Larry Groce has been producing Mountain Stage in West Virginia for 25 years. This weekly radio and public television program has been broadcasting the best mountain music in Appalachia, usually from the WV Cultural Center. This month NPR began distributing the show nationally in the U.S. Also, last year Mountain Stage began archiving podcasts of the programs ... many, many hours of wonderful mountain music.
posted on Jul 19, 2008 - View this thread

The Ediwina Church of God in Jesus Christ Name. Pastor Jimmy Morrow's spelling is often non-standard and this isn't the world's best designed web page. But it's remarkable for what it is: an insider account of the history and practice of a serpent-handling sect by a current practitioner.
posted on May 19, 2008 - View this thread

What happens when a US President declares war on a concept? In 1964, Canadian photojournalist Hugh O'Connor traveled to eastern Kentucky to document the battlefields of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty and was shot for trespassing. The incident is the subject of a wonderful documentary, Stranger with a Camera by filmmaker Elizabeth Barrett, produced by Appalshop, a non-profit organization in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that works with local artists to promote self-representation in media and the expediency of culture to counteract a stagnating local economy. Makes you think twice about nostalgic representations of poor Appalachian coal miners plucking their banjo strings in the hollers, doesn't it?
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Jean Ritchie, Mother of folk music. Abigail and Balis Ritchie of Viper, Perry County, Kentucky had 14 children, and Jean was the youngest...
posted on Mar 2, 2008 - View this thread

"It's like having a gun held on you with the hammer back and not knowing when the man's gonna pull the trigger," is the dramatic introduction to Appalachian Voices' coverage on mountaintop removal. The on-line journal is an environmental advocate for the Appalachian mountains, covering topics from air pollution to forest restoration, but also subjects like box turtles, coyotes, poison ivy and timber thieves. They also have a blog.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

Doc Watson: his warm and unprepossessing voice and rolling guitar stylings (both flatpicking and fingerpicking) are treasures of American music. The following video clips will be a treat for any Watson fan, but especially for guitar players: they feature closeup shots of Doc's left hand fretwork as well as insets of his right hand picking. So, without further ado: Deep River Blues, Blue Railroad Train, Black Mountain Rag and Bluebell.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

Appalachian Apocalypse. Mountaintop removal mining (previously) has a devastating effect on the environment and local populations. The Bush administration wants to loosen regulations and expand the practice. [Via Wired Science.]
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

As legends go, the first recorded instance of violence in the feud occurred after an 1873 dispute about the ownership of a hog: Floyd Hatfield had it and Randolph McCoy said it was his. The rest is Appalachian history. But it turns out that history may have had a helping hand in something called Von Hippel-Lindau disease. It weren't the moonshine, Pa. It was the DNA that did it.
posted on Apr 5, 2007 - View this thread

The Digital Library of Appalachia presents an online collection of music files, images, literature, and scanned documents supplied by twelve regional college libraries.
posted on Jun 22, 2006 - View this thread

Backyard Third World

John F. Kennedy saw it and pronounced it a shame on our nation. Lyndon B. Johnson tried to change it. The "compassionate conservatives" have exacerbated it. I wanted to share it with you. Isn't it time for real change? Hasn't the exploitation of this place and these people gone on long enough?
posted on Jul 26, 2004 - View this thread

Blue Ridge Music Trails. An invaluable resource for fans of old-time country, bluegrass, gospel and folk music in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Includes places and events like the Friday night Flatfoot Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store and the Saturday-night show at the Carter Family Fold .
posted on Jan 21, 2004 - View this thread

The Appalshop, nestled in the hills of coal-stained eastern Kentucky, was founded in 1969 as a War on Poverty project designed to train young people in Appalachia for jobs in film and television. Today, it flourishes as one of the premier cultural outposts of a proud and struggling swath of America. Its projects include documentary films, a record label, and one of the best public radio stations in the country.
posted on May 8, 2003 - View this thread

Homeland security loophole discovered in 1999: "In the Appalachians of West Virginia, the sun was going down and I was stuck for a place to stay.   I knocked on the door of a private farm house.  Three college-age girls were in the middle of an LSD trip.  They recognized me as Art Garfunkel.  I learned that they were three of thousands (millions?) who are "invisible" - pay no taxes, avoid the census taker; they are not on America's books."
posted on Jun 11, 2002 - View this thread