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XI. Art has accomplished nothing, except to show us the confusion in which we already find ourselves most of the time. It has frightened us, rather than making us quiet and peaceful. It has shown us that we all live on different islands, only the islands are not far enough apart for us to stay solitary and untroubled. Someone on one island can pester someone on another, or terrorize him, or hunt him with spears — the only thing no one can do to anyone else is help him.

“Notes on the Melody of Things,” in Rilke’s The Inner Sky, Damion Searls, translator.

In the toy aisle, which is inconveniently next to the bread aisle, I tell my 5-year-old son we are not getting a truck today. I tell him we buy what we need, and not more. I tell him I have enough money for food, but nothing else. I tell him I don’t buy treats for myself. “You buy art supplies,” my son says. And I’m stumped. Because of course he’s right. Continue reading

#appalachia #creativity #income inequality #poverty

The photographer, who died last month, has a famous portfolio of arresting images. Among them is a shot of two children in 1990. Amanda thought the photo shoot would change her life. It did not.

Female employment rates have continued rising in most rich countries, but they have been falling in the United States since 2000.

#women and girls #appalachia

Are your premises safe against haints, furies and other such ornery spirits? Have you painted your front door blue? Has the neighborhood seen a sudden upsurge of bottles dangling upside down in the trees? She knew that there could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born …

Getting ready for worship this morning listening to NPR longing to be in Appalachia.

http://wvtf.org/post/wild-goose-church

jordantarwater-deactivated20171

The Economy and Relationality of Appalachian “Granny Women.”

“Love is a conversion to humanity — a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life.”

- Carter Heyward

by Jordan Tarwater

Granny women have a long tradition in the southern half of the Appalachian mountains, practicing their craft as late as the 1930s. Part midwife, part folk healer, part mountain mystic (a proliferation of popular tales of ‘mountain witches’ who travel by tip-toeing across treetops, I find, have some resonance here), these elders of small communities were often the only available practitioners of healthcare for the rural poor. Armed with a multi-generational knowledge of herbal remedies, ritual, and oral tradition, granny women normally worked free of charge – a vocation set on communal well-being rather than profit.

jordantarwater-deactivated20171

Jesus and Appalachia in Process

by: Jordan Tarwater

Appalachians have long pondered the question, “what sort of being must this one be, who has death behind him?” (ECT 193). Who was and who is the figure of Jesus the Christ? The resultant christological formulations that I have witnessed are a dynamic interplay – the Jesus who loved and the Jesus who died and, in dying, overcame death. It is corporeal, it is bodily, it is pain and love and suffering and hope. Appalachians are a diverse group, and growing more diverse every day; they know what it is to exist on the margins of society, of empire. M. Shawn Copeland’s conception of “a place of racial and cultural mixture, a frontier region that buffered the ‘crossroad of empire,’” speaks to West Virginia, to Tennessee, to Georgia, just as much as to Galilee (Copeland 59).

Appalachians know well the meaning of the words, “can anything good come out of Nazareth” (Jn 1:46)? They know the insistence of the world of placing this concept upon mountain folk: can anything good come from the hills and hollows, from the coal mines, from the ‘hillbillies’?

Online edition now available! Beautiful work and fantastically representative of the USA Mission Experience.

#horizons #presbyterian #appalachia #presbyterianwomen #usame13 #pcusa

Doing my own reflecting on the PW USA Mission Experience to East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Artist L. Gina Canter really sums it up for me in this beautiful piece.

Reflections. 36x48, acrylic, 4/97. Reflections represents the heritage of Appalachian music. The fiddle, banjo, and guitar are shown in the foreground to represent a few of the instruments that were first brought to the mountains during early settlement. The fiddle was one of the most common early instruments in this area. The mountain view shown within the instruments, and the quilt squares that include area native plants, are interwoven and surround the scene. They symbolize the handicrafts and traditional folk music of the Appalachians as true reflections of the land and the people who settled here. Their music and handicrafts were and are today a way of living - a way of art.

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