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"Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."

                                                                                                                          -Studs Terkel

 

Amid rural landscapes and disappearing communities, the residents of Allegany County, New York live a working-class American story. Twelve Ways to Sunday is a portrait film that captures testimonies of life in these small towns. With simplicity and self-reliance, the personalities featured in Twelve Ways to Sunday demonstrate that living often differs from how we earn a livelihood. As the film travels from diner counters to church pews, from living rooms to backwoods, a cast of colorful characters emerges. Meet the traveling teacher who cans her own food, a pastor who also makes and sells candy, a pair of motorcycle and tattoo enthusiasts, a grizzled truck driver, a hopeful elementary school principal, a homesteader, a waitress, a shepherd, a hunter, and the local quilting ladies. And, while Americans elsewhere endure hardships brought on by the current economic downturn, and are forced to re-consider their values, this rural community has long understood what it means to find happiness, humility and patience everyday. As we meander through the town, the film asks its audience to see beyond the inherent deprivation to how these subjects each thrive in their own ways. We find a new wealth here: a shared conversation, self-reliance, a pie on the windowsill, a snowstorm, the silence of the woods, an open road.