Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I found myself going into K-town today for an MRI that I didn't have scheduled until next week. Anyway, they wanted me there today, so off I went. They wanted to look at my brain because of all the strange pains I've been having in my eyes. Anyway, I've never had an MRI, but I figured it couldn't be worse than the CAT scans with the contrasting dye or the thing they hang you upside-down for. They evidently can't do those anymore because of my kidneys.

Well, I was wrong. It was pretty dreadful. They told me that the magnet was so powerful that all of the neutrons in my brain re-aligned and that was what caused the discomfort. It wasn't as awful as some of the things that have been done to me, but it was unexpected--the nausea and dizziness. Arrgh--My atoms hurt!

I've been revisiting the Foxfire series. I was in graduate school when Eliot Wigginton fell-- crashed really--from grace, and felt crushed as many people did who followed the Foxfire experiment. That this incredibly gifted educator was also a child molester defied reason. I've heard similar tales concerning the missionaries who came here during the Christy days. Not all was sweetness and light and outsiders have often taken advantage of the folk here.

But, I thought it time, since I've been doing my own research in this area, to go back and look at the Foxfire books. I think what strikes me this time is that kids really are the perfect conduit for gathering this information. The mountain people are naturally clannish and suspicious, but they would open up to high school kids much easier than they would to some anthropologist or chronicler.

The Foxfire project is still alive and well in Rabun county--without Wigginton. I imagine they are having to go further afield these days for material. Rabun county is pretty developed by now, I'd imagine. Anywhere north of Atlanta is these days.

I found this colorful and visceral worm cure in the Foxfire 1 book:

For tapeworm, starve it. Then hold some warm milk up to your nose and sniff deeply. The tapeworm will stick his head out of your nose to get the milk. Hold the milk farther and farther away from him, thus drawing him out.

~Wigginton, A Foxfire Book (Doubleday, 1972)