The Appalachian Voice
Region’s Businesses Pitch In for the Mountains
This fall, dozens of homegrown businesses from across Appalachia pitched in for an autumn Appalachian Voices benefit. From a mountain bike to raft trips, from a fine bottle of wine to bed and breakfast getaways, these businesses donated over 75 items to Appalachian Voices’ benefit raffle and silent auction, held during Appalachian Voices’ first annual…
Read MoreAltapass Orchards combine Stewardship, Enterprise and Cultural Preservation
images/voice_uploads/ContentsApples.gif When Robert Young marched through what is now known as McKinney Gap in 1780, he never imagined his descendants would grow heirloom apples and preserve Appalachian heritage literally on the ground he trod. Young, an east Tenneseean, was a member of the Overmountain Men, a group of backwoodsmen who defeated the British at the…
Read MoreThe Ubiquitous Coyote
images/voice_uploads/ContentsCoyote.gif To paraphrase William Faulkner, the highly adaptable coyote has not just survived, it has prevailed. “It has defied every effort to defeat it—hundreds of thousands are deliberately and legally killed every year—and has literally taken over North America,” wrote William K. Stevens in a New York Times article in 1999. For a species that…
Read MoreAn Appalachian Earthship: Reinventing the Wheel
Ken and Etta Lebensold reside in a house made of garbage. If their walls could talk, they would tell of traveling cross-country thousands of times. They are well-traveled walls, insulated with 700 used tires, which have been rammed with soil from the home site to create large rubber-rimmed bricks. The Lebensold house is an earthship,…
Read MoreSassafras in America
While the Southern Appalachian Mountains abound in flora traditionally known for their medicinal properties, few equal the sassafras tree in its historical economic impact. The tree triggered a health craze in Europe upon its discovery in North America, when it gained a reputation for curing everything from wounds to rheumatism. Sassafras became a major commodity…
Read MoreDateline Appalachia
DatelineAppalachia New Documentary Showcases Region Over one trillion dollars; 1,000,000,000,000,000. That would represent one estimate totalling the value of the natural resources extracted out of Appalachia since the industrial age chugged up the mountains. This funnelling of the area’s riches all too often left many Appalachian communities at the bottom of the spout, mired in…
Read MoreLandowners Head for the Woods
Virginia landowners will have an opportunity this fall to observe first hand possible alternatives for their forest and for the critters that depend upon it. Experts in managing forests for the future will be featured at Virginia Forest Watch’s (VAFW) fifth annual conference. “We want folks to know that there are alternatives to clear cutting…
Read MoreEditorials and Letters
Forests On May 20, the House of Representatives passed the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and on July 24, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a similar bill. The purported aim of this legislation is to reduce the risk of wildfire damage to communities, address threats to forest health, improve understanding of insect damage to forests, and…
Read MoreChattanooga Comes Back Strong and Green
images/voice_uploads/chatanooga-tn.gif Whether called Chat-to-to-noog-gee by the Chickamauga, reportedly meaning ‘mountain rising to a point’, or later Ross’s Landing, by 1969 the Environmental Protection Agency named Chattanooga something else; “the dirtiest city in America.” How dirty had the East Tennessee metro area become? Drivers had to use their headlights at midday to cut through the black…
Read MoreWomen Paddlers Take On Appalachian Whitewater
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Va. – Milia Boiroyevich learned how to canoe with her family on the Danube river in her native Russia. Today she spends many of her Wednesdays plying the rivers and streams of Southwest Virginia with a group of friends. Boiroyevich is part of an all-woman canoe group founded by a retired physical education…
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