Almost everyone has heard of the Mothman — West Virginia’s best known cryptid. But have you heard of Veggie Man? That’s another West Virginia cryptid. And it helped inspire a zine project from the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center at Fairmont State University. Producer Bill Lynch spoke with the center’s director, Lydia Warren, about the forthcoming publication, which is taking submissions.
There are many folklores and charms when it comes to getting lucky in Appalachia. It’s been said that it’s bad luck to eat lettuce on a hot summer day. People also believe that placing parsley seeds on a fence post and allowing the wind to blow it off to sow it will clear them of any bad luck.
But, the most famous good luck charm in the world has got to be the four-leaf clover. One old mountain lore is that a green salve of four-leaf clovers rubbed over your whole body is said to make you invisible but you cant miss even one wrinkle.
Chuck Kleine
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Can you find the four-leaf clover in this picture?
Red clover and white clover are the most common types of the plant we see in West Virginia.
Neither of them are native to the area and are considered one of the earliest plants brought by Europeans. Both red and white clover are edible and are often used like spinach in a salad.
Some folks use the flowers to make a clover jelly or steep them in water to make tea. The leaves of thye red clover can also be dried and used as a vanilla extract substitute.
Chuck Kleine
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Red Clover
There are a few native clover in West Virginia. The native Running Buffalo Clover has recently been removed from the endangered species list. Kate’s Mountain Clover is another native species, it is rare to find and stunning when in bloom.
Take some time to glance down at the next clover patch you see and have a closer look. The flowers are just beautiful, and maybe you’ll even find some luck hidden under your feet.
Almost everyone has heard of the Mothman — West Virginia’s best known cryptid. But have you heard of Veggie Man? That’s another West Virginia cryptid. And it helped inspire a zine project from the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center at Fairmont State University. Producer Bill Lynch spoke with the center’s director, Lydia Warren, about the forthcoming publication, which is taking submissions.
Our spring broadcast season continues this week with a premiere episode of Mountain Stage, recorded at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, WV. Host Kathy Mattea welcomes Oliver Wood, Stephen Wilson Jr., Dar Williams, TopHouse, and Cloud Cult.
Five years ago, the COVID-19 lockdowns kept a lot of people out of public spaces — and a lot of artists used that time to create. Like the Cornelius Eady Trio. The group is organized around Cornelius Eady, a poet and professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, whose writing has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. With the help of musicians Lisa Liu and Charlie Rauh, Eady puts his words to music.
John Haywood of Whitesburg, Kentucky says he got his first guitar and his first tattoo when he was about 13 years old. These days, Haywood is the proprietor of Parlor Room Art and Tattoo in downtown Whitesburg. It’s a place where some people get inked up … and some play traditional music. It’s a place unlike any other, as Zack Harold reports.
