It's in short supply in Central Appalachia partly because Medicaid pays dentists so little. There is no shortage of them, from the visionary, like specialty agriculture such as finishing hogs on forest mast, to the more immediate, like better dental care. We just need to be willing to dream."Īppalachian journalists should seek out those dreams and ideas. They are inspirations, and a call to action.Īlso inspiring were the final words, from University of Kentucky professor Ron Eller, the leading historian of modern Appalachia: "There are ways to think about the future in the mountains in different kinds of ways than we've thought about them in the past. But this was a story mainly about innocent victims, and the fighting spirit they show. In this program, Diane Sawyer travels to the Appalachian Mountains to report on children who live in rural poverty, and in particular, four who are determined to find a better life. They are often not seen that way by some of the better-off in Appalachian communities, who dismiss the poverty, ignorance and depredation as unsolvable, the adults involved as incorrigible. The nation, and the states involved, should continue to bear some responsibility for helping Appalachia, but the region's problems are also local problems. In addition, Mountain Dew has a pH of 3. It contains 77 grams of sugar per 20-ounce serving, which equals about 19 teaspoons of sugar far more than the sugar content of other soft drinks. Solutions were relegated to the last two minutes, a blur of ideas (infrastructure and job training, green jobs, computers for every student, expanded health care) with only two methods of turning them into reality: stimulus money and more philanthropy for rural areas, one of the means this writer suggested and the one that made it onto the air.ĭespite the relative lack of attention to solutions, the reports focused fresh attention on the problems, and thus could help accomplish what Sawyer, a Kentucky native, suggested in her eloquent closing: "These Kentuckians say the beauty of the mountains is calling to all of us to restart that conversation that began more than 40 years ago," with the War on Poverty. Mountain Dew mouth is a phenomenon that occurs due to the chronic consumption of the eponymous soda. But its main follow-up of seven-and-a-half minutes on last Friday's 20/20 mostly retold the story and reported on the resulting charity - and the promises by Mountain Dew maker Pepsi to provide a second mobile unit and other help for the story's chief adult hero, dentist Edwin Smith of Barbourville. The network followed up with reports on reaction and solutions.
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