On today’s episode of Everywhere Radio, I’m thrilled to have two very special guests, my friends and rural advocacy colleagues, LB LB Prevette and Michael Cooper. LB and Michael have a lot in common. They are both part of a growing movement of rural homecomers, younger people who are returning to their rural roots and hometowns to build a life and committing to making their communities more inclusive, vibrant places to live. They’re also both from Wilkes County in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, not far from Boone and my alma mater, Appalachian State University. 

Whitney: 

Wilkes county is perhaps best known in recent years for its annual music festival called MerleFest, which celebrates Appalachian roots music, and according to the legendary Doc Watson, whatever other styles the performers are in the mood to play. Fun fact, I volunteered at MerleFest, one summer and met the great Doc Watson, and had my first ever sip of Moonshine, those were good times. Like the great Watson family, Michael and LB are investing their time and resources in creating spaces, and events and intentional moments where Wilkes county residents get to build community together. Prior to her current role as community partnerships’ manager for the national organization lead for America, LB was the Director of Community Engagement for Forward Wilkes, which serves minority and LGBTQIA youth in Appalachia. 

Whitney: 

And Michael is a local attorney, and journalist whose articles have appeared in national and state publications. And he’s currently running for Mayor of North Wilkesboro. LB and Michael have also done a lot of other really cool high profile stuff with national and international organizations like Citizen University and the Aspen Institute. So yeah, these are the kinds of people you want to go to a music festival with. I’m a little giddy that they said yes to joining me on Everywhere Radio. So thank you LB and Michael, for being here. 

LB  Prevette: 

Thanks for having us. We’re always excited to get to talk. Especially with you. 

Whitney: 

That’s so great. Hey, Michael. 

Michael Cooper: 

Hey, good morning. I don’t know about being mentioned in the same sentence with Doc Watson, but we’ll roll with it. That’s kind of high praise. 

Whitney: 

I thought you’d like that. I enjoyed remembering that summer, that was kind of a crazy summer. 

LB  Prevette: 

You have perfect Patrick Rothfuss the Doc, MerleFest and Moonshine. 

Whitney: 

So, I wanted to start by asking each of you to tell all of us a little bit more about your homecoming journeys. And in particular, I wanted to know, if it’s working out the way you thought it would. I’m a rural homecomer. And that’s a question that I asked myself on the regular as I’ve been back in Athens for almost a decade now. And sometimes I think, is this what I had in mind when I came home? So I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about your journeys and answer that question in particular, is it what you thought? LB, you want to start? 

LB  Prevette: 

Yeah, sure. I don’t think I would be creative enough to have thought this was possible. I came home I don’t think I was that imaginative, growing up in Wilkes County, it’s the place and one of those towns where you’re told if you’re smart, you have to leave. If you want to be successful, get out. Especially if you’re a gay kid. If you’re a queer kid, you have to leave small towns. Our big and powerful partners in the cities aren’t coming to save us, they’re just buying as bus tickets out. And so it’s what I did and went away, was actually living out west and studying at the University of Nevada, out there I was working with LGBT youth in that area. And there was one day rode at an event, and there was more adults in the room than kids. And that was my decision to go home because I was, man, there’s nobody for 17 year old me back home, there’s no one in Wilkes. 

And when I first moved home, I had no real plan. I thought just living here, that was my advocacy, just living and being a queer person in Wilkes County was enough. And it is for anyone who’s doing that, by the way that is incredibly hard and powerful, and thank you for doing it if you’re back in those places where we’re told to not be. But I just kind of, I call it stumbling forward, where I never really had a path. But people started tapping me on the shoulder and asking. For me, our work with the four books came out of a failed county commissioner run, Coop’s going to be a politician, for sure because it’s not me. And out of that failed county commissioner run we kind of found this really vibrant community and this huge volunteer base of people who really got excited to see someone their age who knew their local issues and cared about them and was willing to call out and challenge corruption in our local government and things that just tend to get swept under the rug. 

And with that, Megan Barnett, who is a superhero here at Wilkes County, had started Forward Wilkes, so she and I were working on this, how can we combine this with the volunteer group and this passion she had, at the time, we were called the Millennial Action Committee. And we were just going to the town because they were raising rent, and pushing out our favorite businesses. So we were just going in there to yell at them about it. And now it’s turned into a group that we have our mountain bike rides every Tuesday, that are facilitated leaving anchor coffee, we’ve got our youth hangout that we do in partnership with St. Paul’s Episcopalian church, which invites the LGBT youth in the community to come to an open and affirming area that we also have now in group counseling, we actually have a therapist who spends her time doing group counseling with LGBT youth. 

-But we’re able when it’s not COVID, to have teams on the green that caters for minorities of doing large scale outdoor summer events that are geared and created by and curated for those communities. So it’s really grown into this organization, it’s still very grassroots, we’re not anything registered people come in and just have an idea. They run with it. That’s a great idea, What do you need? How can we support you? And so it’s put out some just really amazing ways for people to connect without an agenda. When you have an intentional agenda, you get these intentional prescribed outcomes, and we just create places for people to gather and fellowship. It’s kind of coming home, you can’t drink what comes out of that. 

Whitney: 

That’s wonderful. And I love that description of stumbling forward, that really resonates with me, and in a way, just seeing what emerges as you participate. So Michael, what about you? Can you give us a snapshot of your journey? 

Michael Cooper: 

It’s pretty similar to LB’s and that I don’t think either of us figured when we were younger, that we were going to come back. We were taught that to succeed is to leave, and I think we both sort of envisioned our lives taking place somewhere else. And it’s funny, LB and I grew up on the same side of the county, only a few miles away, went to the same elementary school and middle school and high school, I think she’s four years younger, I’ve just had a birthday so we didn’t know each other, growing up, but had a similar art. I’m from the country, LB is the country. I’m from a little suburban neighborhood, but LB grew up on a farm, she is 100% the real deal. 

Michael Cooper: 

And so we had similar experiences growing up, but slightly different in some ways. My story was very tied to the community growing up, mom was a school teacher at that elementary school, she owned the used bookstore on main street of our downtown. And so we spent a lot of time around the store, around the community, my very first job was delivering newspapers, door to door in our downtown. That community was a part of my life, even though I never really thought that I was going to live there again. And so I went off to college, went off to law school, had always great opportunities, but also was a bit of a screw up during my younger years. And it’s funny how these bigger issues things like rural urban divide, or things like the opioid crisis, are also part of your individual stories and part of your friends and your family and people’s lives. And my generation graduating from high school in 2004, a lot of us went off to college at Upstate University, Whitney, where you went, I’m a proud graduate. 

Michael Cooper: 

But my friends that got caught up in that opioid crisis, and I dealt with it battled addiction when I was in my early 20s and it was something, there’s a Robert Frost quote that comes to mind when I was sort of getting my life back on track. And the quote is, “Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” And so when I was getting my life back on track, the easiest place to do that was back home in North Wilkesboro. And so after law school, I took a job at a law firm on Main Street to practice law because it was easier for me to find a job and people who would take me in there than anywhere else. 

Michael Cooper: 

And so my life started again there back home, practicing law, being in court every single day, representing people who’s going through the same stuff that I’ve gone through in my own life, dealing with addiction and things like that. And so I never set out to come back. I just fell into it because that’s the that’s the way life goes sometimes. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love being here, I love this place, and it’s been a powerful part of my story. And so now I get to advocate for the folks who live here. 

Whitney: 

Thank you for sharing that and that Robert Frost quote. Dee Davis, the president of Rural Strategies often refers to that quote, “Home is where they have to take you in.” Well I wonder as was we keep thinking about Wilkes county and your intentional efforts in that space, and that place. Are their primary influencers, or are influences that you lean on, or people you lean on, Or are ones who have come before you, that come to mind as you make your way through Wilkes County? 

LB  Prevette: 

I know, personally for me, a lot of it’s been driven as to sort of coming from a farming community. I just expect people to take care of each other, farmers don’t show up, if someone asked for help you don’t show up and go, why didn’t you do this, they understand that you can do everything right and still fail that. Sometimes it doesn’t rain, sometimes it rains too much. And so that mindset is just one that I’ve always had, just because someone failed doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. That happens all the time in agriculture and we understand that about each other. 

LB  Prevette: 

So kind of that modeling I saw through my dad and our farm communities is deeply influenced me. And then I know myself and coming from a trailer on chicken farm into the world that I walk in now, I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for Michael Cooper. I think everyone out there is battling imposter syndrome. And I wish they all had a Michael Cooper to kick them in the rear and hold them hostage outside a coffee shop and make them reply to emails for opportunities, and believe in themselves. So I think that’s been really huge for me, both just the community I came from, which both gives me my passion for service and feeling of you’re not worthy of doing it, that you’re not paying enough to have it that when you have someone kicking your rear, it’s amazing what you can do. 

Michael Cooper: 

It’s funny that she talks about imposter syndrome because I feel like I deal with it all the time. So I’m .glad that I’m a help with hers. But I need somebody to help with mine sometimes to also she has a Dolly Parton tattoo. So in terms of influences, I feel like we have to give a shout out to Dolly here. 

Whitney: 

Always. 

LB  Prevette: 

Please don’t mention Dolly. And I was, if me and Whitney start talking about Dolly, the rest of this podcast is gone. But guess what a champion of just no judgment, pure love and I can be all of my identities. I can be everything I want to be without sacrificing any of it yet, not only for life, for sure. 

Whitney: 

Amen. 

Michael Cooper: 

It was, I was really fortunate to grow up with that bookstore and the family. And at the time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have all these books because mom would want you to read for an hour, for every hour of television that you watch. And that the time is a kid and a teenager, you hate that kind of thing. But then looking back, it was really a blessing. So that had a big influence on my life but it’s funny how you realize over time, the little things that also were sort of ingrained in you a few years ago, I had an uncle who passed away. And you’ve seen the picture of the farm that mom grew up in Ashe County, which is a beautiful hillside there in West Jefferson, North Carolina. 

Michael Cooper: 

And there’s a family cemetery on the hillside above the farm that dates back to 1800. And so we’re up there in the cemetery for this funeral, and one of the cousins was doing part of the eulogy. And he was saying about this guy’s sort of way of living that, he thought that nobody should look down on me and I shouldn’t look down on anybody else. And that’s as powerful as anything that you can find in any book is a way of living and equality and things like that. And sort of those things are instilled in you along the way that you sort of, you don’t realize at the time, but that’s sort of, that’s sort of my political philosophy too. It’s sort of we’re all in this together and everyone should have a voice and that goes back to learning that from folks who grew up in this farm and West Jefferson, North Carolina. 

LB Prevette: 

And that’s speaking of Coop’s mom’s bookstore, that was also a huge influence on me. Because being four kids, the thrifted bookstore. And my mom was all about that Nora Roberts as they were in the 90s. And that was the front section of browse about, but he kept going to the back there was all the great fiction and then when you walked into the left in the back was all the way, school literature, children’s literature and I still have the stacks of all the Doug Watterson comics that I had gotten from browse about because I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes, for Coop’s mom bookstore that browse about, even though we didn’t know each other at that time, was also a special place in my heart. And one of the things I think of most fondly here at Wilkes. 

Whitney: 

Is that bookstore still here, Michael? 

Michael Cooper: 

So Whitney, it closed last year after 36 years on Main Street. And it’s funny, my mom and her sister started out in the back of a gas station in Ashe County. So they had this stand in the back of a little gas station convenience store with a couple hundred romance novels and then kept growing and they both had a store in West Jefferson in North Wilkesboro. But yeah, we had a good run and obviously, folks like LB, are still reading a lot of these books. Me too. So it’s been a blessing to have that. 

LB  Prevette: 

Your mom and Dolly Parton are the reason I know how to read. 

Whitney: 

That is going to be the tagline for this episode, your mom and Dolly Parton are the reason I know how to read. Love it. Well I want to get a little grittier here for a minute, we’ve been celebrating kind of the foundational aspects of your lives, in your small community. But I want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you all are facing, both internally and externally, right. So there’s a lot of work that internally, we’re all in small places are working on at the moment. 

Whitney: 

We’re just like the rest of the nation, we’re coming face to face with the pandemic with a reckoning around structural racism. So internally, there are all these things that we’re holding. And then of course, externally, there’s this lack of equity around rural investment, rural funding, rural policy, and rural awareness. So I wonder how all that is playing out in your work because you’re both local leaders, and you have national platforms, and you have a national profile. So all of those things together. LB, do you have thoughts about that? 

LB  Prevette: 

Yeah, absolutely. It’s when we think about COVID, and the impact it’s had especially on like broadband access in rural areas I have a friend here, who’s an elementary school teacher, and out of her 23 students, two had internet access, when it came time to go home. And so it’s like, how do you move forward with that, so that’s been huge. I’m grateful working with Lead For America, we have a partnership this year with [inaudible 00:17:53] Forward and a lot of other sponsors called the American Connection Org. Where we actually have 50 fellows going to work in underserved and rural areas on broadband advocacy, infrastructure, ISP accountability, and just doing really incredible work. So I’m grateful in the national to be able to still do work that support places like my own home. 

LB  Prevette: 

I know kind of Wilkes County, it’s hard to talk race in places that are like, white, and just like, over it because it is something that doesn’t feel tangible. It’s not something that the majority of our citizens like, see because it’s just not part of our daily life. And it’s really hard when you’re talking to people who also have been exploited by factory jobs going overseas, by the predatory tactics of the opioid industry, by coal mines leaving, so you have all these people who’ve been exploited. And they say, “Me too.” And we’re yeah. 

LB  Prevette: 

All those things that happened to you, these are true, you were also the victim. It’s just none of them were because you were white, like all of your black citizens and neighbors have been through all those experiences. And right, so it’s kind of like teaching them to at the and, to think for so long when we look at rural white communities, people don’t acknowledge that they have also been persecuted through systems. It’s just none of them had to do with our race. Race it’s just for our BIPOC neighbors, there’s all the things that happen to you. And so think it’s like a hard conversation that really starts with grounding and yes, you have also been a victim. It’s just the end. None of it is because we are white. 

Michael Cooper: 

Whitney, it’s interesting, where LB and I are at, we didn’t learn about the opioid crisis by reading it the Atlantic. We didn’t learn about the rural urban divide by reading some New York Times out there. These were things that were happening and we need these in a personal way. And it’s sort of like that interesting story arc of, of what you’ve seen growing up here. I couldn’t have asked for anything else, I had a pretty comfortable existence. North Wilkesboro, Wilkes county has sort of grown up around furniture, manufacturing and textiles. And we were the birthplace of Lowe’s Home Improvement, and we had a NASCAR race and all these wonderful things. And so much of that though, started to go away in the 80s and 90s, a lot of the factories began to close. 

Michael Cooper: 

Lowe’s move their corporate headquarters closer to Charlotte, we lost their headquarters, we lost a NASCAR race. And it was tough to go through that, and statistics, from the year 2000, when I started high school to the year I came back in 2014, we experienced the second worst decline in median income in the United States. But those were people’s livesi I, you knew those people, buildings, and boarded up stores on Main Street that were closing, and things like that. So you need that in a really personal way. But the answer to that can’t be that you just walk away entirely, or you give up on those places, those people, a lot of what was going on in 2016 with sort of grievance politics was what happens if you don’t fill that void, and you don’t give people a reason to get excited about what’s going on in the community and take pride in who they are. 

Michael Cooper: 

And it’s funny because we’ve done these things before, Lowe’s was something that started here, was a local hardware store, we the folks here who were driving moonshot in the back roads, helped to invent NASCAR with their own form of entrepreneurship. We have these talent and resources and skills here and then sometimes they grow and they get big, and they leave us. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it again and I think so much of this work has to be about giving folks pride about who they are, and where they come from. And as LB was talking about, we’re not the ones who caused the Great Recession, we didn’t invent the painkillers that started causing the opioid crisis, we didn’t come up with those things. 

Michael Cooper: 

They happened here and we have to take responsibility for being involved in some of these things. But at the same time it’s the folks who are reading those New York Times articles, who are the ones who worked on Wall Street and caused the global economy to collapse. And we have a pretty good story, we shouldn’t feel bad about who we are and that’s a challenge to people LB and I ages’. If you have these resources in your own life, you’re able to get a degree and have a good job, now you can work remotely, find a way to go back or serve or do something, if that’s your home, and you care about it. Be a part of that story, don’t, walk away from it. So that’s a challenge for all of us. 

Whitney: 

LB did you want to respond to any of that, or build on it? 

LB  Prevette: 

Yeah, as Coop talks about that 2016, and people kept coming to Wilkes and what happened? Towns like these, and I think for me and one of the things I talk about a lot is just like the lack of representation of how diverse rural communities are on TV. So if you want to be progressive in a rural area, you can’t do that. Or you have to, I’m sure we all at some point, I was told drop your accent, I had a professor in college, pull me up afterwards and be like, I can’t understand you. And like putting in speech therapy and learning how to speak at the center my mouth, I did not take that well. But my accent is still much less than it used to be. 

LB  Prevette: 

And so it’s just this whole idea of what you have to forsake part of your identity if you want to embrace another. And so like, when you hear our voices on TV, they’re the same, like stereotypes and caricatures that don’t reflect my hometown. You hear my accent, and it’s just like hillbilly hand fisherman, or Duck Dynasty. I was that’s just not appealing, sounds cool, it looks awesome, it is vibrant, and it is diverse, and it is lovely. And your accent, I think our identity or culture, especially I think, in the era of Trump has become a costume that other people put on to go play conservative or play all this. And he came back and he or someone with your ass even if they agreed with me, you’re just rude. 

LB  Prevette: 

I’ll be damned if I go break somebody’s window. Because I don’t know anyone from, it’s just, they’re playing us without understanding, the roots in like redneck in labor, organizing and diversity, and what this like hills and hollers have created for pockets of community like that. So we’re just, people wonder why you are siloed away or why there is this rush to urban areas because you don’t show them a way of life here. We look at the media, you don’t show people that you that people couldn’t just possibly be here, they are here. They’re already doing it. So that’s that’s just where the big need, I think just more representation of lives this being lived wholly and fully without having to forsake any part of your identity. 

Michael Cooper: 

And Whitney, to follow up on that, it’s interesting because going back to 2016, we have the New York Times here, PBS NewsHour, NBC News, BBC Radio 4, there was a lot and sort of the five month period. And when those folks came to town, some of us met with them and got interviewed, but we would take them to the millennial coffee shop in the basement of this building right next to the building where the original Lowe’s used to be, or we would take them to meet our friend Devin Weil, who was this person who battled addiction in her own life, lost her kids, lost her job, lost everything got back on her feet, what she did, she started a recovery center for other folks in the community doing amazing work. 

Michael Cooper: 

And for the most part, those folks didn’t get written about, it was always about here’s the bad thing is going on there. Because that has better headlines and sells more newspapers. But all the things that they wanted to write about were things that the factories have closed in the 90s, those jobs were left in the 90s. The opioid crisis peaked here in 2009, and it had been years before anybody from out of town sort of noticed it. And it’s when they came to town, we were wanting to say, Hey, here’s this cool stuff that we’re starting to do. We’re resilient, we’re getting back on our feet, and they’re like, we just want to write about what happened 10 years ago. And so I think telling, doing what LB does and telling the stories of the actual good, positive things that are happening on the ground here is a big part of this because it is going on in places like Wilkes County. 

LB  Prevette: 

Yeah, I think the title of that article from the New York Times, feeling left down and left behind with little hope for the future. I will never forget it, that was infuriating. I was, no part of that is how I feel about my community. And it was very much, that was not the story they were shown. But that was a story they wanted to write when they came here. So that [crosstalk 00:26:47]. 

Michael Cooper: 

It’s interesting how cyclical these things are, for a few decades people went off to college, got a degree had to go work in Raleigh, or Charlotte because that’s where the jobs were inserted in that night. Now because of zoom, a lot of those jobs are going to spread out. But if you look at the things that we have to offer here in Wilkes County, you have scenery, cost of living, quality great outdoors, we have all these great things to offer. And now it’s a matter of Okay, well folks would say, that’s a great place, but I can’t work there and have my job. Now you can and so we’re in a pretty decent spot coming out of the pandemic, and I feel pretty positive about our future here in this rural place, like Wilkes County. 

Michael Cooper: 

And so the most important thing, though, is getting people to believe again, and just taking pride, it’s no longer these big sort of barriers to growth and development is now, you just have to believe in yourself again, and that’s one of the hardest things to do. 

Whitney: 

Well, that’s kind of a nice segue to a question I have for both of you. It’s actually a question somebody put to me the other day, and I’ve been ruminating on it since. And it was, what is yours to do in this moment? So this moment where we’re emerging from, we’re sort of emerging from a pandemic, although, that might be questionable. We are in this moment of national reckoning in a lot of different directions. There’re issues of climate change, and the wealth gap, a lot of kind of overwhelming issues that we’re all facing, whether we’re rural or urban, or in between. And I just wonder what is yours to do at this moment? 

Michael Cooper: 

For me I think it’s doing your part, but also being willing to be vulnerable, and be honest, and telling my own story, that a little bit with some of the stuff that I dealt with. It’s easier probably professionally to have that as part of your biography. But at the same time, there are hundreds and thousands of people you who have dealt with similar stuff, who were having a difficult time getting back into society because they didn’t have the resources or the family support that you did. And if you don’t speak out and help to bring people out of the shadows, then what are you even doing? So I think I play my role to help other folks get a second chance like I did is important. And then just also making folks have that pride in this place where we live, I think, is one small thing that I can do. But I think that that can add up and build over time. 

LB  Prevette: 

Yeah, that’s a great question Whitney, I was thinking, I also my whole journey I’ve never known what’s mine to do, I’ve just done the next right thing. What’s the next step that it feels like I’m supposed to be doing, I could have never imagined living in the world that I do, or walking into the rooms that I do. It’s wild to where it feels taking up space in that and who talks about vulnerability and being authentic. I was born without whatever that filter is, that tells you that might be embarrassing, don’t say. I just was born without that one. And so being in rooms a lot of times with people who just have never experienced this within my fellowship, we’re really grateful to be a part of the Civil Society Fellowship. 

LB  Prevette: 

And none of them have really grown up rural, and then I’m like rural for Wilkes County. Wilkes is rural, and I’m on the white trash of Wilkes County side. And so explaining to them this is a pulley system for skinning deer, or this is what 10,000 chickens actually looks like. And realizing that people don’t know that blows my mind, it is so foreign to me that we all live in town now and do stuff, but we grew up like this, right? So I think it’s standing in those places where I still feel deeply removed from the community I was raised in. I feel like I have left them behind, at times. And then I go into rooms that have to do that, they think my current life is rural and so Southern. And so it’s serving for me, my thing has always been serving as that translator, that conduit who can code switch back and forth into those spaces, and go find resources, knowledge and best practices, and they come home and deliver in a way that my community understands, and wants to be a part of. 

LB  Prevette: 

And the same way of explaining my community and all the things that maybe stereotypically people think that are white trash, redneck all the bad terms they use that I use with such pride. And explain to them how powerful it is. What an act of resilience it is to live like this, what a testament, to your abilities to just determine your future when it’s just humans land out in this area, and what it means to be connected to nature. We talk about new international climate change that we get easy to ignore in the city, it’s hard to ignore it when we keep seeing the river flood more and more and more, and it doesn’t snow anymore. And seeing kind of we live in the world, in the natural world, and we see the impacts faster. So I think there’s a call for people to get back to see the land to know the impact they’re having on it. 

Michael Cooper: 

And Whitney, to piggyback on that so much of this is just lifting up and empowering other folks like us, I think something that LB and I have realized in being in these sort of spaces in leadership programming is that I’m a lifetime 2.5 GPA, I wasn’t the best student in college or law school. But it’s not the folks who are sort of that 4.0 perfect resume, that sort of thing who make the most interesting and compelling leaders. It’s folks like LB, who maybe didn’t go to college to run a nonprofit or things like that, which you fall into it because you care, you have a purpose, and there’s a need in the community. And those are the folks doing the most incredible work. And I think knowing what that looks like, and helping to lift up others in rural America who maybe didn’t set out to do these things, but there’s nobody else doing it. So you have to, but you have a purpose in it. I think it’s really powerful. 

LB  Prevette: 

I think what’s the saying leadership exists in a vacuum, and all we keep hearing is that rural America has a vacuum for young people, it doesn’t exist. That’s where if your mid early career professional and it doesn’t feel quite right, try going into a rural community. There’s probably an opportunity for you to do something life changing and powerful just because there’s not a lot of other people trying to do it. 

Whitney: 

So I want to ask you all before we close this conversation, what are you reading right now? What are you watching? What are you listening to that you think the rest of the country needs to know about? 

Michael Cooper: 

This is a great question Whitney, for somebody with a bookstore in the family, I have way too many books. I’m reading everything right now. So a couple books, I read the Bakari Sellers’ Memoir, I just finished that. He’s from a different part of the South, the rural south, but very similar in some ways Denmark, South Carolina, and it’s just interesting to hear how even though this was a predominantly black, rural agriculture community, the stories are exact same, it’s a very similar living experience growing up in Wilkes, so I recommend the Bakari Sellers’ Memoir. There’s a book I’m reading right now, The Last Best Hope by George Packer. And he has this great understanding of how we sort of broken off into tribes and things like that, but the things that we can you really have in common and care about that’s a great book. 

LB  Prevette: 

I was reading Here Lately, I’ve been lucky I freeze up. I can’t tell my back. Okay, sorry, I couldn’t tell who had frozen up there. I try to not watch a lot of TV because we didn’t have TV growing up. So it’s not a habit that I developed. But yeah, reading Here Lately, I’m super proud of one of my fellows, Marlon Peterson his book Bird Uncaged came out that I have read through and then now, kind of listening to the audiobook, which he recorded himself. And it is awesome, just really phenomenal, powerful piece about his time and the prison industrial complex. And then both the cages we live in, literally and figuratively. I cannot recommend that highly enough, and then I had just finished up Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, which has, again, just really moving out there. And there’s actually a new movie that I have just queued up to want to watch and you guys would probably, we don’t, they called Holler, an independent filmmaker, he went back home, and it’s just kind of released. I just bought it actually, but I haven’t had time to sit and watch it. So yeah, one I’ll put out there on that. 

Whitney: Yeah, thank you all so much. I love it. I love being with you. I can’t wait to come visit, now that the pandemic’s over.