Archive for December 2011
Seeds of Change Initiative to Improve Access to Local Food
The Boone, N.C.-based non-profit group Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture received a $1.1 million grant from Heifer USA to strengthen the local food system in what is known as the High Country region of North Carolina. The Seeds of Change Initiative is a multi-year program that will build upon the emerging local food movement to…
Read MoreBy The Numbers
78%: Voters nationwide who support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s work to hold polluters accountable. 170: Votes against environmental protection in the House of Representatives since the beginning of 2011 1,048.3 million: Number of short tons of coal the U.S. consumed in 2010, the second-lowest consumption rate in a decade. 1995: The last time coal…
Read MoreAnother Nordic Revolution
By Kristian Jackson It’s 5 a.m. and outside the truck, headlights reveal driving snow squalls and drifts as high as the pickup’s hood. Our crawl up Roaring Creek Road near the Toe River of North Carolina comes to a sudden halt in a wall of whiteness. We abandon our attempt to dig out the beast…
Read MoreGolden Eagles Winter in Appalachia
By Molly Moore With their deep brown bodies and gold-tinged feathery manes, golden eagles are icons of ferocity. When Americans imagine a golden eagle diving through the air with talons outstretched, they typically pair the image with a Western backdrop. But as Appalachian researchers are quick to point out, the notion of golden eagles as…
Read MoreOld Folktales Die Hard
By Brian Sewell “Murdered in May of 1865,” a white gravestone on the banks of the Yadkin River in Wilkes County, N.C., reads. “Tom Dula hanged for crime.” The grave belongs to Laura Foster, the victim in one of the most popularized and retold murder cases in Appalachian folk history. Like a game of cultural…
Read MoreThe Qualla Creators
Conserving Cherokee Traditions By Molly Moore On the Qualla Boundary, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ reservation, local resources have inspired arts traditions for generations. Today the community’s rich arts heritage is flourishing. The town of Cherokee, N.C.,positioned at the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway and bordering the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,…
Read MoreBees Share the True Cost of Coal
By Brian Sewell Outside of Appalachia, artists who acknowledge their connection to coal have adopted the issue of mountaintop removal and taken to the road. The Beehive Collective’s True Cost of Coal illustration transforms ways of thinking as it travels by inviting all who see it into a web of stories. The panoramic poster depicts…
Read MorePutting the Human Perspective into Mountaintop Removal
By Brian Sewell For every movement, there is a message. This message can take many forms, but often the most moving is the creation of art to inform. Art helps people see problems anew, even those who see them everyday. The campaign to end mountaintop removal is no different. At the annual meeting of Kentuckians…
Read MorePaul Corbit Brown: Truth Before Profit
By Jamie Goodman Paul Corbit Brown’s life has come full circle – thanks to the lens on his camera. He was born into a coal miner’s family in Kilsyth, W.Va. For generations, every male in his family had become coal miners, but a chance encounter when he was 12 years old ultimately resulted in a…
Read MoreFollowing the Patchwork Path
Quilt Trails Drive Rural Economic Revival By Dana Kuhnline Barn quilts, a relatively new art form that draws on rich rural craft traditions of the past, are helping communities answer an important economic question. “How do we get travelers off the four-lane highways and into communities where they might never go otherwise? How do we…
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