This evening I visited a presentation on Radical Roots at a local coffee shop cooperative.
Did you know that "radical" basically means "getting at the root of something, the fundamental part?" I didn't. I thought that when we called someone radical, we meant they were outside the mainstream, people speaking out for an uncommon view.
Maybe today, the meaning has been corrupted to mean the later, but for this presentation, it is meant to refer to people like Wendall Berry, Helen Lewis, Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson, people who were getting back to their roots, valuing those roots and willing to defend them. From there, perhaps we overflow into that second meaning.
Writer/Photographer Taylor Kirkland spent full days with people who make Appalachia a place steeped in resistance and struggle for preservation of all that is unique and in the blood stream of this Southern mountainous range in the USA.
I, as well, have collected oral histories from an older population in a former city in which I used to live. In that case, we were trying to ascertain the early history of a predominantly African-American community that was plopped down in the middle of polluting industries. They remembered driving by a dump to get to their new homes. They also remember the local Congressman who became the landlord for many of the near-shanty homes. These homes encircled the government-subsidized "projects."
Yet their stories also bond the community in a common memory now in print, of all that was so much better than shacks in alleys before the neighborhood was started. They remembered explosions, but also hunting wild hogs. They remembered their own school, but also never progressing above janitor in the local industry, even when they had a higher education.
Oral histories are living scrapbooks. Every community needs a compilation of the elders' stories that will continue to live for generations beyond the tellers.
A couple great gifts from our maker: memories and language to preserve those memories! Ears to hear and eyes to read also bring those gifts to life.