Bird Droppings April 11, 2010
Finding solutions in all the right places

I had a few errands before sitting down to write today and still had time to stop at Quick Trip. The friendly smiles and hellos make me keep coming back. Actually so many mornings my sojourn to the local QT is filled with coincidence and synchronicity. It was only a years ago today as I went in and picked up my paper I put my paper on my arm so I could get a drink and in doing so had my Atlanta Journal turned upside down. Foxfire magazine caught my attention. The real title for the article is “All mountain man wants is burial in dirt plot; teens will see it through” simple direct and all about Foxfire.
Foxfire began nearly forty three years ago in Rabun County as a teacher’s way of reaching kids. Borrowing extensively from John Dewey’s ideas of experience as a teaching tool the Foxfire founders built a program that immersed students in their own culture of Appalachia. The Foxfire magazine is still a nationally recognized student publication and the Foxfire 13 book just recently was published. The program is about providing context to the academic content of education. It is still in operation at Rabun High School.
The story in that old paper was of an old mountain man Sammy Green who had been interviewed by the Foxfire students for a magazine article as part of their endeavor to capture the lore and stories of Appalachia. As they finished off the record the elderly man who had no family and no money to bury him was concerned about cremation. Which is the method used for indigents. Like many church going mountain folk he believed he would be doomed for eternity in hell if he was cremated, according to rural tradition your body at the second coming will be resurrected as you were in life and buried. All he wanted was to be buried in a pine box in a plot of dirt.
Joyce Green was the Foxfire facilitator several years back and was pleasantly surprised as students took the project upon themselves to provide for Sammy Green when he passed away. The group organized money making projects, put change bottles around to collect for the project, they received a donation of a plot at a local church, another donation of services from a funeral home at cost and ninth graders in shop built a pine casket. This group of students have completed an elderly mans wish. Sammy was in hospice care collapsing from pneumonia when this article was written and he knew his last wish will be carried out thanks to a group of young folks in Rabun County.
It has been a few months since I was last to the Foxfire museum up in Mountain City Georgia n Rabun County. Actually tried to go on a snow day when I had an off week of school back in February and roads were closed in Rabun County due to snow. Hopefully if I can get busy on a grant and my class comes through I will be teaching in a Foxfire teaching method next fall. I have taught and assisted in several courses in graduate schools during the summer teaching the techniques of Foxfire. As I read the article and thought what a powerful statement for today’s youth in a world where most teenager news is so negative.
I recall having two fellows in my first period class who both were seniors and both were going into the military when they graduate and would be chatting about life. I recall so many years ago when I was debating for the war in Viet Nam in a public speaking class. I sort of cheated bringing in an eight foot red tailed boa in a gym bag and building up about how communism could be among you and you never know it. As I ended my speech I pulled the snake out and my debate foe fainted and I won debate by default. As I look back and wonder facing life these so many years since, how my views have changed as to my own personal take on war and on life. I often wonder looking back have they truly changed or have I come to understand better what I did not fully understand at that time. I had always been against the war in Viet Nam and I was not a student of politics or news. It felt wrong to me and I daily would see in our local paper friends and relatives of friends killed during the fighting. At last count seven I believe from my high school graduating class died in Viet Nam. I have several friends from our high school graduates who used to come by my room years back now in Iraq and Afghanistan. One in particular in a hospital wounded we communicate through facebook. Back in the day communication was days and weeks from reaching home not seconds.
Every day I try and make a point of acknowledging that there are people through the world in harms way. I recall only a few years back here in the US at Virginia Tech and again in the Georgia mountains in a small rural community an elderly man emotionally torn about his own end is aided by a group of high school students. I wish this war all wars would end right now and greed and all the ism’s that drive wars would vanish from the world. I also thought as I have been reading a book by Parker Palmer that it is as teachers and as facilitators which is how Foxfire considers teachers is where change can occur.

“To teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced.” Parker Palmer, To Know as we are Known

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