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This October, the Adaptive Climbers Festival will gather in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge for the fifth year. In 2023, Folkways Reporter Emily Chen-Newton covered the event for Inside Appalachia. Since then, the Adaptive Climbers Festival has grown. Organizers say they’re nearly at capacity, with 300 climbers, caregivers and volunteers. Ahead of the festival, the campground has made accessibility improvements. Volunteers with the ACF have also been sprucing up the trails.
Stan and Sue Jennings turned a conversation about a passion into a business.
Photo Credit: Zack Gray/Allegheny Treenware
For 30 years, Sue and Stan Jennings have run Allegheny Treenware, a West Virginia company that makes wooden kitchen utensils. But they started off as a couple of coal miners. And when they weren’t underground, they talked about what else they could be doing.
Folkways Reporter Capri Cafaro visited the Jennings.
Hanging Out With NASCAR Legend Leonard Wood
Straight from the source at The Wood Brothers Racing Museum.
Photo Credit: Mason Adams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Stock car racing’s roots run deep in Appalachia. Some of NASCAR’s early stars came straight from the lawless moonshine runners of the 1920s and 1930s, but NASCAR’s oldest continuous racing team had nothing to do with moonshine.
Mason Adams visited with Leonard Wood at The Wood Brothers Racing Museum in Virginia for stories and wisdom.
Exploring Morgantown On The Back Of A Bicycle
The ad-hoc Morgantown Social Rides aim to get cyclists onto the streets to explore the city in a new way.
Photo Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
With spring, lots of folks are heading out to the woods or the rivers, but one group in Morgantown, West Virginia is taking to the streets – on their bicycles.
WVPB’s Chris Schulz grabbed his helmet and tagged along to explore his city in a new way.
Sovereignty At The Museum Of The Cherokee People
BPR’s Lilly Knoepp (left) spoke with Museum of the Cherokee People Director of Education Dakota Brown and Director of Collections Evan Mathis at the Appalachian Studies Conference on Friday March 8, 2024 at Western Carolina University.
BPR Senior Regional Reporter Lilly Knoepp spoke with Brown as part of a panel at the Appalachian Studies Association conference in March and sent us an excerpt.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by The Dirty River Boys, Charlie McCoy, John Blissard, Sierra Ferrell, and John Inghram.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. We had help this week from folkways editors Nicole Musgrave and Mallory Noe Payne.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Two federally important facilities located in West Virginia require a strict limit on radio frequency interference. But for decades – increasingly as communication systems have become more advanced – those limits have made it difficult for emergency crews and first responders in Pendleton and Pocahontas counties to do their jobs as safely and effectively as possible. Now the results of a lengthy federal study show exactly how precarious the situation is. We caught up with Pendleton County Emergency Management’s Rick Gillespie to find out what the study shows and what happens next.
This October, the Adaptive Climbers Festival will gather in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge for the fifth year. In 2023, Folkways Reporter Emily Chen-Newton covered the event for Inside Appalachia. Since then, the Adaptive Climbers Festival has grown. Organizers say they’re nearly at capacity, with 300 climbers, caregivers and volunteers. Ahead of the festival, the campground has made accessibility improvements. Volunteers with the ACF have also been sprucing up the trails.