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Epilogue Reimagining Appalachia and Ourselves And the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot My personal Appalachian saga affirms T. S. Eliot’s often-repeated assertion, and I hope this book will help other East Tennesseans and Appalachians engage in a similarly fruitful self-discovery. Yet I must confess that coming home has been a gradual, often arduous journey that is still underway. Even the most recent leg of this sojourn, the writing of this book, has consumed more time and energy— and generated far more questions—than ever I imagined when the year off from my teaching duties in 2005–06 formally initiated a process that actually began much earlier. Throughout this endeavor, treks to my parents’ cemetery bench have been a constant. Moments of reflection from that lofty vantage point enabled me to glimpse stories from a personal past and the broader East Tennessee story that were largely unknown to me twenty-one years ago when unforeseen circumstances brought me home. In the years since, this special place nurtured the words and insights that you have just read. Yet, while we historians arbitrarily determine a time to end our investigations, history itself is relentless. Hence, Pop and Mom’s bench has also served as my vantage point for witnessing and reflecting upon the never-ceasing events of East Tennessee’s ongoing saga. Some developments of late were readily apparent from my cemetery perch. For example, last year as I looked north, a new “scrubber” emerged in the shadows of the two towering smokestacks of TVA’s steam plant in the foreground. TVA officials reported that the $500 million project would reduce the plant’s emissions of sulfur dioxide by 98 percent. Yet from my parents’ bench, I knew that considerable costs accompanied this obvious good news. Surely no one could question the value of reducing air pollution, but—considering the nation’s energy Epilogue 248 and environmental dilemmas—I wondered about unintended consequences of this advance. Even though much of the coal burned at the Kingston plant comes from western states, increased TVA demand for coal could bring needed cash and jobs to hardscrabble locales like the Clearfork Valley. But at what cost? Ostensible effects of mountaintop removal for such locations and recognition that Knoxville and the Smokies surely share in the harmful effects—as well as the benefits— that accompany mining and burning coal give me pause. Of course, other changes are occurring in the Clearfork Valley and beyond that I cannot discern from my parents’ bench. I am speaking about ongoing work by Marie Cirillo and Clearfork folks and efforts like the Coal Creek Cooperative that I explored in chapter eight. Other, more recent developments also demand attention. TVA, for example, has installed a network of towering wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain about thirty miles to the northeast, just beyond the horizon from my parents’ bench. At present this is the only operating “wind farm” in the southeastern United States and represents the first half of a twofold TVA strategy that calls for expanding renewable energy sources and a return to the nuclear program that the agency abandoned in the 1980s. A prominent East Tennessee environmentalist recently praised the Buffalo Mountain project and TVA’s new emphasis on wind power and other renewable energy sources and its increased commitment to conservation. In response, Tennessee’s senior senator decried the project and advocated more conventional forms of energy production . Although vague, his plan certainly includes coal and forms of extracting it that cause the aforementioned short-term environmental damage and potentially interminable long-term costs for all East Tennesseans. The view south and east from my cemetery perch, up the Tennessee Valley and beyond to the Smokies and Blue Ridge, is more limited than the view north. But one peering upriver today might reasonably be more optimistic than even a few years ago. Overall the advent of environmentalism has reduced urban pollution coming downriver from Knoxville, and the Tennessee River today is much cleaner than when I swam in it as a youth. A number of projects underway in Knoxville and in other upriver communities promise continued progress on this front. One example is the Little River Watershed project that is introducing UT students to a regional environmental ethic and encouraging them to consider careers in related fields. New models for eco- and heritage tourism emerging in Townsend and in...

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