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To the editor:
Devastation isn’t a big enough word. Not only homes crushed, old growth trees splintered, bridges/road destroyed, but so many people are dead. The actual count is much higher than reported. However it is so heartening to see groups of people from all over the country working as volunteers in the NC mountains. They are being welcomed in homes/shelters as special guests being offered food and hugs. These are the mountain people I came from and have known all my life.
Instead of offering shelter or rebuilding plans, Gov. Cooper is saying: “It just doesn’t make sense to rebuild.” To whom is he talking? Not the people I grew up with.
Asheville was the destination for Bascomb Lamar Lundsford’s Mountain Folk and Crafts Festival, Doc Watson and family performances and myriad music festivals including NF Music Club’s annual adjudication festivals. Mars Hill University has a museum dedicated to Lunsford who traveled in search of mountain musicians and recorded their music.
The Appalachian people came from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Holland (my DNA) for a better life. They brought banjos, guitars, fiddles and made dulcimers. An earlier researcher, Cecil Sharpe, traveled through the hills recording music and dialects. This is the soul of those folks whose stories and songs are written, sung and remembered by the subsequent generations.
I would bet even now those survivors hear the ancestors singing through the trees, rivers, mud and soul of this devastated land. They didn’t start this assault, didn’t deserve the aftermath, but sing on in spite of all of it:
“My life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations……”
Patricia Williams, Advance