Appalachian History

It started back when the animals of the forest had a ball team. The forest animals had a rough line up, a big line up. The Big Bear was the captain. In his lineup he had the Fast-Running Deer. And he had the Big Wolf, and the Big Bob Cat, and the Big Panther. The [...]

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the right side of your screen. If you’d rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here: We open today’s show with a look at the career of [...]

‘Musty’ is one of those old-fashioned words you don’t hear used much anymore. You might on occasion refer to a damp basement that way, and that’s about it. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the word struck fear in the hearts of mountain folk. One of the great comforts of jokes is [...]

The annual Cherokee Gourd Artists Gathering just convened last weekend in Cherokee, NC. Gourd design today mainly encompasses the arts and crafts world of vases, pots, and plates, but it has a politicized function in Cherokee history. Highly stylized gourd masks have for hundreds of years been an essential part of the Booger Dance, a [...]

‘How the Talking Pictures Talk’ Smyth County News Thursday, June 27, 1929 There are two main ways of making talkies. One is the so-called disc method and the other the sound track method. In the disc method, the cheaper and less satisfactory of the two, discs something like regular phonograph records are used and the [...]