This summer, I was asked a very serious question by a very dear cousin of mine about the future of Appalachia: Will I have a hometown in the next 10 to 20 years?
I found it hard to answer that. It's not that the future of our region has not been a huge question mark within my lifetime, leaving the fate of its towns and communities unknown. It's not that the idea of entire communities disappearing hasn't been discussed and/or alluded to. I just hadn't heard it put so frankly and so sincerely before. And I suppose I also hadn't ever really questioned whether or not a community would cease to exist.
She asked me this in July, but I honestly haven't stopped thinking about it.
It's not as if her question comes completely unwarranted. One only has to pay attention to the news to understand why someone would wonder about the fate of Appalachia. The coal industry has been mired by boom and bust cycles from the very beginning. There have always been years of prosperity, followed by years of dire straights. That's just the nature of the beast.
But the current bust cycle carries with it a different flavor of desperation that the region hasn't really ever tasted. Cheap, easily accessible natural gas deposits from Pennsylvania to Wyoming are making coal a waste of the energy industry's time and effort. Increasing public concern about man-made climate change, followed by stricter environmental regulations on carbon dioxide emissions, weighs heavily on an industry who's job it is to pollute land, air and water. Coal reserves that have sustained the Central Appalachian coal industry have been very nearly depleted, making the remaining coal very hard to mine. Industry representatives, political leaders and scientists all agree that Appalachian coal will be gone within my lifetime.
Thousands of coal miners have been laid off since January from jobs that will never return. This leaves thousands of people, who once had one of the best-paying jobs in the region, without a way to feed their families. They have very little options. Go back to school, or leave to find work elsewhere. If you ask me, those are no options at all, especially if you are among the older miners who were hired before companies started requiring high school diplomas.
Today, I listened to an interview with Gary Bentley, a Letcher County coal miner who was laid off by Arch Coal Inc. in June. The interview is part of WMMT's Making Connections program, and was 11 minutes worth of Appalachian coal miner frustration at living in a region whose elected leaders won't do anything to search for opportunities outside the coal industry. After all, how could a politician stick a thorn in the side of the very industry that pays for his or her election?
Bentley now has to drive five and a half hours from Whitesburg to Owensboro to work at a Western Kentucky mine, one week on and one week off. That means, two weeks away from his family every month. Two weeks away from his community every month. Two weeks away from home every month. Just so he can make enough money to support his family.
He explains his situation very simply by saying it's not fair for coal industry folks to come into Appalachia, make billions of dollars, and then leave the people of the region with nothing. He's also angry with his local, state and regional political leaders for seeing the signs of coal's decline in the region and doing nothing to stand up for Appalachia and the people who call it home. There are no other opportunities for a laid-off miner within the region, so they have to leave.
It would seem things are not looking positive for my home region.
But...
With great change comes great opportunity.
I am a board member for the Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development in Berea, Ky., and in our meetings we constantly discuss the future of the region. What will it look like? What opportunities will be available? How will we get there? Who will lead the charge? It's always on the collective mind of MACED. I like that. I like knowing that there is a group of dedicated, passionate and extremely knowledgeable individuals who are working daily to help Appalachia reach it's full potential.
There is a whole slew of young people who are bucking the trend, as one of my professors would say, and opting to remain in Appalachia rather than leave on the brain-drain train. They are working with organizations like the STAY Project and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Appalachian Media Institute to transform the region into what they want it to be.
There are countless nonprofit organizations in the region who are working every single day - including the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, Appalshop and Grow Appalachia - to transform the region and create other avenues beside the mono-economy that has dominated it for decades.
There are amazing things happening, and right now is the time to look on the region with hope. We're at a precipice of change. We're standing on the peak of a mountain. Behind us is the past, dominated by the coal industry; before us is the future, filled with opportunity. Now is not the time to give up or resign ourselves to the idea that if we lose the coal industry, we lose everything. This is only the beginning of a bright, bright future.
I know some might wonder why I fight every single day for the future of Appalachia, or why I wouldn't just move on like so many others have done. There's a simple answer to that. I stay here, and I fight for this place so people like Gary Bentley won't have to drive "five and a half hours from home" to work every other week. So people like my cousin will have a hometown to come back to in 10 to 20 years. So my people, who have been exploited, spit on, trampled, used, abused, oppressed, demeaned, and told they live in a "national sacrifice zone" will be able to reach their full potential, rise above and continue to grow magnificent trees of life, happiness and healthy futures from the deep, deep roots planted by our ancestors, who also fought tooth and nail to save their future.
I work toward a better Appalachia because I fully believe that there is no nobler and no greater task for my life than to give it up to the region that gave me everything I am and ever will be. I owe Appalachia everything, and I will give her everything I have, for all the days of my life.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Analysis of a New York reporter's view of my Appalachia
I was contacted by the reporter who wrote this story, about the federal hate crimes law getting its first test in Harlan County, Kentucky, and asked some questions about my experience of being openly gay in the hills. She told me she was coming down to Harlan from New York City to talk with some folks and do this story about the man who was allegedly beaten for being gay. I told her my story, then got a call from her a couple days later in which she told me she no longer needed me to drive down from Lexington to meet her, that she was going to meet with some other people she had gotten in touch with.
After reading this, I have a theory about why I was no longer needed as a contact: She apparently wanted to talk exclusively with gay people who've had terrible experiences in the mountains because they're gay, something that I did not have. I have never been persecuted, beaten, taunted, made fun of, singled-out, ostracized, discriminated against or otherwise made to feel like I wasn't welcome in my homeland because of my sexuality. Was my experience all rosy and peachy-keen? Hell no. But was it the most terrible experience of my life? Not in a million years, and I certainly wouldn't chose to not live in Appalachia because I'm gay. I'm not the only gay person in the mountains who feels this way.
I'm bothered by this article. I know that for every positive coming-out story in the hills, there are a dozen more that aren't positive. I know that some people have been ridiculed and beaten and discriminated against, and I know that a lot of gay people from Central Appalachia don't want to live there anymore because they feel unwelcome. But not everyone has that experience, and to write a national article that makes it seem as though they do is, in my mind, wrong.
It also bothers me that this reporter frames my homeland as a place only inhabited by pill-heads, violent bigots, religious fundamentalists and corrupt politicians. I'm not saying those types of people don't exist in eastern Kentucky, because they do; but I would be willing to say that it's not the everyday norm in most places, and that there isn't a higher rate of those types of people in the hills than there are in any other part of the country.
I know that eastern Kentucky suffers from a terrible drug problem, that there are some corrupt politicians in eastern Kentucky, and that there are violent bigots and religious fundamentalists living in my hills. But I also know that some of the kindest, most supportive people I've ever known were raised in Southern Baptist churches - some are even deacons in those churches - and some of the fairest politicians I've ever known maintain political positions in the hills. There are a lot of people addicted to pain killers, but there are also a lot of people that aren't.
I've come to expect news stories written by reporters from national media outlets about my homeland to be somewhat skewed in their representation of it. However, this article was rife with hyperbolic statements that seems to suggest things about Eastern Kentucky that simply aren't true, or things about it that make this article reminiscent of early 20th century portrayals of it through the eyes of flat-lander reporters who framed the region as a backward, isolated place, and then blamed the people's ignorance on said isolation.
Some examples (I've bolded the remarks that bothered me the most):
"Harlan County is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest city with an airport, along a road that twists and turns through quiet hills. It's one of the poorest places in America and one of the most beautiful. The luxuriousness of the landscape -- an unending carpet of foliage that rises on all sides, enclosing roads in vivid, green lushness -- is pockmarked with billboards advertising personal-injury lawyers, drug-treatment centers and evangelical TV stars. The only restaurant open late at night is a knockoff of the Waffle House, where, locals say, miners and their girlfriends pop pills in the bathroom. There are no bars, but 116 churches. One resident offered a succinct list of the places where people hang out: "church or jail."
"Stewart and Stallard are hoping the case will change things, that it will finally get people talking about gays in the community but they also know that fear has a way of making people quiet. For years they had tried to start a support group for the few openly gay people in the town. But the only way to convince people to show up to a meeting would have been to offer them prescription painkillers or a party, Stallard said."
"But Jordan Palmer refused to accept this fate. He became a lonely hero, the single crusader for gay rights in all of southeastern Kentucky."
"Every year in Kentucky drugs kill more people than car wrecks. Every day three people die of overdoses. A major investigation conducted by the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2003 found that more painkillers flowed into Kentucky than any other part of the United States. This all perhaps explains why southeastern Kentuckians might not want to talk about the case."
To be fair, the reporter does mention that Palmer and his organization, of which he is no longer president, are not the best advocates for gay rights in Kentucky because they often too quick to make statements about hate crimes that just aren't true, and that Palmer is - in my own opinion, not the reporter's - too full of himself to actually care about other people's rights and true equality.
However, the other statements - some of them apparently made by the people with whom the reporter spoke - are bombastic remarks that frame Eastern Kentucky as an incredibly closed-minded and one-dimensional place. I was once a reporter, so I understand the nuances of writing a news story about a certain group of people of which you know very little and having to rely on statements that members of that group give you to describe the entire group. However, in this case, since I know this reporter talked to not only myself, but another young gay woman in Appalachia who also did not have a terrible experience, I question the reporter's objectivity, and I assume she relied on hackneyed stereotypes about the region because it was easier than actually delving into the complexities of a region long bastardized in American culture as a backward and closed-minded place filled with ignorance hillbillies who know nothing of the outside world because of their severe isolation.
I try as hard as I can to give every story written about Appalachia by an outsider reporter as much credit as I can. I try to remain objective when reading them and understand them from the point of view of someone who is not so invested in reshaping the image of the region to portray it to the rest of the country as a more complex place. For the most part, I'm able to do this because I find that reporters are more fair about Appalachia now than they ever have been.
But this reporter, whom I had so much hope for when we talked on the phone, is not among those who are fair to my homeland. Her lack of objectivity on the matter of gay rights and growing up gay in Appalachia, her disregard for telling both sides of the story of being gay in the region and her dismissal of the complexities of a region that is, for lack of a better word, extremely complex, bothers me very deeply, and I felt it necessary to discuss the issue of news framing of my region, which continues to be very stereotypical, even to this day.
After reading this, I have a theory about why I was no longer needed as a contact: She apparently wanted to talk exclusively with gay people who've had terrible experiences in the mountains because they're gay, something that I did not have. I have never been persecuted, beaten, taunted, made fun of, singled-out, ostracized, discriminated against or otherwise made to feel like I wasn't welcome in my homeland because of my sexuality. Was my experience all rosy and peachy-keen? Hell no. But was it the most terrible experience of my life? Not in a million years, and I certainly wouldn't chose to not live in Appalachia because I'm gay. I'm not the only gay person in the mountains who feels this way.
I'm bothered by this article. I know that for every positive coming-out story in the hills, there are a dozen more that aren't positive. I know that some people have been ridiculed and beaten and discriminated against, and I know that a lot of gay people from Central Appalachia don't want to live there anymore because they feel unwelcome. But not everyone has that experience, and to write a national article that makes it seem as though they do is, in my mind, wrong.
It also bothers me that this reporter frames my homeland as a place only inhabited by pill-heads, violent bigots, religious fundamentalists and corrupt politicians. I'm not saying those types of people don't exist in eastern Kentucky, because they do; but I would be willing to say that it's not the everyday norm in most places, and that there isn't a higher rate of those types of people in the hills than there are in any other part of the country.
I know that eastern Kentucky suffers from a terrible drug problem, that there are some corrupt politicians in eastern Kentucky, and that there are violent bigots and religious fundamentalists living in my hills. But I also know that some of the kindest, most supportive people I've ever known were raised in Southern Baptist churches - some are even deacons in those churches - and some of the fairest politicians I've ever known maintain political positions in the hills. There are a lot of people addicted to pain killers, but there are also a lot of people that aren't.
I've come to expect news stories written by reporters from national media outlets about my homeland to be somewhat skewed in their representation of it. However, this article was rife with hyperbolic statements that seems to suggest things about Eastern Kentucky that simply aren't true, or things about it that make this article reminiscent of early 20th century portrayals of it through the eyes of flat-lander reporters who framed the region as a backward, isolated place, and then blamed the people's ignorance on said isolation.
Some examples (I've bolded the remarks that bothered me the most):
"Harlan County is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest city with an airport, along a road that twists and turns through quiet hills. It's one of the poorest places in America and one of the most beautiful. The luxuriousness of the landscape -- an unending carpet of foliage that rises on all sides, enclosing roads in vivid, green lushness -- is pockmarked with billboards advertising personal-injury lawyers, drug-treatment centers and evangelical TV stars. The only restaurant open late at night is a knockoff of the Waffle House, where, locals say, miners and their girlfriends pop pills in the bathroom. There are no bars, but 116 churches. One resident offered a succinct list of the places where people hang out: "church or jail."
"Stewart and Stallard are hoping the case will change things, that it will finally get people talking about gays in the community but they also know that fear has a way of making people quiet. For years they had tried to start a support group for the few openly gay people in the town. But the only way to convince people to show up to a meeting would have been to offer them prescription painkillers or a party, Stallard said."
"But Jordan Palmer refused to accept this fate. He became a lonely hero, the single crusader for gay rights in all of southeastern Kentucky."
"Every year in Kentucky drugs kill more people than car wrecks. Every day three people die of overdoses. A major investigation conducted by the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2003 found that more painkillers flowed into Kentucky than any other part of the United States. This all perhaps explains why southeastern Kentuckians might not want to talk about the case."
To be fair, the reporter does mention that Palmer and his organization, of which he is no longer president, are not the best advocates for gay rights in Kentucky because they often too quick to make statements about hate crimes that just aren't true, and that Palmer is - in my own opinion, not the reporter's - too full of himself to actually care about other people's rights and true equality.
However, the other statements - some of them apparently made by the people with whom the reporter spoke - are bombastic remarks that frame Eastern Kentucky as an incredibly closed-minded and one-dimensional place. I was once a reporter, so I understand the nuances of writing a news story about a certain group of people of which you know very little and having to rely on statements that members of that group give you to describe the entire group. However, in this case, since I know this reporter talked to not only myself, but another young gay woman in Appalachia who also did not have a terrible experience, I question the reporter's objectivity, and I assume she relied on hackneyed stereotypes about the region because it was easier than actually delving into the complexities of a region long bastardized in American culture as a backward and closed-minded place filled with ignorance hillbillies who know nothing of the outside world because of their severe isolation.
I try as hard as I can to give every story written about Appalachia by an outsider reporter as much credit as I can. I try to remain objective when reading them and understand them from the point of view of someone who is not so invested in reshaping the image of the region to portray it to the rest of the country as a more complex place. For the most part, I'm able to do this because I find that reporters are more fair about Appalachia now than they ever have been.
But this reporter, whom I had so much hope for when we talked on the phone, is not among those who are fair to my homeland. Her lack of objectivity on the matter of gay rights and growing up gay in Appalachia, her disregard for telling both sides of the story of being gay in the region and her dismissal of the complexities of a region that is, for lack of a better word, extremely complex, bothers me very deeply, and I felt it necessary to discuss the issue of news framing of my region, which continues to be very stereotypical, even to this day.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Things you need to know about Bonnaroo that no one tells you about Bonnaroo
Now that I've had time to very nearly fully recover from Bonnaroo last week, I figure it's time for me to write about my experience. I could sit here and tell you all about the awesome performances I saw, which is essentially why anyone goes to this shindig; but, I've decided a more apt use of my blog would be to tell you, the reading public o' mine, about the underbelly of this most illustrious of summer festivals. To borrow a phrase: the follow is "the rest of the story..."
Unless you are the first 100 people to arrive, you will be forced to camp at least a mile, and sometimes more, from the main venue, Centeroo.
We read on the Bonnaroo website that we should expect humongous, Black-Friday-esque lines on every road leading to the Bonnaroo farm. "Fill up your car with gas," it told us. "Make sure you pee before you get in line," it said.
However, when we arrived on Thursday afternoon, the first day of the festival, there was not a single car in front of us. We drove right to the gate, had our car "inspected," got our wristbands put on, and drove right on in. This was fine by us, really - who really wants to wait in a line of immovable traffic for hours?
But, when we were directed to our campsite, it became overwhelmingly apparent to us that the people running this show truly are all hippies who volunteered to work the festival so they didn't have to pay for a wristband. I knew people did this, and hey: more power to them. But, I was certain there would at least be a handful of some sort of staff present to tell these yahoos what to do. I was disappointed to find that this was not the case. Instead, incompetence ruled, and we were directed to the furtherest point of the furthest field of the entire Bonnaroo farm to camp: Camp Clark Griswald.
"How far is that?" you ask. Well, for reference sake: the Bonnaroo farm is hundreds of acres big, which is a lot of land area. Centeroo, where all the music happens, was at least a 45 minute walk from our camp - one way. Our bathrooms were at least a mile from our campsite. The closest water station, where we could refill our water bottles, was at least a mile away.
I suppose I could have lived with all that and accepted it had Camp Clark Griswald been completely full. But it was not. Not even close. We were one of about 20 other campsites in this entire humongous field. Why we could not have camped at the very front of the field, I will probably never understand.
The "bathrooms" are really porta potties.
Nasty, disgusting, deplorable porta potties. Little plastic, blue boxes of hell on earth.
Though, the Bonnaroo folks tell you that these are cleaned out regularly, and though you will see the sewage trucks from time to time, they will never, ever be clean. They will always reek of that blue, chemical water that fills their bowels. They will always be mud/dirt-covered. The seat will always have pee on them. Toilet paper will be strewn about the floor, if there's any in them, that is. You will always have to wait in line to use them while inside Centeroo, and you will always have to pee like a racehorse while waiting in line. There will never be hand sanitizer in them, even though the dispensers for this magical sanitized liquid will be glued to the walls.
You will get used to all of that. You will learn how to hover over the pee-covered seat while keeping your shorts from touching the wet and dirty floor. You will learn to always take your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you. You will stop by your campsite bathroom on your way in and out of camp. The smell of the sterile blue potty juice will become less toxic to your senses. Peeing in these hell-holes will become normal to you, because it has to. You have no other choice.
When you leave Bonnaroo, and you make your first pit-stop on the way home, the bathroom - even if it's a nasty little gas station bathroom in the middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee - will feel like the bathroom of a British royal. You will sit on a pee-free seat and you will wash your hands - actually wash your hand with soap and water - four times. You will be grateful. And you will vow to never again in the rest of your days on earth to set foot in a porta potty.
There is dust everywhere, unless it rains. Then, there will be mud everywhere.
This is not an exaggeration. The ground is so dry, there's nothing else for it to do except turn to dust. It will billow in clouds at your feet and behind the Festi-Cabs. You will inhale it. It becomes what you know to be an ear, nose, throat and eye doctor's worst nightmare. It will create dust-tans on your exposed skin. It will shade everything a soft tan color. And it will crust over the sweat of your body, making the level of gross you've already achieved from sweating from every part of your body for two days with no shower, that much more amplified.
You will see people walking around with bandanas over their noses and mouths and you will think, "I should do that." But you likely won't for whatever reason. It's too much trouble. I'll look dumb. It's one more thing I have to carry on my epic odyssey across this farm into Centeroo.
You will find this dust in your ears after you've gotten home and take your first hot shower in four days.
Everything costs money.
And when I say everything, I literally mean everything. From the time you cross through the entrance toll booths, from the time you leave, you will be paying at least $5 for everything. Showers cost $7, if you use the Garnier Fructis sponsored Bonnaroo ones. They are $10 at the non-Bonnaroo-approved vendors that line the main road and are just outside festival grounds.
In Centeroo, food, on average, costs about $4 to $7 dollars. Beer (Coors and Miller Lite - just about the only two kinds sold) costs $7. Rides from your camp to Centeroo cost $5 a person. A Bonnaroo t-shirt costs, on average, $35. And you can't pay for anything with a card, except for buying Bonnaroo merchandise. There are ATMs set up all over the place, and there's a $4 fee to withdraw money. I know this is no accident. The vendors don't allow you to use cards so you have to use the ATMs. The banks know you are reliant on the ATMs, so they charge you $4 to use them.
All this is to say that: BONNAROO IS A FREAKING MONEY PIT.
Showers
Courtney and I used the Garnier Fructis showers one morning when the gunk became too much to bear (It was our second morning at the festival). Not only did we have to walk a mile to get to them - literally one mile - but once we got there and paid our fee, we walked into a shipping container-turned-dorm-shower. There were about 7 showers in here, with "curtains" that really didn't keep the water from spewing all over everything once you turned them on. While my shower was freezing cold and I shivered my way through it, Courtney said hers was warm, so I'm assuming I just got a defective shower.
There is no private space in which to change clothes/dry off/not be naked, so there are naked women everywhere. Normally, this would not be an issue for me; but, seeing as how I was already irate about having to pay $7 for a cold shower that's sponsored by a multi-billion-dollar company and thusly should be as hot as the sun if I want it to be, I just wanted to get out of the storage container.
All of the dry things you've brought with you will get wet. Everything. Your clean clothes, your towel, even the bag you brought to carry it all. This won't be so much of a problem once you step outside into the blistering heat and unrelenting sunshine of the day, something else you won't really have a problem with once you're finally clean.
All of those things are the major downsides to this festival, and are things I did not know about it until I arrived. However, with all that being said, I am not ashamed to admit that I would willingly and happily go back to Bonnaroo.
Over the course of four days, I witnessed 13 of the best performances by artists I love, and some I'd never heard of before. I don't know what it is about an outdoor music festival that makes artists really, truly perform their hearts out, but there is something to it, because I saw it happen. Maybe it's the fact that they know everyone in the audience is there to hear music. Maybe they feel more freedom to do whatever the hell they want while on stage (like Phish singing "The Gambler" with Kenny Rogers, and chatting it up with the audience). Maybe they've been drinking or taking part in what The Civil War's female vocalist called, "Bonnaroo's organic herb." Whatever it is, they become a part of it and they completely and utterly rock out, jam down and put on an awesomely incredible show.
To witness those performances and be a part of those musical experiences with some of my closest friends, I would hands down, without a doubt go to Bonnaroo again, especially now that I know what to expect and how to get around all of that.
Oh, and next time: I'll rent an RV.
Unless you are the first 100 people to arrive, you will be forced to camp at least a mile, and sometimes more, from the main venue, Centeroo.
We read on the Bonnaroo website that we should expect humongous, Black-Friday-esque lines on every road leading to the Bonnaroo farm. "Fill up your car with gas," it told us. "Make sure you pee before you get in line," it said.
However, when we arrived on Thursday afternoon, the first day of the festival, there was not a single car in front of us. We drove right to the gate, had our car "inspected," got our wristbands put on, and drove right on in. This was fine by us, really - who really wants to wait in a line of immovable traffic for hours?
But, when we were directed to our campsite, it became overwhelmingly apparent to us that the people running this show truly are all hippies who volunteered to work the festival so they didn't have to pay for a wristband. I knew people did this, and hey: more power to them. But, I was certain there would at least be a handful of some sort of staff present to tell these yahoos what to do. I was disappointed to find that this was not the case. Instead, incompetence ruled, and we were directed to the furtherest point of the furthest field of the entire Bonnaroo farm to camp: Camp Clark Griswald.
"How far is that?" you ask. Well, for reference sake: the Bonnaroo farm is hundreds of acres big, which is a lot of land area. Centeroo, where all the music happens, was at least a 45 minute walk from our camp - one way. Our bathrooms were at least a mile from our campsite. The closest water station, where we could refill our water bottles, was at least a mile away.
I suppose I could have lived with all that and accepted it had Camp Clark Griswald been completely full. But it was not. Not even close. We were one of about 20 other campsites in this entire humongous field. Why we could not have camped at the very front of the field, I will probably never understand.
The "bathrooms" are really porta potties.
Nasty, disgusting, deplorable porta potties. Little plastic, blue boxes of hell on earth.
Though, the Bonnaroo folks tell you that these are cleaned out regularly, and though you will see the sewage trucks from time to time, they will never, ever be clean. They will always reek of that blue, chemical water that fills their bowels. They will always be mud/dirt-covered. The seat will always have pee on them. Toilet paper will be strewn about the floor, if there's any in them, that is. You will always have to wait in line to use them while inside Centeroo, and you will always have to pee like a racehorse while waiting in line. There will never be hand sanitizer in them, even though the dispensers for this magical sanitized liquid will be glued to the walls.
You will get used to all of that. You will learn how to hover over the pee-covered seat while keeping your shorts from touching the wet and dirty floor. You will learn to always take your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer with you. You will stop by your campsite bathroom on your way in and out of camp. The smell of the sterile blue potty juice will become less toxic to your senses. Peeing in these hell-holes will become normal to you, because it has to. You have no other choice.
When you leave Bonnaroo, and you make your first pit-stop on the way home, the bathroom - even if it's a nasty little gas station bathroom in the middle-of-nowhere-Tennessee - will feel like the bathroom of a British royal. You will sit on a pee-free seat and you will wash your hands - actually wash your hand with soap and water - four times. You will be grateful. And you will vow to never again in the rest of your days on earth to set foot in a porta potty.
There is dust everywhere, unless it rains. Then, there will be mud everywhere.
This is not an exaggeration. The ground is so dry, there's nothing else for it to do except turn to dust. It will billow in clouds at your feet and behind the Festi-Cabs. You will inhale it. It becomes what you know to be an ear, nose, throat and eye doctor's worst nightmare. It will create dust-tans on your exposed skin. It will shade everything a soft tan color. And it will crust over the sweat of your body, making the level of gross you've already achieved from sweating from every part of your body for two days with no shower, that much more amplified.
You will see people walking around with bandanas over their noses and mouths and you will think, "I should do that." But you likely won't for whatever reason. It's too much trouble. I'll look dumb. It's one more thing I have to carry on my epic odyssey across this farm into Centeroo.
You will find this dust in your ears after you've gotten home and take your first hot shower in four days.
Everything costs money.
And when I say everything, I literally mean everything. From the time you cross through the entrance toll booths, from the time you leave, you will be paying at least $5 for everything. Showers cost $7, if you use the Garnier Fructis sponsored Bonnaroo ones. They are $10 at the non-Bonnaroo-approved vendors that line the main road and are just outside festival grounds.
In Centeroo, food, on average, costs about $4 to $7 dollars. Beer (Coors and Miller Lite - just about the only two kinds sold) costs $7. Rides from your camp to Centeroo cost $5 a person. A Bonnaroo t-shirt costs, on average, $35. And you can't pay for anything with a card, except for buying Bonnaroo merchandise. There are ATMs set up all over the place, and there's a $4 fee to withdraw money. I know this is no accident. The vendors don't allow you to use cards so you have to use the ATMs. The banks know you are reliant on the ATMs, so they charge you $4 to use them.
All this is to say that: BONNAROO IS A FREAKING MONEY PIT.
Showers
Courtney and I used the Garnier Fructis showers one morning when the gunk became too much to bear (It was our second morning at the festival). Not only did we have to walk a mile to get to them - literally one mile - but once we got there and paid our fee, we walked into a shipping container-turned-dorm-shower. There were about 7 showers in here, with "curtains" that really didn't keep the water from spewing all over everything once you turned them on. While my shower was freezing cold and I shivered my way through it, Courtney said hers was warm, so I'm assuming I just got a defective shower.
There is no private space in which to change clothes/dry off/not be naked, so there are naked women everywhere. Normally, this would not be an issue for me; but, seeing as how I was already irate about having to pay $7 for a cold shower that's sponsored by a multi-billion-dollar company and thusly should be as hot as the sun if I want it to be, I just wanted to get out of the storage container.
All of the dry things you've brought with you will get wet. Everything. Your clean clothes, your towel, even the bag you brought to carry it all. This won't be so much of a problem once you step outside into the blistering heat and unrelenting sunshine of the day, something else you won't really have a problem with once you're finally clean.
All of those things are the major downsides to this festival, and are things I did not know about it until I arrived. However, with all that being said, I am not ashamed to admit that I would willingly and happily go back to Bonnaroo.
Over the course of four days, I witnessed 13 of the best performances by artists I love, and some I'd never heard of before. I don't know what it is about an outdoor music festival that makes artists really, truly perform their hearts out, but there is something to it, because I saw it happen. Maybe it's the fact that they know everyone in the audience is there to hear music. Maybe they feel more freedom to do whatever the hell they want while on stage (like Phish singing "The Gambler" with Kenny Rogers, and chatting it up with the audience). Maybe they've been drinking or taking part in what The Civil War's female vocalist called, "Bonnaroo's organic herb." Whatever it is, they become a part of it and they completely and utterly rock out, jam down and put on an awesomely incredible show.
To witness those performances and be a part of those musical experiences with some of my closest friends, I would hands down, without a doubt go to Bonnaroo again, especially now that I know what to expect and how to get around all of that.
Oh, and next time: I'll rent an RV.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Something's rotten in Appalachian higher education, and it smells like discrimination
University of Pikeville President Paul Patton and his pal Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo recently pushed the legislature hard to turn UPike into a public institution like any other state school. The hope was to lower the school's almost outrageous tuition so that more kids would have the opportunity to attend.
They would receive money from the legislature, and as you can imagine, this highly pissed off the administrations of every other state school. If some other school is thrown into the funding pool, it's highly likely every school will receive a smaller piece of the pie. As is the case in Kentucky state politics, the idea that makes the most sense for Appalachian counties was murdered by childish bickering and bull-headedness when it came time for a vote.
However, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Blue-Dog Democracy, Patton emerged with a plan. He would lobby the legislature to set aside more than $6 million in coal-severance money to fund scholarships for kids to attend schools in the mountains.
What a great plan! I love it when coal-severance money can be spent on something other than construction of justice centers or building of unnecessary roads so coal companies can have access to coal in the mountains around those roads (*cough* Route 7 from Jeff to Viper *cough*), and I love it when more kids are afforded the chance at higher education who maybe wouldn't have been able to do so without some financial help.
But then, I read more about this little plan of Patton's, which has since been approved by the highest and mightiest Friend of Coal, Gov. Steve Beshear. As the Lexington Herald-Leader's Linda Blackford reported a couple of weeks ago, the scholarship money provided through coal-severance dollars will only go to kids in nine of 25 eastern coal-producing counties: Bell, Harlan, Letcher, Pike, Floyd, Johnson, Martin, Knott and Magoffin. It will also only be available to kids who go to UPike, Alice Lloyd College or the University of Morehead's extension campuses.
So, let me get this straight: Paul Patton, a Democrat, is going to use coal-severance money to fund scholarships for kids in coal-producing counties, but is not allowing kids from certain coal-producing counties to receive those scholarships. The scholarships will only pay for kids to go to UPike, Alice Lloyd or Morehead extension campuses, excluding kids who go to Union College or University of the Cumberlands, which are both located in districts represented by Republicans in the state legislature.
I believe - if memory serves - that that's called bias. Furthermore, it's pretty low-down dirty to deny kids from any coal-producing county the ability to receive any kind of help they can get to go to college for what are obviously political reasons.
Patton claims that he excluded Perry and Leslie Counties - two of the biggest coal-producing counties in the state - from his list because they are served by the University of the Mountains consortium, which is operated by the Kentucky Community and Technical College system. So, all kids that live in Perry and Leslie Counties only go a KCTCS college? None of them want to go to UPike or Alice Lloyd? This little brilliant plan of Patton's will limit the choices of the kids in Perry and Leslie Counties, and any other county not deemed worthy enough to be included on his list, and he knows it. What utter nonsense.
One other piece to this ridiculous puzzle is that UPike is going to create extension campuses in those nine counties, probably using some of the severance money it's now getting from the state for it's exclusionary scholarships. That seems awfully shady to me. I don't think UPike officials would have decided to put these extension campuses in those counties without A LOT of prior negotiation between county and city officials in those counties.
I'm also quite certain that Patton's hope in all this is that most of the kids receiving these scholarships will attend the University of Pikeville. Not that there's anything wrong with that. UPike is a good school and lots of great kids get a fine education there. But it does seem wrong to create a future UPike-student machine by targeting kids in counties closest to Pikeville - six of which do not contain higher education facilities - with a load of scholarship money and telling them they can only use it if they go to UPike, Alice Lloyd or Morehead extension campuses. Since the Morehead campus is in Floyd County and Alice Lloyd is in Knott, I'm pretty sure that kids from the other counties would chose UPike - not certain, but pretty sure.
It took a week or so, but some folks around the region are speaking out against this plan, calling it "bias" and "discriminatory." Perry County Judge-Executive Denny Ray Noble even said that Patton promised him Perry County would be included on the list of nine, but as it turns out, it wasn't.
I had such hope for this whole deal. I had hoped that there could never be opposition to creating a state school in the mountains, because after all, who would object to Appalachian kids being able to obtain a quality higher education close to home? When that failed, and this severance tax idea came up, I thought it would be awesome if that money could actually help coal-county kids for once.
As it turns out, the politics of academia are the most competitive, the most dirty and the most rotten of all.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The best time a stranger mistook me for a man
When I was younger, I had a bowl haircut... for 14 years. I was small and skinny and was a huge tomboy anyway, so the haircut was really unnecessary if one wanted to confuse me for the opposite sex.
It was not uncommon for complete strangers to mistake me for a boy, especially since I mostly wore boy's clothes and all my friends were boys. I can specifically remember going into a store once with my cousin Seth and the check-out lady said something to us about being cute little boys. My cousin said something about me being a girl. She apologized. Life goes on.
I never corrected anyone, mostly because I was so painfully shy. I guess it bothered me on some level, but not so much that I was awake at night crying about it or anything. Truth is, I would have rather been confused as a boy than be called a girl in those days, I suppose.
But now that I'm 25, certain features clearly mark me as a woman, like my breasts and lack of visible adams apple. Most people correctly assume that I am, in fact, a woman. If they don't, they have the sense to keep it to themselves. That's why I was so taken aback when the following incident occurred last spring.
Courtney and I had just ended a short stay with our friends Lane and Dee in Hilton Head, S.C. It had been a short trip in which we spent most of our time on the beach and eating tasty dishes that rich people from northern states see as novelty and specialty (egg sandwiches and macaroni salad). We observed the gators and water fowl, strolled under live oaks and among former slave houses, and ended the week as guests at a weekly get-together Lane and Dee host for their friends - something Courtney and I now affectionately call Friday night lesbian parties.
When it came time for us to return to Kentucky, we loaded up my poor, old hybrid, Katie H, and hit the road. As many can relate, we had to make pit-stops at the most non-shady-looking places we could find. A task in and of itself in some areas. So, it was without fear that we stopped at a gas station in North Carolina somewhere (at least, I think it was North Carolina) for a break.
I was washing my hands in the bathroom when a woman in her 30s and wearing a dress walks in. I was wearing a t-shirt with cut-off blue jean shorts - my summer uniform, nothing too androgynous, but nothing too specific, either. The woman looks at me, almost walks past to a stall, then stops, walks back out (to look at the door), then walks back in a couple seconds later. I tend to generally think people are weird, so I really didn't think too much about this.
So, she comes back in, looks at me again, then walks over to me and asks: "This is the women's restroom, right?"
I look at her with what I'm certain is a look of bemusement mixed with complete offense as I say: "Yes." I say "offense," because she could tell she had been an idiot. She says: "Oh, I'm so sorry - I've just been so crazy lately, I thought I'd walked into the wrong bathroom."
Not really an apology.
Apparently, I looked like Max, a transgender character on "The L Word," to this woman because she clearly thought I was a man. And why not? I wasn't wearing a dress, after all, and I mean, why would a woman wear anything except a dress?
She chose a stall and I walked out, kind of laughing to myself. I think about this exchange every single time I walk into a public bathroom now, though. Sometimes I wonder if I should act more girly or something, whatever that means. Most of the time, it makes me think about how some people are completely clueless, and it makes me laugh.
I don't wonder too much about that woman and whether or not she's run into any other women who aren't like her in public bathrooms recently. But I do often wish I were better able to think on my feet. Then, maybe I would have thought to flash that woman to prove it to her. At the very least, I would have been able to think of some really clever thing to say, like Andrea Gibson: "I didn't feel comfortable shoving this tampon up my penis in the men's room!"
Oh well. Yet another lost opportunity to make someone feel really uncomfortable with their ignorance.
Next time, I'll be prepared.
It was not uncommon for complete strangers to mistake me for a boy, especially since I mostly wore boy's clothes and all my friends were boys. I can specifically remember going into a store once with my cousin Seth and the check-out lady said something to us about being cute little boys. My cousin said something about me being a girl. She apologized. Life goes on.
I never corrected anyone, mostly because I was so painfully shy. I guess it bothered me on some level, but not so much that I was awake at night crying about it or anything. Truth is, I would have rather been confused as a boy than be called a girl in those days, I suppose.
But now that I'm 25, certain features clearly mark me as a woman, like my breasts and lack of visible adams apple. Most people correctly assume that I am, in fact, a woman. If they don't, they have the sense to keep it to themselves. That's why I was so taken aback when the following incident occurred last spring.
Courtney and I had just ended a short stay with our friends Lane and Dee in Hilton Head, S.C. It had been a short trip in which we spent most of our time on the beach and eating tasty dishes that rich people from northern states see as novelty and specialty (egg sandwiches and macaroni salad). We observed the gators and water fowl, strolled under live oaks and among former slave houses, and ended the week as guests at a weekly get-together Lane and Dee host for their friends - something Courtney and I now affectionately call Friday night lesbian parties. |
| I did kind of look like Justin Beiber, though... |
I was washing my hands in the bathroom when a woman in her 30s and wearing a dress walks in. I was wearing a t-shirt with cut-off blue jean shorts - my summer uniform, nothing too androgynous, but nothing too specific, either. The woman looks at me, almost walks past to a stall, then stops, walks back out (to look at the door), then walks back in a couple seconds later. I tend to generally think people are weird, so I really didn't think too much about this.
So, she comes back in, looks at me again, then walks over to me and asks: "This is the women's restroom, right?"
I look at her with what I'm certain is a look of bemusement mixed with complete offense as I say: "Yes." I say "offense," because she could tell she had been an idiot. She says: "Oh, I'm so sorry - I've just been so crazy lately, I thought I'd walked into the wrong bathroom."
 |
| Max |
Apparently, I looked like Max, a transgender character on "The L Word," to this woman because she clearly thought I was a man. And why not? I wasn't wearing a dress, after all, and I mean, why would a woman wear anything except a dress?
She chose a stall and I walked out, kind of laughing to myself. I think about this exchange every single time I walk into a public bathroom now, though. Sometimes I wonder if I should act more girly or something, whatever that means. Most of the time, it makes me think about how some people are completely clueless, and it makes me laugh.
I don't wonder too much about that woman and whether or not she's run into any other women who aren't like her in public bathrooms recently. But I do often wish I were better able to think on my feet. Then, maybe I would have thought to flash that woman to prove it to her. At the very least, I would have been able to think of some really clever thing to say, like Andrea Gibson: "I didn't feel comfortable shoving this tampon up my penis in the men's room!"
Oh well. Yet another lost opportunity to make someone feel really uncomfortable with their ignorance.
Next time, I'll be prepared.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
My opus about American education
I went to public schools all my life, and I would never dream of trading that education for some privately funded charter school education. I had some of the best teachers money could never buy and I am where I am today in part because of those teachers.
However, I also had a spectacular home life, in which my entire family never failed to encourage me to reach the highest attainment of educational achievement possible.
A lot of children today don't have that. A lot of children today are living in poverty so daunting they don’t get to eat supper some nights, and a lot kids today have drug-addicted parents who aren’t a part of their lives. A lot of kids have disabilities that prevent them from learning at the same pace or level as their classmates. A lot of kids go home to families that beat them and neglect them. And sometimes, kids just don’t have that support system that I had.
This is most of the reason why test scores are so low in most urban and rural schools, where most of those children live.
Public school teachers are saints most days. They can make children who feel like nothing when they are at home feel like they can become president of the United States from 8 to 3pm every week day from August to May, and they can give one hug to one neglected child one day and make that child feel loved for perhaps the first time in their life. Public school teachers can make sure that kids who don’t get fed at home, have two hot meals a day, five days a week, and they can make sure that these same kids aren’t made fun of because they have to wear clothes that are two sizes too small for them.
Public school teachers can do a lot for those kids that don’t have the same opportunities and the same support that I did simply because of my socio-economic standing.
But they can’t end poverty and they can’t stop drug abuse, and they certainly can’t be a child’s parent if that child is not their own.
When I was in school, I had art, music, library and gym class once every week. I would be lying if I said having these classes did not help me become well-rounded in my education.
Now, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school in Kentucky that still offers these classes. Hell, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school who still has an art or music teacher.
I don’t know where this idea that art and music are expendable aspects of public school education cam from, but where ever it came from was not a place of wanting to help public school children succeed.
It’s my belief that in order for a school to be run properly, the principal has to have a black belt in education before he or she takes the reigns of an entire school. They have to have first been in the classroom, teaching actual kids for a long time, because I think we can all agree it takes a lot of experience to be the best-qualified person for such a vital and important job. However, I’m finding that increasing under-qualified people – who have only been teaching for two years – are being given principal positions for political reasons. Something tells me that is not the best way to improve teacher morale or provide students with years-worth of educational guidance.
Teaching is hard – grueling even – and there are few among us who can take on this profession with the proper amount of gusto, heart, strength of mind and body and nerves of steel it requires to stand in front of a group of kids who are not your own and come to know them, love them and teach them how to be productive and well-rounded members of society five days a week, ten months a year for 20+ years. Teachers are not paid six-figures a year – they’re barely paid above the poverty line – and if they’re worth anything, they barely get a summer vacation because they are constantly attending professional development workshops and improving lesson plans and trying to determine how in the world they’re going to raise test scores so they don’t get fired in the next school year.
They don’t get bonuses, they don’t get awards like “employee of the month” – in fact, they get little positive incentive to remain a teacher. They have to love what they do with a love so indescribable with words they can’t even verbalize what it means to other teachers. They all just know they are teaching because they have a gift to help children learn, and my God, what can be more important than knowing you have the power to help a child reach their fullest potential?
So, don’t sit where ever you are on your perch of all-knowingness, whoever you are, and tell me that all we have to do to fix our educational system in America is get rid of all the “bad teachers,” and put all our kids in privately-funded for-profit charter schools, because that is absolutely not the answer.
Maybe if we taxpayers started demanding that our tax money be spent on education rather than $20 million dollars a year on air-conditioned tents for the military, our schools would be able to buy textbooks for every student they have.
Maybe if our best teachers were paid more than slave wages to do the most important job in America, they would actually want to remain a teacher.
Maybe if art and music were returned to schools, our students’ minds would be broadened and expanded so they could become well-rounded individuals instead of rote memorizers of mathematic formulas.
Maybe if curriculum testing was banished to the farthest reaches of Hell and never ever mentioned again, teachers would be relieved of the unbelievable pressure to improve said scores, and be able to focus solely on teaching.
Maybe we as a society can start trying to understand drug addiction more so we can in turn start to help eradicate it.
And maybe, just maybe, in some fantastic show of humanitarianism, if our politicians actually started giving a damn and actually started doing the job they were elected to do, and put their heads together to figure out how to end poverty for rural and urban kids, maybe those kids would start to perform better because for the first time in their lives they won’t be saddled with having to think about going hungry once they get home and maybe they can start doing their homework as a result.
Our educational system needs a lot of work – that much us true. But, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than simply finding all the “bad teachers,” and firing them, mainly because bad teachers don’t exist, but mostly because there’s a lot more to it than just that.
We have to invest in education, on every level, from every angle, in order to improve our educational system. It has to start from the ground up, and it has to start with us.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Sykes provides little benefit to eastern Kentucky
The news that Sykes is reducing its workforce by 157 people at its Perry County branch does not shock or disappoint me. It mostly just makes me shake my head in a "I saw this coming" sort of way.
When Sykes first came to the mountains, it was lauded by local officials as one of the best things to hit the region since cable TV. No one could even come up with a bad thing to say about it, and who could blame them, really. Sykes was providing much-needed jobs to a region constantly begging for work and it was providing those jobs by the hundreds. Almost every time one turned on WYMT, there was an upbeat story about how Sykes had just hired a new slew of eastern Kentuckians to answers calls from all over the country.
It was a great new era for eastern Kentucky and a coup for Hazard and Perry County officials (mostly just the former and late Hazard mayor, Bill Gorman, who was instrumental in convincing Sykes to locate in Perry County), who were forever praising the Tampa, Fla.-based company for helping us poor, downtrodden mountain folk by kindly showering us with jobs we seemingly and inexplicably could not make for ourselves.
And then, this era abruptly ended. Sykes closed its doors and sent all its call-center jobs from the Perry County location overseas to reduce costs. And so, their philanthropy was revealed simply as trying to find the cheapest place to located in order to save money. What... a shock.
Only, not really. It's really not a surprise to me that this happened. I wasn't even surprised when a few years after Sykes closed, another company located on the former MTR site that had been "transformed" into the Coal Fields Industrial Park, Trus Joist, closed its doors as well. Now, yet another groups of hundreds of eastern Kentuckians were suddenly without work.
I wasn't surprised because this is what I have come to expect from life in the mountains: the ebb and flow of jobs. Companies come in and bring their positive spin about how they are our saviors with them. They give their jobs and provide security in those jobs for as long as they deem necessary, then they leave. They pack up their telephones and ship out the last of their wood supply, they transfer their higher-ups to other, more "successful" branches in St. Louis or where ever, then they shuttered the doors, leaving those who used to work there to find jobs somewhere else - jobs that are oftentimes none-existent.
I'm not the only one who has come to expect this, either. It's like a way of life in the hills, to always be waiting for the pink slips to be handed out. People can't get settled into a good job for any amount of time longer than about five years before the company they work for starts downsizing in preparation to leave. They toy with us, these companies, to the point where we can't ever begin to think the jobs will stay. And so, we are left in a constant state of flux, never knowing whether or not we can unpack the boxes in our heads that contain confidence in keeping our jobs.
That is, unless you work in the mines or in a job that supports mining. Those jobs are secure, but only because the coal maggots who run the out-of-state companies have a monopoly on the area. "Can't keep your job at Sykes because they keep leaving? Come and work for us because we never leave." At least, that's the message that's portrayed. And why not? It's really a pretty convincing message when you're force-feeding it to people who want to stay in the region, but who either don't have a degree or don't want to work in the medical field, and to people who are just plain desperate for work. This is part of the reason the coal industry thrives in eastern Kentucky.
However, those jobs are not necessarily secure, either. Jobs tied to coal are only secure as long as the coal lasts, and considering the fact that there are only about 30 years - at the absolute most - of coal reserves left in the mountains, the security of these jobs is increasingly brought into question.
So, what are we mountain-folk to do? Keep waiting for "benevolent" CEO's to locate their failing companies here and provide us with 800 jobs for five years? Keep blasting our heritage away for a dirty black rock until we run our own selves out of work with no where to turn when it's all gone?
We have to start thinking outside the box and we have to start creating a sustainable future for the people who live in eastern Kentucky. We need sustainable jobs that will last longer than the whims of absentee company owners and longer than the end of fossil fuel dependance. We need to create a future of job security that brings us out of the doldrums of ebbing and flowing job security. We need local officials who will start calling a spade a spade and end their constant praise of companies who insult us and our work ethic by locating here, paying workers less than what they pay workers at locations outside the mountains, then leaving when they don't make the kind of money they hoped to make here. We need local officials who will look beyond the short-term and envision a long-term way of life for the future of the mountains, and we need them to work with us instead of fighting progress.
Yes, it's hard for many companies to locate to the mountains when King Coal is holding all the cards, and yes it's hard economically when things get tough to keep the doors open, but that's not excuse to keep dragging us mountain folk along while you wait out the time between just laying off 157 people and closing shop for good.
Maybe it's time for us to take the lead here and refuse to allow absentee millionaires decide our fate as a region. We can make those sustainable jobs for ourselves and we can build a brighter future for the mountains ourselves. We just need to stop relying so much on others to help us when they have no real interest in doing so. That much is clear when they continuously keep us bobbing up and down on a jobs roller coaster that is so hard to exit.
When Sykes first came to the mountains, it was lauded by local officials as one of the best things to hit the region since cable TV. No one could even come up with a bad thing to say about it, and who could blame them, really. Sykes was providing much-needed jobs to a region constantly begging for work and it was providing those jobs by the hundreds. Almost every time one turned on WYMT, there was an upbeat story about how Sykes had just hired a new slew of eastern Kentuckians to answers calls from all over the country.
It was a great new era for eastern Kentucky and a coup for Hazard and Perry County officials (mostly just the former and late Hazard mayor, Bill Gorman, who was instrumental in convincing Sykes to locate in Perry County), who were forever praising the Tampa, Fla.-based company for helping us poor, downtrodden mountain folk by kindly showering us with jobs we seemingly and inexplicably could not make for ourselves.
And then, this era abruptly ended. Sykes closed its doors and sent all its call-center jobs from the Perry County location overseas to reduce costs. And so, their philanthropy was revealed simply as trying to find the cheapest place to located in order to save money. What... a shock.
Only, not really. It's really not a surprise to me that this happened. I wasn't even surprised when a few years after Sykes closed, another company located on the former MTR site that had been "transformed" into the Coal Fields Industrial Park, Trus Joist, closed its doors as well. Now, yet another groups of hundreds of eastern Kentuckians were suddenly without work.
I wasn't surprised because this is what I have come to expect from life in the mountains: the ebb and flow of jobs. Companies come in and bring their positive spin about how they are our saviors with them. They give their jobs and provide security in those jobs for as long as they deem necessary, then they leave. They pack up their telephones and ship out the last of their wood supply, they transfer their higher-ups to other, more "successful" branches in St. Louis or where ever, then they shuttered the doors, leaving those who used to work there to find jobs somewhere else - jobs that are oftentimes none-existent.
I'm not the only one who has come to expect this, either. It's like a way of life in the hills, to always be waiting for the pink slips to be handed out. People can't get settled into a good job for any amount of time longer than about five years before the company they work for starts downsizing in preparation to leave. They toy with us, these companies, to the point where we can't ever begin to think the jobs will stay. And so, we are left in a constant state of flux, never knowing whether or not we can unpack the boxes in our heads that contain confidence in keeping our jobs.
That is, unless you work in the mines or in a job that supports mining. Those jobs are secure, but only because the coal maggots who run the out-of-state companies have a monopoly on the area. "Can't keep your job at Sykes because they keep leaving? Come and work for us because we never leave." At least, that's the message that's portrayed. And why not? It's really a pretty convincing message when you're force-feeding it to people who want to stay in the region, but who either don't have a degree or don't want to work in the medical field, and to people who are just plain desperate for work. This is part of the reason the coal industry thrives in eastern Kentucky.
However, those jobs are not necessarily secure, either. Jobs tied to coal are only secure as long as the coal lasts, and considering the fact that there are only about 30 years - at the absolute most - of coal reserves left in the mountains, the security of these jobs is increasingly brought into question.
So, what are we mountain-folk to do? Keep waiting for "benevolent" CEO's to locate their failing companies here and provide us with 800 jobs for five years? Keep blasting our heritage away for a dirty black rock until we run our own selves out of work with no where to turn when it's all gone?
We have to start thinking outside the box and we have to start creating a sustainable future for the people who live in eastern Kentucky. We need sustainable jobs that will last longer than the whims of absentee company owners and longer than the end of fossil fuel dependance. We need to create a future of job security that brings us out of the doldrums of ebbing and flowing job security. We need local officials who will start calling a spade a spade and end their constant praise of companies who insult us and our work ethic by locating here, paying workers less than what they pay workers at locations outside the mountains, then leaving when they don't make the kind of money they hoped to make here. We need local officials who will look beyond the short-term and envision a long-term way of life for the future of the mountains, and we need them to work with us instead of fighting progress.
Yes, it's hard for many companies to locate to the mountains when King Coal is holding all the cards, and yes it's hard economically when things get tough to keep the doors open, but that's not excuse to keep dragging us mountain folk along while you wait out the time between just laying off 157 people and closing shop for good.
Maybe it's time for us to take the lead here and refuse to allow absentee millionaires decide our fate as a region. We can make those sustainable jobs for ourselves and we can build a brighter future for the mountains ourselves. We just need to stop relying so much on others to help us when they have no real interest in doing so. That much is clear when they continuously keep us bobbing up and down on a jobs roller coaster that is so hard to exit.
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