Christmas In The Head Of The Holler

 

 

Christmas In The Head Of The Holler

We live here in the head of the holler.

Whole family’s down to one last dollar.

December is here. So is the cold.

We are lost without any gold.

 

You other folks wait on Old Saint Nick

But here in the holler we think it’s a trick.

He hasn’t been here in about ten years

Never brought us anything to dry our tears.

 

We keep eating leftover pinto beans

Wearing more holes in the holes in our jeans.

We just need flour, milk, and lard.

Life in the holler’s never been this hard.

 

The children are crying with little hard squalls

Sleeping four to a bed curled up in balls

We eat anything that crosses the yard

Life in the holler’s never been this hard.

 

Some people call this house a shack

No windows in front, no door in the back.

Children run out, chickens run in,

If we catch them they never run again.

 

We remember the year we all got gifts

New pants for Pappy and Granny got new shifts.

Daddy got a pocket knife. Mommy got a skillet.

Brother got a goat and we had to kill it. 

 

We remember that year we had plenty to eat

Shirts on our backs and shoes on our feet.

That year we had more than we needed.

The house got paint, the garden got seeded.

 

Since then it’s been all downhill

Nothing to eat, no hog to kill,

Nothing to spend on the food stamp card.

Life in the holler’s never been this hard.

 

You other folks wait on Old Saint Nick.

Here in the holler we know it’s a trick.

We just need flour, milk, and lard.

Life in the holler’s never been this hard.

Copyright by Roger D. Hicks, December 21, 2020

 

 

"Don't Cry For Us J. D. Vance" An Online Poetry Reading And Discussion Of Life in Appalachia

 The link immediately below will take you to the poetry reading in the title.  It is well worth your time and effort.  

 https://uacvoice.org/dont-cry-for-us-j-d-vance-a-reading-by-ohio-appalachian-authors/

On December 3, 2020, at 7pm, former Cincinnati Poet Laureate Pauletta Hansel headlined and moderated a group poetry reading on Facebook which was cosponsored by the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, Downbound Books, and West Virginia University Press.  The event featured readings by Hansel, Gregory Kornbluh of Downbound Books (co-host), Pauletta Hansel of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition (co-host and author), and Omope Carter Daboiku, Kari Gunter Seymour, Richard Hague, Michael Henson, Michael Maloney, Dale Marie Prenatt, Bonnie Proudfoot and Sherry Cook Stanforth (authors).  Each of the authors read at least one of their works and a few read more of their writing.  The title of the event, "Don't Cry For Us J. D. Vance", should be self explanatory for anyone with a solid awareness of current issues related to Appalachia and the Appalachian Studies movement.  I have added my own opinion of Vance and his scurrilous work at these two links.  In addition to taking the time to watch the recorded version of the Cincinatti reading by the authors above, I would suggest to everyone that you also read the books "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds To Hillbilly Elegy", "The United States of Appalachia" by Jeff Biggers, and "Appalachian Values" by Loyal Jones which I consider to be the most important book for any person to read who hopes to come to understand Appalachia and Appalachian Culture.  In fact, "Appalachian Values" is the first book I ever recommend to anyone who knows little about Appalachia and expresses a desire to understand our homeland and our culture.  

My wife Candice and I watched the reading we are discussing here in its live version and enjoyed it greatly.  Dale Marie Prenatt read her powerful poem about Buffalo Creek in Logan County West Virginia which is her childhood home and the destruction of the communities there by a coal company generated flood was actually experienced by her mother, Gail Amburgy, her maternal grandparents, and most of her maternal extended family.  It is one of my personal favorites from the reading and, in some ways it is personal to me also, since I worked on Buffalo Creek a great deal as a traveling salesman a few years after the disaster and met many of the survivors during that time.  My other personal favorite from the reading was the work of Omope Carter Daboiku, an African American poet originally from the Ironton, Ohio, area.  She is a refreshing and powerful voice of those African American natives of Appalachia who sometimes refer to themselves as Afrilachians although I do not know that Ms. Daboiku takes that position since we have never met or conversed by any means electronic or otherwise.  But based on hearing her read a couple of her highly artistic and expressive poems, I can assure you that I will learn more about her and her work.  

Please consider following the link above to the recorded version of the reading and partake of the entire presentation.  You will find it well worth the time.  

The 78 Most Dangerous Days In America...

 

The full title to this blog post is actuallyThe 78 Most Dangerous Days In American History Since Pearl Harbor and we are currently in the middle of those 78 days which means that I should have posted this piece on November 4, 2020, as soon it was apparent to all rational Americans that Joe Biden was the winner of the election held the day before.  I had actually been predicting the serious levels of danger to America which would arise after a Biden win as early as July or August in 2020 as soon as the majority of polls began to show that Joe Biden was amassing an insurmountable lead in public opinion.  To anyone with any level of psychological or psychiatric training, it has always been apparent that TRAITOR Trump was a very dangerous, criminal, and totally self-serving person.  So the question for those of us with such knowledge immediately became how will this man who is a malignant narcissist at best and an antisocial personality disordered individual at worst respond to the loss of the power which he had gained by virtue of his TREASON with Russia and Vladimir Putin.  It has always been readily apparent to all such trained people that TRAITOR Trump would respond as he always does to differences of opinion with his own mistaken beliefs that he would become increasingly more dangerous, more unhinged, and begin a steadily escalating series of attacks on anyone he believed had been responsible for his defeat and on America, American Democracy, and the entire free world as he draws nearer and nearer to the day on January 20, 2021, when he will be removed from the scene of his four year crime spree and be in imminent danger of federal prosecution for those crimes up to and including TREASON with Russia and Vladimir Putin.  

 

 

On a daily basis since November 3, 2020, we have seen TRAITOR Trump commit a series of steadily worsening acts against all the targets of his self-serving and virulent ire.  He has steadily refused to acknowledge his defeat, refused to concede the election (actually his second lost election),  daily used his favorite tool of stochastic terrorism to further incite the menagerie of Right Wing Radicals who blindly support him, attacked state officials in every state which Joe Biden won, and induced his lawyers to file a long string of unjustified and unsuccessful law suits against those states and those officials.  He has also issued a steady stream of highly questionable and likely unconstitutional executive orders to alter and damage the American government, encouraged the head of the General Services Administration who is known to be one of his loyal minions, to refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden as the president elect and to give him and his incoming administration access to the federal government, fired numerous federal officials who would not blindly support his fantasy that he had actually won an American election, and ceased to do anything except play golf at government expense and work to support his effort to cling to the power which he and Vladimir Putin stole four years ago.  

 

 

As I said above, as much as five or six months ago, I began to predict a series of dangerous actions I could foresee TRAITOR Trump taking after he was defeated in an American election for the second time.  That list of potential threats to America included 1) a long series of highly questionable and likely unconstitutional executive orders which we have been seeing carried out; 2) a series of pardons of his key conspirators which has begun with the pardon of Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn who is one of the direct connections between TRAITOR Trump and Vladimir Putin, the discussion of an attempt to even pardon his children and himself, and discussion of possible pardons for several more of his co-conspirators; 3) further stochastic terrorism and incitement of the Radical Right which he has been doing on a daily basis since November 3,2020; 4) further efforts to destroy the government and weaken various agencies whose missions are in conflict with his criminal interests and this has been occurring with the firing of several federal employees who have disagreed with TRAITOR Trump and this has resulted in the firing of the head of election security who refused to support his claims of election fraud; 5) further looting of the federal treasury which we cannot prove has been ongoing until Joe Biden is actually inaugurated and investigations of TRAITOR Trump's crimes can begin.  Nearly all of these crimes which I foresaw are happening on a daily basis since the election on November 3, 2020, and they will continue and actually escalate until the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.  These are the 78 most dangerous days in American History since Pearl Harbor and, at this point, we have no idea how much further damage will be done between now and inauguration day. 

 

 

If all this disaster should end today, this country will still suffer from the TREASON of TRAITOR Trump for decades to come.  The damage to the federal judiciary, especially the US Supreme Court, will last for as much as a half century based on the age of the appointees TRAITOR Trump and his co-conspirators have been able to place in judicial positions.  Numerous federal agencies such as the State Department have been deeply damaged with an exodus of experienced employees and the unwarranted firings of others.  We cannot rule out the possibility that TRAITOR Trump can still manage to start an unjustified war somewhere in the world, most likely against Iran.  We cannot rule rule out further outright TREASON with Vladimir Putin and Russia including the passing on of voluminous state secrets, identities of American intelligence agents and non-citizen intelligence assets around the world which could result in the deaths and neutralization of numerous agents, double agents, and cooperationg foreign citizens.   We cannot bet that America will ever be safe again because for four years we have allowed a Russian Agent and American TRAITOR to claim to be the President of The United States. 

"Hillbilly" Is A Cultural And Ethnic Epithet

 I suppose that with a title like the one above the first thing I should do is give you a definition for the word "epithet".  The website dictionary.com gives this definition of "epithet" which I believe is the most appropriate for our purposes here: "a word, phrase, or expression used invectively as a term of abuse or contempt, to express hostility, etc." And, as bad as I hate to have to, I suspect I should also give a definition for the word "invective".  The website dictionary.com gives this definition of "invective": vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach;  a railing accusation; vituperation; an insulting or abusive word or expression."  While it might still be fairly common for natives of Central and Southern Appalachia as well as the Ozark Region to sometimes use the term "hillbilly" about themselves, it is also generally understood that the use of the word of the word to refer to such residents will usually result in its being interpreted as being insulting, abusive, a reproach, a censure, or an accusation. Other cultural, ethnic, or racial epithets are also sometimes used by members of the groups they denigrate and defame but, just like "hillbilly", those words are rarely accepted by members of those groups when use by outsiders and they should never be accepted or even used by members of those groups.  In my mind, the word "hillbilly" is no different from, just as defamatory, and just as damaging as any of those other words: the "k" word, the "q" word, the "n"word, the "f" word, or the "c" word.  These words all fall within a class of language which should never be used any more than the more common, but less defamatory, curse words should be used.  Being a member of the particular group in question does not make it any more acceptable for you to use those words than it does for a stranger.  

I have recently located a nineteen year old doctoral dissertation from Lousiana State University by Dr. Laura Grace Patillo entitled Appalachia on Stage: the *Southern Mountaineer in American Drama which due to its length (379 pages) I have not completed.  But the dissertation is intriguing for its content and intention to address the "scripting of America's hillbilly other" as well as for its dedication to "a strong Appalachian woman of faith, patience, and wisdom".  I firmly believe that if more native Appalachians such as Dr. Patillo, myself, and the mentors who taught us to seek positive self image instead of accepting cultural epithets and assumptions about us all natives of Central and Southern Appalachia would have benefited both directly and indirectly.  Without having ever known Dr. Patillo or her work, it is obvious to me that she was raised and mentored by the kind of Appalachian people who sought to emulate our strong, ambitious, and self-sufficient forbears and to pass those qualities on to every person they met in some direct or indirect fashion.  

I have also been able to locate a second refreshingly positively entitled doctoral dissertation by Dr. Casey R. White at South Dakota State University which states its intentions in the title:  "REDNECKS AND HILLBILLIES: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIDE AND HIGH SELF-ESTEEM EXHIBITED BY SOUTHERN CHARACTERS".   Its stated intent to examine the "construction of pride and self-esteem exhibited by southern characters" is exactly what I hoped to engender with this blog post.  I hope to be able to read both these dissertations fully and to report on them succinctly in later blog posts.  

I have also frequently directed others interested in the public image of native Appalachians to watch the AppalShop movie "Strangers And Kin: A History Of The Hillbilly Image".  It is an excellent and timeless examination of the creation and proliferation of the negative image of Appalachian people as "hillbillies".  In a sidelight to this discussion, I am also reminded of a former supervisor I worked under as a mental health therapist in a juvenile treatment facility.  This person was a native of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and I will never forget the conversation in which he informed that he did not believe that there was such a thing as an Appalachian Culture.  When we consider the Appalachian Culture in the light of the commonly recognized elements of culture, it is strikingly clear that few cultures anywhere more clearly meet those elements.  Religion, Art, Politics, Language, Economy, Customs, Society, and Geography are listed among those key factors in culture on the website Quizlet.  As we examine each of those listed elements we learn that religion in Appalachia is strikingly unique with Old Regular Baptists, Freewill Baptists, Holiness, Primitive Baptists, and Serpent Handlers all being key segments of religion in Appalachia.  Appalachia is also the home of a truly unique group of folk artists including Edgar and Donny Tolson, Minnie Adkins, and Tim Lewis.  The language of Appalachia is also incredibly unique and traces its roots directly to the British Isles of the 15th and 16th centuries.  

If you are a native Appalachian, be proud of your heritage.  Do not allow anyone to denigrate, defame, or demoralize you because you are Appalachian.  Speak out both verbally and in writing in defense of the Appalachian Culture and history.  

 

J. D. Vance, "Hillbilly Elegy", And The Defamation Of Appalachian Character

 Let me say unequivocally that the fact that I chose to read this book and write about it on this blog should never be considered a recommendation that anyone read the book, watch the movie, or waste your time, money, and mind on such efforts. 

Several years ago when I wrote the blog post at this link, I sincerely hoped that it would never again be necessary to write another word about J. D. Vance, his horrible and horribly ignorant book "Hillbilly Elegy", or his defamation of the character of every native of Central and Southern Appalachia who ever lived.  But now, after  the release on November 11, 2020, of Ron Howard's movie version of the Vance diatribe, I find myself once again wasting my time writing about J. D. Vance and his stupid but popular attacks on Appalachia and Appalachians in general.  Just as happened with the book, reviews of the movie are nearly universally negative.  And, just as happened with the book, a sizeable portion of the population of Appalachians, the people who should be universally incensed at this trash, are oohing and ahing at the movie which critics are using their most negative words to attempt to describe.  On several Facebook groups which are, theoretically, populated by natives of Appalachia, people are identifying with the aberrant, ignorant, criminal, and dysfunctional characterizations of the members of Vance's immediate family which both he and Ron Howard are attempting to pawn off on the general public as shining examples of the deviants whom they claim populate the entire Appalachian region.  I said in the November 2017 blog post about the book:

In my twenty years of practice as an Appalachian mental health professional, I never had a client walk into my office seeking professional therapy and carrying a biopsychosocial of their own composition.  If one ever had, that biopsychosocial very well could have carried the title "Hillbilly Elegy..."  The book is a wonderful piece of work if one were working with a single client or family unit in a mental health setting in an altruistic attempt to successfully intervene in the mental health and substance abuse problems within that particular family unit.  As a piece of literature intended to be considered as a blanket analysis of a culture, and particularly the Appalachian Culture, the book is garbage.  The fact that the book was seized upon by mainstream American critics and readers as a legitimate assessment of the overall Appalachian Culture is a great miscarriage of both justice and common sense. It is also an indictment of the decision making capacity of that general readership.(R. Hicks, Blog Post Cited And Linked Above, 2017)

I also said that earlier blog post that I had sworn when the book was released and I had read the early reviews of the book by legitimate Appalachian scholars and intellectuals that I had no intentions of ever reading the book until a copy had been given to me by my dear friend, Warene Hobson, after she and her husband, P. J. Laska, had chosen not to read it.  I swear to each of you who read this post and to the heavens above that I will never waste my time, money, or mind watching the movie, not even if some well meaning fool offers to pay me well to do so.  In a review in "Rolling Stone", David Fear and his editors chose the sub-headline "J.D. Vance’s story of growing up poor gets the prestige-drama treatment — and ends up as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing".  I commend them in their choice of verbiage and I could not have said it better myself.  If David Fear and "Rolling Stone" had been the only major outlet to eviscerate the movie, his review could be discounted as false.  But nearly ever major writer, magazine, newspaper or press outlet which have wasted ink on reviewing the movie have concurred with David Fear in most opinions they express.  In a "New Yorker" review, Richard Brody states that 

"the film’s stagings, images, and tones are as formless and as vague as its characters’ mental lives, and that vagueness replaces elements of Vance’s book which are politically and ideologically quite explicit—and which have been criticized for the simplistic lessons that they extract from his experience." (Richard Brody, "The New Yorker", November 23, 2020)

Richard Brody is just as accurate in his assessment of the work of Ron Howard and J. D. Vance as was David Fear.  J. D. Vance, in his malignant narcissism and the resultant wounded response to the familial trauma which caused it, attempted to blame the entire world, Central and Southern Appalachia, in which his mother and grandparents grew up for his damaged psyche.   And, Director Ron Howard, who has spent the majority of his life 3,000 miles or more away from Appalachia, chose to take Vance at his word as have many of those mislead individuals who have read the book or watched the movie.  In my 2017 response to the book, I discussed the use of the cultural and ethnic epithet "hillbilly" in this manner: 

"The word "hillbilly" is just as much an ethnic and cultural epithet as the "n" word, the "q" word, the "k" word, or the "s" word.  It is just as inflammatory and derogatory as the "c" word.  Any person who would use such a word in reference to themselves, their extended family, and their dominant culture and ethnicity is both defaming and denigrating those to whom they refer.  For an excellent film discussion of the use of the word "hillbilly" to discuss and describe Appalachia and Appalachian Culture, please acquire a copy of the Appal Shop documentary "Strangers And Kin: A History of the Hillbilly Image". It is particularly enlightening to learn about the history of the mascot of Appalachian State University, a character named Yosef who is dressed as a "hillbilly" in overalls, a flop hat, and no shoes. That character is the one occasion I can remember in which anything positive ever came out of the creation of a "hillbilly" character.  If J. D. Vance had held any respect for his homeland and its people, he would have never allowed the word "hillbilly" to cross his lips, his pen, or his keyboard. And he certainly would not have used it hundreds of times, as he does throughout the book, to describe his closest family members and alleged role models.  The book is no more an assessment of the overall Appalachian Culture than it is a re-examination of "War And Peace"."(R. Hicks, 2017, Cited and Linked Above)

 I find it truly disheartening in this time when the general public is much more cognizant and enlightened about cultural stereotyping and defamation that the same cannot be said about a large portion of the natives of Central and Southern Appalachia.  If the average Appalachian were as aware of our culture and our history as is the average member of most other minority ethnic and cultural groups in America, those people like J. D. Vance who choose to defame, shame, and denigrate us could not succeed to the degree they do in achieving success in their endeavors.  In perhaps the most easily understood example of the flawed and erroneous pseudologic which Vance uses to press his argument about the negative nature of Appalachia and Appalachians, in an early chapter of the book, he makes the statement that in spite of the large number of men with whom his drug addicted mother kept company none of those men was abusive.  In the very next chapter, he tells the story of how, as a teenager, a physical fight between his mother and one of those men awoke him and he had to come from his bedroom in order to intervene in the altercation.  An error in logic of that nature would not have been well received by Vance's law professors at Yale.  Neither should it be well received by his readers. He also proudly tells the story of how, after he fell asleep on a funeral home pew, his grandparents lost awareness of where he was, assumed he had been kidnapped, and, at gunpoint, assailed the departing mourners at the edge of the parking lot in an attempt to locate him before someone, presumably funeral home staff found him asleep on the pew.  Such behavior is not admirable.  It is not exemplary of any human trait of value.  It is criminal and it is also a typical example of the behavior Vance's family members engaged in and which he attempts to pawn off as typical of all Appalachians.  

I have begun and will end this discussion of J. D. Vance, the book, and the movie, which I once again sincerely hope will be my last, as I began and ended that earlier blog post about the book in 2017.  

Let me say unequivocally that the fact that I chose to read this book and write about it on this blog should never be considered a recommendation that anyone read the book, watch the movie, or waste your time, money, or mind on such efforts.