Friday Video: Where Do They All Go?

Today’s Friday Video is a preview of the upcoming film, Where Do They All Go? by Tom Davenport.

Davenport is currently raising money to finish the film on Indiegogo.  This film follows Dr. Jerry A. Payne, “Entomologist, Georgia Naturalist, Uppervillian, Friend and Artist,” who remembers, as a child, looking at dead animals in the woods and wondering how they al disappeared.  As he says in the preview, “Animals die all the time.  Where do they all go?”

According to the producers, this film will be of special interest to anyone who enjoys watching birds and butterflies, those interested in the intersection of science and religion, entomologists, forensic scientists, and anyone interested in the history of northern Virginia.  It will also be of interest to those who find themselves pondering concepts of death, aging, and friendship.  Isn’t that all of us?  Sounds utterly fascinating, doesn’t it?

Here’s Davenport’s full description of the film:

Jerry and I met each other in the 1950s, riding the school bus to our small rural Marshall High School in northern Virginia.  His high school nickname was “Osmosis” because of his interest in the biological sciences.

Jerry grew up in a tenant farmer family on Llangollen, a 4000 acre estate and thoroughbred horse farm in Loudoun County near Upperville, VA.  Jerry describes his family as “hunter gatherers”.  His father and mother came from Appalachian backgrounds, with only grade school educations.  But Jerry’s mother Becky Payne, encouraged him to get an education so he could leave the farm. “When I got to college and they closed the door of the classroom, we were all equal.”

Jerry excelled and completed his PhD at Clemson University in South Carolina.  With the encouragement of his beloved teacher, the entomologist Dr. Edwin Wallace King, Jerry did a remarkable study of insect succession in carrion, using dead baby pigs he collected from local farms.

This study attracted national attention in Time Magazine and Scientifc American, and became a foundation of modern forensic science.  Jerry donated his 16mm time-lapse footage of the decomposition of a baby pig to the Smithsonian Institution, and on Youtube the clip has over 2 million views.

After retiring from a career in the field with the US Department of Agriculture in Georgia, Jerry and his wife Rose devote themselves to their 80 acre nature preserve near Macon, Georgia which they walk nearly everyday in the tradition of Darwin and his wife.

Both he and Rose excel at the taxonomy of birds, butterflies, and native plants, and they are active in naturalists circles in Georgia where they often bird and butterfly watch with Father Francis Michael Stiteler, the abbot of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers, GA.  Jerry’s artwork (he paints bones and odd pieces of wood he finds in the woods) is often a prize in fund raising efforts by the Enviromental Resouces Network (T.E.R.N.)

Click on the link below to watch the video. 

“Hand of Man” Video About Mountain Top Removal

Music for the Mountains cd. Released 2011.

The band Magnolia Mountain recently released a video for their song “Hand of Man” about the horrors of Appalachian mountaintop removal.  The song appears on the Music for the Mountains compilation cd, which was released last year (to read about that project go here).

According to the band’s web page, the video took about a year to make. It’s filled with footage detailing the destruction that comes from this form of coal mining, including reference to high cancer rates and polluted waterways.  The video takes its cues from a long history of Appalachian organizing.

From Jeff Bigger’s post in the Huffington Post:

The Hand of Man” takes the listener to White Star Holler in Kentucky, where seven generations of mountain families have struggled to defend their lives and livelihoods from the toxic fallout from coal company destruction:

White Star Holler was my home
Shared the crops that we had grown
Shared the water from our well
Shared the life we loved so well
Coal men brought the mountain down
Leaked their poison underground
Mother, neighbor, friend, and son
Cancer took them, every one  (to read the whole post go here)

The band is asking that this video be shared far and wide to spread the word about mountaintop removal.  Want to know and/or get involved?  Visit I Love Mountains.org and be sure and check out the work of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Friday Video: Creation of the Film “Acceptable Limits” by See Rock City Productions.

From Kickstarter.

This week’s Friday Video comes via a suggestion from friend, folklorist, and writer Rachel Reynolds Luster who passed the video our way this morning.  For several months now we’ve been researching the history of Arkansas Nuclear One and following discussions regarding nuclear sites throughout the country. To see other posts about this research go here. 

This video film is part of a documentary film project entitled  Acceptable Limits about the believed health and environmental effects of a 54 year old nuclear fuel processing plant in east Tennessee.  This video comes via Kickstarter where creators of the film are spreading the word and inviting those with an interest in the project to help fund the production of the film. If you are unfamiliar with Kickstarter and their grassroots funding methods, go here to learn more.

For those who are supporters of the nuclear industry and leery of activists who question the industry’s safety, you might feel there’s some bias in this film’s research. Here at the BDJ we are particularly interested in research projects that explore some of the lessor told stories of the nuclear industry and the complexities surrounding their presence in communities.   This film appears to posses the potential to do just that.  We welcome debate on these subjects and counter discussions.
From the Kickstarter site here’s a bit of backstory about the film:
Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) has been the main employer in the rural valley town of Erwin, Tennessee for decades. On the edge of the Appalachian Trail, the facility sits on the Nolichucky River. Initially, NFS brought much needed jobs to the area, hiring those with little education at pay rates far exceeding any of the factory jobs in the area. For 54 years the neighborhood factory has accepted weapons grade Plutonium and Uranium from around the world to create fissionable nuclear fuel for our Navy’s fleet of submarines and aircraft carriers.

When tests of the water in the area showed rampant contamination, Michael Abbott Jr., an East Tennessee native, and his best friend Cosmo Pfeil decided to investigate how this pollution could be allowed to happen. They ended up embarking on an exploration of what the word “community” means to citizens of an Appalachian town dealing with the devastating effects of 54 years of nuclear contamination. Through interviews with former employees (some who were there as long as 30 years) now dealing with serious health issues, neighbors of the facility who watch white smoke billow from the stacks in the early hours of the morning and blow towards their homes, it became clear that there was a problem and that people in this town were sick and dying.

A university study, requested by environmentalists, is being conducted to determine uranium levels in the water and soil in the area. An interim report from the ongoing study states that NFS-derived uranium is present in the water and soil samples taken in Erwin and that the “quantities are likely to be very considerable”. The study also states that “The results also demonstrate the entry of groundwater discharges of NFS-derived enriched U into the surface waters, and point to serious questions about the scope/extent of groundwater contamination near the NFS facility.” To keep the full synoposis, visit their Kickstarter page here.

Here’s the video.  If you are intersested in learning more about this film or helping to fund their research (you can denote as little as one dollar to the cause) be sure and visit their Kickstarter page to learn more.  

If you have a suggestion for a Friday video please let us know.  We love hearing from readers.

In Honor of the Life and Music of Hazel Dickens.

Cover of It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song.

Hazel Dickens was one of the most courageous and important singer/songwriters of our time.

I had the opportunity to write an audio essay about her life and music for the Ozarks at Large Program on KUAF 91.3 FM, public radio out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The piece aired yesterday, but you can hear it online by going here. Or listen here:

Hazel Dickens Memorial by Boiled Down Juice

To hear the whole Ozarks at Large Program for Monday May 23rd click here. There is some great information about ways you can help tornado victims in Joplin, Mo as well information about local benefits for victims of the Tsunami in Japan.

To hear just the piece on Hazel Dickens go here.

And here are links (in no particular order)  to some of the people, places, and music mentioned in the piece. And don’t forget to contribute to KUAF or you local radio station.

Hazel Dickens: It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song, a film by Mimi Pickering.

Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens by Bill Malone.

Rounder Records

Harlan County USA

Matewan

Highlander Research and Education Center

Bernice Johnson Reagon

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Alice Gerrard

National Heritage Fellowship Award, 2001

Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens by Bill C. Malone

At this year’s American Folklore Society conference (something I intend to write more about very soon)my wonderful friends Mike and Rachel Reynolds-Luster surprised me with a belated birthday gift: a paperback copy of Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens (Music in American Life Series, University of Illinois Press, 2008). It’s so good I have to tell you about it. Continue reading »

Myles Horton’s Definition of Participatory Research

Myles Horton is one of my biggest heroes. The founder of the Highlander Folk School, now called the Highlander Research and Education Center, Myles Horton believed in people’s power to change their lives and communities for the better. A true activist and constant learner, Horton put this belief into action when he created Highlander in rural Tennessee. I can’t do justice to Highlander’s work in this short post, so if you are unfamiliar with their work I urge you to spend some time on their webpage and read about both their history and current work. Highlander was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, farm workers’ movements, and organizing for miners in Appalachia.
Continue reading »

The Rural Assembly and the Rural Compact.

Today I came across an organization called The Rural Assembly and I am so excited about their work and I think you will be too. The Rural Assembly is a part of the Center for Rural Strategies, an amazing organization whose fingers are all over most of the rural sustainable movements going on these days.

The Rural Assembly

According to their webpage, “The National Rural Assembly is a movement of people and organizations devoted to building a stronger, more vibrant rural America.” At the core of their work is the Rural Compact: “The National Rural Assembly encourages individuals and organizations to endorse the Rural Compact, a basic statement of principles for building a stronger rural America that improves opportunity for all of us.”
Continue reading »

Up the Ridge, a film about remote Appalachian prisons, racism, and the intentional tension between rural and urban

This very important film was produced out of Appalshop’s hiphop radio program, Holler to the Hood.
The film synopsis reads:

Up the Ridge is a one-hour television documentary produced by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.
Continue reading »