Resurrection

Well, I've decided to drag this thing back out. I should have been writing some over the last month or so that I've been roaming around, but I never thought about it.

Right now I'm in Lott's Creek, KY. The nearest place that is on a map is Bulan, KY. We are about 20 minutes from Hazard. I'm working for Appalachia Service Project (www.asphome.org) helping out in Knott, Perry, and Letcher counties.

I think the most surprising thing is that people in these areas are living much like the people I was hanging out with in Venezuela...except that this is America and we have sufficient resources, infrastructure etc that it's a disgrace that people are living like this. However, with most organizations like I have felt like we weren't doing anything that important, but here I'm seeing a family about to get their first indoor bathroom and another get a room addition to their trailer that will allow them to adopt some related children currently in state custody. Good stuff.

Coal rules this part of the state. I've heard statements like that before, and thought it was an exageration. I also couldn't believe when people would say that mountain top removal mining would flatten the central Applachians. As I've driven around, it seems like maybe every third mountain has been reduced to a big field, and as I understand it there are more contracts out for these huge surface mines than there are mines currently operating. While the process of flattening a mountain is awe-inspiring in it's scale and methods, this area is on its way to looking like Kansas. And making it even more absurd, mountain top removal mining is illegal in Kentucky. Hmmm. How does that work? Our society/government have some serious problems.

Coal trucks rule the roads. If a road is used by the coal companies, the state stops maintaining it forcing the coal companies to shoulder the burden, and the trucks drive on it as if they own it. They are frequent and you learn to get out of the way quickly. This is also the dustiest place I've ever lived (surpassing even the Eastern WA desert), but with a large percentage of the ground being moved around, ground up and dumped into valleys, it shouldn't be too surprising.

The people here have mostly been extremely nice and welcoming. Maybe it's not that Latin American (or whatever other) culture is just nicer, it could very well be that poor people are, as a general rule, nicer than people with more money.