Be a Part of the “Voice”

Did any of you regular readers of the Appalachian Voice ever wonder how a small non-profit group is able to put out 70,000 free newspapers every 2 months and distribute them out to six states? Unlike many for-profit publications that have large staffs and the ability to pay distributors, the Appalachian Voice is put together…

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General Stores Still Making it in the Mountains

It is an almost balmy afternoon, the cloudless sky opening wide against the tightly wooded ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am driving west out of Charlottesville, Virginia, on a gently curving road through open farmland, passing long weathered fences, an occasional estate home, a few horse barns, and then a steeplechase off to…

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Wendell Berry on Sustainability, Citizenship and Becoming a Native

For over forty years, Wendell Berry has written from his hillside farm in Kentucky. Through more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction, he has critiqued the many problems of our American lifestyle while also offering more ecologically sane alternatives. What follows are excerpts from an interview with Berry conducted in November of 2003.…

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Blue Ridge Echo

images/voice_uploads/BrushyMtnsCircle.gif Stop at almost any east-facing overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in northwestern North Carolina and you will see layers of mountains retreating into the distance. Most people assume that they are looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains. While spurs of the Blue Ridge range do taper to the east, the most prominent peaks…

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The Healthy Air Industry

images/voice_uploads/MarshallSmokestackCircle.gif When Person County Manager Steve Carpenter talks about the North Carolina Clean Smokestacks Act (CSA), the enthusiasm in his voice is unmistakable. But the enthusiasm is not because of the much cleaner air that he and his constituents will soon be breathing as a direct result of the CSA. No, when Steve Carpenter thinks…

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Sue Daniel Memorial Fund Announced

Appalachian Voices is honored to be chosen as a recipient of donations in memory of Sue Daniels, a leading mountaintop removal activist from Blacksburg, Virginia, who passed away in November. As a leader of the Blacksburg-based organization Mountain Justice, Sue’s dedication to ending mountaintop removal was extraordinary. Sue took dozens of people to West Virginia…

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Give a Gift to the Mountains

Have you ever thought of a dollar as a vote? The average American will spend $800 on gifts this holiday season, and with each dollar, consumers have the choice to cast their vote for businesses that care about their communities and the environment. Appalachia is home to thousands of locally-owned businesses that have been sustaining…

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To Save the Land and People

Reviewed by Michael Hodges-Foret How can a land be so rich, and its people so poor? According to Chad Montrie, a historian at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, this is the “enduring paradox” of Appalachia. To Save the Land and People explores one aspect of that paradox, the opposition to surface coal mining in Appalachia. Montrie…

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Leaves of Three, Let it Be

images/voice_uploads/PoisonIvyCircle.gif My last article for the Appalachian Voice addressed the exquisite little inconvenience known as chiggers. I’ll continue on the theme of “itch” and explore the plant of myth and misery known as poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). A member of the cashew family, poison ivy has close cousins in poison oak, and poison sumac. However,…

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