By the time Tennessee Ernie Ford released the tune "16 Tons" in 1955, he was already successful. He'd recorded a few hits, hosted an NBC quiz series, appeared in a reoccurring role on I Love Lucy, and made the rounds on country variety TV shows. A twang-laced crooner with a silky baritone, Ernie was arguably Hollywood's most popular hillbilly.
Still, he did something new with this song. He took a sleeper—a folk tune written and released years earlier—and gave it the Tennessee Ernie treatment. Backing "16 Tons" with a full orchestra and singing it in a style that sounded more like Dean Martin than Hank Williams, he created one of the nation's first crossover successes.
Ernie's rendition of "16 Tons" spent ten weeks in the number one spot on country charts and topped pop charts for eight weeks. Mind you, this was years before Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton would obliterate the line between country and pop, and crossover king Elvis Presley hadn't even had a hit yet.
This recording broke new ground and turbo-charged life for the Bristol, Tennessee native, helping Ernie secure his own primetime television show and paving the way for a bevy of awards, including a Grammy, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCen9-RELM
Inspired by Ernie's success, the Birthplace of Country Music Museum is hosting the "16 Tons" Music Contest with performers submitting their own covers of this ode to Appalachian coal miners. They're invited to either faithfully recreate the song or dramatically reimagine it.
"What would '16 Tons' be like as a flamenco tune?" asks Charlene Tipton Baker, the museum's publicist. "A free jazz chart? A bubblegum pop song?"
Creativity is not just encouraged; it could be the winning factor. Judging will be based on musical originality in addition to the quality of performances, and while prizes don't literally weigh 16 tons, they are pretty amazing:

• The musician who takes the top spot will be invited to perform “16 Tons” during the exhibit’s closing concert on February 13, 2016 at Bristol's Paramount Center for the Arts.
• First-, second-, and third-place winners will receive a copy of the book River of No Return: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Woman He Loved along with a museum mug.
• First- and second- place winners also land either five free passes to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum or a one-year individual membership.

All entries are due by December 4, 2015. If you submit, please also share your link in a comment below, and even if you don't record the song yourself, in what style would you like to see someone perform "16 Tons"?

MK: Studying Spanish and art at the same time certainly helped my shift in awareness. For Spanish classes a lot of community involvement is required, and that's primarily where the idea for the project came from.

TR: Who are the people you photographed? How did they react to you being in their homes and businesses with a camera?
MK: I knew most of the people I photographed pretty well before I started the project. One of the guys was my neighbor for a year, a few others I had some classes with, or many of the people I've met by extension of close friends. So far I haven't had a bad experience photographing this community. In the situations where I don't know the people going in, once I explain the project they're happy to help.

TR: What have you learned during the course of this project?
MK: I think one of the more surprising things is how much this project has shifted my own world view. My relationship with this area I've grown up in has become more complicated. I've become more open minded.

TR: If you could help every person in Appalachia understand one thing about their Hispanic neighbors, what would it be?
MK: That we're all the same. They're human beings just doing the best they can. I find that pretty relatable.

I keep a Blue Willow bowl on my coffee table. When people come to my house, they must think it's full of aging junk. The objects inside—an old lock, a gear shift from a Model-A Ford, hand-forged nails, a tool part I can't even name—might be worth ten bucks all together, but they mean the world to me. I found them around the farm built by my great, great, great grandparents, on land where my grandpa was raised.
Every few days I reach into the bowl and pick up one of these trinkets, rub my fingers across its pitted surface, and I swear I can smell hay curing, see the farm's cattle-peppered hillsides rolling back toward the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Friends from Appalachia seem to understand. When I explain that the bowl holds pieces of home, most nod and tell me about things they've carried from mountaintops and hollers, the places they got their starts.
This week, I asked a few of them to share their mementos with everyone here, and they sent these lovely photos along with stories, telling us why the objects are special.
Putting them all together, I'm reminded that we're hardly alone. For centuries, folks have migrated out of Appalachia, and I suspect a lot carried pieces of home with them.
Maybe you have too. If you ever left the region, did you take little tokens, objects that transported you back to the mountains?
If so, we'd love to see them. Please share photos on Facebook or Twitter and include the hashtag #mypiecesofhome.You can email me images too, and I'll consider them for a future post here. My address is revivalist at-symbol therevivalist.info.

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I keep a lot of little things from West Virginia here with me in my Iowa house, among them are bones and glass. Growing up surrounded by cattle farms, the sight of sun-bleached cattle (or other animal) bones was very common, I've brought with me to hang on the wall of my office a cow skull, a raccoon skull and a little diorama that my fiancé Matt made for me with a butterfly and joint bone from a cow! I also have a collection of glass bottles salvaged from the old dump pile at the back of my family's property.
Mesha Maren, Iowa City, Iowa
From Alderson, West Virginia

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This is my great-grandmother's teapot from my mother's father's side. No matter your relation to her, everybody called her Mom. She spent almost her entire life in the Tennessee Valley just north of Chattanooga in the little burg called Hixson, which is now a suburb. Back home, my mother still has handmade patchwork quilts, and a hand made stuff dog and teddy bear that Mom made for me as a baby.
Jason Terry, Washington, DC
From Chattanooga, Tennessee

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My dad and I found this paddle on the Buffalo River, a beautiful waterway that streams through the Ozarks along the Missouri-Arkansas border. I was thirteen and we had just bought the canoe, a bright purple beast of a thing my dad would load on his pickup anytime I'd ask him to take me out. I loved, love, those Saturdays with my dad, and as he ages now, faces a current battle with cancer, I'm glad I have this paddle in my room, hanging above my bed. It's followed me, like a river might, to every apartment I've lived in, from Springfield, Missouri to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to now Washington, DC.
D. Gilson, Washington, DC
From Nixa, Missouri
(While from our neighboring mountain range, the Ozarks, D.'s story was just too sweet to omit.)

You probably know that country music gradually emerged from old time and celtic tunes, slave songs, blues riffs, and hymns that had been handed down for generations, but did you know that there was one special moment—a flashpoint—when all those influences came together and the new sound that would be called "country" was set in motion?
[caption id="attachment_10032" align="alignright" width="275"] A museum artifact illustrates a surprise turn in Roy Acuff's career.[/caption]
The birth of country music happened in Bristol, a town straddling the Virginia and Tennessee border, during 1927. By then, the music industry (still young in its own right) was just recognizing potential in this new style. Looking for fresh talent, a producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company named Ralph Peer set off for Bristol, where he auditioned locally known musicians.
The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, the Stoneman Family—at the time, Peer had no idea that he'd help make these artists household names and simultaneously launch an entirely new musical genre.
“These recordings in Bristol in 1927," Johnny Cash later said, "are the single most important event in the history of country music.”
Beginning next week, the now famous Bristol Sessions will have a museum all their own. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum opens Friday with a star-studded line-up that extends throughout the weekend.
[caption id="attachment_10034" align="alignleft" width="230"] Recordings from the Bristol Sessions can be heard and albums are on display.[/caption]
Dr. Ralph Stanley will perform, along with Carlene Carter and Jim Lauderdale. There will be a  scavenger hunt, street buskers, and a special recording of Mountain Stage, West Virginia's nationally broadcast radio show, featuring Martina McBride and Doyle Lawson.
All of this will be in addition to museum exhibits, which include a Bristol Sessions karaoke booth, artifacts from sessions artists, and much, much more. If you head out to the museum for the launch or at any other point, please add a comment below. We'd love to hear what you think!

Arch Goins and family, Melungeons from Graysville, Tennessee, via Wikipedia.

Nowadays, it seems that every other black-haired, mountain dweller claims Melungeon roots. The name refers to a specific set of families. Traditionally dark-featured and visibly different from their white, black and Native American neighbors, they have lived in southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee for centuries.

Their ethnic origin has been a source of debate for nearly as long. Over the years, they've been called American gypsies, descendants of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, and members of a wayward Israeli tribe. Many Melungeon's themselves claim that their ancestors are Portuguese; some identify as Native American; and still others profess to have originated in Africa.

This ambiguity made early Appalachian whites suspicious. They isolated the Melungeon's to their own small communities in places like Newman's Ridge and the Blackwater Valley of Tennessee.

Early references to the group speak volumes. Dating to 1813, minutes from an area church describe someone as "harboring them Melungins." This less than neighborly phrasing suggests that area congregants regarded the group with disdain, and according to the Melungeon Heritage Association, the discrimination did not end there. In nearly a dozen court cases, the ethnicity of Melungeon people was challenged, including one case in which several members of the group were tried for illegal voting. They were accused on the grounds that they were not white and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot. While they were acquitted, this kind of legal discrimination, along with a general social stigma, dogged the Melungeons well into the twentieth century.

It wasn't until the 1960s, when other racial groups found a new pride in their identity, that the Melungeon's revisited their own. Rather than reject the name that had been used against them, they reclaimed it.

Ever since, popular interest in the group has grown. Melungeons have inspired news articles across the country; several books; the 2007 documentary Melungeon Voices; and at least one song called "Little Carmel." Performed by the rock band The Ready Stance, the tune riffs on the questions surrounding these now notable people:

Little Carmel
Try to trace the roots along
Melungeon family tree
Each branch divides in triad
Settler, slave, Cherokee
Outcast, exiled miles behind
Some seaside colony
Legend holds in manifold
Dash Turk or Portuguese...

 Once an ethnic mystery has been memorialized in song, you know it is the stuff of legend, but that legend is slowly being unraveled. A recent DNA study, published in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, dove deep into the backgrounds of Melungeon families. The researchers compared the families' oral histories, documentation such as court records, and DNA patterns. They found that, in spite of a wide range of ethnic claims, the overwhelming majority of their subjects were the offspring of men who originated from sub-Saharan Africa and women from northern or central European. That is, Melungeons are the most common kind of mixed-race in the United States--black and white.

 

A conflicting study, conducted at University of Virginia College at Wise, claims to have found more complex DNA evidence with a different sampling of Melungeons. While this research has not been peer reviewed, it states that "about 5 percent of the DNA indicated African descent, 5 percent was Native American, and the rest was 'Euroasian,' a group defined by clumping together Europe, the Middle East and India," according to a 2012 article in Wired Magazine.

It seems the Melungeon debate continues. Researchers are jockeying to crack the group's ethnic code, and their DNA evidence is undoubtedly inching us closer to a final answer.

This, of course, begs a whole new set of questions. What happens to the Melungeons once their mystery is solved? Will they still inspire songs? Will people still clamor to claim Melungeon roots when they know exactly what that means? Will journalists and bloggers like me still bother to write about this unusual clan, or will they fade into history, another mixed-race group assimilated into the mainstream?

About this time each year, I sit on my front porch with a bowl of candy, taking swigs from the bourbon and Coke that I've tucked behind my jack-o-lantern and yucking it up with neighborhood families as they parade by dressed as vampires, princesses, and cartoon characters that I'm too old to recognize.
I usually don't have much on my mind. Sometimes I wonder if I'll run out of treats or if anyone can smell the tipple on my breath, but I can say with certainty that I have never spotted a kid with a sheet over his head and thought to myself, "Hmm, did God make ghosts?"
I mean, has that question ever occurred to you? Of all the strange things that enter your brain on sleepless nights or when you're zoning in the shower, have you wondered that?
Not me. At least not until last week when I was clicking through websites while watching TV. Though my attention was torn, I couldn't miss the purple flashing homepage of Appalachian GhostWalks.
Appalachia? Ghosts? In October?
Right away, I knew this little company was blog-worthy, so I picked up the phone and called its owner Stacey Allen McGee. Though I reached him at 9:00 pm during his busiest season, Stacey sounded like he'd been waiting to hear from me. He gave me an excited greeting and told me, right off, that his ghost tours are like none other in the world.
To illustrate his point, he tossed out a question--"What is faith?"
I hesitated, hoping that he'd answer for me, and he did. "The evidence of things not seen," he said.
I didn't follow, so Stacey continued. "Every night, when we take people out on these tours, we hope to introduce them to the kingdom of Heaven."
With that, he paused. He must have known that I'd need a second to process, and he was right. I mean, I knew the company took things-that-go-bump-in-the-night seriously. Right on its website, it said that its tours result from "years of professional, experienced scientific investigation," but I didn't expect this. Scientific investigation and theistic questions? Really?
Stacey went on to explain that one of the oldest ghost stories in the world is in the Bible. He referenced the Old Testament's King Saul, whose spirit had a two way conversation Samuel. He talked about Lazarus, who according to the Gospel of John, was raised from the dead by Jesus. Biblical scripture, Stacey said, shows that "when the body stops working, it's not the end of you."
He believes this as a Christian, and he tries to prove it as an afterlife researcher. Stacey's faith has led him to spend nineteen years pursuing evidence of the hereafter. He has taken photos and videos. He has conducted electro-magnetic research. He says that he has stacks of unusual images. They can only be explained through belief in God or belief in the paranormal...or both.
Talking to Stacey, this starts to make an unusual kind of sense. If Christianity holds that there is an afterlife and ghost hunters do too, maybe there is a way for the two to coincide.
At the very least, Stacey's beliefs have produced one of the region's most interesting tours. Before placing a house on his walks, Stacey conducts exhaustive paranormal and historic research. He wants to insure that his guests have the most authentic, informed experience possible, and it pays off. Everyone learns about local history and lore, and many people claim to have otherworldly experiences while they're on his tours.
Could there be a better time to find out for yourself?
As part of your Halloween countdown, maybe you should take an Appalachian GhostWalk. They're offered across eastern Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. Prices start at $13 per person and same-day reservations are welcome. Stacey says the tours are appropriate for children as young as five, but a 97 year old woman once took two tours back-to-back because she had such a great time. Apparently, they're fun for all ages.
If you go, by all means drop a line here. If you don't, I'd still love to hear about your spine-tingling experiences. Have you ever seen a ghost? Do you think signs of the afterlife can be spotted in our hills and hollers? And if ghosts do exist, did God, in fact, make them?

My friend Dave Tabler posted this rocking video from Tennessee's Museum of Appalachia, along with the perfect description:
"The last 2 seconds of this video is truly impressive: the anvil explodes upward, then lands TWO FEET away from the launch pad. That's some seriously amazing anvil engineering going on to keep that baby from veering off into the crowd!"
[youtube]n1xS_FK_Xs4&feature[/youtube]

This morning, we awoke to heart wrenching images from yesterday's devastating tornadoes. Homes, schools, and in some instances entire towns were torn apart as damaging storms and more than 95 tornadoes tore across the Midwest and into the Appalachians.
I know we're all eager to help. Here are announcements that I've found for ways to donate funds, time, and other resources to the disaster response efforts in our region and beyond. As I find more ways to help, I'll add them to the list. Please also share any announcements that you find. Submit them as comments below, and I'll incorporate them into this post.
If you have been affected by the storms or tornadoes, you can find food, water, and a safe place to stay at an American Red Cross shelter.
[caption id="attachment_5191" align="alignright" width="257"] March 2, 2012 reported tornadoes. Click for interactive map.[/caption]
Alabama
For volunteer information, call 2-1-1 (in Alabama) or toll-free 888-421-1266.
Kentucky
Central Bank locations are accepting donations for Kentucky Cares, a campaign established with the Bluegrass Chapter of the American Red Cross.
Checks can also be mailed to the Bluegrass Chapter of the American Red Cross at 1450 Newtown Pike, Lexington, KY 40511 with Kentucky Cares in the memo line.
A truck at the Hamburg Pavilion Walmart in Lexington will be collecting goods on Monday, March 5th from noon to 7:00 PM.  Items needed include cleaning supplies, garbage bags, paper products, flashlights, batteries, bottled water, and non-perishable food.
Donate blood throughout central Kentucky with Kentucky Blood Center, which has locations in Lexington, Pikeville, and Somerset.
Kentucky Emergency Management has a special page set up for volunteer information.
I've seen that you can donate at Fifth Third Bank and Kroger in central Kentucky, but it's not clear to which organizations.



Tennessee
Greater Chattanooga Red Cross will begin holding volunteer orientations on Saturday, March 3, at 1:30 p.m. Positions include: warehouse, feeding, runners and office workers. Background checks are required. Contact this Red Cross chapter for additional dates and times.
Salvation Army Chattanooga is also seeking stand-by volunteers. Text your name and email to 423-505-1052 to be added to the list.
The McKamey Animal Centerin Chatanooga has a dog and cat food bank available for pets that have been affected by the storms. If your pets are displaced from your home or if you find displaced pets, please call 423-305-6500.
West Virginia
The Huntington Area Food Bank is sending a truck filled with food to hard hit areas in eastern Kentucky. They are accepting financial donations.

American Red Cross: donations can be made online or by calling 1-800 RED CROSS. You can also text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief. If you’d like to volunteer your time, you can search for volunteer opportunities online.
The Salvation Army donations can be made online or by calling 1-800-SAL-ARMY. $10 donations can also be made by texting the word STORM to 80888.
World Vision donations can be made online or by calling 1-888-56CHILD. $10 donations can be made by texting WV to 20222.
 

If you're like me, you don't plan your New Years Eve activities until the eleventh hour. We just decided two days ago to ring in 2012 playing pool and eating pickle flavored potato chips (our local billiard's specialty).
For all of my fellow stragglers, here are five favorite Appalachian NYE options:
5) SnowShoe Mountain's Gone Country New Years, Snowshoe, West Virginia: Snowshoe's 15,000 square foot entertainment venue, the Big Top, is going country tonight. Country headliners Tony Rio and the Relentless will be crooning for the grown-ups; the Boot Scoot Teen Dance starts at 11:30; kiddies will have video games; and everyone can chow on BBQ and fixins.
4) Tennessee Aquarium's New Year's Eve Sleep in the Deep, Chattanooga, Tennessee: Where else in the Appalachians can you ring in the new year with penguins? The Tennessee Aquarium invites you to go behind the scenes with its exhibits, get up close with their critters, and literally sleep with the fishes when you bed down in the Undersea Cavern of Ocean Journey. This one-of-a-kind slumber party includes guided tours, pizza, cider, and continental breakfast.
3) Veritas Vineyard, New Year's Eve Masked Ball, Afton, Virginia: Want to be a masked marvel in the new year? Here's your chance. Veritas Vineyard is hosting a five-course masked ball and dinner. There will be dancing until midnight, when the masks come off and the champagne flows. Breakfast follows at 12:30 a.m.
2) Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, Blood Mountain Hike, Blood Mountain, Georgia: Ring in the new year the way all good mountain folk should--standing on a mountain top. While details are iffy on its website, the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club is leading a six-mile loop hike that crests atop the 4,458-foot Blood Mountain, the highest peak on the Georgia section of the Appalachian Trail.
1) Make Some Noise at Home, Wherever You Are: You don't need Dick Clark to rock out at home tonight. Just grab some pots and pans and latch onto local lore. According to our friends at Appalachian History, "some folks in Appalachia open every door and window at the stroke of midnight to let out any residual bad luck. They make a loud ruckus banging on pots and pans, setting off fireworks and taking part in other noisy activities to chase it far away."
However you ring in the new year, I hope you have a safe and spirited night!

Once again, my history teachers have failed me. If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that this has been a point of outrage in the past. I was never told about the notorious Smith lynching, which was witnessed by nearly a third of my hometown's population. They neglected to inform me about the battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. Now I find out that a top secret nuclear facility, right across the border in Tennessee, developed the plutonium that powered the bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Virginia public schools, could you miss any more opportunities to bring history to life?
This means that the entire trajectory of the 20th century--the world changing destruction in Japan, the rise of nuclear arms, the entire cold war--started in our neck of the woods, in a little town called Oak Ridge.
Beginning in October 1942, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began seizing land in Tennessee's Anderson County, an area about 25 miles West of Knoxville. Within five short months, the corps had removed all residents, raised protective fences, and began construction on Oak Ridge, a top secret town that appeared on no maps. Even local residents didn't realize that they lived next to a production facility for the Manhattan Project, the legendary effort to develop the world's first nuclear weapon.
Fissionable plutonium for bombs would prove to be the facilities greatest accomplishment, but weapons weren't the only products in development at Oak Ridge. With thousands of scientists on staff, the facility pursued a number of projects, including the creation of a nuclear powered airplane.
This was the exclusive focus of one Millicent G. Dillon. In a riveting essay published by the literary magazine The Believer, Dillon describes her experience in the Tennessee mountains. By the time she arrived in 1947, the nuclear bombs had already been dropped; the war was over; and the Red Scare was growing. She recounts how she lived in the secret city--dodging cockroaches and scrounging for toilet paper--and how she left following a political firestorm that could have been lifted from a Cold War thriller.

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IN THE ATOMIC CITY: LIFE IN A SECRET NUCLEAR FACILITY AT THE DAWN OF THE ARMS RACE
BY MILLICENT G. DILLON
In January 1947, when I was twenty-one, I went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to work as a low-level physicist on a secret project, NEPA. I knew nothing about NEPA except that it was an acronym for Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft. As for Oak Ridge, I knew from accounts after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, only that the project had produced fissionable material for the atom bomb.
I had accepted the Oak Ridge job after a single telephone call from an official at NEPA. My name had apparently been plucked from a roster of junior physicists who had worked on defense contracts during the war. My employment background was not a sterling one, as I had a history of rebelling against my supervisors. But the caller seemed to know no more about me than I knew about him, so I supposed he just needed to recruit bodies. I had run out of money, and my projected salary, two hundred dollars a month, sounded like untold prosperity to me. Uncertain and confused as I was about my future, perhaps I thought chance was showing me the way.
CONTINUE READING

In Appalachia, we cherish our national parks -- Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah -- but they came at a cost. Families were moved, homesteads taken, and communities broken when the parks were created. The Knoxville News Sentinel shares the perspective of two elderly cousins on all of this -- Alie Newman Maples, 89, and Cleo Newman, 91:
"'They always talk about the little children who gave their nickels and dimes to build the park. What about the little children who cried because they left? I cried,' says Maples."