Ron Eller

Original intro/outro music: 
"'Till I See Stars" by The Parachute Brigade

Transcript

John F. Kennedy  
The sun does not always shine in West Virginia but the people always do know I'm delighted to be here.

Brandon Dennison  
Ron, we set a theme every year as an organization to really reflect on and engage with over the course of the year. And this year, our theme was history, and really looking at our own history as individuals, our history as Appalachian communities. But also, you know, we knew there was going to be a lot of federal funding coming to the region, you know, really the most, we've seen as a region, probably since the Great Society. And we wanted to understand our history to not repeat mistakes that that got made the last time a lot of money poured in, and to try and be as strategic and proactive as possible to be good stewards of those resources, as they come in to truly improve the quality of life, for the people in our communities with those resources. And we think understanding our history better, can help us do that. So we actually have read your other book, miners mill hands and mountaineers, earlier in the year, and we've just started uneven ground. Now, about halfway through. And so you may get questions on both the books. But I wonder to start if you could just tell us what inspired you to write both of these books. And just tell us a little bit about your story of how you ended up becoming a great Appalachian historian and author?

Ron Eller  
Well, one of the things that I think it's important to remember about history books, when you read history books is to understand the context of that book. You know, history is written by each generation. And I think that's a great thing. Because each generation needs to reinterpret the meaning of the past. In light of the needs of the present, you know, I came out of the generation of the 60s, I was born in the 40s, obviously, a baby boomer, my family has been in the mountains on both sides, my mother's and my father's way back before the American Revolutionary War. Originally, my father's family was from western North Carolina from deep in the mountains, on the headwaters of the New River. My mother's family was from Central West Virginia, my father's family at the turn of the 20th century migrated out of the mountains in North Carolina, into southern West Virginia to work in the coal mines. So I was raised in an environment where I was deeply part of Appalachian culture and history. But my generation was deeply affected by what today we call identity politics, the civil rights movement, certainly the women's movement, many of the social movements of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War, and the anti war movement, pushed many in my generation to reevaluate who we are. My father participated in the great out migration from the mountains for a period of time and I actually went to high school in Ohio was the first in my family ever to get an opportunity to go to college. And I won't go into the detail of what that meant to me. I was able to go to college because I played basketball and got a partial basketball and academic scholarship. At a time when America was very conscious of minority groups. Our experience and out migration had put us in touch with most of the stereotypes and images. And I dealt with that growing up to a great extent. And so we were concerned in the 1960s. About why Appalachia was suddenly drawing a lot of attention on the national scene. I was personally concerned and asking why was I the first in my family, which had been part of the American story since way before the Revolutionary War, including Native American ancestry. Why was I the first in my family ever to have the opportunity to go to college? Why had my people had to leave their home counties to migrate to company towns and and become coal miners? Why I worked in the war on poverty in the 60s, back home. My father after I graduated high school moved back to West Virginia. And I worked in the war on poverty in West Virginia and I was curious as to why was there so much difference in what I saw, and the communities that I knew and worked in, and other American communities. So many of us from the 1960s struggled with the issue of identity. And at that point in time, most of America believed that the problem with the mountains was both the mountains and mountain people. It was our culture that had made us poor. And a lot of the even the theory behind the war on poverty was if we can just get these mountain people to think like the rest of modern middle class Americans, we will solve their problems. And if we can just simply make the mountains themselves look like the rest of America, because these people are isolated you see, and that contributes to their cultural isolation as well, then, then we'll solve the Appalachian problem. Again, in the 1960s, my generation was deeply affected by the idea of colonialism. We saw it working out in what we were doing in Southeast Asia. It was certainly part of the African American experience in in America.

And so we began to ask different kinds of questions about our own history. At that time, when I went to college, there was no such thing as Appalachian history. We did not have trained historians, from the region, who could write the history of what had happened in the mountains and so most of what was written about Appalachia was written by. And I will use the word outsiders. But these were simply people who had not grown up in the region did not know the region well, and were deeply affected by the National images and stereotypes of Appalachia. So I was determined, when I got the opportunity to go to college, I was determined that I was going to try and at least try to understand personally what the history of my people was. And then try and write that in a broader sense. So one of the things and I won't go into a great deal more detail than that one of the things that shaped my generation was this idea that what had created what we call an America as Appalachia, was not a strange land and a peculiar people, not the culture and the geography of the place. But in fact, the experience of development and what had occurred and happened in this region over a long period of time. And one of the things that we ultimately came to conclude, and largely after I wrote, "Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers" was that the Appalachian experience wasn't some strange, unique American experience. Our experience with modernization was perhaps distinct to us, as it is distinctive, almost every minority population across the country. But it was not a unique American experience. In fact, what happened in Appalachia in the mountains, was part and parcel to the American experience itself. And we had to understand that how had communities developed over time, who benefited from the kind of development that came and looking at the  the politics and the economy, that had emerged out of periods of dramatic change,

would tell us more about who we are, and what our experience has been. So I was very much in my generation was very much shaped by trying to address the issues of the stereotypes and images and correct those. And at that time, we were very much influenced by the whole idea of colonialism. And what that told us and I am one of the things that my first book "Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers" helped to do was literally to document the extent of absentee control, and absentee capital influence that had come into the region and what its impact had been. Now, by the end, I wrote that book primarily in the mid 70s. It was published in 1982. And by the time it came out, I had increasingly begun to recognize that that was on part of the story, the story wasn't all wasn't, you know, it was easy to blame outsiders. Because there were many within the region that had participated in this exploitation of Appalachia and of what had occurred. And so we have increasingly come to understand that it's not absentee control. It is, and absentee control has played a very important role in, in shaping our our society. But it's, it's an outlook on life. It's a perspective that is larger than the issue of absentee control. In fact, many from within the region have, over time shared that perspective on what the good life is. And so that "Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers", not only helped us to understand that our history was a history of industrialization and change, just like most of the rest of the America's was, we ended up in a different place. But it also helped us to understand that there were very different outlooks and views on what the good life really is in America and what we want out of that life, and that the story of Appalachia is part of that larger American struggle.

Brandon Dennison  
Can you tell us why you chose the title, "Uneven Ground"?

Ron Eller  
Well, "Uneven Ground", again, can be understood within the context of, of when it was written. After I wrote miners male hands and mountaineers I, for about 30 years worked as director of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, and one of the missions of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center was to work with communities throughout the region, as well as political and economic leaders to improve the quality of life in the mountains. And I learned a great deal from from my 30 years of working with governors and, and presidents and, and local communities, resistance organizations and many others. And o ne of the things that I learned is that we we really had changed quite a bit since the 1960s. And the 1960s, when I worked as a caseworker in child welfare, I saw some pretty appalling conditions. I saw families living in, in homes that we would not welcome animals in. And today, I saw appalling health conditions appalling the ways that poor families were treated. We've come a long way from many of the conditions that that I knew in the 1960s. And yet, having said that, and having recognized the the improvements in the quality of life for for many people, we still have one of the largest percentages of poverty and and problems of any place in the United States. So the the title uneven ground not only refers to the fact that obviously the geography in the mountains is different in life in the in the valleys in the cities is quite different from from life up thehollers, and at the head heads of the coves. But it more importantly recognizes that the way development has occurred has in fact been uneven. Even the positive programs in the 1960s and I many of them were extremely positive and helpful to individuals. Those programs benefited some people more than others. And the reason we continue to have that inequality in the mountains, the reason we continue to have that same reflection of inequality nationally is that the programs in the 1960s simply did not address the fundamental structural problems that had created the differences in the region in the first place. And so what has happened since the 1960s is that we have one attempted to bring mountain people into the American mainstream of consumer capitalism. We have attempted to do that by a massive transfer of, of payments from the federal government to provide a minimal support net, to people. But we have not addressed the fundamental issues of why so many people in the mountains have been forced to leave the region in order to survive. Why so many people in the mountains struggle continually to survive. Why tragedies, such as the mine disasters and the recent flood disasters that have hit East Kentucky, and other parts of the region continue to persist. And so we need to understand that fundamental changes really need to be made. The irony is that those fundamental changes are not just changes within Appalachia. Those are changes from a national perspective. And, as I argue in "Uneven Ground",

Appalachia is not the other America as we suggested that it might be in the 1960s. Appalachia is in fact a reflection of the same kinds of issues that we're struggling with all over the United States, and especially the distance between minority communities and the small, wealthier communities that tend to live in suburban and urban places.

Brandon Dennison  
Such an important perspective. So yeah, let's open it up to some questions we got Gina and who wants to go after Gina just gonna go ahead and tee it up. We're gonna get Gina then Josiah. Gonna hear from the team here, Ross.

Ron Eller  
Okay, great. Terrific.

Josiah Hannah  
Hello, Mr. Eller. This is Gina Milum. I've been the one speaking with you over the emails.

Ron Eller  
Oh, great. Yes, Gina. Good to meet you finally, yes.

Josiah Hannah  
There was a you spoke about I mean, it was early and "Uneven Ground", you can see I've got plenty of notice. When you liken the economic order in Appalachia to a shallow cup, where growth without the capacity to maintain that, you know, growth just causes most of it, you know, most of the prosperity to flow out of the region. And of course, we recognize that as you know, having the mono economy and any absentee ownership. But with these, you know, the Build Back Better, you know, that you, of course you're familiar with and you know, that we have, you know, received grants here in central Appalachia, to help grow, you know, do you see a way, you know, what, in your mind would be the best way to make that cup deeper in order to grow the capacity to sustain the prosperity?

Ron Eller  
If you read... That's, that's a great question Gina. And, and there, if you read "Uneven Ground", there are two actually two editions of "Uneven Ground", there's a hardback edition. And then in 2012, I published a paperback edition in which I included an afterword on the future of Appalachia. And the reason that I did that was because I kept getting asked that question that you just asked me, there is what's the what is this history of inequality and all of the issues that that we discuss in there. What does that mean for what we ought to be doing for the future? And so that's the reason I wrote that. What I think is, in many ways, one of the more important parts of "Uneven Ground" is that is that last chapter. And in that chapter, I recognize that a number of fundamental changes need to be made. The core of answering your question is that we need to focus much more on the revitalization of local community economies in the region. What created modern Appalachia was an economy that was based upon the assumption that we need to produce goods that are shipped out of the region and consumed by someone else. What that also meant was that those who had control of those goods got the larger benefit, with minimal benefit to the people who were actually working to produce the goods in the region. We can I'd get better schools and better health care and better housing, and those kinds of things out of that, out of that process. In the work that I did, for almost 40 years, with the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the various Governors of the Appalachian states, I learned that the real changes have to take place in communities themselves. And the work to create sustainable economies within communities, where communities exchanged goods and services with each other. For example, one of the issues that we struggled with an Appalachian is that we are surrounded with a large number of urban centers. And yet, we do very little exchange between rural Appalachia and the urban centers in terms of goods and services. So we need to do a better job of recognizing that we have a regional economy and a a an economy that is based in local communities that is much more sustainable than what we have what we've had in the past.

Josiah Hannah  
Hello, Mr. Eller. My name is Josiah Hannah. And the first thing I wanted to say is thank you very much. I had your this book in particular sitting on my bookshelf for a long time, the hardback edition and haven't had a chance to read it. This has been this has been the foray into it. I have to be honest with you, when I was reading your first book, I thought, Man, this is so in depth. And I thought I actually shared with one of my co workers, I thought he wrote another one. Wow, I thought that one would have been like a life's work because it was, and then I saw that you were also the author for this. And I thought, wow. But I just want to say I really appreciated and I'm learning to appreciate and value. The objectivity, and the

the humility,

and the absence of grandstanding and throwing your spin on on the events, the the way that you you chronicled and talked about things was so important to me, because of how I heard my dad.

And like, every time you talk about

experiences, it was it was in a way that that helped me to understand more about the snippets and the stories that I would hear from him and from, from my, my, I never got to know my grandpa, but he would tell me stories about his grandpa, and it left so much room for me to just understand.

Ron Eller  
My history and my people.

Josiah Hannah  
And I just really appreciated that. I really appreciate it. Thank

Ron Eller  
you leaving Thank you. That the one thing I don't do a lot of public speak, I've been retired now for 10 years. I don't do as much public speaking and moving around the region as I as I did years ago. But the one thing that I found that was consistent was that when I would talk at some community meeting, and I would tell my story and essentially tell the story that in "Miners, Millhands" and "Uneven Ground", inevitably, people would come up to me and say, "You told my story". And that's what I tried to do. Because, you know, these stories are our Appalachian stories. And they're shared by so many people in the region. The reason that there is so much detail, and actually in both of these books, is again, that contextual issue of when I grew up, when I grew up, the overwhelming. You know, I was told by when we out migrated, I was told by elementary school teacher, that if I wanted to make anything out of myself, I had to become somebody different than who my people were. Yeah. And those images and stereotypes have so shaped how we see ourselves and how we understand where we been that I wanted to prove to document what I was saying. You know, I didn't want to just generalize that, that these companies did X, Y and Z. I wanted to prove it, to document it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And and so that's why there's so much detail in these particular books is that you almost have to overcompensate in order to make your case and to convince people that yeah, you know, it's not our culture that has created these issues. It's the system. And these issues are systematic, and they're not unique to us. We've got to deal with them as a larger society, too. So that that's that reason, though. I appreciate your comments.

Josiah Hannah  
I think you succeeded. At your objective. For your question. I, you know, I was struck, because of hearing again, stories from my dad, he was, you know, he was involved in, in the coal industry, and then also involved in really advocating against and combating some of these things that you wrote about that we're starting to get into an uneven ground about mountaintop removal and, and other things. He lobbied on the courthouse steps, he was a Marine. So he was part of that whole thing. And Vietnam, I used to hear stories of him driving up to Detroit and some of the other towns you mentioned. And so all of it, especially an uneven ground is the you are talking about all these stories I was hearing from my dad. And he was part of a kind of a cool initiative in Williamson, West Virginia, where there was a restaurant that was called the Lock, Stock, and Barrel. And it was, it was actually initiated by I think that the connection is it was the executive chef for Jacqueline Kennedy, who they're traveling through the area was inspired to try to put together a really fine dining experience. And it morphed into something that was owned by the community and lots of cool stories there. But it's very kind of social entrepreneurship, I mean, it, it has things about it that are very similar to what I see Brandon and us as an organization sort of trying to do. And then in your other book that we read, there was an example of a cooperative mine that, that somebody who had an immigrant to the United States and put together and I thought, wow, here's a here's a cooperative mine that was put together that as early you know, as this time period, these ideas are being attempted, and so I guess all of that caused me to see just sort of this not not a straight progression of development cycles. How do you know that I wonder about your perspective, since you do such a good job of not inserting your own opinions throughout this work? I did want to ask you just yourself, where you see us in terms of sort of these cycles, because when I'm reading through how you describe the period of time before the Kennedy administration, it kind of reminds me of how I feel about Appalachia, you talk about how there was a generation that there was sort of a period of hopelessness. And then there were there were swells of hopefulness and sort of anticipation of something new and being on the edge of something and on the brink of something. And I think, Wow, that sounds like how I feel. And I'm curious to hear your perspective about where you see us, you know, is that a, is that a trajectory that goes like this?

Ron Eller  
I think you're exactly. I think you're exactly right. And as a historian, who looks back over time, I think that cycle of what you're talking about, is consistent both within Appalachia, and, more importantly, consistent nationally. We have throughout our history as a nation, and throughout our history. In the mountains, we have had this ongoing struggle to define what does development mean? What does the good life what are we trying to get? What does it really mean? And we have moved back and forth. We'd from time to time have had leaders who have suggested well, we need to be more community wise, we need to support each other. We need to to have regulations and governmental policies that give opportunity to individuals and communities rather than to wealthy and distant capitalists. That struggle as has been as been part of our national struggle since before the American Revolution. You can see it throughout our history, and it has definitely been part of the struggle within the mountains. One of the things that I discovered from looking at the stories of my own people is the fact that my people, as most mountain families were engaged in overtime, were concerned simply about survival. The most important thing to them wasn't making profit's, wasn't making a lot of wealth, wasn't gaining in that respect. But the survival of the family, the survival of family relationships, and by extension, the community that was close to you. I would highly recommend, especially for those of you in West Virginia, by the way, I collected taxes in Huntington, my sophomore year in college and that was a real experience my family is from down around Beckley and down in Summers County. But I would recommend that you all look at Stephens Stoll's book "Ramp Hollow". It's really a history that is set in northern West Virginia. But  Stephen teaches in New York State, but it's it's an, he absolutely is able to capture this larger struggle that I'm talking about. And the two visions, and Stephen argued I think correctly, as I I tried to make the case in "Miners and Millhands" that originally there was one view of what an economy was for, what it existed for, and then there was another view, much more aggressive, national capitalist view that came in and crashed with with that more sustainable local view of what life should be and was all about. I think Steven in "Ramp Hollow", does a real good job with capturing those differences. And I think that's the that's always been one of the the differences in the mountains is people, even today. And we've we've come far away from our original community values that we had. But even today, you find people, you know, whose most important thing in their life is their community, their family. They want a sustainable way to live. They define a particular relationship to the land. And it's not necessarily one of exploitation. It's certainly one of use, but it's not necessarily one of exploitation. And that's what we've been struggling with in Appalachia over time. And that's a larger American struggle that we still see today reflected in, in our national conversation.

Brandon Dennison  
Other questions? For virtual folks, any questions that you'd like to pose?

Stephen Schrock  
I don't have a question. But I just wanted to say thank you for writing these books. I grew up in a town called Gormania, West Virginia, which is located right along the North Branch of the Potomac River. I was raised by my great grandparents. And there was a tannery, that existed there is, you know, way back in the early 1900s. And growing up in that area, I would always see these old overgrown relics of this tannery the row housing and things like that. And I was always, you know, kind of ashamed of where I came from, because it was very poor, there was nothing around. And it was always very confusing to see these old buildings, you know. And this has made me a little bit more proud of where I come from and proud to work for a place like this that wants to bring something different to West Virginia and Appalachia.

Ron Eller  
Stephen, I'm glad you made that comment. Because one of the things that I was trying and in both of those books tried to do was to point out that it's not just a story about coal. As important as coal has been to our history. It's not just about coal. There is such strong similarities throughout Appalachia, between what happened in textile communities. What happened in places like you're describing where there were canneries, and others logging operations. It's the larger themes that tie us together as a region. And the more we recognize that, the more we can move away from the idea that it's something peculiar to Appalachia, we have, we have been the product of a lot of the intensity of these kinds of things. It's interesting. When I retired 10 years ago, my wife and I took a long trip across the West, and back for a couple of months. And I found communities throughout the west and Midwest, that looked a lot like communities I know in the mountains, who boomed at one time and, and then collapsed, because they were, the investments came from outside the, they left nothing in the local community, they took advantage of the workers and took advantage of the local resources and left nothing behind for those communities to sustain themselves. And, you know, that's the Appalachian story. And I felt on my trip that I saw an awful lot of American communities that were being quote unquote, Appalachian-ized because I saw a lot of dead communities and, and downtown areas that were being abandoned, houses that were were unoccupied. So, you know, that I think that's a very important thing. Very important point.

Josiah Hannah  
Gina, again, we just want to travel to where you're at, and to sit down and spend the afternoon with you. You know, kind of adding to Josiah has questions and comments about the cycle, or the waves that seem to come through and their political waves, whether it's, you know, an idea of like, you know, during the Great Depression, whether it's Keynesian economics, and then you get, you get the trough that goes into trickle down, or whatever, the burden Sparrow or the horses Sparrow, the economics that they used to call it trickle down, and then you go back into Camelot in the Great Society, you know, where you're more Keynesian and and then brought back down into these other things. And reading your books, it just really compounds how it just happens again, and again, and again. And socialism is such a, you know, a boogey word, you know, that's the boogey man that has underneath everyone's bed. But how do we teach in the schools do is this community outreach that we explain to people, you know, to vote for their own political interests? How do we get this message out to people in the most value in the best way for people to especially here in Appalachia, which I know it's an American issue, but I'm worried about right now? How do we best face those issues and educate people to get them to see these cycles?

Ron Eller  
That's absolutely a great question, a central question, and I think, to the work that, that everybody is doing. I can only give you a response from my personal perspective. One of my grandfather's was coal miner, the other grandfather was a Methodist preacher. For him, Christ's message was one of taking care of each other was one of fairness and to everybody in the community was one of the acceptance of diversity, a system of what I call Christian, and it's not just Christian, because other religions have the same sets of values, but have religious values that are critically important. And that if we really are taking our community seriously, those are the values that we ought to be continuing to use in our application of how do we develop what does our community need? And and how do we get where we're going going to get? And I do that because you know, I grew up in working class mountain families and, you know, religion is critically important to us. Now, I think, you know, religion has moved off into an individual direction, in the same way that much of our Modern Culture has moved into, you know what's good for me, and to hell with everybody else. But that's not what I understand the core of the religious value system really is and it ought to be about. So one of the interesting things that I observed, and both in when I was working in the war on poverty in the 60s, and when I was researching and writing about it, is, in the 1960s, the churches were very active in the war on poverty, and in communities, there was a a strong activist spirit among the churches in the region, who were involved in their communities. And, and were creating organizations and, and, and asking denominations and larger churches outside to fund particular projects, that activist spirit among the churches in the region, I think has waned a great deal. Since the 1960s, there was very definitely a spiritual component to the folks that worked in the war on poverty. They were seeking social justice, they were seeking to help people who needed help. And we have moved a long way away from that sort of spirit, as many failures as the war on poverty had, and it had its share of failures, the one thing about the war on poverty was that it motivated young people like me, to get involved, we had a responsibility. And you see, I think that's, that's a deeply rooted part of our mountain tradition. If we look, if we really are serious about what is, you know, there, there are many Appalachian cultures, there's no single Appalachian culture, but there are some values and ideals that sort of run through it. And one of those values and ideals is that

you have certain responsibilities to others, especially others in your family and your extended family, and your community. That when you grow up, you're part of that collective group of people who and you have some responsibility to help them out. And the war on poverty touched that value system and lots of us in the region. I am very concerned that our national culture, and because Appalachians are part of the national culture has moved so far away from that value, that it just encourages me that we it's amazing how many young people you know, are still have that value system, given what mass media and television and everything throws at us about being all that you can be as an individual. So I think it's deeply within our Appalachian culture, if we just look at it, to have a great concern about not producing wealth for somebody else, but making sure that everybody in our community is taken care of, and that we have an economy that scholars call it a moral economy, a moral economy that is fair and equitable to everybody in the community. And those are the you know, those are the things I think that you were talking about uneven ground, the lessons of of the 1960s, I think we make a mistake when we look at trying to recruit industry from the outside trying to produce to increase production of products that we ship to the outside. Try to be more like Philadelphia, or Baltimore or wherever that outside entity might be. I think we make a mistake by assuming that that's what's best for mountain communities. When in fact, that then neglects the reality that most mountain folk want to live in their communities, want to stay there, are happy not to have the extreme levels of wealth that one might see in some places in America, but want a fair and equitable and sustainable economy in which to raise their kids and in which to to maintain the kinds of values that they have. So yes, I think that's one of the lessons that we learn. Please pay attention to that last chapter, the afterword on the future of Appalachia, because one of the things that I raised in that chapter in addition to the need for, you know, we've got to do some things with recovering our democracy and our political traditions in the region, we've got to do some things with, with culture and lots of other things. But one of the most important things that we've got to examine in the mountains today, if we're going to have an alternative, is this issue of land ownership. You know, we have so much of our terrain, and our land is controlled by other people, by entities that live not just outside Appalachia, but often outside the United States, our destiny in the future is going to, in fact be shaped by that. And if you look at parts of Appalachia, one of the interesting things that you can find is, you know, there's significant difference in the quality of life in, let's say, Western Maryland, and northeastern West Virginia, and Harlan County, Kentucky, and Williamson, West Virginia, in Asheville, North Carolina, the region has a wide variety of places, there are some places that have moved much farther along and have progressed much farther than the heart of the region and the coalfields as for example, and we need to be asking ourselves why that's the case.

And, you know, too often to a great degree, those places that have prospered more, have been closer to the National Forest System and National Park System. Now, I'm, you know, there are issues and problems with so much of our land being owned by the federal government. On the other hand, as if you look at North Georgia and western North Carolina, even Western Maryland, some places, the availability of public owned land, leaves the option of public debate about how that land should be used, who is to benefit from that land, and what and how that land is to contribute to the economy. And that conversation. I taught school for 10 years in western North Carolina, in the 1970s. And that conversation was taking place in western North Carolina. How should the public land the government land in western North Carolina be used? Should it be used for logging operations and mining operations to benefit private corporations? Should it be used to benefit tourism and the recreational activities that are part of that and who's to decide? They had major major debates and confrontation on it, but they chose to make a stronger connection between the use of their public lands and how it might benefit, localized development, and localized resources. If you look at the coalfields of central Appalachia, we have very little public land. And so land ownership and what we can do to put more of our land into the possibility of, of public use, whether it's alternative energy, resources, whether it's tourism, recreational, tourism, more or second home development, or even agricultural production and other things, you know, we need to begin talking about how we can determine and shape the use of that land for the benefit of local communities. And the coalfields of Appalachia force also have this huge amount now of flatland of mountaintop removal land, that, you know, we need to we need to look one way or another about how is that land going to be used? And how can it be? How can it benefit the local community I mean, that was in many ways the conversation at the turn of the 20th century when we created the weeks act that nationalized a lot of the national forest after the timber industry had cut over and massacred the original Timberlands and region. We nationalized it put it under national control. And now those lands the national forests and the region contribute immensely to the economy, and alternative uses of a lot of that landfill communities. So Land, land use and land ownership continues to be a major, major issue and without doing something to change it. We don't change the long term trajectory for the future of many of these communities.

Brandon Dennison  
Mr. Ron Eller, you've given us a lot to think about. Your books are really are a blessing, it's deepened and enriched our understanding of our home. It's informing our work. We're determined to be part of a bigger movement, to get development right. And to honor our local communities and to learn from our past and build a better future. You really are helping us to do that. And we appreciate your time today. But really, we appreciate just who you are and the work that you do.

Josiah Hannah  
like to extend an invitation anytime you want to come to Huntington, West Virginia. We would love for you to visit us here at Coalfield and our West Edge Ffactory. 

Ron Eller  
I would enjoy doing that. And maybe I may, you know, buy a lot of my family still lives in Beckley area and down in Summers County. I don't get back home as often as I like my wife and I have a cabin that we built in western North Carolina, way back in the woods that we enjoy spending time in but she is also from West Virginia, and she was raised in Charleston, so we get home every once in a while. So, thank you very much. I've enjoyed it.

Brandon Dennison  
Change in the Coalfields is a podcast created by Coalfield Development in the hills and hollers of West Virginia. This episode was hosted by Brandon Dennison, and produced and edited by JJN Multimedia. Become a part of our mission to rebuild the Appalachian economy by going to our website, coalfield-development.org to make a donation. You can email us anytime at info@coalfield-development.org and subscribe to our newsletter for more information on the podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn by searching Coalfield Development. Check back soon for more episodes.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai