"Duets" by Edwina Pendarvis & Harry Geig--Poetry

 

This is a little, self-published, 24 page book of poetry by the Huntington, West Virginia poets Edwina "Eddy" Pendarvis and Harry Geig.  Eddy is a professor emeritus from Marshall University and her partner, the late Harry Geig, retired from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Eddy and I have been friends for several  years and, sadly, I never knew Harry.  Both were widely known, at least in Appalachian and West Virginia poetry circles for the quality of their writing.  While I would not clearly classify everything in this little book as love poems it is constructed and published with love and strong emotions based in a relationship which lasted literally to the day of Harry's death.  My one objection to the book, and one  I  have had with other multi-authored books of poetry is that the individual poems are not labeled as to specific author.  But this is a really nice little book of which I had known for several years but had never been able to locate a copy until recently.  The book was published under the company name Shoestring Publications, Lavalette, West Virginia, and was no doubt done in a very small press run of no more than a thousand copies based on how rarely it ever appears for sale on used book websites.  Since the only Shoestring Publications I can locate on the internet has a Maine land line number, I suspect this book was not done by that company and was, instead, a single effort with a private printer and the authors.  

As I said in my first few sentences, both Edwina Pendarvis and Harry Geig have been recognized as serious and high quality poets in Appalachia and West Virginia for quite a few years.  The book is filled to overflowing with high quality poetry and is remarkably consistent in tone and flow for a book with multiple authors. I have previously read works by both authors and each has always had a unique style in my opinion.  I believe I can sometimes discern which of the two wrote a particular poem but not always.  Harry's poetry tends to flow like scat music, street talk, and is usually about human interactions in an urban environment.  Eddy Pendarvis' poetry often has a more rural, less edgy quality to it.  But I won't bother you my guesses as to which author wrote which poems in the book.  Instead, let's talk about some of my favorite poems and lines in this little jewel.  

The poem "Come and See" opens and closes with some finely chosen words which clearly show the love with which they were written: 

When a long-dead comet    un-named

showered us with an after-image    of meteors 

I went with you   to a hilltop

to watch   you

.....

Whenever   wherever

eye-bright fireworks rise   and die

in a black

                      and purple night    it's you

it's you I want to see  

That opening and closing pair of stanzas is what a well-written love poem is all about.  

The poem "Soldier" is longer than most in the book and chronicles a sad, end of life story about a strong, effective soldier in his "shiny black Pony-ac Ventura...during the strike (but the assailants are still unidentified)".  These couple of lines paint a picture of a strong, effective man in a bad situation who is able to hold his own.  But because the poem is an end of life story, we come to the closing lines and find a seventy-two year old man who speaks out about about being robbed "...three kids callin' me pops..."  and he "...couldn't do nothin' about it...not a fuckin' thing."  That is a strong story about an old man, near death, complaining about his weakness and inability to defend himself.  

The next to last poem in the book, "Christmas or Anytime, Honey" is one of the real, heart string tugging love poems which make the book the little jewel it is: 

"But listen, If you were dying, I'd save you.  I'd stand

at the foot of the bed, challenge Death to his old game, and, 

lousy player that I am, 

I'd win anyway."  

That is just about as strongly poetic a statement of love as I have ever read.  

If you can locate a copy of this little jewel somewhere in a used book store, yard sale, online book seller, grab it up, read it, and enjoy it to your heart's content just as I have. 

"My Curious and Jocular Heroes: Tales and Tale-Spinners from Appalachia" by Loyal Jones--Book Review

 

For many years, Loyal Jones has been the dean of Appalachian scholars and is one of the founding fathers of the field of Appalachian Studies.  But like most other people who earn a preeminent position in any field, he also had mentors, teachers, professors, and a wide collection of others who helped shape him into the scholar and writer he is.  Loyal Jones is now fully retired at age 93 after a long career as a professor, writer, and creator of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College.  I have been influenced greatly by Loyal Jones and his work and have written about him extensively on this blog.  He wrote at least two of the most important books in the field of Appalachian Studies, "Appalachian Values" and "Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands".  He also wrote several books of Appalachian humor with his co-author, Billy Edd Wheeler, who is sometimes better known as a song writer. 

This book, which was published in 2017 by The University of Illiniois Press may well be Loyal Jones' last book since he is now 93 and no longer living in Berea, Kentucky, near the college where he spent his academic career.  This book pays homage, both in biographical essays and the inclusion of selected works, to four of his professional heroes, three of whom he knew personally: Cratis D. Williams; Bascom Lamar Lunsford; Leonard Roberts; and Josiah H. Combs.  These men were all experts in the field of Appalachian Folk Music and Appalachian Humor which includes the world famous Jack Tales.  The book, as mentioned above, is composed of biographical chapters about each man and an immediately following section of folk songs, folk tales, or jokes each man is credited with documenting and publishing in their work.  This book is a wonderful assessment of the lives and academic careers of each of these men and a tribute to the extensive work they performed in collecting these songs, stories, jokes, and riddles which have been passed from person to person in an oral tradition which predates the English settlements in the Tidewater region.  Each of these men were also well educated and worked professionally but the book also makes apparent that each of them was most likely happiest when he was sitting in a hickory bottom chair on a porch in some isolated hollow in Appalachia listening to songs and stories being told by a local resident who often had no formal education but had spent their lives hearing, remembering, and retelling these stories, singing these ancient folk songs, and passing them on once again so they would be preserved in the record over time.  

Josiah H. Combs was the first graduate of the Hindman Settlement School and obtained a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris.  He worked as a professor of languages in several major universities and published several collections of these stories and songs in his lifetime.  Cratis D. Williams rose from a one-room school in Lawrence County Kentucky to become the dean of the graduate school at Appalachian State University and wrote a master piece doctoral dissertation about the literature of Appalachia.  He was also, like Loyal Jones, one of the founding fathers of the field of Appalachian Studies.  Bascom Lamar Lunsford was both a collector of these historic tales and songs and a performer as well.  He also happened to be an attorney and founder of the eponymous folk festival which still exists today at Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, North Carolina.  

Leonard Roberts grew up in Pike and Floyd Counties in Eastern Kentucky and was a multi-instrumental performer and college professor at both Berea and the University of Pikeville.  He is known as one of the greatest collectors of Appalachian folk songs and folk tales. He founded the University of Pikeville Press which published some of his work.  His two best known books, "Up Cutshin and Down Greasy" and "Sang Branch Settlers", are both required reading for anyone who wants to learn about Appalachian folk tales and folk songs.  He died far too young in a wreck with a coal truck near his home in Betsy Layne, Kentucky.  

Loyal Jones did a masterful and loving job of writing about the lives of each of these men whom he refers to as "my curious and jocular heroes" in the title of the book. He explains in the book his use of the multi-definitional word "curious" to describe these men.  Curious can mean both inquisitive, inquiring, and odd or strange.  Each of these men fits that definition in the most positive manner.  They were odd in that they chose to spend their lives collecting, recording, and passing on these stories and tales which most of their neighbors never bothered to remember.  And each of them was deeply curious about their native world in Appalachia and wanted to learn all they could about it in order to preserve and propagate that knowledge.  If you love Appalachia and Appalachian Studies, you need to come to know these five wonderful men with Loyal Jones included as their equal and biographer.  If you love a good folk tale, often leaning to the ribald, you will love these men and this book.  Read it and enjoy it, and learn some of these songs and stories to pass on along your way. 

Hiking At Paintsville Lake State Park!

The photo above is a stock photo of the prettiest portion of what is known as the Kiwanis Hiking Trail at Paintsville Lake State Park which is a trail I hike regularly and just hiked today, in fact.  The trail actually begins near the Kentucky Mountain Homeplace which is also well worth a visit.  You can park in their parking lot, and out of courtesy, as far from their headquarters building as possible and start your hike at either end of the trail which makes a loop around the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters and the Kentucky Mountain Homeplace.  The trail has a couple of slight uphills or downhills but is actually rated, in my mind, as easy.  The section in the photo is just east of and below the Corps of Engineers headquarters and a few hundred yards from the beginning on the highway near KMH.  Paintsville Lake and the marina area are below the trail at this point and just east of it.  A small section of the lake is visible from the trail along with part of the marina area.  Then the trail goes away from the lake, crosses the emergency spillway (or gives you the option of shortening your hike a little by taking the emergency spillway until you rejoin the loop of the main trail near the SW corner of the KMH property.  I actually took that option today although I usually hike the entire loop of the trail with an extra twist or two thrown in.  The main loop is more tree shaded, feels a bit more isolated, and has a generally prettier look than the emergency spillway which is actually a cut through in the hillside which leaves a flat grassy area maybe 100 yards wide which functions as the emergency spillway.  

When I say that I throw in an extra twist or two to my hikes here,  what I mean is that I usually park at the spillway near the public restrooms and public trout stocking area, maybe take one full loop around the spillway area and then hit the face of the dam, go straight up the dam to the highway which crosses there to access the Corps of Engineers office and KMH.  I hike straight up several of the flood control lake dams in Eastern Kentucky and I recommend it if you are a strong hiker with a good heart and lungs, strong legs, and a good back.  But all these dams are steep, high, and tough.  The Paintsville dam is especially tough since it has a large area of boulders about 100 feet from bottom to top all across the dam due most probably to some past seepage problem.  Do not attempt this dam unless you are pretty tough and nimble.  The second twist I throw in my hikes here is that when I have hiked about 90% of the entire loop and I am back in the area overlooking the spillway where I park,  I hit the woods downhill toward the spillway.  It is typical Eastern Kentucky woodland, steep, and rocky.  It also has a couple of places where you could fall 30 feet or so.  But in this area, there is an ancient rock shelter, not a cave, but a rock shelter, overhang, whatever you want to call it which I am sure was used historically by both early native peoples and some of the first settlers in the Paint Creek area as temporary shelter.  It would sleep about a half dozen people and IT IS NOT LEGAL TO CAMP IN IT but it is a nice spot to stop for a few minutes at the end of a hike, cool off, and consider how it might have been used historically.  Paintsville Lake and the Kiwanis Trail is a nice hike whether you are looking for a relatively easy loop or if you want to make the loop more difficult as I do.

Putting Up Peaches! Freezing.

 

For the past several years, I have bought fresh peaches from a Mennonite friend I know who travels with a truck and trailer to peach orchards in several states and sells peaches from his home in Crockett, Kentucky, in the Mennonite community in which I have so many friends and connections.  We freeze the peaches and use them during the winters for cobblers which are wonderful in cold weather.  We have also begun in the last year to fry peaches just as you would fried apples and they are also a great addition to a country breakfast and a nice flavor break from always eating apples.  Due to both the loss of quite a bit of food value and the extra labor involved, this year we decided to try freezing one half bushel box of peaches with the skins on instead of peeling them.  As a test, we made one cobbler with the first box of peaches we bought a few weeks ago without peeling them and it worked quite well.  I have always eaten fresh peaches skin and all and the idea of eating the skin has absolutely no negative connotations for me.   So yesterday, July 31, 2021, we decided to freeze our second half bushel of peaches with the skin intact.  The amount of waste, especially without hogs or chickens to eat the peelings, is incredibly smaller.  Where we usually have gotten seven bags of peaches, minus the few we eat, cook into a fresh cobbler, and a few to give to an elderly neighbor.  Without peeling the peaches, we got the same amount of eating, fresh cobbler peaches, and give away peaches, but had nine bags for the freezer.  That math makes a lot of sense.  I have to admit that we did not do any research about freezing peaches with the skin on before we attempted this which is not usually our first action.  This morning, after having already frozen the peaches, I have read a few articles on the internet from people who have regularly frozen them with the skin on and they all agree that they like it that way.  But one person said that peaches frozen with the skin on will shed the skin when they are thawed.  We will have to see how that turns out in a month or so when we eat our first bag of frozen peaches.  My niece in Kendallville, Indiana, who has frozen, dried, canned, and preserved food for many years in any way possible says that she uses a hot water bath with peaches to cause them to shed the skins before she freezes them.  We considered doing it that way but decided the extra labor with the hot water made it more attractive to just remove the pits, slice them, and freeze them.  Plus, there were two jobs when I was growing up which I hated with a passion and they were helping can beets and tomatoes because my mother used the hot water bath method to get the skins off the beets and tomatoes and that hot water in a three bushel tub was something that I never came to accept willingly.  I just did not want to repeat the experience with peaches.  

I can't wait until that first fall morning when we have fried peaches as a part of our breakfast.