I grew up just a few miles from Virginia's Natural Bridge Zoo and always assumed it was a well-run sanctuary, a place where healthy animals from around the world delighted visitors. New undercover video and a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection paint a very different picture. They detail:

• A capuchin monkey killed by carelessly placed rat bait
• Guinea pigs being “euthanized” by slamming them against concrete
• A baby monkey and its mother being jabbed with a metal rod and, once captured, slammed to the ground
• A camel who died with her neck wedged in a gap that management knew was unsafe
• A macaque who went weeks without treatment for a wound that ran clear to his bone
• An elephant, one of the most social species on earth, kept in solitary—not seeing another of her kind—for nearly a decade

That’s just the start. The twenty-seven-page USDA report goes on to describe unimaginable filth and dead animals everywhere. It even recounts visitors handling thirty-five pound tiger cubs—animals mature enough to hurt people—while zoo staff took pictures.

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Click here to sign the petition. Tell officials that it's time to close this farce of a zoo.

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What does the zoo’s owner Karl Mogensen have to say about all this?
He completely dismisses powerful photos and videos captured by The Humane Society, telling The Roanoke Times, “You can always take a bad picture.”
Luckily, these images say it all. Natural Bridge Zoo is a nightmare for the creatures trapped in it and a hazard for the people who visit. It’s time for authorities to shut it down.
That's why I've started a petition. Sign today and tell the USDA along with Virginia's governor and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries that they must take action. It’s time for all zoos to be places of joy, conservation, and learning, not places of misery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55v4-OY8Kt0&feature=youtu.be

I hadn't expected to choke back tears over my tacos. When I ordered, we were acting like fools, hooting and laughing, making more noise than other families in the restaurant, which would have been the case just about any night, but this dinner followed my graduation. Since I was the first to earn a bachelors degree, we were extra rowdy.
As the server refilled drinks, my stepmother slid a cheery package onto my lap. I looked to her, surprised, and then down the table, wondering who noticed. Cleaning ladies and retirees, they'd already spent too much getting there, two hours from home. I didn't want them to feel like they should have brought gifts too.
My stepmother nudged my shoulder. "Open it!"
With the box flat on my lap, trying not to draw attention, I eased fingertips under the tape and slid gift wrap to the floor. My discretion did no good. Conversation stopped. By the time I lifted the lid, relatives were leaning to see inside. One aunt stood as I unfolded crisp tissue paper, revealing a quilt—light blue with cowboys and ponies, the fabric aged but still bright, though much too small for me.
"Your daddy's!" my stepmother boomed.
Confused, I looked up, trying to conceive how this tiny blanket ever contained the biker next to her, the man behind my every whipping and half my chores, who wore leather and denim most days and a full beard for as long I could remember. Always tough, my father now flashed an uncharacteristic smirk.
Amused or embarrassed? I wondered, trying to read his face, when I noticed that his lids were damp. He blinked hard and cut his gaze away, toward a basket of chips, and I realized this gift wasn't my stepmother's idea.
I closed the box fast, my own eyes threatening to flood. "Thank you," I managed as a chorus of awww ran around the table.
Chatter resumed. We finished our tacos and chips. But that quilt stayed right on my lap, and it's been close ever since, a bright reminder that a good mountain man, no matter how burly, admits he once needed to be wrapped in a baby blanket.

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In this series, folks who've left the Appalachians share mementos we carry with us, objects that remind us of the mountains.

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It arrived after my father died from LaFayette, Georgia – a town nestled into the pine trees just as Appalachia stretches out of the mountains and into red clay. He called it his "steak knife," a military issue oxblood combat blade, and it saved his life along the Korean DMZ in the early sixties. At seventeen, he cut his initials into the sheath.
Knives were a conversation we were able to have without his anger and alcohol. He taught me how to dress a deer with it. He bought me my first pocketknife at the Collinsville flea market.
Now, it rests with a small collection of others—a 90 year old Case folder, a Hen & Rooster whittler, and a black horn Laguiole—like the end of the only peaceful story we ever shared.
Logan Knight, Oakland, California
From LaFayette, Georgia

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Have you ever lived away from the mountains? If so, did you carry pieces of home with you?

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Living with my family in a small apartment across the Hudson from Manhattan, I haven't had room to keep many things from home. I do have this little flashlight, though, factory made in China. It's a cheap trinket but has my grandfather's name on it and came from his house on Read Mountain. The back side says "Cheyenne River Indian Outreach." Undoubtedly a gift from one of the many charities he supported with his electrician union's pension.
Grandpa passed away in March, and seeing his name on this light reminds me of the home he built with his father after returning from the war. I think of his sisters who lived on Read Mountain behind him and summer get-togethers with homemade lemon ice cream. It reminds me of years drinking coffee with him at his army reunions and his boyish eagerness to connect with friends at 91 years old. Then I start thinking, "And, it is a flashlight. It's so symbolic. He had so much wisdom."
I have to admit, though, if Grandpa had received his name printed on a square of toilet paper from some terribly misconceived charity marketing plan, I'd be writing about a toilet paper square instead.
Will Robertson, New York, New York
From Roanoke, Virginia

Driving to Roanoke for a weekend visit, I nearly missed my exit. I’ve taken this turn thousands of times, but in the dark, my mind had drifted to warm butterbeans, ones grandma said she'd have simmering. When I noticed the ramp to my left, I pulled the wheel hard and veered faster than I should have, alarming myself because local police seem to materialize whenever I make a bonehead move.

This last minute gaff meant that I rolled into the valley with my mind on the road, on my speed, on everything except the fact that I’d made it home. I drove for a mile like that, my eyes on the lane divides and fists tight around the wheel, not looking up until I thought to check traffic ahead. That’s when I spotted it—nine-stories of neon bliss. The Mill Mountain Star beamed at me across the valley, a gaudy yet glorious landmark, a constant beacon in a world with precious few.

Whizzing past the airport and the mall restaurant where I first worked, I watched the star grow and felt my tension melt. I thought about all the nights I spent in its glow. Every long walk home from that restaurant job. Every night I yelled “mother may I” in a yard overflowing with children. Every time I stood behind our apartment house alone, squealing toward the sky, trying to coax bats to fly low overhead. Every dinner. Every bath. Every night’s sleep. The Mill Mountain Star shone through my entire childhood, and long before I existed.

It was lit bright, brand new in fact, just after my momma was born. A 1949 holiday publicity stunt that somehow stuck around, it inducted her into the first generation that would know the star’s glow lifelong.

Momma biked right under this landmark as a girl, when it was still safe to ride around Southeast Roanoke after dark. By the early 1970s, she’d had two babies near its base, neither of which she got to hold—the first because she was just sixteen years old and told to give that child up for adoption, the second because the baby was born too small to live. She married my father at the start of that decade and divorced him by the end of it, loving and fighting like all couples and having two more children in between. Once they split, I imagine she spent hours by our third-floor apartment window, watching the star and wondering how she’d manage to raise us boys, dead broke and alone.

I don’t want to overstate the importance of the star. It’s not like it could have helped her with her problems. It couldn’t have given her a job or a car or an education beyond high school. She’d have to find those things herself, which she did, but the whole while, the star did glow. Up on the side of Mill Mountain, too big and silly to be believed, it must have inspired a thousand smiles on my momma’s face and as many on mine.

The night she died, the star was right there, just yards above us. In the hospital that sits next to the mountain, she took her last breath, having struggled through months of starvation, big tumors clogging up her insides. Her two boys, my brother and me, held her hands as she drew a final, weak gasp, not even a lungful, and then let go. We stared at one another stunned and then met at the foot of the bed and hugged, long and silent, until a nurse whispered that when we were ready, we should gather the things we wanted to keep.

I stepped outside that night with full arms—Momma's overflowing purse, greeting cards, her cane, and a little Christmas tree someone had brought. It was December. The air was brisk but not bitter, so I walked slowly to my car. Between the hospital and its parking garage, I looked up. The star was dark, already shut off, which happens every night around midnight. Even its steel frame was concealed against the mountainside, itself a deep blue silhouette, dark as a burial mound, just too sincere.

I wanted to find the switch. Wherever it was hidden, behind bushes atop Mill Mountain or in some municipal basement, I wanted to flip it, to light the star, the sky, to light the whole valley and remember every night my momma lived, the lifetime she spent, beginning to end, with nine-stories of neon bliss overhead.

If you find yourself walking through a graveyard late one night on the western edge of the Appalachians, you should be careful not to trip. I mean watch for the usual graveyard ghouls and all too—they'll snag you as fast there as anywhere—but also glance to the ground every few feet, because they have these strange markers, ones that will send you ass over tea kettle.
They go by a couple different names—tent graves and comb graves—the prior making perfect sense because they're shaped like little tents, the latter a mystery because they don't look at all like combs. Made from rough stone, sometimes paired with metal or brick, they're just low enough to overlook and just high enough to send you sprawling atop the resting place of some Civil War veteran.
You can find tent graves in other areas too, but there's a concentration in west Tennessee, where John and Retta Waggoner explore. Self described "grave walkers," they started their macabre hobby while searching for the burial places of ancestors. By the time they covered all of the cemeteries near their Smith County home, they were hooked. They've walked through graves across Tennessee, up into Kentucky, down into Florida and Arkansas, all over.
When they share pictures of tent graves, everyone's first question is, of course, why such an unusual shape?
The Waggoners say that the most common reason cited is livestock. While we have motorized mowers today, graveyard grass used to be clipped the old fashioned way, by goats, sheep, and cows. To keep animals from sinking into soft, grave-top soil (or being grabbed by a restless corpse) tent graves were built.

"In Overton County the sides are often supported by an iron rod," the Waggoners say, explaining variations in the graves, "whereas in the White County area they are supported by a triangular end section of stone inserted underneath."
This makes me wonder—have you ever run across these unusual markers? If so, how were they made? And, as importantly, did they send you sprawling during your graveyard stroll?

To get your head around the band Goodnight, Texas, you need to know your geography. When the group formed, Avi Vinocur was living in San Francisco. His songwriting partner Patrick Dyer Wolf lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Since a cross-contintal collaboration defined their work, they adopted the name of a town that lied halfway between them— Goodnight, Texas.
It's a really amazing moniker, one that feels classically American and, at the same time, serves as a great media hook. (Try finding an article that doesn't mention the name's quirky origin.) But this week I talked with Avi and learned that The Lone Star State has a lot less to do with the band's substance than another region steeped in American tradition.
You see, he spent a lot of time in the Appalachian South, visiting relatives, roaming our blue rolling hills. The stories he heard and the people he met sparked his imagination and ended up influencing everything from the band's sound to its album art.
Below, Avi tells us how the region's industrial history has inspired him and shares a special photo that underpins one of the band's most popular songs.

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TR: Avi, let's start off with your Appalachian roots. While you were raised elsewhere, you spent a lot of time in the mountains. Whereabouts?
AV: I was raised in Connecticut and Los Angeles. My family, however, hails from around Hagerstown, Maryland and Martinsburg, West Virginia. I grew up going out there relatively often and saw a lot of American history in the process. Our family's basement was full of crazy artifacts dating back to the American Revolution, like a grandfather clock made in 1774 that we still have.
TR: What about the mountains inspires you?
AV: My family lived near a switching station in Brunswick, Maryland up until the 1940s and some relatives worked on the railroad. Hard labor jobs were about all you could find in the area in the mid-1800s up to the early 1900s, and they ended up being the strength that built entire cities as the U.S. expanded. Industrial labor has absolutely worked its way into my songwriting. I am intrigued by a world pre-internet, when geography and circumstance played a large role in who people were.
[caption id="attachment_10291" align="alignright" width="280"] Historic photo behind song "Jesse Got Trapped in a Coal Mine."[/caption]
TR: Some of your songs are even tied to family history, right? One of my favorite tunes is "Jesse Got Trapped in A Coal Mine." Can you tell us more about Jesse?
AV: This is not a family story, just one that I made up, but it reminded me of the types of old stories that do get passed down from generation to generation. The types of stories that reach a point in a game of telephone that you aren't even certain they are true—but you continue the chain by passing them on anyway.
TR: Did your bandmates always share your Appalachian-enthusiasm or did they adopt it?
AV: Patrick and I had always shared an interest in rural American history, so the themes made sense from the get go. His family comes from Buffalo, New York; Central Pennsylvania; and Ireland, so he is no stranger to a hard history.
TR: If you could play one song with one Appalachian artist, living or dead, who would it be and what song would you play together?
AV: I'd love the chance to play with Jimmie Rodgers. I suppose he's a southerner, and more of a country-folk guy, but close enough. Maybe on the steps of the gorgeous old Post Office in Bristol, Tennessee in the late 20s. Any one of his blue yodels. Although I wouldn't want to contract his tuberculosis.
TR: You all include a lot of historic photos in your album art, and you're sharing a special one with us today. Can you tell us a little about it and why old photos mean so much to you?
Many photos in our album artwork were found in old boxes, and I am not sure if they are family or friends of our family or no relation at all. This picture is one I have stared at for a long time. I often think of this man as the Jesse character from our song, and I'm not sure why. There is something so innocent and simple about him. I'm not sure what captivates me about these old photographs, but I am mesmerized by how completely forgotten these people are. They probably had husbands, wives and children, impressive stories, hardships - but none of them exist now. All that remains of their long lives are these pictures.
TR: These pictures...and your songs. Thanks for taking the time to talk.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KprhCjauwiI

Elaine McMillion Sheldon is about to get you out of some awkward situations. She's the director of the award-winning documentary Hollow, and while screening the film in over fifty locations—Virginia to Vermont and Amsterdam to Switzerland—she kept bumping into the same problem.
"I would say it correctly throughout the whole screening," Elaine explained, referring, of course, to the word Appalachia, "but during the Q&A portions people would often revert to App-a-lay-shu. It drove me crazy!"
[caption id="attachment_10164" align="alignright" width="260"] Elaine enjoying her new tee.[/caption]
Now, Elaine's momma raised her right; she's not about to embarrass anyone in public. Instead, she hatched a scheme to subtly correct people. "A lightbulb went off: I should just make a t-shirt that politely makes people sound it out."
With that bright idea, she solved a quandary every native of the Appalachian South faces—that awkward moment when someone says the name of your homeland in a way that makes you want to pack your ears with morel mushrooms and wild ramps.
Luckily, there's no need to correct anyone's pronunciation anymore. Just slip into this instructional t-shirt the next time you'll be around folks who insist on saying Appalachia that other way, and they'll get the picture pretty darned fast.
Sizes run slim and supplies are limited, so you might want to order your App-uh-latch-uh tee today.
And whether you buy one or not, let us know—ever had a moment when you wish you'd been wearing this clever shirt?

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!

Ever stand atop an Appalachian mountain and feel like you could touch the stars?
Well, in 1961, a group of Kentucky craftspeople came closer than just about any of us. Today's guest blogger Adam MacPharlain tells us how Churchill Weavers, a company built on traditional Appalachian weaving techniques, got into the space race. It's a wonderful reminder that old-time ways can still find a place in the modern world.
Adam helps manage the sprawling Churchill Weavers Collection at the Kentucky Historical Society, which includes product samples like this one-of-a-kind space fabric, weaving tools, advertisements, and business records. Watch for his posts about the collection on the society's Facebook and Twitter pages.

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From 1922 to 2007, Churchill Weavers stood at the foothills of the Appalachians in Berea, Kentucky. What started as a goodhearted way to enliven the handweaving industry in this rural landscape ended up as the first company in the U.S. to mass-produce handwoven goods—everything from baby blankets to ladies scarves—and distribute them nationally.
By using an innovative loom that allowed weavers to move quickly, these mountain craftspeople out-produced competitors and caught the eye of an unlikely partner—the National Air and Space Administration (NASA).
In 1961, Churchill Weavers was approached by B.F. Goodrich, which was under contract with the space agency to produce cloth for spacesuit lining. Goodrich provided yarn made from glass fiber and rayon coated with Teflon and asked that Churchill experiment with it. The company applied its innovative spirit and developed a number of weaves, using techniques that dated back centuries and looms that were hand-built by the company's founder.
Samples went to B.F. Goodrich and then were passed to the Navy. After testing for space suitability, a final fabric was requested for a mock-up spacesuit, and Churchill Weavers delivered 70 yards.
"We are quite appreciative of the splendid work," said Goodrich officials, noting that handweaving was incredibly versatile, making it possible to experiment with elements like weave tightness, but in the end, cost was king. With Churchill’s price quote being some 300 percent higher than other competitors, the final contract went to a company that used automated looms.
After the "space cloth," Churchill Weavers took on other unusual projects—including fabrics for globally recognized fiber artist Gerhardt Knodel—but none of their other ventures inspired more imagination or put the company's fine craftspeople closer to the stars.

Raise your hand if you're a Stanley Brothers fan. Mine is waving in the air right now. Their signature sound—sorrowful yet sweet—has enchanted generations, and part of its appeal ties to our region's history of outward migration.
In the mid-1900s, mountain folk flocked to industrial towns. Today, we leave for desk jobs in major metros. The work has changed, but the pattern is the same, and I, of course, am part of it. As an Appalachian migrant living in DC, I am enthralled by the generations who left before me and by the music that helped them stay connected to home.
So is today's guest blogger. Luke Floyd is an avid fan of mountain music and a student at Georgia State University. He sees deeply emotional ties between the Stanley Brothers and Appalachian migrants from the last century. The patterns he's uncovered sure strike a chord with me. I wonder if they do with you too.
Have you ever left your homeland for a stretch? If so, how do songs like the one below leave you feeling? 

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With a voice that sounds as old as his native Virginia hills, Ralph Stanley has become one of the most recognizable names in modern bluegrass music. His gravelly, high-pitched tenor transmits a lonesome sound that is part and parcel with the music and tradition he embodies.
To me, Dr. Stanley sounded his finest when he accompanied his brother Carter Stanley. As the two began their music careers during the 1940s, their voices blended into a smooth mix of Ralph’s high-line with Carter’s baritone. Although their repertoire expanded to include many bluegrass hits, the Stanley Brothers wrote and sang songs that consistently centered on a single theme—home.
During the great migration of the mid-20th century, some seven million Appalachians found themselves away from home and family while searching the Midwest for jobs. In cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, the newfound industrial might of the United States churned thanks to mountain-less migrants.
So when Carter wrote of "mother at home a’waitin," his lyrics resonated with these displaced people. They missed not only their families and their mountains but also their music. The meeting of the Stanley Brother’s lyrics and lonesome tones with the heartache of migration created a semi-sacred reverence. For many, it was as close to the “little mountain church” as they could be at the time.
Remembered as one of the greatest bluegrass lyricists, Carter performed with such emotion that he often had tears in his eyes as he sang. One of my favorite songs written by Carter is “The Fields Have Turned Brown.” While short, the lyrics convey the same melancholy found in historic ballads from the region.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevmoxEsT1g
Our narrator—a man who left his mountain home—begins the first stanza by warmly recalling the parting words of his mother and father, including a soft reminder to not forget his religious raising—as the chorus says “remember that love for God can be found.”
Later, the narrator returns home, but he doesn't find God’s love, just an empty house. Both his parents died while he was gone.
Although his reason for “rambling” is not disclosed, like the millions of Appalachians who left home during the great migration, regret permeates his remembrances. Even when they had good reasons—hunting for work, military service, chasing a better life—mountain people often felt sorrow over leaving.
Carter Stanley was a powerful lyricist, because he harnessed that guilt. The scene in the first stanza of mother and father waving from the porch was reenacted countless times in reality and in the memories of these migrants. Surrounded by an urban, foreign setting, the image of their mountain homes never slipped too far from their minds.
When Carter Stanley wrote of mourning the cost of his choices, he struck a chord among this unique group and, as it turned out, countless other old time and folk music fans who made the song a lasting hit. Decades later, it was still being covered by bands like The Grateful Dead and Old and in the Way.
For Appalachian ex-pats, however, it held special meaning. In their new, urban homes, many found a semblance of normalcy as the years rolled on. People from West Virginia, North Georgia, East Tennessee, and Southwest Virginia found one another and bonded around their cultural similarities. They shared food, a peculiar take on the English language, and, of course, music, forming Appalachian communities that felt a little like home. While their gentle mountains were nowhere in sight, their lives still hummed to an Appalachian tune, though one tinged with displacement and regret, one sung by Ralph and Carter Stanley.

Put down your oversized #1 foam finger long enough to check this out. In the spirit of March Madness, the good folks at Garden & Gun have launched the competition to end all competitions—a Southern Towns Bracket:

With so many great towns in Dixie, we couldn’t possibly hit them all. But after much heated debate, we’ve put together a bracket of 32 of the South’s finest. For the record, we kept it to towns, not cities, capping the population at 150,000 (sorry Atlanta, Nashville, and Dallas). There are historic towns such as Charleston and St. Augustine, artsy towns (Athens, Bentonville), college towns (Oxford, Chapel Hill), and just about everything in between.

[caption id="attachment_9413" align="alignright" width="265"] Greenville, South Carolina. Photo by dustinphillips on Flickr.[/caption]
If ever there was a competition where the Appalachian South had an advantage, this is it. Our region is chock full of charming towns. Roanoke, Asheville, Charlottesville, Gatlinburg, Morgantown, Berea, Greenville, Lewisburg—they're all on the list and waiting for your vote.
Round One is up now. The towns with the most votes by Monday, March 24, 2014 will advance to round two. Oh, and you can vote once a day throughout all of the rounds, so keep on clicking.
You can also cheer for your favorite mountain town on Twitter, using hashtag #SOUTHERNTOWNS.
As the field narrow over the next few weeks and winners are announced on April 4, you'll find the latest updates on The Revivalist's Facebook page.
Which towns will get your votes?

North Carolinians, I hope you're sitting down. I know you all are real proud of Orville and Wilbur Wright, and you've rebuffed challenges for their "first in flight" status from other states and countries, but historic research now suggests that the first flying apparatus actually went airborne in the North Georgia mountains more than twenty years before the Wright brothers' highly lauded flight.
Today's guest writer, Dave Tabler of the popular blog Appalachian History, presents the evidence. We'll let you be the judge.
Do you think this claim holds water? If so, is it time to change the North Carolina license plate? And what about our history books; if Micajah Clark Dyer flew decades earlier that the Wright brothers, how should we tell the first in flight story?

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Micajah Clark Dyer (1822-1891) filed patent 154,654 for his ‘Apparatus for navigating the air’ in 1874, a full 29 years before the Wright brothers made their historic first flight.

Be it known that I, Micajah Dyer, of Blairsville, in the county of Union and State of Georgia, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Apparatus for Navigating the Air; and I do declare the following to be a full, clear and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it pertains to make and use it, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, which form part of this specification…

Witnesses at Choestoe, Georgia to Micajah Dyer’s illustrated and written patent document were Francis M. Swain (a neighbor) and M. C. Dyer, Jr. (the “other” Micajah Clark Dyer who, to distinguish the two, signed Jr. after his name. He was an uncle to the inventor Micajah Clark Dyer, but they were reared as brothers by Elisha Dyer, Jr., grandfather of Micajah). The document was dated February 16, 1874. It was filed in the patent office on June 10, 1874, and was approved there on September 1, 1874.
[caption id="attachment_9268" align="alignleft" width="271"] Clark Dyer and his wife Morena, photo courtesy Union County Historical Society.[/caption]
“When he was not busy with cultivating the land on his farm and tilling the crops necessary to the economy of his large family, Clark Dyer labored in his workshop,” says his descendant Ethlene Dyer Jones.
“There he experimented with a flying machine made of lightweight cured river canes and covered with cloth. Drawings on the flyleaves of the family Bible, now in the possession of one of Clark’s great, great grandsons, show how he thought out the engineering technicalities of motion and counter-motion by a series of rotational whirligigs. He built a ramp on the side of the mountain and succeeded in getting his flying machine airborne for a short time.
“Evidently, to hide his contraption from curious eyes, and to keep his invention a secret from those who would think him strange and wasting time from necessary farm work, Clark kept his machine out of sight, stored behind lock and key in his barn. Those who did not ridicule the inventor were allowed to see the fabulous machine. Among them were the following who bore testimony to seeing the plane; namely, his grandson, Johnny Wimpey, son of Morena and James A. Wimpey; a cousin Herschel A. Dyer, son of Bluford Elisha and Sarah Evaline Souther Dyer; and James Washington Lance, son of the Rev. John H. and Caroline Turner Lance.
“Just when the fabulous trial flights (more than one) occurred on the mountainside in Choestoe is uncertain [about 1872-1874.] Prior to his death, he had invented a perpetual motion machine. It is also a part of family legend that Clark’s son, Mancil Pruitt Dyer, turned down an offer of $30,000 for the purchase of his father’s pending patents on inventions, especially the perpetual motion machine. Maybe Mancil reasoned that if he held out for more, he could receive it. Still another family story holds that Clark’s widow, Morena Ownbey Dyer, sold the flying machine and its design to the Redwine Brothers, manufacturers of Atlanta, who, in turn, sold the ideas to the Wright Brothers of North Carolina in about 1900.”
“Mr. Dyer has been studying the subject of air navigation for thirty years,” says the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph and Messenger, June 27, 1875, “and has tried various experiments during that time, all of which failed until he adopted his present plan. He obtained his idea from the eagle, and taking that king of birds for his model has constructed his machine so as to imitate his pattern as nearly as possible. Whatever may be the fate of Mr. Dyer’s patent, he, himself, has the most unshaken faith in its success, and is ready, as soon as a machine can be constructed, to board the ship and commit himself, not to the waves, but to the wind.”
[caption id="attachment_9261" align="alignright" width="270"] Dyer descendant Jack Allen, a retired Delta Airlines mechanic. crafted every piece of Clark Dyer’s airplane model to scale. Photo courtesy of The Towns County Herald.[/caption]
“We had a call on Thursday from Mr. Micajah Dyer, of Union county, who has recently obtained a patent for an apparatus for navigating the air,” adds a July 31, 1875 article in the Gainesville (Georgia) Eagle. “The machine is certainly a most ingenious one, containing principles entirely new to aeronauts, and which the patentee confidently believes have solved the knotty problem of air navigation. The body of the machine in shape resembles that of the fowl, an eagle, for instance, and is intended to be propelled by different kinds of devices, to wit: Wings and paddle-wheels, both to be simultaneously operated, through the instrumentality of mechanism connected with the driving power.
“In operating the machinery the wings receive an upward and downward motion, in the manner of the wings of a bird, the outer ends yielding as they are raised, but opening out and then remaining rigid while being depressed. The wings, if desired, may be set at an angle so as to propel forward as well as to raise the machine in the air. The paddle-wheels are intended to be used for propelling the machine, in the same way that a vessel is propelled in water. An instrument answering to a rudder is attached for guiding the machine. A balloon is to be used for elevating the flying ship, after which it is to be guided and controlled at the pleasure of its occupants.”
Clark Dyer later invented a spring-loaded, propeller-driven flying machine, according to several witnesses who saw him launch a successful model. Legend says he later personally flew in a full-size one with foot controls and a steering device. He would glide from a mountainside in Choestoe, on a rail-like ramp of his own design.
“Mr. Dyer has worked thirty years on his machine,” said his neighbor John M. Rich in a letter to the editor of the Athens Banner-Watchman from April 28, 1885. “He is not crazed, but is in dead earnest, and confidently believes that he has solved the problem of aerial navigation. He is not a crank nor a fanatic, but is a good, quiet citizen and a successful farmer.”
“People said he continued to work on perfecting the machine until his death on January 26, 1891 at age 68,” says Clark Dyer’s great, great granddaughter, Sylvia Dyer Turnage. “Since the patent we’ve found was registered on September 1, 1874, I believe he had a later and more advanced design in those 17 years.”