Listen this week for an encore broadcast of Mountain Stage featuring Larkin Poe, Victoria Canal, Raye Zaragoza, Ron Pope, and Christian Lopez. This episode was recorded with our host Kathy Mattea on the campus of West Virginia University, thanks to our friends at WVU College of Creative Arts and Media.
Foxfire began in 1967 as a student-run magazine in North Georgia. It was a way for high school students to collect and share the wisdom and lore from their community members. They named it “Foxfire” after a fungus in the region that glows in the dark.
Over 50 years, it’s grown into a book series, a magazine, a museum, and an oral history archive. One of those oral histories is from 1975 and captures the kind of knowledge that Foxfire collected.
An Appalachian Woman’s Place Often Went Beyond The Home
Photo Lilly Knoepp. Appalachian storyteller Elizabeth Ellis is featured in the Foxfire project with Blue Ridge Public Radio,
A lot of the women in older archival Foxfire interviews said that they “didn’t work” but so many Appalachian women were midwives, mothers, and business owners.
Foxfire’s latest collection features 21 women in the book called “The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women,” edited by then Foxfire education director and museum curator Kami Ahrens. Mason Adams had more.
Oral History Tradition Continues Today
In 2020, Blue Ridge Public Radio partnered with Ahrens to record oral histories and aired them on the radio. BPR’s Lilly Knoepp shared a few.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Sean Watkins, The Steel Woods, and Dr. Kathy Bullock and her class at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
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.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey delivered his second State of the State address Wednesday night, giving lawmakers and the public a look at his priorities for the legislative session now underway.
Introducing The Legislature This Week — our new companion podcast to our TV/radio simulcast The Legislature Today. New episodes of The Legislature This Week will drop Saturday mornings at 5 a.m. during the 60-day session.
For the second week in a row, every state touching West Virginia’s border is experiencing high or very high cases of influenza. So far, this state is showing only a low to moderate outbreak. But health experts in West Virginia predict that’s about to change.
When people think of career and technical education, professional pathways in nursing and mechanics come to mind. But West Virginia has a long tradition of agriculture that is reflected in some technical programs. We learn how one school can say they take livestock from pen to plate.