Blog Archives

Mountain Music Trail Winds Through WV

Following U.S. Route 219 through five counties in West Virginia, the Mountain Music Trail highlights the old-time music of the Mountain State.

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Appalachian Millennials and social media in Wyoming County

Guest Contributor Donald Welch: The Rural Appalachian Improvement League encourages plenty of groups to visit the Mullens, W.Va., area to volunteer. But, as an organization focused on sustainability and creating social change in southern West Virginia, the group also uses social media to engage youth and create opportunities for local residents.

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Common Connections: An Appalachian-Romanian Exchange

An exchange program between high students from Mason, W. Va., and Anina, Romania, identified similarities in the music and traditions of these two coal-mining regions.

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Paying Tribute to a Beloved Daughter of Appalachia

Jean Ritchie, Kentucky-born folk hero, environmentalist and activist, died this June in her Berea, Ky. home at the age of 92.

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Ginseng’s growing role in the new Appalachian economy

Most people who live in the mountains know that just being here can have a healing effect on the soul. But not as many people know that many native plants have real medicinal properties. Growing and marketing those wild medicinal plants and herbs was the subject of a recent workshop offered by the group AppalCEED in Norton, Va.

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Appalachian Regional Commission receives citizen input

Subregions_2009_MapOn June 4, the Appalachian Regional Commission held one of its five 2016-2020 Strategic Plan Listening Sessions in Morehead, Ky. The session successfully facilitated the sharing of ideas by Appalachian stakeholders that will inform the commission’s plan for improving economic opportunities in communities across the region.

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Silas House: A Remembrance of Jean Ritchie

Jean in dulcimer shop “Kindness always lit up the face of Jean Ritchie,” begins this remembrance by author Silas House of the Appalachian folk icon who died yesterday at 92. “She was a source of incredible pride for my people. Everyone I knew loved Jean Ritchie, and they especially loved the way she represented Appalachian people: with generosity and sweetness, yes. But also with defiance and strength.”

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Walking the Walk of Preservation

History provides a sense of place. Increasingly, communities are building their own place in history, and finding that preserving the past and marketing it to visitors can also provide a boost in the present.

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Appalachian Voices Book Club

Appalachia’s triumphs and tragedies, its beauty and mystery, and its people’s tenacity, love and good humor have long been enshrined in fiction. This year, the stories of the region’s struggles with coal are reaching a national audience thanks to two powerful new novels.

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Museum Celebrates Birthplace of Country Music

In the 1920s, regional musicians often jammed together in Bristol while waiting for the next train. Those sounds were recorded during the now-famous Bristol Sessions, and now a new museum pays homage to the living legacy of country music.

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