Adelind Horan grew up in Charlottesville to parents with a long history in area theater. Her mother Lydia and her father Michael have appeared in various Live Arts productions for many years. Now she’s returned home after graduating from Hampshire College.
The issue of mountaintop removal of coal prompted her to work on a series of oral history interviews with people in West Virginia and Kentucky, and this summer she’s debuting a one-woman show called Cry of the Mountain that tells the stories of the people affected by the practice. Leslie Channel of the group Secretly Ya’ll sat down with Horan earlier this month to find out more about the show.
Horan will give five performances of Cry of the Mountain at four theatres in the area every Thursday in July at 8:00.
- July 1 @ Live Arts
- July 8 @ Four County Players
- July 15 @ The Hamner Theatre
- July 22 @ Live Arts
- July 29 @ Play On!
Dad stopped by last night in a dream. Lost and confused he did seem. Perhaps looking for my Mom despite his death, he welcomed my long embrace and whispered under his breath, “take me home.”
Unlike my Mother’s family who were Italian immigrants, back when what the lady in the harbor said, was what she meant. They lived in a four room house of wood; paying twenty-five percent as they should, that was due back then for rent.
My father’s father was given a better chance, with acres and acres of farm and forest. My Grandmamma left the kitchen for her spouse, to bear him enough sons to work the land and daughters to help with the house. Then Granddad free to turn his attention, bought the saw mill before the last depression, knowing full well that you never could tell with Hoovers in the White House and halls of Justice, when Uncle Gino Dillinger like friends would come to call, needing what all farm boys needed at the end of the day, a meal from the wood burning stove, and a place to stay.
From dawn to dusk the sons worked the land, while my Grandmamma cooked their slaughtered ham, and father’s father supervised the wood piling from the day’s saws. It was all workable and peaceful until the city business suits reached in with both paws. Worst of all, for the top soil and roots, was the combo of government men and city business suits.
Few things on which my two grandfathers and Uncle Gino agreed, were never respect a Banksta unless you have the deed. Government placed third behind Bankstas, as destroyers of our roots in the land, but none were worse than the business suits given a free hand.
All are gone now except Mom, but I still hear their voices with less calm: Our roots are Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, but we still have the soil to hoe. What was free for the taking was already given to almost all. Still if we let the top soil be swept away, by those who come to reap what the locals sow then speed away, we fail to see the truth beneath our boots that the real gangstas come in Board Room silk suits.
Though it’s energy we need more from here than abroad, it’s mindset that keeps us wasting the sod, that produces what the roots intended, top soil of cultural diversity un-ended. Of TVA, FDR & JFK, Uncle Gino was somewhat forgiving in his day, but always cursed the two Hoovers, and the Republican who golf did play, while Pentagon & Corporations cut our roots in takeover, that abused uneducated locals too desperate for work and pay, into blowing up mountains, killing past & future, and with unnatural causes, destroying the land and streams deep, till without toil the office suits did reap, rewards from Corporate betrayal of “We the People,” who are the washing away top soil.
Dedicated to and Inspired by Adelind Horan and her “Cry of the Mountain, http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2010/06/29/adelind-horan-brings-cry-of-the-mountain-to-charlottesville/ at Hamner Theater, Nelson County Virginia http://www.hamnertheater.com/