March 19, 2025, An Interesting And Informative Day In Prestonsburg, Kentucky

On March 19, 2025, my wife Candice and I took a trip to Prestonsburg, Kentucky, to complete a variety of intended actions including a minor amount of shopping, eating out for lunch, and a hike for me at Jenny Wiley State Park where I often hike when we are in Floyd County. Our first stop was at Wal Mart to do a minor amount of shopping, and then off to Jenny Wiley State Park where one of my favorite hiking trails starts near the lodge and has about 4 miles of linked trails around the mountain, over and along the ridge, and a connecting trail which can take you off the mountain to the site of the former Jenny Wiley Amphitheater which still exists as a building but is, sadly, no longer in use due to the demise of the Jenny Wiley Summer Music Theater which functioned there for several decades. When we got to the park, I left Candice reading in the van as I often do and headed out to hike toward the trailhead near the lodge. As I approached the trailhead, I could see yellow construction barrier tape across the start of the trail with a printed message taped to a post. The message stated that this portion of the trail was closed due to a mudslide, and that the remaining portions of the trail could be accessed at the amphitheater spur. I started back in that direction, stopped for a few minutes to read the names and text on a monument to the children and bus driver who died in the 1958 Floyd County School Bus Wreck, and then headed on toward the amphitheater which is situated near the convention center which is used for a variety of purposes including state employee training sessions, weddings, banquets, and other public events. I have even once seen a rained out performance of the Roger Miller written musical "Big River" in the convention center. As I approached the convention center parking lot, I realized that several vehicles including a group of travel trailers, several cars from various othet states, and one or two vehicles actually marked with signs for the American Red Cross were in the parking lot. I realized the convention center must be in use as the stationary site for the Red Cross Disaster Response to the recent flooding in Eastern Kentucky which had devestated larger portions of Eastern Kentucky and Floyd County in particular. I also remembered that the Jenny Wiley State Park Lodge was once again in use as emergency housing for flood victims as it has been used on at least one other occasion under the incredibly effective and compassionate leadership of Governor Andy Beshear. I had to walk past the rear entrance of the convention center to get to the trail and when I turned that corner I saw two people sitting at a table outside the rear entrance. I suspected they were Red Cross volunteers and stopped to verify that and thank them for their work. We introduced ourselves and my hike turned into a long conversation with these two people and a third who showed up a bit later. They were from three different locations in the country, all long term Red Cross workers, one with ten years of service, one with sixteen years of service, and the third with an amazing forty-one years of work with the American Red Cross and on their third deployment to Eastern Kentucky in disasters. Our conversation quickly turned political and they opened up to me about their fears for the future of FEMA and the likelihood that TRAITOR Trump will destroy that agency and further worsen the disaster response to upcoming hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and other disasters. I expressed my own identical opinions and they reassured me that the Red Cross will always continue to provide disaster services since it is a private non-profit agency. But we all agreed that the future response from the federal government to disasters in the next four years, if TRAITOR Trump is not removed from the White House, will be slipshod at best with any federal funding likely to come to the states in block grants which will be pillaged on two or three levels before any of it actually reaches victims themselves. One of these Red Cross workers had actually been part of the response to the most recent Puerto Rican hurricane disaster when TRAITOR Trump was living in White House the first time and sent almost nothing to the people of Puerto Rico for a variety of reasons including his racism, ignorance, TREASON, and total lack of compassion and empathy. It was very refreshing to have this conversation with people who have traveled the world doing good works for the betterment of the human race, who understand the dire straits our country has been in since January 20 2025, and who can speak as openly as I do about the danger which is presented to the country by TRAITOR Trump and his Criminal Syndicate. I never finished my hike due to the length of that conversation but I have put in about a half hour between my parking location at the parking lot of the old golf course, the lodge, the closed trailhead, and the convention center. I also got a second half hour afterward at the Big Sandy Community and Technical College walking track and campus. As I walked across the campus, I encountered the sign at the top of this blog post, realized immediately that it would be considered a violation of TRAITOR Trump's malicious executive order against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and decided to document these signs for my readers before the Right Wing Radical Repugnican head of the state community college system in Kentucky can force these signs to be removed from the campus, and order that racism, sexism, and mysogny be practiced in the community college system across the commonwealth. Below is the seond sign which was available on the BSCTC campus and all the other community colleges in Kentucky.

"Getting The Spirit" by Vernon Abner, Thoughts About An Interesting Little Book

The author "Getting The Sprit", Vernon Abner was a former US Navy sailor who was born in 1937 presumably in Jackson County Kentucky where he spent most of his life. After leaving the US Navy, he entered Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, as a nontraditional student at the age of about 36. During his time at Berea, he took at least one class from my friend Bill Best whose work I have written about several times on this blog. During his career at Berea, Bill Best encouraged many hopeful Appalachian writers and Vernon Abner was one of those. Bill Best actually wrote the preface to this book which was the only published work, to my knowledge, by Vernon Abner. This book was illustrated by Jon Howson with wonderful black and white drawings including the cover which is a portrait of Vernon Abner. Bill Best concluded his preface with these words: "The other students remember him as being "real", as someone who "understood his own life. He helped create in them a desire to understand their own lives more deeply. Those who take seriously this collection of his story will understand." In an essay on the back cover of the book, Carl and Sally Glover wrote "As you read this collection, we hope you celebrate Vernon Abner's humor and wit, feel his sorrow and depression, and share in his love and appreciation for all living beings. We trust that your venture into Vernon Abner's world will reward you for your time and effort." I am unable at this time to verify my belief that the Glovers were the owners of Kentucke Imprints which was the publisher of this book and is now defunct. "Getting The Spirit" was published in 1985, just 4 years before Vernon Abner's death. It is my understanding that this book was his only published work. The book is broken into three sections: Fiction, Poetry, and Philosophy. The Fiction section is composed of six short stories which are clearly Appalachian in nature. They are replete with examples of Appalachian aphorisms, cultural qualities, and demonstrate a writer who clearly knew the lifestyle of Appalachians quite intimately and effectively. I cannot say that these are great short stories. But I must insist that I enjoyed them a great deal and would gladly defend them as good examples of short fiction based on Appalachian mores and cultural values. They are at time riotously funny. They contain two central figures, teenage males and neighbors who love to play practical jokes on those around them. The title story is about the boys decision to place a hornet nest under the floor boards of a home where a local preacher is holding a service with the entire neighborhood in attendance with the nest situated in such a way that the hornets are able to invade the church service. Without using direct quotations from the story, rest assured that it is quite funny. For those of you with little direct experience in the Appalachia of the period in which Vernon Abner grew up in the 1940's and 1950's, such home based church services were common and I have attended many in my own childhood. This story is a fine reminescence of life in an Appalachia which is now almost entirely lost. The third story, "Did The Fleas Get To College?" is a rendition of another practical joke which is played on a visiting nurse who travels by horseback. It involves the use of a large number of aggressive fleas which the boys have managed to capture from some hogs which one of their fathers has bought and brought home. It is not quite as funny as "Getting The Spirit" but it is well worth reading. The other stories in the book are not at the same level of writing and humor as the two I have discussed but collectively the group of stories in the book make we wish that Vernon Abner had lived long enough to polish his demonstrated talent, produce more and larger books, and become the writer which his potential could have produced. The Poetry section is composed of three poems which are not at the same level of work as the short stories. The final section of the book, labled Philosophy, contains nineteen short essays of about a page each, perhaps averaging 500 to 750 words each. They discuss a variety of common subjects from everyday life in an interesting, but less than perfect, manner. It is regretable that Vernon Abner had not been able to produce a more lengthy book composed entirely of his short stories. He had obviously been compelled to live a life which required time in the US Navy before his college days, the need to earn his daily bread after arriving at adulthood in one of the more poverty stricken counties in all of Appalachia. Like many native Appalachians, he was born with a sizeable amount of talent and intelligence, a prodigous sense of humor, and a desire to share his world with the greagt world outside. It is a shame that life is sometimes not exactly fair.

Reflections On Reading "Appalachian Anthology: Histories, Historiographies, and Oral Histories of Appalachia" by Diane Alexander

Frequently, I buy books about Appalachia, with Appalachian titles, or some which allegedly cover Appalachian subjects, and sometimes I buy some I have to ask myself later, whey did I do that without digging deeper. This book was described on Amazon as "A collection of Appalachian journal articles, research papers, historiographies, and oral histories prominently featuring Appalachian culture, dialect, and stereotyping. Vignettes of oral history from the 30s and 40s..." It is also apparently one of those books which have been published over the last ten or so years by Amazon under deals which have them sold as printed on demand. As a class of books, I have usually found them to be less than the most rational purchases I have ever made, and I have often stated my intentions to never order another one of this type. But before I come off as totally negative about this book, let me say that it does have some merit, primarily in the purely oral history sections of the book. But it is amazingly redundant in the first two articles or chapters. The first is called "The Forties" and listed as being credited to a Joseph Alexander instead of the listed author Diane Alexander. The second article or chapter is called "Appalachian Youth in World War II: An Oral History" and Diane Alexander is listed as the author of that article or chapter. The first, "The Forties" is a genuine oral history which was apparently written by Joseph Alexander about his experiences during World War II both in the mountains of North Carolina and in Newport News, Virginia, where his parents emigrated to for employment during World War II. As pure oral history, it has merit, is relatively well organized, acceptably written, and covers the emotions of the young man about being removed from a rural Appalachian mountain life to life in a Tidewater city during the war. The second, credited to Diane Alexander, is nothing more than an article, or most likely a high school or college term paper, based on the oral history in the first section. It gives her rendition of several of the same episodes Joseph Alexander discussed in his oral history and the quotes from that oral history are ethically attributed to him. But the highly repetitive and redundant nature of the paper or article leaves it only slightly more than useless. Ms. Alexander would have been far better served to have used only one of the chapters in the book, either the pure oral history or her own conclusions about that oral history with credit to Joseph Alexander. But putting both in the book was a waste of both time and paper. By the time I had read both of these sections of the book, I considered abandoing the remainder which is an act of which I am rarely guilty. But I perserved as I almost always do in such cases since I know that I have also written some things which some people did not really choose to suffer through. I have always thought that is another person suffered through the effort to produce a book they at least deserve the respect to have me finish reading it since I chose to buy it and spend my money on it. The third section of the book, entitled "Firewood", is another piece of oral history written by Joseph Alexander about a chore of his youth in the North Carolina mountains. It has a degree of merit equal to that of his first contribution to the book although most modern readers outside a group of off gridders would find it more meaningful than simply something to read for a brief while. It is acceptable as oral history from a prior era and a man's discussion of a portion of the life which made him the man he was when he wrote it. Thankfully, Ms. Alexander does not insert her own article about this particular oral history. The next section, "Spotlight on Appalachia: Settlers and Speech, Music and Moonshine" by Ms. Alexander makes an attempt to discuss all three of the listed elements of Appalachian Culture over the next fifty pages of the book. After having spent the first twenty years of my life in an Appalachian area of Kentucky where moonshine was commonly made, sold, and consumed, and having grown up in a country grocery store where my parents regularly supplied sugar, malt syrup, cracked corn, yeast, and other items to several local moonshiners, I do know a little more than the average novice about this subject. Ms. Alexander does a minimally acceptable job of discussing the topics, but they would have been better served by having been individually discussed in shorter papers. This particular section also shows what is a common problem with the entire book. It would have been much more readable with a higher level of editorial input from a qualified person. That is a common problem in these books which are produced and sold by Amazon without editorial input. Most of those I have seen by all such authors whose work I have read are short on editorial input and long of errors of both omission and commision in all aspects of writing and language. I did think think about this book long enough to produce a blog post about it. I have also saved some of my readers both their time and money if they take my advice and never buy a copy. If you do decide to ignore my advice about the purchase, please do follow my advice about the utility of Joseph Alexander's oral history and the lack of utility in Diane Alexander's writing about it. It will save you half the time it would otherwise take you to read the book and glean most of the value from it.