![]() "For the next year, we're going to be focused on rebuilding what we lost instead of reaching out, like we usually do," Morgan explains. Immediately after the floods, Morgan's role shifted from teaching kids about Appalachian music and dance to coordinating relief operations: helping house displaced people in the undamaged parts of the campus and providing transportation for those trying to apply for federal aid. The school is 120 years old, established to educate the children of coal mining families. I met Sarah Kate Morgan at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, where she serves as director of traditional arts education. After the floods, Morgan's role shifted from education to coordinating relief operations. Sarah Kate Morgan, a director at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, with her mountain dulcimer. To play and share music in Appalachian Kentucky, the wisdom went, is to be a steward of its traditions - and that duty is never more serious than in times like these, when the tangible is lost. But the music-minded residents I encountered while traveling through these counties often spoke of a higher responsibility, inherent to their roles as artists, educators, craftspeople or simply listeners. The practical steps toward recovery, though daunting, are already in motion throughout the region - repairing facilities and venues, restoring instruments, wrangling the logistics and raising the funds to gradually get programs and performances back on the calendar. And for the people, places and institutions that make up the region's storied music scene, a more complicated question looms: What does it actually mean, after a disaster like this, to rebuild an artistic community? There are still hundreds in temporary housing in state parks and travel trailers, who don't yet know when their lives will return to normal. But the absence of news cameras doesn't mean a catastrophe is over. Three months later, the floods have receded from national headlines as new weather emergencies have hit Florida, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Driving along Kentucky Route 15 in early August, I saw school buses shoved into buildings and entire homes forced off their foundations. Andy Beshear's office has put the official death toll at 43. ![]() Twenty-one public water systems were operating at reduced capacity and two more were fully disabled. Thirteen counties had received major disaster declarations from the federal government. About two-thirds of the collection "just disappeared." What was recovered will need extensive restoration.ĭamaged instruments from the Museum of the Mountain Dulcimer line the upper floor of Hindman's Appalachian Artisan Center.īy the time this summer's historic floods subsided, tens of thousands of eastern Kentucky households had lost power. The water carried away dozens of historic instruments, including early examples of the hourglass-shaped dulcimer, developed and honed in Knott and Letcher counties in southeast Kentucky, and one once played by Appalachian music legend Jean Ritchie. In the early hours of July 28, after days of heavy rain, floodwaters from nearby Troublesome Creek rushed through the museum with enough force to blow a door off its hinges and shatter the front windows. You have trepidation and dread looking in at the things you cherish and trying to will them back." When he finally did get up the nerve to visit, he says, the sight of the place gave him a ghostly chill - "like you're Indiana Jones exploring his own tomb. He knew the space all too well, having co-curated its exhibits, and had felt heartsick every time he tried to wrap his mind around what it would look like empty. It was weeks before Doug Naselroad could bring himself to set foot inside the Museum of the Mountain Dulcimer in Hindman, Ky. Barnes/The Washington Post via Getty Images At the Appalachian School of Luthiery in Hindman, Ky., days after July's catastrophic floods, luthier Kris Patrick searches through the mud-caked remains of instruments and materials.Īrden S.
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