So think you guys for coming out tonight my name is ginger and a part of the team here. If you will do me a favor and check your cell phones and make sure they are turned to vibrate. We have had it author who has had his phone go off. We do about 300 events around town each year. If you are not on our mailing list and want to know what else is coming up, you should sign up for mailing list at the front. We will not spam you we will send three to four emails. Month. Tonight we welcome for contributors to the anthology reckoning, going to see if i get this right, tony harkins, meredith mccarroll, bob hudson, and iv bashir. This is a diverse response to hillbilly allergy. Shares a little bit about eat these for contributors and then ill turn the floor over to them. Tony harkins is the author of hillbilly a cultural history of an american icon. Meredith mccarroll is a directive writing and rhetoric at Bowdoin College he is an author. Bob hudson teaches at the university of tennessee and knoxville and is an author. And iv bashirs transition kumar data for Community Economic development in kentucky. Welcome tonight, thank you guys for coming. Im going to turn the floor over to you. So thank you for helping organize this, and thanks for having us. And thanks all for being here. Can you hear all right . Okay. I also want to thank West Virginia University Press who is the publisher for this book. Who sought this kind of weird thing that we wanted to do and kind of helped us to this thing we might do. Derek and abby have been especially amazing at helping get this book out there. Tony and eiko edited this collection, we will talk about that process. We are really excited to have two contributors hear from the collection. So thanks to both iv and bob for making the drive to nashville. Theres a little bit coin on in nashville right now. [laughter] so the structure tonight is going to be a lot like the structure of the book. We will hear from tony about the concept of the book, basically why we wrote this book. Then we will hear from bob, his pieces in the interrogating section of the book. He will read a bit about hillbilly elite is him which is grounded in his work as a historian. I will read herpes, appalachia is very much live which is drawn from the responding section of the book. And ivs piece is a powerful personal response to hillbilly allergy. And the final section of the book is called beyond hillbilly and it is a good collection of different voices that are not speaking directly to jd vance. I will read a little bit about my peace and then academic powder in and that section. And then from there, just like the book we hope that the conversation will open up and you will join us in thinking about it. Tony wanted talk a little bit about it . So i thought taylor swift was good to be here. [laughter] anyway on to thank you all for coming. The book said West Virginia publish the book but in many ways they also sort of came into the idea from the press because i had led a panel at the appellation study conference a couple of years ago. On hillbilly elegy and the reactions to it. And you wont know about it as a kind of phenomenal book sales. It would there is a lot of concerns about the books i lead this panel and out of that is this book and its not just a response directly to hillbilly elegy its also a response beyond that to think about what it is to be appalachian, how we move beyond this experience of the limited vision of what the experience is, to discuss more. And i just thought i would read the questions that will be thinking the answers mike will be seeking answers for. What about vance and his book counts for the explosion of appalachian and its people, its a historical moment of political turmoil. I think all of you can speak to this as well. But certainly that book, hillbilly elegy would not be without the trump phenomenon and the trump election. Then there pieces and their which you think about the construction of the idea trump alaska that all of the lashes a single float and trim voting block its important diversity. Why have the ideas in hillbilly elegy called such a firestorm in the region . What come and learn about the actual appalachian, and will how it is perceived from its reactions . As a student of the image, and the image of the hillbilly, i think a lot about what purpose are these representations serving in politics . And why is it that when i wrote this book, with my original book of thought this ct continue to because it has just been every other image of that timeframe and i started to looking early 1900s this meant negative stereotypical has been discontinued in the culture because we move beyond. Yet hillbilly keeps coming and coming and coming. So what purpose is it serving the culture . What is it mean in the 21st century to be appalachian. And perhaps most significantly one of our contributors asks in his poem social capital, what other appalachian voices have been drowned out in the flood of attention for this book have garnered . We are well three of us are academics and iv as a lapsed academic. [laughter] Community Development something that matters. [laughter] we have a lot of contributors in the book or not academics who are poets who are photography we have personal narratives and we have scholarship we thought it was really important to have multiple perspectives and voices that are speaking not just from the perspective of a scholarship but also lived experience. These things are constantly lapsing back and forth between peoples experience in the kind of work they do. So the book is designed to address all of those different issues, from a number of different visions and to ultimately make the case that no single book, no single voice can speak for a place as broad and diverse as appalachian. Thank you. I can do that goahead ivy. Im good to go wherever. So maybe should come up with how you can help with the topic. I am from appalachia, eastern kentucky. My family has lived at the head of the creek for five generations. We have lived in central appalachian for ten generations. We are pretty deeply rooted in this place. I think all my life i have been told to be proud of where we come from and be proud of who we are. To be proud of eating soup beans and cornbread and sauerkraut. To be proud of playing in the creeks in the summertime barefoot and making bad pies with my cousins and all of that. So, you know, when i got older and out into the world and sought the narratives that were being told about our place and the people who live there. I was rightfully angry. Because most of the stories that are told about the region are false. Or at the very least lacking in some way. My responses about that its pushing back on who gets to tell the stories of this place. Because it matters. It matters who tells the story, it matters what the stories are. Because those stories help to construct with this place is. In my mind it was like this guy got here telling the story that is not accurate. But is lacking in some very distinct ways, how do we combat that in the way we combat that is until her own stories. And thats what i tried to do in my essay. And i would like to read just a little bit of it. Beginning middle and end is how its structured im good to read you some pieces of it. Beginning with she deserves to be in all the spaces. Submitted try to bring her and when i can. So i will start. I will start with her. And a little bit of her story. Della trump berkshire had had enough. She backed her cadillac long ways across the one lane road in front of her house, lift the virginia slim in her mouth, pulled her 38 pistol from her purse and waited. Stonefaced and determined for the next cold truck to come along. The truck had been running day and night, up and down the head of the creek in front of her house every day for weeks. They were coaching every bit of furniture in and outside of her home with a thick layer of group coldest. Her kitchen counter, the rocking chair she sat in wall watching the price is right in the morning and well fortune in the evening. The porch swings, the hanging firms that encircled her ports, nothing could escape the intrusive insidious dust kicked up from the road by the trucks as they barreled the backandforth to the strip mine on the overlooking mountain. The dust swirled and thick gray clouds around the house, seeping in under the front door and closed windows. It buried everything. No matter her efforts to keep the tides at baked cold dust synonymys were inescapable theres only so many things a time can have clorox, pledge, and when next can clean up after someones mass before the time comes to ask. She was not afraid of jail, go get me three hot meals a day in the place to sleep she proclaimed to my dad when he tried to persuade her to remove her onewoman barricade. She is not really making a political stand against sin oppressive industry. She was more interested in defending her home from unwanted, unclean intrusion. She did it make the trip stock forever, but they did turn around and go home, that infamous day when she couldnt take it any longer. A small victory for a woman who fought for nearly everything she had. Fierce is a good word for her. Fiercely loyal to her children and grandchildren. She wants threaten the coach at the local high school so that he would give her son a lettermans jacket. Fierce advocate for doing onto others as you would have them do unto you. Legend has it she kept most of the hungry children and christopher, kentucky fed their entire childhood. Pearson mountain woman who had big dreams of city life, playing piano and singing in chicago or new york city. But who instead married a man, her mother picked for her, before she graduated high school. She stayed with him until the end of her life because of a fierce sense of duty. To me though, she was brandy. I fierce storyteller who had the most enormous zest for love and life. With a heart to match. Her laugh seemed to always echo off the walls and reverberate off the hills that held the hauler. Music was her one true love, second only to the fierce expansive love she had for her family. Made up songs about everyday life rolled over her lips as easily as the fall rolls into the valleys. Shoot often catch a word someone spoke to her and trail off into a song contained with those words. The sun sure is bright today seven would say, she would answer in the melody in the pines, and the pines were the sun never shines she always wore pink lipstick and white powder, and clipon earrings. She had arthritis in her toes from a spent in high heels with matching dresses. She was a beautiful woman. Once she took her to firstborn to have their portraits made in hazard and the photographer was so struck by her beauty he insisted on taking her portrait two. She was wearing pearls in that photo, she was always put together like that. She maintained a standing hair appointment every friday at the beauty shop. She always had short hair, which she preferred, even for her only daughter, my mom who preferred the opposite of almost everything her parents wanted. Granny got her drivers license and earned her ged when she was in her 40s. She kept a newspaper clipping in a drawer that was a picture of her and her fellow ged recipients that year. She lived a life of confinement in some ways, always meeting others expectations and sidelining her own dreams of the process. Her middle ages about reclaiming her independence, creating a life outside of her husband and children. She was, and remains, one of the fiercest, strongest women ive ever known. Iger upper neighbor, would live just up the hill from her and i knew her door was always open to me. I could run down the hill and into her house without warning any day and she would welcome me in, offering me food and conversation. I was often in her kitchen and she put up peaches and ziploc bags for winter, watered her beloved ferns and caged her porch. She. Played piano every day at the baptist church, the Church Founded by my great grandfather less than a mile from my home. When she told me i had piano fingers i felt so special. Like she had chosen me to it carry on her music. Sometimes mom and i would visit in the evenings and watched wheel of fortune with her. In the summer her porch of the full of family who lived within a mile radius. Great aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbors, life updates and family stories to be swapped late into the hours of the evening. Granite was a gregarious and outspoken. Once telling a man to get a life and get a job. And another time telling a longtime preacher he was wrong about god not giving people talent they didnt have to learn. Everyone knew where they stood with her, and where she stood on certain issues. Mostly everyone knew you didnt cross her or just respect her. They revered her and praised her and followed her lead. She was one fierce mountain woman, and it showed. But i would never ever in my wildest dreams or imaginings, disrespect her in any format. Because of her fierceness by calling her a lunatic as jd vancil often referred to his memo and his memoir hillbilly elegy. The way he describes this woman, who claims to revere in credits is the reason he made it out of his low income life in suburban ohio, and into Yale Law School is shameful. I displays a willingness to sell out his family members by tapping into the long history of distorted, false, and intentionally made stereotypical images of some troll appalachia that have been imposed on my region by outside media makers for nearly 300 years. Ever since the first white land prospectors were sent into the region by George Washington himself. Fences willingness to tap into that long history of misleading images of the place and people who live there, proves his endgame. Monetary gain and National Notoriety to bolster a potential political run for office. Supported of course by his carefully created and curated self image. And his socalled expert on the White Working Class of appalachia. A place for which he has never lived. His only connection to the realities were visits with grandparents who traveled home for short periods for a few summers when vance was a child. Vance also actively diminishes, glosses over, and ignores the reality of the Critical Role that appalachia women play. And have played in the economy and in shaping the regions culture and understanding of itself. Appalachian facts, in the very matriarch of culture. We revere our grandmothers and mothers. We follow their lead as they enter the workforce because their husbands have been laid off. For generations, they have grown and harvested our food and fed our bellies three times a day. They have stood on picket lines when men were banned from doing so. They have chained themselves to bulldozers and refused to leave their homes. They prop up our economy in a way that is largely ignored and made invisible and unimportant and false narratives like vances. In reality, the work and contributions of these women, people of color, and queer folks across the region are vital to this past, present, future survival. In short, hillbilly elegy. Denson appalachian which my experiences and those of my family, and those of many of the people i know and love in the region, do not exist. It erases my story, a young clear appalachian with roots ten generations deep in eastern kentucky. His ancestors settled ahead of the creek five generations ago. I hold within me the fierce loyalty enter termination of my granny. The unconditional compassion of my granny hazel, the individual of my parents and the mountain heart and soul. The pride and dignity of all my ancestors combine. And the truth is, we are an incredibly Diverse People in ethnicity, race, class, beliefs, and thoughts. Just like any other place in america. We are the descendents of native people, slaves, subsistent farmers, homeowners, homemakers, schoolteachers, sharecroppers, business owners, eastern europeans, africans. A rapidly increasing number of us have come from mexico or south america. We are gay, straight, and everything in between. We are democrats and republicans. And more than anything, most of us dont vote at all because of apathy and disenfranchised meant. Some of us are coal miners, but more of its work in healthcare. Some of us live in abject poverty, few of us leaving extreme wealth. In most of live in the middle trying desperately monthtomonth to make it all work. In these ways, we are very similar to any other world place in america right now. Just trying to figure at our place in a 21st century world that has for the most part left us to fend for ourselves. Whether jd vancil or anybody else wants to admit it, those of us who are from or currently live in the region are all appalachians and we all have a story to tell about the place we love. The place where our bones are from. The place vance could only dream of ever truly knowing. My granny della had had enough that day although she did not end up in jail and never faced any punitive action for taking your stand she took matters into her own hands because as a descendent of generations of people who had to do for themselves just to survive, she inherently knew that was aware the appalachian people. Perhaps rather than the false narratives about her dna being encoded with laziness and poverty, the true makeup of our genes is intense selfreliance. We always had everything taken from us. And we have always had other people telling us, and everyone else, who we are. So we have had to make do with what we already had for decades. We have become experts at cleaning up other peoples messes. We have cleaned up the messes and environmental disasters left by fraction companies and the artificial message corporations try to make between and among races. And wework to clean up the mess big media has made us into. And long after we clean up what jd vances done, we will go on living in this place, making stories here and telling them to anyone who will listen. Maybe someday our complex stories will overpower the simple or false narratives about our place. Until then, we will be waiting to clean up any new messes will simultaneously building a Brighter Future despite the narrative telling us we cant do it and that we arent worth it. We simply know better. And more than anything, we have had enough of those lies. Thank you. [applause] [applause] well, i first heard about this book in the summer of 2016 im sure thats the case with a lot of people here. Not because i have a spot at the bookstore, well, im from southern appalachia and i teach history at a university that sometimes acknowledges it isnt appalachian sometimes it doesnt. And i teach that history. When the book started circulating the summer of 2016 that had the word hillbilly in it, a bunch of people had asked me if i had read this book. For the first half of this some more nothing except every one asking about of these see if you things on the internet, finally sometime in august someone send me a copy and asked me to it review it. In a moment im going to read a portion of that the strangest thing is what happened next. My mom asked me if she could borrow the copy i said of course in prevention with the review few months passed and i found out tony wanted to do a panel, he wanted a cop and asked for back for my mom. She said id donate it to a library us and why did you do that . She said you didnt like it. [laughter] i told her in academia sometimes we have to keep the books we dont like. So my very heavily marked up copy is in the Public Library and blacktop mountain and virginia very close to the Presbyterian Church were my mom preaches. So i will dedicate this reading to her and her congregation. I hope someone, whether they enjoyed the book i hope someone is actually reading that copy because i will never see it again. [laughter] also before what to start reading a went to mention my reaction i think was somewhat different when i did get around to reading it in august of 2016 i think it was obvious even though im from appalachia, reading it i didnt really seat much of appalachia in it. Instead of region, my first couple thoughts were more about economics so this is a little bit of what my reaction was i also want to mention thanks who allow this to be reproduced and appalachian reckoning was very nice of them. So anyway, hillbilly elegy is basically a work of what i would call self congratulations. [laughter] a literary victory lap in a vindication of the minimalist safety. Wasnt surprised someone like david brooks manure times with such a fan. Condescension over grew the love and what he called the crazy hillbillies phrase that comes up quite often in the book. His book ultimately illustrates the oxymoron, the capitalism and its defenders require. That is, any hardworking individual could rise to the top, but it any given time, far more individuals must remain on the bottom. This is a narrative for which many if not most of the american reading public has shown affection. The bipartisan popularity in 2016 that time when bipartisanship is in short supply the gist of the american reading public still wants to hear about and appalachia and by extension aye working class that is uniform tractable and easy to understand. The public advertise the complexity today is perhaps lower than usual weather social. The fact is Silicon Valley millionaire is the most popular source for understanding 21st century rural poverty is nothing more than a product of the marketplace. Up against the politics of extremist, we are now seeing control by the government, i mustve updated it at some point. [laughter] when i wrote the original i wasnt in control yet. But the politics of extremism we now see controls of the federal government softspoken simplicities like vances are going to seem all the more attractive to the otherwise well meaning americans. Especially folks who by this book. Unfortunately, the politics of hatred is the only apparent alternative, Many Americans will turn instead to the politics of soft intention. Hillbilly elegy is misnamed. Elegies are points dedicated to the dead. The american hillbilly, assuming we can use that word to the White Working Class, isnt dead. She is just pours shes not going to fade away like they expected the native americans would, like everyone living under capitalism, she is defined by her ability to do work. And in this specific case, her apparent inability to make said work turn a livable profit. And even when there is work, it is becoming less work attempting to do because the value of surplus labor has gone down precipitously over the last four decades. That does not seem to be vances concern. He seems to be giving his people a mostly gently worded lecture on their lack of willingness to work. Even when it appears almost pointless to work. For that reason, the book should have been titled hillbilly reprimand. [laughter] vance does not want to mourn his hillbilly family, he wants to make things control it. Like they allegedly were back in the 20th century. But until workers in the postindustrial economy are shown sufficient cause for work, this is not likely to happen. As long as this is the case, this will continue to be americas favorite native scapegoat. Thank you all. [applause] arent, so the piece im going to read from is the back half of the book which is a collection of a lot of peoples voices. This was originally published by southern cultures. Its called on and owned appalachian accent and power. Lets go around the room and say what we are from. It was my first day in a class called experiencing appalachia during my first year of college. Just outside of charlotte, the professor continually nodded as a circle made its way to me. Haywood county i said. Eyebrows were raised in respects. My home was only about 100 miles to the classroom in which i was sitting but Haywood County suddenly became more than a place to me. It was a marker of identity. On day one of class, i learned that the region foundries have been constantly contested. I was told that migratory patterns explain some of the dialects of the mountains. And i came understand that i was appalachian. I knew that i was a mountain girl. My family had been in Haywood County for generations in one branch of my family tree started or stopped depending upon your perspective when the cherokee were marched through. But i had to take a class called experiencing appalachia even though i was appalachian. To experience the region, we studied the foxfire magazine that lined the bookshelves in my childhood living room. We practice churning butter, we read about quilting. And some of this resignation with me because it was familiar. My granny painstakingly taught me had a quote one time which meant i watch her pull out all of my handwork. My granny grew in canned tomatoes and green beans. I knew the differences between blue lakes and there no sound more satisfying than the pop of lid ceiling on the kitchen counter late afternoons. There plenty of traditions i did not know. And theres nothing markedly that we did because we had to. It is true that i had eaten groundhog on a camping trip and its just a tv show doesnt matter. But doesnt matter. It mattered to me as i left town thinking the only way to be a legitimate scholar was to attend college and to change my voice. I learned to talk right, but ive gotten it all wrong. I cant change the fact that my grandmother was raised after her own biological parents left her on the trail of tears. She had no choice but to assimilate the surroundings to fit in. Unable to trace my babe way back but wasnt allowed to have an i can claim those that i have known now that ive learned to articulate issues about the representation and gender politics, i want to do so so they are in the shape they wanted to take all a long. I want to honor the voices that were the soundtrack to my upbringing. I want to claim the voices belonging to my people. She mostly made clean pattern quilts that her motherinlaw made crazy quilt piecing together scraps. Combine that polkadots that form something alluring about these crazy quilt and as i struggled my way through, knowing this wasnt the case and the words taught me how to judge it. There were the even measures to help the pieces together and somehow it is made whole how the intricate gathering together made sense. Im reminded of it now when i consider the layers of my own voice and identity. Multigenerational appellations, firstgeneration college graduates, economically privileged feminist antiracist mother, writer, teacher. I am reminded of that quilt when i look around and see the way is twaysto be appellation and speed evolution. Perhaps the voices of the past will not be lost but they go on and on and on. [applause] so, lets open up to questions and comments. I have a question. Complete ignorance but where does the term hillbilly come from . You are asking the right guy. There were multiple origins and some people said it comes from scotland and the scotch irish. I frankly think it has less to do with the just the alliteration and the first time that it appeared in print was 1900 so it was actually not that old. Recently i think someone found a book that was like 1870 or something. So it is as simple as that and i do discuss in my book and we all think about it in the same way to think about these terms and what they mean there is a recent book now called white trash which makes it beyond hillbilly which is a safe space you can kind of make it derogatory or funny and its therefore acceptable to roll out all kinds of negative stereotypes. Certainly j. D. Vance makes no attempt to define its political power. He uses that word 50 times without any sort of interpretation. So i dont think it has the single origin just like redneck doesnt have a single origin when it comes about that it has a political purpose which is how it explains what existed. I am not a political organizer, and im helping groups to preview these new deals and i would love to hear your thoughts on how it is seen in the light of federal politics i would love to hear your thoughts about the federal issues and politics and what we are seeing now. You know, i think first of all the economic downturn that is happening right now really started 50 or 60 years ago when the coal mines became mechanized and Surface Mining happened and it is a finite resource so you take the top of a mountain and to take all the col call. Because it is so sharp and something people feel like this is a new saying theres organizations like 50yearsold this year they are trying to figure out the new economy. The places that they are talking about so far they havent taken off because of politics is because the people that hold all the power dont want to let it go. We couldnt have done a poll of 5wholelot 50 years ago because e were talking about creating the bond that would have put some of the taxes on coal it could have been used for economic development. Moving into 2020 i think people in the region have kind of exhausted. I know the people i work with and people that you are working with i know for sure are exhausted in the narratives that they have to combat. If you exhausted about politics and about being called a trumpalicia. It is very nuanced and complicated and complex. I dont know, i dont have an answer about going into 2020. I come from the region where people get howard. I dont think people put a lot of thought into that and they think it is an important strategy and more than that, people are like trying to figure it out. People are calling on the past and what weve always done and what can be exported and what cant be done somewhere else. People dont really care about the federal politics really because they dont see that impacting their lives in any w way. It happened because a lot of people didnt vote the reason we ended up with him is because people didnt vote. He got 30 of the vote and one about 13 . Thats what he one nice. So people are that apathetic about it. People are trying to think about politics, but more than that they are thinking about how they can do it themselves. When we find ratings like this is questions about these issues and sometimes i feel a little silly or limited in the fact that the work i do is around storytelling. But i wonder if you see, i dont want to set you up in this way. Theres the screening of the film hillbilly. I dont know if you saw that came out recently, the documentary that looked at the representations and saw more and intersected in important ways. Theres the question after words about why there is often this kind of question people voting against their best interest. I think that there is a powerful storytelling happening on behalf of the coal industry that they are not just doing the job of extracting coal but they are working inside stories and i wonder if you think that is true do you see that happening and is there any way . That is absolute we true. I wrote my masters thesis about the representation specific to reality tv that in that Research Found when powerful people found out there was wealth to be extracted, they started telling the stories and this has been a long pass, 300 year history in telling the stories and then the people and the place made it okay to take everything that they had. And more recently, you know, the war on the whole narrative that happened when obama was elected in 2008, that has been pretty detrimental because the stories they were telling you have to fight for your place in site for who you are. The. They are a coal miner through and through generation to generation where their families have been coal miners. So the coal industry knows this and they did a good job turning the narratives that was anticoal owner and coal miners they were on the picket lines, they went to war against the coal industry to fight for their rights and better wages and not having to pay Company Money and company stores. They played almost this brotherhood to say people are attacking you and your way of life and or culture and who you are and your brothers who stand next to you underground and work hard. And they fought hard against it one of the narratives are out there. That is in the story when thats all they are hearing in the national media. So yes it is really hard and the work i do is all about narrative shifting and how they take those that are inaccurate and false and incomplete and complicated them and twist them in the way of him just trying to rebuild the economy. I dont have an answer. I wish i did. I wish i was able to just flip a switch and see okay but i havent figured it out yet. Im working on it and lots of other people are working on it. We are trying constantly. [inaudible] an upside to the downside. The sorry to put you on the spot. Its very connected to organizing in the region that comes from coal mining and those that organized the. That was the color of the movement because of his being colored of [inaudible] which geologically and geographically is the same. But certainly not much to till the land. You could just keep coding and im curious your perspective on that. There is the mapping in terms of geology, sure the mountains go all the way up there that i think ive been trying to get my head around this why it is so different and it gets slippery because i dont want to see okay on this side of the line come on the outside of the line you are not like this because then it depends upon it being the same and it isnt the same. The region is one of several different maps and it includes 13 states. West virginia is the only state that has every county and goes from the bottom tip of new york down into alabama. And those two states are incredibly different. I grew up in Western North carolina and a nice old cold i was driving back to the Association Conference invites all end over and went to look at it. I am not of the coal Mining Industry and there are so many different kinds of subcultures exhibit gets tricky to try to map it and say what it is and it isnt. I do think though that there is something about the extracted industry that has the way the companies have come into place to take the timber and cold i think it is a combination of that and the unavailable land that there is a shared experience there. I dont see that same sort of extraction. I guess it does move up there. It becomes the target of the extracted industry is a because so much of the Great Northern but it had already been cut down before we considered them machine age. We talked about this being more morality and regions is that fair . I think that you have raised a very excellent point because the people in academia and the southern appalachia in the studies by 90 i think that is part of a it and part of it is t overlaps the northern difference in the south and that also becomes an extra layer of. I think all of those elements together define it as this. The civil war is key. Its almost immediately after the civil war we start seeing of the population of things from its surroundings and they start looking at the places in kentucky and North Carolina. Than they are telling those in philadelphia is a [inaudible] he had some of the same issues going on that was basically red fax and dysfunctional people in maine but that doesnt have been a second and the kind of stream of representation. Dani pletka debate [inaudible] but now you have these. I think at the same time as she felt like she had been judged and this was hopeful context because maybe she was from rural connecticut. But i think that she probably isnt going to say where shes from and have people. This is where i think of this representation. It gets completely exemplified into one where people think of as a voting bloc when its incredibly complex. There was a cartoon about the origin and a story in the cartoon where shes in North Carolina and shes angry and walks through the night if you can do that in one night its all just one imaginary space. It is a fable from the reconstruction. A lot of the northern missionaries and philanthropists who from the 1860s were very intense on trying to. Once they became disillusioned in that, they turned their attention to the upland south and when they wanted to turn their attention from vermont, they have been on the same side of the board. Co. More. These are the places where they finally found the need to uplift someone in the process. So i think it goes back to the simple fact of the matter being listened to part of the country that won the war. Here is another one just came out a. Its not about the history and the experience through multiple voices. Some of it is critical and we have some defenders and we have this understanding of the complexities. Thank you all very much for coming. [applause] thank you so much for coming. If you need a book they are at the registers. Thank you all. He knows the reporters and reads the stories and watches the news coverage. You know, he wants privately called said tivo was the greatest invention of mankind because he had the inventions and watches and pcs how he is being portrayed. I recalled at one point the Washington Post was a really good reporter at a press the prs conference the president made a reference to a story that phil had written before the New York Primary about the Staten Island ferry and he basically went and interviewed people on the Staten Island ferry and found that there were a lot of people that liked donald trump and he wrote a story about it. I didnt even see the story. Trump not only saw the story and read it. He becomes president and goes through all that hes been through and sees not exactly a household name by the way, great reporter we all know him and again its a story that you wrote a. Its mind blowing