Buffalo Creek

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

42 years ago today, my grandparents lost their home on Buffalo Creek in Logan County to a flood created when a coal slurry impoundment dam burst. 125 people lost their lives. A federal inspector found the dam "satisfactory" just four days before it burst. 

The flood could not occupy a more prominent place in our family mythology. My family speaks of "The Flood" as I imagine Shem and Japeth might have at 4th of July cookouts and such.

My mother and father had left Logan County by this time and were living in Wyoming County. My father was familiar with the "dam." He'd visited it several times and once told me that everyone knew its burst was imminent. The slurry water, black and mucky, rushed down the hollow that February morning, taking some houses off their foundations and washing cars downstream. By the time it reached Amherstdale, where my grandparents lived with their children who were still young enough to live at home, it filled homes more slowly. The water covered Granny's ankles when she left the house. Mother says she shut the front gate behind her, out of force of habit.

Grandaddy stayed behind. He escaped to the house's top floor and then made to the roof. The water eventually took the house with it, and he rode the house until it caught on a train trestle, where he climbed off. There he saw a neighbor's boy, face down on the ground, praying as hard as he could. He took off his coat and covered him with it.

My mother says that my father was the last person they "let in the hollow" before the National Guard shut off all traffic. He found his in-laws and he seems to have taken some of my younger uncles to stay with relatives. At least one of them stayed with my parents for several months.

My Uncle Joe played tenor saxophone in the school band and Mother says he was going that morning to a county band practice. One of his best friends, a boy who played saxophone with him, died in the flood that morning. Mother always thought Joey acted very different after that. He still went into the mines though.

Grandaddy, my father, his father, several uncles on both sides, and other assorted relatives worked for coal companies up and down that hollow and in places like it in the southern coalfields. The companies had names like Ameagle, Amherst, Winco, Aracoma, Guyan Eagle, and Pittston. The communities their workers lived in bore the same names. Sometimes one coal camp would be right across the narrow road from a coal camp of another company, their tipples occupying opposite hills and churning out the black stuff around the clock. Most of them lived in "shotgun" houses or, if they were a lucky, in a "bosses" house. My grandfather Paul was a tipple foreman, so their house was probably a little better than many of the others at Amherstdale.

The companies built the housing, even the churches, and ran stores than originally dealt only in company-issued scrip. It would be a mistake to believe that life in coal camps was only hard. If you speak to those who grew up in one they will tell you about playing at the pool, going to the Wesley House for youth group meetings, and dances. But they will also tell you about men covered in coal dust from head to foot, looking, even after they bathed, like they wore eyeliner and mascara. They will tell you about the way their gut wrenched when they heard the company siren blow, a signal that something was wrong in the mine, something that might mean their husbands and fathers might not come home that night. And if they lived on Buffalo Creek, they will tell you exactly what they were doing on February 26, 1972.

My grandparents settled quickly with the company and never regretted it. They moved up to McConnell on Three Mile Curve, closer to Logan.

Pittston Coal called the dam break an "Act of God." They argued that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the loss of life on that rainy Saturday morning. Everyone knew that was bullshit. The "dam" was really just settled sediment from the coal slurry, not a proper dam. There were no controls, no regulation, and millions of gallons of water were building up the pressure behind it. Everyone knew that Pittston was saying that to avoid the enormous payouts that might be owed families. But what could you do? The company was your benefactor, your employer, the one to whom you owed allegiance. 

In the end, the company lost that argument, a rare instance in the coal fields. Settlements were paid, legal precedents set. But after the slurry settled, little changed. Life continued much as it had, though savvy companies learned to rely more on developing technologies to take coal from the ground. Men were a liability if courts insisted you value their lives.

I was born that same year, just a few months after The Flood. Hearing about it as frequently as I did growing up undoubtedly influenced my thinking about a lot of things.

It's easy to imagine a grand legacy to the Buffalo Creek Flood. It's easy to imagine that in the coming years, West Virginians were protected by a more responsible coal industry and state and federal governments who worked together to ensure their safety. Yet that is not the case.

Instead, I sit at home in Charleston, miles away from Buffalo Creek, and I'm afraid to drink the water. I'm even more afraid to give it to my three-month-old son. I'm afraid because a coal-cleaning agent called MCHM was poured into the water source where my drinking water comes from. I'm afraid, because I know that our state's leaders have been bought by the coal industry, and rather than protecting us, they are frantically working to minimize damage to the purses of billionaires who live out of state.

I'm afraid. But I am also angry.

West Virginia, indeed all of Appalachia, is a violent place. It's violence is not only against the body though. It is the violence committed against human dignity. Until our leaders regard her citizens more highly that the wallets of their patrons, that legacy of violence will continue. 

Claims (and Evidence) about the Common Core

This morning, while laying in bed watching the snow come down, really wishing I could just sleep in, I got a text from a teacher friend of mine. It said, "Take time to read," and included an image entitled "The 8 Most Important Things You Need to Know About Your Child's Teacher and Common Core."

First, let me say that I'm sure this friend is a good teacher, though I've never seen her in action. (We went to college together.) Let me also add that I think there are legitimate concerns with the Common Core, student learning standards in English language and mathematics that have been adopted by most states. (I would encourage you to read what Diane Ravitch has to say on the subject, though I would disagree with many of her assertions as well.) Yet I also think there is a great deal of disinformation being given to parents and teachers, too. In my previous work, I learned a lot about the Common Core and even had to occasionally present on the topic.

Since part of the Common Core is evaluating claims with evidence, I thought I'd take a few minutes to address each of these "eight important things." I'm no expert, but I may have a little bit of insight.

1. "Your child's teacher did not create the Common Core standards, politicians did." Well, this is kind of true, depending on what exactly you mean by the word "create." The Common Core was created by a joint initiative of the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- "politicians." Used this way, you may also say that politicians "create" public schools, road systems, and the space program. But the standards themselves were written (i.e., "created") by teachers of English and math. I personally believe that higher education was over-represented in this process, but it is a mistake to believe that Congress may have debated whether i would still go before e, except after c.

2. "Common Core aligned instructional materials (books) are not provided to your child's teacher. Teachers are creating their own curriculum. Daily." This is also kind of true. Most textbook companies have struggled to keep up with the Common Core and states have been wary of adopting materials that claim to be aligned and are not. But my main response to this complaint is, "So what?" As a teacher of music, I actually never had a book that was aligned enough to my standards to simply teach from the book. I taught multiple subjects from year to year, including band, chorus, music appreciation, AP music theory, piano, and guitar and I wrote my own curriculum for every single one of these. You want to know a secret? This is what all good teachers do. Because teachers who just open up the book, read from it, and then assign the questions at the end are not really effective. I would also note that #1 above complained of lack of teacher input and #2 complains that teachers are given more autonomy.

3. "Teachers are being pulled out of their classrooms to learn about the common core [sic]. Teacher absences directly affect student performance. Negatively." This may be true in some areas, but it has nothing to do with the Common Core. If school districts reduce instructional time for teacher professional development, that is a local decision. The alternatives are to schedule professional development during non-instructional time (which is what most school districts in the nation do, contrary to this claim), not offer professional development when new standards or pedagogy are introduced in the classroom, or never do anything new.

4. "Math is new again. In order for your child's teacher to say your child as [sic] a successful math student, your child must explain - in writing - their [sic] thinking. Even if your child has a communication disorder like Autism [sic]." This one is just wrong. Math is not new, though the Common Core does expand approaches to the teaching of math. This is a good thing and allows more students, including those with learning disorders like autism, to succeed. Sometimes they may be asked to communicate their understanding in writing, sometimes they may do it verbally. I fail to understand why this is a bad thing. When a student has the opportunity to explain his or her process, the teacher is better able to understand student thinking.

5. "Your child is supposed to 'dig deep' into the standards, even though the foundation has yet to be laid." Firstly, the child is never meant to dig into the standards themselves; that is the work of the teacher. Secondly, the standards certainly do not ask teachers to dig deeply into their subject without foundational teaching. Actually, the standards are not prescriptive as to pedagogy at all. This one is just nonsense.

6. "Your child will be tested on the new standards before the teachers are trained, before instructional materials have been purchased (if they're ever purchased), and before adequate technology is available to facilitate test administration." Wait, I thought you just complained that teachers were being trained in the new standards (see #3). The two assessments that are being used for the Common Core, from the Smarter Balance Consortium and PARC, have not yet been administered, though the Common Core was released in 2010. That means that there will have been five years from release of the standards till the administration of the first assessment. There may be bumps along the way, including technology issues. This is just how change works, in any area. The alternative is to never change.

7. "Your child's teacher is becoming an alcoholic." Let me buy you a drink.

8. "Your child's teacher is looking for another job." There are numerous problems in public education right now, including an undue emphasis on standardized high-stakes assessment, the narrowing of the curriculum in some districts, the continued politicization of our schools, the charter school movement and the inequitable comparisons made between schools, school voucher systems that favor private schools, teacher quality due to filling positions with untrained "professionals," and much, much more. Anyone leaving the field now may be perfectly justified in doing so. But the Common Core is not one of these problems.

To hear what one talented teacher has to say about the Common Core, read here.

The Myth of the Appalachian

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

I was able to catch all of the U.S. Senate hearing about the chemical leak. I heard just a bit of the House hearing that was conducted here in West Virginia, but I filled in the missing pieces via Twitter. I found little of either to be enlightening and much to be angry or saddened about. The most interesting remarks in the Senate came from Jay Rockefeller, who started speaking off the cuff: "I came from outside of Appalachia, so sometimes I see Appalachia in ways that are different than others."  He started talking about what he called a mythic Scotch-Irish fatalism, ". . . the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them. Not true. Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it."

I've been thinking about that Appalachian myth for a very long time, even obsessing over the idea. I suppose it is natural. We spend a good deal of our lives trying to figure out just who we are. If we are lucky, we are raised in a family that gives us a secure sense of our own identity and encourages us to be ourselves. Even so, there are powerful cultural ideas that can be hard to shake.

Here in Appalachia, we have always struggled to define ourselves. Even before Europeans got here, the place we call West Virginia served as a sort of borderland between tribes and was used as common hunting area. Some of the "tribes" who inhabited the area, such as the Mingo, probably weren't tribes at all, but smaller bands of native people who had left their tribal lands and lived in mixed groups of Cayuga, Seneca, and others.

The Europeans who finally settled were a mixed lot, too. Some were farmers, some were trappers, other were probably criminals hiding in the forest. There probably were a lot of Scots and Northern Irish, but also English, of course, Welsh, some Germans, and a smattering of others. They were Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, but some other lesser-known sects like Dunkards, too. I'm guessing there were probably a good handful who were happy to be living in the wilderness out of reach of church and minister.

There weren't large numbers of slaves, mainly because the land didn't lend itself to the large plantations they had in the deep South. But there were some, and Reconstruction brought more African descendants, including those working on the railroad.

When someone finally figured out how to start making lots of money from the coal in the ground, recent immigrant groups came in large numbers to the mountains: Greeks, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, even some Russians. They were mostly Roman Catholic or Orthodox and brought with them different ideas about family and culture.

Even this brief narrative is an oversimplification, of course. There were Jews from various places, small numbers of Asians, and more. Though perhaps not as diverse as America's port cities, it is a mistake to believe in the homogeneity of Appalachia. And even given the large ethnically European make-up of the region, there is no reason to imagine a general uniformity of opinion. There were secessionists and abolitionists, modern industrialists and farmers, Democrats and Republicans, Klansman and Communists, and everything in between.

Despite this, there has persisted in the mountains a romantic idea about exactly what it means to a true Appalachian. We've heard it in recent weeks since the chemical spill, in the form of our leaders heaping left-handed "praise" on their constituents: the people of West Virginia are a poor but noble race, hearty Scots-Irish stock, who love God and their families, are fiercely independent, and thrive in harsh conditions.

It's nonsense, of course. Some of us are rich. Some are wicked or servile. Some of us aren't Scots-Irish at all. Some are atheists. Some abandon their families. Some are extremely dependent on others. Some are soft.

I'm not saying they're all this way. I'm just asking that our leadership stop patronizing us.

The myth is useful to political and industry leaders. It is how they have justified taking land and mineral rights for a pittance for over a century. It is how they justify polluting our air and water. It is how they justify denying us economic opportunity. It is how they justify denying us basic civil rights.

As I watched the hearing today of the House Transportation Committee, I realized it was how they justify dismissing our voices, too.  Chairman Bill Shuster, R.-PA, had not called representatives of citizen's group to speak, but reluctantly gave those assembled two minutes apiece to voice their concerns. I listened with increasing disgust as it became clear that he was not interested in what these everyday people had to say. He answered most by dismissing them paternally and assuring them they were being taken care of.

The same way industry and government has taken care of us for decades.

Many of us are uncomfortable with the myth.

I might be Scots-Irish; no one in our family is completely sure. It's true I come from a family of farmers and coal miners, and they sure have been poor for a long time. A few have been god-fearing and loyal to family; others have been irreligious scoundrels.

But I am not an Appalachian of myth.

It's true, I like fiddle music and eating beans and cornbread. I can sing all the verses to "West Virginia Hills" and know the state flower, bird, and animal.

But I don't work in coal; I play saxophone. I think before I vote. I have read books --  a lot of them -- not just the Bible. I like films with subtitles sometimes. I like jazz and punk music. Thai is my favorite cuisine. I have my ears pierced and my hair colored. I like to travel.

I have lots of "Appalachian" friends. Some of their families go back generations; some of them just arrived. Some of them are Buddhist or Muslim. Some are gay or lesbian. Some are from Pakistan or Nigeria or Venezuela. Some of them have never been hunting, fishing, or mud-bogging. Some like Broadway shows more than football.

It doesn't make any of us less "Appalachian."

We live here.

We have a right to demand clean water and air, as much as anyone else.

We pay taxes, just like everyone else.

We're tired of being told we're not being true to our "heritage" because we do not kowtow to the wishes of the power brokers in this state.

We're not the "noble poor." Some of us have been (and are) poor. We can tell you that it sucks.

Some of us think that working all day entitles us to healthcare and decent wage. We're sorry if that spoils the image you have of us "simple folk."

I'm Appalachian and I demand that my voice be heard.

My Open Letter to the West Virginia State Legislature

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

Dear Delegate:

I am writing to you today as your constituent, as a father. and as a sometimes-proud West Virginian to ask you to support the "Water Bill" that came from the Senate (SB373).

I say "sometimes-proud West Virginian" because frankly, there are times I am deeply ashamed at the leadership of our state. Following our legislature can be a depressing exercise at times. The body seems reactionary at best and plagued by political pandering. I remember that there were over thirty bills introduced last year designed to protect our "gun rights." I cannot remember a single piece of legislation discussed related to water quality, though every member of that body knew that chemical plants dotted our river valley and that there had already been major chemical incidents in the last three years.

Disheartening, too, has been the rush by our leadership to defend the coal industry's connection to this incident at all costs.  As I am sure you are aware, MCHM is used in preparation plants for the cleaning of coal.  That alone makes this issue "coal-related."  But apart from that, the question on many of our minds is, "Why do 300,000 residents of a rural state like West Virginia use the same water source?"  The answer, at least partially, has to do with the fact that coal slurry has polluted the water table in many rural areas.  Coal companies have done this with impunity as our leadership has kowtowed to every demand from that sector.

Also of concern is that many of us now get water from for-profit corporations like American Water, instead of traditional public service districts. While it may be that privately-held companies can provide more efficient service, it is also obvious that they will put profits ahead of serving West Virginians. Clean water and air are basic human rights. It is clear from the actions of West Virginia American Water that they do not believe this. Our water bills this month have increased significantly, in spite of the fact that WVAW has been unable to provide a safe, quality product.

Many of us are further angered that it appears that Freedom Industries will be given chapter 11 protection to "re-organize," rather than simply liquidating and ceasing business in our state. As has been seen by their continued failure to safely store MCHM in Nitro, this company will seek to skirt any regulation they can. If a foreign power did to our water supply what Freedom had done, we would call it an act of terrorism. Instead, our laws will protect them and their leadership from any criminal penalty.

The attitude regarding this incident, as with most industrial catastrophes in our state, has been, "Privatize the profits; socialize the liabilities."  Although I hope you will support the "Water Bill," it is bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. We need leadership in our state that does not simply react to crises, but anticipates the needs of our people. We need leadership that puts our people above the profits of the fossil fuel industry, much of which leaves our state.

I urge you to act and I urge you to be part of the change we need in the Mountain State.

Regards.