My Appalachian Catchment

I have dear friends and clients, past and present, alive, dead, and dying, for whom I care deeply, who reside in spots with names like Owl Hole Gap, Poor Valley, Tate Springs, Rock Haven, Ni**er Hollow, Wildcat Hollow, Joppa Mountain, Washburn, Treadway, Thorn Hill, Chinqupin, Yellow Branch, Spruce Pine, Pressman's Home, Hogg Lot, Cloud Creek, Cloud Creek Hollow, Mulberry Gap, Natty Branch, Duck Creek, Snake Hollow, Newman's Ridge, Vardy, Clinch, War Creek, Stoney Fork, Cool Branch, Short Mountain, Boatman's Mountain, Stone Mountain, Devil's Nose, Treadway, Thorn Hill, Round Mountain, Grassy Fork, Kyle's Ford, Viking Mountain, Blackwater, Turkey Creek, Five Point, Three Springs, Stubblefield Creek, Morristown Mountain, and Gravel Hill, down on the southside slope, where I live. These people make mistakes, requiring at times my help, not punishment because punishment don't help. From a distance the mountains and hollows seem idyllic, but it's not so. In fact, ignorance permeates the rise and fall of my catchment and its topography. I'll only be able to change things one family at a time, introducing the ideas of neither killing nor consuming animals, mutual aid, community, and secularism. Unfortunately, upon learning that there are people who think differently, their faces blanken as if there's nothing's going on. But, in the words of my Torts professor, Hon. Bill Woods, "it ain't necessarily so."