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Join Popcorn Sutton and J.B. as they do what they do best, one last time. This film is unavailable ANYWHERE as it was Mr Sutton's to distribute personally and I felt that it was worth sharing. Film maker NEAL HUTCHESON- 2009 Emmy Award winner- created this outstanding work of art. I own no copyrights to this film. Credit goes to the film maker, Neal Hutcheson, and Popcorn Sutton. R.I.P Mr. Sutton.- You are missed. - WildlifeSeriaLKiller

Sin eaters and the custom of sin eating seem to come from Wales. Early descriptions of the ritual all mention the bread eaten over the corpse, as well as the payment of sixpence to the person assuming the sins of the dead. Below are two 19th century accounts of sin eaters. "In the county of Hereford was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the sins of the party deceased, and were called sin-eaters. One of them, I remember, lived in a cottage on Ross high-way. The manner was thus: when...

In what the Wall Street Journal dubbed as an “unusual move,” President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday that is was reversing a Bush-era decision and revoking a critical permit for the largest mountaintop-removal coal mining projects ever proposed in Appalachia. According to the Journal:The decision to revoke the permit for Arch Coal Inc.’s Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia’s rural Logan County marks the first time the EPA has withdrawn a water permit for a mining project that had previously been issued.It’s also only the second time in the 39-year history of the federal Clean Water Act that...

Dateline did an expose tonight on southern Ohio poverty

In the century following the Civil War, nothing brought change to Appalachia as much as did the development of coal mining. The western highlands of Southern Appalachia overlay vast fields of bituminous coal and the construction of railroads into the mountains opened up coalfields for commercial exploitation. By the end of the 19th Century, Appalachian coal was powering the industrial revolution in America, providing fuel for power plants, locomotives and other steam engines, and coke for making steel.

Originally published in Field & Stream magazine in 1909, this is the second part of an article written by Horace Kephart, a Pennsylvania-born writer and outdoorsman who moved to a cabin in Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1904. Best known for his book "Our Southern Highlanders" (1913; rev. ed 1922), Kephart loved the mountains and the mountaineers and wrote using accurately-rendered Appalachian English.

Cole came to America with his family in 1818. With little formal training in the art of painting, Cole was recognized as a landscape artist by his mid-twenties. Beginning in about 1833, Cole maintained a studio in Catskill, New York, where he painted many landscapes of the Catskill Mountains and other areas of the Northern Appalachians. [Images of 10 Cole landscapes]

Originally published in Field & Stream magazine in 1909, this article was written by Horace Kephart, best known for "Our Southern Highlanders" (1913; rev. ed 1922). A "come-here," Kephart loved the mountains and the mountaineers. "Bear Hunting in the Smokies" is a delightful story complete with accurately rendered Appalachian English, tall tales, and howling gales.

Vintage settler's cabins are rare finds, as most of them didn't survive very long. Many thousands of these shelters were built during the early history of the Backcountry, constructed quickly and simply of peeled logs, often with no windows. The cabin depicted here was located in the Rich Valley of Virginia and was photographed in 1880. [Picture is linked because of claimed library restrictions]

Joshua Shaw was born in England in 1776 and was already noted as an artist and painter of landscapes when he came to America as a young man. In 1818, Shaw traveled down the east coast to Georgia, sketching and painting as he went, and then trekked into the mountains of Appalachia to make the journey back to his home in Philadelphia. The landscapes which resulted from that trip are the earliest such works featuring scenes in the early-American Backcountry and provide a rare glimpse into a world in which settlers had but recently put down roots.

The log cabins in this collection of vintage photographs have been lost, to the best of my knowledge. Timbers may have been salvaged from some, and it is possible that one or two have somehow survived, but if so I can find no trace of them.

This article features a single cabin which is perhaps the most primitive example of such a habitation you'll ever see. But it is the real McCoy -- a one-room, round-log Backcountry settler's cabin, the kind of structure that was thrown together quickly by tens of thousands of immigrants in the mountains of Southern Appalachia during the colonial years. Previously I would have been confident in stating that not one of these structures had survived much past the time of the Civil War -- but not only was this one still standing when it was photographed in 1902, it was the...

Here's the challenge: certain words and phrases characteristic of Appalachian English in eastern Tennessee and elsewhere can be traced back to Scottish English. Some of these are disappearing; others have spread throughout the South; a few seem to be making it into widespread usage. How many do you know? 1. backset; 2. let on; 3. bonny-clabber; 4. palings; 5. redd up; 6. creel; 7. kindling; 8. hull; 9. nicker; 10. whenever. (I knew 5 of the 10, so that makes me 'bout half smart . . .)

In 1875, writer Edward King published a travel memoir, "The Great South: A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland." The book contained numerous illustrations by James Wells Champney, including drawings of log cabins of Backcountry folk. [Vintage illustrations]

CHARLESTON, W.Va., April 2 – CHARLESTON, W.Va., April 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Thursday mandated a totally new and virtually unattainable water quality standard for all coal mining permits across Appalachia in a move that threatens thousands of jobs and the economic future of mining communities. The announcement comes days after the EPA began the veto process for an already approved permit for the Spruce No.1 mine in Logan County, WV. The EPA has only used this veto authority 12 times since 1972, and has never used its authority to veto an existing permit. "Thursday's EPA...

Prof. (Emeritus) Michael Montgomery has shown a definite link between the Scottish English of the Ulster emigrants to America and the Appalachian English dialect. Robert Burns was a poet and a lyricist who studied and wrote in Scottish dialect. His most famous collection of poetry is "Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect." Burns collected Scottish folk songs, which he sometimes revised or adapted, and he traveled through southern Scotland collecting material for The Scots Musical Museum. Burns' poetry and lyrics thus reflect an extensive knowledge of the Scottish folk idiom. (Burns' letters, in contrast, are written in standard English.)

Prof. (Emeritus) Michael Montgomery has done a fine job of showing that Scottish English, imported primarily by the Scotch-Irish (Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish, if you prefer), had a greater impact on the Appalachian English dialect than did the tongues of Southern England, which predominated in the coastal colonial settlements. In his essay "How Scotch-Irish Is Your English? -- The Ulster Heritage of East Tennessee Speech" Montgomery discusses the rise and fall of two such words, "cracker" and "cohee" . . .

Here's the challenge: certain words and phrases characteristic of Appalachian English in Eastern Tennessee and elsewhere can be traced back to Scottish English imported to this country by Scotch-Irish settlers. Some of these are disappearing; others have spread throughout the South; a few seem to be making it into widespread usage. How many do you know? 1. piece; 2. beal, bealing; 3. mend; 4. airish; 5. chancy; 6. muley; 7. bottom; 8. discomfit; 9. singlings; 10. fireboard . . . .

An order of the Virginia Colonial Council dated May 4, 1725, concerned an allegation that "divers Indians plundered the Quarters of Mr. John Taliaferro near the great mountains [i.e., the Blue Ridge] . . .[and carried off] some of the Guns belonging to and marked with the name of Spottsylvania County . . . ." The Council concluded: "It is ordered that it be referred to Colo. Harrison to make inquiry which of the Nottoway Indians or other Tributaries have been out ahunting about that time . . . ." Now, the Colonial Council was an august body and its...

From early American times through the 1920s, many highway bridges were built of wood and were often "covered" -- roofed in, and typically walled-in as well -- in order to protect the heavy timber trusses which carried the weight of the structure. At one time there were an estimated ten thousand-plus covered bridges in the United States. Only about 750 remain. In this article -- vintage photographs of covered bridges of the Appalachian Backcountry.

Are yous up for a few more words on the subject of Appalachian English? The words for today being "yous" and "you'ns," along with variant spellings like "youse," "yooz," "you-uns," and "youens," and their Scotch-Irish roots. The traditional speech of the Backcountry is not a "corrupt" dialect, as is often assumed by those from "yonder" and “away,” and its roots can be traced to the places from whence the Backcountry settlers originated. "Yous" or "youse" as the plural form of "you" is of ancient origin and came to America with Scotch-Irish settlers in early colonial times.

The unenlightened assume that Appalachian accents and usages are a “hillbilly” corruption of the flatlands Southern drawl. This is not so; the accents and usages of the Backcountry developed contemporaneously with the versions of English spoken in the other areas of European settlement. The society and culture of the Backcountry were dominated by the large numbers of Scotch-Irish immigrants, blended with the influence of German, Dutch, Welsh, Scottish, and yeoman English settlers. Appalachian speech developed from the versions of English introduced by these settlers, independently of the development of the Southern drawl and the Yankee accent of New England. The...

WISE, VA. -- The anger at Washington that is seeping across the country registered a while back in the high ridges of Appalachia, a once-indomitable Democratic stronghold where voters turned away from President Obama in 2008 just as overwhelmingly as they embraced him most everywhere else. Voters in Virginia's 9th Congressional District are mad that the government has spent hundreds of billions to fix an economy that seems only to deteriorate around them. They're fearful of a federal takeover of health care. They're petrified that proposed emissions limits would destroy the coal industry that provides most of the region's jobs....

In Southern Appalachia, sweetnin' refers to sugar in its various forms, including white sugar, brown sugar, honey, and sorghum syrup. For almost a century following the introduction of sugar sorghum to the United States in 1857, sweet sorghum -- popularly known in the region as "sorghum molasses" -- was the sweetnin' of choice. [Vintage pictures.]

One sure sign of a genuine specimen of folk cuisine is an abundance of old family recipes which are generally similar but differ in details. Stack Cake is the real thing -- you can collect as many "authentic" recipes for stack cake as you would like. Stack Cake is made of 6 to 8 layers of cake with an apple-based filling between the layers. A common apocryphal story is that it originated as poor-folks' wedding cake, with several guests each contributing a layer.

Guardian reporter Gary Younge reports from Prestonburg, Ky., an Appalachian coal-mining area that has seen one of its worst years, with a quarter of the families living in poverty and half of the children in Floyd County living on food stamps. And Younge found a lot of fingers pointed at President Barack Obama among the residents there:

The maples and other showy trees are done now. The weather has turned dour again and the maple leaves are falling fast. These are pictures taken (mostly) around town near the end of the high season. Most are maples, but there are other trees, including a cherry and a willow oak.

We live on the western edge of the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachian Mountains, where the landscape is defined by long ridge mountains, with coves nestled in higher elevations and river valleys in the limestone and shale formations below. The Autumn turning of the leaves this year has been slow, giving us a long season of fall color. The images in this article are from the past week.

One of my favorite Backcountry Web sites is "Blind Pig and the Acorn," where I can listen to mountain music while reading about Appalachian folkways and folklore. Today on "Blind Pig," folk remedies for "What To Do For A Toothache." One of the remedies: "hold liquor in the mouth for several minutes - then swallow." Sounds like it's worth a shot. Or maybe a double shot. Heck, I could learn to like a toothache . . . .

Europeans named the southern mountains after the Apalchen or Apalachen tribe of natives. How did the name progress from "Apalchen" to "Appalachia" and "Appalachian Mountains?" By the whims of cartographers and geographers, it seems. The steps from "Apalchen" to "Appalachian" can be traced by referring to vintage maps which provide names for the mountains of the East.

Obama health meeting draws Appalachian protesters By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press Writer July 29, 2009 BRISTOL, Va. - More than 200 protesters from a conservative corner of Appalachia showed up Wednesday in opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform effort. Some held signs reading, "Obamacare is political malpractice" and "Keep your hands off my health care."... ...The protesters, who came from the tri-state area of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, were focused on who will get to make health care decisions. Art teacher Angie Meade, 39, of Bristol said she worries that government control of health care will mean...

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Angry Appalachian coal miners are refusing to vacation in Tennessee because they say one of that state’s political leaders wants to eliminate needed jobs by banning mountaintop removal. Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is sponsoring legislation that would bar coal companies from the controversial mining practice that involves blasting away mountaintops to unearth coal and dumping dirt, rock and trees into the valleys beneath. Such a ban would effectively halt the destructive form of mining. Miners in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia are taking part in the protest, said Roger Horton, director of Citizens for Coal,...

If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September through May, you may live in Ohio. If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't work there, you may live in Ohio. If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Ohio. If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you may live in Ohio. If "Vacation" means going anywhere south of Columbus for the Weekend, you may live in Ohio. If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Ohio. If you...

Anyone who believes the "green energy" hype should spend a day driving around Buchanan County, Virginia, to view the cross-hatching of excavations and roadcuts which scar the landscape. Southern Appalachia is experiencing a natural-gas boom, but the production of this "green" fuel is far from benign.

CARLISLE, Ky. -- Tabbatha Tubbs laughs at the thought of Washington politicians decreeing her hometown Appalachian. After all, there's not a mountain in sight from this gently rolling countryside best known for its thoroughbred horse farms. This is picturesque Bluegrass country: Black wooden fences surround grazing thoroughbreds. Golden stalks of tobacco hang from tiered barns. And herds of fat beef cattle mow their way across fields of green grass. It's hardly the heart of Appalachia, the rugged hills where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty some 44 years ago. But like it or not, Tubbs and her neighbors...

WASHINGTON -- If you're a Democrat who needs help getting the votes of rural white folks, the go-to guy is David "Mudcat" Saunders, a central-casting political consultant recently made famous by a parade of magazine writers led by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash. But sometimes you can learn more about a people and their place through literature than by hiring consultants. So I called Ron Rash, poet, author and purebred Appalachian whose newest novel, "Serena," should be at the top of Barack Obama's reading list. Sarah Palin might enjoy it as well. Described by one blurber as "an Appalachian retelling...

Hey All Ohio Valley FReepers: McCain-Palin Rally 3pm this Sunday in St.Clairsville, OH at Brush Run and Airport Rds. (6160 Airport Rd.) Call 614-441-8622. Free Advance tickets required.SEE ALL YOU OHIO VALLEY FREEPERS THERE!

‘YOU CAN’T JUDGE A MAN THIS WAY’: That’s what Obama supporter Ruby Hale says she tells people at church in tiny Rowe, Va. “I am convinced he is a Christian.” WHITEWOOD, VA. -- The isolated towns of Virginia's Appalachian coal region are home to strong labor unions and Democratic political machines that date back generations. Yet voters here who eagerly pushed Democrats into the Senate and the governor's office are resisting Barack Obama. Some Americans say Obama's race and uncommon background make them uncomfortable -- here those people include Democratic precinct chairmen and get-out-the-vote workers. Many Americans receive e-mails falsely...

The rush to tie up drilling rights in Marcellus shale is ramping up just west of the Interstate 81 corridor, as companies compete to sign leases. The black sedimentary rock runs from western New York south into West Virginia. It has been promoted as one of the most promising natural gas sources in the United States. Piping the gas through the hills and mountains of Appalachia, however, will not be easy. New technologies that include horizontal drilling and pumping in water to fracture the rock, have been found to release more gas and make recoveries in shale more economical. Rising...

DILLONVALE, Ohio -- Barack Obama attended a barbecue and grilled Republicans on the economy yesterday in eastern Ohio, a region cool toward him in the March primary and important to his chances this fall. Obama, spending his third day in the state since Friday, spoke at New Philadelphia yesterday and greeted supporters at a farm in Dillonvale, south of Steubenville on the edge of economically hard-hit Appalachian Ohio. He argued at Kent State University's Tuscarawas campus that Republicans are not discussing the economy at their convention in St. Paul because of how bad it is, and that the GOP and...

In the town of Shenandoah, Penn., parishioners at a local church offered up prayers for peace - a peace that was broken the night of July 12, when Luis Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was beaten to death The crime shocked people in this small, Appalachian town, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. A late night street fight punctuated by ethnic slurs ended in Ramirez's death. Four high school students, all on the football team, are charged in connection with the homicide. (...) the county's Hispanic population - up 65 percent since 2000 as a new wave of immigrants...

“The Appalachian voting bloc will be critical in the … 2008 presidential election,” former Democratic National Committee executive director Mark Siegel says. Yet his broad statement comes with its own geopolitical caveat: location. “It all depends on what part of Appalachia you are talking about,” says Siegel. “If they live in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then, yes, without a doubt they are the key voters. If they live in West Virginia, then no, because for the Democrats that is not a state that is in play.” Appalachia is not a single state but a region that has its own unique frame...

"Hick." "Hillbilly." "Redneck." "Inbred." "Cracker." "Ridge Runner." I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the '80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a rube when I brought along my sky-blue JCPenney suit—with reversible vest—and my stack of Willie and Waylon albums, and entered a world that was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to my fancy William & Mary roommates from the private schools. Imagine my surprise at their surprise when, thinking nothing of it, I casually mentioned that I...

This time it's a duly certified, establishment-vetted, card-carrying member of the Mainstream Media who's been caught, tried and convicted by the always watchful PC Police. This time it was no Howard Stern or Don Imus, or even a football coach lettin' 'er rip at a press conference. This time it was NBC's own, always respectable if not downright pedestrian Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Alan Greenspan. Goodness. What did she do? It seems the lady went and referred to an area of southwestern Virginia as "redneck, sort of bordering-on-Appalachia country." Ooh-wee!The linguistically delicate of southwestern Virginia are still squealing. These easily...

It isn’t just West Virginia. We saw those same lopsided majorities for Clinton -- three and four to one -- in southwestern Pennsylvania, western counties in Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. We’ll see more such blowouts in Kentucky’s eastern counties on May 20. Who are these people and what are they thinking? They live along a geographical belt of the country roughly corresponding to the Appalachian Mountains stretching from upstate New York to Alabama. Many call the area Appalachia and describe the people as “backward”. Such characterizations are both unfair and inaccurate. These people have been there a long time. Migration...

Barack Obama met with reporters Friday in Indianapolis and admitted the obvious: "We've had a rough couple of weeks. I won't deny that." The next couple of weeks will show just how rough. The roiling controversies -- over his remarks about rural voters and his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. -- have cast new doubts over the Illinois senator's ability to win over white working-class Democrats. Tuesday's two primaries will offer fresh data on his appeal. Sen. Obama is strongly favored in North Carolina, while Indiana is seen as a toss-up. If Hillary Clinton gets...

WISE, Va. - Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama on Wednesday focused on the struggles of the nation's poor — from rural Appalachia to Washington's urban Anacostia — in competing speeches that underscored the fierce fight for the Democratic nomination. Edwards was wrapping up his eight-state poverty tour with stops in Virginia and Kentucky, the latter where Democratic icon Robert F. Kennedy spoke nearly 40 years ago in his plea to help the nation's forgotten. Unwilling to cede the issue to Edwards, Obama spoke at a recreation center in the nation's capital, and in a jab at his rival,...

Southern Appalachian Multiple Use Council P.O. Box 1377 Clyde, NC 28721 828-627-3333 NEWS RELEASE For immediate release June 25, 2007 Contact: Steve Henson, Executive Director Southern Appalachian Multiple-Use Council, 828-627-3333 Environmentalists Lose Court Battle to Stop Timber Harvesting in Eastern National Forests Clyde NC – In a summary judgment ruling last week Federal Chief Judge Sandra Beckwith (Southern District Ohio) found that the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USF&WS) and the US Forest Service (USFS) had properly followed federal law and biological assessments in planning and implementing forest management practices on several eastern national forests including the Pisgah National Forest...

I am getting really sick of the Mexican Invasion costing so many jobs in the Southwest Virginia- East Tennessee area. My husband is a brickmason. He is the 5th generation mason in his family- our son is the 6th. Up until just a couple of years ago brickmasons had contractors ringing their phones off of the wall wanting them to do work for them. My husband had to turn down dozens of callers because he couldn't do it all. Things have sure changed . Now, a lot of contractors in this area have gotten dollar signs in their eyes and...

More than $500,000 has been seized so far as authorities continue an investigation into illegal gambling and its possible ties to public corruption in the small town of Appalachia. Authorities say the money -- about half of it from safe deposit boxes and the rest in various bank accounts -- is linked to three Main Street gambling establishments suspected of paying off town officials in exchange for an agreement that local police would not interfere with their business. Special prosecutor Tim McAfee compared what authorities have discovered so far to organized crime more likely to be found in Chicago or...