Appalachia in the Wintertime

(*disclaimer: I am aware that technically, it is still fall.  Maybe when we start getting snow and ice here I'll do another post- entitled "Appalachia in the REAL Wintertime")

Although I have spent a significant amount of time in Appalachia, seeing these beautiful mountains in seasons other than summer has been eye opening.  I guess I had subconsciously assumed it just looked the same all year round... green everywhere.  I loved seeing the leaves change color this fall, and then they one by one dropped to the ground.  Once they were all gone, at first, I hated the way the mountains looked, so gray and boring.  But then I began to look closer.  And since I've gone on several hikes lately, I've had a chance to take a good look at what Appalachia looks like in the winter.

One of the most striking things to me is to look at where the mountain meets the sky.  (Is that still considered a horizon?)  You can look at the trees on the top of the mountain and see every individual branch as the light shines through.  I've tried to take a picture, but the camera on my phone doesn't even come close to capturing the complexity.  (Someone with an awesome camera and photography skills, come visit!)

My roommate and I did some day-tripping around Eastern Kentucky this past Saturday, and during our travels ended up in a conversation with an artist of many talents- Tom Whitaker.  As we listened to his stories and views on life, one of the things that struck me was his comment about the trees.  My paraphrasing probably won't do his words justice, however I will try: Have you ever looked at the trees in the winter?  You start to see humans in them.  Their arms and legs and faces and hips.  Just listening to this amazing character of a man was quite possibly my favorite thing I've done since moving here.

More of the things I've noticed...

1. I notice the evergreen trees so much more now.  They are easy to spot (since they are the only trees with leaves) and I like looking at the different mountains and seeing how the types of trees on each one differ.

2. The kudzu has died.  I'm so used to seeing it cover everything.  Even though the brown leaves are around, they have shriveled up some, and are starting to reveal the mysteries formerly hidden beneath the blanket of kudzu.

3. The days here seem shorter than they were back home in the winter.  I feel like I'm living the song "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive."  (fun fact: Harlan is only about an hour away from me)  One of the lines of the chorus says "where the sun comes up/ about ten in the mornin'/ and the sun goes down/ about three in the day."  I overhead a conversation the other day about a man who grew up here in Hazard, and then moved elsewhere, somewhere much more flat.  He was amazed that when the sun went down in his new home, it really got dark.  As opposed to what he was used to, where the sun would slip down below the mountains, but light would linger long after until the sun truly set.

Community House Raising

The HDA hosts an annual "Community House Raising," and this meant that I actually got to do some construction!  It was supposed to take place last Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday but the weather was pretty terrible.  The plans for construction were to get the house dried in over the course of the three days.  "Dried in" is a term meaning that the house will be completed to the point where it is ready for the subcontractors (electrician and plumber) to come in and do their work.  Some of the work had already been done, the foundation block had been laid and the carpenters had completed the floor framing.  The plan was to complete the framing on Saturday, do the roofing on Monday, and install the siding on Tuesday.

However, because of the weather, we were only able to work half-days on Saturday and Monday.  Here are some pictures of those days:

We put down the subflooring, framed and sheathed the exterior walls on Saturday.  On Monday we framed and interior walls and started installing top plates.  During the week, the carpenters spent some time at the house working to get ready for friday.  They had the trusses installed and ready when the volunteers showed up on Friday.  I was only able to go out for the afternoon on Friday since I had clients scheduled that morning.  When I showed up they had already decked the roof and installed shingles on half of it.  Here are some pictures from Friday:

To see pictures of the whole project, you can go to our facebook page and look at the album: Community House Raising 2012. 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Housing-Development-Alliance

The event is held for several reasons.  One is to attract funding from local and individual sources.  Another is to raise awareness of our organization and what we do, and this is done by inviting local volunteers.  The event is well known throughout the community.  The family we were building the house for came out and volunteered all three days, which was great!  Not only did they get to meet the other people working on the house, but they were also able to gain "SHOP hours."  SHOP hours are a kind of sweat equity that make it possible for our clients to work on their house in place of a more traditional down payment.  Managing that program is a part of my responsibilities at the HDA!

Do First, Learn Later

I haven't written anything in a while, and I especially have been avoiding talking more about my position at the HDA.  Mostly that's because there is so much to say that I didn't know where to start.  So there are things that I'll talk a little about today, and more about in later posts.

As the title suggests, most of the things I do at the Housing Development Alliance started by me doing them first, and then learning more about during/after.  As I wrote when I first started, my very second day here I started taking all of the client intakes: both in person and over the phone.  I didn't even really know everything we do at the time, so I was winging it for sure.  But as I've talked to more and more clients and found out their situations and what programs they fit into, I now (and for a while now) know what to say to clients and how to direct them towards their next steps in the application process.  As time has gone by, my responsibilities have grown.  A few weeks ago, I was working to help re-do our Housing Counseling Manual.  We do housing counseling throughout the homebuying process, and this is one of the requirements of USDA Rural Development for them to provide a loan to a client.  Much of it was outdated and we decided to look at it and see what we could change for the better.  The parts that I worked on were ones I was not an expert in, so I had to do a fair amount of research to make sure what I wrote was correct.  This included sections on living "green," saving money on your food and phone bill, and avoiding predatory lenders (watch for a later post on predatory lending).  Learning more about all of these things has also been helpful in my own personal life- and trying to manage/stretch the limited living allowance I get from AmeriCorps.

My other more recent responsibilities include doing Credit Reviews and serving as a Loan Originator.  Checking people's credit actually did require quite a bit of learning ahead of time.  But I am continuing to learn as I see different credit reports.  For the most part, the credit reports we see are either Not Scored or have low scores.  So I am learning how to counsel clients on how to build credit, improve credit, and dispute any false information on their credit report.  I very recently started filling out loan applications with clients who need repairs, which involves A TON of paperwork.  And everything has to be arranged just right when the finalized applications get sent up to Rural Development.  This has made me think about the differences between ASP and what I'm doing now (also to be discussed in a later post)- one of which being the amount of paperwork.  If I could go back to this past summer, I would complain much less about having to find deeds and titles compared to the massive amount of documentation required here for each client to apply for a government loan.

Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm complaining, I actually do like this style of learning.  It keeps things exciting and I get to see how the things I'm learning apply in all different situations.

*Also, a note on the last post/ Coal Severance:  I have learned a little more about it, and I guess the Coal Severance Tax is county-based.  So counties with a lot of coal industry physically located in their county get a lot of Coal Severance money, and vice-versa with counties who do not.  This can be unfortunate for smaller counties that don't have a lot of coal mines located in their county, yet many of their residents are coal miners.  Organizations who want some of their county's money (non-profits, etc.) petition their county judge, who ultimately makes the decision about where the money goes.

Black and Gold

This was originally supposed to be a post devoted to the Black Gold festival held annually in Hazard, but I've been slacking and several weeks have passed since the festival.  So instead I'll focus this post on focus of the festival... Coal.

Fall is festival season in Eastern Kentucky.  West Liberty has the Sorghum Festival (which sadly, I had to miss).  Whitesburg has the Mountain Heritage Festival.  Beattyville has the Wooly Worm Festival... and the list goes on and on.  Hazard's annual festival (Black Gold) is devoted to celebrating coal.  Although the bumper stickers I see driving around are a pretty good indication of the sentiments about coal in the area ("If you don't like coal, then don't use electricity" is a Perry County favorite), the festival took things to a whole 'nother level.  There were T-shirts proclaiming that "I Support Coal Because Coal Supports Me," etc.  And in Triangle Park in downtown, there was a huge display of very large coal mining machinery.

But there were also other things to celebrate.  This year was the 100 year anniversary of the 1st train coming to Hazard.  The festival consisted of an abundance of greasy food, lots of rides (which I heard enough about their un-reliability to want to stay far, far away from), and several sub-par musical performances.  Unfortunately we did not get to enjoy any of the bluegrass that the state of Kentucky is known for.  Instead we got to enjoy the KISS cover band and many other interesting musicians.  There were some upsides to the festival- the craft fair portion of the festival was fun to walk through and we got to see some of the local artisan's products.  And on Saturday morning, there was the parade.  The parade was very long, and consisted of MANY pageant winners.  I use the term "winners" loosely here, because there may have been 20-30 of them in the parade.  I'm still perplexed as to how the pageant (that had happened prior to the festival) worked, I guess there were a lot of categories.  And, since Hazard is where the idea for the Dukes of Hazzard came from, of course General Lee was in the parade!  To say the least, the parade was entertaining.

So I do, without question, live in the heart of Coal Country.

What I've been hearing some about lately is the Coal Severance Tax.  I'm a little hesitant to talk about it here because I don't know much about it yet.  Here is an excerpt taken from maced.org:


For many years after Kentucky created a coal severance tax in 1972, almost all of the revenue was used for general state appropriations rather than specified for use in the coalfields. In 1992, the General Assembly passed legislation to apportion half of the monies back to the coal mining regions of eastern and western Kentucky. The legislation allocated a share of those dollars (15 percent of coal severance receipts) to a revenue-sharing program for local governments to provide basic services (known as the Local Government Economic Assistance Fund (LGEAF)) and a portion (35 percent of receipts) to 
local funds whose use was restricted to developing industrial parks and sites (the Local Government Economic Development Fund (LGEDF)). The authors of the legislation believed industrial recruitment was key to diversifying the region’s economy as coal jobs disappear.  During the 1990s, LGEDF monies built a series of regional industrial parks. After mixed success recruiting industry, the 

legislature began utilizing coal severance monies for a wider range of purposes, including the following:

Educational and social programs that serve coal mining areas

The budget has funded specific programs in areas like education (the Read to Achieve program in coalfield counties; education technology in schools; the Robinson Scholars program; scholarships to the medical school at Pikeville College); health (Trover Clinic in western Kentucky); and drug abuse (Operation UNITE, the drug courts program). 

Debt service on infrastructure and buildings

State budgets since 2002 have included debt for coal county capital projects, including expansion of water and sewer services and the construction and renovation of schools. The state issued bonds, and a growing share of coal severance revenue goes to paying debt service on those bonds. In the governor’s proposed budget for 2013-2014, over $30 million in coal severance revenue is reserved for debt service payments.

Local projects

In several legislative sessions, the legislature approved earmarks using monies that had built up in single-county LGEDF accounts for a variety of specific local projects, including senior centers, veterans memorials, recreation and sports facilities, tourism projects, community centers, library supplies, fire trucks and other public safety expenditures, and more.

Coal and energy-related expenses

A portion of severance tax dollars has been allocated to coal industry-related expenses and spending. For a while, $19 million a year was allocated to pay workers’ compensation liabilities for injured coal miners. Recent budgets have also included monies for a mining engineering scholarship program, mine safety enforcement, and energy-related economic development projects in coal counties.

On a level more closely related to what I'm doing in Hazard- there is a Coal Severance Grant that helps to fund the local homeless shelter, Community Ministries.  As I learn more about this tax and how the money is used- I will definitely share!  I'm not taking a stance on our country's use of coal as a source of energy- I'm just trying to bring up another side of the issue that many people probably don't know about.

Also I did the Run for the Hills 5K/Charity Challenge this Saturday!  The weather was pretty terrible but I persevered.  It was put on by the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, another topic for a future post!

Americorps, Pre-Service Orientation

I would really much rather do a post on the Black Gold Festival that started tonight in Hazard and will continue through the next 2 days.  It is pretty much consuming my life since I live in downtown, one block away from where the action is happening.  Just this morning, I discovered on my way to work that the city switches the direction of the one-way street in front of my house just for the three days of the festival.  Go figure.  The policeman seemed to think I was an idiot when he stopped me, but oh well.  But... more to come on the festival later, when I have experienced the full extent!

For now, I will talk a little bit about my Pre-Service Orientation for Buildcorps.  I spent 4 days at Camp Cedarmore, outside of Frankfort, learning all about what it means to be an Americorps service person, poverty/homelessness, and we managed to find time to do a few fun things too.  The training on Americorps was a lot of learning how to do the paperwork and reporting.  Apparently Americorps is always at the top of the list for programs the government might cut from the budget, so as a result we have to make sure we are representing the organization in a correct and positive light.  A big part of this was learning which terminology to use.  For example, I am not "working" and do not have a "job" instead I am doing "service."  What some people would consider my "boss" at the Housing Development Alliance is technically my "site supervisor." And I do not earn "income" or a "salary," instead I receive a "living allowance."   And so on...
Branches of Americorps seem to be divided by state, and Buildcorps is one of the Kentucky branches.  I found out we would be competing against the other Kentucky Americorps programs in a food drive this fall, in order to stock the local food pantry's of Kentucky with canned food.
Apart from the expected team building, we learned a lot about poverty and homelessness in the state, which really could apply to our country as a whole.  We did a poverty simulation on the first day where we learned how frustrating it can be trying to balance making ends meet, childcare, finding a job, and/or looking for government or outside assistance.  In the simulation, there was never enough time to get everything done in a day, or even a week.  We were given limited transportation passes as a symbol of how hard it can be to get around if your only option is walking, or if you have to pay for gas or public transportation that you really can't afford.  Also, it taught how common it is to be sent from one agency to another, and how the next agency or even the one after that isn't necessarily the one that you need.
We also learned about how in the US, even 20 or 30 years ago there was a much larger safety net in place for people who were at-risk of homelessness  (most Americans, in reality, are only a few paychecks away from financial trouble and maybe even homelessness).  This safety net has been greatly reduced- but I won't elaborate anymore since I can't have an official political stance while being represented as an Americorps!
As a break, on the last night of our training we went to Frankfort.  We ate at a seafood restaurant on the river, and went to Buffalo Trace Distillery- a stop on the "Kentucky Bourbon Trail"- a tourist attraction that I want to continue exploring!  We did a ghost tour at the distillery, I guess Ghost Hunters, the TV show had shot a show there in the last year or so.  Along the way, we got some of the history of Kentucky Bourbon and Buffalo Trace.  I'll include some pictures I took on the tour:

Running for The Hills

Very soon after I arrived in Hazard I found out there was a rapidly approaching 5K the I could participate in.  It is appropriately named "The Run For The Hills 5K."  Since it will be held October 6th, I went ahead and started training.  Since I didn't exercise all summer while at ASP, and had only just started working out again during the month of August, training is necessary.  But once I started going for runs here I quickly realized that getting back in shape was not going to be the only problem.  As you could probably guess, there are lots of hills here, even more than in good old Chapel Hill.  Another problem is the Coal Trucks that frequently drive through the area at very high rates of speed.  These are a problem when I run on the main roads, not only are they scary, but they also tend to kick up a lot of dirt and dust from the side of the road.  So I decided to try the back/more residential roads.  Please googlemap downtown Hazard, so you can get an idea of the maze of roads.  Finding my way around the windy roads which usually are missing street signs isn't too bad though really, I kind of enjoy the adventure.  The real problem with the more residential roads is the Appalachian dogs.  Any person running (to them) looks like a fun chasing game just waiting to start.  So I endured lots of barks- some behind fences and others not.  As I keep running, I'm learning which roads are runner friendly and which ones to avoid.

But my real purpose in writing this post is to share the good side of my Hazard runs.  Not only are they helping me to find my way around, but also I am able to notice things that I otherwise wouldn't (when driving).  My discovery yesterday was the Bobby Davis Park- an oasis in the middle of Hazard.  It was a small, but welcome sight.  Even though I'm living in the mountains, Hazard sprawls out for quite a ways and since I live right in the heart of downtown, I sometimes miss having green space around.  Here are pictures of the park...

A post on my Buildcorps/HHCK training from last week coming soon...

Hello Housing Counseling

This posting may jump around a little, I want to talk about too many things to focus on just one!

I worked three days last week and got a jump start on learning things that most of my peers won't have to know for several years... primarily everything that goes into a mortgage/buying a house.  My main duty is assisting Pam, the permanent Housing Counselor, with everything that she does.  So apart from trying to absorb all of this new information, I also began doing client intakes.  This means that anytime someone called or came by the Housing Development Alliance, I was their first contact.  During this interaction I would determine whether they wanted a new home or rehab on their current house, and then ask a long list of questions in order to determine their current financial situation, and whether they would qualify for a loan.  A big part of this process is determining their level of income, since the HDA is committed to serving people who are low and very low income.  These terms may seem vague, but there are real values behind them.  Most of it is based on the Area Median Income (AMI) of the county.  At or below 50% of the AMI is considered very low income and at or below 80% AMI is considered low income.  As I learn more, I will be able to talk to the client further through the process in collecting the appropriate documents and helping the client to actually apply for the loan or grant.  In other words- I will sometimes serve as a loan originator.

I would also like to share this description of Buildcorps:
"The largest competitively funded AmeriCorps program in Kentucky, Build Corps serves homeless and at-risk men, women and children throughout the Commonwealth.
Build Corps members provide housing case management services, construction and weatherization services and financial literacy education to low income Kentuckians. Members make an in-valuable contribution to their host sites by providing direct service to clientele; recruiting, training and supervising volunteers; raising funds; and building community awareness about challenges faced by homeless and inadequately housed individuals."
I will be learning much more about Buildcorps at my training in Northern Kentucky next Tuesday-Friday.

And finally just a few fun facts about my life in Eastern Kentucky:
1. The only place to buy wine that we have discovered so far is the CVS pharmacy
2. I watched a live recording of What's Cookin Now the world's only LIVE radio cooking show (that we know of).  It comes on the radio once a month
3. One of the chefs of What's Cookin Now did a review of a recently opened local restaurant, reading it provides a pretty accurate view of Hazard living.  Also I ate at the Treehouse Cafe and enjoyed my sandwich very much.  Here is the link:
http://www.whatscookinnow.org/?p=541

The Big Move

I moved back to Appalachia today (Monday), but this time I'm not here with ASP.  My employment situation is a little hard to explain (I don't fully understand it yet), but I'll try.  I am being paid by the Kentucky branch of Americorps- called Buildcorps, and interchangeably (?), the Housing and Homeless Coalition of Kentucky- the HHCK.  They are placing me in a nonprofit where I will work for the next 12 months.  The nonprofit is called the Housing Development Alliance and is based in Hazard, KY.  Hazard is a little over an hour south of West Liberty where I spent this past summer.  My decision to take the job and move to  Kentucky was a little impulsive but I'm still very excited.  I am living in the upstairs apartment of a house in downtown Hazard, and am in the process of settling in.  My job should be less hectic than my summers at ASP, much more like a real M-F 9-5 kind of deal... so that should leave plenty of time for blogging!  I start work on Wednesday and should know more about my position then, and I'll spend tomorrow setting up utilities, unpacking, and exploring Hazard.

The Volunteers Are Here!

Our first groups of volunteers arrived yesterday afternoon!  One group is from Wisconsin and the other is from Illinois.  I will be having a lot more groups from up north this year because of my location.  They try to schedule groups so they drive shorter distances.  In Tennessee, I got a lot more of the southern groups, but since my county this summer is almost as north west as ASP goes that is not the case this year.

Things have been going well in our county as a whole.  We were able to find all 7 homes for our crews to work on this week, although it was a challenge.  And we will need to find 5 or 6 more for week two since we jump to 12 crews, and at least one of our current projects may be completed after this week.  Since ASP is new in the county we are still working on spreading the word and trying to gain more applications.  So as Center Director, I spent a fair amount of time set-up week trying to build up relationships with existing community contacts and make new ones.  Community contacts are usually non-profits in the communities where we work that already work with low-income families and are able to collect applications for us, even throughout the off-months when we don't have a presence in the county.  In order to generate more applications, we even went so far as leaving applications in the mailboxes of home that we thought could be potential projects.  One of the new contacts I was able to make is the Long Term Recovery Team (from the tornado) in Morgan County.  Up until this point, we had not really received many applications from tornado damaged homes (and still haven't received many... but are hopeful!).  The most we had seen was hail damage from the storm surrounding the tornado.   The Recovery Team invited us to attend one of their weekly meetings, so Logan and I sat in on the meeting last Thursday.  They seem to still be in the developing stages and are ironing out some wrinkles in their system, but it was very interesting to hear an insider's perspective on the recovery process in the county.

Our weekly culture night tomorrow night will be some speakers who experienced the tornado first-hand, so I'll post more about that next time!

Set Up 10 Days

This year ASP changed many things- one of which is that our set up was extended from 7 to 10 days.  Since I’ve been here I’ve discovered many things…

1.   The school’s internet restricts many of the websites we need, including gmail (keeping us from using our ASP e-mail)

2.   (… or really 1 continued) What a proxy server is.

3.   I don’t get cell service in the majority of Morgan County, including our center :(

4.   What a “Title 1” school is… Morgan Central Elementary is one of them!

5.   It’s a dry county, which isn’t all that unusual in the Appalachian region.  Whenever we cross the border to another county there is usually a store selling beer and/or liquor right over the line.

6.   We are pretty close to Winchester, the place where they make Ale 8 (a ginger ale sold only in Kentucky).  Can’t wait to go there on a Saturday or day off!

7.   We originally thought our only food options were Subway and a McDonald’s with the dining room closed, but since we have discovered many places to eat!  The Frosty Freeze has food and ice cream, which I’m sure our volunteers will be happy about.  We also found 2 pizza places, That Pizza Place and Little Caesars, and an interesting place called The Lemon Tree Restaurant

8.   There is actually a river called “Lickin’ River” in Morgan County

9.   We’re also home to Cave Run Lake

10.        Morgan County has one of the largest Mennonite populations in the country (we found them in Crockett, KY)

11.        Morehead is the closest city, the place where we’ll go when we need WalMart, Lowes, more food options, etc.

I have also learned a lot about the tornado damage in the area…

1.   A smaller tornado went through Index (where we are staying, right outside of West Liberty) a few days before the big one

2.   The big tornado that caused the destruction of West Liberty touched down for more than 90 miles

3.   It would have been an EF-5 tornado, but the mountains slowed it down to an EF-3

4.   It snowed the day after the tornado

5.   There was also hail surrounding the tornado, which caused additional damage to people’s homes and cars

6.   Still hearing different things about FEMA’s response to the tornado, for example, there is a house we will most likely work on that received some money from FEMA but doesn’t have the labor or skill to do the repairs. In this case we will have the family buy the supplies and materials with the FEMA money and we will provide the labor.  It turns out to be a win-win, since it creates more room in our budget for other projects, and they are getting the work done that they need.

7. The post office was in a portable trailer until TODAY when it reopened!  We set up our PO Box and the address (in case you want to send me anything...) is:

PO Box 576

West Liberty, KY

41472

Also, please like our center’s facebook page:

Facebook.com/aspmorganky

And check it for more updates on what I’m doing this summer!

County Visitin'

So I've been at training for a little over a week now and a lot has happened!  Not only have we been learning all about construction and all the paperwork we will be responsible for this summer, we have also had some time for fun things.

On Wednesday, I had "County Visit Day" where I was able to visit Morgan County for the first time!  It was shocking to see the tornado damage in West Liberty and around the county.  And everyone we talked to said that everything looks much better now than before, since they have had about 2 months to do relief so far.  I met with our community contact, which is our biggest resource for finding homes since ASP is new in the county.  They have been collecting applications for us, and should be a useful contact throughout the summer.  Next, we headed to our center (where we will be living and hosting volunteers for the summer).  It's called Morgan Central Elementary School, and it is quite possibly the nicest ASP center I have EVER SEEN.  The building is only 4 years old, and is in pristine shape. There are even skylights!  Our facility manager (who is also principal of the school) is very excited to have us in the area working.  She told us that her house is one of the ones destroyed in the county, and she is currently rebuilding.  Finally, we stopped by the hardware store.  Neighboring counties have used this hardware store in the past, so even though we are new to the county, they are already familiar with ASP!

Center Directors get told their staff one day ahead of everyone else, so I found out my staff on Thursday night.  Yesterday, (friday) we had a huge picnic and a "staff reveal" where us CD's made our staffs do all sorts of crazy things... kind of like an obstacle course in order to finally find out our staff.  I have one returning staff member- Logan from Alabama, and two new staff members- Carson from Texas and Emily from Connecticut.  I'm excited to have 2 boys on my staff again, like my first summer.  And also excited to get to know and work with them!  We have several more days of training, and will be leaving for Morgan Co. on Thursday.

The internet here at Jonesville is pretty slow, but I'll post pictures to my facebook very soon!

Summer 2012 Schedule

Thought I would post my schedule for the summer...

May 17th: Start of CD Training in Jonesville, VA!
May 25th: I find out my staff!
May 31st: Depart for counties (Morgan Co, KY in my case)
May 31- June 9th: Set-up Week
June 10- July 28th: 7 weeks of volunteers
July 29- July 31st: Closing out our county
August 1st- 3rd: Back to Jonesville, VA for Wrap-Up
August 3rd: End of contract

I should have cell service in Jonesville, and if you want to send any mail the address there is :

ASP Jonesville Center
PO Box 250
Jonesville, VA 24263

Not sure yet what the situation will be in Morgan County in regards to cell service, and I'll be finding out the mailing address shortly.  During training I'll be doing a "County Visit Day" to see my county and center, and meet the community contacts, and I should have more info then!

I'm very excited to start the summer, it all just seems a little surreal with the quick turn around from graduation!  Better get back to packing...

Pre-Summer Post

Hello all!

I am returning to Appalachia this summer, but this time as a Center Director- so things will be a little different.  One of which is that I already know where I'll be spending the summer!  I will be in Morgan County, Kentucky which is a county where ASP has NEVER been.  (This is pretty unusual)  One of the reasons we are expanding there is the recent tornadoes that went through the area at the beginning of March, 2012.  From talking to my PM (Program Manager... aka boss) and browsing the internet, the devastation from the tornado seems huge.  Apparently the courthouse in West Liberty (the main town in the county, where we will be staying) was completely destroyed, and we are having trouble getting in touch with a bank in the area since phone lines are still down.  The hardware store may also be out of operation, in which case we would get lumber and supplies delivered from another county.

All of this should make for a summer unlike any I have had so far.  I am a little nervous, but also excited about the challenge.  The construction will be different and there will be many other relief organizations still in the area that we will be working with.  We will be staying at an elementary school in West Liberty, where there are currently no showers, so we will be installing temporary ASP ones!  I will be posting more as I hear- please google the tornado, the pictures of the damage are incredible.

-K