The bestseller "Hillbilly Elegy" left out a lot of hillbillies. Big thanks to the Chicago Tribune for giving me a chance to sing their praises with the below essay.

 

*

I have a lot in common with J.D. Vance, author of the new memoir "Hillbilly Elegy." We both grew up dirt poor in hillbilly households. We both ended up at Ivy League schools — Yale for him, Harvard for me — and somehow we both made our way into America's urban, professional class. While he and I are cut from the same cloth, we look at our kinfolk, blue-collar people in the Appalachian South, and see wildly different things.

In his best-selling book, Vance shines an unforgiving light on hillbilly culture, using his own family as examples. I'll never forget the description of his uncle taking an electric saw to a man, nearly killing him because the fella called him a son of a b----, or the scene in which his grandparents trash a pharmacy after a clerk chastised their boy. To Vance, as a child, this was normal behavior. To the rest of us, these people seem unhinged.

 

CLICK TO CONTINUE

Did you know you can pick up handmade, Appalachian art for as little as four dollars?
Under the mantle Appalachia Press, John Reburn creates affordable and quirky art pieces on his old time printing press. Usually in the form of frame-worthy cards or invitations, his work reflects a kind of craftsmanship that has been lost in the e-card era. Each runs through a hand operated press, which doesn't just lay ink overtop the paper, but instead pushes ink-covered plates into it, imprinting the paper with art carefully crafted by John.

As cool as the letterpress process is, the art itself might be even cooler. Showing everything from naked butts to off-color needlework, it infuses this age-old technique with a kind of whimsy that stops people in their tracks.

I spotted some of John's latest pieces in Roanoke recently, and I'd love to hear what you think. Leave a comment, letting us know which you like best.
Plus click over to the Appalachia Press website if you're looking to pick up some of his economical art. You can order select products online, request custom work, and find a list of retailers, which span from North Carolina clear to Massachusetts.

Fifteen-year-old Dawn Jewell isn't a bad girl, but she sure steals a lot of vehicles. It starts with a four-wheeler, which she rides away from chess pie, Mountain Dew, and a flooded kitchen on Thanksgiving Day. Deep in the Kentucky woods, she falls into a sinkhole. Upon being rescued, she steals an Olds Delta 88, which slides down a mountainside. She wakes up in that wrecked car and swipes her cousin Denny's truck. Back on the road, she tears "past the bootleggers, past the tombstone marker for the old black school, past the tunnel where they moved the river out of town."
This is a girl on the run. And author Robert Gipe has given her good reason. In his debut novel Trampoline (iTunes/Amazon), Dawn is surrounded by drug addicts and a decimated landscape, a horrible version of Appalachia that she wants to escape and the rest of us hardly want to see.
Me included. Ohio University Press sent a review copy of the novel over a year ago, and I fell in love with the book's teen protagonist and Gipe's goofy illustrations of her internal life. The writing is remarkable—clean, true to place, and at times breathtaking, like this advice from Dawn's grandfather.

---

Fear men. Flee them. Give them nothing. They mean you ill. Their voices smack of honey and their words set off string music in the chambers of your heart. But mark my words: they will cut you down, chop you up, cook you over fire, eat only the pieces that suit them, and throw the best of you into the weeds for other beasts to rend and gnaw.

---

Pretty, ain't it? But also brutal. Men can be awful in this book. Dawn's brother Albert only shows at school to deal drugs. Her uncle forces her to tend his moonshine still. And the women aren't much better. Wasted girl cousins and girlfriends of boy cousins litter so many collapsing trailers, while lost in grief, Dawn's mother has given up on everything but the bottle.
"I was a freak, soft and four-eyed," Dawn says, describing herself and her kin, "with black fingernail polish, a dead daddy, a drunk mama, a crackhead brother, outlaw uncles, and divorced grandparents who made trouble for normal people every time they come off the ridge."
Without flinching, Gipe shows just how awful Appalachia can be, and that's why it took a year to write this. He made me think about ugliness in my own family—the cousin who turned tricks to buy drugs, the aunt who was thrown from a balcony during a drunken brawl, people I love who've lived under bridges, and all the children who've been taken by Social Services. There are a lot of them, and most days, I'd rather opine on the latest farm to table restaurant than ponder where they ended up or, even worse, how they'd turned out if they'd stayed in my family.
Still, I finished Trampoline. In fact, I couldn't put it down. Gipe kept me glued to his book by matching every ounce of blunt dysfunction with an equal amount of elusive delight. Yes, there is violence and anger and just plain meanness in his Appalachia, but there is also beauty and insight and subtlety.
Take Dawn's aunt. Named June, she fled across the border to Kingsport, Tennessee decades ago, putting miles between herself and all the roughness back home. When Dawn visits, another side of Appalachia is revealed.

---

June's front room was dark and golden, like a pirate cave. There were posters on the walls for hippie music shows and works of art that were funky and done, you could tell, by people June knew. There were quilted and woven and crocheted things, and it was hard to imagine anybody ever throwing up on any of it or anybody ever flinging a chair at somebody in that room.

---

While it enlarges the book's universe, this excerpt alone is still a gross simplification of what Gipe has created. It would have been easy to pit Appalachia's haves and have-nots against one another—God knows plenty of writers do—but Gipe is more sophisticated. Let's stick with Aunt June as an example. Of late, she has come to miss exactly what she tried to escape when she moved to Tennessee and built a self-described fortress of solitude. "I miss all the racket people made when they got together," she tells Dawn, "everybody talking at once. Everybody jammed up together on the porch or in the front room, the kids all keyed up."
This lovely twist is one of dozens that kept me guessing. Every time I thought I had Trampoline figured out, Gipe ran against the current, creating some eddy that delighted me, that made his world intoxicating and supremely real, as complex as any life off the page.
My favorite surprise is Dawn's intense, almost preternatural, relationship with the mountains. On and off, she imagines them before Europeans settled, before their descendants trashed the land, an inner monologue that reveals how profound a fifteen-year-old can be. She fantasizes about buffalo retaking Appalachian valleys and asks what the Cherokee and Shawnee thought when forests were clear cut. To them, she figures, a farmer's field would have looked no better than a car wash.
Here, she tells how the mountains keep her sane.

---

The trees and the roll of the earth held me up like the ridge holds the clouds from passing so it can pour down rain. The vines and rabbits and the squirrels and the orange lizards out on the rocks after a storm—all those things I'd forget when people dragged me down—I needed them close and always, where I could get to them quick when Albert was crazy on some new dope, when Momma was out of her head, when Mamaw pulled back into her groundhog hole of nothing for me, when Hubert made me want to blow his head clean off—there was only the mountains could talk sense to me.

---

If nothing else connects mountain readers to this book, this should do it. Whether you're the child of a coal barren or cooking meth in a shed, you see the same fog-laden hollers; the same blue peaks define your sky. Landscape is our equalizer. It inspires and constrains us all, providing an awesome stage where we love deeply and go mad, where we till the earth and meditate, where we craft stories, like this one, which is such a brutal, gorgeous force, so steeped in local culture, I do wonder if it is the most Appalachian novel ever.
 

The copy of "The Homecoming" I've been reading since I was a boy.

Before Earnest Hemingway, John Updike, or Breece Pancake, I read books written by Earl Hamner, Jr. His most notable titles, Spencer's Mountain and The Homecoming, centered around one Appalachian family. Named the Spencers in print, they were later called the Waltons on TV.

 

Like me, this fictional brood lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, though they did so during The Great Depression, some fifty years before I was raised there. They were poor but never destitute, earnest but never banal. They resembled my family in many ways, but somehow their lives were less sordid. None did jail time. They never said filthy things or whipped their children with belts. They were the kind of people we aspired to be, ones who became noble by way of their strife.

When Hamner brought this goodhearted family into the mainstream, he pulled off a coup. During the tumult of the 1960s and 70s, in the midst of race and gender struggles and a time of burgeoning sexuality, he wrote simple stories—one about a son searching for his father during a snow storm, many about the same boy torn between his loyalty to home and his drive to be a writer. Even when Hamner's tales addressed hot button issues, like racism or antisemitism, he ran against the grain, revealing that goodness didn't come from picket signs but instead the human heart.

 

At age eleven, I was too young to glean any of that. I just knew that I loved the Spencers and the Waltons. Whichever surname, they meant the world to my mother, brother, and me. We actually imitated them at night, saying goodnight, John-Boy, and goodnight, Mary Ellen before bed, and my little brother adopted Elizabeth Walton as his imaginary friend. The youngest of the televised siblings, she played with him when he was alone and was the first to be blamed when he did something wrong. In time, she became a running joke. The line Elizabeth did it sent peals of laughter through our tiny, third-floor apartment.

This morning, thirty-some years later, my husband texted me, saying, "Earl Hamner died. 92 years old." I was working on the final chapters of my first novel at the time and stopped, stunned.

I'd always fantasized about meeting him once the book was done. During a telephone interview or lunch near his LA home, I would explain the peculiar role his characters played in my life, saying that he was the first author who made me want to write.

 

It's true. Though I loved other books, none led me to think I might pen one. It took a mountain man to spark that notion, and while I'll never be able to thank Mr. Hamner for that, I can still suggest you find his work. His novels about the Spencers are out of print but worth the search. In them, you'll see how unabashed goodness can be enthralling and how Appalachia, for all its grit, can sooth the soul.

*Special thanks to Rod Leith, who shared this clip.

 

Our friend Casey LaFrance is back with a poem about an abuser and the scars she left. A native of the North Georgia mountains. Casey teaches political science and public administration in Illinois, where he has a loving wife, two catkids, and many cat-themed t-shirts. His poetry has been published here and also in Unfettered Muse.

*

Pedigree Dogs

By Casey LaFrance

I remember rubber wrestlers
and orange slices on your
days off, when you'd jerk me
out of school. Problem was,
pops, you seemed to forget
I was there after the sausage
biscuits with mustard and
the dime store trip. You
went to work on cars and
watch Don drink beer and
curse through his toothless
mouth while I sat in fear
of this woman who beat me
who drank and drank until
she felt like going outside
to watch me ride the big
wheel while she communed with
nature or god or whatever she
worshipped. I saw her attempt
to get right in the end. I saw
her smile and cry and tell pity-tales
one after the other. I felt bad for her,
but I don't think I ever forgave her.
I still have scars from the cast
iron skillet and the
heavy old telephone,
but momma can't understand
why you didn't cry at her
funeral.

*

Yeah, every­body has a dead grand­mother story. They’re not sexy and nobody’s buy­ing. But this story is mine, and it’s not so much about the woman as it is about the place. I’m from a lit­tle coal town, McAdoo, in North­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia. A place where peo­ple still use clothes­lines, and it has noth­ing to do with being green. A place where wed­dings and fam­ily reunions mean at least a fist fight, and maybe one of Aunt Vera’s boys piss­ing in somebody’s car to teach them a les­son. A place where it’s hard to say whose sin will draw the nas­ti­est whis­pers, the cousin who’s sus­pected of covert abor­tions, or the cousin who had the gall to earn a PhD. A place where aunts will still rec­om­mend spik­ing a baby’s bot­tle with Karo syrup, and stare slack jawed when you reveal that all of your chil­dren made it through infancy with­out ever touch­ing lips to a rub­ber nip­ple. A place where a cousin can snarl about all the ille­gal Puerto Ricans and not under­stand why you burst into laugh­ter and shake your head. A place where uncles cap­ture snakes from inside houses in paper gro­cery sacks, where a black bear might just amble out of the strip­pins, where great-grandfathers sit with Phillies base­ball games on their tran­sis­tor radios eat­ing tomato and oleo sand­wiches before they die of black lung and are buried in their Knights of Colum­bus uni­forms, swords by their sides. A place where Grannies yell at kids in words that are not Eng­lish, and the onion domes of Byzan­tine churches rise once-resplendent in once-golden paint above streets crammed with clap­board houses and Amer­i­can flags.
Because this is Appalachia, but this isn’t the Appalachia you think of, with blue­grass and corn­bread and kids named Billy Bob. This is where kids are named Stan­ley, and you can’t pro­nounce their last names, what with the sz’s and cz’s and w’s that sound like v’s. And the Stan­leys all say youse guys. This is the Appalachia where grand­moth­ers don’t flinch to say cock­sucker in front of you when you’re lit­tle enough to only pic­ture an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion for a chicken, but Protes­tant is whis­pered, a dirty word. This is the Appalachia where you vaca­tion Down The Shore, and pep­pers are man­gos and you sit on your dupa and shut your trap for two-tree min­utes now, henna?
The colos­sal maw of an aban­doned strip mine yawned behind my grand­par­ents’ house, the house that my Pop­pop built him­self, just down the big back lawn and across the alley from the loom­ing house that he was born in, the house that my Granny and Grand­pap lived in until they died, where Granny’s par­ents had been laid out for their home-funerals, back when such a thing was what was done. My sec­ond cousins lived in one half of that house, and the youngest was just my age. The sum­mer they finally paved that alley, she and I got in a fight, each of us on either side of the cool­ing asphalt, and one of us hit the other in the fore­head with a well-pitched rock. I can never remem­ber which one of us threw the rock and which one of us bled. We were that close. When she got knocked up at fif­teen, I thought Well hell, I can’t judge. There but for the grace of God and my par­ents’ trusty pick-up truck go I.
Because my mom and dad got out, had packed up every­thing we owned and moved us, pick-up truck­load by pick-up truck­load, to Vir­ginia in 1979. I was four. The world had been all of a cou­ple miles squared, and every per­son I’d ever seen had known my name, known my fam­ily. I’d thought black peo­ple were only on TV. But you’ve heard the Billy Joel song, so you know that part of the story. The coal was gone, the fac­to­ries were clos­ing. “It’s get­ting very hard to stay…”
But back I came, each sum­mer wowed by the hori­zon appliquéd with ghosty blue sil­hou­ettes of moun­tain tops, back to this place that seemed on one hand burst­ing with magic and wild­ness, and on the other just plain back­ward. Down at the bot­tom of Logan Street, behind Poppop’s house, there was the Shit Crick, into which all the borough’s raw sewage was emp­tied. There were no big box stores, no fast food restau­rants. We’d get on the high­way in Poppop’s big green Oldsmo­bile, cruise-control it to the Frackville Mall for that. I’d perch on the arm­rest beside my grand­fa­ther as he sang Sina­tra, keep­ing my eyes peeled to catch sight of the golden arches high atop the hill as the mall came into view. Or we’d wind down the moun­tain to Walt’s Drive-In for soft serve ice cream cones, watch golfers on the dri­ving range behind, bring back a CMP sun­dae for Nanny. Her favorite, chocolate/marsh mellow/peanuts. What McAdoo had was the fire­house, with booze at night. An Ital­ian place, for pitza, the kind that drips orange grease to bleed through stacked paper plates and needs to be folded in half to fit in your mouth. An inex­pertly hand-painted sign nailed up crookedly out­side somebody’s door, adver­tis­ing ETHNIC FOOD, and that means pierohi, halupki, halushki. There was a roller rink, but that was closed down every sum­mer, or maybe just closed down for good.
My cousin and I roamed, played all the make-believe games. We watched Hatchy Milatchy on black and white TV, and put on dance shows for Aunt Peggy when she came home from work­ing at the Kmart in Hazel­ton, and dressed up in Granny Palmer’s old hand­made floor-length slips and her other acces­sories, antique hand­bags and scarves, that my Nanny still had saved in a trunk. We picked Queen Anne’s Lace and put the flow­ers in glasses of water and food col­or­ing, watched the blooms turn col­ors. We argued over which celebri­ties we’d marry, we argued over which of her teenage sis­ters’ boyfriends was the cutest, and when we got a lit­tle older we’d skulk in alleys and sneak cig­a­rettes and sing Guns N’ Roses.
These were my sum­mers, until Nanny got sick.

***

It’s a few days after my four­teenth birth­day, and I’m stand­ing in the Decem­ber rain, strad­dling one of my cousins’ old ten speed bikes, watch­ing some strangers dump back­hoe shov­el­fuls of cold wet dirt on top of my grandmother’s cof­fin. Nanny is down in that hole, not wear­ing the col­or­ful poly­ester pantsuit she asked to be buried in. She’s wear­ing the mint green gown that she wore for one of the twins’ wed­dings. They said what she wanted was tacky. I went back to the house with every­body else after the funeral, but they were all eat­ing and talk­ing, and I didn’t feel like doing either. I came back, by myself, to watch this.
There are sev­eral acres of ceme­tery out here on the edge of town, butting up to the rail­road tracks, before you cross over to the long road through the woods where wild huck­le­ber­ries grow in sum­mer, where cold, cold water bub­bles up from moun­tain springs, the road that leads out past the cigar fac­tory, over to Tresckow, where both my aunts live. Chain link and crum­bling stone walls sep­a­rate sundry grave­yards that belong to dif­fer­ent churches, fences that keep the dead Poles from the dead Ital­ians, the dead Irish from the dead Slo­vaks, the dead Rusyns from the dead Hun­gar­i­ans. I look out and see a wide expanse of gran­ite head­stones jut­ting from the var­ie­gated drab greens, browns, yel­lows of grass that’s been frost­bit­ten. Look­ing back toward town, I see the slop­ing streets crowded with clap­board houses, and the squalid onion spire of St. Mary’s against the low gray clouds.

***

She hadn’t been my favorite. My Pop­pop was ded­i­cated to spoil­ing me, sneak­ing me sug­ary cere­als in tiny boxes and buy­ing me cheap toys at the IGA. She was ded­i­cated to tough love, mak­ing me spend the whole sum­mer writ­ing out my mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables, and telling me that wear­ing those tight jeans like my cousin did would give me crotch-rot. But then she got sick. Really sick. She had at least two kinds of can­cer at the start, one of which required bed rest, the other of which was best man­aged with an active lifestyle. We would walk two miles every morn­ing, in a big loop, very slowly, very care­fully, and then she would spend the after­noon in her reclin­ing chair. I spent a lot of time with her. We talked a lot, like we never had before.
She told me sto­ries. Her toes curled up girl­ishly, and she rubbed her feet together as she told them. Sto­ries about drink­ing fresh hot milk from the goats her par­ents had kept in their yard over on Jack­son Street. Sto­ries about her father Wasyl com­ing to Amer­ica from Rus­sia, how the coal com­pany owned him, how he never really learned Eng­lish. Sto­ries about dat­ing my grand­fa­ther, illus­trated by black and white pho­tos held into the albums with those lit­tle paste-on cor­ner frames; pic­tures of Pop­pop with slicked-back hair, in white tee shirts and blue jeans, look­ing like Mar­lon Brando, her by his side in bobby socks, the cap­tions call­ing her Katie when I’d never heard any­body call her any­thing but Kath­leen or maybe a few times Kathy. Sto­ries about my mother when she was lit­tle, about how she finally got so tired of wash­ing and brush­ing and iron­ing my mother’s hair that she one day sur­prised her by lop­ping it off with a sly pair of scis­sors after her bath; about how she got so sick of my mother sneak­ing out of the house with her bell-bottom jeans rolled up beneath her school skirt, those hip­pie jeans embroi­dered with a big pair of hands grab­bing the ass cheeks, that she stole them and burned them in the fur­nace. Sto­ries about nurs­ing school, work­ing at the hos­pi­tal, trav­el­ing on her cruises. The story of when I was born, two months early, tiny but strong, and she was there in her crisp white uni­form to assist Dr. Lee with the delivery.
But most of all, she liked to tell me about her favorite movie.
I’d never seen it, The Sound of Music. We never watched it together. It was the mid 1980’s of course, and my grand­mother didn’t own a VCR. The idea of pop­ping a tape in and watch­ing a movie when­ever you wanted to was still an absurd exoti­cism. But this was even bet­ter. She recalled the plot for me a thou­sand times over. She described the char­ac­ters, recited dia­logue, sang the songs. I felt like I knew the whole movie by heart. It made her so happy, even when she was exhausted and strug­gling, even when she was so bent that she couldn’t lie in the bed any­more and had to spend all her time in that brown reclin­ing chair. She died in that chair.
We’d come up to visit for Christ­mas. My birth­day is the day after. I heard her the night before, up all night with my mother by her side, beg­ging my mother to help her kill her­self. Ask­ing for her sewing scis­sors, as if she’d be able to do the job with them. She told my mother that she could see her par­ents, stand­ing in the hall­way out­side her bed­room door, wait­ing for her. Then in the morn­ing, on the day I turned four­teen, she took one last gur­gling, labored breath. She was 54 years old.

***

The rain has soaked through my clothes and I am freez­ing. The grave is filled and I’m alone here, the work­men are gone and it’s get­ting dark. I pedal back up to the Slo­vak church, and I slip inside. The doors have never been locked, day or night, any time I’ve tried them. That would never hap­pen in the city where I live. But I’ve come here a lot, this is famil­iar. I kneel in front of the painted plas­ter Blessed Mother in the dim and quiet. Her eyes are like anthracite slag. I light one of the votive can­dles, add one more flick­er­ing flame to the field of squat red glass cylin­ders. I reach deep down into the pocket of my jeans, and I pull out my rosary beads.

***

I’m sure I’ve been gone a long time, but nobody seems to have noticed. Most of my rel­a­tives have got­ten pretty drunk, even the ones for which it takes a hell of a lot. As I walk in, I hear an aunt say She held out for Christ­mas, she held out so she wouldn’t ruin Christ­mas for every­body. My Pop­pop turns his head slowly, slurs, one thick fin­ger pointed at my chest, She died on your birth­day, so you can never for­get her. 
I change into warm, dry clothes. I ghost past them, between them, eat a lit­tle frost­ing from my cake; it’s still in the fridge, pris­tine, with the plas­tic bal­le­rina on top. I go into my grandmother’s bed­room; nobody wants to be in there. I shut the door and curl up in the dark, in her chair. My hair is still damp. I’m remem­ber­ing when I was scared to sleep in the dark, in this room, and she told me The dark is noth­ing to be afraid of. God made the dark so that every body and every thing can rest.
I’m sob­bing now, chok­ing and heaving.
And when I’m done, I breathe deeply. I rub the brown velour uphol­stery on the arms of her chair. I notice the remote con­trol for the tele­vi­sion on her bed­side table, just where she must have left it last. It’s barely vis­i­ble in the dark, but it some­how catches my eye. I sigh, and I pick it up. My fin­ger touches the power but­ton, and there it is. In Tech­ni­color. Julie Andrews, twirling around and around and around:
“The hills are alive with the sound of music,
With songs they have sung for a thou­sand years…” 

***

My grand­mother left me her wed­ding ring when she died, she left it to me. My mother took it, said I couldn’t be trusted with it yet. My mother wore it on her own fin­ger, for years. As my birth­day approached, in 2004, she asked me if I wanted any­thing spe­cial for turn­ing thirty. Yeah I said I want Nanny’s ring. She gave it up reluc­tantly, but now I wear it. It reminds me of where I’m from.
When peo­ple asked, I used to say Oh, from around Allen­town. Or maybe Do you know where Scran­ton is? Wilkes-Barre? But those answers are not quite true. So, you ask me now, ask me where I’m from. I’ll look at my fin­ger, and I’ll tell you:
Yeah, every­body has a dead grand­mother story. They’re not sexy and nobody’s buy­ing. But this story is mine, and it’s not so much about the woman as it is about the place. I’m from a lit­tle coal town, McAdoo…

This prose poem is for you if your heart has broken—but not for a lover—broken because you looked at someone and saw how hard the world can be.
It comes from Ellen Birkett Morris, the author of a poetry book called Surrender. Ellen was nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize and received a 2013 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. A native of The Bluegrass State, she has referred to the Appalachians as "a place of great beauty and dark struggle, of treasure and turmoil."

*

What Broke My Heart

by Ellen Birkett Morris

It was the sparseness of your cabin. The slanted porch and wood gone grey. Your tiny kitchen with one clean pot set on the stove. The small bedroom with the iron frame bed I was sure you inherited from your grandmother. It was the bottomland that made up your farm alongside the river. The God willin’ and the creek don’t rise hopefulness of it all. The small patch of zinnias that you picked to put in our baskets each week. It was the story you told me while we stood by your truck of a strict father who didn’t let you go to the movies, at least not the ones you wanted to see. Your worn shoe peeking out from the bottom of your jeans. The sight of your back under your thin t-shirt as you unloaded bushel baskets from your truck. It was your marriage to a woman who bought vegetables from you, and how I asked at the year-end party where she was and you said I don’t know, as if she just vanished one night, leaving you a sky full of stars but no moon in sight. It was the picture of you, your shirt off, young and strong, your heart still intact.

Whether you're looking to learn about hillbilly history or Ralph Stanley's story, you're in for a treat when you visit Bristol, Tennessee this winter. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum is showing a series of Appalachian documentaries produced by the good folks at Appalshop, arguably the region's most distinguished film and arts organization.
"Appalshop has been doing great work for decades," says Thomas Richardson, curator of education and outreach at Birthplace of Country Music Museum. "When we opened the Museum we asked ourselves, who do we want to partner with that's doing similar work, and doing it really well? Appalshop was one obvious answer."
True to form, Appalshop has produced quite a line-up for the series—Sunny Side of Life, Sourwood Mountain Dulcimers, From Wood to Singing Guitar, Hazel Dickens: It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song, Quilting Women, The Ralph Stanley Story, Strangers and Kin: A History of the Hillbilly Image, and His Eye is on the Sparrow.
These films run through February 28 with select showings featuring speakers, concert performances, and panel discussions. You can find a complete schedule on The Birthplace of Country Music Museum website. Best of all, the films are free with the price of museum admission.
Can't make it to Bristol? Don't despair, you can purchase all of these films on the Appalshop website.

I could tell you that Story Time with Uncle Scratch is like nothing you've ever seen. It would be true but such an understatement. This new comic series is about young Moses Hatch, a backwoods farm boy who is pulled, living and breathing, into Appalachian folktales woven by his otherworldly mentor Uncle Scratch.
According to Sean Coxen, the comic's creator, Moses faces "head to head scrapes with the supernatural, where he’ll have to test his mettle against the howling, gibbering forces that lurk, forgotten in the eastern woodlands."
Sounds like good reading to me!
While the first issue is short at just fourteen pages, its art is expertly drawn. The images are, first, beautiful, just a joy to see, and also energetic. They create a real sense of action and motion, which is helped by Sean's smart choices as a writer. He opens with a lie and closes with the introduction of Uncle Scratch, a character my eyes can't help but study.
With twigs for hair; a bushy, fox-like tail; and exposed ribs, Scratch is an enthralling mash-up that manages to look peculiar without ever becoming menacing. (At least not yet!) His oddness is compounded by what he does, which is to say nothing weird. Uncle Scratch sips a steaming beverage and talks to young Moses like a real uncle might. There's no hocus pocus, no dragging the boy into alternate realities. The normality of the scene somehow makes Scratch's debut that much stranger.
Personally, I can't look away, but I'm excited to hear what you think. Leave a comment below, and if you like what you see, consider supporting Sean's creation. You can donate to his crowdfunding campaign over on Patreon, a site dedicated to supporting artists.

*

CONTINUE READING

 

When Mark Green was nine years old, he needed to carry nuts and berries in something. That's not an issue most of us encounter these days, but in Mark's family, it made perfect sense. His Cherokee father and Irish-American mother valued traditional living. That meant no plastic toys, no running water, no phones, no car, and it meant a lot of foraging.
Luckily, his grandfather had an old-time solution to the berry and nut problem—simply peel bark from a tulip poplar limb, fold it half, and bind it with a reed. Boom, an instant basket!
[caption id="attachment_10002" align="alignright" width="244"] Handmade acorns are included on each of Mark Green’s baskets.[/caption]
Nobody knows how long Cherokee folk have been making these handy vessels, mostly because they were as common as dirt. Bark baskets weren't art-pieces but instead utilitarian tools. More often than not, they ended up as kindling when they were done being used.
Today, we look at them a little differently. In an era of Rubbermaid and vacuum sealing, these natural containers—devoid of glue and chemicals—take on a special meaning. They connect us with our Appalachian heritage and remind us that not everything useful has to be made by a machine.
According to Mark's wife Kimberly, bark baskets have a hundred uses. "We have one on the spinning wheel for tools. Tooth brush holder. Needle holder," she says. "There is one in the Jeep tied to the air vent for pencils. One in the craft room for scissors and, of course, anytime we need a basket in the woods for blueberries, blackberries, or flowers."
I don't know about you, but there's something about seeing an old Cherokee craft alive and well that makes me smile. It also made me want a basket of my own. Mine is now holding dish towels and I guess I will buy more organization boxes and baskets. If you were to pick one up, how would you use it?

*

You can purchase Mark Green's handmade baskets online at Gallery of the Mountains (just email or call to place the order) or in the company's store inside Asheville's Grove Park Inn. They're also available at the store Chifferobe in Black Mountain, North Carolina and make appearances at select festivals, including the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair, Townsend Fall Heritage Festival, Tennessee Fiber Festival, and Carolina FiberFest.

Photos provided by Aaron Blum.

Scan the rolling hilltops of West Virginia, and what would you expect to see—an old coal tipple, boulders, the crumbling remains of a settler's cabin? How about a gilded palace with colorful windows inspired by peacocks surrounded by an award-winning rose garden and a hundred or so fountains?

For over forty years, Marshall County has been the site of New Vrindaban, one of the largest Hare Krishna communities in the U.S. Filled with ornate touches—stained glass, real gold, and crystal—the temple at the heart of this community has been called America's Taj Mahal, but to photographer Aaron Blum, the people who live there have always simply been his neighbors.

"They just were part of my hometown just like anyone else," Aaron told me in a recent interview. He saw Krishnas as he was growing up, sometimes wearing their tell-tale saffron robes, and while they stood out, he didn't give them much thought until he was older, when he began encountering them at punk rock shows.

 

"The Krishnas were always there serving food, and as long as you would talk with them about religion they would give the food to you for free," he said and with a pause adding, "I am a sucker for pineapple chutney!"

It wasn't long before Aaron visited New Vrindaban, and he started doing so just like anyone else. Tourists are welcome.

"In fact, they're counting on it," Aaron said, "a large part of their income is based in tourism," but he visited so often he began to make friends and eventually secured permission from the community's head of public relations to photograph freely.

What emerged was a riveting collection of images entitled Almost Heaven.

These photos spotlight what, on the one hand, seems like an unlikely community for West Virginia but, on the other, is actually in keeping with many Appalachian traditions.

"When I’m there I’m constantly thinking about how so many others had come to the hills of Appalachia to isolate themselves for protection, religion, solitude, freedom," Aaron said, "and the Krishnas have a very simple lifestyle, like so many other country people."

In spite of its emphases on simple living and its bucolic setting, New Vrindaban has seen dark periods. In the 1980s, two of the community's resident were killed by a third. The murderer claimed that the group's leader, Swami Bhaktipada, was behind the killings, and later, Bhaktipada did plead guilty of conspiring to commit murders-for-hire.

For a time, the group went into a tailspin, losing many members, letting its grounds fall into disrepair, and even being excommunicated from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

But thirty years can heal many wounds. It has at New Vrindaban, which is again a member of the Krishna's governing body and has a new leader, Jaya Krishna. This former Swiss businessman has revitalized the temple and gardens, and he is, at the same time, restoring the group's reputation."There is a completely new set of individuals there," Aaron said, "and they could not be more wonderful."

Today's residents form a unique melting-pot, adhering to Hare Krishna religious traditions while also being influenced by West Virginia culture. In Aaron's photos, you see how this plays out. Krishna robes are worn with Carharrt jackets and beaded necklaces with work boots.

"They exist in both worlds simultaneously," the photographer said, "so it is easy to see how they borrow from each lifestyle."

Want to see for yourself how the worlds of eastern religion and Appalachian heritage come together?

New Vrindaban invites everyone to visit. The Palace of Gold is open according to a seasonal schedule, and the community offers newly-remodeled guest houses to those wishing to stay overnight. If you go or if you've been before, let us know what you think. Are the temple and grounds as pretty as they look? How do you see the merger of cultures working? And what do you think of the Krishna chow?

Aaron says he's hooked on their samosas!