Spring 2017 Update Appalachian Spring

Lord have mercy!  I been busy! It's been a WHIRLWIND of activity.  Trying to blog...yep it's not working. Too much interference but I'll get to some book and video reviews in this post.  I read quite a few this past winter like, Liberal Redneck Manifesto :Draggin Dixie Out Of the Dark, White Trash and Hillbilly Elegy to name a few. Scroll down if you are impatient.

My son was FINALLY approved for disability. WHAT A BLESSING! We were at the crossroads of no return. But though that is a small blessing, doesn't make up for him working, we've a long way to go to get him WELL!  He's getting an appointment at UVA. This crazy disease he has, (is anyone sure these immune diseases are not in our environment?)  is moving into his eyes.  We try to take care of each other, but at the moment his condition is pretty bad. Much worse than I am. It's OK...we are alive.

Spent some money catching up bills and a couple of things giving him a reason to keep trying. Got him a computer. He was using my old one and another that was given to him. Both pretty much slow as molasses and out of date. He really needed a new one. Got a chair that lifts and reclines, which has helped him immensely!! We tore down the bedroom he's staying in. Hadn't been changed since he was a teenager.

He had a bad episode a couple months ago and while I was in there trying to help him up and get his socks on, I noticed how depressing his room was!  We changed that.  A good clearing out, paint and a rug and a new bed frame helped a bunch. Took us WEEKS to do that. He can't look up or bend at all..so he was at mid level. I did above and below with help.  He slept in my bed (it's higher to get in and out of) and I slept on the couch.

After working on that, I was SPENT. I think I'm still recovering. But this is what I noticed, with his illnesses, the change in his surroundings, it's changed his mood from one of despair to hope. So it's worth IT!  He has a long battle ahead to get him to the best he can be. Every little bit helps.

The election...WELL....it happened.....let's not go there. It's going to be an interesting next couple of years. I'm not sure what to think really. I piss a lot of my family off about politics. I'm not liberal or conservative but I'm also liberal and conservative...depends on the damn issue!!

 Not happy at some of the things being rolled back of course. After going through these illnesses I don't believe we are "throw away people" because we can't afford health care without help at the moment. Without it I believe my son nor I would not have a chance at survival. It's not a game, it's not a theory, these illnesses are not something we could have prevented from happening with clean living. But we are only 2 people in a sea of Americans, trying to survive in the same boat.  It amazes me we have money for war and walls but not healthcare solutions. So yes, it's a pretty touchy subject to me.

I've read a few books and watched a few videos of note over the winter/early spring I'd like to tell you about. I'd love to do separate book reviews, but I don't have energy or time. I will just link and make a few comments.

Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester and Drew Morgan's, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta the Dark, is absolutely wonderful. First book on my list, one I overly enjoyed reading. I took it to read waiting for a doctor's visit. I busted out laughing to tears at some of it, and had to leave the waiting room because I was giggling too much. A lady, when I returned, asked me what I was reading that was so funny. I showed her the cover and she FROWNED at me. Don't know if she believed me, but I told her it was worth the funds and the laughs. I related to every bit of it, and if I had the money I'd buy every young man, over 18, in the South or North, a copy. It's got cussing and it's bawdy. Funny as all get out though. I gave my copy to my grandson to take with him on his way into the world.  You can find them on tour with a listing of all things Wellred on their web site.

Or purchase your own copy on Amazon. Draggin Dixie Out of the Dark

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  I'd heard so much about this book. It's a good, fast, read. Read it in a day but.....it's the world of Hillbillies according to the experience of J.D. Vance. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We all see the world differently.  To say I agree completely with his view, would be lyin to ya.  His mamaw could of been my own mother, but his insistence of he was the Appalachian version of Horatio Alger, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", kind of guy, kinda made me wince. It's the overall, anti-government intrusion theme, doesn't jive with what we who live here, know how he and his family would have lived. Especially here...in the heart of Appalachia.

The Marines is a government funded job, bub, and it got you on the road to your success. My dad took that same route. I'm sure there were student loans, grants etc. that educated you. I'm sure there were other programs that kept you alive until you could join the Marines. Since you were so poor, I recognize that the details of your own family finances might not be something you were privy to growing up, but don't insist to others, if you don't know, you did it ALL on your own, without any government assistance. Government assistance is not just food stamps and welfare. The difference is chance, access and those that take advantage of what is available to improve themselves.

His view of pay day loans is typical anti government regulation view of an industry that preys upon the poor. He got a loan and paid it back. Good for him. Said he saw no reason to regulate that industry, because HE was able to not have any further misfortunes and figured out a way to pay it back.

I've been to Richmond trying to get the legislature to regulate how much interest these payday and title loan lenders can charge. Believe me, he's not the customer they make the most money on. We had people testify about their loans, raised to charge over 300% interest. These loans trapped them in a cycle they can never get out of.

His not knowing what forks to use at a fancy dinner, because in our hillbilly world no one ever taught "him". Well that was his experience in his part of hillbillydom. My mother, who was raised in a 4 room house with gravity flow water and an outhouse, took out the Betty Crocker cook book and taught her kids, which fork was what, just in case we attended such a dinner. I have my grandmother's home economics books from the 1920s, that the girls were taught in school these lessons. It might be some knowledge lost on his generation but it was not mine or further back.

So it was a well written book, his family members could have been mine, his description of where he was raised hits a memory for a lot of people..... but...the world of hillbillies is much more broad than his experience or just his view.

So many of us don't want to leave Appalachia, to make a what he would consider a "success" of ourselves. I would say those that have clung to, stayed, and survived, regardless of money are more of a success story of Appalachia.  WE ARE STILL HERE fighting to make it and keep our children here. We know what the hillbilly highway out of here is. We know how our ties to this land call us back when we take it. Many more prefer not to take it out of here, no matter what the outside rewards. That's doesn't mean we are not and could never be a success. His version of success is not mine.

I read Ron Howard is making a movie of Hillbilly Elegy.....I hope he doesn't kick us in the teeth.

One of my favorite websites and Facebook pages is The Bitter Southerner. They publish awesome stories and views about how diverse the Southern experience is. Appalachians relate to the South, in Ohio even, more so than any other group.  Last week they published a post by David Joy called, Digging In The Trash It's a more honest and truthful picture of poverty in the south and in Appalachia.

My next book was right up my alley.  A history book!!  White Trash:The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. It's a history book about class in America and a timely eye opener for anyone that doesn't know this history. I've studied this, because I've came across it in research. Walter Plecker was a prick for eugenics and partly responsible for running many of my family members out of Virginia in the 1920s.

Isenberg puts this history and it's background all in ONE book! She added some wonderful research and quotes to use later. I LOVE IT. If we are going to tackle poverty and race issues, then you need the history of class and of that poverty as a base. Helped me with some family research too, on some places to look, when she wrote about indentured servants.

Let me type from the flap.

"Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature, and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society --where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Some of the founding fathers believed poor people were subhuman, and wanted to apply strategies used in agriculture and animal husbandry to improve the stock. Poor whites were central to the rise of Lincoln's Republican Party, and in addition to slavery, the Civil War itself was fought over class issues. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which was a factor in the rise of eugenics - a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization.  These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society. Now they are offered to us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty, and the label is applied to celebrities ranging from Dolly Parton to Bill Clinton. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been near the center of major debates over the character of the American identity."

Highly recommend this book.

I FINALLY set down and read the complete edited copy of Building Power, Changing Lives: The Story of Virginia Organizing. by Ruth Berta and Amanda Leonard Pohl.  If you read my About Me, then you know I've been involved with this organization since its inception. Yep, I and many others are in this book. This book was created for our 20th Anniversary. It explains the organization and lists all the local and state issues we worked on. With the political climate as it is, I am MORE sure than ever certain, the way we do it, this is the way to go. It's inclusive, strategic and deliberate in what we try to have influence over that makes a real difference in people's lives.

It's not about political party, (It crosses paths with parties, only if a party starts working towards what helps the most people, you work with them)  but it's more about all people in their community tackling issues important to them. People normally that have not been active but suffering. That takes time, but it WORKS!!

Jay Johnson and I talking about Lee County, the FIRST county in the state, to a group.

So many times people look at an organization like this and say, "I see this problem. What is this organization going to do to fix it for me?"  When the question really is, "What are YOU going to do to fix this problem for yourself and your community?"  VO gives tools to do that.  We do a lot of teaching, and breaking down barriers between communities. The book is full of many accomplishments related to that. Sometimes they don't seem that big, such as getting a deaf interpreter on call in a hospital where there is a large community of deaf people. It means a lot to the deaf community! Or getting a county to make sure their jury pool is diverse. This book is full of those battles and wins. Like a pebble in a still pond, it radiates out.

AND this year I was put on the schedule to speak in Blacksburg, VA at the 2017 Appalachian Studies Conference called, "Extreme Appalachia", for Virginia Organizing and went with one of our organizers Brian Johns....why the heck can't I ever remember to take a CAMERA!!

If you are not aware of the Appalachian Studies Series....it's EVERYTHING Appalachian!!! At the time I was needed at home and it was hard to get away just for the day! But I would have loved to have stayed to visit every forum this year. All of them were top notch. This was my second time in 20 years being there. Next year's 2018 conference will be in Cincinnati, OH under the theme, "Re-stitching the Seams: Appalachia Beyond it's Borders".

Our session was convened by Penny Loeb and entitled: Democratic Participation in Southwest Virginia and West Virginia. Two of our presenters didn't make it because of family emergencies.  But I met Patricia Bragg, who I absolutely LOVE. Her story is told in a book written by Penny Loeb and movie called, "Moving Mountains: A story of Faith and Perseverance".  Her story is the perfect example and BASIS of the contention between coal mining and the destruction it's causing to our communities.  We struggle between needing an environment where we can continue to live and drink the water versus coal mining jobs. I bought a copy directly from the author and it was a good video. I recommend it highly.





What I'm reading now is Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II book, The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear.  I'm a Dr. Barber fan. He speaks what I've thought for YEARS especially knowing history. The 80's Prosperity Gospel movement, and it's whole message is destroying too many people's lives.

It's tied to the alt right movement of perverting the messages of justice and mercy of the Bible and other faith traditions.  I've not finished this one yet. I read it when we go to Doctor's appointments.  Doctor appointments have allowed me to READ A LOT!!

Barber's preaching on You Tube with Repairers of the Breach movement, gives ME HOPE. Like none other. I can be so depressed and listen to him speak and feel better. The work I've been involved with for 20 years is because I have this sense of caring, mercy and justice. When I've been screamed at and called everything but something nice for standing up because people are being made to feel as if they have no right to their rights....Creator has got this!  What ever troubles, whatever craziness is going on in this world, there are good people and if it's not about love or forgiveness it's not from God.  If it's pointing out others sins and being self righteous of our own, and being implemented as policy,  it's not right either.


AND LAST.....Several years ago I was contacted through my blog from a company wanting to possibly use some of my grand dads pictures for a project. The West Virginia Coon Hunters. I'd sent the few I had, sent them all the way to California and got them back, and they even scanned them at high resolution for me and sent me a disk, but didn't get to see the project. It was a photo project of country music. Seriously....all the stuff going on in our lives with sickness...I FORGOT about it.

A couple weeks ago I was flipping through Netflix. I don't get to watch it much. Saw this program "Country:Portraits of an American Sound.  Company sounded very familiar. So I watched it. I ended up in tears. For a few brief seconds, the picture of my Grand Daddy Bane, with the West Virginia Coon Hunters, was on a program with photos of Country's TOP performers!!! Photos of everyone who was anyone in Country Music.  He finally friggin MADE IT! I'm still tearing up.  Thanks to the Annenberg Space for Photography Arclight Productions for contacting me and for including them in their documentary!!




So I been a little busy!! Hope all are healthy and blessed. Thanks for reading. HAPPY SPRING!!!

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.