In December of 2019, I and a handful of other EKU students were selected to participate in EKU Library’s Archives After Dark program. Students in the program get to pick one archive out of a curated selection, and on the night of January 17th, 2020, the students stayed overnight in the EKU Library building from 7:00 PM – 7:00 AM working on a creative project inspired by the archive they chose. Some students wrote poetry, some wrote short stories, and others made visual art. After an extensive editing process, all of the participants’ work was published in an online eBook. You can read my short story “Stewards” (and look at all the other participants’ work in the eBook) here. Below is my artist statement from the book:

In a letter penned to lament Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper’s 1968 vote against the construction of a dam in the Red River Gorge, Joseph B. Murray accused Senator Cooper of betraying his constituency and siding with “the minority groups and the socialists” by voting against the construction of a dam that would have flooded eighty percent of the Red River Gorge. Given the Gorge’s present-day reputation, I assumed Mr. Murray was in the minority. I assumed that Cooper’s vote reflected that of Powell County citizens.

I was wrong. Further research revealed locals in Powell County were dying year after year in violent floods caused by the unusual makeup of the Gorge, and the dam was seen as the best solution to save their homes, neighbors, and families. It was largely activists from outside Powell County, and even outside Kentucky, who fought successfully to prevent the dam from being built. Did those (mostly) non-local activists have a right to tell Powell Countians what to do with the land? Or is it actually Powell County’s land to begin with? Should a geographical wonder be left to the control of locals? “Stewards” is my confused attempt to work out those questions. The story follows a man surrounded by differing opinions on whether a river in his fictional Kentucky county should be dammed. He isn’t really sure what to do about it. I don’t know if his final decision is heroic or villainous. I don’t know if it is his right to do what he does anymore than I know if Mr. Murray was more right or wrong than Senator Cooper.