The Appalachian Voice
Perusing Kentucky’s Pine Mountain Park
By Joe Tennis High above Pineville, Ky., near the start of the challenging Laurel Cove Trail, an old joke straddles a rock at Pine Mountain State Resort Park. Local lore suggests that the people of Pineville were worried about the menacing-looking boulder coming loose and rolling off Pine Mountain. In the 1930s, shortly after Pine…
Read MoreCapturing Appalachia: Finalists From the Appalachian Mtn Photography Competition
By Jamie Goodman It took three judges almost a full day to narrow 1,156 entries down to 49 finalists. The results were stunning. This year’s Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition, currently on display at Appalachian State University Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, features works by photographers from around the Southeast, and a diverse and artistic…
Read MoreIt’s Not My Mountain Anymore Review
Barbara Taylor Woodall, a distinguished writer and Appalachian native, tells the gripping — and sometimes humorous — story of her life growing up in the heart of the Georgia Appalachians in “It’s Not My Mountain Anymore.” Woodall was born in 1954 and raised in a family that maintained a very traditional Appalachian farm life. From…
Read More“The Day Baby Brucie Died”: An Oral History of the Buffalo Creek Flood
by Betty Dotson-Lewis Author’s note: Larry Conn is a Freewill Baptist Preacher, a public school teacher in Logan County, West Virginia, and a member of a gospel singing group. The oral history of Buffalo Creek Flood survivors such as Larry Conn may have been told repeatedly, but with each time it is relived. Forty years…
Read MoreHooded Crane
In an extraordinary story of “taking the long way ‘round,” a bird from the other side of the world paid a visit to the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge in eastern Tennessee, shortly before the New Year. Jeffrey Davis drove 12 hours from Chester County, Penn., to take this photo of the Hooded Crane, a 3-foot tall…
Read MoreWe Can End Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee
By Dr. Minnie Vance Chattanooga, Tenn. In Tennessee, we love our mountains. These peaks and valleys inform our southern heritage, enhance our connection to family and represent the best of what we call state and country. Our mountains are home. Nevertheless, we too are facing down the barrel of continued mountaintop removal mining. Unfortunately, in…
Read MoreThe Unhealthy Culture of Coal
The latest in a round of studies on health and well-being in the coal-bearing regions of Appalachia was released in mid-February, with the puzzling conclusion that, while coal mining may not directly contribute to health problems in Appalachia, it still plays a significant role in the health problems in Appalachia. Borak’s study claims that the…
Read MoreNatural Gas: Not All It’s Fracked Up To Be
By Jesse Wood When energy industry giant Halliburton invented hydraulic fracturing in the 1940s, they unlocked the potential for a natural gas boom in the United States. Now, decades later with mounting environmental and health impacts and more accurate estimates of the nation’s reserves, some feel natural gas isn’t all that it’s fracked up to…
Read MoreReclaiming Appalachia: Can Legislation and Enforcement Restore Mountains?
By Molly Moore Kathy Selvage has lived in Stephens, Va., her entire life. From her front porch, she can almost see the field where her childhood home once sat. Instead of the hardwood forest that surrounded her home, graded hills lean against each other like a lumpy bag of onions beneath a blanket of savannah…
Read MoreThe Sewanee Coal Seam: The Dirt on East Tennessee’s Toxic Coal
By Jenni Frankenberg Veal One of the most toxic coal seams east of the Mississippi River has cast a dark shadow over the land and people living in its boundaries. Landon Medley, a resident and former county commissioner of Van Buren County, Tenn., has witnessed the impacts of mining in the Sewanee coal seam firsthand.…
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