west virginia, by god!

from childhood into my early twenties, i would tell my folks that one day i'd settle down somewhere in the heart of west virginia. my reasoning: west virginia was the one state i knew that was entirely mountainous. i still love that country, and after spending a night in morgantown, i am also in love with its cities. although morgantown is a little more northern than i've ever been comfortable with, i was surprised to find how much i liked it.

at common ground, i was among a few other folks from wv and ky who were "ambassadors" from central appalachia. we spent a lot of time discussing and explaining mountaintop removal to concerned, conscientious folks. i spent one day of my film class showing films about coal sludge spills and floods. i was glad to share these stories with such a captive and caring audience, but i found it emotionally and even physically exhausting. i got so homesick, that even when showing these awful images of coal companies, those images nearly knocked me over with intense yearning to be back home. it's times like these jean ritchie lyrics swell inside me, like the l&n don't stop here anymore:

"Never thought I'd ever live to love that coal dust
Never thought I'd pray to hear those tipples roar"

the best thing i brought back from common ground was learning how to do the charleston from the amazing rhiannon giddens, who we all decided must be channelling an ancestor when she gets to doing that dance.

nearly half my drive home i was bouncing with the bow-legged charleston groove while i drove. my plans for this weekend (after working in the garden, of course) are to put on some old records and charleston myself dizzy on the kitchen dance floor.

Do I really sound like that?

I'm spending a week in Maryland, teaching at Common Ground. Here's a couple of things that really strike me when I'm far away from home:

* I can suddenly hear how my voice sounds when I speak.
* My accent seems to get deeper, and I fall into using a language that is out of place here, but transplants me back home as I speak.


What I'm wondering is:

* Do I really speak with a thicker accent when I'm out of my element and surrounded by people who do not speak like my homefolks OR is it that I'm more conscious of my way of speaking when I'm dropped into a group of people who don't speak the way I do?

Last night I called neigbor Billy Joe under the pretense of checking in on my furry house critters. Really, I was just calling to hear my neigbor's voice and chat for a little about the little things we always talk about: the weather, the animals, the garden, the work that needs doing and how nice it's been to see so many good friends this summer. After giving me an update on Bella's activities (she's been camping out with the Judy Branch pack the past couple of nights), Billy Joe figured the real reason behind my call:

I was feeling homesick for Judy Branch.

Blissful exhaustion

I am recovering from my favorite week of the year: Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, and it has left me delirious, exhausted and somewhat in pain. The pain is mostly from a banjo playing injury I incurred the very first square dance on Monday night. I think it must have been the banjo gods trying to wean me from using my left index finger too much.The blister continues to grow after that forty minute tune, six days ago.... and I have learned how to play with minimum use of said injured finger.

Each year Cowan Music School has become more and more akin to a family reunion. It is a small gathering that grows just a little each year. So many of the people who come to the school feel like cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. I love the balance of children with adults and the nurturing spirit that seems to envelop us all. There's no competition to be the greatest musician or to play the fastest or the most like Art Stamper. Everyone is here to play, listen, learn and visit. It is the happiest I ever feel. The only bad part of the week is when it comes to an end.

Last week I learned that Judy Branch has secret healing powers. Early in the week I was suffering with a tension headache. I retreated to Judy Branch to recover, and I got an urge to work in my garden. The very moment I knelt on the ground and put my fingers in the soil, the headache lifted. I wonder if that magic soil would heal my banjo injury.... Perhaps I'll give it a try this evening.

13 Aprons

I returned from my Grandma's to Judy Branch with a bag full of aprons.

Yes, aprons. Nine aprons to be exact. Each handmade, and each with its own distinct character. I found them in Grandma's hallway closet, and I entertained her at the "hospital" with a fashion show that took her back in time. I chose old jewelry to go with each apron and arrived at the rehab center with all props in hand for a evening's worth of entertainment. (Granny's recovering from a fall that broke her arm, and that's one of the many reasons why I set out to visit her last week.) I modeled each apron, and she told me who they once belonged to and who most likely made them. On several occasions she had to closely inspect the stitch to see if it was left or right-handed. The aprons belonged to and were made by great aunts: Mammie (maker) and Ruth (wearer, whose figure was much like mine apparently), Great Grandmother McCandless (maker), Great Grandma or "Nanny," as I always called her and, of course, Grandma. Nanny embroidered her apron. Together we examined the stitchwork and design, the stains and the holes and recreated a history for each and every apron.

I learned that the women of Grandma's life always tried to give her aprons because they thought she should wear them. But she never would. Unless some of the aprons were hand-me-downs or used by others, I think she may be telling me a little fib. We won't dwell on details, though.

The aprons now belong to me, and for some reason that just makes me incredibly happy.

Just a few years ago, I discovered the great usefulness of aprons and had begun a small collection for myself (total: four). Now, with my inheritance, Judy Branch is well stocked with 13 aprons. What a great excuse to make a mess in the kitchen!

almost a portland winter...

but it's only a kentucky summer.

a few days ago i left a dry, hot judy branch on a journey to visit my grandma in nashville. i came home through potholes that had become ponds and roadside waterfalls that splashed down rock face onto pavement to become waterways. this was not the first time i attempted to wish myself into a tall pick-up truck on my drive home. even so, i found myself singing silly songs praising rain and pup bella as she soaked herself in the downpour out the side window, tail wagging, as i slowly inched my way through thickly slicked roads, closer and closer home.

i love visiting my grandma. but from the moment i arrived in nashville, i became intensely homesick for the pace and space of life that judy branch provides. i can handle the city traffic just fine, and i am able to enjoy what a city has to offer. i just don't ever wish that kind of environment for myself. it's a shame that so many of the cities in this nation are exclusively car-centric and so consumer driven. it makes no sense to me at all.

i am far from all that now with all the joys that judy branch has to offer on a saturday night: the sounds of steady rain fall mixed with my favorite community radio station WMMT, four loving housemates (all fuzzy and shedding like crazy), fresh veggies to cook for supper and no plans for tomorrow other than to get ready for my favorite week of the entire year... cowan creek mountain music school!

Explaining Okra...

I have a few friends who live across the pond. I'm not talking about neighbors Bill & Billy Joe who do happen to live on the other side of the Judy Branch fish pond. I mean that big Atlantic Ocean pond! After reading my blog, a friend from across the pond had a few questions. It made me realize that even in our increasingly homogenized, globalized world, we each have our own realities and our own language for describing them. Here's what needs clarification:

So what are :- Mojitos (you ate them in miami), what is okra (and what do you do with it).
And is there a burger place & pub nearby?

Mojitos are a tasty carribean drink (common in Cuba and Haiti and surely other places) made with a large amount of fresh crushed mint leaves. It is a cousin of the Brazilian cocktail, Caipirinha. A mojito is traditionally made of five ingredients: mint, rum, powdered sugar, lime juice, and club soda. I sipped on one of these with friends in Miami while eating at a Haitian restaurant located in the heart of one of Miami's Haitian neigborhoods. Being someone who is more of a beer or wine person, I was surprised how yummy and refreshing the mojito was, and I'm determined to learn how to make it once I grow a good crop of fresh mint!

Ah, Okra.... It'a a staple garden food of southeastern US, and an especially popular ingredient in southern, cajun, creole and soul food cuisines. Also common in African and Indian cuisine. Okra is actually originally from Africa. The plant grows to be almost as tall as a corn stalk and produces a beautiful flower from which a long fruit emerges (which is the part you eat). Last year I grew both green and red okra. Some people really despise okra because when cooked the interior of the vegetable has a slimy texture. I love okra in a variety of forms. Cut into bits, deep fried and breaded, it makes for a great salty snack that I have often thought should be available at movie theaters like popcorn. Cut up and stewed in a gumbo or just by itself with tomatoes and herbs, okra makes for a really savory addition to any meal. In my family, okra is the key ingredient to making a perfect vegetable soup. As you simmer your soup, you gently press the okra pieces against the side of the pot, thus creating the perfect consistancy for your broth. More can be discovered about okra at target="_blank"Wikipedia

Although it would be most interesting to visit a pub located in this neighborhood, I'm afraid to say that there is no pub (nor a burger place) anywhere near Judy Branch. You must drive at least 30 minutes to arrive at a place that serves any sort of food, and even further to find yourself in a place you can obtain an alcoholic beverage. Judy Branch is located in a "dry" county, a concept that is nearly impossible to explain to our friends across the Atlantic. What it means is that no alcohol can be legally bought or sold within the county limits. It makes for a thriving blackmarket of bootleg beer, hooch and moonshine, and there are folks who make a good living at these arts around here. And that's one of the reasons our county hasn't been able to pass a referendum to allow alcohol to be sold!

The U.S. has never had a the sort of thriving pub culture of Scotland and Ireland. We have bars, the majority of which are not worth the visit. In Kentucky, we have honky tonks. Now these are worth an occasional visit, but you have to have your wits about you. There's an entire culture built up around honky tonking, and regulars at these joints are very serious about their night life! Loud country music and bar fights are an essential element to most of these places, and if you're not a regular, you stick out like a sore thumb. Not the kind of place you go for a drink and a mellow chat with friends. Hazard and Pikeville are the two nearest towns where you can go out honky tonking. They are each about an hour's drive away. I'm more of a quiet type, so I don't go out to the honky tonks but once a year or so, and it's usually with much encouraging from a big group of friends.

Here's my neighborhood pub: I dust off the Guinness poster on my living room wall and invite friends to come out to Judy Branch for an evening or a weekend of playing music, telling stories and sipping on a few beers. If it's winter, we sit around the fire place. In warmer weather, we sit around a fire pit in the yard or on the porch. Judy Branch serves so many purposes in my life, and depending on the company, it's as close to a pub as you'll get in this part of the world, smoking ban and all!

Star Wars

Out on Judy Branch you can really see the stars. And being a child of the 70s and early 80s, a good long session of star gazing leads my mind to drift to the epic stories that reigned my childhood. Yes, Star Wars. Princess Lei will always be trapped somewhere inside of me, fighting so fiercely (and with attitude) against the evil empire.

When I was in grad school, the most important book I read was John Gaventa's dissertation: Power and Powerlessness: Quiessence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. For me, he was the first person who ever laid out the complexity of the power relationships that cause all the horrible inequalities we see happening around the world today. I still can't get my head around it all, and I have a feeling that this is one of the reason's I'm nestled as far back as I can possibly get in this holler. I need a place to escape to each and every day. And Judy Branch is the ideal place to go.

Besides being raised with the ideals of the small band of rebels of Star Wars, I was raised by a family that somehow instilled in both myself and my brother that we should not sit by while others suffer. I was raised to think and to care and to try to make a difference. My brother took this literally, first as a vigil anti fighting neo-nazis, now as a paramedic. I took to the hollers, trying to figure out how to make my homeland a place that people can still make a living and find a community.

What I've learned: It's not easy trying to make the world a better place, no matter how you go about it. Sometimes the only place I can bear to be is way back here at the head of Judy Branch. Let the deer nibble at my garden, the poison ivy brush against my feet and the racoons raid my compsost bin.... These challenges are welcome compared to the unthinkable beasts of the rest of the world.

When I first read Tolkein, I must have been 8 or 9 years old. I decided right then that there was NO way that I was human. I was of Elvin stock, and that was that. There was no way that I could ever understand the ways of Man. There was no way I could ever be on of THEM. Somehow, I missed the boat.

I still feel that way.

Thunderstorms are approaching Judy Branch. Time to switch off the electric window to the world and read myself to sleep by candle light.

Terrified and In Love

.... with revolution and a piece of land.

And saddened that the nation I was born into is the cause of so much of the world's misery.

I always knew a little about Fidel, but I never realized how narrow the views of him I'd been given in my life. Now I am in love. And I think Alice Walker is too. It is nice to be reminded of your mentors and heros and people who really have made a difference in the world and tried to do good.

Viva la revolucion!

My goal this summer is that once the sun has set and the 360 degree TV is only useful to feline eyes, I will dedicate my pre-sleep hours to reading the writings and stories of people who have inspired revolution and truly changed the world. Ghandi. Castro, Lumumba, Don West, Mother Jones and Jimmy Carter are all high on my list.

In those hours leading up to sunset, I'll work in my garden and let the teachings soak into me at the root.

"Ignorance is cheap," I saw a sign somewhere saying that. The worst kind of ignorance is when you think your way of thinking is the only way to think.

360 degree TV

My house has many windows and a wrap around porch. Depending on which window you choose, you'll find yourself peering into woodland thickets, a long meadow and garden patch or a porch that is home to a variety of dogs, birds, bugs and sometimes people. In warm weather all the windows are open, providing not only a view of these environments, but also the sounds and scents.

For my feline housemates, the windows are a complex, multimedia entertainment system. If one window is made inaccessible (say by closing a door), it diminishes the surround sound/smell/sight quality of the entertainment system.

In window world, everything is timed just so. Sid Vicious (cat) will be sitting and staring at the study window, and suddenly he'll bolt from his perch and speed across the house to the french doors or a kitchen window. Imagine if people would turn off their "reality tv" and switch to the 360 degree window entertainment my cats enjoy. What a different world we'd live in! Maybe then, we wouldn't be an obsese nation of greedy, dimwitted sleepers. Look out your windows! There's a world out there just waiting to entertain you. And get this.... it's absolutely free and there's no commercials!

House guests

I don't have house guests or parties that often out on Judy Branch, namely because of the far removed location of this place. It's not perched on the side of a mountain like some of my previous homes have been. Even so, the roads are croked and narrow and sometimes not altogether there.

Last night I hosted a potluck to celebrate the arrival of friends Carla & Mitch (http://www.zoespeaks.com/) who are in town to play at the Seedtime Festival. My kitchen table was overloaded with scrumptous dishes. Neighbors Bill and Billy Joe came over with dishes made from garden fresh pickings. Work friends and visiting musician friends and just plain friends-friends arrived, arms full of savory and sweet edibles, and intentions to make the evening truly delightful. Carla cooked up fresh Kale greens from her garden. Rich took on the role of grill master. And the kids played capture the flag in the yard with the help of six dogs.

We feasted porchside on home-cooked dishes that seemed to come from every corner of the world. One young lady became quite popular with the crowd for bringing a cherry pie made from cherries she picked that very day! I should mention that it is the season of interns, the time when several young college kids intern with non-profits in our county, bringing new perspectives into our daily lives and vibrant, hopeful energy to our communities. I think the evening was a healthy dose of Judy Branch living for them. I especially enjoyed how we all gathered in the living room after eating and had a big old fashioned song swap. Four of my all time favorite kids were in attendance, and we enjoyed the song circle "by the sea." Key ingredient: a big jar of sea shells inherited from my aunt. When the music started to soak in, and I saw the kids sitting right in the center of it all, I knew those shells were meant for moments like these. With the music encircling us, we poured the shells onto a quilt and each picked out our seven favorites: five to keep for ourselves and two to give as gifts to our parents. There were some moments of tough bartering and a quibble or two over a particular shell, but for the most part, we enjoyed showing each other the bounty of treasures we liberated from an old jar.

Texas Depression

For the most part, I love to travel. But there's a difference in travel by choice and travel by "executive order." I took up administrative slack at work so that "the organization" could manintain good face as a partner/member of an influential national arts network. My "pay" has been that I get to travel to the network meetings, which are required. Over the past two years I've travelled to: Los Angeles, where I got to visit an old gypsy travelling companion of days gone by and ride a roller coaster on the Santa Monica pier (thus inspiring her 30th bday boardwalk celebration a year later). New Orleans, a few months before Katrina, where I strolled down streets filled with childhood memories of summer pilgramages to visit my momma's family. Miami, in December, where I examined beached jelly fish up close, sipped coffee at tiny neighborhood Cuban bakeries and feasted on Haitian food washed down with real Mojitos.

And now.... a suburburban sprawl on the outskirts of Dallas. I have been homesick since a week before I left to come out here.

In my mind, I am at Mount Airy, surrounded by friends, crooked fiddle tunes and moonshine.

In my reality, I'm counting the hours until I arrive back home to Judy Branch.....

Where is Judy Branch?

To get to Judy Branch you have to drive a good while. On this drive, you follow a creek to where it meets a river, and then follow that river to where it meets up with a railroad line. You then follow both river and track, passing several stages of the coal and gas industry: two or three mine entrances (mainly strip), a few fluctuating roadside gas wells, a processing plant, a tipple, a loading track (to put the coal on the train), repair shops for trucks and equipment, riverbank graveyards for unfixable parts, another processing plant and a deep mine...

It may be hard to imagine, but there's immense beautry and life alongside these industrial eyesores. Fall, spring and summer are best. It's always best when the leaves are on the trees. Those leaves remind you that there is still life here despite the constant pillage.

I have grown to love the drive to Judy Branch and all the places it takes me. I have not grown into comfort with my own complicity and participation in the system that makes things so. I hate that by simply being a human being living in our current society, I am inextricably linked to the complex system that brings all these industrial monstrosities to my distant holler. I have spent my entire life participating in systems that I do not believe in. I have yet to discover a way to feel okay about that.

Judy Branch is the place I find myself right in the middle of it but with a quiet distance to reflect. Every time I come home or leave, I go on a journey that forces me to think about the real costs of our "quality of living." When I get home, I go on a journey of rediscovering the challenge of growing your own food and fending for yourself. Neighbor Billy Joe (Neighbor Bill's wife. She calls him William.) thinks that if folks would go back to getting by with what they have, our world (and country) would be in a lot better place. I tend to agree.

Okra planted, time to sleep

Despite the heat and the possibility of taking catnaps on a much-needed day off, I worked in the garden. I have been working tirelessly in this garden since April, even though I know the odds are against me. Neighbor Bill has told me all about the farming difficulties here on Judy Branch. Soil is rocky and not very rich. Been over-farmed and strip mined to boot. Then you have the deer. Hundreds of deer roaming these parts, and the dogs don't do too much to keep them out of the garden. Even if you build a tall fence, you still have to reckon with the racoons, and possibly the groundhogs. If somehow you can manage to keep those out, then you've got the bugs and the soil problems. Somehow, though, he has done it. A real garden of Eden, just the next house up. He even has asparagus.

The last place I lived was on a river that flooded. After the flood, the garden only required that I drop seeds on the mud and cover them over. What a bounty! For two years I had more corn, okra and tomatos than I knew what to do with. More, even, than I could give away. To this day, I dread to think what kind of toxins were in that rich silt left by that flood. Whatever they were, they gave me three months supply of green tomotoes. And that's the only good thing I can remember about that place.

Today I finished my fence and planted okra. Last week I punctured my foot in a failed attempt to drive a T stake in the ground for my garden fence and learned one of the most important lessons in life: steel T stakes should NEVER be mistaken for pogo sticks. I'm stubbornly independent and I like a challenge. On the matter of the fence, these characteristics did not work toward my personal well being. I do hope that they will at least produce a good crop of okra.