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Update July 30, 2012: A visit to Appalachia with flag in hand.
On the way to Mountain Mobiliization, we stopped and climbed Pinnacle Rock near Bramwell, and flew the flag for the first time.
Just got back from the RAMPS camp. What strong, kind, and beautiful people. Concerned that our miner families don't fall to idolatry of King Coal. Glad for the opportunity to plant the Appalachian flag in sight of the WV state capitol. Saw Appalachian sunshine on the flag as we were leaving.
Oh Appalachia's blog entries from 2011:
The return of the Indigenous Peoples
The Cherokee Homeland and a renewed Cherokee Republic
The Iroquois Homeland and a renewed Iroquois League, including the Mingos who live in Oklahoma nowadays
We would invite the Indian peoples who—like us—were shaped by these Mountains, to come home to Appalachia and be reconciled with us.
We suggest embodying here as Cultural Organizations. Cultural Homelands can freely overlap with each other.
Bioregionalism in Appalachia
A Katuah Bioregional Homeland (a cultural organization for those of us who identify more with Nature than with Folk Culture)
The Right to Walk
In my Appalachia, one of the basic legal rights will be the right to safely walk to any address. In present-day West Virginia, unless one lives on a back road, it's a threat to life and limb to walk anywhere. When horse-travel gave way to motor vehicles, the roads were made to serve machine traffic, not human beings with their god-given legs.
I would go to great lengths to enact this—including building walkways and footpaths throughout the entire state. They would often be built outside the guardrails. In many places, this would require significant support structures or even overhead suspension due to the sheer mountainsides. In other places, a nice path would be built through back lots. My Department of Transportation would really act as if human feet are legitimate transport.
The Appalachian Round
I'd mark the boundaries of the Appalachian cultural Homeland with a trail that goes all along the border. It would follow the closest trails and roads.
Likewise for each of the thirteen of the Appalachian cultural states—a Vandalia Round circling West Virginia, a Franklin Round circling East Tennessee, and so forth. This would magnify awareness of our Appalachian states.
Appalachia as a Garden
I would make West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia as beautiful as our most beautiful parks. Who wouldn't want to live in a garden park?
Don't you like how it feels to be in Pipestem Park? With its neatly trimmed, wide grassy edges—its clean and bright feel.
Or the nestling valley of Camp Creek?
Or the Sunrise Gallery in Charleston, with its secretive path down the shaded mountainside?
Or the restful gothic elegance of the Biltmore House and gardens?
The Blue Ridge Parkway with its handsome stonework guardrails, tunnels and bridges that enhance the vistas?
We could feel like that most of the time.
In the Cool of the Day
My Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my garden so fair?
You may live in this garden if you keep the grasses green
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Oh this earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And He walks in His garden in the cool of the day
Then my Lord, he said unto me
Do you like my pastures of green?
You may live in this garden if you will feed my lambs
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Oh this earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And He walks in His garden in the cool of the day
Then my Lord, he said unto
Do you like my garden so free?
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the people free
And I'll return in the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Oh this earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And He walks in His garden in the cool of the day
—Jean Ritchie ©1971 Geordie Music Publishing
A Citizens' Livelihood
West Virginia ought to be the first state in the country to enact a Citizen's Livelihood. Instead of a Minimum Wage, every Citizen who works 40 hours a week must receive from their Employer at least the pay and benefits that an entry-level State employee receives. Is it so wild to suggest that the basic livelihood of our Civil Servants be used as the benchmark for a minimum dignified livelihood in our Private sector?
And if the person only works part-time, they still receive an equivalent percentage of pay and benefits, so that if they worked another part time job for a total of 40 hours, then between the two Companies they'd receive the full Citizen's Livelihood. Otherwise Companies will wriggle out of it by cutting everyone to 39 hours!
Someone might ask: "Why should Employees receive such a full living when the Self-Employed and Small Business Owners have to scramble for a similar living?" That is an important question. Yet the majority of individuals in the state are Employees, rather than Entrepreneurs. There are ways of ensuring a similar livelihood for Entrepreneurs.
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When even our fast food and convenience store workers receive a dignified livelihood, that will stop the Economic Draft of our Appalachian young people. If it's an individual's destiny to enter into that, then fine, but we ought not be pushed into that world just because our society has decided that other kinds of work are not worthy of a full livelihood.
At first I wanted to say that all workers ought to receive the pay and benefits that our servants in the West Virginia House of Delegates and Senate receive. No Public Servant would say this out loud, but their actions say that Government leaders feel that their work is more important than that of fast food and convenience store workers. Their actions say that our friends in Government secretly feel they work harder and deserve a richer lifestyle than the individuals who cook their hamburger and ring up their gas purchase.
Yet I'd be willing to settle for the equivalent of only entry-level civil service pay and benefits for all the strong and beautiful wage-slaves I've worked with at McDonald's, Marathon stations, and Wendy's here in West Virginia.
Appalachia's mysterious peoples
Homeland of the Chestnut Ridge People
The coming Separation of Nation and State will allow these Identities to freely blossom within the Cultural Sector.
A sad and beautiful song
Henry Russell's Last Words by Diana Jones
Three kinds of welcome signs
I noticed recently that the signs welcoming us to the City of Princeton were removed. I asked my dad about it and he said that it was from the controversy about which organizations and clubs would be allowed to post their symbols on the sign and which ones wouldn't. Since the sign is owned by the City Government, it implied endorsement of the clubs on the sign. And if any clubs were turned away (the "We Despise Princeton" club), that would be unfair.
I suggest that Princeton have two different signs:
1) One sign made by the City Government. It would welcome us to Princeton as a Governmental jurisdiction, as a municipality.
2) One sign made by the Civil Society Organizations. It would welcome us to Princeton as a Cultural community. This sign would be a concerted effort of the Non-Profit/Non-Governmental Organizations in Princeton, including the Churches and other Religious Organizations. It would have space to hang all those weird symbols that we're used to seeing—Rotary, Kiwanis, and so forth. I guess this sign would have to be on private property. It'd probably fit somewhere on the hillside nearby. And if the "We'd Rather Live in Bluefield" club wanted to hang their logo, but the other Organizations didn't want them on their sign, then the WRLB club would be free to arrange with roadside property owners to plant their own welcome sign.
For the sake of organic symmetry, there should be a third sign:
3) A sign made by the Business Community of Princeton. It would welcome us to Princeton as an Economic market and a place of work. This sign would be built by the Princeton Chamber of Commerce. This is the appropriate place to declare that Princeton is a "Certified Business Location" (whatever that means). Like the "Cultural" sign, the "Business" sign would be on private property too.
Why our people are struggling with weight
1) Our souls—the inside world made of ideas, feelings, and will—are sheered off from an early age by desolate government schools and by a culture that worships business and glorifies militarism. Like crashed pilots lying on the ground with a grave wound, we reach for anything that will stop up the hole.
2) We are fed orc swill. From the womb, our metabolisms are damaged by chemicals and pesticides in our food, by refined white stuff, and by food that was grown, canned, and packaged without love. Our obesity is a symptom of being physically poisoned.
West Virginia—the world's first Certified Organic State
I would make the USDA Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 the minimum standard for all agriculture in the state. Non-Organic pesticides and fertilizers would not even be for sale here. People would know that "West Virginia Produce" means clean, fearless, living food.
A quiet place
Up here on the Ridge, our young people don't have many cultural activities to participate in, so they ride around in ATVs. I'm sorry I'm not yet in a position where I could facilitate some sort of vibrant cultural life up here. I don't blame our young people—yet it sure is loud.
My dream is for this:
•I look forward to the day when our motor industry will produce electric ATVs, or powered by some other quiet clean source.
•In the further future, as America recovers from her automobile addiction, I'd like to see the Ridge closed to vehicle traffic. Only the occasional utility or emergency vehicle, farm trucks, and deliveries allowed.
•The road would be for feet, bicycles, golf carts (and electric ATVs), and horses. Kids could play in the street. Most everyone would own a golf cart to travel on the Ridge. A neighboring family owns one. I like that—it's nice and quiet.
...I have seen this situation with my own eyes in two places: on Mackinac Island in Michigan and on Cape Fear Island in North Carolina. No cars allowed there. Those places have a rejuvenating feel, and the air is fresh.
Why can't a Ridge be an Island?
This Ridge has seen a lot since she first coalesced from the mists. All sorts of life-ways have come and gone, from the Ancients who participated in this landscape, to the foot-paths of Shawnee men and women, to our grandparents with their horse-based travel, to our present-day gasoline motor engine situation. Change does come. Changes can be enacted. When will we have another Quiet of the World?
Quantity and Quality
I feel sorrow about how my people are trapped by the idea of Quantity. If there were two products on the shelf:
1) A food item filled with dead stuff—cancerous, uglifying chemicals, embalming fluid preservatives, and grown and packaged by miserable minimum-wage slaves.
2) A food item glowing with purity and vitality—certified Biodynamic and grown by independent farmers who receive a fair price...yet which costs 50% more than Product #1.
I'm sorry to say that most of my people would pick the first one.
Political parties in a Tri-Sector State
In a Tri-Sector State, political parties are clearly incorporated as Non-Profit/Non-Governmental Organizations. As organizations, they are part of the Civil Society Sector—the Cultural sphere.
Political parties are essentially a kind of fraternity of like-minded individuals that propagates a particular philosophy of state-craft. They are supposed to be non-governmental "political philosophy organizations".
But over the decades and centuries, we forgot that these "Political Philosophical Organizations" are supposed to be entirely distinct from the Government per se. Nowadays, the Government and the Political Party System are entangled and fused—both in our perception and in fact.
For example:
•The Government facilitates the "Primary Elections". Primary Elections are really supposed to be internal leadership elections within a Party Organization, having nothing to do with the Government. Government facilitation of these events is like the Government facilitating the internal elections of the Methodist Church Conferences, Baptist Conventions, or Ruritan Club.
•The Government prints the Party membership of Candidates on our election ballots. Since Political Parties are non-governmental organizations, marking them on ballots is like marking the Candidate's membership in a fraternal club, or church, or other civic organization.
•The Government physically seats our political Representatives in our capitol chambers according to their membership in the Political Party Organizations. That's like sitting our Representatives according to other personal criteria such as their gender, religion, or height. We have been trained to narrow our focus onto only one Quality of all the Qualities that an Individual civic servant possesses: Namely, where he or she lies on the Spectrum of Left and Right, as indicated by their professed membership in the Liberal Organization or the Conservative Organization.
How will this be different in a Tri-Sector State?
In a Tri-Sector West Virginia:
•The Political Governance will have nothing whatsoever to do with leadership selection within non-governmental organizations, including Political Party Organizations. "Primary Elections" (In-Party Elections) are none of the Government's business. As far as the Governance is concerned, there is only one real Election—the General Election.
•An individual's membership in a Political Party Organization (if any) is their own business, just like their membership in any other civic non-governmental organization such as Rotary Club or Church. Individuals as Individuals—not as Party functionaries—offer themselves for political service. This is palpably reflected by there being no Party affiliation printed on ballots.
•Seating in our Legislature will be alphabetical according to last name.
Political Party Organizations would participate in the Cultural Council alongside the other branches of intellectual and cultural life—schools, churches, clubs, arts groups, and so forth. Like all Cultural Organizations, they would receive no Government funding—but would operate solely on freely given donations.
The root problem isn't that Economic Corporations transfer so much money to Political Party Organizations—it's that we are deep in a Systemic Blindness that cannot clearly perceive how these Organizations have become melded to our Governance. This blindness is manifest in real structural con-fusions and entanglements. The Tri-Sector State will take the sword to those tangled strands.
Appalachia's arrival
Our mountain ancestors went through "ethnogenesis"—a dissolving of old identities and birth of a distinct regional flavor. The sea of humpy mountains blocked our mothers and fathers off from the rest of the world, and their various Anglo-Celtic accents and traditions coalesced into something new. We were nestled the Mountain womb like a delicate embryo, and then a fresh Spirit entered in. She hand-crafted our Traditional Appalachian speech and stitched together some guiding motifs for our folkways.
Expendable?
Let's be frank. The American establishment is allowed to uglify our landscape because they view us as expendable. I'm with this man from Utah. [Update: I found out recently, he was born in West Virginia.]
This speech should've been shown on our local news.
Here's a map of the actual or planned destruction of our Mountains:
It looks like a foreign belligerent force touched down here. It looks like our landscape was sprayed with giant cluster-bombs—like we were bombed in slow motion.
This would not be allowed in the Adirondack Mountains of New York or the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Nor would national political leaders raise their family in a community that hunkers next to a Removal Mine, with its asthmatic dust and desolating presence. But we don't live in "tony" places where those circles move.
What a pity that our state and local leaders are trapped and paralyzed by the idea that "Whatever is Good for Business is Good for the Community".
What are we going to do?
Appalachia: The End of America and the Beginning of Something New
The Founding Fathers considered naming the country "The United States of Appalachia". In those days, the Appalachian wall loomed large in the imagination. Nearly all the rivers of the Thirteen Colonies had their source in these Mountains.
Appalachia has become a Bizarro America—a Mirror Image of America-as-a-Whole, where America's strengths and weaknesses, illness and beauty are magnified.
Another way of looking at Appalachia is that we became so American that we came out the other side.
See this map that shows what ancestry is claimed in the U.S. census:
That tan-colored area extending from West Virginia down through the southern Appalachians—that's where most people mark "American" as their ancestry instead of some Old World ethnicity.
We've been rooted here so long that most of us don't claim any other identity.
America has thoroughly digested us. Our men and women make up a high proportion of the Armed Forces. When I was in the U.S. Army*, it was strange how the "welcoming crew" at Fort Jackson singled out those from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
*I was one of the worst U.S. soldiers in the history of the country.
The American Establishment would like to treat us like manure. Even our landscape is being chewed up and digested to fuel the American Way of Life.
But when life hands us a bucket of compost, maybe it's time to plant a Garden. Flowers grow well in compost. We still have many beautiful Flowers here.
Which god?
I've noticed a few churches around here fly the U.S. flag over top of the Christian flag. What is up with that?
The approach of Reconciliation
I admire and endorse the skill and work that the artist put into the mural in downtown Princeton. And I recognize the good will of all who have contributed to the beautification efforts.
Yet do pictures of machine guns really evoke the images and feelings we want to cultivate in that space?
I suggest that we hire that same artist to paint a second picture. The first picture displays the memories—wounded and honorable memories—that many of our veterans bear from serving as our fingers in the fire. The second picture would be painted as a veil over the first image, and would skillfully incorporate colors and forms from the underlying scene. The theme of the second picture would be Reconcilation.
A high place
Am I the only one who mourns the placement of that cell-phone tower in Princeton?
When I was a kid, the family would return from a drive at night and approach the city from Courthouse Road—and then cresting the hill there was the vista of the sparkling starry lights of Princeton. In my world, it was a City of Light—my own Paris.
Farewell to Appalachia
Last week I moved away. I hope to gain the tools and strength to someday come back and make some serious changes. In the meantime, she will abide in my memory.
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