Ken Burns says his 'American Buffalo,' premiering Monday on PBS, is mainly a tragedy but one that offers hope

Ken Burns (Los Angeles Times photo by Mark Sommerfield) and his subject (photo by Craig Mellieu via L.A. Times)

“The American Buffalo,” a two-part, four-hour documentary by Ken Burns, premieres Monday on PBS. Burns says the story is “mostly a tragedy . . . about disconnecting a whole group of people from an animal that they felt in kinship with over thousands of years. And it’s the story of another group of people who see themselves as superior, as the dominant species with permission to do anything they want to do” and almost exerminate a species that numbered in the tens of millions.

But it is also a story that offers hope. After what Burns calls “the largest killing of wildlife in the history of the world,” some who took part in the killing helped preseve the species, Michael Ordoña reports for the Los Angeles Times. He says the documentary “contains inspiring accounts of oneness with nature, chilling stories of sadism and bloodshed in a mad rush for profit (and worse motives) — and a message of hope rooted in the potential for transformation within human beings.”

Burns told Ordoña that for 30 years he wanted "to do a biography of an animal, to complement or contrast with all the other specific biographies or big-topic stuff that we’ve done. We’d intersected with that story in 'The West' in the mid-’90s, again in the late ’90s with 'Lewis and Clark,' and then in the aughts with 'The National Parks.' I’m glad that we waited, because it gave us time. Scholarship improved. It also gave us the possibility to develop a narrative that wasn’t just going to pay lip service to other points of view in some paternalistic or even patronizing way, like allowing other points of view, but seeding the film with them. . . . It allowed us to tell a much more complicated, a much more nuanced story and one that is not really complete. I think by the time we finished it, we realized our two parts were the first two acts of a three-act play. The third act is, 'What are we going to do now?' Yes, the buffalo is saved. So our early ideas that this was a parable of de-extinction are true, but it’s so much more than that. Will they just be standing fenced in, in corrals or feedlots or whatever, sustainable, not going to go extinct, but can they roam wild and free the way they used to?"

Grocery, destroyed by E. Ky. flood and owned by Black woman who's been there 50 years, to reopen Saturday

It was the only grocery for miles around. (Image from "East Kentucky Flood")

The Rural Blog doesn't usually run notices of non-media business openings, but we're making an exception in this case because Saturday's reopening of Isom IGA in an unincorporated community between Whitesburg and Hazard, Kentucky, will be an important milepost in the region's recovery from the flooding that destroyed the grocery.

Gwen Christon in her store, ready to open (Photo
by Ryan C. Hermens, Lexington Herald-Leader)

The tragic story of the supermarket's owner, 67-year-old Gwen Christon, who has spent 50 years working in it or to rebuild it, brought outside help, and a determination to reopen, with the help of her son, Simon, who decided two years ago to follow in her footsteps. She told the makers of the "East Kentucky Flood" documentary that she worked 50 years to buy the store and pay the mortgage, and Simon said “I’m next in line to work another 50 years and get it paid up.” She and her husband Arthur bought the store in 1998, reports The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg. She didn't own the land, but after the flood the landowner donated it to her, allowing her to get loans, reports Linda Blackford of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Carl Sivak of MDI, a wholesale grocer, told Blackford that divine intervention is all that can explain how quickly Christon has outfitted the store with coolers and freezers that are usually on back order for nine months to a year: “To get this store back together in nine months is amazing.”

MapQuest

“The Lord has just put things in order for us,” the Christons' son Simon told Blackford. “There’s no other explanation.”

After announcing that she planned to reopen April 1 (a goal she will meet Saturday), Gwen Christon said of the region, “This is our home. This is our people, and we have to stick together. . . . I think we can come back stronger. I think we can come back more together.”

Isom is in Letcher County, where one-half of 1 percent of the 20,000 or so residents are African Americans. Gwen, Arthur and Simon Christon are three of them.

'We've run the table this week,' rural editor-publisher writes after documentary premiere and tentative decision to close

The Canadian Record's front page this week; click to enlarge.

Has a newspaper ever been the subejct of a freshly premiered documentary and announced its plan to suspend publication, all in the same edition? Surely not, but that is the remarkable case of The Canadian Record in the Texas Panhandle, one of the best weeklies we know.

"We'll just call it what it is. This is the Navel-Gazing edition of The Canadian Record," Editor-Publisher Laurie Ezzell Brown says in her "Field Notes" column. "I’m not proud of that, but we have made the news, and we are determined to give The Record and its staff the same treatment we would any other newsmakers—good, bad and otherwise. Frankly, we’ve run the table this week."

The other news about the Record was a long-touted lawsuit filed against it and other local news media by the family of a high-school student who disappeared in 2016 and whose body was found three years later. Events in the case "have been accurately, fairly and thoroughly covered in these pages for over six years now," Ezzell Brown writes. "News of the lawsuit followed our difficult decision at midweek to walk away from the sale" of the paper, which has been in her family since 1947.

"That decision was preceded by a series of delayed contract signings and requests by the buyer for key changes to the contract, which we ultimately rejected. The outcome was both unexpected and quite frankly, a relief. The sale was not meant to be. However, it has left us in the difficult position of deciding what this newspaper’s ultimate fate will be. After three decades and counting under our ownership, we are 30 years older, 30 years wiser, and 30 years more tired. We cannot continue to work at the pace we have, or to shelve our personal lives to meet the demands of this community newspaper that we love. . . . At the risk of appearing to concede defeat, which we do not, my staff and I have agreed to suspend publication of The Record following our Thursday, March 9, edition. This will allow us time to notify our readers and subscribers and advertisers, to continue to seek a new owner for this newspaper, and to fight a toxic lawsuit meant to impugn the reputation of this newspaper and its publisher. We have arrived at this decision with great difficulty, having tried for at least the last two years to find someone who will take over this job. There is no way to adequately express our sadness in closing these doors. We can only assure you that we have chased every lead, walked down every dead end, and knocked on every door in an attempt to find an alternative to quitting."

In the documentary by Heather Courtney, "For the Record," filmed over the last five years, Ezzell Brown talks about those efforts – "Newspapers with small circulations in rural communities aren’t exactly the hot ticket;" Canadian has 2,649 people, Hemphill County 3,382 – the tribulations that preceded them, and possible outcomes: “No one else is gonna tell the stories that we’re tellin’, nobody . . . What happens if nobody’s doing this?”

The 37-minute film premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, Saturday. In the story about the premiere, Ezzell Brown says,  “For The Record feels like a very personal story about our lives and work here in Canadian, and that of my parents, Ben and Nancy Ezzell, who established such a strong legacy with this newspaper before us. It also conveys a more universal message, though, and one I hope many will hear and heed: that community newspapers like this one play an essential role in protecting and celebrating democracy from the ground up, in small rural towns that otherwise might have no voice, no visibility, and certainly no one holding public officials accountable for their decisions. Without strong community newspapers, we are risking the health and vitality of the rural communities they have nurtured and protected for so many decades.”

'East Kentucky Flood' tells the story of a deadly disaster, a courageous and heartfelt recovery, and an uncertain future

Rockhouse Creek, a major tributary of the North Fork of the Kentucky River, flooded Isom and its supermarket.

The record flash floods in southeastern Kentucky last summer killed 45 people and worsened a regional housing shortage. More than six months later, hundreds of people are still staying in campers or substandard housing, Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Some people in the region worry that it will become depopulated, but others see the flood as an opportunity to build back better. They're the stars of a half-hour documentary, "East Kentucky Flood," produced by the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, one of the flooded towns.

Letcher County, Kentucky (Wikipedia)

Like all well-told stories, this one is in three parts: Stories of the flood and its close calls, the courageous and heartfelt response, and the ongoing recovery and prospects for the future. And it focuses on one Appalachian county, Letcher, which has the headwaters of three rivers. The villain in this story, funded by the Flora Family Foundation, is the North Fork of the Kentucky River.

A man recalls the waters rising around him: “It was everything I could do to keep my feet on the ground.” Another tells of a woman in her late 70s who uses a walker but hung on to the roof of her front porch for five hours awaiting rescue. Whitesburg firefighter Charles “Red” Colwell found a woman neck-deep in water and couldn’t get her into a kayak: “I just found some adrenalin and I just was able to put her in that kayak. I said, ‘We have to go. We have to go now. I cannot swim.’”

Much help came from “the hillbilly refugees, the people who have moved out of here,” recalled Gwen Johnson of the Hemphill Community Center. “They knew we weren’t gonna get any help from anybody else,” and started making contact. “When the roads opened up, they rolled in here.” She said three “drunk angels” arrived with a load of meat and “stayed with us three days, and I don’t think they drew a sober breath while they was here, and they just kept on a-cookin’.” 

But much help has also come from local residents, including fellow victims. Huffman said, “I noticed that the ones who lost so much have been trying to help everybody else.”

Appalshop filmmaker Willa Johnson recalled, “I didn’t know the people who were showing up to help me – or it was people I never expected show up to help me. People who have very openly disagreed with me on politics – it’s become a line in the sand for us, and we just can’t talk – were showing up.”

Photographer Malcolm Wilson of Blackey said he made 2,500 images of the flood, “some of the hardest photographs I’ve ever made in my life. . . . Some things I didn’t photograph, that I saw; I just couldn’t bring myself to do it . . .  The other thing that really blew me away was the Isom IGA.”

Simon and Gwen Christion in their Isom IGA, being rebuilt (Images from documentary)

The rural supermarket's owner, 67-year-old Gwen Christon, who had spent 50 years in it, told the filmmakers, “For a week, I actually walked around in shock, wondering what I was going to do.” But her tragic story brought outside help, and a determination to reopen, with the help of her son, Simon, who decided two years ago to follow in her footsteps. She said she worked 50 years to buy the store and pay the mortgage, and he said “I’m next in line to work another 50 years and get it paid up.” She said, “We plan on opening April 1, 2023. This is our home. This is our people, and we have to stick together. . . . I think we can come back stronger. I think we can come back more together.”

Angie Hatton hopes that's true. The former state representative, defeated for re-election due to gerrymandering fostered by long-term population loss, said tearfully, “I just don’t want people to move away. The people who’ve stayed have been so brave to try and stay, you know . . . We can do a lot with a little here; we always have been able to. And for those who are moving away, I get it, you know, I understand, but I just hope we can find a way to build housing up off of the creeks, flood-proof our bridges and use this disaster was, instead of the end of us, as a catalyst for a new beginning for everything that makes it hard to live in Eastern Kentucky.”

Coal companies own most of the high ground. Educator Jeff Hawkins mentions coal without saying the word: “Part of the struggle has been that we have been so closely connected to a single industry; it has really driven our economic base and our personality and who we are for a century.”

Wes Addington of Appalachian Citizens Law Center said as he was surrounded by relatives’ homes: “It’s really difficult to figure out, well, how do you move away, or how do you leave the place? And I haven’t mentioned, it’s like, a beautiful part of the country. It’s a really pretty place to live.”

But how does it build back better? “Frankly, it's gonna require a lot of federal money – and interest in, you know, supporting a region that’s really supported a lot of the rest of the country’s growth over the past 100 years," Addington said. "That’s what I hope happens. I think it’s really uncertain.”

WEKU-FM has concluded its six-part series "Rise" about the flood and recovery. The opening narrative for the closing episode: "While still adjusting to such heavy loss and amid much uncertainty, Eastern Kentuckians are giving careful consideration to the future. In addition to addressing the immediate need for housing on higher ground, that future includes preparing for the possibility of more frequent extreme weather. Is this a turning point? Or just another turn on the curvy road ahead? Residents demonstrate the most important key to a strong community is knowing how to show up for your neighbors."

Holiday roundup: Blizzard creates a temporary community of travelers; an enchanted garden also cultivates people

The Alabama Hotel in Basom, N.Y., hosted more than 100 people in the storm. (Photo by Joe Bradt)

When the big blizzard closed the New York State Thruway (I-90) west of Batavia, some travelers headed north on NY 77 and found refuge in the hamlet of Alabama, specifically the Alabama Hotel. "The restaurant was founded in 1840 as a hotel/bar, but it hadn't welcomed overnight visits for decades," Tracey Drury reports for Buffalo Business First. Owner Joe Bradt told CNN some thought from online searches that the inn had rooms to rent, but they had to stay in its 70-seat dining room. Bradt said the guests "came together; they were cooking, they were washing disches, they were busing tables; it was a sight like no other."

The youngest daughter of Donna Reed, who plays Jimmy Stewart's wife in "It's a Wonderful Life," has made it her mission to ensure that small-town theaters can show the classic 1946 film, which was more difficult this year, Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post reports.

The Post's Sydney Page has another nice holiday feature, about a 100-year-old woman in an assisted-living facility in Lexington, Va., who makes custom jackets by hand and gives them away!

Woodlake, California (Google map)

At the foot of the Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, Calif., "where square acre after square acre of industrial farmland is planted in precise rows, an unusual garden grows and climbs and spirals, writes Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times. "Papaya, bananas, jujube, three types of guava — fruits that speak of faraway homelands — flourish at the 13-acre Woodlake Botanical Garden . . . No chemicals are used here. Visitors are welcome to pick any fruit they see and to sit in spots so deeply shaded they stay cool in the summer heat and dry in the rains that don’t come often enough." And there's a flock of pelicans in Bravo Lake, in one of many nice photos by Tomas Ovalle. But Manuel and Olga Jimenez also cultivate people. Nice story.

In notorious case of water pollution, big oil-and-gas firm will build water system and pay residents' bills for 75 years

What may be America's most notorious case of drinking-water pollution from oil and gas operations ended Tuesday, as "Pennsylvania’s most active gas driller pleaded no contest" charges of "polluting a rural community’s drinking water 14 years ago" and trying to evade responsibility, reports Michael Rubinkam of The Associated Press.

Wikipedia map

"Residents of the tiny crossroads of Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania say they have gone more than a decade without a clean, reliable source of drinking water after their aquifer was ruined by Houston-based Coterra Energy Inc.," AP reports. "Coterra agreed to pay $16.29 million to fund construction of a new public water system and pay the impacted residents’ water bills for the next 75 years."

The plea was "the result of years of negotiations between Coterra and the attorney general’s office"  of the state, AP notes, and "represents a milestone in one of the most prominent pollution cases ever to emerge from the U.S. drilling and fracking boom. Dimock drew national notoriety after residents were filmed lighting their tap water on fire in the Emmy Award-winning 2010 documentary 'Gasland'. Coterra’s corporate predecessor, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., was charged in June 2020 with 15 criminal counts, most of them felonies, after a grand jury investigation found the company drilled faulty gas wells that leaked flammable methane into residential water supplies in Dimock and surrounding communities. . . . Coterra pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of prohibition against discharge of industrial wastes under the state’s Clean Streams Law. The plea means Coterra does not admit guilt but agreed to accept criminal responsibility."

Residents have shunned their well water since "and even water drawn from creeks and artesian wells instead," AP reports. "Resident Scott Ely said some of his neighbors had moved away or developed health problems as a result of Coterra’s practices, while his own children, now in college, had grown up 'without a safe water source. . . . There’s so much heartache."

The Rural Blog's Top 10 stories for 2021 illustrate the rural journalism institute's history, mission and forms of service

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

When our friends at The Daily Yonder listed their Top 10 stories of 2021, it made us wonder what the top stories of the year were on The Rural Blog, as measured by individual page views.

Al Smith

Sadly, three of of our top 10 dealt with death: a news story and an opinion piece about the passing of Al Smith, co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog, and a story on the death of former Louisville Courier-Journal editor David Hawpe, who was born in Eastern Kentucky, was a reporter there, and made sure that the C-J paid attention to the rural region even as most newspapers forsook rural coverage. Al and David were keys to whatever success I have had, and I miss them every day. But I'm glad the stories about them got attention.

As The Rural Blog says on its right rail, it's about facts, not opinion, but you may read an opinion here occasionally. We've had a little more opinion in the last few years, because of the issues facing our democracy and journalism (and especially lately, rural journalism). Soon after the Jan. 6 insurrection, I wrote that rural newspapers should "speak the truth, stand up for it and have respectful dialogue" with readers who believed then-President Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him.

When The Associated Press finished its meticulous investigation of election-fraud claims and published a story saying that there was far too little fraud to make a difference in the election, I asked AP to make the story available to weekly newspapers that don't subscribe to the wire service. AP agreed, and our story about that was one of the most-read on The Rural Blog in 2021. Thanks again to Adam Yeomans and his superiors at AP!

The most-read post on the blog this year was a piece I wrote about Bruce Springsteen's Super Bowl ad for Jeep, which drew fire from The Washington Post's pop-music critic, who said it felt "insulting and wrong" in the wake of the insurrection to suggest that "we should all swiftly and metaphorically travel to the nucleus of white, rural America to make up and move along." I wrote that it was the columnist who was insulting and wrong, and quoted other, better takes and provided background.

The most-read news story on the blog was about the departure of a prominent local editor in Paxton Media Group after it bought her newspaper and the others in Landmark Community Newspapers in one of the biggest community news media transactions of the year. The story came from the Yonder, which quoted the unhappy editor at length but had nothing from Paxton. We sought comment from the company and added it; no other such examples have surfaced.

Another widely read story was about this year's Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism, which went to the Thompson-High family of Whiteville, N.C., which published The News Reporter for more than 80 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for public service. It's great to see high readership for a story about exemplars of rural journalism.

The 10th most-read story is also gratifying. It alerted readers to a re-airing of the Institute's 2020 documentary, still available online, "about a soldier from one of the most isolated places in America who repeatedly put his life on the line for his country – but quietly returned to his very rural life and wasn’t fully honored for his heroism until 73 years later." His name was G. Murl Conner.

This didn't start out to be an article about the Institute and what we do, but that's what the page-view statistics tell us. And we wouldn't be doing right by ourselves if we didn't take this opportunity to ask for tax-deductible contributions to support our work. You can do that online, by going here. Thanks!

Ken Burns: The one national historic site with 'massacre' in its name shows we should teach history, not mythology

The Sand Creek Massacre, from History of Colorado; the national historic site was dedicated in 2007.

By Ken Burns

For The Washington Post

I’ve been making films about American history for more than 40 years. In all of those years, there’s something central that I’ve learned about being an American: Veneration and shame often go hand in hand.

Today, however, I fear patriotism is presented as a false choice. It seems that for many, to be patriotic is to remember and celebrate only our nation’s triumphs. To choose otherwise, to choose to remember our failings, is thus somehow anti-American.

But it is not so simple.

When the National Park Service opened its 391st unit — the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site — the site became the first and only to include the word “massacre” in the title, a reminder of the Nov. 29, 1864, attack on Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people that was misrepresented as a “battle” for nearly a century. In a video, I reflect on the legacy and contemporary resonance of this massacre.

Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.

As some question how to teach American history to our children — and even question the history itself — I urge us to confront the hard truth, and to trust our children with it. Because a truly great nation is one that can acknowledge its failures.

Ken Burns is a filmmaker whose digital history project UNUM connects scenes from his documentaries to current events.

Documentary chronicles Pulitzer Prize-winning rural paper; can be viewed online through a film festival this Saturday

The Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times (Art is at right)

A new documentary follows how a rural Iowa family has not only persevered in the face of challenges to local journalism, but has thrived and produces an outstanding, award-winning community newspaper.

In fact, the awards—one big one, at least—first prompted filmmaker Jerry Risius' interest in the Cullen family, who own and operate the Storm Lake Times in rural northwestern Iowa, Julie Gammack reports for the Des Moines Register. Risius, an Iowa native, was working in Africa for the late Anthony Bourdain in 2017 when he saw a New York Times story reporting that Editor Art Cullen had won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

"My eyes popped out of my head," Risius told Gammack. "You never see a paper in a small, northern Iowa town win a Pulitzer!" On a trip to visit family soon after, Risius arranged with Art Cullen to spend an afternoon at the paper and shoot some footage in hopes of pitching it as a documentary. The footage got the attention of co-director Beth Levison, but "at first, the Emmy and Peabody-winning independent producer didn't bite on the project. Then, in July of 2018, Levinson read a column by Cullen that appeared in The New York Times titled "In My Town, We Need Immigrants." The Storm Lake editor wrote about what immigrants bring to rural communities as an antidote when the U.S. government kept the children of asylum seekers in cages," Gammack reports. Cullen's column "was a man-bites-dog moment. It contradicted the myth that all who live in predominantly white rural America hate people who don't look like them. Levison was captivated. And so are those who watch 'Storm Lake'."

The documentary "is a vital celebration of the role of community-based news gathering at a time when media revenues are way down and the credibility of the press has taken a hammering across much of the country," David Rooney writes for The Hollywood Reporter. "Chronicling roughly two years in the life of The Storm Lake Times, which has served the rural Iowan farm town for 30 years, the film is an engrossing account of a family business run with integrity and passion. It also doubles as restorative proof that, even in these divided times, respectful co-existence can still outweigh opposing political views."

The film is showing at the Woods Hole Film Festival Saturday, July 31, and streaming is available at 8 a.m. ET that day. (It’s live at 8:30 p.m.) Regular tickets are $14; a house hold ticket is $20. Click here for more information.

Documentary on rural soldier's heroism and campaign to get him the Medal of Honor is returning to TV this weekend

Lt. Garlin Murl Conner

A year ago today, on Memorial Day 2020, Kentucky Educational Television premiered a documentary about a soldier from one of the most isolated places in America who repeatedly put his life on the line for his country – but quietly returned to his very rural life and wasn’t fully honored for his heroism until 73 years later.

"From Honor to Medal: The Story of Garlin M. Conner," will air again on KET's Kentucky Channel at 8/7 p.m. ET/CT Monday, May 31, and is available online at www.ket.org.

The hour-long documentary tells the story of one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II, who received the nation’s highest military decoration only after a 20-year campaign by his widow and friends.

Their campaign ended in June 2018, at the White House, when then-President Trump presented the medal to Pauline Conner, who still lives on their small farm near Albany, just down the road from their son Paul. Soon she plans to deliver his military memorabilia to the Third Infantry Division museum at Fort Stewart, Ga., where there is a Murl Conner Room, next to the Audie Murphy Room.

The two soldiers are a study in commonality and contrasts. Murphy, a son of Texas sharecroppers, won the Medal of Honor for his heroism in northeastern France on Jan. 26, 1945. He returned to the U.S. as perhaps the most decorated American soldier of the war, and became a major movie star.

Conner, who knew Murphy, earned the medal the day before and just a few miles away, but in the fog of war only got the Distinguished Service Cross. He returned to a creekside farm in Southern Kentucky's Cumberland River valley with no electricity or running water. Like most soldiers, he rarely talked about his exploits, which included suffering many wounds and earning four Silver Stars.

Only after Conner died in 1998 was his story told – first by a rank stranger who became his greatest advocate and inspired others to join his campaign to get Conner the Medal of Honor. Led by a neighbor who wouldn’t take no for an answer, they struggled for 20 years to break through Army bureaucracy, losing at every turn – but remaining inspired by Conner’s examples of determination and resolve.

Conner, fresh out of a hospital for a serious wound, volunteered to be a forward observer for artillery that was needed to stop a German attack – an attack that came so close he finally called in artillery on his own position. His commanding officer said he should receive the highest possible medal, but the officer was wounded the next day and didn't follow up.

The follow-up came decades later, from Richard Chilton, a Green Beret veteran from Genoa City, Wisconsin, who met Conner and learned his story while researching the service of his uncle, who died at Anzio under Conner’s command; and from Walton "Chip" Haddix of Albany, Ky., who took up the campaign begun by Chilton and wouldn't take no for an answer. The Army finally relented.

The documentary was produced by Lexington filmmaker Jeff Hoagland and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. It was sponsored by private donors and the Veterans Trust Fund of the Kentucky Department for Veterans Affairs, a state agency that assisted the Conner team's legal efforts at the direction of then-Commissioner Heather French Henry, whose cause was veterans when she was Miss America.

Trailers for the documentary are online at honortomedal.us, along with information about Murl Conner and some of the major players in the effort to get him the Medal of Honor. The program has been aired by public TV stations in other states; check local listings for broadcasts outside Kentucky. DVDs of the documentary are available from the Institute for $29.95, by emailing al.cross@uky.edu.

In Nomadland, about a homeless rural migrant worker, 'a ghost of a Western' and maybe 'The Grapes of Wrath'

Frances McDormand in Nomadland

Nomadland, which won big at the Academy Awards last night—Best Picture, Best Lead Actress (Frances McDormand), and Best Director (Chloé Zhao) — presents a complicated portrait of the rural West and the gig economy.

The film follows Fern, a widowed former teacher in her 60s, who becomes a van-dwelling migrant gig worker after the factory shutters in her rural Nevada town. It's based on the 2018 nonfiction book of the same name by journalist Jessica Bruder, who lived in a van for three years and followed itinerant gig workers to research it.

Critics and Nevadans have praised the film for its authenticity, saying it faithfully depicts rural Nevada. And if the characters are realistic, it's because many are actual migrant gig-workers, not actors. Nomadland also manages to avoid common Hollywood tropes that show rural areas as full of simple bigots, dangerous freaks, or salt-of-the-earth down-home folks; a feat Oscar contender Hillbilly Elegy could not duplicate, Stephen Humphries writes for The Christian Science Monitor.

But the film pulls its punches in showing how dangerous menial gigs can be, especially for seniors, and ignores Bruder's pointed economic critiques. In the book, she describes the nomads as "plug-and-play labor, the epitome of convenience for employers in search of seasonal staffing. They appear where and when they are needed. They bring their own homes … They aren’t around long enough to unionize. On jobs that are physically difficult, many are too tired even to socialize after their shifts." One 77-year-old worker told Bruder that "They love retirees because we’re dependable. We’ll show up, work hard, and are basically slave labor."

"Because the film is primarily a character study of [Fern], it exchanges Bruder’s sharp indignation over capitalist exploitation for a muddled message about individual freedom that downplays the real stakes of gig labor," Wilfred Chan writes for Vulture.

Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker in November, "Somewhere, inside this lovely and desperate movie, there’s the ghost of a Western. Though people still gather around a campfire, their talk is of cancer and P.T.S.D.  Instead of cowboys driving cattle to high pastures, Fern and her kindred spirits converge, in certain months, on an Amazon warehouse—still obeying the rhythm of the seasons, I guess, as they bubble-wrap junk and box it in time for Christmas. . . . It maintains a fierce sadness, like the look in its heroine’s eyes, alive to all that’s dying in the West. That is why Zhao so often films at daylight’s decease, catching enormous skies of violet and rose, and why her fable speaks to us, in 2020, as John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” did to audiences eighty years ago. Fern’s needs and rights are as basic as those of the Joad family, yet there was a breadth and an uplift to their yearning that has since dwindled to a speck. “Fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul,” Tom Joad said. “The one big soul that belongs to everybody.” Some hope. Fern has her own soul, and it’s hers alone, packed away tight in the van, together with her toothbrush and her chicken-noodle soup. On she goes."

Film on journalists' rural-America trek premieres Tuesday

Deborah and James Fallows

A new documentary aims to bring to life two journalists' writings about rural America. James and Deborah Fallows crisscrossed the U.S. for five years in a small plane, writing about small towns and their newspapers for The Atlantic. They turned their travels into a best-selling 2018 book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America. Eight of the communities they highlighted in the book are featured in a new HBO documentary called Our Towns, which premieres on HBO and HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, April 13.

Directed, produced, shot and edited by Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, the documentary "paints a remarkable picture of America and how the rise of civic and economic reinvention is transforming small cities and towns across the country," according to HBO. It "spotlights local initiatives and explores how a sense of community and common language of change can help people and towns find a different path to the future." View the trailer here.

The documentary is "an optimistic, visually-arresting snapshot of life in small towns and cities," Adam Giorgi writes for The Daily Yonder. "t’s impressive how many important issues the film fits into the narrative, hitting upon homelessness, opioid addiction, immigration, global trade, the legacy of slavery, climate change, and even the decline of local news. But for all its sweep, when you get past the big-picture, high-minded concerns on the filmmakers’ minds, the heart of this story is found in the details, when its feet are on the ground. It’s the close-up look at each community, and the people who live there, that animates 'Our Towns' and makes it stick. The message here is ultimately one of optimism, resilience, and reinvention, and it resounds because of the individuals seen putting those principles into practice. The filmmaking team doesn’t paper over or push aside very real and formidable challenges, but they focus their lens first and foremost on those who are working to adapt and overcome them."

Also in the Yonder, Anya Slepyan listens to its "Everywhere Radio" interview with the couple and wonders if the documentary can "help us go beyond red states versus blue states." 

Federal court strikes down Interior Department rule requiring paid permit to film in national parks

A federal judge has struck down a portion of the Interior Department's film-requirements, ruling that the National Park Service cannot require commercial filmmakers to obtain a paid permit to shoot video on National Park System lands, saying that such a rule violates filmmakers' First Amendment rights.

"In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declared that the statute and enacting regulations that require those engaged in 'commercial filming' to obtain permits and pay certain fees are unconstitutional," the National Press Photographers Association reports. "The court also found that the permit rules restrict speech in public forums, including the many National Park locations that are already considered traditional public forums such as the National Mall. The court found that the rules were content-based restrictions on speech, subject to strict scrutiny. Likewise, she found, the regulations and underlying reasons offered by the government—namely obtaining a 'fair market' payment on top of any administrative costs—do not meet that scrutiny."

Recent films, including Hillbilly Elegy, prompt discussion about how Hollywood views rural America

Films like Hillbilly Elegy and the new limited-release Nomadland are stirring up new discussion about how Hollywood portrays rural life, Stephen Humphries reports for The Christian Science Monitor.

"It’s a touchy topic. White, rural voters have been excoriated in some quarters of the media for voting for Donald Trump. Consequently, popular culture depictions of those in the countryside are often viewed through a political lens," Humphries reports. "Those living in small-town America worry about how they’re portrayed by filmmakers who’ve parachuted into a locale. Others argue that the outsider storytellers can bring fresh perspectives to socioeconomic issues. But there’s also widespread agreement that Hollywood should venture into the outer reaches of red states more often and try to tell nuanced stories about what unites and divides us."

Stereotypes are also often embraced by nationwide news media, R. Garringer writes for Scalawag:

"I've seen national media portray West Virginia—where I was raised—and Eastern Kentucky—where I now live—as the home of racist white voters, as a place of despair and conservatism, as a wasteland of drug epidemics and pollution. I've seen national media swoop in every four years for presidential campaigns, or stop in for a short story about the "drug overdose capital" of the country. I've seen national media seek out stories that fit a narrative they wrote long before their reporters set foot on mountain ground. What I've almost never seen is national coverage that portrays this place as the home of rich legacies of radical labor organizing, environmental organizing, and queer organizing, as the soil for rich artistic and literary traditions, as a region shaped by patterns of in- and out-migration, as a place that is complex, varied, diverse, and full."

Impoverished single moms in Appalachia don't have much access to the literary world, and are mostly portrayed inaccurately in popular media such as Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy film version of J.D. Vance's book, Alison Stine writes for Gen, a Medium publication about politics, power and culture: "The film gets so much epically wrong about the region it purports to reflect; its poverty fallacies have overshadowed how much it gets wrong about women, particularly single mothers."

In the film, Vance's mother, a high school salutatorian, mourns that she got pregnant at 18 and was unable to pursue her own goals. "But her very valid complaints of not being allowed to better herself or use her brain because she’s been forced into solo caregiving are presented by the film as hysterics. She’s a roadblock in Vance’s way — how dare she question the system," Stine writes. "In this narrative, Vance’s desire for a better life is presented as noble, a hero’s quest. Bev’s desires — to have more schooling, to remarry, to get out, like Vance — are monstrous, unacceptable . . . Vance heads off to the kind of better life that only some men can aspire to, while women are left behind to pick up the pieces."

New Ron Howard-directed film 'Hillbilly Elegy', based on controversial J.D. Vance memoir, mostly panned by critics

Glenn Close and Amy Adams in Hillbilly Elegy

Most critics are panning the film version of J.D. Vance's controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which debuts on Netflix and in theaters Nov. 24. The film, about Vance's childhood in an Appalachian migrant family in Ohio and his bootstrapping rise to success, boasts formidable star power, with Ron Howard directing and Amy Adams and Glenn Close starring as a feuding mother and daughter. But that wasn't enough to carry the film, many critics said.

The film would be "almost laughably bad—if it weren't so melodramatic," Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post writes. "From one side of its mouth, the film tries to suggests that the values J.D. was imbued with — perseverance, self-sufficiency — fueled his success. (The author is now a venture capitalist.) And yet those same values don’t seem to have saved many in his family — or, frankly, the larger Rust Belt community. From the other side of its mouth, the film hints that J.D. is who he is because he’s something of an anomaly: a chubby, ambitious, fact-spewing nerd who’d rather watch a news show on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal than sit through a cable broadcast of Terminator 2: Judgment Day with his grandmother for the umpteenth time."

Alissa Wilkinson of Vox is less charitable, calling it "possibly the worst movie I've seen in years." The memoir was widely criticized for seemingly dismissing the role of sociocultural ills in personal success, writes Wilkinson, who says she comes from a similar background, but she writes that "whatever your opinion of the book, the movie is a different animal, and a startlingly terrible one." In the book, Vance's background makes him intriguing to others, but in the movie it's played for embarrassment; that rings false, Wilkinson writes: "It is distractingly Hollywoodified, a rich person’s idea of what it is like to be a poor person, a tone-deaf attempt to assuage a very particular kind of liberal guilt by reifying the very thing that caused the guilt in the first place. And, perhaps worst of all, it’s a very dull movie."

G. Allen Johnson of The San Francisco Chronicle praises Adams' and Close's performances, and gives it a somewhat kinder review: "A strength is that focusing on the past defuses the inevitable burden of representing the complex politics of Trump country. A weakness is that it is about as relevant to the current moviegoer as Fried Green Tomatoes or Steel Magnolias. The movie feels defanged, a film that won’t quite go there."

The film is "exactly the kind of milquetoast and capital-'E' Empathetic movie you would expect a bunch of Hollywood liberals to make from Vance’s memoir," David Ehrlich writes for IndieWire. But it's not true to the book, he writes. Vance's memoir "read like a tortured account of survivor’s guilt from someone desperate to justify his success and make peace his their one-way transition from yokel to yuppy," Ehrlich writes. It became a political football, but the film is "anodyne and somehow apolitical" and seems like "it's trying to sand the edges off this story and do Vance the favor of making him seem like a good example."

Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times calls the film a "wobbly sociological treatise by way of a tough, harrowing personal story" and writes that the film has been "denuded of any meaningful politics to speak of" despite Vance’s "harsher assessments" of the people he grew up around. Director Ron Howard, who as a boy played Opie in The Andy Griffith Show, is "a political liberal but an aesthetic conservative" who "has never been one to rock the boat or advance a provocative point of view," Chang notes. "Which is not to say there are no real-world ideas or insights to be gleaned here, only that they’re mostly glancing, incidental ones."

Rural Assembly Everywhere virtual festival Oct. 26-30

Rural Assembly Everywhere, a virtual festival for rural leaders, advocates and allies, is coming up Oct. 26-30. It's organized by the Rural Assembly, a Center for Rural Strategies program that connects more than 400 organizations and individuals nationwide focused on improving rural policies and communities. 

Rural Assembly director Whitney Kimball Coe said it was critical for such people to be able to gather, even if it couldn't be in person. "Family meeting feels like an appropriate metaphor for what we’re trying to accomplish with Everywhere," she told Tracy Staley of The Daily Yonder. "We’re calling everyone together, from all places, all regions, all sectors, and backgrounds because it’s going to take all us committing to the future together, and we don’t leave family behind."

The festival will feature a diverse line-up of speakers, panelists, artists, and happy hour discussions. "The keynotes, panels, and breakouts will address both current and longstanding issues, such as the 2020 election, the pandemic, gender and race, climate change and resilience, and rural and Native youth leadership," Staley reports. "The event will also include artists from across the country who will weave songs, poetry, film, and humor into the program throughout the week."

Registration is free. Click here for more information or to register.

Promotional trailer released for film adaptation of controversial Hillbilly Elegy memoir, which debuts Nov. 24

 

On Wednesday Netflix released the first trailer for "Hillbilly Elegy," an adaptation of J.D. Vance's controversial 2016 memoir about growing up in an Appalachian-transplant family in Middletown, Ohio, between Cincinnati and Dayton.

"Vance’s memoir delves into the social mores and political beliefs of poor conservatives, and, upon publication, was quickly heralded as a touchstone for making sense of Donald Trump’s election," Yohana Desta writes for Vanity Fair. 

The film could finally net an Oscar or two for director Ron Howard and stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close as a feuding mother and daughter. The trailer alone, Desta writes, is "awards bait of the highest order." The film will debut in theaters and on Netflix on Nov. 24.

Mountain students' evocative photos from the 1970s have become a book and a documentary, on PBS this week

Russell Alemon wrote, "I'm lying on the back of my old horse." (Photo via KET)

This item has been updated with material from the documentary.

In 1975-81, a teacher in far southeastern Kentucky loaned a camera to her students, many of whom came from homes that didn't have a way to photographically document their accomplishments, daily lives and family gatherings. Now they're a book and a documentary.

Ruby Cornett: "I asked my sister to take a picture of me
on Easter morning." (Photo via KET)

"The photographs they snapped were simple, yet laced with deep meaning: the black and white selfie, the comical moment of lying on a horse’s back, and showing off an Easter Sunday dress," Liz Moomey reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The photos were made into a book, Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories By Children of The Appalachians. It’s now being republished and an Appalshop documentary about the project, Portraits and Dreams, will air at 10 p.m. Monday on KET," the state network, as part of PBS's "POV," or point of view, series. Check schedules for air dates and times on other PBS affiliates.

“Having a camera gives anyone power, but particularly children,” Ewald says in the two-minute trailer for the documentary. “It's really like the first time you fall in love,” Ewald told Moomey. “You have this intense experience. I had really fallen in love. I could see what they could do. I could see what photography could do.”

One of her students, Gary Crase, says he grew up “poorer than a church mouse” without running water in his home until he was 22. “This was a huge thing for someone to say ‘Here is your camera and here is your film’,” he said, “because we were poor. [Classmate] Johnny Wilder’s family was the same. They didn’t have two pennies to rub together.” In the documentary, both share some painful memories.

Moomey writes, "Without the camera, few moments of he and his family living in Letcher County would have been captured. The family didn’t have a camera, and relied on extended family to take photos and share them. Crase still looks at the pictures in his family photo album."

Crase, who Ewald says was her smartest student and is now a college science teacher, tells her in the documentary that "You made a mark on us" and asks her if they made a mark on her. Ewald, an internationally known photographer, replies with her line about falling in love and says, "I learned how to do everything I did with you guys."

Ky. soldier’s heroism, and 20-year campaign to recognize it with Medal of Honor, are subjects of documentary to air on Kentucky TV at 8 p.m. ET Monday, May 25 – Memorial Day

Lt. Garlin Murl Conner, 1945

As Americans honor patriotic sacrifice on Memorial Day, Kentucky Educational Television and perhaps other state networks will premiere the story of a Kentucky soldier who repeatedly put his life on the line for his country – but wasn’t fully honored for it until 73 years later.

"From Honor to Medal: The Story of Garlin M. Conner," airing on KET at 8/7 p.m. ET/CT Monday, May 25, tells the story of one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II – who received the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor, only after a 20-year campaign by his widow and friends.

Their campaign ended June 26, 2018, at the White House, when President Trump presented the medal to Pauline Conner, who still lives on their small farm near Albany, just down the road from their son Paul. She said in a speech at the Pentagon the next day, "This is what Murl would want me to say: God bless these United States of America."

Murl Conner served more than two years in the Third Infantry Division, suffering many wounds and earning four Silver Stars. On Jan. 25, 1945, he volunteered to be a forward observer for artillery that was needed to stop a German attack – an attack that came so close he finally called in artillery on his own position, offering his life for his country.

Conner survived that day in a ditch in the French province of Alsace, and came home to a Kentucky farm with no electricity or running water. He had a family, gave them a good life, and was a leader of his fellow farmers and veterans. He suffered in body and mind from his Army service, but said very, very little about it.

Only after Conner died in 1998 was his story told – first by a rank stranger who became his greatest advocate and inspired others to join his campaign to get Conner the Medal of Honor. Led by a neighbor who wouldn’t take no for an answer, they struggled for 20 years to break through Army bureaucracy, losing at every turn – but remaining inspired by Murl Conner’s battlefield examples of determination and resolve.

In the end, in an amazing turn of events, they won. And now their story is being told, along with the story of Lt. Conner, who now may be the most decorated American soldier of World War II.

"He was a combination of Kit Carson and Davy Crockett," says Walton Haddix of Albany, who took up the campaign begun by Richard Chilton, a Green Beret veteran from Genoa City, Wisconsin. He met Conner and learned his story while researching the service of his uncle, who died at Anzio under Conner’s command.

"He cared about his men more than anybody I ever knew," Chilton says. "If you want to save your life, go out with Murl. Don’t go out with anybody else."

The documentary was produced by Lexington filmmaker Jeff Hoagland and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. Al Cross, the executive producer and Institute director, says: "I grew up in Albany and knew Murl Conner, but like almost everyone else in town, I had no idea of his war record, and when my brother David said I should do this documentary, I immediately agreed."

The one-hour documentary was sponsored by private donors and the Veterans Trust Fund of the Kentucky Department for Veterans Affairs, a state agency that assisted the Conner team's legal efforts at the direction of then-Commissioner Heather French Henry, whose cause was veterans when she was Miss America.

She says in the documentary, "Just to know that you are part of this great mission that has lasted so long, and that you could at some point in your future, tell your kids, tell your grandkids, that once upon a time you were part of this fight . . . "

Trailers for the documentary are online at honortomedal.us, along with information about Murl Conner and some of the major players in the effort to get him the Medal of Honor. Check local listings for possible broadcasts outside Kentucky.

Documentary explores African-American Appalachian diaspora connecting through a historic social club

  

A new hour-long PBS documentary, Eastern Kentucky Social Club, explores an organization founded in 1969 by African-American Appalachians who wanted to maintain a link with their homes after they migrated out of the coalfields to mostly northern cities. The film was created by PBS' Black in Appalachia project. Read more here.