Mountain News & World Report; News Segments on AIDS Education and Appalachian Writers

Documentary props and State Representative Paul Mason recently believed to be neo met and discussed AIDS education and prevention portion of the legislation that that that I have that I have worked with and created with the help of Bill and a lot of people was addressed primarily situationally it was addressed that situations and there were it was not address that there was the focus was not was not prevention. There needs to be additional legislation focusing on on prevention. I have looked at some programs and some models and I think would serve would serve Kentucky whale Amery University and Atlanta lady of the name of Dr. Marion Howard created a program of peer education program. We're back she went into the schools and show young people or les volunteered to become peer educators and they went through intensive intensive training and they go back

for answers and not graders lecture say with Rader's seniors legs lecture for a month kind of kind of program. Simply teens will listen to other teens before they'll listen to you and me. And that seems to have had a fairly fairly good success. There is also a similar program that uses peer educators as well as some outside lecturers and in Washington D.C. That's that's that's an excellent program and I invasion a program for bad that we bring a teacher in to do some central location that at least one teacher in the more than fourteen hundred schools in the Commonwealth of Kentucky become well-versed on the issue of AIDS and AIDS prevention and Prevention and have that teacher go back to her or his or her

school and become a trainer for that school and create AI invasion. A Kentucky and Youth Health Corps or or something like that something to do and still some some pride in young people that were bad that they will but they will be proud to abstain in the war or abstinence becomes something that you know it's kind of like the old ranking on prime up play age and that's that sort of thing I envision that. But I also invasion but we but we won't fail to recognize human nature and and do some training and then how to protect yourself in the event and say careers that say it also C. Everett Koop Dr. Koop who is one of our most conservative surgeon generals nobody thought he'd even use the word. When Dr. Koop sow what was happening over a period of time his

recommendation is that we don't really have to talk about sex but get down even to the third grade level in discussing how you do not contract it how you can be friends and everything I buy it. And he was the one that began to really push the AIDS training and that sounds excellent to me. Representative Mason they are what you're saying. Peer pressure I have found with drugs too is one that works a whole lot better than not and you know out here in some of the other programs we've had in the. Yes I have also found that following you probably have also that there is a lot of parents a player who would like for their children to really learn good good prevention and to understand about sexually transmitted diseases. Whereas seems like there's always a minority that scream out the loudest and programs get lost because some people are afraid to offend a small group. But I've had a lot of parents over the years to thank me

for some of the things that I helped their children through with pick or even in drugs I used to do a lot of drug dogs in the schools and and I've had children who are now have been physicians say they never used it because I came and presented in such a way that I thought well why should I. And I think the same thing here there are a lot of other diseases out there 60 transmitted besides the HIV and but they are treatable. There is this one is not. But I do believe that a lot of parents if they thought their children would be in top properly and given good clean facts about things would much prefer that the net have their children learned off of the street from somebody that I found that I have a lot of these children are so ignorant and I'll give you one example I had a handsome nephew. He broke the ever record this high school had in southeastern Turkey that the boys went on to professional. He was a really outstanding football player. I would call him a real job and I told his father you better be talking to him about sexually transmitted diseases and particularly

the AIDS virus gave me material and I came home for Thanksgiving holiday and I asked this young man I said Is there anything you want to ask your aunt Mary about AIDS. And he said oh no the boys in the locker room said it can be cured with a shot of penicillin. Now I'm talking about ignorance that can cost you your son or your daughter's life. Well 15 years down the way just at the prime of their life they can go and they're going and it is happening and if we keep burying our heads in the Psion we are going to lose a lot of you know in the United States right now we've lost enough of a generation of young people who will be working and earning a living and supporting this older generation of which I am entering into very rapidly. We have lost that income. We have lost that Social Security. We have lost that support because of ignorance. There's even more and more. Opposition to on the AIDS program when they were even in the six I

think the opposition to the AIDS program is because it started out in the homosexual population and we've not gotten out of that gear. We still are labeling it that even though that is no longer a fact that is no longer a fact whatsoever it is now into the opposite and in and we are letting ourselves still be led by the very early days of ignorance. And I mean ignorance. We had a man in his 90s that they thought was a positive case of AIDS believe it or not. And literally before the Act was passed that we have was set out on the street and they threaten to burn his home because somebody want to come in and bring in food they were going to pick it for her to go back to school. It was pure ignorance of the man that at age 100 he did not have it it was a false positive. And it's in even when he was dying somebody says that they didn't want their father in that room with him because he'd come down with AIDS. It is the ignorance out there that we need to overcome not only in that to help our children but the adults who are propagating

this type of ignorance. We in one of our schools before I would lecture we would have a not group and have the parents come and listen to the same lecture I was going to do for the children the next day. And do you know we got a lot of cross and people have come out and said Thank you Mary I didn't realize this. I led this thing in my mind but now I see I you know it's we've got to educate everybody but particularly the parents about some of these things and I think a lot of parents would welcome getting information to their children that they knew was good information and was done in a professional way and had nothing to do with describing the sex that can go on through all of that stuff. But if you simply had it is transmitted. Paul I want to get back to you and then the videotape Melinda. Now we know that's been shown all over the United States. And

what impact do you think that the laughably in the Mason has made in the know nothing in the just the aid community but to the to the people of the those they to the home the limber shamed the nation and to them to facing their own actions to shame the nation into and to move. Into action as far as some of the programs that we have today she was very instrumental limb and helped offer in the American this billed as a the aid station of of 88. And with her lectures and the fact that she would go around saying hey I'm just your normal girl next door and it happened to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to your child and and she she made all of us all of us face the issue and face it head on and I think I don't think Melinda ever realize the impact she was having I don't think that it ever occurred to her she just

doing his thing. Yeah this was a you know this was what major in that. But you need to let your county has a number of them. HK she was in the Kentucky River Valley I think when you see the new statistics coming out. These are gone be updated from June the 30th. You going to see Harlan moving up there going to see a lot of other counties that we have act like that they didn't have any you going to see there are statistics changing to show that a lot of them catch up with nature. It's out there. We just will not admit it is they are. What is the breakdown of some of this really think it is your major like Harlem. Hurry not of all known AIDS cases well near as of June the 30th the 95 reported cases in Pike County was not done but we know there's been more than Myatt in Harlan County for. But I was talking with a young physician that had just sent three back to the hospice a player. I educate hospice nurses in my lectures and I've had them come up and tell me the number of

cases they're taking care of does not correspond with the statistics that the state has in their hands and the state told us the last time that these were going to be more updated and we were going to be surprised at the number of cases that were now in the eastern Kentucky Canas we had one area fall that never did report a case and I know darn good where my say of having talked to the physicians in that area. Perry for a long time had none. They finally have one that we know very Kenny is more than one case or has had more than one case. Same thing with round more hit area they never did seem to have anything going and they went through all the death certificates and begin to fan people that had died of circumstances that were very close to AIDS or probably were AIDS so Kentucky will be getting a new set of statistics in the next couple of months on these. County by county cases and I think you're going to see eastern Kentucky moving up. I might add very quickly when I first started my lecture on drugs everybody tell me isn't it wonderful we lived in the mountains we would never have to worry about

drugs and acid in the Bible says there come a day when you'll pray for the mountains to fall on you. And that's what's happened in our area with the amount of drugs and I think in the future we're going to see the virus is in every Cannie in the in the United States as according to Dr. Koop that's when he said there is to Candy that does not have the virus. We are developing a large amount of orphans and we're developing a high percentage of children particularly in Miami Detroit New York and places that are dying of AIDS. We had one baby born in our county of cocaine addiction that did not come from a place of the ride in our county. And so if we can have that we know that and financially we've got to have some a job the children born through Dr. Mary Fox and State Representative Paul Mason format news Morial report Nygard. Each summer the Hahnemann settlement school holds its annual Appalachian Writers Workshop the week

long event has become an important part of the region's literary scene and it's often a chance for us at WMT to meet some of the region's best writers. Jim Webb reports. This past August the Heinemann settlement school hosted its 18th annual Appalachian Writer's Workshop. Two of the poets from the workshop Deborah Hale spears of I don't know Heil and Eddie been Darvocet Huntington West Virginia visited with us here at the BMT and shared their thoughts and work. Deborah Hale Spears How are things going at Heineman this summer. Got a large group of participants this year and some good instructors has been very profitable and made a lot of money. Now I wish we could say that I don't really think that Manny is the issue that a lot of creative people are being fed and that's always important. What's the best thing about the time in a writer's workshop and in your thinking. One of the major reasons I come back is because of the atmosphere between the

writers. We not only learn in the classes from the instructors but we learn from each other. And you feel like family by the end of the way. It's a nurturing fear. Definitely. Well would you share a poem or two with us. This one's Ruby's eclipse may nineteen ninety four. Ruby runs her fingers over rocking chair arms and backs before she tries the ride at rummage sales and flea markets. She touches Afghans Shaws and doilies considers their stitches. The joining together and witch sized needle white shape hand used when she rocks quiet afternoons on the front porch motorcycles flying by raise the hair on her arms and the back of her neck grows cold as it is separated from her head and shoulders.

She steadies shadow patterns near noon when the eclipse began. She determined to see everything and new life and not look to the source of the darkness. Her dog crawled under the rock or made himself small and cried pitiful Well HP's if she stopped rocking. She pulled her second hand shot over her knees up to chin touch Barry's arms under and crossed herself hands on breast feeling smaller. She thought thoughts to exercise from herself when the cold dark had passed. No one spoke and she spoke to no one. Even heartbeats load more solid in concentration. Feet grew to porch plank boards. Her legs were no longer a method of going from one place to another but an anchor holding down the machine

to disallow movement from the task at hand. For a while at least this will be enough. A game whose rules she understands Ruby chooses the Boid wait at had been and could have been as the dragon gives up the sun as slowly as the feast began. Renegade moon denies that staging daylight. Ruby's confession is placated absolved in patterns of storytellers licens leaving the dealer's hands free ready to wager copper pennies on newly dealt cards called Eclipse past an 18 year wait begins with first labor pains toward her daughter's birthing and new breath. When is many years passing again brings light to slay the dragon. There is a rhythm to Ruby's rocking.

Why is it you write seems like that. Earliest memories I have of trying to do anything creative trying to create something outside myself to stand beside me or around me is of writing. When I first started reading I read with the thought of maybe someday writing something someone else would read and that was my childhood vision and where as I grew older I wrote and really had no idea what I was writing. My teachers also felt very confused and they would direct me toward first one teacher then another. And when I was a freshman in high school I want to national poetry award and they weren't quite sure what to do with me then either. They had a person who wrote poetry and poetry was a feared subject in the school system. The teachers stayed back from it or stuck very close to writhe matic sing song type of

poetry. And as time went on I ran into more and more people who showed more and more interest in my writing and helped direct me and taught me a better way to express myself and keep on expressing. Would you read another one for me. Yes I read visions of the sky. As children we would stretch rather our backbones against the picnic table and gaze off in tonight's blanket saying that one must be a satellite and the red one a planet. We would miss morning spread of bread stained fingers across ghostly mist suddenly visible as our kings of the sun and earth rolled into one another. Youth allowed. This gave us permission to desperately cling to sleeps quiet to miss the specters race over the next rich places where Knight still clung in the purple wash

from heaven when first bird twill broke the cricket song. A dog barks. We awoke when day had already arisen to pieces of sound left from yesterday and small splinters of wood cleaning to our backs. Knowing. Deborah Spears. Were visiting there was any Pendarvis of Huntington West Virginia. How are you doing Eddie. And how has the writer's workshop at Hammond been for you this summer. Oh I've really liked it this summer one of the people that I've really enjoyed this there this year is the woman who wrote the hangman's beautiful daughter and she walks the tills. She's she's

really a good storyteller entertaining and really helpful as a teacher. What kind of writing do you do. Mostly I have to do technical writing mostly I do writing related to my work. But the writing that I really love to do is poetry. But what do you mean by technical writing. Well I have to write articles articles for since I work at Marshall and have to publish or perish. I write a lot of education articles. So I started to write poetry to see if that make my education articles less boring. But then I liked the poetry a lot and that's mostly what I wanted to write. Well is it making them. No it didn't help with education articles. I don't believe that it's true. I think that well would you like to read one of your technical articles for us. No thank you I'm sorry we don't have room for poetry honestly but we want the real stuff

that I would like to do that I'd like to read. Oh OK. I bought one here yeah. OK this is a poem called Indian burial ground. And I just think it's ironic. What made me think of riding it was it seems ironic that we name our football teams and sports teams and cities that we want to seem powerful we name them after Indians even though we destroyed their culture we want to take the parts that we romanticize So this is called Indian burial ground eating the hearts of our old enemies. We name our trucks our teams our cities in hope of courage. We conjure their painted warriors. But their spirits not sleeping in language our words can't call them in the silence of pine trees in the heart of the wind and at the breathless hide of the Falcon hanging before she stoops. The Indian spirit

lies buried like fire in the tulips dark bulb. Why did you write that. Because I think it's ironic that we tried to try that if the hearts of our old enemies and get their bravery by labeling our things Apache or Comanche Atlanta Braves whatever this is trying to take that from them. That too after taking other things but we can't. I mean what what I like is that we can't get their spirit that way. Would you read another one for OK this one is the reason I want to hear the little Jimmy Dickens song about sleeping at the foot of the bed. Because people make fun of Appalachians a lot of times for everybody cramming in the one room or sleeping sideways in the bed so you can fit all the kids day or so this is called Crazy Quilt. If I had my way we'd all sleep together in a rickety four poster bed. Eight beagles two

tabbies grandma three taught smile man and the hand we'd squirm squeaking giggle snores and sighs rising like balloons under a silvery roof of tan under a tint of silvery rain and there a silver dollar moon we'd snuggle safe as spins and dream together while the clock jumps the night like a bug. With thank you very much Eddie Pendergrass Deborah Hale Spears and he been Dervis were recorded during a visit to the Apple shop August 3rd 1995 but not News and World Report on Jim Webb.