Tis the Gift

Happy Poetry Friday!

How are you navigating November?  As I was casting around for an idea for today's post, the Shaker song, Tis the Gift to be Simple caught me. 

On Monday, my family gave me a day to go history hunting. I drove into West Virginia coal country. In 1934, this area was hit hard during the Great Depression.

Demand for coal had dropped off after WWI, oil was on the scene diminishing demand even more, labor fought with business and then the stock market crash sent everything into a downfall for years. Miners laid off out in Scott's Run WV weren't used to making more than company script. There was no safety net save Mother Nature.

Arthurdale was a homestead project of FDR's New Deal. It was considered a hand-up rather than a hand-out by policy makers of the time trying to prime the pump of the economy while stemming the tide of widespread unemployment and specific homelessness and dire conditions in Scott's Run. There are millions of details and decades of detail to learn about Arthurdale.

Arthurdale was very much Eleanor Roosevelt's project. She poured her heart and soul into the 165 homesteads--of which 162 are still standing and inhabited today.

My time poking around one of her projects was a gift. The snapshots below of are my time there.

And bonus? One of the books I listened to on my ride was The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo......just before she won the National Book Award this week. Another gift.

Please don't miss the Poetry Friday Round-Up at Linda B's Teacher Dance. You won't be sorry.