Dungeons & Dragons And Remembering Jean Horner, Inside Appalachia

For 15 years, a Virginia library has been hosting a weekly Dungeons & Dragons game night for teens. It can get a little wacky.

Also, we remember renowned Tennessee luthier, Jean Horner, whose fiddles were played at Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry. His shop was a destination for fiddle fanatics.

And, a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia serves vegetarian food made in three sacred kitchens. 

You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

• Weekly Dungeons & Dragons Night For Teens At Virginia Library
• Remembering Tennessee Luthier Jean Horner
• Cherokee Cyclists Meet To Retrace And Reclaim Trail Of Tears
• The Three Kitchens Of New Vrindaban

Weekly Dungeons & Dragons Night For Teens At Virginia Library

Every week for the last 15 years, kids have gotten together at the Roanoke Public Library to play Dungeons & Dragons. 

Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D for short, is a roleplaying game that allows players to inhabit characters in a fantasy setting. They work together to battle monsters and find treasure, and to tell a shared story in which they’re all the main characters.

Jeffrey Wood is a youth services librarian, and he’s game master for the library’s D&D program. That means he’s the person who prepares each game, and acts as referee as the kids work their way through it.

Host Mason Adams made a couple visits to the Roanoke Public Library and caught up with Wood one of those evenings as he prepared the next episode.

Remembering Tennessee Luthier Jean Horner

For more than 70 years, Tennessee fiddle maker Jean Horner built instruments that have traveled across the country. His fiddles have been to Carnegie Hall, the Grand Ole Opry and the Smithsonian.

Horner’s craft was shaped by his roots in Appalachia’s Cumberland Plateau and his fascination with great Italian violin makers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Horner died in January at age 91.

For the Rural Remix podcast from the Center for Rural Strategies, Reporter Lisa Coffman interviewed Horner at his workshop in 2023 and brings this remembrance.

Cherokee Cyclists Meet To Retrace And Reclaim Trail Of Tears

For years, a group of cyclists from the Cherokee Nation have embarked on an annual ride from Georgia to Oklahoma. The nearly thousand-mile ride follows the northern route of the Trail of Tears. The trip pays homage to the group’s ancestors, who were forcibly removed from their homelands in the 19th century. The cycling trip involves multiple stops related to the migration, during which thousands of Cherokee died.

One of those stops is Blythe Ferry, Tennessee — the last place the displaced Cherokee people were able to see their homelands. Cynthia Abrams of WPLN has more. 

The Three Kitchens Of New Vrindaban

Last fall, Folkways Reporter Zack Harold made a trip to the small town of New Vrindaban, in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle.

It’s a Hare Krishna community started in the late 1960s. These days, the town is home to a few hundred permanent residents, but thousands of pilgrims visit each year. They come to worship in the temple and to visit the opulent Palace of Gold. 

But those main attractions were a pretty small part of Zack’s trip. He ended up spending much of his time in the kitchen.

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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Jean Horner, Erik Vincent Huey, Keith Williams and Myna Belle Williams, Jeff Ellis and Hello June.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Abby Neff 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 Chris Julin.

You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.

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Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.