I just read that Leslie Jordan died yesterday. Appalshop put it well when they said "Today we've lost an eastern Tennessee icon who brought us love and life through comedy, activism and not being shy about our mountain twang. Rest easy, Leslie, and may we keep dreaming and believing in brighter tomorrows in your honor."
Leslie Jordan was openly gay and it is gratifying to me that so many people in Appalachia are mourning his passing and saying how much he meant to them. His life, which we could all be celebrating, showed that bridges can be built and crossed in principled and meaningful ways and that activism matters.
This person did a more-than-credible job with this song, and their care for the song and what it says is real. This was recorded a couple of years ago, but I just found it on the Souls Harbor Pentecostal Holiness Church page. That church is located in far Southwestern Virginia. It's rural, mostly white, and majority women, and it's poor. This is a part of the country that struggles with unemployment, poverty, and substance abuse and lacks comprehensive social services.
I like this version of the song better than the original, though I do respect the work done by The Talleys.
The song begins with a description of real-life problems that most of us face every day. We do indeed live in a broken world where "everything is upside down, wrong is right and right is wrong." Most of can identify with that line, although when we get down to the question we will disagree over what is upside down and what is right-side up and is wrong and what is right. It's easy to take this as code for just about everything on the Trump agenda, but I'll say that capitalism has turned the world upside down. People profit from doing that and keeping things turned around, and it will take a mighty movement of working-class people to set things right.
There is hope in this song that everything will be set right soon when our Savior comes. The contradiction is that the song says that God created this broken world. Did God create a broken world? Is that true, or did the social order turn things upside down? God's judgement will certainly prevail, but God has a preferential option for the poor and the oppressed and women. God has judged, is judging, and will judge. Heaven and hell are present now. God wants our liberation, and wants us to want it.
Feel this song and think of those in your life who are struggling. Let's give one another reasons to hope and work for liberation and heal this broken world.
This very touching photo is making the rounds among my Facebook friends and many Facebook groups that I belong to. The photo is said to show a coal miner coming straight from work to this past weekend’s University of Kentucky Blue-White Game in Pikeville, Kentucky with his son.
University of Kentucky Head Basketball Coach John Calipari was touched by the picture and posted the photo on his Facebook page this morning and committed to providing VIP tickets to the miner and his family at a home game at Rupp Arena. The coach used his post to talk about his family's ties to mining.
We all want this photo and the story going around with it to be true. We want to live in a world where parents bond with their kids. We deeply appreciate the sacrifice and the exhaustion captured in the photo. We want this to be a good lasting memory for father and son. We know that look on that mine worker's face and we can see ourselves in it. We appreciate Coach Calipari remembering where he came from and his generosity, and we wish that others who have moved up and moved out would do the same. It is so tough in the mining towns and hollers, and especially in Southeast Kentucky, that people need a stand-in who sacrifices and gets recognition and a reward. That mine worker could be so many struggling and deserving people who want to bond with their kids and grandkids. Whether the photo and the story are what is being claimed or not, there are great truths here.
God bless that man and his son and Coach John Calipari.
God bless every parent and grandparent who gives or tries to give to their young ones.
God bless every hard-working person and every unemployed person with that look on their face and everyone who knows and feels what that look means.
There is an opportunity here to consider some important questions. Why don't parents and grandparents have more time with their young ones? Why are we so tired so much of the time? And what about all of the other people---moms who work in their homes and factory workers and white-collar workers---who also run from their work to pick up their kids and get them to an event that they can share in? Where is their recognition? Why aren't there more Coach Caliparis? Why are the media companies, the social media companies, the electronics industry, top performers, the so-called "influencers," and so many others trying to separate parents and children with tablets, phones, TikTok, and so many other forms of individualized forms of entertainment? Why is it that a father and son at a ball game without a phone in their hands is news?
My final thoughts on this are kind of simple. We needed help getting Black Lung legislation passed recently but it was hard finding allies. We need help now with the Warrior Met Coal strike in Alabama as those mine workers have been on strike almost eighteen months. Those workers and their families need our support. I am so happy to see support for this great man and his son, but some of that support is coming from folks who would not live next door or sit next to this man and his family, much less support mine workers when the help is urgently needed. Let's make solidarity with one another and care for all of our kids a lifestyle, something we do 24/7 and become famous for.
The following story comes from Sheila Walsh, a conservative Christian writer. I picked up this quote from her from Facebook. It reminded me of an encounter I had with a Mexican shepherd many years ago in a bar in rural Colorado. I could not tell the man's age because he was so weathered, but he was much older---and much wiser---than I was. He told me a story of having had to wrap himself in a bloody and dirty sheep skin on the prairie late at night in order to save a lamb. I don't remember if he was successful or not, but I remember that he wept as he told the story.
Sheila Walsh is intending to tell a story of Jesus and saving grace, and I think that she does this well. But as I think about the Mexican shepherd in the bar and this story I also think about how the Shepherd Jesus uses disguises and human beings to do the work of salvation, and I am reminded that there are saints in this world who step in and give. I am also reminded that the story holds up if we take the parable or simile out of it. Animals are also the work of God's hands and have souls.
Sheila Walsh wrote:
Every once in a while, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and reject it. There are many reasons she may do this. If the lamb is returned to the ewe, the mother may even kick the poor animal away. Once a ewe rejects one of her lambs, she will never change her mind.
These little lambs will hang their heads so low that it looks like something is wrong with its neck. Their spirit is broken. These lambs are called “bummer lambs.”
Unless the shepherd intervenes, that lamb will die, rejected and alone. So, do you know what the shepherd does? He takes that rejected little one into his home, hand-feeds it and keep it warm by the fire. He will wrap it up with blankets and hold it to his chest so the bummer can hear his heartbeat. Once the lamb is strong enough, the shepherd will place it back in the field with the rest of the flock. But that sheep never forgets how the shepherd cared for him when his mother rejected him. When the shepherd calls for the flock, guess who runs to him first? That is right, the bummer sheep. He knows his voice intimately. It is not that the bummer lamb is loved more, it just knows intimately the one who loves it. It's not that it is loved more, it just has experienced that love one on one.
So many of us are bummer lambs, rejected and broken. But Jesus is the good Shepherd. He cares for our every need and holds us close to His heart so we can hear His heart beat. We may be broken but we are deeply loved by the Shepherd.
Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times Dr. Ralph Stanley with Eddie Dean New York, New York: Gotham Books, 2009 453 pp, $25.00 paperback
Very few days have passed over the last year or so when I have not listened to Ralph Stanley (1927-2016) or the Stanley Brothers play that “high lonesome” music that they were known for and helped define. It touches me deeply. As Ralph Stanley tells readers many times in his autobiography, this is not bluegrass or country music. It is something different than those forms. It can be lived, but it cannot be imitated. It can be played, heard, and felt, but it is still difficult to describe. Dr. Stanley tried to describe the sound several times in his autobiography but was never quite able to do that, and if he couldn't do it than no one can. It is not that he was deficient, but that the music is rooted in particular conditions and places and is full of heart and soul.
I was fortunate to visit the Ralph Stanley Museum in Clintwood, Virginia recently. The Museum is interactive and educational, and a person who is interested in the music and the contexts in which that music developed can spend many hours there. A very friendly and helpful staffperson at the Museum made the visit especially enjoyable. I picked up the book and some recordings of Ralph Stanley and the Stanley Brothers that were new to me at the Museum, along with some other items, and I read Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times as I travelled through the region. I did not want to finish this book. It is written in a conversational style and I sometimes felt that Ralph Stanley and Eddie Dean had written the book with teaching in mind. They did a great job of it.
I was reading the book one evening in a busy restaurant and bar in Norton, Virginia and got deeply buried in it between eating my barbecue and fried pickles and drinking sweet tea that would put most people in a diabetic coma. As I was leaving, I nearly ran into a guy who wanted to know what book I was reading. He knew the music. "That must be a real good book," he said. It wasn't your typical barroom interaction.
The high lonesome sound that the Stanley Brothers and Dr. Stanley made popular is the music of an exploited people who were finding their voices. It was the music of small farmers, logging camps, and coal camps in Central Appalachia and, later, it spoke to and spoke for migrants who moved on to factory towns and cities. It connected lived traditions with changing environments and with the changing fortunes of the people who most identified with the music, who felt it. The music can be despairing and painful because the people who listened and lived it suffered and because they knew what depression was even if they didn't have the clinical names for it. The songs often talk about moving on because for several generations people were forced to leave their homes or because within their cultures there were people who “were bound to ride,” as one popular song said. Some of the music is intensely religious or spiritual and came from the centuries-old Old Regular Baptist and Primitive Baptist traditions and can be quite hopeful and forward-looking.
The instrumental piece “Hard Times” does something remarkable by matching gears shifting in a truck as it climbs those mountain roads in Central Appalachia and takes those hairpin curves just a little too fast. You can imagine the feelings of a family taking to Route 23 and leaving their place and people behind with the hopes of finding something better. The version of “Gold Watch and Chain” done by Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys (and made popular by the Carter Family) connects us back to the nineteenth century but carries a longing with it that remains current. “Two Coats” helped bring Primitive Baptist and Regular Baptist hymnology to people who were not familiar with it, but in the hands of Dr. Stanley it became universalist. Ralph Stanley often included hymns when he performed, and even did so in bars. The audience expected this, but bar owners were not always so open-minded. Dr. Stanley and Eddie Dean describe a violent confrontation between the band and a bar owner over this matter. “Pretty Polly” and songs like it will be taken as misogynistic today, but these songs also describe violence that continues in parts of Central Appalachia (and everywhere else) in frank terms. There is a point in the book where Dr. Stanley describes a terrible murder that took place in Breathitt County, Kentucky years ago in painful detail and provides an explanation for such violence that readers will learn from. The song “I’ll Remember You Love In My Prayers” connects us not only to another time, but to Ireland and to the experience of emigration.
Dr. Stanley acknowledges in parts of the book that he was influenced by Black musicians, and the area of Virginia he came from produced many outstanding Black and white musicians. He was an unapologetic Democrat and pro-labor, and he campaigned for John Edwards and Barack Obama in Southwestern Virginia. Dr. Stanley did not say so in his book, but his music required a break with the past in order to find its own place. Near the end of the book Dr. Stanley describes how Uncle Dave Macon was shocked to hear Earl Scruggs play banjo and could not quite abide with it. As Dr. Stanley pointed out, Uncle Dave Macon knew American music that had been popular in the mid-nineteenth century and was an old-time and rowdy showman of his times, but he was also a very odd man with personal quirks that makes the reader uncomfortable and may have troubled Dr. Stanley. In addition to all of Uncle Dave Macon’s oddities that Dr. Stanley mentions, he was also a racist who had been influenced in his youth by a Black musician. Earl Sruggs and Dr. Stanley may not have been free from racism, but they represented departures from the past and ways forward. The Stanley Brothers’ version of “John Henry” carries these contradictions.
The high lonesome sound hit the airwaves and became most popular as the music industry was becoming more profit-based and exploitative and as music and musicians were being drawn into competition with one another. Much of Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times is taken up with Dr. Stanley talking frankly about what music and performing meant to him and what his professional standards were. He held fast to his tough standards, but they were sometimes at odds with what record labels, bar owners, and other musicians expected. There was a contradiction between Dr. Stanley’s respect for skill and his professionalism, on the hand, and the demands of the recording industry and venue operators on the other hand, and these differences are taken up in the. book
Much of the book is taken up with the Stanley Brothers’ efforts to succeed and the bumps in the road and the failures they experienced. The loss of brother Carter Stanley in 1966 and the loss of other great musicians along the way, violence, backbiting, and the kinds of dramas that afflict working-class Appalachians hurt. Elvis Presley and rock-and-roll nearly sidelined bluegrass, country, and traditional music, but the New Grass and “progressive” bluegrass movements of the late 1960s and 1970s also hurt. The book reminded me of these later movements, and the fact is that I cannot appreciate that music as I once did because the original high lonesome sound has spoiled me. On the other hand, Dr. Stanley had much good to say about the early folk revival and Bob Dylan and said that he and Dylan understood one another because they were of similar mindsets.
Dr. Stanley had a later-in-life baptism that he talks honestly about in book. I was impressed by how he understood how complex people can be and how forgiving he was, and I wondered as I read if his abilities to understand and forgive people were tied directly to his spirituality. He often mentions how certain people crossed him or fell short of the mark, sometimes including his brother, but he forgave and put the past aside and found paths to reconciliation. His theology carried what theologians call “a preferential option for the poor” and this shows up in his recording of “The Orphan Girl” and some other songs.
Ralph Stanley became Dr. Ralph Stanley in 1976, when Lincoln Memorial University awarded him an honorary doctorate. The University established the Dr. Ralph Stanley Endowed Music Scholarship in 2002 with help from country musician Ricky Skaggs. Dr. Stanley was understandably quite proud of having received the honorary doctorate, but the Endowment probably meant as much or more to him because it supports music students from Dickenson or Wise County, Virginia. Dr. Stanley had come from a hard scrabble background and had never completed his formal education, but he remained in the region where he had been born and had grown up. He said in his book---and said many times while performing---that whenever he performed "Shout Little Luly"---he thought of his mother and where he had come from.
The recognition that Dr. Stanley gained in his later years validated his hard work but was long overdue. He won multiple awards, including a 2002 Grammy Award for his rendition of “O Death” in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and induction into the Grand Ole Opry, between 1992 and 2014. Much of the recognition that Dr. Stanley received in these years has also validated the lived experience of the region. But by the end of the book Dr. Stanley is wistful and analytical and is coming to terms with the passing of time and changing tastes. He understood that changes were underway that might undermine his music and what it represented, but he seems to have not fully understood the contexts for these changes.
This book is a history book, a kind of oral history, that takes almost one hundred years of our history as its subject. It is also a story of faith and success. You will do well to read the book and visit the Museum. I gained much by reading William H. Turner’s The Harlan Renaissance right after finishing Man of Constant Sorrow. Taken together, these books give readers a broad view of Central Appalachia’s diversity and cultural forms.
The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively--The Deadliest Man in the West Virginia-Colorado Col Mine Wars R.G. Yoho Burlington, North Carolina: Fox Run Publishing, 2020
Books about labor history and their authors have their ups and downs. Over the past fifty years in the United States we have seen the field of labor history move from institutional histories of unions and strikes and the biographies or autobiographies of union leaders to making arguments in favor of theories about immigration and how classes formed in the United States. There followed from that very-much-needed scholarship on women, certain crafts and trades, people of color, specific immigrant groups and regions, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of radical workers and their organizations. Labor historians and others then delved into researching and writing about the daily lives of "ordinary" people and people and movements who had been important in their day and who have since been written out of history or forgotten about. Along the way we had quite a few working-class people writing labor history as they knew it. None of these areas of study ever disappeared or were ever pushed aside exactly, but as research went on people began asking different questions about our history and searching for answers.
Labor history's fortunes are tied to the fortunes of the labor movement. When union organizing is on an upswing, more work on class struggles gets written and published. When unions are doing less well, there is less published. Much labor history has been written as a part of a wider attempt to map a history of the United States that includes everyone. That has meant deconstructing or disassembling aspects of our culture, and that is a continuing project. Getting working-class people on tape or film who were closely involved in their communities has been essential to this. The historians have taken us apart, but they have not yet put us back together with a full understanding of who we are. Much labor history has also been about answering specific questions. Why doesn't the United States have a larger labor movement, mass labor and socialist parties, a more cooperativist society as other countries do? Why are race and gender our largely unspoken and unapproached divided lines, and what does this mean in the daily lives of working-class people? How do working-class identities intersect and where and why do they diverge from one another? What do "race," "class," and "gender" mean in the United States anyway?
Labor historians necessarily write from the histories of their countries and their peoples. You can catch up with what is new and interesting in labor history by going to the Labor and Working Class History Association to start with. There are labor history events on Zoom about every week from one source or another. There are journals, films, music, museums, and lots of books being published that are way too expensive for most working-class people to afford. If you're interested in radical analysis of labor history that you can afford, go to International Publishers and Haymarket Books to start. If you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket, head over to the University of Illinois Press to start.
There are many people who write and present about labor history who are not attached to colleges and universities and who self-publish. There are also many professors who teach at smaller colleges who have devoted themselves to doing local labor histories. Over the past few years there has been quite a bit of interest in the West Virginia Mine Wars, and there are people who live in West Virginia who are uniquely qualified to tell the stories of the Mine Wars. The Mine Wars ran from around 1912 into the early 1920s. This was essentially open warfare between mine workers and their supporters, on the one side, and the coal companies, law enforcement and gun thugs, and politicians who sided with the companies on the other side. It is remarkable to understand that working-class people engaged in prolonged armed struggle in Central Appalachia. It is more remarkable to understand that similar battles were fought in Colorado, parts of the South, Illinois, and many other places all within the last one-hundred and-forty years. These were open battles over workers' rights, safety on the job, higher pay and wage floors, the right to union representation, democratic government, and, in many cases, the right of workers to control or have a say in how coal was going to be mined. Please visit the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum and look at the books and learning sessions they offer to begin learning more.
R.G. Yoho has written a book about Charles E. Lively, a complex and troubled man who worked for the notorious Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Baldwin-Felts is most often remembered as a union-busting and strike-breaking outfit that had on its payroll men who spied on union organizers and used violence and extra-legal means to achieve their ends and most often got away with what they had done. Really, nothing good can be said about Baldwin-Felts and objectivity is impossible when discussing the agency. Lively was a mine worker who took the side of the anti-union gun thugs. He spied on union miners, infiltrated the union ranks, and committed terrible acts of violence in Colorado and West Virginia, and probably in other states as well. In doing this he was part of a large and nefarious cohort. He and a few others were responsible for the murders of Sid Hatfield, the pro-union sheriff of Matewan, West Virginia, and Ed Chambers, Hatfield's friend and deputy, in Welch, West Virginia on August 1, 1921. Lively never paid for his major crimes, unless we consider his downward-spiral over the years as justice.
These assassinations were carried out in order to revenge the outcome of the Battle of Matewan on May 19, 1920 during which seven Baldwin-Felts detectives were killed. Two miners and Matewan's pro-union mayor were also killed that day, and the number of people wounded has never been determined. The violence in Matewan was one part of class and community conflict in the region as the coal industry sought to take over the state. The killings of Hatfield and Chambers sparked outrage across southern West Virginia and helped lead to a mass armed march by mine workers on Logan County, West Virginia and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Workers had reached their limit and wanted justice and their communities supported them.
Yoho's book is not a reliable labor history. He gets the initials of the United Mine Workers of America wrong and he misses an opportunity to describe the violence that Baldwin-Felts operatives engaged in in Colorado and how one of those operatives was assassinated in Trinidad, Colorado. He gets a story of a lynching in Colorado wrong. The socialists who were so important to mine worker organizing in Colorado and West Virginia get little attention. Yoho uses many newspaper articles as sources that appeared in newspapers far away from West Virginia and Colorado. Mother Jones, often called "The Miner's Angel" for her work in union organizing is mentioned without examination, although she committed serious errors in Colorado and West Virginia. People of color and immigrants who are essential to the story don't get mentioned. Yoho does not take up the fights that mine workers organized to take control of their work and all of the ways the coal operators fought back and insisted on holding the cards.
But Yoho does something else that is remarkable when he follows Lively into what must have been madness and dissolution. Labor historians rarely do this. Yoho is good at questioning motivations and creating a narrative of Lively's fall. He seems to dismiss Lively's anti-communism and reactionary politics as his motivations for betraying others and trying to break the miners' union. He goes deeper and gets as close to Lively's inner self as an author can do from a distance and in a short book. This becomes a good case study of someone who lives at the margins with an outsized temper and a level of alienation that swamps him. We see Lively falling apart over the years and then taking his life as he was hitting rock bottom. This occurred in 1962, or forty-two years after Lively had been one of the team who killed Hatfield and Chambers. It is difficult indeed to find anything redeeming in the life of Charles Lively as R.G. Yoho tells the story, and that helps make this a compelling tale.
This is a book that cries for better editing, less repetition, and less insistence on holding the moral highroad, though I share most of Yoho's sympathies.
If you have not seen John Sayles' film "Matewan" you owe it to yourself to see it. Here is a scene from the film that carries on the legend of Sid Hatfield:
Charles Lively appears in the film here. He is the man who makes "the bad end of the bullet" speech.
Taken from the Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church and Native Americans Facebook pages:
As summer comes to an end and the school year begins, if you have non-Native kids please take the time to help them understand that many Indigenous children wear their hair long and/or in braids. Hair is sacred in many Indigenous cultures, our hair is a symbol of strength, wisdom, and identity. Some teach that your spirit lives at the base of your neck and spine which protects you. The longer the braid grows to the earth the more grounded you are.
WMMT is one of my favorite radio stations. It comes from Whitesburg, KY., and the station went off the air for awhile because of the recent flooding.
The station is back on the air and anyone with a computer anywhere in the world can tune in.
This is non-commercial, listener-supported, and democratically-controlled radio that does the great work of connecting people across a big spread of Appalachia and connecting people who live outside of the region with the region.
I know that many people have done versions of this song. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings did especially memorable versions. But today I heard the version done by Hazel Dickens and it moved me. I have not heard it in many years. I think that this song explains so much of what we see on the news these days. Think a good thought for the people on both sides of the gun because neither side is the right side. If you're one of us who is getting weary bearing your burdens and your scars please talk itr out with someone and get some help.
The Pressley Girls come to us by way of Celebrating Appalachia. We highly recommend that blog. You can also find them on Youtube doing music, giving us meditations, teaching Appalachian language, driving around, and more. This is a good reflection on not wasting and giving some hints on how to repurpose things. That and I feel that this video connects me to people and a place I miss.
"Prayers do not need special times or special words. Our prayers exist unspoken in the
silent spaces between our actions. They are an expression of our ancient spiritual instinct,
a reaching out into the other world for any help that may be there. Our heart speaks more
eloquently than any mantra about the things we long for and wish could happen. Our tears and
smiles reveal the hope hidden behind our daily life, the quiet need we never express. We are praying every day, whether we acknowledge it or not. And our prayers are being heard every day, whether we believe it or not."
Every Friday we post some things that we hope will make you smile. There will nothing here on Fridays that will make you think really hard or worry or get angry or depressed (we hope). Please do look around the blog, follow us, argue, use the recipes, get some comfort from all of our other posts. But on Fridays just grin a little. If there is something here that you can read, try clicking on it. Thanks!
"Thank goodness the Thesaurus survived!"
For those of you who didn't get the post above:
Conway Twitty--It's Only Make Believe
An abandoned vehicle on Rt. 119
Balcony seating at the derive-in
Well, I'm at the emergency room 😩.
This day has not been good. I got the chance to go horse back riding. Big
mistake. I got on the horse and started out slowly, but I got cocky.So we started going a little faster and
before I knew it, we were going as fast as the horse could go. And when I tried
to stop the horse, I couldn't stop him, he must have gotten spooked or
something. He was out of control, so I decided to try to jump off the horse,
and instead, I fell off but my foot got caught in the stirrup and the horse was
dragging me. And he wouldn't stop. Every time I screamed at him to stop, the horse
went faster.
🐎
Thank goodness the manager at the grocery store came out and
unplugged the machine. But he had the nerve to take the rest of my quarters so
I wouldn't attempt to ride it again.
Pastor Kalina preaches in Salem-Keizer, Oregon. She is from Tonga. Being in her
presence instantly relaxes me. She has been doing these chair praise dance videos for
awhile now. Most people can do these without much effort. These are meditative.
Monica Ross and Family featuring Daddy (aka Sir Joseph Wilson) “God Will
Take Care of You” (This really comes home for me.)
I miss people who
*know that "a mess” is how much it takes to feed your family and that "a bate” is how much
you get to eat of that “mess.”
* know that it's not "directly"-- it's "dreckly."
*know that "Comin' up a cloud" or "Here come a wind" means close the windows, unplug
"Be at peace today. Even if it is one of your worst days: be at peace. What hurts us will one day cease. What worries us will be resolved. What we long for will be revealed. Even if we are engaged in a great struggle right now, we can be at peace in our mind and heart through the Spirit, for life is more than what limits us. There is an endless love surrounding us, broader and deeper than any ocean. There is beauty and hope and healing. There is change and there is renewal. Remember this promise in sunshine and in shadow. And be at peace. Be at peace today."
This is another lift from National Public Radio, this time from their "Here & Now" show on August 30, 2022. Under discussion here is Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus.'
The show that I'm focusing on here has to do with what gets called "the opioid crisis" and how we respond to that crisis and the people at Ground Zero in that crisis. I feel overwhelmed by it much of the time. Maybe you share my feelings. Over time I have opposed needle exchanges, and I have opposed legalization of drugs because I have believed that these signal social approval or surrender to something that is bad for people. I remember dope taking over communities in the early 1970s, and I continue to believe that that was used as a means of social control and to put a brake on organizing and protests.
But this story confronts our lack of compassion and attention to what's going on, and I imagine that Beth Macy's book 'Raising Lazarus' does the same. I'm looking forward to reading the book. Some of what is discussed in this story touches upon what I recently blogged about when reviewing the book 'Dopamine Nation.'
This is not abstract for me. I know people who struggle with opioid use, and if you're a working-class person you probably have family or live in a community that has been negatively affected by Big Pharma and doctors pushing pain meds and the illegal trade in these drugs. I come from an area of the country devastated by this and by the social conditions that created and gave room for this devastation. These drugs, and worse ones, seem to be the cause of some terrible suffering where I live now as well.
I'm ashamed of my past lack of compassion. I think that this interview makes a strong case for harm reduction rather than the policies that we have in place now. I'm still not in the legalization camp, and I'm not ready to fully embrace the author's view that "anything that gets people to care" is going to be a social good, but I do want to support a version of "barefoot doctors" in our communities, fully resourced, who "raise Lazarus" and get people on the road to recovery. In my mind, recovery entails some kind of progressive social action. It sounds as if Macy agrees with that to some extent.
Macy is telling a true story, with all of the ambiguities that truth entails. As I said, I have not read the book, but it does sound as if she ultimately sees the story she is telling as one of healing and hope.
"Your private hopes and dreams are not idle thoughts of no consequence, but elements of a sacred vision, a roadmap to a more loving future. That is why they are important. They are the shape of things to come. They are an expression of the confidence you have both in yourself and in the power of the Spirit. Never underestimate what you see when you are looking through the eyes of faith. You may be seeing the first hint of a reality you are creating, a glimpse of your legacy to generations yet unborn."
There comes a time in your healing that you have to shift. They traumatized you, abused you, and tried to crush your soul. They haven’t repented, apologized and don’t even seem to care. Can I tell you something beloved…you can’t heal forward holding on to what they did. You can’t get mad enough to make them feel bad for what they did. You can’t deny yourself enough joy, peace and happiness to make them repent.
They continue to try to smear your name, lie on you and try to get a reaction out of you. Can I tell you something…they cannot smear your name to anybody who knows you, loves you or cares about the truth. Yes, it hurts to be lied on…yes, it hurts to have lies believed by the people you thought knew you, had your back, and the people you thought were your friends. Let’s put them in perspective so you can heal forward…they aren’t your friends, they were acquaintances. Friends, people who love you and people who care about the truth don’t believe lies and don’t accept the word of a liar. A real friend won’t believe what somebody tells them about you without talking to you. And a ride or die friend won’t let somebody tell them anything about you that doesn’t agree with their testimony about you. You don’t need those people as friends beloved. Thank God for showing you who they are and praise God for removing them. They were covert baggage not a blessing.
You will experience a shift when you entrust history people to God and get selfish about your healing. They don’t have power, they had power. They don’t have control, they had control. You don’t owe them anything…not a conversation, not a thought and not one second of your healing. You’re not healing for them, you’re healing for you. You’re not healing to reconcile with them, you’re healing to reconcile with your destiny. They aren’t the last or the only, they are 1 out of 7 billion other people on the planet. Get selfish about your healing beloved. It’s not about them, it’s about you. You’re not people dependent, you’re peace, love and joy dependent.
Melissa Harris Perry does my favorite show on National Public Radio. The show is The Takeaway and I think that it is usually engaging and gets to the nuances that make things interesting and complex.
Today's show had a story about healing, whether that was intended or not. NPR described the segment as follows:
More than 55,000 people across the U.S. are incarcerated with the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. This population been rising sharply in the past few decades, with an increase of 66% since 2003, according to research by The Sentencing Project.
For those who are sentenced to live and die behind prison walls, there is a sense that they have been forgotten. But a new project is documenting some of their stories: The Visiting Room Project features interviews with more than 100 men who are serving with life without parole at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola.
The Takeaway spoke with Project co-creator, Dr. Marcus Kondkar of Loyola University New Orleans, and with Mr. Arthur Carter, who was recently released from Angola after his life without parole sentence was reduced.
"I think that once you get a chance to see this is the person that the taxpayers are still holding in prison, I think the question should resonate: why they still are? Why are they still serving life sentences with no possibility of going home?" said Mr. Carter.
Fried bologna ("baloney") is a big thing in Appalachia and parts of the South. This is Tipper and her husband from Celebrating Appalachia showing you how to make it and eat it. We frequently pick up their posts because they're usually so good at celebrating Appalachia. You would not think that you would not need a video to show you how this is done, but this really helps.
Now, when I make fried bologna I use a thicker piece than Tipper does and I singe it. I don't add onions or cheese, but I may add a fried green tomato (not breaded) or mustard or I scramble eggs and put a biscuit on the side. It works. Try it and find your favorite way.
I'm not going to recommend that anyone drink soft drinks or sweet tea or buttermilk, but I imagine that most people who eat fried bologna do drink those. Water or lemonade will do just fine.
There is so much hear to learn from and to take joy in. You can see the Spirit moving at Greenleaf Christian Church and their ministries, but you see the Spirit moving there in ways that you cannot predict. Please take some time to savor this and let it sink in.
"Tonight the drums of the ancestors resound among the dark clouds. Shafts of brilliant light tear open the sky to let the rain pour in from heaven on high. Creation is alert to the power of the holy. Earth opens her arms to the falling rain. All creatures great and small listen to the passing of the storm. It is a sacred time, an invitation to humility. We are such small parts of the greater whole. We are small beings huddled together on a rainy night. We are part of a great pattern, an endless life, a sacred love, that floats across time and space, clouds like ships, sailing the storm-tossed sea."
My nonna (grandmother) used to make these for Christmas. When I tell folks about this who are not from Appalachia or coal-producing regions their first reaction is usually to say "YUCK!" But I do think that this is really good---diabetic coma inducing really good, unfortunately---and I hope that someone out there will give it a try and enjoy it and pass it on.
I lifted this recipe from Jerry Higgins on the "Scenic Harlan Co. and surrounding area" Face book page, but this almost matches the recipe that I have on hand.
ENJOY!
Peanut Butter Potato Candy
1/4 cup unseasoned mashed potatoes 2 tablespoons milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 pinch salt 1 (16 ounce) package confectioners' sugar 1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar for dusting 1/3 cup peanut butter, or as needed
Combine mashed potatoes, milk, vanilla extract, and salt in a bowl. Stir confectioners' sugar into potato mixture until a dough consistency is reached. Refrigerate dough until chilled, about 1 hour. Sprinkle confectioners' sugar on a cutting board or waxed paper.
Roll dough into a large rectangular shape on prepared surface. Spread enough peanut butter on top layer of dough to cover. Roll dough into a jelly roll shape; refrigerate roll for 1 hour. Slice dough into pinwheels to serve.
People who know the difference between a hissy fit and a conniption fit, and that you don't "HAVE" them, you "PITCH" them.
People who know how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc., make up "a mess."
People who can show or point out to you the general direction of "yonder."
People who know exactly how long "directly" is -- as in: "Going to town, be back directly."
People who know that "Gimme some sugar" is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.
People who can use "fixin" as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.
People who say, "Well, I caught myself lookin'."
Pastor Kalina Malua Katoa
Del McCoury & Friends - Going Up The Country (Canned Heat 1968)
National Public Radio carried two interesting stories on healing today, but the stories covered very different forms and processes of healing.
One story covered how three sisters in Western North Carolina, part of Appalachia, are dealing with carrying a rare genetic mutation tied to Alzheimer's. My heart goes out to these women because they have hard stories and are doing what they can to learn about Alzheimer's and help others and because they come from my demographic. I understand what they're saying and how they're reasoning, though I cannot touch their situation. I get what one of the women is expressing when she says
The next morning I was wallowing in self-pity and what I'm going to miss. I'm going to miss birthdays, and my grandchildren won't know me, you know, as a healthy person. But then on the front porch in the mountains of western North Carolina, I'm rocking, and there's this single cloud in this Carolina blue sky, as we like to say. And I was praying for him to take my worries away. And I'm sitting there rocking, and the single cloud thins and thins and thins, and then, poof, it's gone, and with it, my worries.
And I get what is meant when another of the sisters says
I say it's like the Kennedy compound, except redneck. Some of the houses have wheels on them. But anyway, my dream is to have both of my sisters there in that little house...
and another responds with
The good thing is, we would be surrounded by family and people that have known us since we were children. And so if we walked away, somebody would find us, help us find our way back home.
The story is less about being healed of or surviving Alzheimer's and more about human connection and hope as the means of healing, or connection and hope being the healing that we can get when there are no other remedies.
The second story falls differently. The filmmaker Edward Buckles, Jr. went through Hurricane Katrina when he was thirteen years old. Now here he is with a documentary film, Katrina Babies, that takes up the on-going and unfinished healing still going on after seventeen years after Katrina did so much damage to New Orleans and the region. I believe that the United States has never been the same since, and some of the people who Mr. Buckles interviews make a similar point and do so with more eloquence than I can.
Here is the official trailer from HBO:
The healing here is connected to social justice and all of us taking a hard look at what the United States has become and is becoming.
Perhaps the healing here starts with Mr. Buckles saying "This film is not going to heal everybody. This film has not healed me. But it has opened up a door for me to figure out, "Okay, what does that journey to healing look like?" Because we are not just healing from Hurricane Katrina, we are healing from everything else that we have experienced before the storm and after the storm. And I just want us to know that we can start that journey." Or perhaps it starts with mourning when Mr. Buckles speaks a hard truth by saying "The New Orleans that was filled with families, the New Orleans, where all you really saw was Black people. We were in our neighborhoods, and we owned our neighborhoods, and we took pride in our neighborhoods. I just want people to know that when they're coming through to New Orleans and when they are experiencing all of this great culture and all of this great magic and beauty, that it comes from us. It comes from all of the people who were here before the storm, some of us who are still there after the storm. That's what I want people to know, is that everything that you love about New Orleans comes from us."
There is something universal in something that Mr. Buckles says in the interview. He says "I proposed this idea in the film of the double-edged sword of Black resilience. Yes, we are resilient. Yes, we take pride in our strength. But on the other side of that, is us being viewed as not needing the same help that other people need, because of the fact that we are so strong and we are so resilient. I think that people will like to look at them, 'Oh they're good, they're bouncing back. New Orleans is rebuilt. New Orleans is coming back. They don't need anything. Look at that.'"
What is universal here, or what should be universal, is something that connects New Orleans to Appalachia and that reaches from place to place and across peoples. This talk of "resiliency" and not needing help comes up more often these days. We hear it in Eastern Kentucky now as people try to recover from the floods that took thirty-six lives just a few weeks ago. We hear it from and about Black people as racist wave after racist wave becomes another kind of flooding. And Mr. Buckles is exactly right: this is a double-edged sword because, while there is a truth there, it also sends a message that help isn't needed or deserved. It becomes a way of rejecting government and struggles for social change and of introducing libertarian ideas that will quickly become a Grade B version of survival of the fittest. The "country folks can survive" slogan comes back with the extra meaning that "city people" are a problem, sometimes implying people of color. You will hear similar ideas in hip-hop and rap, but blaming someone else. And here we are in another civil war.
The peoples of New Orleans and Appalachia have more in common than they don't. I'm sure that most working-class people in New Orleans, or those who were forced to leave their city, can fully identify with the desire to have family together in a house and to be "surrounded by family and people that have known us since we were children." Large numbers of people in Appalachia know that they live in "America's internal colony" and should be able to understand something of the experience of the Black Belt South and of being forgotten by those in power. Justice will be to make sure that housing, family, and control over one's circumstances happens, and not to leave housing and family and order up to luck and fate and to who has a gun or a gun and a badge.
I don't believe that we can put preconditions on healing. I know that some folks resist healing or have forgotten how or why it's needed. I have come to believe that we can say in love and solidarity with one another "We don't care if you want it or not or deserve it or not, but we're going to do some healing on you!"
From Central Appalachia a few weeks ago
And a closing quote:
"You have the healing touch, even if you may not realize it. It is not a supernatural gift, but a common gift, one given to us all. We are born to be healers, along with other vocations, to help us navigate this world as vulnerable beings. We have the power to hear one another, to communicate, to empathize. We have the ability to care, to understand and to forgive. We have humor in abundance and comfort to share. We can change a heart with only a smile. We can offer peace and shelter to any in need. You are one of us, the healers of the Spirit."
