Appalachia Bare’s distinguished Associate Editor, Edward Francisco, recently conducted an interview with editor, writer, activist, and promoter of all things Appalachia, George Brosi. Our region is filled with so many people who dedicate their lives to Appalachian causes. Brosi is one such person. Please enjoy reading his bio entry andContinue Reading
It stalks like a shadow and hugs like a strait-jacket. I wear it like an off-the-rack, ill-fitting coat. At times, it tightens round my throat like a scarf threatening to strangle me. It’s closer than my own skin. It itches in spots beyond my reach to scratch. I didn’t askContinue Reading
My grandson, Joshua Bathe, passed away last April after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer five months earlier. The following is my poetic tribute to him. Elegy to a Grandson Grief undulates like an inchworm and just as slowly. It forces one to use the conditional tense: HeContinue Reading
Betty Brewer was my great-aunt, though only four days older than my mother. I never knew Betty. She died before I was born, killed by a jealous wife who caught her husband and Betty in a lover’s tryst at a boarding house rented by the day. Family spoke of BettyContinue Reading
Alvin Goins was a day laborer living in Rhea County, Tennessee, during the early and mid-years of the twentieth century. He was a Melungeon, a descendant of Portuguese ancestry. He was also illiterate. Yet, he had an extraordinary gift for numbers, able to calculate sums mentally in seconds, qualifying him,Continue Reading
When I was ten, my mother enrolled me in Margaret Howell’s School of Dancing and Etiquette. It was a phase of my male finishing school education designed to rid the savage within and transform me into a Southern gentleman, i.e., Chaucer’s “veray parfit gentil knight.” (For the record, all gentlemenContinue Reading
— From Death, Child, & Love: Poems 1980-2000 Last night while trimming our Christmas tree my son pointed out how I’d not written many poems lately to which I replied, “It’s true. But sometimes life is more prose than poetry. Do you understand?” A stupid question considering what he’d justContinue Reading
Henry Everett The old man lived for the sound of a chicken squawking, the sentry’s warning at which he drew back light from a windowless cabin, a portal cut squarely at eye-level in a single oaken door, then stuck the sightless barrel directionlessly out into night that thundered once withContinue Reading
**Photo Source: Library of Congress The history of the Southern Appalachian region is a saga of exploitation by profiteers inimical to the aims of ordinary people to provide for their families in safe conditions. The brutal treatment of coal miners and their families is well known and thoroughly documented. However,Continue Reading
If you read my review of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, then you’ll recognize that Elizabeth Catte’s What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia has done my work for me, though we arrived at similar conclusions independently. Catte is a historian with more than simply an anecdotal interest in Appalachia. WhereasContinue Reading