NOTES – 1986

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 17: PUBLICATIONS PMSS
Notes 1986
May

NOTES – 1986

“Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School”
May 1986

GALLERY: NOTES – 1985 May

This year Pine Mountain has faced a painful financial adjustment.

TAGS: NOTES – 1986 May, Hull House, Katherine Pettit, Ethel de Long, Environmental Education, community education, photographs, print class, community services, Weaving Club, Cooking Club, swimming pool, reflection class, Chapel, Intervention Heritage Classes, Earn and Learn Project, streams class, local schools, Plant Dye Workshop, Elderhostel, music, crafts 

[letter insert] Paul Hayes, Ellen Hayes, finances, Mary Rogers, Burton Rogers

TRANSCRIPTION: NOTES – 1986 May

P. 1

NOTES FROM THE
PINE MOUNTAIN
SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
PINE MOUNTAIN    HARLAN COUNTY     KENTUCKY 40810
Telephone: 606 / 558-3571 -3542

May              James Urquhart, Director               1986

It’s Not A Job, It’s A Way of Life!

[Image: Photograph of Old Log and entrance sign to Pine Mountain School.”]

One Christmas day during dinner, when a needed job had to be done immediately, a settlement school worker found herself complaining about being bothered during their holiday. She was told, “It’s not a job, it’s a way of life.” This way of life. . . the settlement schools. . . began as a rural adaptation of the settlement houses in the urban areas, such as Chicago’s Hull House, conceived and founded by Jane Adams. Women like Pine Mountain’s founders, Katherine Pettit, of Lexington and Ethel DeLong from the East Coast, came in to help fulfill a felt need, such as education or medical treatment. Pine Mountain’s programs have reflected the felt needs of the community from the beginning. In addition, there was a vision to provide a challenge to growth beyond their immediate needs.

Our environmental education program challenges the student to learn about the environment even before or more than they want to know. The community education program is a felt need, requested by the area people, but which challenges many to literacy, to participate in the social concerns of their lives, to development of a sense of place in their lives. The settlement school and all who work with it or in it, are challenged to a way of life that reaches beyond the mountains of Appalachia.

P. 2

In boarding school days they surpassed felt needs for standard education. They provided practical and experiential education, that could be considered far-reaching even by today’s standards.

BOARDING SCHOOL

[Images: “Print Class” – photograph of students working in the print shop. “Community Services” – photograph of a student tending to a mother and child.]

 

The community school, housing public school education for the area, exceeded standards of the region. It challenged the students to reach deep within and beyond themselves and to attain unimagined goals.

COMMUNITY SCHOOL

[Photographs with the following captions: “Weaving Club” – Child operating a loom. “Cooking Club” – children watching a demonstration by a teacher.]

P. 3

Education is a lifelong process that develops the whole person, mentally, physically, and spiritually, within the context of his society and environment.

[Photographs with the following captions: “Summer Pool Time With Local Children,” “Reflections Classes,” and “Pine Mountain Chapel.”]

P. 4

In addition to providing the tools of basic literacy, education provides an opportunity for a better quality of life.

[Photographs with the following captions: “Intervention Heritage Classes In The Library With Local Students,” “Learning To Love The Plant World,” and “Earn and Learn Project.”]

P. 5

At its best, education should be an enjoyable, experiential activity.

[Photographs with the following captions: “Music In The Schools,” “Streams Class In The Stream,” and “Classes In Local Schools.”]

P. 6

Education develops a sense of place and leads to an understanding of our relationship with our natural environment and the development of a sense of stewardship.

[Photographs with the following captions: “Plant Dye Workshop With An Elderhostel,” “Hiking The Mountain,” and “Classes In The Plant Center.”]

P. 7

Education affirms each person’s cultural and spiritual roots, while providing the perspective of understanding other ways of life.

[Photographs with the following captions: “Crafts Of Early Settlers” and “Music Of The Region.”]

P. 8

While always seeking to foster the rich cultural heritage and independent spirit of its people, the Pine Mountain Settlement School continues to provide a springboard to the future.

[Photograph of three couples performing a country dance outdoors.]

CALENDAR OF SPECIAL EVENTS

January…….Winter Botany Weekend
March……….Elderhostel
April………….Advisory Board Meeting
April………….Board of Trustees
April………….Pine Mountain Wildflower Weekend
May…………..Black Mountain Wildflower Weekend
June…………..Edible Plant Weekend
July…………….Appalachian Family Week
July…………….Elderhostel
August……….Medicinal Plant Weekend
August……….HomecomingWeekend
September….Elderhostel
October………Fall Color Weekend
December…..Nativity Play
December…..Christmas at Pine Mountain
(Write for details)        Dance Week

Our commitment to students of all ages is firm and based on the educational standards set by our founders in 1913. Your contribution today can and will make a difference tomorrow. We can make a difference together.

(Remember, your contributions are tax deductible.)

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
Incorporated
PINE MOUNTAIN, KY. 40810
606/558-3571 or 558-3542

[Small sketch of two pine trees in a mountainous setting.]

P. 9 [Insert]

[Upper left: Small sketch of two pine trees in a mountainous setting.]

PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL
Incorporated
PINE MOUNTAIN, KENTUCKY 40810
——
Telephone: (606) 558-3571

November 7, 1986

Dear Friend of Pine Mountain:

Pine Mountain is looking forward. We have sent you a letter from the past. Why? Each builder of a program has a vision of the part entrusted to him. It must meet the needs of the present and the future. However, each worker builds on the foundation of what went before. He must be aware of the strengths and potential of that foundation, and sensitive to the vision and ideals which formed it, or the building will collapse. To change the metaphor, a root is essential to every living plant. What grows with its help is not just more roots. The plant pushes upward in new forms and intricacies, but it grows from its own roots.

This year Pine Mountain has faced a painful financial adjustment. One solution would be to despair, to cut off all growth and leave a barren stump. Another would be to have faith that the vitality that is in the institution is ongoing, is needed and is a gift to the world today.

This year inflation, insurance cost increase, aging buildings and generally higher expenditures, have brought challenging demands to Pine Mountain. The School has cut down on staff; it has faced financial readjustment. When in 1918, it had a problem of five extra children wanting education, and 5 cents in the bank, it had to make the choice of saying, “No”, to people who needed its services, or of admitting the children and believing that somehow funds would be made available. The School weathered 1918. Will it weather the emergency of 1986, when school after school, person after person, has written to beg for the continuance of programs that have meant so much to them?

In this time of change we have an answer from the past. Paul and Ellen Hayes, graduates of Pine Mountain Settlement School’s boarding high school, have stepped into a challenging situation to do all in their power to see that this institution they love so much, and whose mission they believe in, may be bolstered, restored and grow as a meaningful part of the mountain on-going heritage and serve, as William Creech envisioned, “The state and the nation, and the people across the seas if they can get any benefit out of it.” That is a labor of love and faith. They have come in with loving hearts, sensitive to the various needs and with a deep commitment to understanding what needs to be done.

We rely on all of you who have meant so much to Pine Mountain’s growth and service over the past to help restore and expand the work of this unique and much blessed school in its mission of faith and love for this area and for the whole of God’s creation. “This is”, we repeat today, Miss Pettit‘s words, “A glorious world to work in.”

In the spirit of Pine Mountain,
[Signed]
Mary Rogers

 [Signed]
Burton Rogers, Director Emeritus

P. 10 [Insert]

An Old Man’s Hopes
for the Children of the Kentucky Mountains
***************************************

I DON’T look after wealth for them. I look after the prosperity of out nation. I want all young-uns taught to serve the livin God. Of course, they wont all do that, but they can have good and evil laid before them and they can choose which they will. I have heart and cravin that our people may grow better. I have deeded my land to the Pine Mountain Settlement School to be used for school purposes as long as the Constitution of the United States stands. Hopin it may make a bright and intelligent people after I’m dead and gone.

From a letter by
William Creech, Sr., 1915
PINE MOUNTAIN, KENTUCKY

Previous:
NOTES – 1985
Next:
NOTES – 1987

See Also:
HISTORY PMSS Summary 1985-1986
HISTORY PMSS Summary 1986-1987

Return To:
NOTES Index