H2O

Day four and counting and 300,000 West Virginians still can't drink, cook with, wash with or shower in their water that was horribly spoiled by a chemical spill. (I talked about all this in a post the other day, go down to read it....) And remember their are only 1.2 million people in WV. So a quarter of the people in the state are water-less....

I also had a post about feeling guilty about being blessed a few weeks ago where I wrote about my dis-ease with the water I waste when many--perhaps most--of the people on the globe don't have unlimited access to clean water. I was writing about the Developing World but now West Virginia seems to be there, which, in a way, it has always been along with Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, South-western Virginia and North-western North Carolina. That is about the limits of what is called Appalachia.

The first argument about Appalachia and all the poor, ignorant, misbegotten mountain people who live there is how to pronounce "Appalachia".

I guarantee you that 99.5% of the people who live there or grew up there pronounce it "Ap-pa-latch-a". But back in the 50's and 60's of the last century when the rest of the country discovered that there was a pocket of poverty in the rural mountains of "Ap-pa-lay-cha", that's how the world came to pronounce it with "lay" instead of "latch" and the accent one syllable too soon.

(Funny thing, even I grew up talking about "the Ap-PA-lay-cha Power company" that serviced vast expanses of "Ap-pa-LATCH-a" because the power company was owned by people in Philadelphia who mispronounced it from the get go....)

I spent a lot of years embarrassed about where I came from, but I got over that three or more decades ago when I decided I was sick and tired of being sick and tired about where I came from....

That's something that distinguishes Appalachia from the North East. When you meet somebody from back there for the first time, your first question to each other is 'where do you come from?' Because poor, ignorant, misbegotten mountain people have a sense of 'place' that borders on genius, you could learn a great deal and have profound insight into a new person just by knowing 'where they came from'. You understood the character and civilization and people of each little hollow and valley. The next question would be 'who are your people?' and the answer to that would reveal volumes....

I'm still not used to the North-East's obsession with asking people, on first meeting 'what do you DO?' It is the distinction I'm fond of making between 'doing' and 'being'. Doing involves us in tasks and career paths and activity. Being is about 'who you are' and 'where you come from' and identity.
What you DO and who you BE are world's apart. I'd rather begin becoming friends with someone's 'identity' than with their 'profession'.

My friend, Jim Lewis, who was Rector of the big, downtown Church in Charleston, WV, once said to me about our mutual acquaintance, Denise Giardina, "Jim, can you believe someone as talented and gifted as Denise grew up in McDowell County?"

Jim Lewis was from Baltimore. Folks in Charleston (the 'city' of West Virginia) were exotic to him, but someone from McDowell County, for God's sake, was downright primitive...

"Jim," I replied, "I grew up 9 miles from Denise. Our parents knew each other."

He looked at me as though I had shown him the crown jewels without him asking. "I can't believe this!" he said, genuinely having trouble computing that he knew two people from Appalachia (which he always said with the accent on PA and a LAY sound) who, of all things, weren't poor, stupid and misbegotten.

Here's the Truth. Those of us growing up there and those who are still there, essentially agree with the assessment that people 'from there' are 'poor, stupid and misbegotten'....That's what we were told by the media and the sociologists and the politicians and since they were the media and the sociologists and the politicians, we believed them.

After all, if smart, urbane, sophisticated folks like all the Ivy League Vista workers thought we were poor, stupid and misbegotten, it must be True.

What you learn being an Appalachian and learn fair well is this: humility.

And that might be the greatest gift being an Appalachian could give. Just maybe.

But will all you people stop ruining our mountains with strip mining and stop poisoning our water with chemicals.

Is that too much to ask?