brought money to demand decent plumbing and trash pick up and roads. It's been amusing to watch.

But what I really find questionable is many want to make this extraordinary living at the old Appalachian "arts" or even small farming while changing the view of Appalachian actual history. It's not a bad thing to have this diverse economic growth. We have goat people, and alpaca's, and ostriches with sheep and wineries. Very odd to walk through the mountains and run up on an ostrich! 

But I recently saw a "chair" artist. He made split oak chairs much like my great grandfather did. Wants a pretty penny for them too, $300 and up each. Is it worth it, probably if you don't want to have the pride to make it yourself, but looking at his work and remembering the old chairs around the family, I don't think he took the care that Grand dad did with making his chairs.

And wineries, there were many in the mountains who made there own brews. Just wasn't as commercial though we had a quite few small business commercial operations.  There was actually a small winery in Bland County ran by the Justus family. But we mostly made our own. I ought to pull out my aunt's dandelion wine recipe. (I once made a batch collecting dandelions off the municipal courthouse lawn in Radford VA. Prettiest crop of dandelions you ever saw that year.)

This is the difference, these new chairs, these new wines, are for money on an economic level that just never existed here in the mountains much. I had an uncle who ran a mill and for grinding the corn he would take a percentage of the corn not coin and then would sell it sending it by train or wagon east and south. It was more of a barter system that I am aware of. And of the chairs,  Grand Daddy made his chairs because he was too poor to purchase Grand Maw store bought ones. He would "trade" making a chair if he found something to trade for. We made do using the resources we had...and in the process, was artful in how we made do. The myth and simple life they want, the newcomers are destroying because they don't understand it came with an outhouse and bad plumbing. It came from a more barter system of community. It came out of necessity.

We provided for ourselves something useful like a quilt out of the best part of a rag, something beautiful like a hand carved box out of left over wood, or created music that sounded sweet or sad or made you want to dance. That's what made it different, that's what makes Appalachia special. It was born out of hard times, not good times. Out of real life, not easy street or the rich parlors of the coal or railroad barrons, but on the side of a mountain in a house that could be called a shack today. I wonder what picture they would rather have on the wall with a quilt in a museum exhibit. A ranch style brick?

Now, our children are buying in to the modern life. What will they learn of their own history? Will the story be we never had to make what we needed and we all lived in real fancy homes and only made chairs for art sake. It's second nature. We have indoor plumbing and water now. The cross cut saw is hanging in the shed, rusted. We go to Walmart and Lowes and no longer have to travel a long distance to get a stove. They won't know that we ordered from Sears and Roebuck the fancy things and pick them up off the train. Our children don't know about going into town only on Saturday. By the way, those that lived in town, yes, they might have had indoor plumbing in some of the houses but right next door you had an outhouse that could be visited by a tanker truck in the late 1970s to pump it out!

Appalachia has changed and is changing and now to tell our story they want to get away from the reality of the circumstances that existed for many of our Appalachian people that created the real art of Appalachia, the flavor of Appalachia, the one they sort of want to mimic for big bucks.

At that meeting there was a comment that people from the mountains are "ashamed" to say how they lived so we need to steer clear of any exhibit that puts Appalachian people in a stereotypical light such as with an outhouse.  That statement made me feel hurt and ashamed that we have to change what I know of my own family history just to please...... who? and I wanted to scream OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, HOW STUPID CAN YOU GET!!!  I think we ought to embrace every bit of our history and all the things that made us different even the darn plumbing!!! If you are going to tell the story and get the "flavor" of Appalachia that is a BIG part of it.

This Picture is of Grand Dad sitting in a homemade split oak chair, in a house with gravity flow water and an outhouse, in June 1961, just on the outskirts of Bluefield WV.   THAT'S REAL APPALACHIAN HISTORY FOR ME!!!