Jeez. So, as little as a month ago, I was worried about getting a job in August. I hadn’t yet been accepted to a PhD program, and without that fellowship money guaranteed for the next year, I have to admit I was starting to stress.

But now that I’ve gotten that all wrapped up, I have gotten two . . . count em TWO . . . unsolicited offers for Adjunct positions at local universities. I might be able to take one of them, if they let me only teach one class (they want someone to teach two), but I don’t think my schedule will allow me to even consider the other.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about having options. But I wish I had known this was going to happen when I was staying up at night worrying about how to help keep a roof over our heads.

Meanwhile, the comics are coming along. So is my final graduation formality of a paper. I think I schould be able to have 15 pages or so on good old Chico Mendes finished by tomorrow. Maybe once I get another page or so finished of the comic, I’ll post them. Maybe not. I don’t want to jinx myself.

Huh. 

What happened there?  It looks like I just took four months off from blogging. 

Aw, shit.  It looks like I gave up on that comic book I was totally going to do, too.  Yeah, there are a few pages that I finished but didn’t post, but I was feeling a bit too restricted by the format I was working in.  Form is good–in fact, it’s the basis of comics writing–but that form just wasn’t right for what I wanted to do.  Too many words and too little room for drawings.  I like the idea of a drawing and printing 1/4-page pages, but if I try it again, I’ll do it pictures-only.

Oh, did I mention that I finished my thesis?  No?  Well, I did.  I’m now a Master of History.  Sounds pretty impressive, huh?  Also, I enrolled in a PhD program not far from here (though not here), and will be commuting down a couple of times a week starting in the fall to take classes, and TA for one as well. 

But if I learned anything at all from the last semester, it’s that: a) I need to keep to a strict work schedule, and: b) I need something creative other than history, parenting, or cursing to help keep me sane.  So, instead of flipping through the channels on the old television for two hours everynight after the kids go to sleep, I’m going to dedicate myself to drawing more comics. 

Honestly, I’ve been inspired by the comics and general bloggery of my comic book twin, Alec Longstreth, to really make this a long-term commitment.  I love drawing comics, and I love it when people read my comics.  Also, I want to create something that my kids can read when they get older and maybe feel like they know me a little bit better.  Sappy?  Maybe.  Unrealistic?  Not really, unless you count the whole “doing something other than history” thing.  But I’m going to do it.  You hear that, me??

But, I’ve resolved to write the first chapter of my thesis before the end of the semester (actually, it’s a ploy to write one 20 page paper instead of two for my two readings courses), so I could be gathering up notes right about now. 

But then there’s this . . .

And, of course, this . . . .

Not to mention this . . . .

What’s a guy to do? 

Speaking of which, where are all of the good daddy blogs?  Or, I guess, all of the good comic-nerd-history-grad-student-daddy blogs?

In the early sixties, after the UMWA and coal operators shut down health and welfare benefits for thousands of eastern Kentucky coal miners, a movement of “roving pickets” (miners going on strike without the support of a union, who traveled from mine to mine picketing) began. This got the attention of some Old Left types in New York and Pennsylvania, who created an organization called the Committee For Miners (CFM). At first, the CFM just organized charity drives, and popularized the slogan “No Christmas in Kentucky”, which Phil Ochs (not a writer, but a journalist, mind you) turned into a song. But by 1962, CFM was on the ground in eastern Kentucky, trying to organize unions of the unemployed and helping out with the defense of some roving picketers who had been arrested on trumped up charges of trying to dynamite a bridge.

CFM’s organizing efforts resulted in the formation of the Appalachian Economic something something Conference (AEPEC), which was formed with the help of some Old Left heavies like Miles Horton of the Highlander School and Carl Braden of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF).  Now, meanwhile, the civil rights movement is in high gear, and black folks are starting to suggest that if white people really want to fight racism, they need to go out and do it in the white community.  SNCC is moving towards becomming less of a multiracial organization, and all-white groups like the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) are springing up.  The Old Left/Popular Front types who are getting involved in Appalachia see the way events are unfolding in the region as a chance to open a white wing of the civil rights movement, and to eventually build an interracial working-class coalition.  So, AEPEC starts a Southern Mountain Project (SMP), but pretty soon (after some fairly heated personal disputes–DRAMAA!!) it’s obvious that the SMP is really just going to be SCEF’s thing.  SCEF spends a couple of years recruting college students from across the country to come to Appalachia and try to make SMP like the Mississippi summers, but in white communities instead of black ones. 

But the people in Appalachia really aren’t that interested in becoming a white wing of the civil rights movement.  They have little love for their bosses, police, or city/county governments, but they’re also fairly suspicious of the college kids who have come in to organize them.  Plus, the college kids really aren’t sure what they’re supposed to be doing, other than walking around in their bikinis, smoking pot, and letting their dogs shit all over the houses they’re staying in.  But, there is one thing that’s for sure: a lot of people in Appalachia are pissed off about the way the coal operators are treating the land.  Some folks working with SCEF get mixed up in protesting against the coal companies, and three of them, plus Carl and Anne Braden, get charged with sedition in Pike County, Kentucky (which is the funniest part of the story.  Who in their right mind would want to overthrow the government of Pike county circa 1968??).  They eventually get off when the state sedition law is ruled unconstitutional, but by that point, the movement is practically dead. 

So, that’s the basic story.  I’ve been able to fill it in quite a bit and give it more of an interesting historical context through the readings courses I’ve taken this fall.  I’ll post some of that soon, and we’ll see where I am on what I think about it all.

“I’m Audi 5000.”