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Appalachia
May. 25th, 2006 03:08 amI just watched Stranger with a Camera on TV Ontario. It is the story of a film crew that went into the mountains of eastern Kentucky to film how the coal mining was affecting the lives of the people who lived there. During the 1967 filming, the dislike of outsiders came to a head with the murder of one of the filmakers, Hugh O'Connor, who happened to be a Canadian. The murder trial took place in the county seat, which is Pikeville. I've visited Pikeville, doing some work there. The film that was made of the footage they took then was called Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People. And I have to say that it is as true now as it was then, throughout the areas of the US South that I have visited and lived in. Not a lot has changed in many ways in the region.
One of the trips I did before I left North Carolina was a road trip down to Newton, NC, which is the birthplace of Tori Amos. I travelled the secondary roads, and the poverty of the people's homes was striking. And what was even more striking was how richly appointed and maintained the churches were....surrounded by the ramshackle shacks the people around them lived. In many ways, the growing rift between the Rich and the Poor in the Appalachian South is a foreshadowing of what is happening in general North American society today. The Rich are very rich, and living very well, and the Poor are barely scraping by, sacrificing their lives to the capricious consumption of the Rich...dying in mines, low-wage no-where jobs, or getting involved with drugs and gangs.
I was tentatively offered a job in Pikeville. It would have kept me in the South...and in retrospect, it is a very good thing that I didn't accept it. I might not have survived it.
I recommend everyone see both Stranger with a Camera, and Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People. I need to see about getting a copy of the latter, as all of it I have seen is from the clips of it in the former.
One of the trips I did before I left North Carolina was a road trip down to Newton, NC, which is the birthplace of Tori Amos. I travelled the secondary roads, and the poverty of the people's homes was striking. And what was even more striking was how richly appointed and maintained the churches were....surrounded by the ramshackle shacks the people around them lived. In many ways, the growing rift between the Rich and the Poor in the Appalachian South is a foreshadowing of what is happening in general North American society today. The Rich are very rich, and living very well, and the Poor are barely scraping by, sacrificing their lives to the capricious consumption of the Rich...dying in mines, low-wage no-where jobs, or getting involved with drugs and gangs.
I was tentatively offered a job in Pikeville. It would have kept me in the South...and in retrospect, it is a very good thing that I didn't accept it. I might not have survived it.
I recommend everyone see both Stranger with a Camera, and Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People. I need to see about getting a copy of the latter, as all of it I have seen is from the clips of it in the former.
