this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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This also isn’t a matter of opinion, Appalachia has been defined by Congress as 423 specific counties; you’re either in one of those counties or you aren’t. That said, some of eastern and southern Ohio is considered part of Appalachia, but not the part JD grew up in.
Some of that selection seems suspect to me. It's weird to include central Mississippi, but exclude the blue ridge mountains. With government definitions like this comes money, so I bet there was a lot of politicking involved. That said, jd's hometown is definitely not Appalachian, though I dont think he claims that. He claims (and this is my memory from reading the book when it first came out), that his family is Appalachian, so he claims heritage that way. Not to defend him, cause I think he's a POS, but I think it is fair to claim he feels Appalachian.
There's plenty of substantial things to criticize him for
I'm not sure what you mean, the Blue Ridge Mountains are included from what I can tell?
Yeah, it looks like it includes the blue ridge mountains and a little more slightly further east even. It seems to include everything that could even be argued is Appalachian.
The Shenandoah valley, which is bounded on the east by the blue ridge is not included. That's several counties that you can see carved away between rockbridge County, VA, and Jefferson County, WV. The blue ridge continues further south from there, and a lot of it is left out on the map, too.
I grew up one county away from Middletown Ohio. It's nothing like the other Appalachian counties I've been in. It's like a very rural suburb of Cincinnati. You're 5~10 miles from a crap ton of big city amenities. I went there all the time for sports, and they came to my much more urban high school to play too. Yes, it's got some very large rural areas but it's not geographically isolated the way the rest of Appalachia is and has parts of it that are very suburban (vs truly rural).
I wouldn't be surprised if he had season passes to King's Island. That's totally like growing up in rural Appalachia, right?
I mean, as starving college students my GF and I would get season passes to KI for the next year when they went on sale in November. They were half price, so two passes, plus VIP passes to skip the lines, plus gold member parking passes came to $75-$80. We literally had to go twice a year to have saved money. Mondays and Tuesdays seem to be the best days to go. We would drive up to KI on the first day of our weekend, sleep in the back of my SAAB and drive back home to Lexington on the second day after the park closed.
Admittedly even being a full ride scholarship student, and therefore "poor" by Transy standards, I realize that I had a good bit of privilege as a young adult.