MarieCirillo.txt

-n -n -n >> All right. >> Today is. >> Today is, what is today? September the 25th. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Today is September the 25th. It's approximately 2PM Eastern Standard Time. We're in Jellico, Tennessee. >> 1993. >> Yeah, 1993. Interviewing, Marie Cirillo from Clearfield, Tennessee. This project is being done under the auspices of the Kentucky Oral History Association. And we'll go ahead and get started. Randy Norrish, doing the interview. >> [LAUGH] >> I've got to ask you some questions that I wonder if you want to ask. Because we're doing this with the data form. >> Sure. >> And what I need to ask you is if you could give a short name and place a bird on those. >> Marie Eleanor Cirillo. I was born in November 16th, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. >> Okay, if you could, could you tell me your father's full name and origins? >> Okay. My father's name was Frank Cirillo. He died last year at 90. And he came to this country from Italy when he was nine years old. He was from the mountains in southern Italy. And my mother moved to New York when she was 20, I think, from Kentucky. >> And her full name? >> And her name was Nancy Adrienne Rapier. Now Cirillo, right? >> Okay. Could you tell us how many brothers and sisters you have? >> I have three sisters, all married, all with children, all still live up in the east, New York and Boston. >> And their names? >> All right, Nancy Cirillo, Francesca, and Margaret. >> No brothers. >> No brothers. >> I don't think that's it. We've got all of them. Now we can get the interview. What I'd like to do while we're down with all the other interviews is ask three questions, and those three questions aren't quite simple. How you feel like your life has been affected in the past by living in the cold fields, what it's like now, and what you think it's going to be like in the future, how do you perceive the future? So, and having said that, those are broader questions, and if you diverge off into storytelling, that's okay. That's all right. But that's usually when we get the best on the interview. But I guess one of the things I'd like to do is, in terms of talking about how things used to be in the cold fields for the people, the women in your family or your family in general, your story, if you could. Just tell us when your people came to the cold fields and from where, and your earliest recollection of being here, and pick up from there. >> My earliest recollection of knowing anything about coal was as a child, Brooklyn was still heated with coal, and my father was a music teacher, and he had a little # outside the house, a little shingle called "Cerulo School of Music." But the people that delivered coal to us was a Cerulo coal company, of whom I knew nothing about, they were not related. But coal used to come into our basement and get shoveled into our furnace. And I remember as a child, my father reading the newspaper and carrying on to himself mostly, because the four girls that sat around the table were just eating their cereal or tantalizing each other, but daddy would read the paper and sort of expound on different things. And I remember very clearly him talking about these coal miners and these unions and John L. Lewis, and being the Republican that he was, I guess not very sympathetic, toward them. And I remember him talking about how here they were on strike for more money and what would they do with their money if they had it. They're just living in those shacks and running around in Cadillacs. So I remember those kind of experiences with coal in my early years. Then I came... When you were a baby, what happened? That would have been, let's see, I was born in '29. This probably was about '39. It seems like I was probably 10 or 11 years old when I heard that kind of stuff. And your mother was born? My mother was from Kentucky, and we spent... But she was from central Kentucky, so it was hilly country, and it was a very small rural place, which I love dearly, but I didn't see any coal there. And we used to spend all of our summers in Kentucky, and we did a lot of canning and sending foods home for the winter. But then I got back into the Appalachian area when I was 20, because when I was 19, I joined a convent, a group of Catholic sisters called the Glenmary Home Missioners, and they were organized to work in the rural south. So I found myself in the 50s and 60s in the coal fields. We were primarily in Virginia, in the community of Appalachian, Norton, Dundanan, Stonega, all the little coal companies around there. But you had joined? I was a sister, and we did our mission work. Was the order in New York City? No, no. We had headquarters was in Cincinnati. So I moved from New York to Cincinnati to join that order, and then started working in the coal mining areas. And I guess in the early days, in the very early days, there wasn't a lot of talk about strip mining. But as time grew, there were two things that I remember about the past. One was my consciousness of all of the people moving out of the area. And in the early 60s, we actually started opening, well, we opened a center in inner city Cincinnati over the Ryan area to work with the Appalachian migrants there. And then in '64, we opened a house in Chicago, and I went and lived up there for four years. And then we opened a house in Detroit. And part of our working up there was getting phone calls from our sisters in Virginia or someplace saying, "Hey, some guys are leaving, and they're not old enough to work, so can you help them get settled?" And stuff like that. What area was Chicago and Detroit when you were working? It was uptown Chicago. And tell you the truth, I don't remember the neighborhood in Detroit. But it was mostly populated by mountain migrants. Yes, yes. And you remember what area in Detroit? I don't remember that. But it was mostly populated. Yeah. How did you, one of the questions that I, you say you got these phone calls, and how did you, what were your, even though you were, I guess we can call you half a hillbilly. Right, right. Because of your mother, how would you, how would you... And a mountaineer from my father too, brother. Right. Right. From Southern Italy. Italy. And how would you describe how you feel, or how you felt about, what kind of impressions did you get about these people? What kind of impressions did they make on you? Oh, well, one of the things I, one of the things I, and I don't remember when I came to realize this, but there was a time when I realized why the men who were fortunate enough to have a job, why they bought Cadillacs and lived in shacks. I realized that they lived on company lands and all that they could do was rent and they really didn't have an option to invest their monies in a home. And if they had money, then the next best thing was, was the car. And I remember going home and trying to tell my father that, but he didn't remember the time when he had to impress me with his... With his great knowledge. With his great knowledge. Right. But then you say you learned about that. What other, what other, what character traits, I guess, what you noticed about them? Were they happy? Were they sad? Were they hard of working? Were they lazy? I mean, you know, what kind of... Well, a couple of things and some of it happened so gradually that it would take some thinking to pin it down. But I certainly remember when I was 18 and 19 and wanting to be a missionary sister, it was to come help poor people. And there was a certainly a period in my life when I realized that they were the more giving people. And it got to be a very reciprocal kind of thing. It wasn't us helping them at all. And I think some of that have always been impressed with the generosity of the poor. Just simple things. I remember as when we were sisters and would go do home visits and, you know, would have Bible schools and all that kind of stuff. Going to visit middle, we just knock on every door. But when you go to visit the poor people, like if they had an extra cabbage or some tomatoes that always want to share something with you after you spend some time there, where this wasn't true of most other people. I guess I also came to appreciate the spirit that came out of their music and their poetry and also their love for the beauty of their mountains. That certainly gave them a lot of in touchness with the part of the transcendent piece of life that so many of us lose in our mechanical sort of productive mode. When you talk about, let's see, you don't have to forgive me of having this memory. All of the things that you, what did you just, the thing you just said before you got into that part of the music? Oh, I was saying I first came down thinking I was going to help them and then I realized that they had as much to give and then I was talking about how generous people were and then how I came to appreciate the energies that were in their music. That was, I was going to ask you, there's a lonesomeness or a sadness, a sad quality or a longing that's in mountain music and what do you attribute that to? Or do you have, have you ever thought about it or does it seem that way to you? I heard a musician describe it that way the other day that there was always, there was a lonesome quality to mountain music. I think it has something to do with being in touch with the awesomeness of nature and it's something that's a part of you that you can identify with but it's so far beyond you that you can never grasp it and it's that kind of a yearning or a lonesomeness of never being able to really fully understand it or grasp it in the human content. When you mentioned that and you were talking about coming down here and being a missionary, do you think that thing that you just laid your hand on is what it is that makes people think that mountain people are spiritually bereft? Is that, and they're misinterpreting it? Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And so, that had never occurred to me but it was, there was always some quality in mountain people that was like everybody was going to save us from ourselves and when you said that that just struck me as maybe that's what they're misperceiving this spiritual quality. It's something like the lonesomeness that everybody feels at Christmas time. This is the moment when you want all of your love to be experienced in its fullest or something and you want more than can ever be realized. And it can never be there, it can never be there. Great, so there's always that little bit of lonesomeness at that time, yeah. When you said that you, this was, you had worked in Cincinnati and you had worked in Chicago, then you came to, what year did you actually come to? Virginia and Appalachian, that's Nicola. Oh, oh that was in, let's see, we opened those, I entered the convent in 1948 and those houses had already been opened and I probably spent some time there in, in the early 50s. Was that after you, you went to Chicago or did you? No, oh no, that was before. Okay, so first you went to the connollogy. Right, right, first we were living in the mountains, like in the late 40s and the 50s and then that was the time when the mining was happening and people were trying to catch on to what was going on and then the two things that boomerang was the three million out migrants and, right. Which is what I was talking about. Yeah, so that out migration and the consciousness of this awful strip mining. So I think this, this thing of having to be displaced and also for those that were here to have to, the only choice they had to stay here was to tear up the lands that were, yeah. So I think, you know, they had to do violence to their, to their spirit to, to survive. So then we went up, we opened houses in probably Cincinnati was the early 60s and Chicago was 64 and Detroit must have been maybe about 65 or six. There were very large populations of the out-of-might and some of those areas even then. Oh, absolutely, in Uptown, Chicago, that's a neighborhood of about a 20 block area that had, they said it had 40,000 people and over 20,000 of them were mountain people. And then there were Native Americans and Puerto Ricans and Orientals and senior citizens. The Dallmaker, you know, came out of that experience in Detroit. Yes. But for the best of my knowledge, now one book has come out of Uptown, Chicago. And I would have thought that at least one of those 40,000 people would have put that experience in a book and it's, but I've not found it yet. I'd love to see it because. It's interesting. I have, I had a woman once who from Athens, Ohio, who tried to, she did Folk Opera, what she called it, and she tried to do a story of the Chicago and she came down to Clarefield to see this end of it. And it didn't come off too well, but yeah, I happened either. There is a young woman though, a storyteller in Virginia, now what's her name? Young woman who was actually born and raised in Chicago, but her parents were from Virginia and she's moved back and she's a storyteller. And if she hasn't done the Chicago story, she, she should. There's also something nice out of Cincinnati. I don't know whatever happened to it, but a number of years ago, the Appalachian Center in Cincinnati got a humanities grant and got their teenagers to do stories of going back home to their grandparents or the home place. So they were comparing the mountains and Cincinnati. Where was your, you said your mother was from Central Kentucky? Little place called New Haven. New Haven, okay. After you, you went to Cincinnati and Chicago and Detroit, when then did you move back into the region one year? All right, in 1967, 44 of the sisters left the order of sisters and wanted to stay working in Appalachia. So we've organized a nonprofit group called the Federation of Communities and Service. So I was one of those 44 that was in '67. And when we left the convent, then I found Clairefield and started working there. So I've been there since '67. Did you, when you left, you say this group of sisters, did they leave the church or did they just leave the convent? They left the convent. But were you still Catholics? And nuns? No, we weren't nuns anymore. Okay, so when you left the convent, they could no longer be a nun, is that it? That's right. We will. Late people. And everybody went and looked for their own job and found their own place, but we did want to stay in Appalachia. So was that an organized movement that you did that? Yeah. I mean, was it in response to some, were you upset with the church or? Yeah, those were times when the church was trying to change. And we were a group that definitely needed change because we had taken on all the old ways, which was so inappropriate in the mountains. And so you felt like then that the-- And as we, we were trying to adjust. And the bishop in Cincinnati, who was sort of the highest superior in terms of the church over us, kept telling us we couldn't do this and we couldn't do that and we couldn't do that. And we finally thought, forget it. You know, we didn't give our lives to the church. We gave our lives to the people. Right. And once you're, and once you're, you saw them that your, your role was in conflict with the church's requirements or-- Yeah. Okay. I was just trying to clarify that. Yes. So when you moved into-- Clairefield. Clairefield. That was what year-- '67. '67. And I guess let's call that your present. All right. Beginning in the-- All right. --as since you're full time. All right. How did that-- So the shift was that, number one, when I was in Chicago and going to school studying sociology, I took a lot of-- any course I could on migration and trends like this and studies in Appalachia. And everybody, every book was saying, with this migration of the Appalachian and all the studies that were being done by sociologists, it was sort of anybody that had any get up and go got up and went. So when I came to Clairefield and the population had dropped from 12,000 to 1200, I-- the people that were there, according to the scholars, were those that didn't have any get up and go. Well, I didn't come into Clairefield with that attitude. If anything, I came to prove them different. So number one, I was working with sort of the remains of everything that had left. And also, the perspective of the strip mining being the central issue shifted when I came here. Because that isn't what people were saying, even though this place was strip mined to death. What they were saying was that the major problem was not the strip mining. The major problem was who owned the land. So that's when I started looking at who owns the land and what does that mean and why could people not create jobs and why couldn't they live here and who's pushing who to do what. So that started really my long, slow journey into understanding the corporate absentee land companies. Has they existed? And land issues. And land issues. And land ethics. Or lack thereof. [LAUGHTER] And lack thereof, right. You know, the thing that when we talk about out migration and all these things and you're sitting there talking, if we hadn't introduced this interview as the way that we had, it's almost like we could be talking about Ireland during the potato famine, you know, like the whole country left. And I begin to wonder, you know, and if the same issues, since the English, I think a lot of these, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of the land companies that are still here, that these absentee landlords are English companies. Yes. And it's almost like we never really got our independence from England, you know, that they may have taken the flag somewhere else, but they just, but everything else was the same. And when I moved to Clarefield in '67, 80% of the land base in that valley was owned by the American Association, which was an English company, right. Now they sold out five or six years ago to the JM Huber company, which is a new Jersey company. But yes, it was like, you know, we said, we absolutely. How did you, when you got there and you noticed all these, when you said that everybody that, you know, that with any get up and go, it got up and went, the ones that stayed, if that's not the reason they stayed, why did they stay? Well, what was the reason for staying? I'm often wondered that, you know, I often wondered so many, why didn't everybody stay? I believe, right. Well, some people were just too old. All right, that, that was obvious. Some people owned a house and had a little bit there. And because nobody would buy it, they didn't feel like they could give it up. So they stayed because the little bit that they owned was there, their investment. And whether that was a good or a bad thing, you know, I used to think, in those, those days, if the government was serious, you know, the thing that they could offer to do would be to buy these homes from people and give them enough to, to get out. So somewhere there for that, some people went to the cities and couldn't speak to why they couldn't hack it, but they couldn't. Now, I know when I was up in Chicago, I was there for four years. And one of the patterns that I sense with a lot of the people was that their tolerance for what the city put them through could last about six or seven months. Then they would have to go home. And then after a few months, when they were starved out again, embarrassed because they were living off their folks or whatever and couldn't find it, they'd come back. But after another period, you know, it was just, so the, the differences in lifestyle are something that no one has, I guess, tried really to articulate so that it could be understood rationally. I also know that a lot of people that I met up in Chicago had divorces because one of the members wanted to go home and one wanted to stay. So it was generally the man who wanted to come back home and the woman who wanted to stay. And I think it had something to do with the attraction of the man to the outdoors and the mountains and the hunting and stuff like that where the women, I think, preferred the city because they didn't have to go hold the water or chop the wood. It was like, life was, Life was, well, I may have been worse for the men in the city. It was better for the women. Yes. Yes. And do you think also that the economic issues, do you think they saw it as, that there was a better chance that they might not make it in the city, but sure as hell, they weren't going to make it back home. You know, do you think that was part of their, part of their rationale? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can, I can see that in my own experience. It was never my mother that wanted to come home. It was always my dad. Dad. And, and it was never my aunts. It was always my uncles, although they all stayed except my father and he stayed, he left, for exactly the reason he just mentioned, which was he just absolutely couldn't tolerate the city. So do you. And he couldn't, he couldn't tolerate assembly line. Yeah. It barely nuts. Yeah. Well, it is. It's, it's not a stop. He put about 150 fenders on backwards, backwards one day at the Ford factory. And so that was his last. His last. He was a style-nonsense. He just couldn't, he just couldn't. But all my aunts was left with. And my cousins still live there in Cleveland, or a lary of orignary. Yeah. But yeah, it's really interesting to listen to you because a lot of it is the same. Yeah. My, my experience validates what you're saying. You know, it's very interesting to hear it. From an outside perspective and to say, well, it wasn't just me. You know, these things really happening. So when you moved, when you moved back and you started looking at these people that had stayed and working with them. Let me ask you this question. Why were you attracted to working with this group of people that were still here as opposed to those that were there? Oh, because I really got angry that there was so many people who wanted to live in a rural area and couldn't. I mean, that, you know, I thought, why can people not make that choice? And one of the things in Chicago, these Chicagoans would get so angry with these mountain people, if they just make up their mind to stay here. But no, they have to run home every weekend. And every time somebody dies, it's their uncle. Well, you know, they couldn't have that many uncles, but they were always running home for a few. But they really did. They were right. I got to thinking that the mountain people could could say something to city life because I realized that at that point, the only people who came and settled in our country came from so far away that they didn't have any choice to run home. So they couldn't say anything to these factory people. You know, they had to stay there. But darn it, mountain people could say something to them and they could say it's not worth it. I'm only eight yards away from the house. Right. Right. And it's not worth killing myself for this kind of a life. So I think if mountain people had more respect or more confidence in themselves or knew how they fit into history, they probably could have talked back. And there were some, I mean, there were the mountain people who were off to school and got into sociology and all those different kinds of courses and wrote books. And yeah. But How were they how were these people treated in the city? What was your perception of how they were treated? Were they treated good, bad and different? Well, number one, I remember one experience when these 17 year olds came to Chicago and my friends, the sisters who were living in Virginia called me and said, would you please help them out? So they came up to our place and the first two days they were there, they got stopped about three times by the cops to be frisked. So I think number one, they just, you know, any mountain kid was suspect. I remember a couple of times when I was flying into Chicago and took a cab to get home, that the cab drivers would warn you to pull up your windows because we were going into dangerous territory. Well, little did I know that I lived there and that I was walking the streets every night and never had any problem. You know, but so there was a real fear really of the mountain people. What do you suppose they did? I know certainly that as you know, one of our real problems in the mountains is violence. Did they perceive us as violent people or? They probably did. Is that quite a fear? Well, yeah, and people, you know, when you can image these people that have had a hard life and their faces are worn and torn and they're skinny and, you know, sort of rag tagged. And when you go around a city looking this way and we didn't present a good appearance, you didn't present a good appearance and and the lean, lanky, sort of typical mountain guy was, he could be identified. I remember somebody telling me that the way they could identify the mountain people in Chicago was by their secondhand clothes. So I guess these sort of faded out clothes. We stood out and cracked. Yeah. I did hear, you know, some of the factory owners because they used to come to the neighborhood sometime. And what I perceived was if they knew how to manage the mountain people, they couldn't find better workers. But if they didn't treat them like human beings, the mountain people just wouldn't tolerate it. And they'd talk back and go home. My uncles lived in the work in Rears Tool. It's one of the few non-union shops in Ohio. And probably half the workforces from West Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee. And they have a perception of them as being, well, one of my uncles, they lived on Peacewood. And he said he never worked over 40 hours while he worked there for 10 years and never got paid for less than eight. So he was doubling his production every and his experience was common. So they felt there that they they didn't get better. Better workers. More loyal workers. And obviously, as you say, they need help. And I think all of the factory owners and managers by and large in the Greeks I don't know what that has to do with it. They they were. I mean, that's what they had to do. It's interesting. They got along well with it. That's interesting. And had a good experience with it. And seemed to understand them. You know, and again, maybe it had to do with the fact that since they were closer, they could run home on the weekends and absenteeism wasn't such a from from Chicago. Yes. You had to miss Monday or you had to miss Friday, I guess, you know, it was a two-day trip. And so maybe that was a real issue. Yes. But they took off in this day to work. Mm hmm. Whereas that wasn't a problem in Northeastern Ohio or in Pennsylvania. That's right. Because they could get back before Monday morning. So that reminds me when I first came here, I remember if you were down on this 25 W around midnight, it was bumper to bumper. You could hardly move because they were all coming home that, you know, we didn't have the interstate. And it took about eight hours to get there. Right. And then also on the weekends, you really were careful the way you drove because these guys from the cities were coming home, showing off, you know, they got they got a job, they got a car, but also just the confinement of the city. They just had to be wild and free and they'd drink at night and run off the roads and knock you down. And we used to have a lot of accidents on the weekends. Yeah. So that's not so anymore. Yeah. Well, when you came back in 68, 67, and you started getting involved in land issues and all these other things. How did you, I guess, life in general, but particularly women's lives? What were the women's lives like here in 67 as compared to what you had left in the city, you know, to compare the two perhaps? Was it still as harsh as it had been? It hadn't changed much education opportunities, those kinds of things. No cars. You know, if there was one car, the man had it. They could be stuck for months without leaving their home that have to haul water. So they were isolated to a large degree? Isolated. Right. I think I think that was the hardest thing. I remember thinking if I had it, the one thing I would give every woman would be a vehicle. So they could get out and around. Yes, because that was the time when we were trying to organize people and women wanted to do, but they couldn't get anywhere. Couldn't get anywhere. So if one week, say, for instance, if you had a car, then you'd carry eight or ten people to do all these things, these organizing. When you came here and you noticed and you looked around, I'm sure it was readily apparent to you or that everybody won land company on everything. And after you noticed that and you stood up and mentioned it, how were you treating them? Were you, were you, was your views welcomed? Or did they throw bricks at your car? Well, I tell you, when people told me that was the issue and they knew the American Association and they just knew the company's owned it all. And I said to them, well, what can we do about that? They didn't know and I didn't know. But because they were an older set of people by and large, the one thing that they thought they would like to do would be to try to get some health services in the area. So I was looking around for medical people to come help them. And in my search, I found Vanderbilt students who came summer after summer with health fairs. And I remember the very first summer. Well, it wasn't, I came in September. So the next summer we had a Presbyterian church group to help with the health. But the next summer, the Vanderbilt students came and the leader of that group, after he was there the first year, that first summer, he said to me, you don't need doctors around here, you need lawyers. And so the next summer, he recruited not just medical students to come back and help us with the clinic, but he recruited some law students who started this systematic sort of research on who owned the land. And after a summer, what, and John Gavento was one of those students. Do you know that? Right, right. All right. So he basically came to do that research at the encouragement of Bill Dow, who really discovered this from the insight that he got from, you know, some of the issues that the people were talking about. So when we found out the facts in our county about what percentage of the land was owned, what percentage of the-- In Campbell County. In Campbell County. What percentage of coal was produced, and, you know, like 90% of the wealth was produced by these people, and they paid 4% of the taxes. That's after that research was done in our county and five other counties, that was really what started-- what mobilized us to form a several Cumberland Mountains, the anti-strip mine group. So that group got on to then stopping strip mining, and we were still stuck with, you know, what do we do with who owns the land? I think the next thing that was obvious to me was that when we were ready to have a clinic building up in Clarefield, and the board with the doctor went over to Middlesbrough, where the English company had a headquarters, and they asked if they could lease or purchase one half acre of their 40,000 to build a clinic, and they said absolutely no. We're not making any land available for you communists over there. So at that time, all these activities were-- What year was that? That would have been '69 or '70. Then the next effort that the community people had was to get some sort of industry in the area, and we sort of learned the hard way that the way you invite industry is you try to get an industrial site. Well, generally you have an incorporated town that has a-- Well, we didn't have an incorporated town, so like we formed a non-profit group, we tried to find some land. So we wrote to all seven companies that own major pieces of land in that area, and asked if any one of them could see it in their heart to make five or 10 acres available so that we could do something to create jobs. Two of those companies wrote back and said it was against their policy to sell land, and the others never even answered us. Well, we managed-- You know, eventually we managed to get a factory, and eventually we managed to get a clinic, and eventually we wanted to start building houses, and we formed an organization, and after we built three houses you couldn't find any more land. So it wasn't until 1977 when we figured out, and we heard from other sources, that one way to deal with the land ownership issue is to form a non-profit, a community land trust, and try to buy some lands. And when you buy the lands then, the community holds those lands, just like the land company holds it and leases it to the coal, gas, oil, and timber people, and nothing for the people. We said we're going to get land, and we're going to hold it for the people, and we're also going to make sure that environmentally the land is preserved, so that it'll be a sustainable life. And then, you know, what we've grown to understand is that we just can't have land to build houses, but we have to have enough land to provide-- to generate some income. And that moved us to thinking that it has to be the timber, because we don't have good enough lands for gardens, and to deal with the coal or the gas or the oil is not a way to-- you know, that's an extractive industry that won't renew itself. So that gets to the issue, which I was going to ask you before. These land companies, if I'm not mistaken, have owned these lands for like 100 years. That's right. And just in the last two or three years, a good bit of that land has gone up the sale. I've noticed that. And we go to these auctions, but who gets it? Just bigger companies for other purposes. I think Tennessee's got something that, if you don't exploit the mineral rights, it goes back to, you know, a big problem was having that. The separation. The separation between the mineral rights and the surface rights. Well, Tennessee's done something to where, if you haven't done something with it over a period of time, it reverts back to the surface owner. So ultimately, if the people can ever control the surface rights, at some point, they may be able to get back the mineral rights, which would then protect the surface rights. But the question that I was going to ask was, you know, we had this huge outmigration in the 50s and 60s. Why had we not had that huge outmigration before when the land was still owned? You know, it had the same, I guess what I'm trying to say is the circumstances were more or less the same other than the fact that World War II was over. Well, and that was, I was going to say that. Is that the whole? That's what the Postmistress up in Clairefield told me. The way I got the story, and she had been Postmistress all her life, she said when World War, you know, the mines were mostly deep mines and a lot of hand labor. When World War II came, all of the men went off to war. And she, I remember her saying that she even went off to war. She joined the WACS and wanted to be with them over there. So I don't know who took over the post office. But she said when they were gone to war and they needed that coal down at Oak Ridge, for you know what, they introduced strip mining. So that was the admin of strip mining was to support the Manhattan Project. Yeah. That's, I mean, it would be worth doing all the research on that, but that's, you know, and I'm guessing she's right. So then when the men came back, there were no jobs. And it just so happened that at that period, then all of these, the coal, I mean, the car businesses were booming and all the plastics were coming, like the Big Four Micraplace in Cincinnati just took thousands of people. So what we were doing was after the United States had won World War II, then we were the only industrial giant with an intact plant, then it was expanding to meet all these world markets that we had conquered. They needed this extra manpower to, what about, did the women ever work? And I, you know, I'm familiar with the men working in the factories up north. Did the women, when you were in the court, Chicago, San Diego, did they work, you know, outside the home then? My mother was a secretary, but you know, is that one of the reasons they wanted to say, did they get out and start making money themselves? And, and you see what I'm saying? Yes, I know what you're saying. And that was probably true to some degree, but not overwhelmingly. Like I don't remember seeing all the men staying home, taking care of the kids while the women off to work. So I, it was not, my memory was that they would come in, they'd find some kin folks to stay with the first couple of weeks, they'd go to the blood bank, which was right in the neighborhood and sell their blood to get immediate monies. Then they'd do the day labor thing until they could get a steady job. And then once they found a steady job, they'd wait two weeks and after that then the, the pay would come in and then they'd find their own place to live. So they were dependent on some kin now, you know, the toughies who started it in the beginning. Yes. That was my uncle Garmin who apparently put up everybody from Crossville, Tennessee at one time or another for at least a month. And I remember that, that kind of experience being the men's tale. I don't, I don't know that the women sold their blood, they probably did. And then the day labor, I think of that more in terms of the men. Yes. I see that I, my, my memory was of them taking care of kids, you know, that was, was it? Okay. That was, you know, that was, that's when my mother, she worked, but I had lots of aunts that stayed at home, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, yeah. But I guess the industrial plants really, through, and then you might find, I'll, I'll pull it out because I've got a half a dozen of them. But it's on a family up in Clairfield where there were eight or 10 kids, half of them went to the city and thought those who stayed home were stupid and half of them chose to stay in the country and they tried to defend their position, why they did. But obviously there was nothing in terms of popular sentiment going for them. But it would be interesting, this, this was done a good 15 years ago. It'd be interesting to track down a few of those families. I actually thought about doing a film on exactly that same thing. Only I haven't located the family that I was going to do it on yet. And, uh, uh, I was going to call it, and, and, and, uh, um, Scatterd C. Yeah. That's what we were going to call it. And, uh, I was going to work on it for my, I'm going to be starting back in the fall at Bowling, here in Ohio, working on a PhD in American cultural studies. So that's, uh, was what I was until I did this. And now I'm going to, they're going to let me use this as my dissertation. Oh, all right. I was going to say, are you going to get this thing done and that too? I'm using it. Yes. Wonderful. Wonderful. So if you would now, when, when you're back here in Tennessee, tell us about, uh, and you got, and you noticed that, uh, the land was the issue and you started the land trust. Except it took us 10 years to figure out what to do about the land issue. In the meantime, we were just doing little things we thought we could do like crafts and trying housing, a little industry and childcare and health services. And finally, you know, after 10 years, we thought we can do a little, we can try this thing. And cause a couple of places in the country were trying it. And, uh, yeah, so it's taught us a whole new, But your perception of, of what can be done with the mountains then in a sense is in a way you're looking at it kind of like the land companies like in terms of farming the land is as we all know, pretty much worthless. That the only thing that can really be done with the land is manage the resources that are on at the timber, the coal and whatever, but in such a way that it's a, doesn't destroy the land and be it's beneficial to the people instead of some individual. Is that kind of the direction or kind of some of the decisions you've made with the folks at Bland Trust? Yeah. And that you, you don't, uh, because I know at one time it was all like it was the evil company. And now we've kind of reached the, the point that although they didn't necessarily do it the right way that the things that they were doing, it wasn't necessarily anything else could have been done. You know, that's what I'm trying to get out of there. I guess is there, is there no creative way to look at the mountains other than, other than what can, what can be done with them other than cutting the trees and mining the coal and taking the steel in it? I'm from Frostville, but we do crab orchard stone. And that's what we've done there is to pick up every, every field stone and crab orchard stone that they can lay their hands on it or sell it for $40 at then. Yeah. So I just, you know, I'm just thinking kind of loud and I was asking you, uh, when you all, that process of decision making that you went through, you kind of arrived with the same conclusion in a way as a group, I guess that, that's, uh, the best thing to do is just manage the resources. Right. Get that thing back in. Right. And, uh, I think our people are just attracted to the timber and they've begun to get a little system of who can do what and we're trying and visioning. Um, I don't know if this is shared by all of them. I've certainly shared my thoughts with them. Uh, but it seems to me that when we started strip mining, I mean, the people tell me that they knew there was something wrong about it. I mean, it was just, it was just the ugliness as compared to the beauty. You just can't do this to God's earth and to that kind of thing. But, uh, no one could have predicted the environmental damage that it did. Nobody knew, you know, at one, at the beginning point. And I think it was because they didn't perceive that anybody could actually, as we've seen now, could actually litter the terra mountain down. That's right. It had never been done before. Right. It had never been done before. And, um, and we didn't know what, what the price was any more than all this pollution and, you know, the nuclear waste and this stuff. Like, uh, we didn't know it create these monster problems. When you say us, we didn't know that. Nobody. Do you think the people in power that were making those decisions, do you think they knew that? Not when they started. How could they have? You don't think they did? Like the, the coal company people and the TDA people in and, Well, some, there might have been some few scientists or geologists who would have known, but the ordinary, uh, even bureaucrat up there wouldn't have known that it could ruin the earth because we don't know anything about the earth. Most people that are sitting up in those positions. But, uh, number one, we do know better now. Number two, I think we're also aware of the fact of, at least what I read in some of the better science magazines is that in the next 50 years, coal, gas and oil will probably be gone. So we're talking about, and this is kind of interesting to me that we're living in this hundred year period between 1950 and 250 where coal, gas and oil became the main source of energy and basic materials. And even when people say, well, when that's gone, we'll find another way to survive, we'll get it from the sun or some place that, you know, that might be true, but whether that same kind of heat can push the same kind of machines, who knows, or whether we'll have to create all different kinds of machinery. And then the other thing is that that will, you know, getting sun or alternatives is going to mean that Appalachia doesn't play into the energy field anymore. So, um, I think if, if people who want to live in the mountains and feel some responsibility to the mountains don't learn how to get a communal sort of control over their lands and learn how to cut in good taste and replant, you know, in 50 years it's going to be over. It's going to be over. And I think it's, you know, when I, one of my predictions is that as we move out of the fossil fuel era, well, before it finally dies out fuel is going to be so expensive, which will make the cost of food so expensive that people will go back to trying to produce food. But by the time we have to figure out a new system for agricultural production, we're going to have as many starving Americans as we've seen starving Africans. And I don't think it's going to be in my lifetime, but it's going to, it's, it'll probably happen when this cycle of, tremendous increase too, that we're losing all of us is gone. Right. Right. And see, my feeling is that Appalachian people have lived with that reality. They have certain insights about what the fossil fuels have done and been to them and what they've given to the world. And if we, if we could just be taught our history in our schools and then get some sense of what's going to happen in when it's over. And also to get some sense of this hundred year period in the, in the perspective of, of the whole human race and just human, human right. The human evolution and how we're living it. I guess if you had to describe in one word, maybe the experience that you saw, we talked about your past experiences and then what kind of college you're present in like 1968 and '67 until now. If you, if you had to put all that into one word or a word or two, how would you describe that whole experience in terms of your, maybe your past and your present? And it sounds, it sounds like you're, you're early, the thing you were talking about earlier when you were in the convent. That you could, you could, I don't want to presume just before you, but it sounds like that was a learning period and learning about the people and the problems and then you came here. And then one, how would you describe that? Well, when I came here, it was sort of like, I'm not in the convent now. They're not going to tell me when to move. I'm in no hurry. I want to stay here until I figure out why people can't live here. And it's sort of been 27 years now pursuing why people can't live in rural areas. And what did you figure that? Well, I figured out it has a lot to do with who owns the land and how land is treated. And I think the, this is not my own, it's, it's a saying of Thomas Berry that is so meaningful to me. It's a sentence that says, let's see. Oh, I, but the concept is that we have to move toward living as if the natural community and the human community can live together as one sacred community. So I think the word community means a lot to me. And it means more than just people living together. And rural community is the place where, you know, nature and humans learn how to live together. Right. Right. And it's there where, you know, the people who have that were left behind, that stayed behind, that are still there and haven't forgotten certain things about their relationship to the trees and the forest and the rains and the water have really something to move toward a real contribution to. You know, this whole idea of capitalism and industrialization and urbanism and mass production and producing cars and refrigerators and all, it all rests on the idea of cheap and plentiful raw material. That's the thing that you've got to have in order for that system to work. Yeah, I know. Do you see in this now getting to the future? Absolutely, I do. Do you see, I'm glad I'm 64. We're going to pretend that you, that there's still a, you know, that there's 30 years out there for you. And see, I just gave you nearly something. Well, if we're going to do that, let's just give you 40. I have a great aunt that's in Kentucky, that's 102. But looking 30 or 40 years down the road, do you see that, that society maintaining that, I think you're already seeing changes in that you're saying the land companies that have the land now are having to give it up because it's not profitable to maintain 100,000 acres of land that's not doing anything other than just sitting there waiting for you to use it. And these bigger companies are coming in and buying it up. Now, are we going to be faced with the idea in the future that this big pyramid with this broad base of natural, cheap, natural raw materials is no longer the way we're going to operate? Or are we creating a system where some company is going to buy up this land company, this and not only is it not, is it going to be the same thing? The pyramid base is going to be bigger and controlled by fewer. Right. See what I'm saying. That is what's happening right now. And the one natural resource that has the chance to offer some sustainability to our life is about to go through the whole clear cutting process. And if we can't stop that, if we haven't learned enough from our past experience to know how to get a handle on this, then... Or to at least derive some profit off of it while it's happening. Well, it's not good enough. It's not going to take care of your children. I'm assuming though that they managed it properly. Yeah, well, they won't. They won't. Yeah, probably when you talk about clearing, you know, if that don't come down, that's awful. You don't see what they've done out well. Especially in the mountains where, you know, we'll have the floods and the rain and the erosion. The thing when I was in Mississippi, I was the thing that struck me about our whole project in the Delta. Some guys stood up and talked about how and what we ran into there was they had had oil farmers who had farmed a thousand acres or 1,200 acres. You know, these are pretty good size farms for 50 years and they were in the third generation. And they had like shared property working for all these generations. And now the big insurance companies were coming in and buying up these farms that they could get in 100,000 acre parcels. And the white landowners were now farming for their own land as a tenant farmer more or less and at a bigger level. And the thing that struck me was it was interesting. They had become the same thing that they had done to the black farmer. They were a sharecropper. Only they just got to drive a pickup truck instead of a one-off model tee, you know, a walk. And so there were some fellows that stood up and said, "What's happening here to us?" It's the same thing that happened in the mountains and I thought, "Wow, I never thought of that." But I thought that was a tremendous insight that this guy had made. So in the future, do you see the same thing happening to us that's happening to those farms and I guess is that what we're looking at? Is they're just buying up and putting these things together? I guess in terms of my future, the next 10 or 12 years, I think that the grassroots people that have some insights about what life could be for them and their children has to be partnered with some of the smart professional people who also know there's not much future for them either. And we have to start having new kinds of alliances to get hold of these things so that production can happen, but it can happen right, that local people can have some sense and some rights to governance over their own communities and that we have to have a whole new land ethic. And there are little pieces of this happening. Now, I guess the question is whether it's going to happen fast enough. I'm guessing it won't and I'm guessing 50 years from now, 40 years from now, that life will be a disaster for most of the people in this country. I mean, people in Russia will be looking at us on television. How do you see it in the mountains being worse than it is? Well, yes, I mean, if I think of these companies buy it and they're going to own it for the next 50 years and they're going to clear cut for the next 50 years, and welfare is going to get stingier and more controlling over us. In fact, if welfare gets cut out, we're going to have riots and we're going to have killings like in South and Central America. People aren't going to let their children starve, but it seems to me that maybe we have enough people with some conscience and some knowledge that we've gained over the past 50 years that we could put to preventing this kind of an onslaught. I guess if you had to. The other thing that I see is with the lands, they're being bought up for rich people, vacations. They're going to be a perfect target when people get angry enough. I mean, it could be bloodshed, it could be poverty, it could be just the ruined chaos. Yes, I think things could get real. If they keep going the way they have been, it could get to an end. There's just so much of this violence. And look at some of the statistics now of the percent. They say the rich keep getting richer and the poorer. Well, when you look at real facts, it's just an incredible thing that's happened in the last 10 years. And that'll either explode or somebody's got to, some people have to start wooing it another way before it explodes. Yes, we're close to a brink. Certainly, I think we see the same, I know the people in LA when I talk to artists out there, Tina Allen, they don't call what happened to riots, they call it the rebellion. So they see it as like the revolution. Yes. And I don't think it would take a lot for that idea to spread to a lot of places where people are desperately cool. I guess if you had to sum up everything that you've been here now for, I guess, for almost 40 years, what holds you, your closing statement of all what you say for a later time in your life? Yeah. I guess I would say that it seems to me that if everybody, including children, would gain some greater consciousness of the environment. And if women would not be afraid to get out and start taking some leadership in developments, then maybe things could happen in a different way. And I think we have to, all of us, children and women and men, figure out how to deal with and how to heal the really damage that's been done to the man in this whole experience. I think the men who have had to go on the assembly lines, the men who have had to get behind those strip-mined jobs, I've heard men up in my community say that they knew every day they went out to the strip mines that they were losing a future for their children, but they didn't know what choice they had if they wanted to feed their kids that day. So I think the men need a lot of healing. And I don't know how that can happen. I think part of it could be giving them the chance to do things right and to bring the earth back to life again, and to have as many jobs, rehealing as you have destroying. But I think, so I think there's a place for environmental consciousness and there's a definite role for women and a definite role for men. And I guess I'd like to think that if women had a new kind of leadership in development, kind of things, that maybe things wouldn't have to end in bloody wars. Maybe there are other ways to do things. And so they need to evaluate their strengths. And I guess, so I appreciate people looking at women in a special way, but I'm caught up right now in even how you look at the men in a special way. I noticed that from the interview that I kept trying to more or less steer you into women questions. Yeah. And but your view is more of a view adopted, more of a community, sense of community. And you know, that's the, it's interesting, the African American community, you know, they're the same that I keep here talking about. I don't know where it came from, but you know, the tremendous difficulty they're having with young black males in violence and trying to find a role for them in the place of society. And they keep saying in Africa, it takes an entire community to educate a child. That's the same that I keep hearing and talking about. Yeah, that's nice. And I think that's nice. I like it. I think education or lack thereof has played in the mountains. My perception has always been that for blacks and for whites, we're generally at the level that they are now where they could be exploited as either a cannon fodder or feed in the factories in the North. It didn't really matter which one, but they were going to be exploited in one place together. What do you see in the validation for that theory and what you've seen in the last 40 years? Yeah, I think I remember once when I was with rural American women getting hold of a study on vocational schools in different parts of the country and have vocational schools teach differently. And it was interesting that in the Northeast, they were teaching entrepreneurial skills, where in the South they were still teaching people how to go get jobs for the companies. This was at the same time? Yes, at the same time. Because my worldview that evolved, I don't know how accurate it was, but my worldview that evolved was that. And it was hard to dispute it because I could see it happening was that they were building the missiles and the M16s in Connecticut. That was their job. And they were building the bombers and machine guns in California. That was their job. And it was our job as hillbillies to go use and get killed. And it was like there were certain... And our lands, and interesting, our bodies get killed and our land gets raped. And so it's almost... It was like... And the thing that I've noticed about Chicano micro workers, it's almost like there are certain people that have been picked out like, your group will pick lettuce for the rest of your life. You hillbillies will be privates in the army till you croak. You blacks will be servants and common laborers. And yet we think we don't have a caste system like in India or a class system. Right. It's like nobody actually sat down and said that, oh, here's the plan where this is all going to put... That's the way it was working out in reality. And by something, we were coming back from Florida. We stopped at the Holiday Inn. He was like nine years old. We stopped at the Holiday Inn in Valdosta and Charlie was looking around. I was, "What's the matter, Charlie?" He says, "I thought slavery was over with." And I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "What are you talking about?" And Anne was getting out of the car. And he says, "Well, all of us that are staying here, we're all white and we're going up to the rooms." And he says, "And everybody that works here, they're all black." And I told Anne, I said, "You explain that because I have no explanation for it." And I'm interested, so out of the mouth is vague. It's so obvious what's happening. You don't have to be a rocket scientist. Now, why it's happening is that... Is there a plan somewhere that we weren't told about? But it's interesting because the thing that you just brought up about the locational skills that were being taught, that's the first hint of almost like an organized experience that I've heard of. And like, they're being taught in entrepreneurial skills and working out how to get a job at the back group for $2 now. But I don't know... Well, they also... I've heard a number of times over my life about how certain books don't get into college curriculums. So I'm sure there's some things that some people try to teach that those who control the educational system don't want us to be taught. Well, your view of education in the mountains, what you see here in Campbell County, what role do you see that education plays? Is it a liberating force? Is it part of the problem? Or is it part of the solution? Is it liberating? Or is it... Well, of course, some of it helps some of the kids to some degree. I don't think it has the power that education should have. And part of that, I think, is that it never teaches the basic things in the context of their life. If, in fact, you graduate and do well in school, you're more suited to go to a city because you've been taught to make it in a city. You haven't been taught to make it in a rural area. We know nothing about water. We know nothing about trees. We know nothing about the geology of the area. We know nothing about how to plant, how to recycle, how to live with and make with. So, to a large degree, education, you're saying, has been removed from any cultural context. It makes any sense. That's right. And that's why we have for them... Right. So, it's a real drag. It should be exactly the opposite. Yeah. Where education should be geared to the particular, say, for instance, if you were... Every classroom, every high school in southeastern Kentucky should have some sort of an objectively taught strip-mine course. Absolutely. Yeah, that's what you're talking about. Yes. And, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I had a woman living with me for four years, and that was before Man and Woman's Exchange went on. And she worked for the La Follette newspaper and then for part-time. And then her other part-time, she volunteered her time at three of the high schools working with the seniors on a senior play. She went right to the schools and worked with them. And then she started this radio show here with the Jellico thing. And that went fine for about six months. And then one Saturday, they decided they were going to discuss strip-mining. So, she just had the same questions like she had with anything else, you know. That was the end. That was the end of the Kids Radio Show. It was blown off the air. And I thought, "What?" Yes, just ended that day. So, do you think then that education, any time it is in the mountains, would it be fair to say from your observation in that video that you just relate that any time education threatens the organized existing power structure, it is squelched? I would. Rather than saying, we're going to teach you how to manage and manipulate power and... Right. Or to argue or to look at different options. Even the idea of discussing it is a port to those people that control. And then, of course, when they go outside of their community and hear these things, they don't know how to think about it or defend themselves or because they've never heard anything. They've always been told what to do. Told what, yeah. And had a... Yeah. And rather than... And so when they get into an urban environment where they have to make decisions, they're not good decision makers because, A, they're unfamiliar with the culture and, B, they've never been taught to make decisions. So, like, you don't have to make decisions, I'll sigh for you. Yeah. Yeah. However, the one thing that happens is just like sometimes when outsiders come into an area like this, they see things in a new way that some people appreciate. And the same with when rural people go to a city and get into a situation. Sometimes they see things in a new way. You know, I think that's a fascinating thing about the mountain people and their migration. So many of them who live sort of this closed life in the mountains then went to the cities. And when they came back, they had different ideas about what could be done. And it was really interesting for me to see how many of those people had to go, you know, with very disappointed because they couldn't make the thing work here. You know, what could work there couldn't work here. And... Why couldn't it? Well, it would be interesting. That would be a fun thing sometimes to pursue some of the men up in the holler and go through that experience. If they have figured out after sort of 15 years now of living back home, not being able to... If they've figured out why it could work there, but it couldn't work here. Now, let's make sure we're talking about the same it. What it is that you're talking about? Well, the it is starting a little business of some kind. Okay. And then why capitalism is an available economic system in the mountains? Right. They never engage me that much in their pursuits. But as I watch, I think I wonder if they've figured that out yet. You know, why their dreams and their new insights haven't worked. But then, you know, it would be interesting to see what things have worked or how it's made a difference in the mountains from people coming and going. Well, you've got to go. And I think I've certainly got a page of an interview here. Okay. I want to get the exact name of the organization that you're working on. Well, the... Let's see. I'm employed. I get my paycheck through the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville in a program called Appalachian Community Development. And my 27 years up in Clarefield, I've worked with most of the nonprofit groups at one time or another as they were getting started. And working most comprehensively now, I guess, with the Woodland Community Land Trust and Development Corporation. They're partner organizing community land trust and development corporation. Well, that's a separate corporation and the Woodland Development... Woodland Community Development Corporation. What? Community... There's one economic issues and one's land issue. Right. Woodland... Community Development Corporation. And you're going to make it difficult for me to put one thing under your... Well, right. Because that's what we're doing. Right. Picture... Yeah. Yeah. Well, the most consistent thing in some ways is... And the thing that's allowed me all these insights through the... The thing that's allowed me to stay in a community 27 years and learn things that I never would have learned if I had flipped from one place to another is the stipend that I get from the church through this Appalachian Community Development. So you're actually... Your daily bread is paid for by the Catholic Church. So when you left the... When you left the order... The order. You... You did... Three of us got employed by the church. And I was one of them. And I'm the only one left that's employed by the church. And have you tried to do any... Let's see. What would I do? Do Catholics proselytize? I mean, have you tried to recruit Catholics? No. Has that been part of your mission or... No. That's not... Which is kind of interesting, but hasn't been. It's like almost... But what's in it for the church? Well, I think we're all... I think everybody in this country is certainly asking the question, at what point does our country need conversion and where and how. So I think we're all asking the same question. And maybe, again, if you can... If somehow you can maintain some relationship between people of polar positions and can start finding some common ground that you can... No bridges. Yeah. Do you see your... In a sense, I'm kind of getting the same idea from you that this... In South America, this... What do they call it? Revolutionary theology? Is that kind of... It's called liberation theology. Is that kind of... Are you a believer in that same kind of... Because from what I'm getting from you, is you kind of combined your church view and your economic and community development view. It's all kind of the same. And it sounds like... I don't want to put words in the middle. It's what I was kind of hearing that you saw it as the same. I have a sense that in this country, it has to be... It's a little different than the liberation theology. I've been pursuing a sense of a mountain theology or a mountain spirituality. Or I can't make up my mind whether I'll find it mostly because of the mountain culture, or if it has something to do with a sense of community, and whether it's a community theology. Or the mountains themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Getting back to that thing we talked about at the very first, in the interview about this idea... I think maybe it's the mountains. And I'm guessing that if one were to study mountain people throughout the world, you'd find something similar. I've always said that no matter where you went, if you could find mountain people, that they were all about the same. I think they have the same relationship. So it seems to me if there's a mountain spirituality, then a theology would come out of that. But for it to come out, for it to start emerging, it has to... I think it's going to be based on some sort of a sense of a land ethic. And I don't know that liberation theology started out that way. It was more sense of... It may not have started out that way, but certainly in El Salvador, it was central to what they were trying to do, which was provide a certain amount of land for the people that lived there to support themselves, which is the same kind of idea that you're talking about. Interesting. See, I don't stay in touch with it enough to know. Yeah, well, I mean, that's just what I... Yes, you get a big difference. But to me, so maybe... I guess what I'm getting at is maybe we can have all these different kinds of names for it. We can call it mountain theology, or we can call it liberation theology, or we can call it save our country from the mountains, or we can... It's maybe the same thing under a different name. It's all fish. It's just a summer perch and summer. So I don't know. You raised a lot of interesting things for me to know. Which is what I've got always in it. See, in any way, I bet. I bet. Yeah. Okay. All right. The end. And if-- [AUDIO OUT]