Category Archives: Wendy Welch

A Life’s Work Rolls On – –

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Jack’s guest post is a bit late this week, because Wendy beat him to it on Wednesday – –

When I first met Wendy she was working as a community storyteller in Kingsport, Tennessee. She used her skills to help folk in a housing project engage with the world outside through telling their stories of re-entry from prison life, from their native Appalachian towns, and from learning about other cultures through her telling them stories.

Throughout our time together she has used these storytelling skills as well as her writing to continue supporting various communities – refugees and asylum seekers in England included. She worked with the Muslim moms there to help them tell their own stories and again learn about other countries from children’s storytelling, and also teaching them to tell stories in their community.

On arriving in Scotland she quickly set up a storytelling cooperative called ‘Storytelling Unplugged’ which ran afterschool clubs and library events as well as activities in health centers and even in the only Scottish children’s hospice. Eventually she wound up on The Scottish Government traditional arts committee.

She is the only person to have served on both the US and Scottish storytelling national governing bodies.

All of that led eventually to where she is now – in Appalachia as the Executive Director of GMEC (Graduate Medical Education Consortium of SW Virginia – a real mouthful!).

So now she brings together all of that plus a PhD in Folklore and a Masters in Public Health and an enthusiasm for foraging and gardening to (drum roll please)….

bringing together medical students and trainee doctors to learn how to interact with their often misunderstood patients through programs of community nourishment and a mixture of storytelling and writing. All of that and encouraging youngsters to become medical professionals and others from outside Appalachia to relocate here and set down roots.

Wendy puts the community into medical community, and I am proud of her! Especially when her whole use of storytelling to build trust and combat misinformation landed her on NPR last week. Their program THROUGHLINES was doing a conspiracy theory and medical misinformation blog post, and they interviewed her as one of their experts. Hers was the final quote of the whole program, speaking the truth by saying that the truth mattered. In fact, it is a matter of life and death.

I am proud of my wife’s accomplishments, but listening her talk about people telling the truth might have been my proudest moment yet!

That Margarita, Though

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Bad days that follow good times feel somehow worse, as though reality wishes to remind you that you’re not on holiday anymore, you have responsibilities and the occasional wild card, so here’s one to remember that with.

I left my last aunt’s house at 6:30 am on Sunday. Four days of visiting relatives, attending conferences, making strategy, and running around with childhood friends from my old neighborhood would culminate in getting to my parents’ house in time to see my sister, who was there helping them get their wills finalized.

This was a big deal, the moment when “what happens if” became a certain plan involving who had what decisions to make and who would come live with them and inherit the house, all the things. My sister and I had agreed an amiable plan, and we really wanted to celebrate it with Sunday fun before they went to the lawyer’s office Monday.

My tire blew at 9:30. There was a rest area right there and off I wobbled–knowing what that smell, that sound, and that pull to the right meant. But hey, I had Triple A, hurray hurray!

Yeah, right.

Four hours later the tow truck took me five miles on their dime and another three on mine. Every time I called to check progress, they told me the tow truck would be there within 45 minutes. A nice truck driver offered to help me, but the Prius had no spare. A couple of people asked if they could do anything, but the tire store open on Sunday was behind us, northbound, and everyone at the rest area was going south. So Triple A got a scathing review, and I got a new tire at 3:30 pm.

Which meant the day with my sister was lost. I should have been there at 1, but still had three hours of driving. After a few phone calls (hands-free, of course) we agreed I would shop up Monday after the wills and we’d all grab lunch before I had to conduct business in Knoxville for my day job.

So I drove another couple of hours until the emotional and physical exhaustion of a packed week of extroverting coupled with the anger of realizing Triple A was a scam and I’d been took suggested now would be a good time to pull over.

I pulled off in some little town called London, Kentucky, and found a hotel with a pool. By then I was starving, and 600 feet straight down the road was this little shack of a restaurant labeled “Mexican Grille”

Whatever. I stashed my stuff in the room and walked to the place, decorated like every other Mexican foodery in America. I ordered a veggie quesadilla and the house margarita.

A minute later the waitress brought me a party in a swimming pool. I’ve seen hotel bathtubs smaller than that thing. I stared at the sparkler, which seemed to be singing something to the effect of “THE SUN’LL COME OUUUUUUT TOMORRRRROWWWW” while simultaneously promising immediate delights.

It had five pieces of fruit, three pieces of candy, and a rubber duck hanging off its rim in addition to the sparkler. Forget salted rim; there was no rim showing beneath that stuff.

The waitress openly laughed at my face, and then she patted me on the shoulder and left.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if she read my face and added a few things, or if that’s the way the margarita sparkles in London, Kentucky, in this tiny little shack of a restaurant by the side of the road in this deserted small Appalachian town.

It was the next day, talking to Jack (hands-free!) as I drove down to Knoxville that he pointed out where I had been: THAT London, where the guy had shot up the highway before disappearing. Well, maybe that explained why the place was so empty and the hotel and the restaurant were so friendly and kind. They were recovering from a very bad week as well.

The sparkler told the truth: in all the hard times and strange circumstances, we still have Light to guide us, some fun to have, a few delightful surprises to lift our spirits in bad times, and always, the friends and family who undergird our lives. Thank God for London, for sweet waitresses who makes amazing margaritas, and for sparklers.