I am sure that there are many opinions but most writers take the negative approach when explaining the high rate of poverty that exists in the present day and the refusal so some to cooperate with differing social agencies, or those that maintain their existance from government handouts.

I would appreciate some comments from the forum about their feelings of this prevalence of poverty in the area. I state this because I was a child of the late depression times and the son of a coal miner who lived in the mining camps in Bell County. My father gave his life in the mines. Even though we lived in what would now be considered the worst of poverty, there was a pride in which there was never a thought of being in  poverty.

Have the people of Appalachia changed, or is the concept that poverty is a known fact or is it a governmental and mainstream culture concept

"Cat Head" Biscuit Recipe: An Appalachian Favorite!

Makes six large biscuits.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 3/4 Teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Double-Acting Baking Powder
• 1 Cup of Buttermilk, Milk, or Plain Yogurt
• 4 1/2 Tablespoons Lard, Shortening, or Unsalted Butter

Preparation Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

3) Add the lard, butter, or shortening a piece at a time, then mix it into the dry mixture thoroughly with a pastry cutter or two butter knives slicing in a scissor fashion. The finished mixture should have the consistency of course-ground cornmeal.

4) Mixing. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and add all of the milk. Using a spoon, stir the mixture. Pay special attention to scraping the edges of the bowl so that the dry flour there has a chance to get wet. You only want to stir until the milk is incorporated into the dry mix and there are no large areas of powdery flour remaining. Don’t over-mix here. The dough after mixing should be lumpy, sticky in places, and a bit shaggy in the driest areas. Using your hands, leave the dough in the bowl and carefully knead it about three times. Just lift it out as best you can, fold it in half, then press it down. You may want to sprinkle some flour over it to keep your hands from getting coated.

5) To make "cat head" biscuits (so called because they are large–about the size of a cat’s head), simply pinch off a ball of dough about 2 1/2 inches across and pat it into a thick patty. Put the shaped biscuits into a stoneware pie plate or large cast iron skillet (or on a cookie sheet). Bake for 15 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits are a light golden brown.

Last week, the mountains — and their people — lost one of their fiercest and most loyal defenders. Judy Bonds was 58 years old when she died of cancer only months after first being diagnosed.

It is ironic and perhaps even illuminating that Bonds died of the disease after more than a decade of fighting against the coal industry because she feared it was releasing cancer-causing chemicals into the water supply. It was a fight that led to her becoming perhaps the most beloved hero of the anti-mountaintop-removal movement.

Bonds, a coal miner’s daughter, was the seventh generation in her family to grow up in MarFork Holler, near West Virginia’s Coal River. Just over a decade ago, she witnessed her 7-year-old grandson being surrounded by dozens of dead fish while wading in the creek.

When she reported the fish kill to Massey, the coal company that owned the processing plant at the head of the holler, her battle had only begun. It ignored her, despite subsequent black water spills. “So I started to put together. … They’re poisoning everybody,” she later recalled. Water tests of the creek proved that the preparation plant was releasing polyacrylamide — a cancer-causing agent used to prepare coal for burning. Her state government paid her no mind.

The media ignored her, too, which she blamed on prevailing stereotypes about the region. “Appalachia is a bad taste in mainstream Americans’ mouths,” she once said. But she refused to go unheard.

In 2003, the world started to take notice of Bonds’ tireless efforts. The Goldman Environmental Prize — the world’s most prestigious award for environmental activism — was presented to her. She popularized a T-shirt emblazoned with “SAVE THE ENDANGERED HILLBILLY.” Film crews and authors flocked to her home to cover the issue. Bonds traveled across the nation to give rousing speeches that left audiences slain by her humor, outrage and humanity. The first time I heard Bonds speak, in a packed Harlem church, I cried hard and laughed aloud, as did just about everyone else. She was sharing the stage with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that night, and despite the eloquence of his speech, it was Bonds who left the bigger impression.

Bonds suffered for the attention she brought to the issue. Once, while protesting that Massey had built a 2.8-billion-gallon coal sludge pond just above an elementary school, a Massey employee’s wife assaulted her. People in her community cussed and threatened her so much that she was forced to carry a stun gun to work and to install surveillance cameras around her home. Others chose not to even speak to her at the grocery store.

But Bonds was defiant. The strong always are.

“I’m not going to … bury my head in the sand and say, ‘I can’t do anything,’ ” she told me and co-author Jason Howard when we were working on a book that featured Bonds. “I’m not made that way. I’m going to get a lick in so they know they’ve been in a fight. Now ain’t that what a true Appalachian does?”

It is. True hillbillies (a description Bonds said she “loved”) always stand up for what they believe in, and fight back, no matter what. But only the truest hillbillies are full of the kind of light that Bonds possessed.

The coal industry’s favorite adage is “Coal Keeps the Lights On.” But Bonds knew that there is a light that is more important than electricity. She knew that the clearest, truest light is one made of defiance and compassion, strength and love. That’s the light that lived in Judy Bonds, and no amount of coal dust will ever be able to darken that.

Silas House serves as the NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College and on the fiction faculty at Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. He is the author of four novels, including “The Coal Tattoo” and “Clay’s Quilt.”

(This article was taken from the Louisville Courier Journal) http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110112/OPINION04/301120060/1054/OPINION/Silas+House+%7C+Mourning++a+true+hillbilly+++Judy+Bonds+(1952-2011

She was 81.

Mrs. Bowling died Friday at her home on Mudlick Road near the community of Saul in Perry County, where she lived almost her entire life. Her husband, Bascum Bowling, died some years ago. They had 13 children.

As Mrs. Bowling told it, she was taking the wash off the clothesline one day in 1997 when New York filmmaker Rory Kennedy, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, showed up at her home.

Mrs. Lynn had a relative in the hospital in Prestonsburg, KY back in the late 80′s/ early 90′s.  My great grandmother was in the same hospital at the time and my Grandma Bonnie, her daughter, was sitting with her.  Mrs Lynn stopped by my great grandmother’s room, a lady who she did not know, and she sat and chatted with my Grandma Bonnie for quite some time.  Before leaving she invited her to “come down and see me”.  This situation has endured me to this stranger more than anything.  She showed kindness to my family, whom she did not know.  She is the real deal, a real Appalachian Coal Miner’s Daughter, down to earth, beautiful inside and out.  Unchanged by fame, southern hospitality abounds within this woman.  She is an inspiration to all women, not just Appalachian women, but her heart belongs with us, in the mountains.  She is beautiful and still “plain as dirt” despite her great success.  I’m very proud to have her represent the area of Appalachia that I am from. 

Loretta, you are an inspiration to us all.  May we not forget where we come from no matter where we go.  Let us know forget our raisin’!