GIGGLES DECEMBER 8, 2000-SEPTEMBER 12, 2015

THE BEST DOG IN THE WORLD

Today I buried the best dog in the world.  Her name was Giggles and she was a 15 pound miniature Dachshund who had been a member of our family all but six weeks of her long, wonderful, and loving life.  We got her in late 2000 shortly after my wife Candice had progressed into a wheelchair due to a rare, genetic, degenerative disease which had begun in the middle 1990's when she was in her middle 20's. Giggles would have been fifteen if she had lived until December.  Candice had a great deal of depression early in her disease progression.  When we got Giggles, she proceeded to spend the great majority of her life in Candice's lap or walking between the wheels and behind the axle of her wheelchair on their many trips to Old Mill Park in our home town of West Liberty, KY, where they often went to exercise.  Giggles learned very rapidly that the best way to avoid being nipped by the wheelchair wheels required her to stay between the wheels when the chair was in motion.  When Candice would stop rolling, Giggles would come around to the front of the chair, climb on the footplate and then into Candice's lap which was her favorite place in the world.  I have always said that she was the best untrained therapy dog in the world.  I gradually came to simply call her The Best Dog In The World and she was.  She was a bundle of joy and boundless energy.  She went nearly everywhere we did except to work. And we developed a habit, if we were leaving her at home to tell her "we are going to work" no matter where we went.  She traveled a great deal of the Eastern United States with us by car and it never mattered where we were so long as Candice and her wheelchair were there Giggles was absolutely dependable in any situation.  She loved me too and I loved her just as much as Candice did.  But in her heart, Giggles had a seven day a week job taking care of her "Mommy".  But until she got too old to climb up into my pickup, she would meet me at the top of our driveway, if she and Candice were in the yard when I came home.  And then she would climb in the seat with me behind the steering wheel and greet me with a "howl fest" which we both loved to do generally to the accompaniment of my favorite Bluegrass music.  She slept in the bed with us every night and loved to spend long hours in Candice's lap in a recliner under a quilt.  Candice continued to work for ten years in our local food stamp office after she progressed into the chair and Giggles was a major part of that accomplishment.  She was much more than a dog.  She was a family member.  In the fall of 2010, she survived a stroke which temporarily disabled her entire left side and we thought at the onset that she would not survive that event.  So, in reality, we had known for five years that she was on borrowed time.  But we were not anywhere near ready to see her go.  She developed serious intestinal problems late last night and went downhill rapidly.  There is no real late night emergency veterinary services in our area and we were hoping she could hold on until they opened today.  But she deteriorated quickly after 4:30am and died in her "Mommy's" arms at 6am.  We wrapped her in her favorite blanket and chose a spot for her in front of the sidewalk in front of the porch as close to the house as we could keep her.  As I dug her grave with the same old hand tools, I have seen my elderly neighbors use to dig human graves during my childhood, I remembered one man in particular who had no public job, volunteered to help dig every grave within walking distance of his house, and felt very strongly that the last decent thing we can do for anybody is to dig them a perfect grave.  I have seen that man mix small balls of mud to fill tiny holes which fell out of the side walls of a grave in order to ensure that he was paying proper respect to the deceased.  So in memory of that old man and The Best Dog In The World, I tried my best to dig her a perfect grave.  I used my double bit axe to cut the tree roots and throw them out.  I used my spade to smooth the bottom and the sides.  I got down on my knees and laid her gently in it and told her I loved her once last time.  But nothing I have done today, or in the last fourteen plus years can ever properly repay that little dog for everything she has done for me.  And, I will end this piece with a comment I have made about her in a multitude of places for quite a few years: I thought more of that dog than I did many of my relatives.  She was with us for almost fifteen years and never lied to me, stole anything from me, or ever voted Republican.  You can't ask for much more from a dog.  Godspeed, Little Girl!  I love you!  

STRADDLE POLL POLITICS IN APPALACHIA

JUMPING THE FENCE GETS YOU CAUGHT ON THE BARBED WIRE

    When I was growing up in Knott County KY, I was taught on a daily basis that Franklin D. Roosevelt, from whom I had gotten my middle name had, along with Winston Churchill, saved the world and that the best interests of the working class, poor, elderly, infirm, young, disabled, and minorities lay with the Democratic Party.  Later, after I left Knott County for a larger and wider world, I was fortunate enough to meet and be mentored by two other men, Don West and Jim Ferrell, who reinforced the validity of my childhood political learning.  During my youth, I was taught that there is no worse form of vermin in the world than a "straddle poll".  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a straddle poll is a person who regularly switches sides in elections, jumping from party to party and candidate to candidate based on whim and easily shifting winds of purported change.  In my youth, the switches were most often predicated by a flurry of $5 bills and half pints of whiskey passed out within a few days of the election.  In my native Knott County, which had been controlled solidly by Democrats for more than a hundred years, such a switch was predicated by thousands of tons of gravels placed on private driveways and roads which resulted in the winning Republican Judge Executive being sent to the federal penitentiary on election fraud charges.  And actually, that Judge Executive was following in the footsteps of his Democratic predecessor who had already been tried, convicted, and sentenced on similar charges.  Today, I am unable to even find the term straddle poll in my Concise Oxford English Dictionary.  When I look it up on Google, the answer comes back with the second word spelled "pole" and describes an artful move by a nude dancer. In some ways, the two definitions are rooted in similar shenanigans or artful moves under duress.  In addition to attempting to educate potential voters about the inherent fallacies in independent politics, a major objective of this post will be to salvage the expression "straddle poll" from the linguistic scrap heap.  

Today it is not uncommon at all to hear individuals who regularly vote exclaim proudly that they are "an independent and I vote for the candidate and not the party".  More than 200 years of American history have proven this belief to be self defeating and unfounded.  I know of one county in Eastern KY, Magoffin County, where the court house is regularly occupied by a divided corps of elected officials split between the two major parties and generally unable to agree on anything more than the site of the actual court house.  That county has been embroiled in legal disputes over elections for at least five years involving the duly elected County Judge Executive and his narrowly defeated opponent.  The case has wound its way through the KY court system and the appeals process has become both highly personal and unending.  And, whether the voters ever admit it or not,  the turmoil is a direct result of an electorate who are incapable of committing wholeheartedly to either political party for any length of time.  It is a direct result of straddle poll politics in both aforementioned counties.  Additionally, when local jurisdictions, whether they be counties, precincts or cities, become unpredictable in their voting patterns, politicians and leaders in control of both major parties become distrustful of the electorate and are more and more unwilling to take positive actions to support that electorate and provide the communities involved with the services and infrastructure they need.  For many years, Magoffin County KY has been among the highest counties in unemployment in the state in spite of having been crossed by the Mountain Parkway, a major artery for business in and out of Eastern KY.  But business executives are often unwilling to commit large expenditures for long term operations in a county where the leadership of the court house in unlikely to remain in place more than one term.

By contrast, Leslie County KY, about 85 miles to the southeast and located along the Daniel Boone Parkway, has been a solid Civil War Republican County since 1865.  It is impossible for a Democrat to get elected in that county and it served as the site of Former President Richard Nixon's return to public life after his impeachment and resignation primarily because it has been absolutely loyal to Republican causes since long before the current oldest residents were born.  In that kind of safely predictable setting, a former president was willing to step out in public and begin his work to rebuild his legacy as much as possible before his death.  And, while Leslie County KY is not generally wealthy, their economic existence is much more stable and predictable because higher level politicians and business executives know that the county is politically predictable.  \

My own home county, Morgan County Ky, is currently simultaneously working to recover from a major tornado on March 2, 2012, and the necessity for the federal government to prosecute, convict, and imprison County Judge Tim Conley, a Republican who was elected in 2008 after more than a hundred years of highly predictable Democratic results in the county.  The bottom line is that straddle poll politics does not work.  It is not any less distasteful if it is called by the misnomer "independent politics" and it will nearly always result in confusion at the court house, distrust by state and national party leaders due to unpredictability, and will always cost a locality in terms of investments, infrastructure, and political capital in state houses and Washington, DC.  Or as my father taught me, if you keep jumping back and forth across the political fence, sooner or later you will leave the figurative family jewels hanging on the barbed wire. 

ROWAN COUNTY KY, MOREHEAD, AND THE BATTLE FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY

KIM DAVIS AND THE RIGHT WING EFFORT TO SUBVERT THE US CONSTITUTION

On Thursday, September 3, 2015, in Ashland, KY, US Circuit Court Judge David Bunning will conduct a hearing to determine whether Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has committed contempt of court by defying the judge's order that she provide marriage licenses to all applicants in keeping with the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges as well as their decision in late August 2015 to deny Davis' appeal without comment.  Judge Bunning will have the option, if he finds that Davis is in contempt of court, of 1) mandating that the clerk pay hefty fines on a daily basis; 2) ordering that she be jailed until she either resigns from office or decides to comply with the Supreme Court decision; or, 3) a combination of the two previously listed penalties. Most legal experts who have been interviewed in the media have stated they believe the judge will not jail Davis at this hearing but will fine her heavily with a cumulative daily fine and give her one more chance to comply with the law.

It is my opinion that Davis is highly unlikely to comply under the duress of anything less than jail time.  The judge has also ordered all of Davis' deputy clerks to attend the hearing.  Those deputies have also been defying recent court decisions and orders but the common assumption is that their defiance is motivated by the need to obey Davis in order to keep their state jobs.  But it is my opinion that they will be likely to be fined individually at this first hearing.  I also tend to believe they will be polled by the judge as to their individual beliefs about the ongoing events and given the option of offering to issue marriage licenses.

Davis has consistently stated that her defiance is based on her "deeply held religious beliefs" about the sanctity of marriage.  Davis reports that she is a member of the Solid Rock Apostolic Church, an unaffiliated Holiness church at Farmers, KY.  But it has also been common knowledge in Eastern KY and Morehead for several years that Davis has been married four times, divorced three times, and has actually married her current husband twice.  There are also media reports that the record proves that Davis conceived a set of twins with her eventual third husband while married to her first.  These reports also state that when Davis divorced that first husband she married a second who adopted those children conceived with the yet to be married third husband.  Davis is then reported to have been divorced again before eventually marrying the biological father of her children as her third husband.  Quite frankly all this marriage record serves to do is remind me of the old baseball comment that "you have to have a scorecard to know who is in the game".  It is also clearly reason to question any of Davis' stated respect for the sanctity of marriage and perhaps even common decency.

At this point, it is appropriate that I state for the record that I am a 64 year old married heterosexual male who graduated from Morehead State University in2000 as a non-traditional student in my late 40's.  I completed every course for my bachelor's degree on the main campus in Morehead.  I also completed the university's Academic Honors Program and graduated as the Outstanding Student in the Social Work Department and served one year as President of the Non-Traditional Students Organization.  Let it be clearly understand that I know Morehead, KY, quite well and I deeply committed to the long term welfare of the community and all its citizens.  It is also pertinent to say that I was raised in the Old Regular Baptist Church, one of the most conservative forms of Baptist theology.  As a part of my academic and literary work, I have also studied Appalachian serpent handlers extensively for a pending book.  I also maintain ongoing friendships and business relationships with both Mennonite and Amish church members in both KY and IN.  I also believe it should be clearly understood that I am qualified to discuss minority religious beliefs in the Appalachian region.  I gradually came to support the right of all citizens to marry despite the fact that I have had GLBT friends since the 1960's.  As I have watched the Kim Davis story unfold and become a stain on the city of Morehead and Rowan County, I have been appalled at her total disregard for law and the US Supreme Court.  It is my sincere belief that this fiasco has the capacity to serve as a long term negative influence on the community.

I am uncertain about the actual internal motivations of Davis but I doubt the sincerity of her stated support for "the sanctity of marriage".  It is clear to me that she unfit to serve in elective office and deserves jail time until she either resigns from office or agrees to do her job, her entire job, and to issue marriage licenses to any couples who apply just as 117 of the 120 clerks in KY have been doing since the day after the Supreme Court decided the issue.  No person's individual rights can ever be allowed to infringe on the majority and Davis has clearly, singularly, and blatantly attempted to defy the highest court in the land.  She should be jailed immediately.  She should also receive a heavy, daily, cumulative fine.  She should be forced to leave office and this stain should be wiped clear from the image of the greater community.

In general, Morehead has always been one of the more tolerant and forward thinking communities in KY and Appalachia.  It has always benefited from being a university town with a high percentage of educated residents.  Morehead deserves to have its reputation restored.  There is no doubt that the courts will continue to uphold the right of every citizen to marry.  There is no doubt that eventually Kim Davis will leave public office and a generalized sigh of relief will be heard all over KY.  But I envision a time when Morehead, KY, can actually benefit from all this uproar by becoming a destination for same sex couples to come in order to be married.  On September 2, 2015, at least one out of state gay couple came to Morehead to apply for a marriage license.  If the community if relieved of the blight of Kim Davis and embraces the rights of all citizens as it always has, a time can come when Kim Davis is nothing more than a mildly embarrassing memory.  Now lets all just hope that Judge David Bunning once again performs his duty and sends Kim Davis to jail in order afford her some time to think. 

Ruminations On 2014 In Appalachia And America

For a variety of reasons, I have not written anything of consequence in the last several months but I have maintained my usually close observation of a variety of issues both in Appalachia and America at large.  I have to admit that I was caught up in political observation for most of the past year or so and I have been generally disappointed by the results of the elections I have watched.  The Republican Party has managed to gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928 and we all know what the outcome of that was.  John Boehner has been re-elected as the Apeaker of the House and Mitch McConnell of KY has been elected Senate Majority Leader.  I had strongly supported the election of Alison Lundergan Grimes to the senate from KY and was sorely disappointed by her loss to McConnell.  The one bright side to that is that she has lost none of her appeal in KY and could still be senator or governor.  Along with the re-election of most of the Republicans in both houses of congress, they gained several seats in both houses and their new members in the lower body particularly are of a Right Wing Radical persuasion which is terrifying.  They have also appointed Rep. Scalise from Louisiana as the House Republican Whip despite clear evidence of his connections to several white supremacist organizations including one headed by former Grand Dragon of the KKK David Duke.  In response to some rather vociferous reactions to the appointment of Scalise, Duke has threatened to out every member of congress to whom he has connections and he claims to have many.  My personal response to that is to say "Let her rip, David!"  In the event that he did release a list of names, it would give liberal and middle of the road Americans a clear group of elected officials with whom to be displeased and to resist in future elections.  I doubt that he will release the list of names since he knows that could trigger more than one defeat in the future and weaken whatever connections he still has to Washington power.  

In my own KY, Senator Rand Paul is making more and more noise that he intends to run for President and is actually being perceived by a certain segment of the electorate as a legitimate candidate.  That assessment of the man could not be further from the truth.  He is a true Right Wing Radical Republican with ties to the Tea Party and generally does not represent the views of most of Kentuckians or Americans.  He also has more than one distasteful, illegal, immoral, or disqualifying incident or expressed belief in his past.  As an eye doctor in Western KY he has been sued for malpractice at least twice and created his own accreditation body when he was unable to qualify for accreditation.  There is also the prior allegation of his involvement in an alleged sexual assault while in college.  But the alleged victim in that incident suddenly dropped off the media radar after making serious allegations.  However, she never withdrew those allegations and that seems to raise two possibilities for her silence.  Either she was actually lying or she was either coerced or bribed to get her to shut up.  Senator Paul is also planning to try to run for both President and Senator in a violation of the KY constitution which blocks anyone from running for more than one public office at the same time.  Alison Lundergan Grimes, the KY Secretary of State, is responsible for overseeing the election process in the state and has said she will sue Paul in federal court if he attempts to register for both offices.  In the event that this issue does arise in the coming months, Secretary Grimes deserves the support of every rational voter in the state in her efforts to stop Senator Paul.  I hope to write further on the possibility of Rand Paul as a Presidential candidate in the future  but I need to do more research on one particular aspect of that idea, his close ideological resemblance to former Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, the godfather of the Anti-Communist crusades in the 1950s which literally destroyed the lives of thousands of good, decent Americans who were not remotely communists and done absolutely nothing wrong.  

And, in that vein, I have personally never been more fearful about the state of American Democracy than I am today.  Even in the 1960's & 1970's with Richard Nixon in power and great crimes being committed against personal liberties, I was not as fearful of potential outcomes as I am today after this most recent election.  In the Viet Nam Era, both houses of Congress were still occupied by a group of honest, decent, law abiding citizens of both political parties  such as Senator Sam Irvine, Senator Barry Goldwater, Senator Everett Dirkson and others who would not have joined an illegal conspiracy in order to gain their political ends.  Today, with the current congress, I cannot make that statement.  Senator Paul himself has been heard to say that he believes that lying is a legitimate means to gain political ends.  West Virginia has elected Senator Shirley Moore Capito whose father served prison time due to political corruption as Governor of West Virginia.  Whip Scalise has connections to the KKK.  And the list goes on.  

Additionally, the Citizens United decision from the U. S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a great deal of what happened in this most recent election.  The entire idea that a corporation can make unlimited contributions to political races and be viewed by the courts as a "person" is a giant step toward the destruction of the concept of "one citizen one vote".  This problem was further exacerbated by the fact that less than 40% of eligible voters actually went to the polls in 2014, I have recently begun to repeat a mantra whose source I have been unable to clearly identify that "bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote".   Corporations and the super rich will always speak up and spend money to protect their vested interests.  Single anonymous citizens, especially if they are poor, will frequently if not generally, fail to speak up for their rights and needs due to the need to find daily subsistence.  Poverty makes us involuntarily prioritize our actions in ways that do not support our own best interests.  And many of the already stated goals of the Republican majorities in congress are geared to increase the ever expanding wealth gap among Americans by privatizing Social Security; destroying Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care; continuing high interest rates and instituting higher qualifications for student loans; continuing to refuse to tax corporations and the rich at rates equal to those imposed on the working class; decreasing VA loans and other VA benefits; eliminating funding for National Public Radio; and a thousand other unstated programs in government are in danger from this congress.  

To repeat myself, I have never felt that American Democracy was more endangered than it is today. 

THE MUSIC OF THE GREAT MIGRATION

LORD, I'm 500 miles away from home!

Following the end of World War II hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and military support people returned home with no clear plan of employment and not a lot of jobs available.  This was especially true in the Appalachian South.  This precipitated one of the largest human migrations in the history of the United States.  Thousands upon thousands of native Appalachians left Central and Southern Appalachia to go to the industrial Midwest and north.  Many of them, along with their descendants,  still remain there today.  In many ways, both subtle and obvious, they changed the history, culture, and sociology of the regions to which they moved.  I have mentioned in other posts that they brought their churches, foods, habits, music, and arts with them and transplanted those elements along with themselves into the sometimes resistant soil of their new homeland.  I have also written one post about Dead Baby Music, A Subgenre Of Bluegrass and, in part, that music is also the music of a displaced people.  I also wrote a post about visiting my own relatives in Kendallville, IN, a town which was forever changed by this migration.  That post can be found at  Visiting The Urban Appalachians . 

In the area of their music, they made an impression not just on the area in which they were living but on the entire country.  This was especially true of country music, bluegrass, and to a a lesser degree, jazz and blues.  Just as the book "The Dollmaker" became a part of American literature, the music of these transplanted Southern Appalachians became an integral part of American music.  Songs such as "Detroit City", "South of Cincinnati", "Times Is Gettin' Harder", and even Johnny Cash's "One Piece At A Time" were the music of a displaced people working in America's factories to make the products of a country.  

Just as "The Dollmaker" was the story of a people living a life they disliked in a place they had no desire to come to love, songs like these were the musical tears of a people who had come to a cold, distant, and different land in order to make their way.  And in spite of how much they may have disliked the lives they were leading, they came to many forms of success just as Joseph did in Egypt.  The musical structure of these works held diligently to the music of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and the rest of the Appalachian Mountains.  Their lyrics were the wails of displaced people who longed to see the hills of home.  And, without belaboring this aspect of it, this music was a manifestation of the Appalachian Value Love of Place about which I have written so much.  

These songs told stories about the lives of displaced people in very many ways.  The absolute classic among them is Bobby Bare's "500 Miles Away From Home"  part of the lyrics of which state: "well I didn't have to pack.  I had it all right on my back.  Well, I'm 500 miles away from home."  That is a typical story of thousands of native Appalachians who mustered out of the military or simply graduated from high school and immediately left for what my high school sociology teacher Wallace Niece used to call "Dayton, Detroit, Middletown, and all points north."  They found a town with jobs, sometimes with the assistance of a relative who had gone on ahead and already had work.  They took what little money they had and began walking from door to door, factory to factory seeking work until some hiring agent who knew the traits of this group of people hired them.  Then they went to work and soon bought a car, a house, and sometimes became trapped by their possessions and related debts.  But life didn't always go well and sometimes they found themselves doing without, drawing unemployment, and unable to return home if they wanted to.  The Bobby Bare lyrics go on to say: "I know this is the same road I took the day I left home.  But it sure looks different now.  And I guess  I look different too cause time changes everything.  I wonder what they'll say when they see their boy looking this bad."  And in situations like that, many of them never even made the attempt to go back home.  

My bluegrass song writing friend Clarence Kelly told this part of the story in a way that is rarely equaled in country or bluegrass  with his classic song "South of Cincinnati".  It is a love story gone wrong but that love story involves both a couple and the love of the mountains.  The song is about a man who left Harlan County Kentucky to go to Chicago to work after telling the woman he loves he will be back someday.  But he never comes back and eventually dies in a "cheap cow city motel" and the last stanza finds "a slow train headed south through Cincinnati" carrying him back to the hills of Harlan.  

And, of course, not everything went well for these people just as it did not go well for Gertie Nevels in "The Dollmaker".  She lost a child.  These displaced Appalachians lost children, divorced, became unemployed, drank too much whiskey, and lost their way at times.  And to the good fortune of the rest of us, they often put those losses into lyrics and music.  One of the most poignant and powerful of these songs is "The Rolling Mills Of Middletown" by Tom T. Hall, perhaps the greatest of the Appalachian lyricists.  In this story, his protagonist marries the wrong woman, moves to Middletown Ohio and goes to work in a steel mill where the "rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll on, roll on".  As the story progresses, the man is sent home from work early one night but decides to stop for "a good cold beer at a little bar.  His woman and some day turn guy were dancing closely there."  And the man simply turns and walks away to end the story in a bone chilling manner which is Tom T. Hall at his best.  

"Some say they saw him near the tracks at furnace number one with heat so hot the hubs of hell would seem just barely warm.  Well they never saw my friend again. Did he do something wrong?  The rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll on, roll on."

Not all of these stories of displacement and relocation ended in such a strongly negative manner.  Many thousands of these people succeeded admirably and went on to wealth and fame.  And the combination of success and failures; births and deaths; marriages, divorces, and wedded bliss led to the creation of some of the best music in American country, bluegrass, jazz, and blues.  The people of Appalachia who had gone north to attempt to make their individual marks on the towns they found collectively left a far greater mark on the music of the common people of the entire country. 

Reflections On The Death Of Pete Seeger

If I Had A Hammer, I'd Hammer In The Morning

 

 

Pete Seeger, a genuine America hero, is dead.  I never knew Pete Seeger but we had one friend in common, the Appalachian poet and social activist Don West.  Pete Seeger and Don West had a great deal in common.  Both were hauled in front of the Senate Un-American Activities Committee which was chaired by Wisconsin's right wing radical Senator Joseph McCarthy.  Both Pete Seeger and Don West stood up to Senator McCarthy and his right wing minions with unflinching persistence and refused to be cowed by a classic example of a small minded, black hearted, egocentric man who had managed to accumulate far more power than he was capable of handling in a responsible manner.   Both Pete Seeger and Don West walked out of the McCarthy Hearings with new, ironclad determination to exercise their right to free speech and to dedicate their lives anew to the causes of the poor, minorities, elderly, infirm, and the working class.  Both men faced persistent problems throughout the rest of their lives due to this work for good, right, just causes.  They were frequently defamed, belittled, and pilloried by the forces in America which have always fought to prevent just causes from being successful.  But neither of them ever gave up on the fight and went to their graves after speaking about injustices as long as it was physically possible for them to do so. 

Pete Seeger was a shining example of a public figure who knew how to use his fame to help others.  He spoke out in songs, speeches, and written prose on nearly a daily basis for more than seventy years.  Since his death, I have read quotes from him as recently as 2011 in which he was still seeking to right wrongs, repair injustices, and change the world for the better.  Don West did the same until his death at age 86 in 1992. I was also lucky enough to meet two others who were interrogated and  pilloried by the McCarthy Committee, Florence and Sam Reese, and to spend one day in their company in November 1974 at a workshop at the Highlander Center in New Market, TN, which was co-founded by Don West.  Sam Reese was a union member and organizer during the UMWA strikes in Harlan County Kentucky during the 1920's and his wife Florence was a songwriter and singer who wrote the classic union song, "Which Side Are You On", during those union efforts.  Just like Pete Seeger and Don West, Florence and Sam Reese never stopped speaking out against injustice and working to right wrongs and improve living conditions for the working class, the poor, minorities, ill, and elderly.  They also travelled the country as long as it was physically possible for them to do so and Sam  Reese was actually in poor health when I met the Reese's but he was still working and speaking out to the best of his ability to do so. 

I have learned a great deal from knowing Don West, knowing the work of Pete Seeger, and learning for one day at the feet of Florence and Sam Reese.  The most important thing I learned from them all was that freedom of speech is a sacred right given to us by the founding fathers and should never be abridged or endangered and should also be exercised at every opportunity especially in the presence of those like Senator Joseph McCarthy who would seek to impair, endanger, or infringe upon it.  I learned that there will always be people like Joseph McCarthy who are willing to ignore and even run roughshod over the constitution in order to promote their own interests and opinions.  I also learned that speaking out in support of the best interests of the poor, minorities, elderly, infirm, and working class can be an expensive and painful habit.  But I also learned that there must be those of us who are persistently and unceasingly willing to speak out and to suffer whatever consequences might occur in order to promote the truth, to fight injustices, and to seek to make the world a better place for all who live in it no matter how vocal, venomous, or virulent the opposition may become. 

It is particularly interesting that Pete Seeger died in these current times when a particularly vocal, venomous, and virulent group of people have risen to some serious levels of power in this country and are totally devoted to destroying the rights and lives of those less fortunate than themselves.  A Right Wing Radical Fringe of the Republican Party is once again holding sway with millions of attentive listeners and they are working to impair voting rights; destroy trade unionism;  reverse important gains such as minimum wage, overtime pay, health care reform, gay marriage, and women's rights.   This group is led by several members of congress including, but not limited to, Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, Representative Paul Ryan, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and a handful of other slightly less vocal and virulent public figures.  These are particularly dangerous people and these are the most dangerous times for human rights and free speech in America since the McCarthy Era.  This group of public figures have managed to gain the support of several hundred thousand to a few million Americans and to promote a number of various assaults on voting rights, free speech, universal religious freedom, health care accessibility, and a plethora of lesser social contracts which have been forged by voters and workers over the last 50 to 100 years. 

There has never been a more important time for socially responsible individuals to stand up, speak out, and work to promote the best interests of all Americans.  I ask each of you who reads this piece to spend some time in reading, study, and observation in order to prepare yourselves to support the common good just as Thomas Paine and the founding fathers did.  Work to develop the unceasing and unflinching fearlessness Pete Seeger and the others I have mentioned developed in the face of Joseph McCarthy.  Stand up, speak out, and never cease to do so until the day they bury you just as Pete Seeger, Don West, Florence Reese, and Sam Reese did.  

101.1FM, WSGS Radio, My Favorite Places In Appalachia

THE BEST RADIO STATION IN APPALACHIA

 

 

I have mentioned in other posts once or twice the fact that I grew up listening to radio on a couple of stations in Eastern Kentucky.  But the station I have mentioned most frequently and the one I consider to be the best radio station in Appalachia is WSGS FM 101.1 in Hazard, KY.  Their excellent website can be found at WSGS Radio . The station was one of the first to be licensed in Eastern Kentucky and one of the first 100,000 watt stations in the area also.  At the time, Hazard was a small town and waiting for the coal boom which made it famous.  Earnest Sparkman, a native of Knott County and a former University of Kentucky basketball player, along with a couple of partners obtained a license and opened the station.  Over the course of time, Earnest Sparkman managed to buy out all his partners and his descendants still operate the station today.  They play an eclectic mix of country, bluegrass, mountain music, and a bit of other genres sometimes accidentally and sometime on purpose.  They are available over the Internet and have a loyal following of former Eastern Kentucky people all over the world.  Their website is also very well managed and takes a strong interest in history, both their own and that of the local area. 

 

WSGS is exactly what a small town radio station should be and yet, with 100,000 watts of power and a broadcast tower located on one of the highest mountains in Kentucky, they boom their signal out over portions of five or more states.  You can listen to them all the way from Southern West Virginia to Western Kentucky and from Southern Ohio to Western North Carolina and a large chunk of East Tennessee.  They still run a local advertising base with most advertisers being businesses located in Perry County and the surrounding counties.  They run one of the best bluegrass and classic country formats in the entire southeast and regularly play songs from the early days of radio.  They also have recently resurrected their swap shop show which had been off the air for several years.  They broadcast University of Kentucky men's basketball and a plethora of local and regional high school games.  They are also one of the longest running broadcasters of the Kentucky Sweet Sixteen Boy's Basketball Tournament in the entire state. 

 

But the best, most unique, and most entertaining part of their regular broadcast schedule is known as The Faron And Scott Show, a wide ranging, free wheeling half hour of conversation, country music, telephone requests and bizarre slices of life which comes on each weekday morning at 9:35am.  The show is run by the station manager, Faron Sparkman, and a regular member of the broadcast crew, Scott Napier.  It is the continuation of what began as The Faron And Bob Show or The Excellent Adventure.  The show was renamed after the death of long time station engineer, Bob Hale, who passed away in his early 60's on the 60th anniversary of the station after having been the man who held equipment together and cohosting the show for many years.  The Faron And Scott Show is very difficult to describe but it is a throwback to all the little radio stations in the southeastern United States when new station owners and broadcasters were first trying to find out exactly what that new fangled thing radio was all about.  They allow call-ins and have a regular cast of callers from around the area who might call to talk about anything from the death of Ray Price to the ongoing effort to catch an irritating rooster running loose in the city limits of Hazard. One of the best aspects of those call-ins over the last several years has been regular calls from Colonel Hugh X. Lewis, born as Hubert Bradley Lewis in Yeadis, Kentucky, who rose to stardom in the world of country music and died in on December 29, 2020, only four days after his 90th birthday.  Hugh X. Lewis was just one of the more than 400,000 innocent victims of the Covid 19 Pandemic which did not have to happen if the White House had done anything about it after having been told the pandemic was coming in January 2020.  One of the more hilarious recent call in requests was for the country classic song "Make The World Go Away" by Eddy Arnold for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in light of his recent political fiasco with the lane closure on the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  The show begins with a minute or so blend of short sound clips gleaned from radio, television, old commercials, and news shows that will initially make no sense whatsoever to the new listener.  I am certain that nearly every weekday at least one or two people driving through the area hear the beginning of the show and believe they have wandered into the Twilight Zone and rapidly choose to miss out on one of the most unique and interesting radio shows in America today.  But for the thousands of regular listeners and hundreds of regular callers, the show is a mandatory part of daily life in Appalachia.  The show might feature an interview with a new performer or band who are on the road promoting a new release or  a tribute to some radio legend who has passed away recently.  The unlimited surprises of life on the radio are what make the show well worth your time. 

Over the 65 years that WSGS has been in operation, they have survived floods, a major fire, and the onslaught of canned radio on satellite.  Their listeners are loyal and never desert the station.  The management also has managed to preserve thousands of hours of priceless tape including founder Earnest Sparkman broadcasting from the scene of the Floyd County School Bus Wreck; live music performances by The Singing Miner, a pro-union disc jockey and former coal miner; sports broadcasts by famed basketball announcer Cawood Ledford; and hours and hours of Earnest Sparkan playing Santa Claus and a character known as Greasy Creek Bill who still delivers taped one liners on the station long after the death of his creator.

WSGS is a throwback to radio as it used to be and a harbinger of what radio could be if station owners had more in mind than just selling advertisements and pleasing whatever statistical slice of the community which spends the most money.  It is a place where a poor, isolated, Appalachian of little or no means can feel comfortable calling in to share human contact with a disc jockey who will provide that contact with respect, humor, and appreciation.  WSGS is well worth spending some of your time either driving in your car, or listening on the internet in order to enjoy a slice of life in the Appalachia of both today and yesterday.  It is one of my favorite places in Appalachia.