Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It is easy for the dog to bite the hand that feeds it ,also.
You can't eat " scenery " when you got a family to support !
What a strange reply. Now that you have given Kentuckians the benefit of your observations, perhaps you could click on the Colorado Forum and liven it up for us with some pithy comments on the "Fracking" thread there.
BTW, it is unacceptable for any dog of mine to bite ANYONE's hand, never mind the one which holds the food dish. I take it that residents of Arkansas can be recognized by their missing fingers?
Yep, you can eat the scenery if you know what you are doing. Makes for mighty good eating, too. Add a garden, a few chickens, a hog or two, and a beef, and you eat as well as anyone who depends on an upscale restaurant for a whole lot less. Morels, huckleberries, wild strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, black walnuts, hazelnuts, hickorynuts, asparagus, polk, creases, and many other wild greens, cat tails. By the way, we grow or wildcraft many of our own medicines, too.
The coal companies offered the folks of eastern KY.......... JOBS .......that enabled them to support their families.
What have you coal company bashers offered ?
Sympathy ?
Sympathy doesn't pay bills !
Have you read Harry Caudill's "Night Comes to the Cumberlands"? I strongly recommend it for anyone who would like to learn more about the sad history of coal in Eastern Kentucky. It was not much like the deep coal mining which took place in Arkansas about a hundred years ago...
It is easy for the dog to bite the hand that feeds it ,also.
You can't eat " scenery " when you got a family to support !
People in scenic areas like the vacation towns surrounding the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (and in Arkansas's own Ozarks and Oauchitas) seem to do pretty well "eating the scenery".
Diversification of Eastern Kentucky's economy has been proposed for almost a century now - but little has occurred. Meanwhile, much of its incredible beauty has been severely damaged by the effects of surface mining of various kinds, and its waterways - which of course flow from the mountains into Central Kentucky and thus affect many who do not live in the mountains - have suffered unconscienable damage. The out of state coal company owners have grown wealthy at the cost of the people who made their fortunes possible.
Coal may "keep the lights on" - but it's also responsible for a lot of darkness.
Do you people think these issues do not concern the people of Eastern Kentucky? Really? When it comes to seeing your neighbors and the families surrounding you having things while your family does without, it becomes a hard issue. If you don't know what you are talking about and the issues that Kentuckians and most of us the Appilachaian Mt.s face, Don't judge us.If you ain't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
I also doubt the irony. However, my feeling is that people are desperate for work and the coal mines pay better than some other jobs (which ain't saying much, I know). Many see the argument coming down to environmental rules vs food on the table. After all, it's too late for much for the land and rivers of Eastern Kentucky, anyhow. My grandfather once showed me a river that he used to fish back in the early 1900's. I asked him if there were still fish in it now and he just shook his head and walked away.
The coal miner is in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position. It's one thing to talk about clean, sustainable energy in the abstract. It's quite another if you think that you've had your hours cut back or have even lost your job for the sake of a principle that is certainly not upheld where YOU live.
Colorado shares in the identical same problem, as does Utah the other Western Mountain States. There's strip mines, fracking, old tailings that leach nasty chemicals like arsenic into the water drainages and we have uranium settling ponds all over the central part of the Colorado-Utah border. The cancer rate is beyond all statistical belief in the two small Colorado towns of Nucla and Naturita which were once home to a booming uranium mining industry. Then demand for uranium went down - way down. The mines closed and the entire town of Uravan was plowed under and cemented over by the DOE because the contamination at that site was so awful. Uravan still appears on Colorado maps, BTW - a ghostly reminder of times gone by and suffering which still continues. Meanwhile, the people of Nucla and Naturita who haven't been diagnosed with cancer (so far) want the uranium mines back. There's no other work in the region except for the mines.
A state which catches the attention of a hard rock mining company may gain several hundred or more jobs in the mines, but the suffering visited upon both the land and its people is often beyond measure. I have a friend who worked for 20 years in the coal mines of Utah and Colorado, so I showed him this thread. He kept nodding his head as he read, saying stuff like "That's right. It happens that way here, too." He'd never heard the song, "You'll never leave Harlan Alive," but he was very moved by it all the same.
The fight that continues between hard rock mining companies, the miners they employ and sometimes kill, the advocates for this country's energy demands, and those who want to protect our priceless natural heritage has to end. Corporate CEO's need to be taught that ethical conduct and a reasonable annual profit are not two things diametrically opposed to one another. Environmentalists need to understand the history of places like Harlan, KY and Nucla, CO and what life is and has been like for the people who live there. And miners might keep in mind that their job today with an environmental corporate criminal like Peabody Coal will ultimately result in depleted seams of coal, rivers that their children and grandchildren will never catch a single fish in and eroded gullies where hardwood forests once stood.
The motto of the State of Kentucky is "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Words every single one of us would do well to ponder.
The motto of the State of Kentucky is "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Words every single one of us would do well to ponder.
I agree 100 percent but, what should we expect from a Country where there is no truth, nothing is right and everything is wrong?
The coal companies offered the folks of eastern KY.......... JOBS .......that enabled them to support their families.
From the very beginning the coal companies did everything they could to suck Kentucky and its people dry. They came in and "bought" mineral rights for a song, often from farmers who had no idea what mineral rights were and what selling them to a coal company would do to their land and the value of that land.
Well, if you no can no longer plow your fields, at least you go down the mines and support your family that way. But coal companies are not in the business of providing a job corps for miners. The company wants the most coal for the lowest price and miners don't figure into the equation except for the noney that can be saved by using fewer of them. Automation (meaning strip mining, augering, etc) allows higher coal production using fewer miners. Some examples of the loss of jobs which began in the 60's and continues to this day:
United States Coal and Coke Company employed 8,000 men before "automation" reduced its workfore to 1,700]
Consolidated Coal Company had 5,000 employees who were all laid off until only 900 remained.
An entire town vanished when Blue Diamond Coal Company sold its mineral rights to a subsidiary of Bethlehem in 1960. Bethlehem acted in the time honored fashion of hard rock mining companies. Rather than spend the money on clean-up and restoration of the damage Blue Diamond had wrought, it was decided to access the coal seam from the other side of the mountain using strip mining techniques. The mine that had been operating in the town of Hellier, Kentucky was shut down and dismantled. Every single miner who had worked in that mine lost his job. Poof! Gone.
The examples above come from the 60's, but mining employment in eastern Kentucky has continued to decline dramatically. In 1979, coal mining provided over 50,000 jobs in Kentucky, with nearly 36,000 of those jobs located in the Appalachian region of the state. By 1992, mining jobs in eastern Kentucky had fallen below 20,000, and by 2004 were just above 13,000. over the same period. This is primarily the result of technological innovations that enabled more coal to be mined with fewer workers.
Our Southern Mountains have been subjected to some of the most destructive mining techniques that the extractive fuels industry has been able to evolve. Entire mountains have had their tops lopped off. Vast areas of land have been rendered as bare as the surface of the moon with the top soil replaced by mounds of tailings that cannot support the growth of even one common weed, never mind the hardwoods and native flora which once flourished there - the flowers, the native grasses, the useful herbs - all things green and growing - replaced by barren stretches of nothing.
Quote:
What have you coal company bashers offered ?
Sympathy ?
Sympathy doesn't pay bills !
What have YOU offered? Snarky comments posted at random in this thread. If the plight of Eastern Kentucky interests you so much, why don't you try acquiring a little information before you post your next non sequitor? And if you have some sort of prejudice against the people of the Eastern Kentucky Mountains, don't expect the people here to respond sympathetically to your comments.
One more thing: Scenary puts the food on the table and the roof over the head of many a resident of the Colorado mountains. There's a great example of this just right up the road from me - the resort town of Telluride. Telluride started out its life as a mining town, extracting several different metals which were plentiful there - one of them being the one that gave the town its name. The usual drama of the hard rock mining industry played itself out there, complete with unsightly tailings everywhere and the contamination of two major water drainages from the chemicals used in the extractive process. The area became mined out and languished as a ghost town for many years. Then someone wandered by one day and noticed what a majestic setting surrounds the area. The mountains are spectacular, complete with waterfalls and fields of wild columbines in the summer. And in the winter? Snow and more snow.
Plans were drawn up, investors were found, work on the ski slopes began, and an environmental clean-up commenced. Telluride went from being mostly a ghost town where a Victorian house on Main went for $15,000 to a year-round resort which attracts tourists from all over the world for its ski slopes and its natural beauty. That house on Main now goes for at least $500,000.
Eastern Kentucky, while probably not a candidate for ski resorts, may yet be able to pull off some other rags to riches story of it's own. I very much hope so. The Kentucky Mountains deserved to be treasured, not trashed.
I noticed this thread quite by accident. I have lived in the State of Colorado for a very long time now. However, mountains are part of my family bloodlines, and I could no more live without the Apalchians of Eastern Kentucky or Colorado's Rocky Mountains than I could food and water.
My family first settled in Eastern Kentucky near the Cumberland Gap in the late 1700's. Many still reside in the area of Whitley County and Williamsburg, Kentucky to this very day. Life in Eastern Kentucky has seldom been anything but a hardscrabble existance. My Daddy who was born in 1916 (the 2nd of 6 children), told me that the Wilson clan back then were considered no-account - family legend has it that "Old Man Sam" (my great grand-pappy) was the worst tempered old coot in the region, as well as the best moonshiner, and a fair to middlen fur trapper.
Whitley County was scandalized when the most desirable girl in the County, my grandma, Susie Stinson, up and eloped with Albert Wilson from Old Man Sam's infamous moonshiner family. Grandma Susie told me that Albert Wilson was the best looking boy in the entire town, and if she had to convince him to run off with her so that she could keep him, it was well worth the bargain!
My grand daddy, Albert had no idea what he was getting himself into by marrying into the Stinson family. My Great Grandfather Stinson ran the sole country store for miles around, and he was the only person in Whitley County who subscribed to an actually newspaper which was mailed all the way from Louisville! Albert's only daughter Susie wasn't going to end up as a share-cropper's wife. Nor would she someday wave goodbye to her husband as he left to work in the dangerous mining indusry.
Instead, Susie Stinson's father unpeeled a bunch of hard earned greenbacks from the wad he kept in the safe in the back of that county store. Albert and Susie had to promise tonever look back and leave the mountains behind and head out for the bluegrass country near Richmond, KY. That money was just enough to buy a farm big enough to sustain the young family, as well as grow a cash crop of tobacco which could be sold for the cash to make payments on their debt to Susie's pappy. They paid that debt and went on to set the money aside to send 5 of their 6 children through the University of Kentucky in the depression of the 1930's (back then, UK offered free tuition to KY residents. Imagine if it were to do so today!)
Neither one of my grandparents even finished high school, yet one of their sons got a doctrate in chemistry, another got a PhD and became head of the Education Department at the University of Boston, my Dad attended medical school; his younger sister became an RN and his second youngest a school teacher.
My Aunt Doris had the Wilson women's weakness for good looking men with soft Kentucky drawls. she was the only one to quit schoolbefore completion - to marry the "handsomest boy in the County." And even she eventually returned for her degree.
Wow! I really went on and on remembering my "old Kentucky home." I hope I don't come across as being uppity or bragging about my family roots. What I wanted to convey is that the people of the Kentucky Mountains are a strong people. They don't quit - they're workers from sunrise to sunset and the women sing those same old Southern spirituals my Grand Mother Susie used to sing when she went about her tasks...
The people of Eastern Kentucky are no different in their needs than the coal miners of Utah and Colorado or any other state in our Nation. They deserve an honest day's wage for their honest day's work. The child of a miner's family from our Southern Mountains needs and has a right to an education every bit as much as every other child in the US.
Today, US corporations treat their workers not as honest employees who will put in a a good day's effort in exchange for fair treatment and decent pay, but instead as parasites who deserve little and whom CEO's make it a crusade to given them ever less, even as these corporate robber barons award themselves a higher and more obcenely costly compensation package each year. Sadly, these developments are nothing new. Amoral coal and energy company execs no longer even think twice about leading the charge to destroy wages, pollute water supplies, kill an unacceptable number of miners in accidents that were easily avoidable, etc.
The people who wrote the OP, the people who replied to it, the people who live in Eastern Kentucky, the people who USED to live in Eastern Kentucky and/or those who still have loved ones there, AND the people of the United States need to read the following book, even if it's the only one they'll read in the next five years:
Night Comes to the Cumberlands, by Harry M. Caudill, published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation, Ashland, KY 2001.
(available either new or very reasonably priced in used condition)
That was waaaaaay too much out of me, so I'll just slink back on over to the Colorado Forum and inflict no further diatribes upon the readers over here in the forum for the fine State of Kentucky.
Take care, ya'll!
- Rambler
That was Awesome,Thank you for takeing thetime to post this.Of course my family roots are from Ky.I was born in Corbin.My parents and Grandparents were from Harlan.My father worked in I.H.Coal mines along with many of his brothers and relatives.
My father bought a farm in Corbin with money he saved and we moved away from Benham when I was 10.I just loved your story,thats all Im saying.Our family has had a colorful life also,but I dont have the strength to sum all of that up at the moment.Again Thank you!!!Wow!!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Another Fine Kentucky Family!!
