Rednecromancer

Patria

It's Memorial Day and the usual old men will be reliving their glory and remembering dead friends on the Courthouse green in a few hours. God bless them.  It is right that we honor those who have died in the service of our nation. 

 

I always feel kind of uneasy talking about military service since I am not a veteran and the closest I have come to combat is facing down a deranged knife wielding vagrant in the halls of the Ohio Capitol when I was a young assistant sergeant-at-arms armed only with a trash can lid.  I regret many things about my life ( only an asshole will say they don't ) and one of them is that I didn't do some type of military service for my country.

 

Tony Applegate was in his late twenties when he was killed as part of a tank crew in the first Gulf War. Tony and I weren't real close but going from 5^th grade to your junior year together in a small Appalachian community tends to make all your classmates seem more like friends than acquaintances. 

An incident involving other men from my alma mater during the current Gulf War brings home the added horrors of having 40% of your fighting force comprised of National Guard units.  A squad partly  of young men from my old high school gets ambushed (if there is any other way these guys are attacked) and one of the soldiers is shot through the neck.  As he starts to fall he is caught by his best friend.  Indeed war makes best friends out of everyone in a unit but this was literally his best friend from back home.  The slightly older crew member (my cousin's husband) who loaded the wounded soldier on to the chopper graduated a couple years ahead of the other boys.  Of course Columbus, Ohio's Marine Reserves Lima Company is the most painful example of this situation.  My grandfather, Honey, who was wounded as a forward observer in WWII confirmed that in the 95^th AA the men were from all over the country.  We assume that this is to spread out the casualties among all the nation's communities.

 

Some soldiers make it home with life altering injuries.  My community lost Mike Brown this year.  Mike was a Vietnam veteran who came back and taught and coached in his home community.  We all know that war never left Mike yet he struggled through it in order to make a difference in the lives of the kids in our community.  Anyone who faces combat has to be changed in a way that I am not worthy to understand, but those who are maimed have to contend with not only their mental but physical wounds.  I think often about my aunt Helen's husband Bob.  Bob was a mere teenager when he left his leg on a German minefield.  He hobbled on a cheap, ill fitting prosthesis for the rest of his uncomplaining life.   My wife's hometown (Cleveland, OH) friend Tom made it back from the first Gulf as lieutenant of a quartermaster unit only to die suddenly in his early 30s of an vascular incident.  The loss of Tom, certainly made us take the idea of “the Gulf War” syndrome more seriously.

Rednecromancer sincerely honors all those veterans who died on the battlefield and at home after their service.  We also want to give our thanks to those who are currently doing what their country asks them to do and to ask all of our readers to send out a special prayer for our own SFC Daniel Wilson the man behind Appalachian Patria a member site of the Appalachian Webring. 

Motto

I am still real excited about the flag project and I hope everyone is making an effort to tell all their friends and especially those friends you might have in the media.

 

I was also thinking if we are going ahead with our Appalachian Flag Project, then why not go all out for some of the other trappings of statehood?  Think, we get all the benefits without having to bother with a highways budget. 

 

One of the other things that groups such as states, fraternal organizations and souleating corporations have is a motto.  If I am not mistaken E Pluribus Unum was our nation's first  motto, right? "From the many, One."  I like it a bunch.   I also like West Virginia's  “Montani Semper Liberi” and Scotland's “Nemo me impune lacesset”.  Let's face it mottoes sound better in Latin.

 

To that end I have put my three semesters of Latin to work and come up with this offering.

 

Remansum

 

I hope this translates to: We remain.

 

I thought about a simple phrase that describes us.  After a couple hundred years and the homogenizing effects of electronic media we remain a separate culture.  We remain on land that no one normally wants unless natural resources are present and then it is just to get the wealth and leave the land.  We remain where there is little promise for economic advancement because somethings are more important than money.

 

Yet if we are finally forced to move and drift from our hills and hollers we remain Appalachian.

 

 

14 Stars

This is the latest design by Tennessee Jed

The folks over at Appalachian Greens have taken the idea of an Appalachian flag to heart and they have been working on a few designs.  I am thrilled at the prospect of this project actually moving forward.  I like all the ideas so far and I would be happy to fly any of them over my home. 

 

We must keep promoting the project.

I can remember reading a story in one of my elementary school readers about the boy who designed the Alaskan flag.  I was quite inspired by the story and have loved flags every since.  A feller can't have too many flags on his flag pole.  Flags and other symbols of identity are just shorthand for who you are.  I reckon it is a carry over from our non-literate history. Crests, totems, standards and flags taken all together give a visual definition for who we think we are.

 

I'm an Appalachian.

 

Now where is my flag?

"Other" America

During the Easter weekend I sent emails to most of the 26 United States Senators who represent states with Appalachian counties.  Only one or two of the Senators did not have functioning web pages or message forms.  The message was a simple request for a paragraph stating their support of the Appalachian people and words of encouragement.  Below you will find an example of some of the text.  I personalized it where I could.  Some of the senators are family acquaintances, one I have worked with as a legislative aide and six have represented me or my state in congress.

Dear Senator:

 

My name is Xxx Xxxxxxx and I am the publisher of Rednecromancer a blog and website dedicated to Appalachian advocacy with an emphasis on improving the reputation of our region in the nation's media.  We are especially interested in engaging the young adults of   Appalachia in a discussion about the region's future and what they can do to control the destiny of Appalachia.

 

Appalachia, its diaspora and related regions have to endure unfair depictions and insults but we have also been energized by recent portrayals such as the PBS series The Appalachians and David Sutherland's Country Boys.  The United States of Appalachia, a book by Jeff Biggers released in January of this year is an honest and detailed description of our region and its cultures. 

 

These positive images certainly go a long way to repair the collective self-esteem of young Appalachian women and men, but a word of encouragement from our leaders can give hope to those who are working for a brighter future. 

 

In that spirit, I humbly request a short message of encouragement to the people of Appalachia that I may include on our blog.  We hope eventually to collect such messages from all of the individuals who represent Appalachia in our nation's capitol and from statewide representatives as well. 

 

I would like to personally thank you for your service to the region.  I look forward to reading your message to Appalachia.

 

Sincerely

 

As of today I have not had a real reply from any of the offices, not even my senators here in Virginia.  I did get a donation request from a senator in another state that was obviously a result of the email since it addressed me by my middle name that I used in the  email.  Most all other mail I receive uses my first name.

 

On some of the sites it stated that 60 days prior to a primary or general election the offices could not initiate correspondence. I can understand this but I am asking for a reply so I assume this prohibition doesn't apply.  In some cases I got an immediate email that explained that due to the high volume of emails the senator could only respond to their constituents.  Okay, but some of these folks have less than two million people in their state.

 

None of the senators had a direct email address.  All used a web based form that looked as if it was set-up by the same IT personnel and varied little from senator to senator. They wanted name, address, email and such.  All had a pull down menu with a list of issues you could select from.  Abortion, Homeland Security, Economy, Agriculture were just some of the choices.  Basically the options could be taken from an national news agency's list of hot topics.  Some did have a text box where you could type in your area of concern.  I typed: Pro-Appalachia.  But most if they allowed you to vary from the official list, only gave Miscellaneous or Other.

 

One would hope that the counties of Appalachia are important enough to merit their own category on the pages of senators from West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.  I guess we are Michael Harrington's Other America .  But as sad as the omission and much more alarming was the homogeneity of these web pages.  I do desire that each member of the Senate enjoy the same respect and privileges as every other senator regardless of the size or wealth of his state but the issues of one state cannot be exactly the issues of another state. Certainly senators as representatives of an entire state have to look more holistically at issues but for these pull down menus to be near identical is a bit disconcerting.  I would rather that the senators have wildly different interests and agendas and share a common trait of goodwill and cooperation than be focused on the same media dictated issues but with polarized views and infused with a spirit of acrimony.

 

Is anyone listening?