Listen to Deep in Tradition at 1 pm tomorrow! (oh and this post contains another rant or two)

Once upon a time, about 4 years ago, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. This desire has since faded the way of my desires to become a hairdresser, a justice on the World Court, a veterinarian, and governor of West Virginia. But working for a radio station is pretty fun. Could it be that I am drifting back into the route of communications?

I visited my friend at Berea College this weekend. Berea was modeled after Oberlin (Learning and Labor signs are all over campus), but it is different in many ways, mainly in that students must not only be very smart to go there, but they must also demonstrate financial need. Once they are at Berea, they must not only keep their grades up, but work a job to help pay for their tuition, because Berea is completely FREE. My friend is majoring in an academic field, and also working in Berea's pottery studio. She goes to class, does homework, plays music, hangs out with friends, and throws at the pottery wheel for work almost every day. It is unfortunate that one of the ways Berea is similar to Oberlin is that it is having financial difficulty.

http://www.berea.edu/

I went to a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony at Fleming-Neon Baptist Church today. It was hosted by a community group in Letcher County. It was great to see a bunch of people black and white (because until leaving Letcher County and visiting Berea this weekend, I hadn't seen a single person who was not white in Kentucky) packed into this tiny church to celebrate the day with people sharing their memories, music, and love for one another. It was a bit more church-y than I had expected, but it was a good way to spend the morning and feel like a part of a community.

I have been having trouble sleeping. It isn't like the other times I've had trouble sleeping because of stress, excitement, or over-caffeination. It's because I've been reading and learning about the coal industry and have been so pissed off at coal companies (and Don Blankenship in particular) to get to sleep. The more I learn about MTR, the more it makes me uncomfortable. Not just because of the way it makes the mountains look, the impact it has on the water, the impact it has on the health of the people, or the reduction in jobs that came with the switch from underground mining to surface mining, but also because of the dirty business and legal techniques big coal companies use to steal peoples' land, sneak around the law, keep mines non-union, and disregard their workers' health, safety, families and lives. It's just sad to drive through and see towns that were once obviously very prosperous empty and poverty stricken because of the boom and bust of coal. I'm still not entirely comfortable saying that coal mining is terrible, because it seems like underground mining in the past was much more people-friendly, mainly because it employed more miners, but also because mines weren't all owned by the same mega coal companies (monopolies, anyone? I am not always the best at keeping up with American politics, but I'm pretty sure that the first Roosevelt tried to make some rules so scary companies couldn't dominate the market. But then again, I'm not a historian, politician, or coal miner). Underground mining is pretty dangerous (not that sending your kids to school underneath a sludge pond created because of surface mining isn't dangerous) from what I understand.

I definitely feel more comfortable driving my car, eating red meat, and not recycling than I do supporting Massey Energy. But at the same time, I don't have a solution to the economic gap that coal fills (for the state, but not for the people). It's frustrating to realize that a politician who is anti-coal can basically kiss his/her/hir political career in West Virginia goodbye. Even my beloved Senator Byrd is pro-coal (obviously, or how would he have continued being a successful WV politician for 50+ years?). It's frustrating to see white trucks driving on the interstate with their "Friends of Coal" stickers covered in black dust. I'm not comfortable with the coal industry, that's for sure. But the more I learn and the more I learn to love this area of the country, the more I want the people to be successful and happy. And it seems to me that this can't be possible with coal, or without it. Mineral wealth is a fickle friend.

I'm sorry to rant about the coal industry. I actually wanted to talk about Appalachian culture and the reason Appalachian needs something like Appalshop (here's a hint: it has to do with safe spaces), but I got side-tracked. I will go to the bar tomorrow or do a radio show so I can talk about something else. Listen to Deep In Tradition tomorrow at 1 pm with Rich Kirby and I at http://appalshop.org/wmmt/!