Elk Creek, Virginia, is a small, unincorporated community located in Grayson County, about a half hour from the North Carolina border. Many people in Elk Creek have deep ties to their land, and for one family taking care of their land and honoring their ancestors meant creating a traditional Japanese Shinto Garden. From Elk Creek, Folkways Reporter Wendy Welch brings us the story.
WVPB news anchor and journalist Beth Vorhees is retiring today. We invite you to watch this look back on her three decades of excellence covering West Virginia public affairs:
Beth founded or shaped the programs that have come to define West Virginia Public Broadcasting: The Legislature Today, Inside Appalachia, and West Virginia Morning.
She also leaves her mark as a mentor to dozens of journalists, including Death, Sex & Money host Anna Sale, NPR Newscaster Giles Snyder, and her replacement on The Legislature Today, Ashton Marra.
(Watch this video from former colleagues George Manahan, former Mountain Stage executive producer Andy Ridenour, and Inside Appalachia host Jessica Lilly.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96rO2xSqlc
Today, a group of WVPB members have pledged $12,000 in additional gifts when 200 or people people make a sustaining gift to West Virginia Public Broadcasting in honor of Beth’s career: https://secure.wvpublic.org/donate/
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A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds that black lung rates are the highest they’ve been since the 1970s. Justin Hicks and Howard Burkes reported on that for the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom. Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams spoke with Hicks and Burkes to dig a little deeper.
For nearly 100 years, Snuffy Smith has been a staple of newspaper comic pages, though these days, it’s easier to find him online. Snuffy Smith was brought to life by Artist Fred Lasswell in the 1930s, but now the strip is written and drawn by John Rose, who lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. We hear from Rose about drawing the famous hillbilly.
Roadside farmstands with homemade jams and bread are a common sight in Appalachia. Because they’re unmanned, many of them work on the honor system: Take a carton of berries, leave some cash. But the humble farm stand is changing to keep up with an increasingly cash-free society. Folkways Reporter Wendy Welch recently visited a stand in Wythe County, Virginia and has this.
Writer Emilee Hackney has a complicated relationship with where she grew up. She loved her friends, family, the swimming holes and wild places in Tazewell County, Virginia, but she felt stifled. Her new memoir, All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir, explores this tension and what happened when she did leave.