Brandon Dennison: 0:10

All right, this is Change in the Coalfields. My name is Brandon, I'm your host. This week is going to be really fun because we have a colleague and a coworker of mine, and a friend, Marilyn Wrenn, who's the Chief Development Officer currently, for Coalfield Development. Of all the different folks that I've worked with in community development, I think Marilyn has the deepest, the richest sense of why this work is so important, what it takes to do this work, and how Appalachia got to the situation that it's in, and therefore insights into how Appalachia can get out of where we're at and get to a better place. So Marilyn, I just have a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for you. And I'm excited today to slow it down a little bit and have more of a conversation than what we can have at the beginning of the end of a staff meeting and let let our listeners in into your brilliant mind.

Marilyn Wrenn: 1:06

Thank you, Brandon. I'm looking forward to this. You and I have worked together for a long time.

Brandon Dennison: 1:13

We have even before, so folks should know even before Marilyn was at Coalfield Development she was with a group you're going to hear about in the podcast called Center for Economic Options. And CEO for short was one of the very earliest supporters of me of Coalfield Development, I was putting on a meeting of stakeholders to discuss green collar jobs in Wayne, West Virginia in the summer of 2010. And I was really just sort of Googling around calling around for folks who might be supportive of that found CEO. And the meeting was like less than a week away. And Marilyn and her colleagues there Pam didn't blink an eye and said we'll be there. And just they believed in me and Coalfield and what we were doing and that was really a morale booster, Marilyn.

Marilyn Wrenn: 2:07

Well, you know, I mean, I still remember that I remember getting the call or reading the email, however it came in. And, you know, Pam Curry, and I, you know, we've been, she'd been the director of CEO for many, many years. And I joined the organization. When I moved back shortly after I moved back in I think I joined them in 1999. And, you know, so we had been working on lots of different strategies really to connect people who were disconnected from the Appalachian economy, to the economy, focus basically on women-owned businesses and farm-based businesses and had started doing social enterprise and trying to figure out how to get more state level support for these really small businesses. And I think when we talk with you, when, when you contacted us to talk about your ideas, all of a sudden, I was kind of like, 'a Ha, there it is. Yes, yes.' You know, you were you were speaking the language and speaking it from a vantage point that we were, I think, kind of intuiting toward, but you know, you were you were coming out of school, you had studied it, and it was just kind of like, let's figure out, you know, what we can do here to help help this sorry, young person.

Brandon Dennison: 3:30

I was, I was very young.

Marilyn Wrenn: 3:34

To, you know, to see this, and I remember driving to Wayne County, I don't think I've ever been to Wayne County. I remember, you know, parking at the Chase building and coming over to, I guess the meeting was there at the bank.

Brandon Dennison: 3:47

The County Commission was was renting the upstairs of the bank. Great memory.

Marilyn Wrenn: 3:54

I remember it vividly because it was such a, it was such a spark. And just the way, the way that you know, you were conceptualizing how this work could look and how social enterprise could could play a role. And using the, you were with the housing authority, right, so you know, using how you could you could use some of the resources that were available there to to, to fund the efforts it was kind of like okay, yeah, this is very interesting. So and then then after that, I remember several meetings at our office working on various grants trying to get you all.

Brandon Dennison: 4:34

You had the coolest office, I wish, how can I've verbally helped people visualize it was this second story in this historic building in downtown Charleston and you in between you and Pam you had? I think all the furniture was like made out of reclaimed barn wood. And then you just had plants it was just like a live like a like a jungle. Just plants everywhere. Yeah. It was right around the corner so a ton of natural light came in.

Marilyn Wrenn: 5:03

Yep. Yep. They had a stained glass window there. The desks were actually made from an old growth butternut tree that had fallen. And I still have my my dining room table is one of those tables and Pam still has the rest of it. But it was beautiful. Butternut white walnut wood, supernatural. Not supernatural, but very natural. And yeah, I still have some of the plants in my current office. But yeah, we spent so much time working together trying to figure this out that we spent more time in that space working with each other than...

Brandon Dennison: 5:40

You would feel it when you when you walked in. And also Cindy Manning, who's with Coalfield Development now she was on the CEO team. And a part of that just creating that great environment. When you walked in the office, you could feel the creativity, the commitment, the love, really love for this place love for each other appreciation for what Appalachia is and what it could be.

Marilyn Wrenn: 6:03

Yeah, well as West Virginians, I mean, you know, that's, I, I'm from, I'm from here, right? You know, my, my, my mom's family was from Clay County, my my dad's was from Charleston, I grew up in Charleston. And you know, I just have a deep abiding connection to this place. And I did go to University of Kentucky, my sisters, and I all for some reason ended up at University of Kentucky, and we all came back, I was gone the longest I was gone a total of about 10 years, living in Lexington. And that's where I got involved in rural economic development through a federal job with the, with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and I started doing community facilitation then, and got turned on to this idea of Community Foundation's, and started learning about private foundations. And at the time, it was kind of like, well, this is a cool way to fund local work. There, you know, this is this is interesting, this is, you know, back in the late 80s, early 90s. And I had some really interesting experiences, working to develop Community Foundation's out in the western part of Kentucky, and then saying how you probably you may or may not remember, like when you were searching out private foundations to see if they would fund your project, you had these big volumes of hard bound books.

Brandon Dennison: 7:39

I came in just towards the end of that, yeah.

Marilyn Wrenn: 7:41

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, it was such a process to go through and, and try to figure out like, who funds in your area who funds in your interest area? So it was it was, but it was fascinating, because I hadn't run across that.

Brandon Dennison: 7:54

And you found that which sort of makes sense, because West Virginia has a lot less of these things called Foundations, than many other places, right?

Marilyn Wrenn: 8:03

Yeah, yeah. And that's what really started kind of occurring to me that, you know, I'd come I'd come home on weekends, I, you know, talk to people, you know, because I was really enjoying my work with NRCS. And, and, but I just had this thought in my head, 'Well, geeze, if I can do this in Kentucky, if I can help, you know, with our C and D districts, if I can help our C and D districts figure out how to fund their projects, why the heck am I not back in West Virginia, helping Appalachia, helping my people, you know, fund projects?' So I came back and went to work for the development office, because that sounded like a, you know, a good place to start when you wanted to come back and help develop West Virginia. And so I worked there and while there they had a program to get your, I forget what they call it your qualification as an Economic Development Specialist. I should probably remember that, but I don't. But they have, they sent you to Norman, Oklahoma, to the economic...

Brandon Dennison: 9:11

Of all places.

Marilyn Wrenn: 9:12

Of all places, and I spent about three summers there during tornado season, which is, did you know that the National tornado center is in Norman, Oklahoma, and it's there for a reason. There's lots of tornadoes. Yeah. But anyway, so I did my resource in my research project on the correlation between the number of private foundations in a state and the economic conditions of that state, and found out that we just didn't have a whole lot. And I think at the time, West Virginia had less than 1/10 of 1% of all private foundations located within its borders and not a single foundation, um, serving the entire state within its borders. And I believe that's still the case.

Brandon Dennison: 10:03

You have Benedum based out of Pittsburgh.

Marilyn Wrenn: 10:07

Yeah, yeah, that's the biggest and, our nonprofits were, and still are providing absolutely crucial social infrastructure services.

Brandon Dennison: 10:19

So what comes first, the lack of foundations, leading to a lack of economic prosperity, or the lack of economic prosperity leading to the lack of foundations?

Marilyn Wrenn: 10:32

I think the latter, I think that the fact that so much of our wealth was bled out of the state, during the the time in our history where the most units of labor were being performed, if you want to think about that, as our, you know, the, the high productivity of our coal industry back in the back in the 50s. Back, you know, when coal was king, 40s, and 50s, when coal was literally building the nation, a lot of the value of that wealth was bled out of the state, through people not being paid actual money being paid scrip, you know, the, the coal barons, you know, concentrating that wealth, often out of state. And that just doesn't really give you a good, a good starting point.

Brandon Dennison: 11:22

You've talked about the stickiness of wealth before, could you say a little bit more about that for listeners?

Marilyn Wrenn: 11:29

Well, you know, I mean, for wealth to matter, it needs to stick, it needs to stick, where it was, should have been earned, where it was earned, where it was, where the labor was that that would have caused the wealth. And when the wealth didn't stick, to our state, to our towns, to our communities, to our families and to our individuals, we've just, we've, we're in a hole Appalachia is in this dearth of wealth. And, you know, I know you and I've talked a lot about the impact of this lack of generational transference of wealth, where if you, if you don't have that wealth, you can't, you can't turn it over to the future generation, you have nothing left at the end of your life for your kids to build on. And we've been doing that for generations, generations are starting from scratch, because, you know, I think in a lot of cases, we just didn't have that sticky wealth that enriched our communities. And I think you can see that, with this, you know, a lack of whether they're corporate foundations or enough wealth in a community that the community has to figure out, well, 'What are we going to do with all of this?' You know,'How are we going to, you know, maximize all of this wonderful wealth that we have in our community?' So we don't, you know, there's no reason why anyone really gonna set up a lot of the foundations to do...

Brandon Dennison: 12:58

So at the family level, too, right? I mean, so if you don't, if there's if you're if this wealth isn't sticking, a lot of work is happening. Yes, someone's getting wealthy, but it's not people here in Appalachia. And then if you think about in America, you know, there's some some exceptions from really wealthy. You know, landed gentry, but other than that, how do we build wealth, right? Like we have a valuable home that we can sell, we have savings accounts, we have, we pass on inheritances and start businesses with that. And all of that becomes less possible without this stickiness is right?

Marilyn Wrenn: 13:34

Right, I mean, it, a lot of that it becomes less possible when, when the value of the labor wasn't, wasn't valued. It wasn't valued in a tangible way. But I mean, you're exactly right. That's where, that's where so many of so many people in the past, you know, were able to get that leg up and get, you know, get a get a start at life. You know, because they were able to inherit something, you know, from their family. Not everyone, I mean, there's always exceptions, there's, you know, self-made people all the time, and you can see that, but by golly, having, you know, having a base of, of, of wealth, at the community level, at at the family level can make a huge difference. So, but we digress.

Brandon Dennison: 14:30

This is the heart of it. I mean, people look at Appalachian, it's like, what's wrong with that place? What's wrong with those people? And it's like, well, if you have a little bit more than a 30 second soundbite, you know, it's actually pretty clear economically what what's what's wrong here.

Marilyn Wrenn: 14:46

Right. Right. We we did not, we did not retain enough of the the value of the labor to have, you know, to build on, and in some places like, you know, things like, you know, private philanthropy in different places, and that is what has stepped in, and has really helped fill those gaps for people having the availability of a rich philanthropic ecosystem. And that, you know, getting back to West Virginia, you know, we, we don't have a lot we don't I mean, I think it's getting better. But one of the things that I learned when, when I came back, and I eventually went to work for the Center for Economic Options, one of the things that was fascinating to me about that, or excuse me, about that organization was that it had tapped into this network of funders that you just didn't, you just didn't see back in the day, it was, you know, had Ford Foundation funding and Benedum Foundation funding, but also, you know, Hitachi and the MIS foundation and just this kind of wealth of support. And, you know, I had done it when I was with the development office, I had done a evaluation and a survey of the nonprofit organizations in the state, just to see, you know, what was the usage were were people tied in, and I'd have to pull up the you know, it pull it back up. But I was just kind of fascinated then that most of the nonprofits in the state were not tied into any sort of philanthropic network. And when they listed, you know, the grant, some of them had federal grants, but they, there was like, not a lot of acknowledgement of, there weren't the different types of funding streams. Except, you know, there were a few exceptions, I remember that the Center for Economic Options was really the standout. And a lot of that had to do with just, you know, having those connections with a broader, you know, foundation, world, and really, you know, they were able to get their the work funded in some really interesting ways.

Brandon Dennison: 17:12

So the Center for Economic Options, was it a founder or near founder of CAN? The Central Appalachian Network.

Marilyn Wrenn: 17:21

it was the, let me see if I can think about this, the Center for Economic Options, ESnet, and Mason, were the three founding organizations of the central Appalachia network. And they they didn't actually found it themselves, but they were all they were all known to the I'm trying to think of how this worked, Carolyn Carpenter was a program officer at the Benedum Foundation. And I know that Pam Curry, the director of the Center for Economic Options, you know, worked with Caroline really closely. And CAN was pulled together to really provide professional support to the Executive Directors of these, these foundations. I mean, these organizations in Appalachia that were all focused on connecting people to the economy. So it was a learning network. And it was a, it was a support network. And it really, back in the day was pretty, I mean, it still is an extraordinary network, and the fact that it's been going on for 25 years, but just how it was able to provide like real time access to information to these Executive Directors who are trying to figure out how to expand their work, expand their impact in Appalachia was really cool. So what CAN, you know did in its early days was it puts a little bit of money forward into these these gatherings called CAN tanks, like like think tanks, but they were CAN Tanks...

Brandon Dennison: 19:13

Clever!

Marilyn Wrenn: 19:13

And it allowed organizations to explore ideas, everything from like flexible manufacturing networks, to entrepreneurship, to looking at the urban rural divide, to looking at local food economies. And the information coming out of the CAN Tanks was very widely shared and people beyond the organizations you know, hosting it were invited in and so a lot of the work I mean, I can see the roots of, of a lot of the work that's currently still being done, you know, tied back to the, you know, these CAN Tanks that you know, they they were the seeds planted.

Brandon Dennison: 20:00

Very early on, you know, I mean, you talked about when I went to graduate school for nonprofit management 2009. I had never heard the phrase social entrepreneurship or social enterprise. I feel like CEO colleagues at CAN had been doing I don't know if you called it that, but had been doing that for decades before. I mean, really innovative stuff.

Marilyn Wrenn: 20:22

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's it is really interesting to look back, it's almost like, sometimes I wish there was like a, you know, you could draw out the family tree of all of these, some of the initiatives in Appalachia, because I think sometimes we get the false idea. That stuff, stuff just happens, right? Like, you know, an idea is good, and it hits or it isn't in doesn't hit. But the foundation and the legwork that's gone in, and the investment, the sheer number of dollars that have gone into, you know, our broader systems to support this work is, I would love to calculate it someday. And I would, in the second piece of that, what I'd really like to do is to calculate the value of the the labor lost during during those years. You know, we were talking just a few minutes ago about you know, we weren't our labor wasn't valued to the extent that it should have been, I'd love to calculate that and to see just kind of on the balance of scale, where are we now with the amount of investment that has come in? And in order for Appalachia to basically capitulate into a better economic space, do those numbers need to match? And how close are we to that investment to that value? You know?

Brandon Dennison: 21:50

Do you feel like? Yeah, I mean, that's actually could make a fascinating dissertation. We have any PhD candidates out there listening, get Marilyn's permission first, though. But do you feel like so Marilyn, having a sense of growing up here, doing public service work in Kentucky, working in state government, here working in nonprofit sector her. Do you feel like we're making progress? We're getting some things figured out? Or are we further behind? Are we about the same? What's your honest assessment there?

Marilyn Wrenn: 22:29

I mean, that's such a good question. And also makes me think that the only sector I really haven't worked in is private, so maybe I should. I'm missing one. But gosh, I think in some ways, we are making good progress. I think that there, and I'm trying to think of what decade it was, like in the early 2000s, in the late or, you know, like, before 2010, whatever you call that decade, I have no idea. For a little while, there was a bigger emphasis on grassroots organizations being developed and supported. And around 2010, it seems my dates might be wrong. We sort of pulled back from that. You know, there was and you know, things go in cycles, right? I mean, ideas are tried, if they're, if they don't seem like they're bearing fruit, sometimes they're abandoned in favor of the you know, sometimes you call it the flavor of the week, you know, different types of things. But for a little while there, we were building the nonprofit capacity in the state. And it really investing in small local nonprofits. And sometimes I do wonder if we had stayed on that path, and had upped the investment into those organizations, you know, where would we be today? Would we have a stronger base of, of organizations providing different types of services across the state that might be helping people move out of poverty more quickly? You know, we went more toward a, I think, a funding of an institutional model. After that, and that's, that's a choice.

Brandon Dennison: 24:30

That's two different ways to do philanthropy you're laying out here. I mean, one way is really find those social entrepreneurs, whether they call themselves that or not, are social enterprise type creative, scrappy organizations who might be operating out of a old apartment unit, and boost them up or go through you said the institutions you know, go through the universities go through the large, already established, go through local government. That's two very different approaches to philanthropy.

Marilyn Wrenn: 25:00

Yeah, it is. It is. And, you know, we've, we've, I think are, you know, more nonprofits now than back in the day are connected with a broader, a broader array of philanthropic organizations across the nation. But I think that we still do see, you know, discrepancies in the amount of philanthropic funding. Right now, I'm talking basically, you know, private philanthropy, that's coming into West Virginia, you know, maybe my second research project would be to, you know, redo that survey and see how, what's changed if anything has changed. You know, so I do think that we've grown our nonprofit capacity to provide leadership and services, but I think that there's opportunities in some of our smaller communities still, for more organizations to stand up and be supported, because they best know what's going on, they best know, where targeted strategic funding at the local level, can be that lever and put emphasis and pressure on you know, just usually, it's just a few certain things in order to get, you know, fairly dramatic results. And I think that helping organizations figure out what those levers are, so they can, you know, affect the greatest amount of change efficiently, you know, is is fascinating work. And, you know, there's still opportunity in there for us to, you know, to accelerate what it is we're trying to do here, which is rebuild the Appalachian economy from the ground up. That's, that's what we've, we've needed to do. And that's how you know Coalfield approaches it. And I think that's absolutely correct.

Brandon Dennison: 26:55

So, you mentioned so sort of back to the beginning, Marilyn, you mentioned roots and Clay County grew up in, in Charleston. Can you tell me just about your West Virginia, childhood, what were some things that you were excited about as a kid?

Marilyn Wrenn: 27:13

Birds, just always I've, I've always been a frustrated ornithologist. And it's so funny, I was going through a bunch of stuff recently, and I found a newspaper article from way back when I want to say it's 1977, 1978. And in Charleston, they're getting ready to blow up this bridge, the old Kanwha City bridge and put in the Interstate bridge, and my sisters and I, we used to go down, like on the Saturdays, we'd walk down underneath this bridge, and we'd feed the geese. Apparently feeding the geese as a, you know, nine year old was like the highlight of my week, probably still would be. And so they were gonna blow up the bridge. And there's actually a newspaper article about my sisters and I trying to figure out like what to do to save the geese to keep them from being blown up. And so the interview is, it's a funny article. And so they talked to all of us, and I had this grand idea of how to get the geese out from underneath the bridge, you're gonna get a truck, you're gonna get a ramp, you're going to get the food, you're going to lead the geese, you're going to do all this stuff, you're going to get the geese away from the bridge before the bridge blows up. There's firecrackers involved, there's all kinds of stuff. But I had a plan on how to get the geese. And then the reporter asked my sister, like, what she thought about it, and she's like, 'Geese are nice.'

Brandon Dennison: 28:39

That's all that's all. She said.

Marilyn Wrenn: 28:42

Like I like geese, but it's kind of interesting.

Brandon Dennison: 28:46

No, that's great.

Marilyn Wrenn: 28:49

So, this, this whole strategy and planning, like mindset of how do you get? How do you get the result that you want? And what are the steps? And what is the strategy? And what does it take? Apparently, you know, I've been, I've been approaching my life's problems like that for a very, very long time. And, you know, and who knows why, right, you know, it's, it's just what I what it is, but I still see a lot of what I'm passionate about is broken down into these, here's what has to happen.

Brandon Dennison: 29:23

You're an action oriented person.

Marilyn Wrenn: 29:24

Kind of kind of action oriented. You know, it may not be exactly like, like what I thought, but you know, at least there's some some movement toward a strategy. And bottom line, the geese were fine. They didn't put them in a in a semi truck, but they did relocate them. No geese were harmed in the building of the bridge. So I think, you know, I think sometimes I do, I must get some of that from my mom who was raised in a poverty, there's no other way to say it, in Clay County, born right at the end of the Great Depression. And she, she was the oldest of six siblings, and there was no father in the family, he had abandoned them when she was 12. And she knew, however, that there had to be something, there had to be a plan, there had to be a strategy to make things better for her family. And so, right after graduating high school, she, she got on a bus to Charleston, and she not been to Charleston, and she just knew she had to get out of the bottom in Clay County and try to try to put together a plan to help her family just like it, it's an immigrant story. And, you know, I mean, we have immigrants that are doing this around the world right now. And whether it's getting on a bus from Clay to Charleston, or getting on a ship or getting getting across a land in dangerous situations, it's it's that drive and desire to be able to help to do something, to make your situation, your family situation better. So she got on a bus, went to Charleston and ended up with she could type, she had mad typing skills. And so she ended up typing in the secretary pool for this before Columbia Gas, I can't think of the the name of the gas company back in the day, but but it was there in this different setting that she met my dad, he was an engineering student, and mechanical engineer, and the son of a cobbler, you know, had he, his father owned a shoe repair shop, you know, just an entrepreneur working hard. And, you know, they they set up a life that was very different from, from what she knew, and really, from what he knew too.

Brandon Dennison: 32:02

Did your mom look back on Clay County fondly, or as sort of a tough time not to be returned to?

Marilyn Wrenn: 32:11

Really the the latter, it was, it was tough. Although we did return, and my you know, every weekend, I can just remember, you know, we'd go to Clay County, and work work in the gardens, you know, play in the country, my mom would help her mother with, you know, just hang out and, and be there and do whatever we could to, you know, to make her life better. And, you know, but it's it wasn't a, my mom didn't have a sense that, you know, it was her job to try to change the entire economic situation of, of the place she, was concentrated on on her family and, and helping there, but I think that that sense of, somebody's got to do something here, is her legacy to me. I'm just, you know, it's a slightly different scale, because I've been privileged, I've been, you know, privileged by her courage to not have to fight for my individual family, but the sense of fighting for justice and peace in a way so that other family, because I know there are just as many family and maybe not just as many as you know, that was a bad time. But there are still families that are just in the same situation she was in struggling with abject poverty and really no way no ways out. And I don't know if it's easier, if it's harder now to get on the proverbial bus or not, you know, I mean, maybe back then it was it was simpler. You know, the bus, the proverbial buses maybe don't run as far or there's not as many opportunities at the end of it or, there's not, you know, there's stigma around poverty that maybe she didn't face because back in the Great Depression, there were so many people, you know, in that situation, I don't know.

Brandon Dennison: 34:23

It is amazing to reflect on those. Just the courage of that.

Marilyn Wrenn: 34:28

Yeah.

Brandon Dennison: 34:29

And that commitment in the sense of love and then you've also got some of your dad's engineering mind. I would say a lot of your planning and your let's get into action.

Marilyn Wrenn: 34:38

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's there. They were amazing. They were an amazing couple and they gave my sisters and I you know, opportunities for education and a, work ethic. You know, he he grew up, as I said, the son of a shoe cobbler and worked at the shoe shop and got put himself through school through a work study program at the University of Cincinnati, you know, I mean, they were not people of great means. I don't think any of my grandparents actually graduated from high school. So I'm, I'm, I'm really close to this, you know, I'm a generation away from, from situations that are really hard to believe. In some cases, you know, that today, just, you know, I know what I know what it looks like. And I think that that does, you know, when one of the things and you know, this, that when we're talking with people and talking about our circumstances, and people refer to Appalachians in West Virginian's as 'them' or 'they,' and my gut instinct is always it's like, 'You're talking about me. It's not them and they it is, it is me and mine.' Yeah, it is very personal. It is personal. I, you know, I, I remember, I, you know, I, I know, talking to my mom the struggles that might, you know, that her mother went through, and the pain and the the fear, just having to, you know, fight to live, you know, I mean, close to the land, but also with a lot of with a lot of love, and a lot of a lot of care for people around them and a lot of generosity. I mean, the generosity is just amazing. I mean, they had nothing but you know, my mother would tell stories about a my Mamaw, you know, when people would come through even worse off, she always, you know, had a had a plate of beans and a piece of cornbread to give anyone who who needed some food. You know, she would she would share. And I mean, just to think about that. It's, it's not that long ago, and it's not that far away.

Brandon Dennison: 37:07

So I want to go back just for the listeners, just you did not miss hear. So when I asked Marilyn, what she thinks about her West Virginia childhood, she did say birds. We heard about your your first organizing activity to save the geese under the Kanawha bridge. I've learned so much about birds from you. That that has remained a lifelong passion. Can you just tell us what is it about birds that just keeps drawing you in? And what have you learned from birds?

Marilyn Wrenn: 37:40

Oh, god, they're, they're tough. They are tough. They're tough little creatures. And it just depends on you know, like, where they are. And I mean, it's really funny. Most people, I've had a thing about birds since I was a little little kid. And people always say like, 'What's your favorite bird?' It's like, I don't, I don't have a favorite bird. It's not about, 'Oh my god, I love penguins.' It's or, you know,'Eagles are cool." It's not like that. It's, it's them as a as a as an idea. It's, they, they're, they know what they need to do. And they do it. It's whether they need to build an incredibly complex nest out of sticks, with no opposable thumbs, but you know, they do it. They have to get from point A to point B, and point B might be 10,000 miles away from point A, and they've never done it before. But by God, they do it. And we really don't understand all the mechanisms how or why. And I think it's that mystery of, of as many years as people have studied birds, there's still a whole lot about them that we don't know, we really don't know, we don't know why some songbirds can hear sounds that are at such a low register, that it's incomprehensible to us. But they've evolved to hear it and they hear it for a reason. We just don't know what it is. We don't know. You know, how you communities of birds figure out you know, that they need to move in mass to a different place. You know, they but they communicate, and they can they, they have these these abilities that it would behoove us to understand, I'm sure, but just how they how they figured out, you know, their strategies for survival. There's so many lessons for us, and we better start listening to them and to other species and watching what they're doing. As it relates to climate change, as it relates to what we're doing to the world, we need to see where they're going, because we're going to have to go there too. And if we stop paying attention to them, you know, it's it's to all of our peril. I love it. You said, 'They do what they have to do, even if they don't know how.' And so there's, there's such a clear parallel to, you know, we wake up every day at Coalfield Development, we're literally trying to rebuild the Appalachian economy. It's like a ridiculous mission, but it has to be done. And so we'll gather what sticks and twigs and candy wrappers we can and do it. I've always had, I mean, I've always had this, like, I love the absurd. That's like, I just love absurdity. And whether it's kind of like, all in the same category, whether it's like, you know, I've never built a nest, but here's my stick, you know, this is gonna work, or, 'Hey, you know, we've got incredibly entrenched poverty and, and have to rebuild an entire economy. But hey, you know, here's a stick. This was gonna work.' There are some parallels there. But, you know, I mean, you got to get the geese on the truck, right? You got to get on the bus, you got to get you got to, for the love of God, somebody do something. It's like, it has to be, you know, it has to be all of us.

Brandon Dennison: 41:34

It has to be all of us.

Marilyn Wrenn: 41:35

Yeah. And I don't, I don't, I don't feel like I've got enough privilege to not to not be in the, in the group that's, that can just sit back and say, 'Oh, someone else is gonna do it.' I just, I can't do that. I just can't do it.

Brandon Dennison: 41:48

Well, thank you for willing to take on the absurd. And for everything that you've you've given to Appalachia, to me to Coalfield Development, there's a lot more actually, we're gonna have to schedule a part two, to Marilyn because you just had such an interesting and rich life. But rich, I mean, not necessarily financially, but your your family, your friends, your community. It's just incredible. And it really does matter. And it really has made a huge difference.

Marilyn Wrenn: 42:20

I appreciate that. You know, I mean, it's, it's not work to take on by yourself, you know, I mean, it's, it's really not. And, you know, I, you know, I've appreciated the opportunity to work with you, you know, for many, many years. And, you know, people like Pam Curry people like yourself, people like I mean, I can think of other folks that I've worked with over the years, that it's kind of like it's your flock, right, you find your flock.

Brandon Dennison: 42:52

Yeah.

Marilyn Wrenn: 42:52

And figure out who's going to flap in the front for a while. And who's going to bring up the rear and keep an eye out. And just get it, get it done.

Brandon Dennison: 43:05

Beautiful image Marilyn. Thank you so much. And onward.

Marilyn Wrenn: 43:10

Onward. Thanks.

Brandon Dennison: 43:15

Change in the Coalfields is a podcast created by Coalfield Development at the West Edge factory in Huntington, West Virginia. This episode was hosted by Brandon Dennison, and produced and edited by JJN Multimedia. Become a part of our mission to rebuild the Appalachian economy by going to our website Coalfield-development.org to make a donation. You can email us anytime at info@Coalfield-development.org and subscribe to our newsletter for up to date information on the podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by searching for Coalfield Development. Check back soon for more episodes.