Things Get Worse in Kentucky Flood

8/2/2022

Trying to Save the History of Appalachia. Photo, thanks to NY Times.

When I covered Appalachia from a home base in Louisville, some of the grand leaders of Appalachia had a suggestion for me: why not live in Whitesburg, the center of the universe?
They had a point – “they” being Harry Caudill, lawyer and writer, and Tom and Pat Gish, who put out the great weekly newspaper, The Mountain Eagle (“It Screams.”)
Those grand figures of the Kentucky mountains both lived in Whitesburg, in Letcher County, current population 2,200.

Also in Whitesburg was Appalshop an invaluable repository of the images and words and sounds of mountain people, mountain culture, mountain history. (See Randolph Fiery's tribute to Appalshop, Comment No. 9.)
Now Whitesburg, and Appalachian history, have been crushed by the floods that have marauded through Eastern Kentucky in the past week. The floods have spread mud over every inch of the treasures of Appalshop.
I am sick.
Here's the NYT article. Fifty years ago, that might have been me writing it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/04/us/kentucky-flood-appalshop-archives.html?searchResultPosition=1

I have already written about the stricken counties and given three general funds. (below)
How can I tell anybody to prioritize a center of history against hospitals and food drives and housing centers?
I only know that Appalshop is special, representative of the world that is being washed away because most elected public officials and industry (Here’s looking at you, Commodore Manchin) pay no attention to the region they helped dig up.
Here’s a link for Appalshop.
https://appalshop.org/news/appalachian-flood-support-resources
Now back to our previous disasters:
***
In my first month on a new job covering Appalachia, I happened to be nearby when the mine blew up on Dec. 30, 1970. I drove until I found the narrow road leading to the site where 38 miners had been killed in the dog-hole Finley mine at Hyden, Ky.
Around 8 or 9 PM, I noticed a Red Cross truck, with long lines, and I waited my turn for, as I recall, a cheese sandwich and a coffee, for which I was extremely grateful.

The Red Cross was there at other disasters, like the one at Buffalo Creek, W. Va., on Feb. 26, 1972. People have to eat, in all those isolated towns, most of them on bottom land, inundated by the downpour and the disintegrated hillsides of Appalachia.

In the latest horror story, good people and good organizations, are feeding the flooded mountain hamlets of Eastern Kentucky.

The Red Cross is there, because it always is.
https://www.redcross.org/donate/disaster-relief.html/?cid=disaster_brand&med=cpc&source=google&scode=RSG00000E017&gclid=CjwKCAjwlqOXBhBqEiwA-hhitORr5j455Wf9c-eU79JiSEfjnvHknssybFb8oyhktMRnu0So8boHfxoC4qkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Kentucky is lucky enough to have a thinking, feeling governor named Andy Beshear. Only last December, a tornado hit Western Ky, and he set up a special relief mission. This week Gov, Beshear set up another relief mission in the eastern part of the state:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-to-help-flood-victims-in-kentucky

Also present is the World Central Kitchen, run by the Washington, D.C. chef, José Andrés. It seems he is everywhere – most recently in Ukraine – and I am not surprised that within hours workers and volunteers were somehow getting to the inundated towns, preparing hot food, good food.
https://wck.org/en-us/news/kentucky-flooding

I would urge a contribution to any of these funds.

I take this disaster personally because this flood has brought up the same towns (Hazard, Troublesome Creek, Isom, Viper, Cutshin, Fisty…) and the same family names I saw on mailboxes in clusters along the highway (Amburgey, Webb, Sturgill, Stamper, Estep).

Death and disaster introduced me to Appalachia, and now death and disaster focus my attention, again. The climate continues to grow worse and so have the senators from Kentucky -- people like Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Neighboring West Virginia has the coal-dealer, Commodore Joe Manchin, doing something for the good of others only when it profits him.

(The Senate? Have you seen the list of 41 Republican scoundrels who have banded together to deprive military veterans of medical benefits for a burn-pit plague?)

So what chance do regular Appalachia people have, trying to survive alongside the creeks and rivers in the region known as the “dark and bloody ground” to the Shawnees and Cherokees who were there before Daniel Boone and his kind.

Appalachia has been messed over by government and by industry. The least we can do for the flooded people of Kentucky is help feed them.

Ina Selden

8/2/2022 05:58:51 pm

Powerful commentary. Will do as you suggest and help.

8/3/2022 03:05:24 pm

Ina, mille grazie, G

Altenir Silva

8/2/2022 06:07:25 pm

Dear George: It was very sad. Here in Brazil, the CBF spent a fortune on the refurbishment of the training center of the Brazilian soccer team in Petrópolis City. The same town that suffered from a terrible flood. The people got homeless and hungry, while they lodged the players in the luxe. A horrible thing. God bless the Kentucky people.
Altenir

George

8/3/2022 03:07:42 pm

Dear Altenir: front page article in the NYT today about Brazil constructing tiny landing strips in the rain forest, to allow for quicker devastation. Are we all crazy? Muito Obrigado, G

Randolph

8/2/2022 09:50:29 pm

George,
Thank you…..
You understand the complexity of the land and people of Appalachia.
The hollows of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky are challenging places to live In the best of times. Climate change and the natural disasters that follow become Generational Gamebreakers.

I think you knew Harry Caudill, the author of Night Comes To The Cumberland. He was one of the first people who wrote about the exploitation of people in the region. He knew that the land and people of Appalachia had become “disposable” ; a Third World country, much like the Congo. Yes it was OK to take the minerals and keep the people in poverty for the better good of the planet.

You made me smile at the dimming of the day, when you said that it was personal to you. Yes it’s personal to me also.
Yet I am thankful on this evening that you have written this piece with compassion and kindness for those people in the land that you encountered long ago.
All the best to you.
R

Yes, contributions to those organizations will help.

8/3/2022 03:14:10 pm

Dear Randolph: Yes, I did know Caudill. In early 60s, I read his book, "Night Comes to the Cumberlands," and was so touched that in 1970 when the editors Gene Roberts and Dave Jones asked me to cover Appalachia, I jumped at it. I met Caudill a few times...he and the editor of the weekly Mountain Eagle ("It Screams") Tom Gish challenged me to live in their town of Whitesburg rather than in my effete little corner of Louisville. I'd love to have a count of how many times I headed east on I-64 and got on the Mountain Parkway down into Eastern KY....Now many of those counties, from Jackson down into Hazard, are under water. Caudill's book was prophetic...and ongoing. Best, G

Alan Rubin link

8/3/2022 03:42:16 pm

I do not believe it possible to completely comprehend the suffering of others unless you have witnessed it first hand.

i had experienced the effects of a hurricane that hit the NYC area in August of1955. The between Phillipsburg, NJ and Easter, PA was down. When I could not understand the mid-week delay on Rt. 22,
I suddenly realized that there was no bridge. What had been considered a sleepy Delaware River flowed with enough force to topple the bridge.

Bethlehem, PA, home of Lehigh University, has steep mountains on both sides of the river. The water came four or five blocks into town and was threatening the blast furnaces at Bethlehem Steel. They are a continuous process that is only banked for maintenance. Old timers said that they do not ever remember that possibility every happening before.Ever since, I have not seen any humor in the expression, "don't f*** with mother nature".

The people in the flooded areas need all the help that they can get.

Randolph

8/4/2022 07:41:37 am

It is a busy world and I thought that some of you might miss George’s article on today’s sports page of the New York Times : “A Dignified Ambassador for Dem Bums.”
It is a fine tribute to Vince Scully.

Thanks George.
R

Randolph

8/4/2022 06:40:49 pm

George,
Thank you so much for mentioning Appalshop.
I hope that your regular readers take the time to read the New York times article.
I first became aware of Appalshop almost 50 years ago. Appalshop has been a salve and a bright light to a lot of people in the hollows of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. They developed a radio station, film company, Record label and a Roadside Theater group that traveled throughout the United States and Europe. They produced over 100 films, Documentaries and cultural programs that highlighted rural communities and people. They were able to document Appalachians who were extraordinary humans, but were unknown outside of the small places they lived. Back more than 30 years ago they were awarded the DuPont award from Columbia University for their excellence in broadcast journalist.
Back last year, living far away from my mountain home, I contacted
Appalshop. Sometime over the last 40-50 years, I had lost two blues albums that had been recorded on there June Appal Record Label.
One of the albums was located and I received a pristine copy of a 1986 recording of the Metropolitan Blues Allstars, Eastern Kentucky boys that could really play the blues. For some reason, it made me feel better about the troubled world of Covid and Trump.
It appears that a lot has been lost, but these are people of strong spirit and they will continue to be a positive light in this big old goofy world.
Thanks again George for mentioning Appalshop.
R

Gene Palumbo

8/7/2022 08:44:55 pm

Randolph mentioned George's fine piece on Vin Scully. Here's the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/sports/baseball/vin-scully-dodgers.html

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

Things Get Worse in Kentucky Flood

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