Recommended Resources
Mandatory Prep Work for Groups:
Please come prepared, having already taken a look at these resources:
Article in US Catholic: “The Problem with Mission Trips” by the mission office director of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Dr. Mike Gable.
Video: Listening to the Voices of Appalachia – 11 minutes
Part One of the People’s Pastoral, “The Telling Takes Us Home” – pages 7-27. (To reduce reading load for students, have each person take one of the “voices” to read, summarize and report on to the group)
Other (optional) Recommended Resources:
BOOKS:
1) The Appalachian Bishops’ Pastoral Letters:
(1975) This Land is Home to Me www.ccappal.org
(1995) At Home in the Web of Life www.ccappal.org
2) The Appalachians-America’s First and Last Frontier– edited by Mari-lyn Evans, et al.
3) Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes-Back Talk from an American Region, edited by Dwight Billings et al.
Videos:
1) Magisterium of the People - on the People’s Pastoral letter by Catholic Committee of Appalachia (available on DVD)
2) The Appalachians – America’s First and Last Frontier, 3 hour PBS documentary available in DVD/VHS
3) Gasland – avialable on Netflix
4) The Last Mountain – available on Netflix
Websites:
1) Catholic Committee of Appalachia – ccappal.org
RESOURCES on WEST VIRGINIA
1) Facts & Figures– http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/state/westvirginia.html2) When Miners March, by William C. Blizzard www.whenminersmarch.com
2) Other places to visit while you’re here: http://www.wvtourism.com/
RESOURCES on THE CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT
Books:
for these and others, go to: http://www.catholicworker.com/bookstore/index.html
1) Dorothy Day Selected Writings, edited by Robert Ellsburg
2) On Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Day
3) Loves & Fishes, by Dorothy Day
4) The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day
5) Easy Essays, by Peter Maurin
6) Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, edited by Phil Runkel, et al.
Videos:
1) Entertaining Angels, with Moira Kelly, Martin Sheen
Websites:
OTHER TOPICS & SITES OF INTEREST
Some of the issues confronting the Appalachian region are: absentee ownership of land, an economy based on extraction of resources such as coal and timber -often with environmental consequences, poverty, hunger and homelessness, private prisons, pervasive drug usage. Other issues are more subtle: a large military budget resulting in cutbacks in social services and education, disproportionate number of Appalachian youth joining the military because of high unemployment, US domestic and foreign policies that affect the local economy, racism, sexism, and other divisions and conflicts.
Private Prisons – http://www.grassrootsleadership.org/
Mountaintop Removal – http://ohvec.org/
Appalachian Resources – http://www.uky.edu/Subject/appal.html
The AppalShop – http://www.appalshop.org/
Google “poverty in Appalachia” and get a slew of articles, papers, economic reports that give explanations for why Appalachia is considered a sacrifice zone in the United States.