Sometimes situations interrupt what a person has planned. Repercussions are felt in several areas, like a faceted, imperfect jewel. As Chief Editor of Appalachia Bare, I have planned so many things this year, and, hopefully, they will all work out just fine. But a recent event occurred that put aContinue Reading

I love Autumn and Winter. I love the trees’ rustic changing colors and the crisp, cool temperatures, abated by a snuggly fleece throw and a cup of hot chocolate. I love the greater sense of my ancestors as the veil thins. I love wooly worms and pumpkin patches and bonfires.Continue 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

**Featured Image: Barbara Allen’s Cruelty by H. M. Brock (Cropped) My maternal great-grandmother, Cora (McNeely) Goins, lived a good deal of her adult life in a coal camp, just down the road from Kentucky, in Westbourne, Tennessee. As the coal boom slowed and the company’s profits waned, the coal baronsContinue Reading