Random Ramblings On Blog Readership

After years of writing this blog and seeing it slowly begin to become reasonably popular among blog readers, I am suddenly seeing it rise above 50,000 and even 60,000 page views a month. To be honest, I have no idea why this has happened. I suspect it might have finally been posted somewhere by somebody with much larger readership which is causing the increase in page views from the sometimes 20,000 page views it had received in the past, or the lesser numbers which were universal in the first 5 to 10 years of the blog. But now, for two months in a row, it has exceeded 60,000 page views after having been regularly graced by less than 20,000. Follower numbers have slowly risen to more than 200 but that took years. I have regularly posted blog posts on several Appalachian oriented sites but it took about 15 years for the blog to see this sudden increase. If you have any ideas about why please post them in the comments section on this blog post.

Walking At The Lexington Arboretum, June 2026!

A few weeks ago, I had an appointment in Lexingtno, Kentucky, and took a hike of an hour or so at the Lexington Arboretum which is a lovely, peaceful, and educational place to walk in beautiful, flowering, and wooded setting at the southern end of the University Campus. I frequently walk there when I am in Lexington. The Arboretum has a combination of fairly wide paved trails and others in the more wooded areas which are unpaved but usually filled with tanbark. I prefer the wooded trails and usually try to walk those unless it is after a recent rain since some of them are more prone to a bit of mud than others. On a busy day at the Arboretum, you might meet a half dozen or so people on the wooded trails. On a busy day,you might meet more. On the particular day I have in mind, I only met a few. At one area, there is small circular patch of perhaps a quarter of an acre open area beside the trail with a large central tree, a circular path at the outer edge of the circle, and a concrete bench for resting and meditation near the tree. I rarely stop when I am walking but sometimes will circle that area just to see if anything interesting is in bloom there. On the day I have in mind,I noticed a large plastic big mouth jug with a lid and a sheet of hand written paper on the front. The jug was filled with small scraps of paper. The sign read Free Poems, Take One or something nearly like that. I reached in and took one, the first one on top of the pile. I have scanned it below.

It was written on a receipt from Food Lion, Morgan Square, Route 522 South. It turns out that this store is actually in Berkley Springs, West Virginia. There is one other potentially identifying item on the receipt which I won't list in this blog post in order to prevent less honest people from having the ability to track down the author of the poem. The poem isn't the best poetry I have ever read. Neither is it the worst. This is what it says in seven lines:

It's nice, sweet, a bit too much leaning toward paganism for me perhaps. But it was a very nice gesture for some woman named meagan to leave a jar of her poems, all written on small scraps of paper in a waterproof jug in a forested patch of the Lexington Arboretum. Thank you, meagan!

"Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al.

After thirty or more years of periodic searches on used book websites, I finally located a copy of "Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al, a group of Appalachian writers connected to The Soupbean Poets Collective of Antioch College/Appalachia. The book was published by Mountain Union Books of Beckley, WV, in 1977. Mountain Union Books was an imprint which was briefly operated by Antioch College Appalachia, which was a branch of Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio. This branch campus was created by Antioch College in the early 1970's, initially opening in Huntington, WV, and after a couple of years relocated to Beckley. The branch was operated for roughly 8 years before being shuttered by the mother institution which had created a group of such campuses in California, Alaska, West Virginia, and one or two other locations. The campus in Beckley was never large with an annual enrollment which was generally less than 100 students. But Antioch Appalachia, which also operated briefly as The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, was staffed by several of the best writers in all of Appalachian Studies including Robert "Bob" Snyder, P. J. Laska, Don West, Bill Blizzard, Rod Harless, and Yvonne Snyder Farley. The campus also produced several well known authors of Appalachian Literature most of whom are still writing and publishing today. During the brief life of the campus, four of its female students were featured in an issue of "MS Magazine" as "Women Writers of Appalachia". Those four women were Gail Amburgey; Pauletta Hansel who eventually became the first Poet Laureate of Cincinatti, Ohio; Peggy Dotson Hall, now deceased; and Sylvia Evans. I ahve to admit that I have never met either Evans or Hall and know little about any subsequent work they did. But I have known both Gail Amburgey and Pauletta Hansel for years and read a great deal of both women's work. Other published student writers who attended or graduated from Antioch included the late Joseph Barrett who has two published books as the product of his brief life; Bob Henry Baber, the eventual mayor of Richwood, West Virginia, and the author or editor of several books. I am proud to say that I was briefly a student at Antioch Appalachia but didn't complete a degree there. I have published fiction and nonfiction in a dozen states and one foreign country. My first collection of short stories is pending publication at this time in late June 2026. I always have and always will say that being exposed to the faculty and students at Antioch Appalachia and the high level of education they provided was the greatest influence on my writing. Antioch Appalachia was a wellspring of and for writers and writing in Central and Southern Appalachia. In addition to the Appaachian writers who were produced by the campus, two other students achieved success in divergent fields. Sam Farley, a Vietnam veteran and eventual social worker who in 2007 was in 2007 recognized by The National Association of Social Workers, West Virginia Chapter, with the Catalyst Award for Direct Social Work Practice. Barbara Placier Ervin, another graduate of Antioch Appalachia became a professor at Lander University in South Carolina and served as Director of Montessori Education at that institution where she earned the Mary Frances Poole Alston Award, which is presented to a faculty or staff member who has provided "visibility for Lander University throughout the state of South Carolina, the United States and the world" which was a recognition of her internationally recognized work in her field. By percentage of the student body, this group of highly successful individuals stand out very favorably in comparison to nearly any other college in the nation. The book being reviewed here contains writing from several members of that group including Pauletta Hansel, Gail Amburgey, Mary Joan Coleman, Bob Henry Baber, and Joseph Barrett. It also includes work by Bob Snyder, P.J. Laska, and Yvonne Snyder Farley who all served as faculty of Antioch Appalachia. This little book contains the powerful and sometimes biting poetry of Gail Amburgey who was a survivor of the Buffalo Creek Flood and one of two Antioch Appalachia products who went on to be among the early female coal miners in Appalachia. Gail's writing is frequently colored by her exposure to that flood which was a glaring example of everything that can go wrong when an American industry is underregulated and its actions go awry. It also contains contributions from Joseph Barrett who published poetry in numerous journals around the world before his untimely death at only 39. There is also some fine writing by former student David Chaffins who became a career Navy noncom. Jim Wayne Miller, who was a professor of German at Western Kentucky University and a well recognized writer of literature in Appalachia, also contributed to this book which must be considered a complement to the little college that could. This is a generally difficult little book to find for sale since it was issued in a small edition in 1977. But if you can locate a copy, buy it, read it, come to enjoy one of the most productive institutions to ever exist in Appalachia and Appalachian Literature. You won't be disappointed.!

Why Is This Blog Going Wild With Page Views, Almost 60,000 In A Month?

I have no idea how or why it has been happening, but my blog, "My Appalachian Life", has gone wild with page views over the last couple of months. Before this streak started, I have never had more than about 35,000 page views in a month, and that only twice. For several years, the blog had averaged about 3,000 page views a month despite the fact that I was posting on it regularly, and often shared blog posts on several Appalachian based groups. This month the page views are approaching 60,000. One of my favorite and most personal posts, "My Appalachian DNA", has had almost 1,000 page views this month. Could it be because Blog Spot has linked it to the feature where you click to be taken to a random blog? Does that feature even require that a blog be linked? Could some other person with a large social media following have shared this blog on some of their postings? Or is it just a random, unexplainable fluke? If you have any idea why this has suddenly started happening, I'd love to hear it. https://myappalachianlife.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-appalachian-dna.html

"Fifty Best American Short Stories", Edited by Martha Foley

I love short stories, and I consider the short story to be the best form of all writing in literature. It has almost no room for error. Even the simplest little changes can either make a short story truly great or turn a potentially great short story into something very ordinary. I have read and studied the short story form ever since my high school days which were a mighty long time ago. I also write and have published about 20 short stories in at least 12 states in a variety of both college and university literary journals and some of the better online websites. I published my first short story in my twenties. But I don't pretend to be an expert on the short story, and I surely don't pretend to be a great short story writer. I do profess to be a good short story writer, and I believe the significant number of editors and/or editorial committees who have accepted and published my stories is some level of proof of their agreement with me about my self assessment. The best way to become a good to great short story writer is to read stories by the authors whom other people who understand the short story believe to be the best in the world. Everyone has their own opinion of what a great short story is, and there is room for some disagreement since the idea of stating what is a good to great short story is very subjective. It should also be very objective and sometimes editors are more subjective than objective. I remember one story I submitted to a book project in Texas, as I recall, and I got a handwritten rejection from the editor who had rejected it which said something to the effect that "This story really doesn't fit our project goals, but it sure is an interesting story." Did that editor mean that "interesting" was a good thing or something less. Since he bothered to send me a handwritten rejection, I assume he liked the story. You never know in a case like that. But to get to the point of this blog post, I am actually supposed to be writing about the book of stories which I recently finished by reading one stor a day from the book with my wife. This particular book, "Fifty Best American Short Stories" Edited By Martha Foley, was published in 1986 and contains stories from 1915 to 1964. It contains short stories from several of my favorite authors although the stories the editor chose are sometimes not my favorite stories by a particular author. It also contains some stories from people whom I had never read who might not make anyone's top ten or top fifty list of short story authors which speaks to that subjectivity of which I spoke earlier. But it is overall a very good book of short stories and well worth reading. The authors in this collection whom I had already placed on my list of favorites includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson. Interestingly, the editor did not include the story I consider to be each of those writers' best. She might have been bowing to copyright restrictions on what she considered their best but included another story from each of them in a bow to what she considers their overall greatness. Or maybe we just have differing opinions, hence subjectivity rears its head. If you can find a copy of this old collection, buy it, read it, and make up your own mind while trying to be totally objective about the process.

"The Town And The City" by Jack Kerouac--Thoughts On A Rereading

 

"The Town And The City" was Jack Kerouac's first published novel and was released by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1950.  It began one of the greatest careers in American fiction for Kerouac and was the initial expression of what would become known as The Beat Writers.  I read it the first time in about 1974 after having been exposed to Kerouac by Robert "Bob" Snyder who was the Director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia.  Bob was a professor, mentor, and friend to me and dozens of other young Appalachian writers.  I had no exposure to Kerouac at all prior to that, especially in the public school system of Knott County Kentucky.  I might have heard his name but had never read a single thing he wrote until that time.  By the time I began to read him, he had published more than a dozen novels and was a household name in most of literate America.  I had slowly evolved from a young Appalachian boy who was deeply interested in literature, politics, and the arts into a more developed reader and writer and a hippy and opponent of the Vietnam War.  That metamorphosis was complete after my time at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the company of Bob Snyder and the other faculty and students at what was a small, somewhat experimental campus Antioch had set up as an outreach to what they considered to be disadvantaged groups in several locations around the country.  I was immediately enthralled with Kerouac's writing and the first of his books I read was probably "Dharma Bums" or "On The Road".  I quickly went on to devour nearly every printed word the man ever wrote and regretted that he did not live to write that much more.  He is truly one of the 8 or 10 greatest writers America has ever produced and one of the few about whom it can be said that he actually established, along with several of his friends, a new school of writing.  

Recently, on one of my many trips to small "junk stores", I wandered into a first edition copy of "The Town And The City" which I had bought in a small pile of other older, less  important books in which I was also interested.  As I was going through the owner's small shelf of used books in what is essentially a small antique shop, now on its way out of business to be replaced by a booth in a Peddler's Mall, I saw the title on the spine of the book, pulled it off the shelf and was amazed to see that Kerouac and Harcourt, Brace, and Company had originally published the book under the name "John Kerouac".  I never said a word to the owner whom I like personally, but who knows little or nothing about books and writing.  I immediately laid the book in "my pile" and moved on, as I always do, to find what I want in such stores and then to negotiate a blanket price for the lot.  To say the least, I paid less for the lot than I would have to obtain this book alone which was published under his legal name instead of the pen name he had adopted later and which became how he will always be known to the world.    Admittedly, the book is an ex-library copy with typical library markings and some clinging evidence of a former library dust jacket, but it still well worth keeping forever to me.  

My wife had previously read only two of Kerouac's books and had liked those: "Visions of Gerard" and "The Subterraneans" which we had actually read together with me reading out loud while she washes dishes which I rinse and put away later.  She had tried one of his other more stream of consciousness novels previously and didn't like it at all.  So I had decided to try the softer, gentler, deeply loving pair of novels to attempt to hook her on Kerouac. It had worked and now we moved on to this unique copy of "The Town And The City".  This book is in most ways a very typical first novel by an American author who is deeply committed to getting himself published.  But is also a very good novel, not great, but quite good, well structured with a well developed group of central characters, the Martin family in a small town in Massachusetts and later in New York City.  It is about their lives as a family unit and as individuals and is quite long at 499 pages compared to most of Kerouac's later works.  It leads us through this large family's lives in the years preceding World War II and the War itself, shows the development of the individual children into unique adults, their individual departure from the family nest, a wonderful old farmhouse on the edge of a small, close knit town.  It also depicts the father's descent into gambling, drinking, and losing his small printing company, and eventually the home.  He becomes a printer in companies owned by others, and eventually moves with the wife and two youngest children to New York where he works the last of his career and dies old and broken down in a small apartment.  

The later sections of the book contain two interesting segments.  First, in an encounter on the streets of New York, one of the Martin sons who seems to most closely depict the author himself meets a small group of other young men who appear to depict the young Ginsberg and Burroughs or perhaps Gregory Corso.  Another of the characters in that small group is called "the young thug Jack" which is a fascinating way for Kerouac to have described himself.  To my knowledge, this is the first time America was exposed in literature to part of the group of people who would become known as The Beat Writers.  At the end of the book, the funeral of the father, George Martin, is set in the small New England town in which he and his wife grew up and were married.  The depiction in the conclusion of the novel is one which could have been typically been written about a funeral and visitation in almost any small, rural town in America.  It could have definitely been written about funerals in general in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  The entire town turns out to bring George Martin home, say goodbye to him, and bury him in the little country church yard.  A large collection of distant relatives from both sides of the family show up, many of whom the Martin children have never met.  But all of them seem to remember George Martin and his wife.  It is a wonderful depiction of a funeral in rural America and points out just how clearly Kerouac intended to contrast his character's lonely death in a small apartment in the largest city in America as opposed to the funeral which his native small town was willing to provide to one who had not lived there in many years.  It is the perfect ending to a long, complex, wonderful first novel by anyone's standards. 

Half A Million Page Views In The Life Of This Blog!

Sometime overnight this blog reached 500,000 page views for the life of the blog.  It has consistently averaged about 3,000 page views a month over the last several years but on several occasions it has had as many as 10,000 to 19,000 page views in a month.  On one occasion, in March 2015, it came up just short of 21,000 page views for the month.  And, all the page views and follower numbers are due to the fact that the blog has slowly accumulated a gradually growing number of followers now at about 215.   Without readers, there would no reason to write a blog, or to put it another way "if a tree falls in the wilderness and nobody hears it does it make a sound".  The answer to that one is no in my opinion.  Once in a while I write a post about some person in the history of Appalachia and suddenly receive a comment from a family member, friend, or former student of that person who says "Thank You!"  That makes it all worthwhile!  You might have also noticed that I have never allowed advertisements on this blog.  It has never been about an attempt to make money.  For me, it has always been about spreading information and ideas to as many people as possible.  My original intent was to keep this blog absolutely restricted to topics about Central and Southern Appalachia.  In May of 2016, I found it necessary to write about Matt Bevin's War Against Appalachian People  and I have never regretted having taken that step.  Matt Bevin proved on a daily basis that he was totally unfit to hold any position of public trust at any level.  In October of 2016, I finally wrote my first blog post about the TRAITOR Trump.  I deeply regret that I did not write a first post about TRAITOR Trump much sooner.  As our country has steadily sunk deeper and deeper into the moral and ethical desert which has been created by TRAITOR Trump and those who support him, I have wept as the majority of the greatest nation on earth have done.  I will continue to write speak out against, and do everything in meager power to try to influence every American I can to work to help us hold this TRAITOR, multiple rapist, career criminal, tax cheat, racist, and idiot responsible for at least part of his thousands of crimes against America, American Democracy, the human race, and the planet in its entirety.  If that upsets you, you are part of the problem.  And, in closing, I would like to thank all of you who read this blog, learn from at times, and agree with the values which it works to uphold.  THANK YOU ALL!  

 

Southern Legitimacy Statement

Once upon a time about 13 years ago, I was applying for something or other, probably a position (unpaid of course) writing a piece now and then for some minor website or magazine which deemed itself to the be the epitome of how to write about life in the American South.  For some unknown reason, I actually did the assignment with a bit of a sarcastic tone and submitted it never to hear from the place again...which was probably just as well.  I am attaching the piece below and hope at least one of you who might read it understands what I have intended to say about this farce.  

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Roger Hicks’ Southern Legitimacy Statement

Having spent most of my life in Southern Appalachia I tend to think of myself as an Appalachian first and a southerner second.  However, I have also spent most of my life on the appropriate side of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Nobody who lives north of the Tennessee border ever seems to know how to make sweet tea. Nobody who hasn’t lived in West Virginia (or perhaps Missouri) ever understands the Missouri Compromise.  I have spent days, weeks, months, years in places like Pipestem, West Virginia; Yee Haw Junction, Florida; Sand Mountain, Alabama; Marshall, North Carolina; and West Liberty, Kentucky.  I was born in Lackey, Kentucky, and my parents carried me home from the hospital through the front door of a small country store they owned.  The door on the other side of the room went into our living room.  I spent years hearing old men sit around the gas stove telling stories about life in Eastern Kentucky before “we went across the waters and fit the Germans”.  I went to a two room school in Knott County Kentucky and started selling Rose Bud Salve, Grit Newspapers, Cloverine Salve, and garden seeds door to door when I was about ten.  I grew up knowing how to find, catch, kill, skin, dress, and cook fish, frogs, chickens, hogs, squirrels, rabbits, ground hogs and any other thing that flew too low over the dinner table. I not only know what a Hoover Box is; I know how to make one and where to set it. I also know why it was necessary and appropriate to name that device a Hoover Box. I also know how to raise, pick, can, freeze, and cook things as diverse as shuck beans, plantain, poke, tangle gut, pickled corn, and cushaw. I developed lifetime resistance to starvation through development of survival skills. I reckon that probably qualifies don’t it? 

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And, I will conclude by saying, I reckon that is just about what I should have said under the circumstances. 

g

My Concept Of Writing

The little ditty below is a brief statement I wrote a couple of years ago for posting on the internet literary website, "Creativity Webzine", which is based in Germany and on which I have had three short stories published over the recent years.  It is separate on that website from my primary biographical statement and was published as part of a larger section by numerous writers about how and why we write.  While this little piece and about two dollars will buy you a cup of bad coffee from your favorite gasoline station, some of you who read this blog regularly might find it interesting.  As for my work on "Creativity Webzine", you can go to this link "Creativity Webzine: Fiction" and by using the "Find On This Page" function in your web browser with my name "Roger D. Hicks" and find each of the three stories.  Sadly, the website does not have a direct search function which can take you directly to any particular author, story, or other aspect of the voluminous website.  If you actually go to all the trouble of finding and reading any of my stories there, I'd love to hear what you think of them by having you leave a comment on this blog post. 

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My Concept Of Writing

Roger D. Hicks grew up in Appalachia, writes as an Appalachian with publications in numerous print and online venues, and was mentored by nearly a dozen of the best writers in the history of Appalachian Literature.

For me, writing is a natural part of life.  I write to help explain, preserve, protect, and defend the vibrant culture which made me what I am today.  I write both fiction and non-fiction with the intention of producing the best work of which I am capable.  My writing has been influenced both by the Appalachian writers who have been my friends, mentors, and role models and by the great masters whom I have read for my entire lifetime: Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, Flannery O’Connor, P. J. Laska, Bob “Billy Greenhorn” Snyder, James Still, Kate Chopin, Kerouac, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Guy de Maupassant,  and dozens more.  I don’t write to emulate anybody but I attempt to learn from everybody whose work I read from the penultimate masters to those mistaken idiots who crank out drivel without the ability to understand just how awful their scribblings are.  Examples must be inspirations, objectives, and warning signs along the road of literature and life in order to be well rounded and useful as a whole.  I hope that the last thing I write is the inscription on my tombstone.