Anne Clinard Barnhill

Essays on Childhood: The 2011 Writers, Part One

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 4 Comments

We know something is going right when we have too many outstanding essayists to announce all at once!  The Essays on Childhood project is pleased to introduce you to the first 6 of 11 writers for 2011.

The entire collective is multi-talented, courageous, and impressive.  We hope you will spend some time “getting to know” these fine people and anticipating the pleasure of reading their essays.  As editor, I have read some early drafts and can promise you an experience with these stories and reflections that will open your eyes and stir your heart with new ways of thinking about childhood experience.

Anne Clinard Barnhill

Anne Clinard Barnhill grew up in West Virginia and graduated from Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi.  Her debut novel, AT THE MERCY OF THE QUEEN, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in 2012.  She is also author of AT HOME IN THE LAND OF OZ: Autism, My Sister and Me, a memoir about growing up in West Virginia in a time before anyone had heard the word ‘autism’.  WHAT YOU LONG FOR is a short story collection published in 2009 that also contains stories set in the mountains.  Books are available from Amazon, www.jkp.com, www.mainstreetrag.com or, if you’d like a signed copy, from the author directly at acbarnhill@yahoo.com.  Anne’s essay will examine issues of racial and ethnic prejudice towards the Melungeon population; Melungeons represent a “tri-racial isolate group” mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of Central Appalachia.

Helen Adelia Slaughter Basham

Helen was born in Dunbar, West Virginia, on April 26, 1928.  She laughs at newspaperman Jim Dent’s description of “a fate worse than Dunbar.”  Her elementary through high school education all took place in a single block and only three blocks away from her home.  After Helen worked a year in an office in Charleston, “hating every minute,”  her youngest brother came out of the Navy with an engineering degree and  helped send Helen  to West Virginia University, where she majored in social work. From 1950 until 1966, Helen worked in several states (sometimes part-time during child rearing years) as a social worker or as an administrator of programs for children and families.  She describes her five children as the most important people in her life — sustaining, inspiring, and sheltering her with their love.  After retirement, Helen returned to live in a little house decorated with sage siding and purple shutters and doors, just down the street from the big box of a house where she was born.  Unbeknownst to her at the time, Helen’s 50 year old son died the day before she wrote her essay which “just poured out” of her.  Her essay describes her experiences as a fairy maker artist and her journey into creative thinking and doing after retirement.

Julian Martin

Julian is the eighth generation of his family born on Big Coal River.  He is a graduate of St. Albans High School where he was an all-conference football player. He has a chemical engineering degree from West Virginia University (WVU) and worked two years in the chemical industry. After one month training to make sidewinder missiles he joined the Peace Corps as West Virginia’s first volunteer and taught chemistry and coached the track team at a secondary school in Nigeria. Since that time, he has also worked in urban outreach, organic farming, environmental education, and conservation.  He loves his wife and several children, step-children, grandchildren and step grandchildren and two great grandchildren.  Julian’s essay is tentatively titled, “Homeplace,” and is a colorful reflection on his growing up experiences on his grandparents’ farm.  He admits though, “I called it Grandma’s house and farm ever since Grandpa threw a rake at me.”

Melanie Foster Taylor

Melanie claims she is “not a real writer’s writer, except for trying it now.”   She is a classical pianist, and piano teacher who has been inspired to write her childhood story by her former piano student, Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher. Forced into really early retirement by the economic crash in 2008-9, this former college music professor now has plenty of time to reflect and write. Oh what a blessing. Melanie is presently trapped in South Carolina, but visits the family in Charleston, West Virginia two or three times a year. She breathes anew whenever she sees the mountains again.  Her essay, “Going to the Farm,” recounts memories of trips to the jointly-held family vacation farm in Monroe County, West Virginia, from Charleston. Model-T’s, grand pianos, and wildlife ensue.

Jean Hanna Davis

Jean is an accomplished singer, guitar player, and sometime songwriter.  She has been performing since the age of 12, in all settings, ranging from concert halls to bars to churches to festivals.  Her family relocated to Charleston, West Virginia from New Jersey when she was 7, and as many times as she has tried to leave, something keeps pulling her back.  Jean and her family live in Princeton, West Virginia.  Her essay will explore her experience moving to West Virginia from New Jersey during her early years, and some of the places she began to find herself accepted in a strange new land.

Devin McGrew

Devin was born in Charleston, West Virginia. She was raised in a farm house in a little town called Liberty. At the age of 11, she moved to Sarasota, Florida, with her mother and stepfather. She lived in Florida for 10 years before returning to her hometown in West Virginia. Devin is attending college at American Public University working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in Legal Studies. She currently works in the oil and gas industry as a paralegal. She is a single mother to a beautiful daughter named Lauren. They live in a small town in rural West Virginia with their two dogs, Foxy and Molly.  In her essay, Devin plans to explore how her life in Liberty influenced her lifelong passion for shooting guns.

Winter Solstice by Anne Clinard Barnhill

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 25 Comments

It seems so perfect that today, in the midst of our winter wonderland among the West Virginia hills, that I am able to share reflections from Anne Clinard Barnhill on her snowy childhood memories here.   Winter Solstice is Anne’s much-anticipated submission to the Essays on a West Virginia Childhood project.  This project is a direct result of A Better West Virginia’s annual initiative to strengthen the mountain state.

If you were lucky enough to have a West Virginia childhood, you may know instantly what Anne means when she speaks of long winter walks connecting her, even in her tender years, with what “belonged to the infinite.”  Thank you, Anne, for sharing your memories!

Anne has been writ­ing or dream­ing of writ­ing for most of her life. For the past twenty years, she has pub­lished arti­cles, book and the­ater reviews, poetry, and short sto­ries. Her first book, AT HOME IN THE LAND OF OZ, recalls what it was like grow­ing up with an autis­tic sis­ter. Her work has won var­i­ous awards and grants. She holds an M.F.A. in Cre­ative Writ­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina at Wilm­ing­ton. Besides writ­ing, Anne also enjoys teach­ing, con­duct­ing writ­ing work­shops, and facil­i­tat­ing sem­i­nars to enhance cre­ativ­ity. She loves spend­ing time with her three grown sons and their fam­i­lies. For fun, she and her hus­band of thirty years, Frank, take long walks and play bridge. In rare moments, they dance.  You can find more about Anne on her website,www.anneclinardbarnhill.com.  If you are in the Winston-Salem, NC, area you will want to visit Barnhill’s Wine Art and Gifts on January 29 at 2:00 p.m..  Anne will be reading, signing, and discussing At Home in the Land of Oz and What You Long For (a collection of short stories).

Winter Solstice

From what I gather listening to other folks, a whole lot of people don’t like winter–they complain about the cold, the snow, the ice, the heating bills–just about every part of the season.  I, on the other hand, adore the quiet months of December, January and February.  This affection for what some describe as a dark and dreary time comes from my growing-up years in West Virginia.

I remember watching the gathering clouds, heavy and gray, stack up and up and up until the whole earth was pewter, the sky thick with pearly puffs.  I would sit on the antique couch in our living room in front of the picture window and watch as the flakes began to fall–big at first, then tapering to tiny, fast flurries.  I knew the small flakes were a good sign the snow would continue and pile up several inches–enough to cancel school the next day.  Secure in that early wisdom, I would skip my homework , saving it for tomorrow, to be done in the luxury of my bedroom, clad in the red-and-white striped flannel pajamas my dad made for me.  Instead of studying, I would stay on the couch in the quiet front room and watch the snow.

Sometimes, my mother would bring me a mug of tea or hot chocolate, though she usually saved the chocolate for when I came in, wet and freezing, from sledding.  My dad would build a roaring fire that sputtered and popped, sending little fireworks up the chimney.  My parents puttered around on those days, leaving me alone with my daydreams.  And daydream I did–me, pirouetting onstage in a pure-white sugarplum costume; singing “the hills are alive with the sound of music” and twirling across a mountain meadow; kissing Errol Flynn in ROBIN HOOD (yes, he was before my time, a hero of my father’s, but I found him irresistibly handsome in those old Saturday morning movies); and reading my poetry to a rapt crowd, bongos beating in the background.

High-faluting dreams for a girl tucked away in the West Virginia hills……while some might have found those hills confining, I found them inspiring.  The path behind my house led to Suicide Rock, an enormous boulder that, according to local legend, was the site of a dismayed Indian maiden who threw herself off the edge in despair over a broken love affair.  Often, I walked down the mountain, following the path strewn with leaves and sticks to that magical spot where the story happened.  Squirrels skittered through the woods and the occasional tapping of a woodpecker gave a rhythm to that world, the song of the forest becoming part of my blood, part of my own beat.  Alone in the woods, stories buzzed around me like gnats.  I climbed Suicide Rock and plopped down on that rough granite, imagining that the Indian maiden heard the very sounds I was hearing, felt the soft wind through the trees and saw the deer in the distance.  I dreamed other stories there on the rock and grew to love my own company and the pleasures of solitude.

That love of being alone found its best expression in midnight walks during winter, the moon casting an eerie glow to the entire world, the snow reflecting the light in loving response, Endymion to Diana in every pale snow pile.  I would head out at what my mother called “the witching hour” and walk down the road until my nose got so cold it began to drip.  The silence was palpable and soothing, the world muffled with a snowy blanket, soft as a baby’s comforter.  I couldn’t have said it at the time, but what I experienced in those long winter walks belonged to the infinite–God, the imagination, time’s longing for itself–and those interludes gave me a hunger for the spiritual, an appetite that is only satisfied when I return to the mountains, those winding roads that lead to moments of mystery, found in the West Virginia hills.

 

West Virginia, January 11, 2011

Image credits: Photo of Ms. Barnhill, http://www.anneclinardbarnhill.com

Photo of snow falling in Kanawha County, WV, E. Gaucher