I could barely sit through the segment, it was so painful to watch. IMO, what most people in Appalachia are lacking is hope. When you lose hope, you give up. Even if they say that they haven't given up, it's clear that many have.

It's easy for us to say "Go to the library" while we sit here in the comfort of our warm homes typing out insensitive words on our computer keyboard but if you haven't had a place to lay your head and you're cold and sore and bones are aching from lack of sleep and peace of mind, and then you have to walk 8 miles one way to get a GED, it takes a strong mindset and will to plod through.

My father was raised in poverty, not in Appalachia, but poverty nonetheless. He was a coal miner who, in his time, was paid by the ton, ie., how much coal he mined determined his pay check. Plus he worked w/explosives and many days worked in waist high water. He got caught in a cave-in once and had second degree burns on his back but he went back to work immediately after being treated. He didn't pack a lunch; he worked through his lunch hour so that he could mine an extra ton of coal to bring home more money. We didn't have a car then, so he rode the bus to and from work and from our apartment window I would watch him get off the bus and drag himself home, too tired to remove his helmet, face black w/coal dust and weary from working underground all day. He'd run his bath water and fall asleep in the tub every day, then go to bed, wake up at 2:00 AM and have a big breakfast, which was sometimes last night's dinner, then get on the bus that morning and do it all over again. He never gave up and only retired because the mine that he worked in closed and he would've had to work out of state and at age 62, decided against that. He retired w/benefits and black lung disease. We were never wealthy, to be sure, and we were broke more often than not, but we were never poor. Being broke is a condition; being poor is a state of mind.