The Context Cut for Space
The details that I couldn’t include in my recent NPR story on poverty and power bills.
(Read to the end for Kristen Koopman's Halloween-themed reads as well as a post about the haunted house of the cell.)
In late August, I drove three plus hours to Wise, Virginia, to cover the issue of energy poverty--when energy bills are disproportionately high relative to an area's normal household income. Parts of Wise County are above the 90th percentile, with some of the highest energy poverty in the country. In Wise, I met Deborah Nagy, a spunky 71-year-old with piercing brown eyes who wanted to share her favorite cabbage roll recipe more than she wanted to talk about what I was there to talk about: the assistance she needs to pay her power bills, and what could happen to her if that program gets cut.
I covered that in my recent story, coauthored with Melba Newsome, for WVTF’s Radio IQ and Climate Central, which I am excited to say was funded by the Pulitzer Center.
What I want to talk about here is what I learned about Deborah Nagy and my other sources that didn’t get into this story, because it was just too complicated to explain in the allotted space (even though that space was quite generous by journalism standards).
Deborah wanted to be sure I knew that she was college-educated and had worked until she needed to retire. It’s clear she did everything society expects, and rightfully feels angry that she’s stuck in poverty despite all her efforts.
You see, Deborah lives in an area with high rates of chronic disease, because of the coal mining and poverty there. When she graduated college, she had a job offer in Richmond to be a teacher. But her mother had a heart attack and needed care. So, instead of taking the job in Richmond, Deborah stayed home. She spent her early adulthood when one normally builds a career caring for her mom and then her dad. That set her up to work in home caregiving for the rest of her working life, which despite its importance garners low wages. The reason Deborah didn’t get out of poverty was because her parents got sick when she was young, through no fault of their own.
I also spoke with Tiffany Hunter, who I connected with through her work with the justice group Virginia Organizing. Even though the demographics of this area are overwhelmingly white, my coauthor Melba, who is an African American woman, encouraged me to find the perspective of someone nonwhite. I’m glad she did, because Tiffany, also an African American woman, had such an important perspective. Tiffany doesn’t get caught up in the common tropes of individualism and bootstraps that gaslight people into not standing up for themselves. She had very clear thinking about what these programs do and what the consequences would be without them.
Tiffany loves living in nearby Norton, because her kids are safe running around outside in the beautiful countryside and roadsides around this small town. Also college-educated, Tiffany had the opportunity to travel to many cities through her work. But she liked the slow-paced, rural life that she could return to in Wise.
Tiffany, who is in her forties, is unable to work because she needed to get a liver transplant last year after she went into respiratory failure. She’s still recovering, and she talked about how the heat wave in July was so much harder to endure in her state compared with when she was younger and compared with how her kids experienced it.
Despite these challenges, Tiffany spent most of the call talking about her mom. Tiffany is also in the sandwich generation, caring for not only her kids but also her mom, who is in her sixties and has severe diabetes and early onset dementia.
Both Tiffany and Deborah talked about the tough choices they make between buying food, medicine, and electricity, and how the federal and local energy assistance programs allow them to get food and medicine during the coldest and hottest months. Tiffany grew up watching her mom go without food so the rest of their family could get enough to eat. She knows that if her mom has to choose between having a cold house and cold showers or eating, she’ll choose to go without food. Tiffany also knows that that could lead to her mother’s decline.
It’s hard talking to people about these issues, looking them in the face while they tell you that they or those they love will suffer and may die if a program is cut. I could hear the fear in their voices, see it in their eyes, could feel them imagining it viscerally. I felt heavy long afterward. I don’t think Deborah and Tiffany and her mom deserve to be living how they currently live, and certainly don’t deserve an even worse situation. These are fixable problems.
Deborah and Tiffany both understood that there is a stigma to speaking about their need for assistance. They are very brave to talk publicly about their struggles. They are both people I would enjoy hanging out with. If you live in Appalachia or other Southern rural places, you probably know people who are living close to the line like this. If you come from a middle class background, as I do, you may not realize the struggles of your community members, because they don’t talk about it and you don’t ask. As Tiffany said, “Poverty is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived in it.”
I also interviewed Marsha Craiger, the administrator of the state Senior Cool Care program and the local energy assistance fundraiser through the eldercare nonprofit Mountain Empire Older Citizens (MEOC). Marsha is the one who introduced me to Deborah Nagy and helped her get an air conditioner last year. Tiffany also knew of MEOC and the assistance they offer her mom.
Marsha was thrilled to have me reach out to her for a visit. She’s a friendly, talkative, and caring Christian mom who grew up in Norton. We connected over the fact that our dads had been stationed at the same air force base in Goldsboro, NC. (They didn’t overlap, though.) Marsha talked about how there’s a stereotype that people abuse assistance programs like hers, but that it was obvious to her that people don’t.
Wise County and Norton are considered Trump country. More than 80% of Wise County voters and 70% of Norton voters supported Trump in 2024. Marsha was guarded about politics, but she was explicit in her support for federal energy assistance, which generally has had bipartisan support. Deborah Nagy also wanted me to know she’s a Democrat. Tiffany’s advocacy for justice in Virginia also indicates progressive politics. These places feel much more purple when you visit them, with lots of nuance around the politics that is not captured by the binary way our political system divides us. While it’s easy to encounter Trump voters in these places, it’s also not uncommon to encounter nonvoters, Democrats, various independents and unaffiliated voters, and Republicans who are uncomfortable with the direction of their party. In fact, I was impressed that the people I interviewed were aware and informed about current politics. The most common thing I encounter where I live is disengagement and a lack of awareness about the news. But that rant will have to wait for another newsletter.
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Kristen's Corner
It's spooky season, everyone! In honor of that, and the fact that this year has felt like several particularly hard decades rolled into several months, I'm focusing on recommendations at the intersection of spooky and joyous. Does that thrill up your spine spark joy?
A Few Minutes of Your Time
This amazing Halloween light display set to the October classic "Spooky Scary Skeletons" will first of all make your Halloween preparations feel utterly inadequate, but second of all get this song stuck in your head for the rest of the month.
Because it's a light show, I recommend cautious for those who may be impacted by flashing lights.
An Upcoming Anthology
These Dreaming Hills, an anthology of Appalachian speculative fiction, is open for submissions! https://www.appalachiabook.co/submit Although I don't have anything to submit, I can't wait to read this anthology.
A Story
Last Train from Deadwall, by André Geleynse in Beneath Ceaseless Skies: https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/last-train-from-deadwall/
I don't really know how to describe this; it's got skeletons and necromancy and also steampunk trains and corporate horror, and did I mention it was published in a high fantasy magazine? It's definitely worth a read for hitting the exact right mix of feeling and fun.
A Bonus
Do you wish you knew more words about bones? Do you like magic and swords and also the scientific method and memes? If you haven't read Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, it's a great choice for spooky season, and I cannot emphasize enough how many bone-related words you will learn. Even if you think you know all the bone words. There are more than you think, and Tamsyn Muir knows them all.
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