The Appalachian Voice
Two Catholic Sisters: Working in the Web of Life
For the past 26 years, Sister Beth Davies has lived in one of the most remote towns of southwestern Virginia, in a little coal camp called St. Charles. Her “holler” literally dead ends into a mountain, but it is neither a metaphor for the way she lives or what she has helped the people of…
Read MoreSo Cool – Winter hiking offers peace and solitude
Appalachia may be famous for its colorful fall foliage, But autumn gives way to an equally enchanting wonderland of snow covered hills, frozen waterfalls and the promise of evergreens speckled throughout hillsides. Hiking in the wintertime gives you a new perspective about otherwise familiar trails and local parks. In the winter, the lack of foliage…
Read MoreThe ghosts of Buffalo Creek
On the 35th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek disaster, we remember with great sorrow the 125 innocent men, women and children who lived their lives in harm’s way and lost them due to the recklessness of Pittston Coal Company. We will never forget the unethical engineering that brought millions of gallons of water crashing down…
Read MoreCoal country needs santa more than ever
The Santa Train rolls through three of Virginia’s “coal counties”: Dickenson, Russell and Wise. Along with neighboring Buchanan, Tazewell and Lee counties, the coal counties of southwest. Appalachian Virginia, are among the most distinctive in the Commonwealth. They often feature the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the state, and are the target of government…
Read MoreSanta train rides again through Appalachia
ftp://avweb:[email protected]:21//appvoices.org/images/voice_uploads/krause.santa.gif The crowd started to trickle in by nine, watching the volunteers of “Dante Lives On” set up their bake sale on the concrete slab that marks the site of the former theatre. By ten, children were playing on the grassy lot that once housed the company store. The Santa Train used to stop at…
Read MoreIt takes a universe: An interview with Thomas Berry
Last year, Southern nature writers John Lane and Thomas Rain Crowe traveled together to the home of ecologian Thomas Berry, in Greensboro, North Carolina. At 91 years of age, Father Thomas Berry is one of the most profound, if not most celebrated, spokespersons for the preservation of the environment in the English-speaking world. His books…
Read MoreNC’s Mountain Bogs Show Amazing Diversity
ftp://avweb:[email protected]:21//appvoices.org/images/voice_uploads/Bog.scientists.gif It’s been a long day in the field, but sitting around a kitchen table strewn with plants, bags of soil and books, N.C. State researcher Brenda Wichmann and Misty Franklin, botanist with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, still have a few bags of specimens to work through. This is the end of the…
Read MoreAll in favor of cranberry bogs, please raise your forks
The cranberry sauce on your holiday table is probably from somewhere along the low-lying New England coast, brought to you courtesy of Ocean Spray. Chances are good it was shipped along with millions of other supermarket cans to travel across the nation, to be opened and dumped onto fine china dishes, and to be set…
Read MoreWestern religion is already ‘green’
Two decades after “Dirty Dancing”
Early travelers once believed Virginia’s Mountain Lake was bottomless – or, at least, up to 300 feet deep. In reality, the mountaintop pond extends about 100 feet from the surface. And there’s a hole in it. Water comes into the natural 55-acre basin from a 500-acre watershed, but it escapes at a rate of 600…
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