found in Sago Mine Disaster, featured story (Appalachian Coalfield Stories) Book
by B. L. Dotson-Lewis
Showing posts with label Appalachia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Appalachia. Show all posts
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Sago Mine Disaster, (Appalachian Coalfield Stories) feature Builder Levy photos
Builder Levy photos
found in Sago Mine Disaster, featured story (Appalachian Coalfield Stories) Book
by B. L. Dotson-Lewis
End of Shift by Builder Levy
http://www.amazon.com/Sago-Mine-Disaster-Featured-Story/dp/0741434784
found in Sago Mine Disaster, featured story (Appalachian Coalfield Stories) Book
by B. L. Dotson-Lewis
Friday, May 17, 2013
Scotland National Library selects books on Appalachia by Betty Dotson-Lewis for International Collection
Scotland
National Library selects West Virginia Writer, Betty Dotson-Lewis (B. L. Dotson-Lewis), books on
Appalachia due to their connection to Scottish and Scots-Irish Culture and
History
Books selected by Scotland National Library for International Collection “Appalachia: Spirit Triumphant”
“Sago
Mine Disaster (Featured Story): Appalachian Coalfield Stories”
“The
Sunny Side of Appalachia: Bluegrass from the Grassroots”
Images from Appalachia
Letter from Author:
Hi Y’all,
My name is Betty Dotson-Lewis. I am a writer from Summersville, West
Virginia (Appalachia). My grandfather was William Basil Young of Southwest
Virginia and of Scottish descent. I
grew up in the Appalachian coalfields surrounded by the best people in the
world with popular Scottish surnames such as; Smith, Brown, Wilson, McDaniel,
McKenzie, Burnett, Ritchie, McQueen, Kincaid, McMillan, Akins and on and
on. These are the people in my books.
So, I wanted you to know that we,
the descendants of the Scottish and Scots-Irish, are still here, in these
secluded hollows and windswept ridges of the Appalachian Mountains where our
tough and resilient ancestors first settled. Appalachia is where you can get close to your
Scottish roots on this side of the Atlantic and acquainted with your kin.
Our Scottish and Scots-Irish
ancestors fled to America because of political and religious persecution. These
settlers who made that long, hard journey across the ocean in the 1700s, often
sick or starving, brought little or no material baggage, but they did bring
their cultural baggage, which included the many ballads, stories, and
instrumental tunes from their own heritage. Fiddle tunes with bows dusted in
kitchen flour fill the air on any given Sunday after church when clans gather.
They brought with them their severe and stubborn reputation and their brand of
Protestantism which has served as the foundation for our Baptist and Methodist
faiths today. They brought a talent for
making corn whiskey (moonshine) to go along with their distaste for government.
Most landed in Philadelphia where
they intended to settle but soon they discovered the good farm land was already
taken, and they disliked the British Colonial government as much as the one
they had left behind. Thus, the immigrants left Philly and headed west and
south settling in the Appalachian Mountains becoming some of the first white setters in
that region. The green valleys and highlands not only provided a remote haven
and a barrier to the outside world, but reminded the Scotch and Scots-Irish of
their homes in the Old World.
Take care,
Betty Dotson-Lewis (B. L. Dotson-Lewis, WV Writer)
lewis_betty@hotmail.com
Take care,
Betty Dotson-Lewis (B. L. Dotson-Lewis, WV Writer)
lewis_betty@hotmail.com
********************************
About my books:
About my books:
My books are devoted to documenting and understanding Appalachian culture and values
and passing down the heritage. Readers will be fascinated by numerous
first-person interviews with the Scots-Irish settlers and other immigrants who
have struggled through coal mine tragedies, union wars, floods, family feuds,
industrialization and de-industrialization to help form the modern Appalachia.
There are prescriptions for reform, celebrations of things that are worth preserving
in the modern world. A unique portrait
of mountain people is painted in their own words.
Journey into our world of Appalachia- A place both
physical and spiritual
Books may
be ordered from:
(www.) Amazon, Barnesandnoble, WV Book Co. in Charleston, WV, www.buybooksontheweb.com, booksamillion.com, Tamarack in Beckley, West Virginia, etc.
(www.) Amazon, Barnesandnoble, WV Book Co. in Charleston, WV, www.buybooksontheweb.com, booksamillion.com, Tamarack in Beckley, West Virginia, etc.
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Selected works by this
author:
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*********************
co-author of “The Girl From Stretchneck Holler, Inside Appalachia” by Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher (novel - fiction) --- not included in Scotland National Library selection
http://www.amazon.com/Stretchneck-Holler-Inside-Appalachia-ebook/dp/B007UIYD8A -- print copy also available
co-author of “The Girl From Stretchneck Holler, Inside Appalachia” by Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher (novel - fiction) --- not included in Scotland National Library selection
http://www.amazon.com/Stretchneck-Holler-Inside-Appalachia-ebook/dp/B007UIYD8A -- print copy also available
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The Girl From Stretchneck Holler, "Inside Appalachia"
Youtube Videos: Veterans Honored
new: New River Gorge Bridge Day, Fayetteville, WV Oct. 20, 2012 video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPe0hd1h8Ts&feature=share
The Girl
From Stretchneck Holler "Inside Appalachia" by Betty Dotson Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher
Price: $5.99 USD. 72560 words. Published by Brighton Publishing LLC on April 15, 2012. Fiction.
A heart-warming, heart-wrenching collection of short stories of moonshine, cock fights, domestic abuse, Holy Rollers, coal mine thugs and the simple yet complex lives of people up the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains. Coal mining provides a livelihood which is colored by violence, and the rape of mountains has forced an independent people into subservience.
Price: $5.99 USD. 72560 words. Published by Brighton Publishing LLC on April 15, 2012. Fiction.
A heart-warming, heart-wrenching collection of short stories of moonshine, cock fights, domestic abuse, Holy Rollers, coal mine thugs and the simple yet complex lives of people up the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains. Coal mining provides a livelihood which is colored by violence, and the rape of mountains has forced an independent people into subservience.
Excerpts from The Girl From Stretchneck Holler: Inside
Appalachia
Coal
Miner’s Son
“J. C., here’s your mason jar of milk
and bread for your dinner,” my mother said. She wiped her forehead wearily.
She’d been up since before daybreak building a fire in the wooden cookstove and
fixing breakfast for her four boys. I was the oldest, seventeen years old, and
today was my first day to work in the mines.
I noticed Dad’s hard hat and work boots
by the door; he was still in the back bedroom. Mom touched my shoulder briefly
as I got my stuff and stepped out on the porch to wait for him.
“Take care, son,” she said softly. She
turned away quickly, but not before I caught the tear in her eye. Mom hated the
mines; she’d lost her father and two brothers during a cave-in ten years ago.
She’d wanted Dad to quit then. She didn’t want me to start now.
This was a temporary job for me. I
wanted to go to college (the first of our family to do so), but even with the
bank loan I managed to get, I needed more money for books and clothes. Dad got
me hired at his job site—a deep mine five miles away. We’d walk there and back
and eat our milk and bread so as not to have to spend our fifty cents’ pay on
food or gas.
I heard Dad’s voice and he came out the
door; his eyes were ringed with the black soot residue that scrubbing couldn’t
get off, and he was rolling his Prince Albert. “Ready, boy”? Before I could
answer, he inhaled deeply and immediately his thin body was wracked with harsh
coughing. He continued to smoke as we started to walk rapidly. “You’re almost a
man now son… by the end of this summer, you will be a man.”
God help me, I worked hard that summer.
A pick and a shovel, crawling on my hands and knees, too tired at the end of my
shift to barely talk; but if hard, dangerous work was the measure of a man, I
became one.
By the end of that first week, my knees
were bloody and raw from scrabbling on them for hours on end when the roof wall
was too low for a man to stand. I coughed short, hard coughs and spit up gobs
of phlegm streaked black; even the snot from my nose and the tears from my eyes
ran black.
The men had taken to calling me Junior,
and after seeing that I aimed to stick it out, they treated me good. Dad worked
deeper than I did, with the experienced old-timers, but he heard tell of how I
wasn’t no quitter. He was happy with me then.
When I’d first told him how I wanted
more schooling, he’d snorted and said, “Are you afraid to work for your
living?” I needed to prove I could work at what he thought was a “real” job,
but I also aimed to show him I had further ambitions than to work in the mines
all my life. On our walks home, I told him of my plans to travel and see the
world. He said, “Yep, I had them plans too. Best you settle down and marry some
little girl from these hills than take off to God knows where, son.”
I kept talking every day, and I wore him
down. He began listening, even asked questions about college. That summer, my
dad and I actually talked at length for the first time I could remember. I
found out that he’d dreamed of going to Texas when he was young. “Out there is
wide-open spaces so a man can breathe,” was what he said. My dad had emphysema
and black lung, also a touch of TB, but couldn’t afford medicines or doctors; ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The
Beautiful People of Stretchneck Holler
I remember seeing my grandfather on my
mother’s side. I was scared to death of him. I saw him a few more times when I
went with my mother back to visit after we moved across the mountain. His image
remains vivid even today. I may have gotten my height and coloring from him.
He was tall, big and blond, with white
and pink baby-looking skin. He was a violent man. His work: a union organizer.
He called men out on strike by shooting a pistol in the air near the mouth of
the mine.
He carried his money in a large leather
wallet chained to his belt. His job afforded him good money. He drank heavily
and everyone up and down Knox Creek, where he lived, knew he had another woman.
She was young and beautiful with fair skin, red hair, and pretty clothes. That’s
where he spent his time off from work. She got his money—what he did not spend
on moonshine. He would walk up the road, staggering back and forth, on payday.
Sometimes falling down by the road and lying there until he came to, then back
up to stagger towards home and my waiting grandmother. Once he made it home to
his tarpaper shack, he hung up his wide-brim hat on the wooden peg by the front
door. After making sure his white shirt was open down almost to his waist and
adjusting his shoulder holster, he sprawled out on the feather tick bed after
he checked the chambers, making sure the Smith & Wesson pistol was fully
loaded. When he was roused up by cars and trucks speeding up and down the road
and blowing their horns as they passed his house, he’d get out of bed, pull his
pistol out of his holster, throw the door open and shoot up in the air yelling,
“You scabs, damn you. You sons-of-bitches. Go to Hell.” Then he would slam the
door shut and sprawl back down on the feather tick bed until the cars and
trucks came again. He guarded the United Mine Workers of America on Knox Creek
with his very life. His allegiance belonged to the miners’ union, and anyone
who did not swear by John L. Lewis was in danger of my grandfather’s wrath.
His wife, my grandmother on my mom’s
side, was my favorite person in the world. I knew her best because my mom
talked about her constantly. A battered and abused woman, she fought off my
grandfather with a hot poker when he tried to beat her while he was drunk. He
cursed my grandmother and left her mostly penniless except for what little bit
she could lift from his wallet while he was in a drunken stupor...
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Press Release-- Girl from Stretchneck Hollow
Kathleen Colley Slusher---------------------------- Betty Dotson-LewisFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MEDIA CONTACT: Kathie McGuire
October 6, 2011 Kathie@BrightonPublishing.com
Brighton Publishing LLC signs authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher for Girl from Stretchneck Hollow
Brighton Publishing LLC announced the signing of authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher for their collection of short stories illuminating life in Appalachia
CHANDLER (AZ)—Brighton Publishing is pleased to announce the acquisition of Girl from Stretchneck Hollow: Inside Appalachia by authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher. This collection of short fiction about life and lives in Appalachia will be released first as an eBook in mid-2012.
Dense forests begrudgingly give way to steep banks which tumble down to swiftly flowing streams throughout the mountains of Appalachia from North Carolina to Kentucky and on through West Virginia. The land and its people are bound together, past and present, with a history and a culture as much their own as they are neglected and misunderstood.
In this collaboration between two accomplished authors, a collection of short fiction has emerged in which readers may revel. Both heart-warming and heart-wrenching, Dotson-Lewis and Slusher put the very raw lives of Appalachia into captivating prose which sweeps the reader into their stories.
“What Pulitzer-winner Charles Wright accomplished in his poetry about Appalachia, Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher have equaled in their prose,” said Kathie McGuire, director of Brighton Publishing LLC. “They pull no punches in shining light on the realities of the back woods—the moonshine, domestic abuse, holy rollers, coal miners, cock fights, and beyond the shocking, an amazing portrait of the difficult lives of people „up the hollers‟ in the Appalachians.”
Stories rising from this upbringing serve as windows to the souls of those hidden children of the mountains. “The Rooster Fight” is a brutal story of forbidden cock fighting, gambling, drinking, and mob-like behavior, told in a child‟s tender voice. “The Porkpie Hat” story reveals the dangers lurking in the mountains, embodied in a mentally-impaired boy and a sexual predator brought to live with his family after the coal miner father is killed. “The Groundhog” is, in itself, a test of readers‟ nerves. Funny, yet grotesque, it is a true-life, actual account of catching, killing, and cooking mountain cuisine.
A common thread weaves through these stories like the threads of a mountain quilt sewn together over the years: a new piece, an old piece, one worn by a grandmother, one having covered a deceased child. Throughout Girl from Stretchneck Hollow: Inside Appalachia are the lives of all the children raised in Appalachia‟s coal culture. Their voices linger still.
Betty Dotson-Lewis was raised in a coal mining town in the remote mountains of West Virginia. She attended Berea College, and has already authored three books on Appalachian life. Kathleen Colley Slusher, a Berea College graduate, was raised in Haysi, Virginia. Half-Japanese, half-American, she, too, grew up among the coal fields of Southwest Virginia, and today is a retired English teacher.
# # #
501 W. Ray Road, Suite #4, Chandler, AZ 85225 • www.BrightonPublishing.com
October 6, 2011 Kathie@BrightonPublishing.com
Brighton Publishing LLC signs authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher for Girl from Stretchneck Hollow
Brighton Publishing LLC announced the signing of authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher for their collection of short stories illuminating life in Appalachia
CHANDLER (AZ)—Brighton Publishing is pleased to announce the acquisition of Girl from Stretchneck Hollow: Inside Appalachia by authors Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher. This collection of short fiction about life and lives in Appalachia will be released first as an eBook in mid-2012.
Dense forests begrudgingly give way to steep banks which tumble down to swiftly flowing streams throughout the mountains of Appalachia from North Carolina to Kentucky and on through West Virginia. The land and its people are bound together, past and present, with a history and a culture as much their own as they are neglected and misunderstood.
In this collaboration between two accomplished authors, a collection of short fiction has emerged in which readers may revel. Both heart-warming and heart-wrenching, Dotson-Lewis and Slusher put the very raw lives of Appalachia into captivating prose which sweeps the reader into their stories.
“What Pulitzer-winner Charles Wright accomplished in his poetry about Appalachia, Betty Dotson-Lewis and Kathleen Colley Slusher have equaled in their prose,” said Kathie McGuire, director of Brighton Publishing LLC. “They pull no punches in shining light on the realities of the back woods—the moonshine, domestic abuse, holy rollers, coal miners, cock fights, and beyond the shocking, an amazing portrait of the difficult lives of people „up the hollers‟ in the Appalachians.”
Stories rising from this upbringing serve as windows to the souls of those hidden children of the mountains. “The Rooster Fight” is a brutal story of forbidden cock fighting, gambling, drinking, and mob-like behavior, told in a child‟s tender voice. “The Porkpie Hat” story reveals the dangers lurking in the mountains, embodied in a mentally-impaired boy and a sexual predator brought to live with his family after the coal miner father is killed. “The Groundhog” is, in itself, a test of readers‟ nerves. Funny, yet grotesque, it is a true-life, actual account of catching, killing, and cooking mountain cuisine.
A common thread weaves through these stories like the threads of a mountain quilt sewn together over the years: a new piece, an old piece, one worn by a grandmother, one having covered a deceased child. Throughout Girl from Stretchneck Hollow: Inside Appalachia are the lives of all the children raised in Appalachia‟s coal culture. Their voices linger still.
Betty Dotson-Lewis was raised in a coal mining town in the remote mountains of West Virginia. She attended Berea College, and has already authored three books on Appalachian life. Kathleen Colley Slusher, a Berea College graduate, was raised in Haysi, Virginia. Half-Japanese, half-American, she, too, grew up among the coal fields of Southwest Virginia, and today is a retired English teacher.
# # #
501 W. Ray Road, Suite #4, Chandler, AZ 85225 • www.BrightonPublishing.com
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Mountain Talk
Mountain Talk
In Appalachia, we know where you're from by the way you talk.
By Betty Dotson-Lewis
In the corner of Appalachia where Tennessee meets Virginia, where this photo was taken, dialect is more southern. Mountaineers like to talk and you can tell what part of Appalachia people come from by the words they use. Karen Stuebing, photographer
Hi, Y’all.
Maps are essential in locating and describing where people live in our country. Some who are proficient in map talk, refer to latitude and longitude when pinpointing a specific state, town or region.
However, people who live in the heart of the Appalachia region spreading across the mountains of West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina, northern Georgia, Alabama, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky are quickly and easily identified not by lines on a map, but by their dialect.
My home is located high in the mountains of West Virginia — Latitude: 38.28 N, Longitude: 80.84. I speak the mountain dialect of the central coalfields of West Virginia: “Hi, How are Y’all? I live in the holler by a crick close to my kin.”
My parents migrated to central West Virginia from Southwest Virginia. They held on to their Virginia accent which was noticeably different from their children’s speech. They said things like: wite, nite, lite, youins.
West Virginia is the boundary state between the North and South. There is no single West Virginia dialect. Instead it depends on what part of the state you live in.
For example, if you live in the northern part of the state, which borders Ohio and Pennsylvania, the accent is more northern. The primary marker being the long “l” sound. Residents in the interior of the state speak more like people from Kentucky or southern Virginia. Residents of the southern counties have a very pronounced southern twang.
Regardless of where you live in West Virginia, we are all blessed with a bit of that southern twang. The further you go into the mountains – the more twang and colloquialism you will find.
So, come with me on a dialect journey into the Appalachian Mountains.
Linguists refer to the southern mountain dialect as the folk speech of Appalachia. The archaic speech can be narrowed down to sort of a Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English. Dialect variations can be traced to immigration patterns. The southeastern coalfields of West Virginia were settled by miners immigrating from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Along the Ohio River, which was more industrialized, a large number of the immigrants came from Eastern Europe.
There are communities in the southern part of the state that are almost entirely African-American. Mine owners brought in former slaves during the mine wars of the 1800s to replace the striking miners, and because these communities remained segregated, the dialects of the southern slaves lived on in the speech.
I have compiled a list of words and phrases commonly used in mountain dialect and their standard English translation:
Holped – helped
Heered – heard
Deef – deaf
Afreared – afraid
Blinked milk – sour milk
Weary – worry
Near – nigh
Reckon – suppose
Backset – Backset of the flu
Ill – bad-tempered
Gom – Mess
Fillum – Film
Pert-near – almost
Ahr — hour
Am-Bew-Lance — ambulance (Call an am-bew-lance.)
A-mite — a little (You're lookin' a-mite peak-ed today.)
Arthur-itis — arthritis (Dad’s arthur-itis is really actin' up.)
Bar — bear (Llnes, tagers and bars, oh my.)
Battree — battery (The car’s battree is daid.)
Beholden — owe (I don't want to be beholden to you.)
Briggity — egotistical (The young man is acting briggity agin.)
Book Red — educated (He went to college -- he's book red.)
Cheer — chair ( Pull up a cheer and set a spell.)
Choirpractor — chiropractor (If you are down in the back, go to the choirpractor.)
Co-cola — Coca Cola, any brown soft drink (I ordered a co-cola at the diner.)
Crick – stiffness (I’ve got a crick in my neck.)
Decoration Day – Memorial Day (We visited the family cemetery on Decoration Day.)
Ate Up – completely infected (Dave’s ate up with the cancer.)
Elm — "m" The thirteenth letter of the alphabet. (Dial Elm for Murder.)
Far — fire (The mountain is on far.)
Haint — ghost (from haunt) (I’m afraid I will see a haint in that house.)
Hard — hired (He was the hard hand on the farm.)
His people — relatives (His people came from Ireland.)
Het — upset (She got het up over the contract.)
Hisself – himself (He built the barn hisself.)
Ideal – idea (Try to come up with a good ideal.)
Ink pin – pen (Give him the ink pin.)
Kin – related (He is kin to most of the people in this holler.)
Outsider — A non southern West Virginian (Mountain folk are skeptical of the outsider.)
Parts — neighborhood (It is good to see you back in these parts.)
Pizen — poison (That snake is pizen.)
Plain spoken — honest or genuine (The people trusted Jim because he was plain spoken.)
Poke — bag or a sack (She carried the groceries home in a poke.)
Polecat — skunk (A polecat ran under the old building.)
Put Out — angry or upset (The mayor was put out with the council’s decision.)
Red Light – stop light or traffic signal (My town has one red light.)
Skittish — nervous (The boy was skittish when asked to recite a Bible verse.)
Spell — a while. (She stayed on the mountain for a spell.)
Spell — being lightheaded or dizzy. (The woman had a spell in the doctor’s office.)
Thar — there (Thar's a pretty little pony in the field.)
Wrastlin’ – wrestling (My son is on the wrastlin’ team.)
Actin' Up — hurting (His injured knee was actin’ up.)
Agen — against
Bile – boil
Brung — brought
Carry — take or drive
Churched — excommunicated
Drug — dragged Et — eaten
Holt — hold
Kindly — nearly
Learned — taught
Mosey — go to
Pack — carry
Peart — well
Plumb — completely
Reckon — guess
Retched — reached
Rinch — rinse
Sangin' — digging up ginseng
Worsh — wash
Monday a week — next monday
Shore — sure
Down in the back — back injury
Cut the light on — turn the light on
I don’t care — Yes, please. I would like some. (Do you want more coffee? I don’t care.)
Worshington - Washington
One North Carolina scholar uses the term "constellation of features" in describing the distinctive mountain speech.
Here are some of my Kentucky relatives, Jean D. Fuller on the left and Judy D. Coyle on the right. There is a commonality between the dialect spoken in Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.
For example, the letter “t” is added at the end of words such as “across” and “twice” making the words “acrosst” and “twice” becomes “twicet”. This pronunciation was common among English speakers centuries ago and Appalachia is the only region that has held on to the pronunciation.
The pronunciation of the letter “i” is much different in certain words such as “light” and “fire” than in other parts of the U.S. “Light” sounds like “laht” and “fire” sounds like “far”.
Hollow becomes Butcher Holler in Loretta Lynn’s song about her East Kentucky homeplace, Coalminer’s Daughter.
Mountain folk are famous for coining their own words to express a thought or observation. The word “sigogglin,” for example, means something that is crooked.
In rural Southern Appalachia an "n" is added to pronouns indicating "one" or ownership. So, "his'n" means "his one", "her'n" means "her one" and "yor'n" "your one," i.e., "his, hers and yours." Another example is the word “yernses” or yours. “That new car is yernses.” Use of the word "dove" as past tense for dive, "drug" as past tense for drag and "drunk" as past tense for drink are grammatical features characteristic of older Southern American English and the newer Southern American English.
Outsiders are often confused by the use of the word y’all, meaning the second person plural of you. When speaking about a group, y’all is general. You know the group of people as a whole. All y’all is more specific. This means you know each and every person individually in that group. Y’all can also be used with the standard “s” possessive. “I’ve got y’all’s assignments ready.”
Here are some other expressions contributed by some of my Facebook friends: Virginia Winebrenner Sykes: This is a good site," idn't" it? I hear so many people, including my mountain girl self, say "isn't" this way. Another one, I don't say, but have heard said is brefkast instead of breakfast.
Anna Dennison Circle: Whoppin – whipping; boosh – bush; dropped her calf – gave birth; peak’ed – pale; gone and done it again; smitten – likes; yonder – over there; and nary – none,
Shirley Tinney: "If'n” is a word I've heard.
Sue Underwood Mergler: How about "over yonder"? My boys pulled me aside one day after a visit to West Virginia and wanted to know were Yonder was, because Granny was always talking about it.
Builder Levy: Back in the early ' 70s when I was visiting and photographing in Mingo County and I would ask Nimrod Workman and other old timers I would meet, how are you doing, the answer would be, “Terrible!"
Pat Williams: Feeling "tolable like" meaning pretty good.
Karen Butler Britt: Stilts or Tom Walkers; toboggan-hat or sled; Jennie or mule; church key or bottle opener; leather britches aren't pants but dried green beans. Hominy is corn kernels soaked and cooked in lye to remove it from its kernel. Huckleberries are wild blueberries. Icebox was a refrigerator with a huge block of ice to keep food cool. Mule trader wasn't someone who traded mules but would trade pretty much anything for a good deal.
Although this unique mountain dialect is changing, losing some of its distinctiveness, it is not going to disappear in the near future -- with 20 million people living in the Appalachian region.
Bye y’all.
Comments19 July 2010 - 9:23am — editor
"Buddy"
Eastern Kentucky coal miners refer to each other (and those they are talking with) as "buddy."
"I'll tell you now, buddy, it's hard work." "Hey, buddy, pass me some salt."
I don't know if the use of "buddy" in this familiar, friendly way extends to West Virginia coal mining places.
20 July 2010 - 7:14am — Tipper
Southern Highlands of Appalachia
Wonderful post!! I live in the Southern Highlands of Appalachia-born and raised as they say-and most all the words shared in this post are familiar to me. I write about all things Appalachian at www.blindpigandtheacorn.com Each month I have an Appalachian Vocabulary Test-you can go here to see them: http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com/blind_pig_the_acorn/appalachian-dialect/
My favorite part of your post-is where you state our lovely dialect isn't going to dissappear anytime soon-I so agree. The wonder of the Appalachian Dialect is alive and well in my neck of the woods-and I'm trying to ensure it stays that way too!!
Thank you for celebrating our rich language.
Tipper
20 July 2010 - 8:19am — shaina
Fixin
One thing I didn't see on the list that I say and hear people say all the time is, "fixin".
Like, "I'm fixin to leave."
A friend of mines brother from New Hampshire heard me say that and said, "You're fixin? What are you fixin?" So I had to explain to him that it meant, about to.
20 July 2010 - 9:19am — Dr.Townsend
Our phrases
Even though I went off to school and came back, I feel that I did lose some of my accent. I realize that I should be proud of my Appalachian twang and the phrases my parents used (and I still use).
I was in Connecticut a few years ago. I was at a conference and someone asked me how I was going to get back to the airport in a couple days. I told them that I had a ticket to take a shuttle van back to the airport. The new colleague said, "Would you like to ride with me to the airport." I responded, "I wouldn't care to." She looked at me funny and asked, "Does that mean you want a ride or you don't want a ride?" ... www.dailyyonder.com
In Appalachia, we know where you're from by the way you talk.
By Betty Dotson-Lewis
In the corner of Appalachia where Tennessee meets Virginia, where this photo was taken, dialect is more southern. Mountaineers like to talk and you can tell what part of Appalachia people come from by the words they use. Karen Stuebing, photographer
Hi, Y’all.
Maps are essential in locating and describing where people live in our country. Some who are proficient in map talk, refer to latitude and longitude when pinpointing a specific state, town or region.
However, people who live in the heart of the Appalachia region spreading across the mountains of West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina, northern Georgia, Alabama, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky are quickly and easily identified not by lines on a map, but by their dialect.
My home is located high in the mountains of West Virginia — Latitude: 38.28 N, Longitude: 80.84. I speak the mountain dialect of the central coalfields of West Virginia: “Hi, How are Y’all? I live in the holler by a crick close to my kin.”
My parents migrated to central West Virginia from Southwest Virginia. They held on to their Virginia accent which was noticeably different from their children’s speech. They said things like: wite, nite, lite, youins.
West Virginia is the boundary state between the North and South. There is no single West Virginia dialect. Instead it depends on what part of the state you live in.
For example, if you live in the northern part of the state, which borders Ohio and Pennsylvania, the accent is more northern. The primary marker being the long “l” sound. Residents in the interior of the state speak more like people from Kentucky or southern Virginia. Residents of the southern counties have a very pronounced southern twang.
Regardless of where you live in West Virginia, we are all blessed with a bit of that southern twang. The further you go into the mountains – the more twang and colloquialism you will find.
So, come with me on a dialect journey into the Appalachian Mountains.
Linguists refer to the southern mountain dialect as the folk speech of Appalachia. The archaic speech can be narrowed down to sort of a Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English. Dialect variations can be traced to immigration patterns. The southeastern coalfields of West Virginia were settled by miners immigrating from Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Along the Ohio River, which was more industrialized, a large number of the immigrants came from Eastern Europe.
There are communities in the southern part of the state that are almost entirely African-American. Mine owners brought in former slaves during the mine wars of the 1800s to replace the striking miners, and because these communities remained segregated, the dialects of the southern slaves lived on in the speech.
I have compiled a list of words and phrases commonly used in mountain dialect and their standard English translation:
Holped – helped
Heered – heard
Deef – deaf
Afreared – afraid
Blinked milk – sour milk
Weary – worry
Near – nigh
Reckon – suppose
Backset – Backset of the flu
Ill – bad-tempered
Gom – Mess
Fillum – Film
Pert-near – almost
Ahr — hour
Am-Bew-Lance — ambulance (Call an am-bew-lance.)
A-mite — a little (You're lookin' a-mite peak-ed today.)
Arthur-itis — arthritis (Dad’s arthur-itis is really actin' up.)
Bar — bear (Llnes, tagers and bars, oh my.)
Battree — battery (The car’s battree is daid.)
Beholden — owe (I don't want to be beholden to you.)
Briggity — egotistical (The young man is acting briggity agin.)
Book Red — educated (He went to college -- he's book red.)
Cheer — chair ( Pull up a cheer and set a spell.)
Choirpractor — chiropractor (If you are down in the back, go to the choirpractor.)
Co-cola — Coca Cola, any brown soft drink (I ordered a co-cola at the diner.)
Crick – stiffness (I’ve got a crick in my neck.)
Decoration Day – Memorial Day (We visited the family cemetery on Decoration Day.)
Ate Up – completely infected (Dave’s ate up with the cancer.)
Elm — "m" The thirteenth letter of the alphabet. (Dial Elm for Murder.)
Far — fire (The mountain is on far.)
Haint — ghost (from haunt) (I’m afraid I will see a haint in that house.)
Hard — hired (He was the hard hand on the farm.)
His people — relatives (His people came from Ireland.)
Het — upset (She got het up over the contract.)
Hisself – himself (He built the barn hisself.)
Ideal – idea (Try to come up with a good ideal.)
Ink pin – pen (Give him the ink pin.)
Kin – related (He is kin to most of the people in this holler.)
Outsider — A non southern West Virginian (Mountain folk are skeptical of the outsider.)
Parts — neighborhood (It is good to see you back in these parts.)
Pizen — poison (That snake is pizen.)
Plain spoken — honest or genuine (The people trusted Jim because he was plain spoken.)
Poke — bag or a sack (She carried the groceries home in a poke.)
Polecat — skunk (A polecat ran under the old building.)
Put Out — angry or upset (The mayor was put out with the council’s decision.)
Red Light – stop light or traffic signal (My town has one red light.)
Skittish — nervous (The boy was skittish when asked to recite a Bible verse.)
Spell — a while. (She stayed on the mountain for a spell.)
Spell — being lightheaded or dizzy. (The woman had a spell in the doctor’s office.)
Thar — there (Thar's a pretty little pony in the field.)
Wrastlin’ – wrestling (My son is on the wrastlin’ team.)
Actin' Up — hurting (His injured knee was actin’ up.)
Agen — against
Bile – boil
Brung — brought
Carry — take or drive
Churched — excommunicated
Drug — dragged Et — eaten
Holt — hold
Kindly — nearly
Learned — taught
Mosey — go to
Pack — carry
Peart — well
Plumb — completely
Reckon — guess
Retched — reached
Rinch — rinse
Sangin' — digging up ginseng
Worsh — wash
Monday a week — next monday
Shore — sure
Down in the back — back injury
Cut the light on — turn the light on
I don’t care — Yes, please. I would like some. (Do you want more coffee? I don’t care.)
Worshington - Washington
One North Carolina scholar uses the term "constellation of features" in describing the distinctive mountain speech.
Here are some of my Kentucky relatives, Jean D. Fuller on the left and Judy D. Coyle on the right. There is a commonality between the dialect spoken in Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.
For example, the letter “t” is added at the end of words such as “across” and “twice” making the words “acrosst” and “twice” becomes “twicet”. This pronunciation was common among English speakers centuries ago and Appalachia is the only region that has held on to the pronunciation.
The pronunciation of the letter “i” is much different in certain words such as “light” and “fire” than in other parts of the U.S. “Light” sounds like “laht” and “fire” sounds like “far”.
Hollow becomes Butcher Holler in Loretta Lynn’s song about her East Kentucky homeplace, Coalminer’s Daughter.
Mountain folk are famous for coining their own words to express a thought or observation. The word “sigogglin,” for example, means something that is crooked.
In rural Southern Appalachia an "n" is added to pronouns indicating "one" or ownership. So, "his'n" means "his one", "her'n" means "her one" and "yor'n" "your one," i.e., "his, hers and yours." Another example is the word “yernses” or yours. “That new car is yernses.” Use of the word "dove" as past tense for dive, "drug" as past tense for drag and "drunk" as past tense for drink are grammatical features characteristic of older Southern American English and the newer Southern American English.
Outsiders are often confused by the use of the word y’all, meaning the second person plural of you. When speaking about a group, y’all is general. You know the group of people as a whole. All y’all is more specific. This means you know each and every person individually in that group. Y’all can also be used with the standard “s” possessive. “I’ve got y’all’s assignments ready.”
Here are some other expressions contributed by some of my Facebook friends: Virginia Winebrenner Sykes: This is a good site," idn't" it? I hear so many people, including my mountain girl self, say "isn't" this way. Another one, I don't say, but have heard said is brefkast instead of breakfast.
Anna Dennison Circle: Whoppin – whipping; boosh – bush; dropped her calf – gave birth; peak’ed – pale; gone and done it again; smitten – likes; yonder – over there; and nary – none,
Shirley Tinney: "If'n” is a word I've heard.
Sue Underwood Mergler: How about "over yonder"? My boys pulled me aside one day after a visit to West Virginia and wanted to know were Yonder was, because Granny was always talking about it.
Builder Levy: Back in the early ' 70s when I was visiting and photographing in Mingo County and I would ask Nimrod Workman and other old timers I would meet, how are you doing, the answer would be, “Terrible!"
Pat Williams: Feeling "tolable like" meaning pretty good.
Karen Butler Britt: Stilts or Tom Walkers; toboggan-hat or sled; Jennie or mule; church key or bottle opener; leather britches aren't pants but dried green beans. Hominy is corn kernels soaked and cooked in lye to remove it from its kernel. Huckleberries are wild blueberries. Icebox was a refrigerator with a huge block of ice to keep food cool. Mule trader wasn't someone who traded mules but would trade pretty much anything for a good deal.
Although this unique mountain dialect is changing, losing some of its distinctiveness, it is not going to disappear in the near future -- with 20 million people living in the Appalachian region.
Bye y’all.
Comments19 July 2010 - 9:23am — editor
"Buddy"
Eastern Kentucky coal miners refer to each other (and those they are talking with) as "buddy."
"I'll tell you now, buddy, it's hard work." "Hey, buddy, pass me some salt."
I don't know if the use of "buddy" in this familiar, friendly way extends to West Virginia coal mining places.
20 July 2010 - 7:14am — Tipper
Southern Highlands of Appalachia
Wonderful post!! I live in the Southern Highlands of Appalachia-born and raised as they say-and most all the words shared in this post are familiar to me. I write about all things Appalachian at www.blindpigandtheacorn.com Each month I have an Appalachian Vocabulary Test-you can go here to see them: http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com/blind_pig_the_acorn/appalachian-dialect/
My favorite part of your post-is where you state our lovely dialect isn't going to dissappear anytime soon-I so agree. The wonder of the Appalachian Dialect is alive and well in my neck of the woods-and I'm trying to ensure it stays that way too!!
Thank you for celebrating our rich language.
Tipper
20 July 2010 - 8:19am — shaina
Fixin
One thing I didn't see on the list that I say and hear people say all the time is, "fixin".
Like, "I'm fixin to leave."
A friend of mines brother from New Hampshire heard me say that and said, "You're fixin? What are you fixin?" So I had to explain to him that it meant, about to.
20 July 2010 - 9:19am — Dr.Townsend
Our phrases
Even though I went off to school and came back, I feel that I did lose some of my accent. I realize that I should be proud of my Appalachian twang and the phrases my parents used (and I still use).
I was in Connecticut a few years ago. I was at a conference and someone asked me how I was going to get back to the airport in a couple days. I told them that I had a ticket to take a shuttle van back to the airport. The new colleague said, "Would you like to ride with me to the airport." I responded, "I wouldn't care to." She looked at me funny and asked, "Does that mean you want a ride or you don't want a ride?" ... www.dailyyonder.com
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Robert C. Byrd's successor
West Virginia's newspapers are filled with questions, comments regarding the successor to West Virginia's Senate seat of Robert C. Byrd. Byrd died on June 27, 2010 at the age of 92. He was the longest serving Senator.
Age and length of sevice are important but more importantly is what Byrd's life represented. He was orphaned at the age of one or two so he never really knew his parents. An aunt and uncle adopted him and moved him from his birth state of North Carolina to the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
His adopted father made a living for the family by working in and around the coal mines. The family moved around to different coal camps. Byrd, at a young age, adopted the strongest work ethics and a strong desire for education. He loved his country. His desire to serve led him to politics. He made bad mistakes but he acknowledged those mistakes and told his people why he acted as he did. He said that he became a member of the KKK to gain political support from powerful people -
rich people who could help him win elections.
While I was working on my first book on Appalachia - titled: Appalachia Spirit Triumphant (a cultural odyssey of Appalachia by B. L. Dotson-Lewis (2004) I called Sen. Byrd's office frequently. I spoke with Martha Ann McIntosh, his assistant. She arranged for me to get a story about Robert C. Byrd for my book. She told if I could come to D.C. she felt positive I could see Byrd in person. I never did get to go.
I did meet him in Beckley at the Regional Airport. I heard he was coming in so I asked a friend, Joan Moore, if she wanted to go over and meet Sen. Byrd. We met him as he got off the plane. He was so nice and friendly. He hugged us. He was warm and kind.
For all the talk about Sen. Byrd's replacement - it cannot happen. Whomever gets the seat - it is a filler - not a replacement. Robert C. Byrd was one of a kind. He was our West Virginian.
Age and length of sevice are important but more importantly is what Byrd's life represented. He was orphaned at the age of one or two so he never really knew his parents. An aunt and uncle adopted him and moved him from his birth state of North Carolina to the coalfields of southern West Virginia.
His adopted father made a living for the family by working in and around the coal mines. The family moved around to different coal camps. Byrd, at a young age, adopted the strongest work ethics and a strong desire for education. He loved his country. His desire to serve led him to politics. He made bad mistakes but he acknowledged those mistakes and told his people why he acted as he did. He said that he became a member of the KKK to gain political support from powerful people -
rich people who could help him win elections.
While I was working on my first book on Appalachia - titled: Appalachia Spirit Triumphant (a cultural odyssey of Appalachia by B. L. Dotson-Lewis (2004) I called Sen. Byrd's office frequently. I spoke with Martha Ann McIntosh, his assistant. She arranged for me to get a story about Robert C. Byrd for my book. She told if I could come to D.C. she felt positive I could see Byrd in person. I never did get to go.
I did meet him in Beckley at the Regional Airport. I heard he was coming in so I asked a friend, Joan Moore, if she wanted to go over and meet Sen. Byrd. We met him as he got off the plane. He was so nice and friendly. He hugged us. He was warm and kind.
For all the talk about Sen. Byrd's replacement - it cannot happen. Whomever gets the seat - it is a filler - not a replacement. Robert C. Byrd was one of a kind. He was our West Virginian.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
In the Midst of Poverty by Pat Gish
Pat Gish speaks out on newspaper reporting
Mountain Eagle newspaper, Whitesburg, KY
Nieman Reports
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University
Vol. 53 No. 2 Summer 1999
War Crimes, Human Rights and Press Freedom:
The Journalist's Job
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Midst of Poverty,
People's Stories are Hard to Tell
Small Staffs, Lack of Resources, and Families' Fear of Reprisals
Add to Difficulties in Coverage
By Pat Gish
Twenty-one Appalachian counties lie along or near eastern Kentucky's border with Virginia. It was the people who live here who gained national attention in the early 1960's when New York Times reporter Homer Bigart came to the Kentucky mountains and reported what he saw and heard. Bigart was drawn to eastern Kentucky by the book "Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area," written by Harry M. Caudill, an attorney who grew up in one of those counties and came back home to practice law.
What Bigart saw and reported became fodder for policy discussions in the Kennedy White House when the first of his articles appeared on a Sunday in October 1963. President Kennedy moved immediately to get help into the area, and those 21 counties later became a principal focus of President Johnson's War on Poverty. In the nearly 35 years since that war was declared, many things have changed for the better. But much of the deep poverty and the consequences it brings to families who experience it remains.
The Kentucky State Data Center in Louisville, which keeps track of population and social circumstances that the census tracks, reported in April that the poverty rate had decreased in all but one of these 21 Appalachian counties from 1989 to 1995. The center keeps records by groups of counties known as "area development districts" (ADD), and the 21 counties are divided into three such districts. The decreases are not large, one percent in one ADD, 2.5 percent in another and 2.7 percent in the third but at least they are decreases. During this same period the median household income rose by more than $6,000 in each development district.
Beneath those statistics there lies a continuing thread to the stories that Bigart uncovered. In these three districts live nearly one quarter of Kentuckians whose incomes place them at poverty level or below. In 1989 the total was 165,856 persons, or 24 percent of all state residents in poverty, and in 1995 it was 162,496, or 23.5 percent of the state number. And four of the five Kentucky counties with the highest percentages of residents at poverty level are included in these districts. Three of these counties are included in the Kentucky River ADD, which has an overall poverty level of 33.6 percent, the highest of any development district in the state.
In Owsley County, the state's poorest, 46.6 percent of all residents and 65.4 percent of residents under 18 are considered to be living at poverty level or below. In adjoining Lee County, 39.1 percent of all persons and 54.7 percent of those under 18 are poor. In Wolfe County, which lies next to Lee County, 38.9 percent of all residents and 57.2 percent of all under 18 live at poverty level or below. Magoffin County, the fourth in this group, is a part of the Big Sandy district; 38 percent of all its residents are considered to be in poverty and 51.2 percent of those under 18.
In January, payments to families in Kentucky's Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP), formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), averaged $224.15 per family, or $94.69 per person. All of these families are past the first 30 months of the five-year period during which they can receive their lifetime allotment of welfare money. State family services workers in public assistance programs in all 21 counties are trying to find ways of getting jobs for these families when their five-year transition period ends. Committees which include workers for the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children and interested private citizens are meeting frequently to look at possible solutions, but so far the results are discouraging. In my county, Letcher County, a new data entry company has set up shop and has hired some workers who were receiving K-TAP money. But those 15 jobs represent only 2.3 percent of the 680 families in the K-TAP program in this one county. The question now is what to do about the other 97.7 percent.
Two years ago, a group of citizens in Letcher County, where I live, got together to write a proposal to the state Cabinet for Families and Children on how welfare reform might be carried out in our county. I was not a part of that group, but The Mountain Eagle, the local weekly newspaper that my husband and I have published for the past 42 years, carried the proposal in full. And since its publication, we have followed its slow progress. The group spent five months developing the plan, which was completed in October 1997. The planners had three goals: to create a diversified, strong local economy, to find new ways of attracting capital into the county, and to assure a better way of life for Letcher county children.
The plan proposed a new local credit union to help low-income families; a new small business technology cooperative specializing in digital service industries; a business development network using retired and active businesspeople as trainers; a program to train people to repair existing homes and to build new ones; more child-care services, which also could train welfare mothers to care for other people's children in their own homes; classes to move welfare recipients into jobs in the health care industry; creation of wood industry jobs by expanding existing businesses or helping people create new ones to use the area's large supply of timber, and establishment of a "one-stop shopping center" where welfare recipients trying to make it on their own could get help with counseling, education, job placement and other services.
A representative of the state Cabinet for Families and Children has promised to come to Letcher County soon to look at possible quarters for the one-stop center. The other proposals in the plan are still being discussed. Meanwhile, several groups of interested citizens have been meeting every month with the state workers responsible for getting the 680 families in our county off welfare and into some kind of work.
The fundamental problem is that the jobs are not here, and the families are not equipped to move away. One group of local businessmen is meeting every month to look at possible job development. Another group of church and welfare workers and interested citizens meets to look at problems and possibilities; I have attended most of this group's meetings. The Eagle tries to keep up also with what the businessmen's group is doing, but it meets on Monday night, which is deadline night at the newspaper, and we can't always free someone to attend.
This problem of small staffs and little time is one that was cited frequently by editors and writers at other eastern Kentucky newspapers when I called to find out what problems they were having in covering welfare reform. Most of the papers are weekly; a few publish two or three issues a week. There are two small dailies. When I asked whether papers had provided coverage and if they had any difficulties getting information, these were some of the responses:
"We haven't covered it as much as we should. We've included all the wire-service [AP] stories. It's hard to get a local angle and we're kind of short-staffed. In the near future we're going to do an in-depth story on it."
"No, not really. That's on my list. It takes so much personal research."
"A lot of people in our area are shifting from AFDC to SSI (Supplemental Security Income). It doesn't have any cutoff date." (We agreed that we admired their ingenuity.)
"I don't expect we'll get people complaining to us until the [five-year] deadline gets nearer."
"We've had a little coverage, but nothing lately, nothing we have generated. It's difficult to devote reporter time. We don't have enough staff to give time or attention to issues beyond breaking news. It's sad to say when there are so many people involved, but it's hit or miss with us."
"We have an interest in it, but have we covered anything? Not really. I would want to devote study to it. Local people here are afraid to have their names out."
"It's hard to get much out of the local social services department, but we have done some coverage on a welfare-to-work program and the area development district has been very helpful to us. We have only two people, and we haven't had much time to devote to it."
"We have stayed on top of Vision 2000, but information from that is a lot lighter now. They've let up on what they're sending us." (Vision 2000 is a state-set standard for local welfare reform efforts.)
"We've had a couple of stories, but our coverage has been kind of limited. The biggest problem is that some people don't want to be identified. We don't get a lot of releases from the local agencies, and also we're limited on space."
"I have found people very willing to talk and give information."
"To tell you the truth, we haven't really tried."
"We've done a few stories. We've talked with people who would lose their welfare and what alternatives they might have. We've also used AP stories. We should probably deal with it more than we have. It seems always to be there."
"We haven't run into too much of a problem. We've been to two years of meetings. We got into doing that and have been fairly successful in getting most of the information we've needed. Last year in our 'progress edition' we did a whole section on welfare reform. We haven't done too much lately."
"Cover welfare reform? Not really, other than releases. I hadn't even thought to check into that."
The Wall Street Journal recently carried a long, moving article describing the trials of one eastern Kentucky woman who accepted a grant from the state of Kentucky and relocated to the Cincinnati area after receiving training in her home area. That article, which followed the woman and her family over an entire year, would have filled a large part of the news space in any eastern Kentucky weekly and certainly took more time, energy and money than small county newspapers can afford.
A reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently spent a week in Letcher County looking at welfare reform issues and other aspects of eastern Kentucky life. He did this story as part of a series of articles about the 35th anniversary of the War on Poverty. He also had ample time and resources to assemble the information he needed.
The Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky's largest daily, recently completed a six-month study of welfare reform in eastern Kentucky and published the results in a three-day series titled "Welfare Dilemma in Eastern Kentucky." In the paper's issues of May 2, 3 and 4, that series took up a total of eight and a fourth full-size newspaper pages. It required two reporters, a photographer and a graphics artist. The small newspapers in eastern Kentucky do not have the resources to provide that kind of coverage.
A reporter for a large Kentucky daily newspaper said it was difficult to find welfare recipients to be interviewed for feature stories on the problems or the successes of welfare reform. Cooperation from local offices of the state welfare system was not good. Local state employees were not willing to ask questions of recipients and relay information to reporters. Recipients were afraid to talk to reporters and didn't want their pictures taken. State welfare officials were upset by questions from news reporters and tended to be "a little bit defensive."
In eastern Kentucky jobs are scarce for everybody and especially for un trained or inexperienced workers. "You can't put a person in training on how to work a mop for five years," the reporter at this large Kentucky paper pointed out. "It's a national issue. State officials shouldn't be so thin-skinned." In one instance, this reporter had been talking with a welfare recipient for some time about her problems, but after a call from an official in the Cabinet for Families and Children in Frankfort (our state capital) the woman would no longer return the reporter's telephone calls. Presumably she had been told by someone in the state or local welfare office that she should not talk with reporters.
Fear of losing jobs or benefit checks is not new to people in the Kentucky mountains. For many years local politicians and/or coal company officials had almost total control over the lives of many mountain families. A coal miner who did or said something his bosses didn't like could find his furniture out on the street when he returned to his company-owned house. For many years, local political powers had a major say about who received welfare and who didn't. Those lessons were absorbed quickly and thoroughly. Tales about such punishment perhaps have become embellished over the years, but they continue to affect mountain residents' actions.
Welfare recipients who live here have good reason to be hesitant about talking to reporters. It's part of the legacy of their forebears' lives and circumstances, but it does make it difficult for those who genuinely want to learn about their situation and tell others so that positive changes can occur, as Bigart's effort shows they can.
Pat Gish has lived in Letcher County for the past 42 years. She grew up in central Kentucky and her husband, Tom, grew up in a Letcher County coal camp. Married since 1948, they bought The Mountain Eagle in 1957, a weekly which they and their children still operate.
Why Identify Welfare Recipients or Quote Incorrect Grammar?
At The Mountain Eagle newspaper we do not use photographs of welfare recipients as welfare recipients. It's hard enough to have to be one without having to face the prospect of someone taunting you or your kids over a circumstance beyond your control.
We do, of course, use their pictures in different circumstances, such as a birthday, engagement, wedding or school honor.
We also use correct grammar when we are quoting someone, welfare recipient or not. Our observation is that newspapers generally do not quote any other group of Americans in dialect whether they are Kennedys in Massachusetts, Dodger fans in Brooklyn, Mexican-Americans in California, or African-Americans in Alabama. We see no reason why Appalachian residents should be challenged for speech brought here by settlers from the British Isles centuries ago.
Mountain Eagle newspaper, Whitesburg, KY
Nieman Reports
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University
Vol. 53 No. 2 Summer 1999
War Crimes, Human Rights and Press Freedom:
The Journalist's Job
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Midst of Poverty,
People's Stories are Hard to Tell
Small Staffs, Lack of Resources, and Families' Fear of Reprisals
Add to Difficulties in Coverage
By Pat Gish
Twenty-one Appalachian counties lie along or near eastern Kentucky's border with Virginia. It was the people who live here who gained national attention in the early 1960's when New York Times reporter Homer Bigart came to the Kentucky mountains and reported what he saw and heard. Bigart was drawn to eastern Kentucky by the book "Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area," written by Harry M. Caudill, an attorney who grew up in one of those counties and came back home to practice law.
What Bigart saw and reported became fodder for policy discussions in the Kennedy White House when the first of his articles appeared on a Sunday in October 1963. President Kennedy moved immediately to get help into the area, and those 21 counties later became a principal focus of President Johnson's War on Poverty. In the nearly 35 years since that war was declared, many things have changed for the better. But much of the deep poverty and the consequences it brings to families who experience it remains.
The Kentucky State Data Center in Louisville, which keeps track of population and social circumstances that the census tracks, reported in April that the poverty rate had decreased in all but one of these 21 Appalachian counties from 1989 to 1995. The center keeps records by groups of counties known as "area development districts" (ADD), and the 21 counties are divided into three such districts. The decreases are not large, one percent in one ADD, 2.5 percent in another and 2.7 percent in the third but at least they are decreases. During this same period the median household income rose by more than $6,000 in each development district.
Beneath those statistics there lies a continuing thread to the stories that Bigart uncovered. In these three districts live nearly one quarter of Kentuckians whose incomes place them at poverty level or below. In 1989 the total was 165,856 persons, or 24 percent of all state residents in poverty, and in 1995 it was 162,496, or 23.5 percent of the state number. And four of the five Kentucky counties with the highest percentages of residents at poverty level are included in these districts. Three of these counties are included in the Kentucky River ADD, which has an overall poverty level of 33.6 percent, the highest of any development district in the state.
In Owsley County, the state's poorest, 46.6 percent of all residents and 65.4 percent of residents under 18 are considered to be living at poverty level or below. In adjoining Lee County, 39.1 percent of all persons and 54.7 percent of those under 18 are poor. In Wolfe County, which lies next to Lee County, 38.9 percent of all residents and 57.2 percent of all under 18 live at poverty level or below. Magoffin County, the fourth in this group, is a part of the Big Sandy district; 38 percent of all its residents are considered to be in poverty and 51.2 percent of those under 18.
In January, payments to families in Kentucky's Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP), formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), averaged $224.15 per family, or $94.69 per person. All of these families are past the first 30 months of the five-year period during which they can receive their lifetime allotment of welfare money. State family services workers in public assistance programs in all 21 counties are trying to find ways of getting jobs for these families when their five-year transition period ends. Committees which include workers for the Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children and interested private citizens are meeting frequently to look at possible solutions, but so far the results are discouraging. In my county, Letcher County, a new data entry company has set up shop and has hired some workers who were receiving K-TAP money. But those 15 jobs represent only 2.3 percent of the 680 families in the K-TAP program in this one county. The question now is what to do about the other 97.7 percent.
Two years ago, a group of citizens in Letcher County, where I live, got together to write a proposal to the state Cabinet for Families and Children on how welfare reform might be carried out in our county. I was not a part of that group, but The Mountain Eagle, the local weekly newspaper that my husband and I have published for the past 42 years, carried the proposal in full. And since its publication, we have followed its slow progress. The group spent five months developing the plan, which was completed in October 1997. The planners had three goals: to create a diversified, strong local economy, to find new ways of attracting capital into the county, and to assure a better way of life for Letcher county children.
The plan proposed a new local credit union to help low-income families; a new small business technology cooperative specializing in digital service industries; a business development network using retired and active businesspeople as trainers; a program to train people to repair existing homes and to build new ones; more child-care services, which also could train welfare mothers to care for other people's children in their own homes; classes to move welfare recipients into jobs in the health care industry; creation of wood industry jobs by expanding existing businesses or helping people create new ones to use the area's large supply of timber, and establishment of a "one-stop shopping center" where welfare recipients trying to make it on their own could get help with counseling, education, job placement and other services.
A representative of the state Cabinet for Families and Children has promised to come to Letcher County soon to look at possible quarters for the one-stop center. The other proposals in the plan are still being discussed. Meanwhile, several groups of interested citizens have been meeting every month with the state workers responsible for getting the 680 families in our county off welfare and into some kind of work.
The fundamental problem is that the jobs are not here, and the families are not equipped to move away. One group of local businessmen is meeting every month to look at possible job development. Another group of church and welfare workers and interested citizens meets to look at problems and possibilities; I have attended most of this group's meetings. The Eagle tries to keep up also with what the businessmen's group is doing, but it meets on Monday night, which is deadline night at the newspaper, and we can't always free someone to attend.
This problem of small staffs and little time is one that was cited frequently by editors and writers at other eastern Kentucky newspapers when I called to find out what problems they were having in covering welfare reform. Most of the papers are weekly; a few publish two or three issues a week. There are two small dailies. When I asked whether papers had provided coverage and if they had any difficulties getting information, these were some of the responses:
"We haven't covered it as much as we should. We've included all the wire-service [AP] stories. It's hard to get a local angle and we're kind of short-staffed. In the near future we're going to do an in-depth story on it."
"No, not really. That's on my list. It takes so much personal research."
"A lot of people in our area are shifting from AFDC to SSI (Supplemental Security Income). It doesn't have any cutoff date." (We agreed that we admired their ingenuity.)
"I don't expect we'll get people complaining to us until the [five-year] deadline gets nearer."
"We've had a little coverage, but nothing lately, nothing we have generated. It's difficult to devote reporter time. We don't have enough staff to give time or attention to issues beyond breaking news. It's sad to say when there are so many people involved, but it's hit or miss with us."
"We have an interest in it, but have we covered anything? Not really. I would want to devote study to it. Local people here are afraid to have their names out."
"It's hard to get much out of the local social services department, but we have done some coverage on a welfare-to-work program and the area development district has been very helpful to us. We have only two people, and we haven't had much time to devote to it."
"We have stayed on top of Vision 2000, but information from that is a lot lighter now. They've let up on what they're sending us." (Vision 2000 is a state-set standard for local welfare reform efforts.)
"We've had a couple of stories, but our coverage has been kind of limited. The biggest problem is that some people don't want to be identified. We don't get a lot of releases from the local agencies, and also we're limited on space."
"I have found people very willing to talk and give information."
"To tell you the truth, we haven't really tried."
"We've done a few stories. We've talked with people who would lose their welfare and what alternatives they might have. We've also used AP stories. We should probably deal with it more than we have. It seems always to be there."
"We haven't run into too much of a problem. We've been to two years of meetings. We got into doing that and have been fairly successful in getting most of the information we've needed. Last year in our 'progress edition' we did a whole section on welfare reform. We haven't done too much lately."
"Cover welfare reform? Not really, other than releases. I hadn't even thought to check into that."
The Wall Street Journal recently carried a long, moving article describing the trials of one eastern Kentucky woman who accepted a grant from the state of Kentucky and relocated to the Cincinnati area after receiving training in her home area. That article, which followed the woman and her family over an entire year, would have filled a large part of the news space in any eastern Kentucky weekly and certainly took more time, energy and money than small county newspapers can afford.
A reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently spent a week in Letcher County looking at welfare reform issues and other aspects of eastern Kentucky life. He did this story as part of a series of articles about the 35th anniversary of the War on Poverty. He also had ample time and resources to assemble the information he needed.
The Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky's largest daily, recently completed a six-month study of welfare reform in eastern Kentucky and published the results in a three-day series titled "Welfare Dilemma in Eastern Kentucky." In the paper's issues of May 2, 3 and 4, that series took up a total of eight and a fourth full-size newspaper pages. It required two reporters, a photographer and a graphics artist. The small newspapers in eastern Kentucky do not have the resources to provide that kind of coverage.
A reporter for a large Kentucky daily newspaper said it was difficult to find welfare recipients to be interviewed for feature stories on the problems or the successes of welfare reform. Cooperation from local offices of the state welfare system was not good. Local state employees were not willing to ask questions of recipients and relay information to reporters. Recipients were afraid to talk to reporters and didn't want their pictures taken. State welfare officials were upset by questions from news reporters and tended to be "a little bit defensive."
In eastern Kentucky jobs are scarce for everybody and especially for un trained or inexperienced workers. "You can't put a person in training on how to work a mop for five years," the reporter at this large Kentucky paper pointed out. "It's a national issue. State officials shouldn't be so thin-skinned." In one instance, this reporter had been talking with a welfare recipient for some time about her problems, but after a call from an official in the Cabinet for Families and Children in Frankfort (our state capital) the woman would no longer return the reporter's telephone calls. Presumably she had been told by someone in the state or local welfare office that she should not talk with reporters.
Fear of losing jobs or benefit checks is not new to people in the Kentucky mountains. For many years local politicians and/or coal company officials had almost total control over the lives of many mountain families. A coal miner who did or said something his bosses didn't like could find his furniture out on the street when he returned to his company-owned house. For many years, local political powers had a major say about who received welfare and who didn't. Those lessons were absorbed quickly and thoroughly. Tales about such punishment perhaps have become embellished over the years, but they continue to affect mountain residents' actions.
Welfare recipients who live here have good reason to be hesitant about talking to reporters. It's part of the legacy of their forebears' lives and circumstances, but it does make it difficult for those who genuinely want to learn about their situation and tell others so that positive changes can occur, as Bigart's effort shows they can.
Pat Gish has lived in Letcher County for the past 42 years. She grew up in central Kentucky and her husband, Tom, grew up in a Letcher County coal camp. Married since 1948, they bought The Mountain Eagle in 1957, a weekly which they and their children still operate.
Why Identify Welfare Recipients or Quote Incorrect Grammar?
At The Mountain Eagle newspaper we do not use photographs of welfare recipients as welfare recipients. It's hard enough to have to be one without having to face the prospect of someone taunting you or your kids over a circumstance beyond your control.
We do, of course, use their pictures in different circumstances, such as a birthday, engagement, wedding or school honor.
We also use correct grammar when we are quoting someone, welfare recipient or not. Our observation is that newspapers generally do not quote any other group of Americans in dialect whether they are Kennedys in Massachusetts, Dodger fans in Brooklyn, Mexican-Americans in California, or African-Americans in Alabama. We see no reason why Appalachian residents should be challenged for speech brought here by settlers from the British Isles centuries ago.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Appalachian Mountain Project
My writing began to materialize as a project to give ordinary, common, blue-collar workers and their families a voice. People reared in coal camps. People who have their arms, hands and legs cut off by large mining machinery. People who have lived their entire life in a four-room house. People who did not draw ordinary money at the end of the pay period but who were given scrip to spend at the Company Store. People, who often lived no better than slaves, and were told they were lucky to have all they had. I wanted to give these people an opportunity to talk to someone, to tell their stories, to have their stories recorded as a remembrance.
With all this on my shoulders, I feel I have been forced to write by an unconscious mandate. Someone must hold these precious memories up for the world to read.
The people of the Appalachian coalfields are much like the survivors of any major disasters (God or manmade). And like the victims of those disasters – my people too have been forgotten. Their own strength, courage and caring for each other have made them into pillars of strength many times without benefit of a loving or responding government. Many of the mountain people have died because of mine explosions, accidents and black lung.
B. L. Dotson-Lewis
Summersville, WV
With all this on my shoulders, I feel I have been forced to write by an unconscious mandate. Someone must hold these precious memories up for the world to read.
The people of the Appalachian coalfields are much like the survivors of any major disasters (God or manmade). And like the victims of those disasters – my people too have been forgotten. Their own strength, courage and caring for each other have made them into pillars of strength many times without benefit of a loving or responding government. Many of the mountain people have died because of mine explosions, accidents and black lung.
B. L. Dotson-Lewis
Summersville, WV
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