I've covered many stories that have involved difficult conditions. For example, I went to Sudan, where more than two million people have died in civil war. Recently I was also in war-torn Iraq. These were assignments where I had to be prepared for difficult living conditions and dangerous situations. So it was nice to finally do a story in an environment that was extremely friendly for the most part. I was in a small town with pleasant people, just observing their daily life.
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The town is the site of a famous documentary film called Stranger With a Camera, which is about Canadian filmmaker Hugh O' Connor, who was killed by a local landlord while documenting poverty in central Appalachia. The landlord resented the film crew's presence because he believed that they were trying to make the townspeople look like hillbillies. So when it comes to media in Whitesburg, that same feeling still lingers today, and I found myself constantly fighting it.
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There's an organization called Youth Bored that initially sponsored punk rock concerts, but has now expanded out to other types of music, including Christian death metal. It's pretty popular with the kids, but completely new to me. I guess I'm a little outside the loop since I'm in my mid-forties. I even tried to appreciate it, but ended up carrying ear plugs around in my pockets. The death metal was just too big a contrast to Kentucky's mainstream Appalachian music.
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