Apples in Appalachia: Golden Blushing

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By Leah Eller

Editor’s note: For the university’s 17th annual North Georgia Research Conference, Leah Eller, a senior in the Department of Visual Arts, analyzed the composition, color, texture, line, and value of a wall tapestry by an Appalachian artist, Tommye Scannlin.

On my trip to the Quinlan center for Visual Arts, I saw an exhibit by Tommye McClure Scannlin. Her works consisted mostly of wall tapestry, but she incorporated some paintings, including watercolors of the images she wanted to weave. The artwork that I selected to analyze is “Golden Blushing,” a hand-woven tapestry about 3 feet wide by 5 feet long. The color, line, texture, value, and composition are used together in the tapestry to create an interesting and rather impressive work.

Golden Blushing by Tommye Scanlin

Having some weaving knowledge, I know that such a large tapestry was woven on an upright loom, with warp threads placed fairly far apart and weft threads woven specifically where they need to be. As is common in weaving, the artist made a painting as a template for the wall hanging.

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The magic of the mountains

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By Kelley Spurlock

Appalachia — its mountains hold my heart in the way that no other mountains can. As a little girl I would cherish the hikes I would take with my mother on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. I would live for the days when I could kayak down the Lehigh River and surround myself with the beauty that these mountains hold.

Hike the Appalachians

I remember the sun shining down on a thick forest which seemed to be swaying to a rhythm only known to itself. That was when I became convinced that these mountains have a magic like no other.

Now, here in Dahlonega, I am able to call these mountains my home. I am able to appreciate the concerns of Helen Lewis, the grandmother of Appalachian studies.

 

For example, the Chattahoochee National Forest is our backyard. Its trails, rivers, and hollers are our key to this place’s rich history. This is not the history that involves civil war battles or Hernando de Soto’s search for gold, although that history can be found here as well. Rather, the history of this place is hidden in the families who have lived here, the miners who have labored here, and the Native Americans who were carried away. This history cannot be found in textbooks, but it can be found within the mountains we call home.

The Chattahoochee National Forest holds the stories of the people who have stayed there and the people who have passed through. My own story, in fact, lies deep within its comforting hills where I believe it will be preserved. A friendship, a marriage, and a lifetime love were created in this forest, and our story will always continue here. The same can be said for countless others who draw their roots from these mountains.

Like Absher, I would consider myself a loyalist to these mountains. There are no mountains that are as comforting and full of culture as the ones that we have right here — not even the Rockies or the Swiss Alps can equal them. The lush green forests and the mountain laurel will always be here to call me home. The creeks tell the stories of people who have lived here for centuries. The wind whispers invitingly through the pine, oaks, and hemlocks; and the mountains stand tall and define our region.In Appalachia,  forests envelope, cultures run deep, and stories never end.

Kelley Spurlock is a writing and publications major at North Georgia College & State University. Her minor is Appalachian Studies. She is from Sparta, N.J.

 

 

More than a cabin

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By Jerrell Riley

Editor’s Note: Students in the Appalachian Studies Minor at North Georgia College & State University produced this community service learning project in partnership with the Lumpkin County Historical Society.

1830s cabin donated to Appalachian Studies at North Georgia College & State University by Jim and Betty Smulian

It is old, this cabin. Old at least by the new settlers’ count of time in these mountains. Built about 1832, they think, the time when gold brought the new settlers, the cabin builders, to drive out the old settlers, the Cherokee; a process of tribal conquest and replacement that has gone on for thousands of years.

It is a tiny space. Most folks would think it small for even a single room in today’s houses. Big enough, they might think, for a child’s bedroom, but not much more. Certainly too small to be a house.

They pulled this cabin out of the hollow where it sat for seven or eight generations, brought it to town, repaired it, restored it and set it up for us to see, to visit, to study. These are worthy things, but I hope that some will see that this is more than just a cabin of some historical interest. It is more even than just a physical record of a people, place and time.

The cabin cannot speak, yet it can tell hundreds of stories. Stories not particular to this cabin but to the larger community, these are stories of the cabin builders of the southern mountains. You must work to hear them because you hear them not with your ears but with your eyes, your mind and your heart.

It tells a story about community, about how people came together to share in the work to give one family shelter. No one person or small family could have lifted these logs into place. Neighbors set aside their own needs for a time so that others would have this place to live. This collectiveness and mutual support was critical to the survival of our frontier forebears.

It tells a story about subsistence. It is tiny, but it turned the winds of winter, sheltered from the rain and provided a hearth for gathering. The fireplace provided the only light beyond what daylight filtered between the roof shakes. It was the heat and the stove. For us and our comparative wealth, it is hard to understand the story that this little cabin was, for then and there, enough.

It tells stories of living. In this place children were born, and died, songs were sung, and prayers were said. Word were spoken in anger and taken back, forgiveness asked and given.

We see blank walls, empty space, but if all the cabin’s stories could be replayed, what a tapestry of sight and sound it would be.

It is more than a cabin.

Author’s Bio: Jerrell is retired from a 40-year career in employee benefits consulting and management. He has a BA degree from Emory University and has returned to college at North Georgia to take courses in areas he was interested in but which did not fit into his curriculum at Emory. He and his wife live in Dahlonega, Ga., where he is active as a volunteer supporting pet adoption and animal welfare at the Lumpkin County Animal Shelter

What is “my” Appalachia?

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By Kaitlin Pritchett

In my Appalachia, college is a new step for my family and me. It is a privilege and not just something assumed.

If someone had asked me six months ago, what is Appalachia? I probably would have just talked about the Appalachian Mountains and made up some crazy definition, trying to describe Appalachia. But the truth is I had absolutely no clue the region even existed. A couple of months ago I began taking a class at North Georgia College & State University that introduced me to the region. I was given a rough definition of Appalachia and found out that I had been living in the region my entire life. I have heard many people describe what Appalachia means to them, which got me thinking. What is “my” Appalachia?  Continue reading →

Opening a window to the whole world

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By Sarah Holly

I feel that everyone can find themselves in these mountains. You just have to open your eyes and look.

Editor’s Note: In the next few weeks, students in the Appalachian Minor at North Georgia College & State University will be blogging and following the advice that Helen Lewis offered as we began this program, “If you want to study Appalachia, find your place in this place.”

None of my family is from Appalachia. I have lived all over the world, but I have had the immense fortune to stumble across this region in America and fall in love with its beauty. Yet, this love for the mountains is a relatively new phenomenon.

Sarah Holly (far right), her younger sister, and their father on one of the family's road trips through Appalachia

When I was younger, my sister and I had what people would call chronic car sickness. I looked at my parents’ Ford Taurus and got queasy. Every car ride usually ended with me in a dirty gas station or on the side of the highway. My family has a cabin in Highlands, N.C, which we have been visiting since I was two years old. The environment never stood out to me, but the car ride always did. Traveling from Melbourne, Fla., it seemed I had designated puking spots: I-95; Atlanta; The Waffle House in Rabun County; The Piggly Wiggly in Rabun County; the Sinclair gas station off of Highway 62. Needless to say, the mountains and I had a hate-hate relationship. They made me miserable.

As I got older, my queasiness turned into flat-out fear. I moved first from Florida to upstate New York, then on to Chicago. I adopted the Midwest mentality; “it’s not coke, it’s pop, and flat is good”. Mountains no longer possessed any importance in my life.

Then, in the summer of 2005, I had the joy of passing through the mountains twice. The first time was on a trip to Washington, D.C. with a group of my 8th grade classmates. A majority of my friends had never seen mountains, which blew my mind. Passing through Pennsylvania, we were all in amazement. We had never seen the vast rolling ravines in the mountains. Awe turned into panic. “We’re going to tip over the side! No one will find us! Where are we?”

I remember everyone on the right side of the bus rushing over to the left aisle, because we would be less likely to tip over into the great unknown. Girls were crying, boys were trying to stay calm, but those curves were huge, and clearly tour bus drivers could not be trusted. I remember sitting with my head between my knees trying not to cry. The second time was moving from Chicago to Georgia. I was already reduced to tears, and the mountains of Tennessee did not ease my fears of a new place. Coming over narrow rises and hairpin turns with a trailer attached to our car made me think we might die. The fact that walls of stone surrounded us did not lessen my fears. My knees knocked for weeks after that trip.

Living in Forsyth County changed my perspective on mountains. I never realized the amount of fun to be had. Whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River was the most exhilarating event of my life. I had never thought that this was even a recreational activity, I remember looking up at my mom like she was insane when she suggested I go. Upgrading to some small kayaking runs, I became obsessed with cheating death. I soon was climbing the sides of the mountains that I used to fear. Sitting along a ridge in the wilderness, seeing the gleaming lights of Atlanta in the distance, has made me see that the mountains can open a window to the whole world. When you are on top of a mountain, you might as well be on top of the world. Seeing the beauty of God’s creation and participating in activities that have risks has made me a much stronger inpidual than the flat lands could have ever made me. I feel that everyone can find themselves in these mountains. You just have to open your eyes and look.

Sarah Holly

Author’s Bio: I am a 21 year old Junior at North Georgia College and State University. I am studying history with a minor in Appalachian Studies. I am an Army Brat and have lived in many different places. When I graduate, I want to go to law school and work in historical preservation or environmental conservation.

Married to the mountains

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By Barbara Taylor Woodall

I am a 7th generation Appalachian still living on my home place in the North Georgia Mountains.  I’m held captive here, not with chains and fetters but by an undying devotion to a  land of great beauty. I was reared in a humble farm family that taught me to appreciate God‘s giant pastures.

On winter mornings from underneath thick layers of patchwork quilts, I studied ice crystals formations on frosted windowpanes. Oxygen-rich air burned our noses until Dad kindled a fire in the mud-daubed fireplace he had built from creek rock and red clay.

Long before the rooster’s crow, he raked gray ashes with an iron poking stick, looking for glowing embers. He reached into the wood box for the rich pine splinters and cones to place on the live coals. Gently, he fanned with a paper until bursts of yellow flames appeared. Aromas of pine filled the house.  Finally, a leather string latch was lifted, opening a weathered plank door. Dad carried larger sticks from the porch to cross over the young fire. A huge back stick was placed behind the flames. It held heat all day while he was away working at the sawmill.

The morning fire, now ablaze in the fireplace, turned into a rib-roaster. Mama called it a “turn and burn” heating system.  Stepping into my brother’s bedroom with a voice of authority, Dad said, “Hit th’ floor. More people die in th’ bed than anywhere else. Shake a leg!”  An unheeded call was met with a bucket of cold water thrown into their snoozing midst.  It always worked.

He assigned chores for after school. Dad was not to be trifled with: nothing short of a hospital stay excused us. He honored the law requiring school attendance, but school was secondary to working the land. My brothers had one foot in the classroom, the other on fallow ground.

When Dad was not pulling “the money stick” at Ritter’s Saw Mill, he lived behind a mule-drawn plough.  He never saw mere dirt, but envisioned planted seeds and tender plants kissed by morning dew.  He saw bushels of shelled corn drying in hampers for seed and bread. He saw winter feed stored among ribbons of cobwebs, hanging through barn cracks and well fed stock roaming the fields.  Faith in a full harvest kept him stepping.

I watched the plough turn new earth row after row. It looked like the earth was opening her mouth to produce life. Corn was life.  Soft silver winds brought scents of pennyroyal and mint from the creek bank, awakening the sap within him. When he stopped for a dipper of cool water, he often picked dandelion blooms that dotted the landscape like golden jewels of Eden.  They looked nice on Mama’s table.

Our hearts were knitted with golden threads to the Appalachian Mountains.  We were, in fact, married to our portion of paradise.

Author’s bio: Barbara Taylor Woodall lives in Rabun County, Georgia. She graduated from Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in 1973 and was active in the Foxfire programs. She is the author of It’s Not My Mountain Anymore.

Thoughts on Byron Herbert Reece’s Poem “The Travelers”

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By Ethelene Dyer Jones

Editor’s Note: This explication was first published by the Byron Herbert Reece Society in March, 2010. To read more about the “bard of the North Georgia Mountains”, click here. To enter, this year’s poetry contest sponsored by the Reece Society, click here.

Byron Herbert Reece

The Travelers

I have come down by many a way
From Dooly to the hills of home,
Though one was best, for if it stray
The meanest road seems good to roam.
And though I have inquired of none
What thoughts with each tall youth abode
As they leaned idly in the sun
And watched me tramp the dusty road,
It was not yesterday time taught,
By keeping me to fields confined,
How there may be escape in thought.
These made a journey in the mind
Until, beyond the hills and me,
They saw, if vaguely and in vain,
The long waves breaking on the sea,
The cities shining on the plain.

I view “The Travelers” as one of Byron Herbert Reece’s autobiographical poems.  It’s not that every one of his poems, or any poet’s poems, are not all autobiographical, in reality, for each person brings to pen and paper what he or she knows of life and experience to write whatever is known particularly to that person.  Each view is different;  likewise, each critique of another’s poem also brings to bear what the reviewer knows of similar experiences.  In essence, we each are fellow travelers on this road called life.

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‘Slim pickings’, but rich in all that counts

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By Rosann Kent

Take your different-ness and do something with it. Write a song. Tell a story. Make art. It will help you, and it will help others. – Hannah From

Hannah From

It’s one of those late winter days in the Appalachians when the promise of spring lingers in the pink sunset. I’ve driven so far down a once-graveled twisting road in White County unrecognized by my GPS that I began to wonder if I’ll arrive before dark. Suddenly, I am greeted by a flurry of barking, wiggling, chattering whirls  — two dogs and three children hurdle out of the mountain laurel and launch themselves toward my car stuffing into my hands bouquets of dried branches secured with a blue rubber band from a broccoli bundle.  Eleven-year-old Hannah has helped her younger siblings scribble out a message in multicolored chalk on the concrete porch.

Welcome to are home. 

Their father, James, a teacher, smiles ruefully at the error. “They were excited about the crocus”, he says. “It bloomed. Just this afternoon. We’ve been watching it”.

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Affrilachia! A Sense of Place and Identity

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By Marie T. Cochran

Editor’s note: On Monday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m., we launch “Affrilachia in Words and Images,” a series examining the African-American experience in Appalachia through expression in poetry and art with a keynote by Frank X Walker. The series is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and North Georgia College & State University. Free and open to the public. Click here for more information.  

Though I’ve always been proud of where I’m from, as an African American, I’ve always been teased about the fact that I was born and raised in Toccoa, Ga., amidst the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. My Black friends from Atlanta and other urban environments look askance when I mention that during my childhood, I enjoyed the TV show The Waltons equally as much as Good Times. Unlike many of them, I was a first generation college student and my parents earned a living working in a textile mill.

Ultimately, I plunged into the life of an artist and cultural advocate where I have spent my adult life laboring to connect college campuses and communities in urban settings. Now, I work primarily in rural Western North Carolina and have begun to fully appreciate the physical landscape and comprehend the enmeshed web of relationships that form my cultural heritage.

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Home grown tomatoes

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By Jeff Davis

Editor’s Note:The center’s Saving Appalachian Gardens and Stories served on a panel at “Growing the Appalachian Food Economy: A forum on local food systems and sustainable agriculture” on April 3-4, 2012, in Asheville, NC sponsored by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Click here for more information on this conference. 

Heirloom tomatoes from SAGAS, Saving Appalachian Garden and Stories

Years ago, I heard a lyric in a honky-tonk in Tennessee that still rings in my memory with a simple yet profound statement about life.  It goes like this:

 There’s only two things

That money can’t buy

And that’s true love

And home grown tomatoes

 

As many other details from those times have faded, that little lyric, harvested from a beer bar, has stayed with me.  I could go on and on about money and true love but, right now, those home grown tomatoes are really on my mind.  It’s late winter, cabin fever is setting in, and my mailbox is filling up with seed catalogs.  It’s enough to make love and money seem almost insignificant.

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