The Monkey Do Project

Each Wednesday, I spend time sifting through various social media streams so that I can find interesting people and projects who may not appear in the news. Yesterday, I came across The Monkey Do Project, which seeks to partner with groups working in Appalachia. As I read about the project, I was reminded of what […]

Read More

Economic Development in Appalachia: It’s Not Always about the Roads

Poverty is one of the big themes in So Far Appalachia, particularly how the relationship between local, state, and national governing bodies impacts the region. In The Road to Poverty, researchers found that as rural areas were pulled into the national economy, the long-term effects (at least in Clay County) undermined the local economy. One […]

Read More

The Map That Answered This Question

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my friend, Lali, with whom I shared a very intense friendship twenty years ago. We had one of those inexplicable connections that tethered us together for years. As I was traveling to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I wondered if maybe her family was from here since this is Mennonite country […]

Read More

A Needle in a Haystack

“If you do it will be, in the writer’s opinion, almost a copy of the German jaeger rifle because these Bakers were making guns from 1717-1754 — the earliest gunsmiths I have found in this area of Pennsylvania.” — Sam Dyke, 1972. “The Baker Family of Gunsmiths in Lancaster, County 1717-1754 The problem with history […]

Read More

Lancaster, PA

I arrived in Lancaster just a little after noon today after surviving a drive that took me through the foggy Appalachia mountains, torrential rain down pours, and hours of driving time without mobile cell service. As some severe weather is headed my way, I skipped some of the preliminary research today and instead got my […]

Read More

Appalachia: The Well-Spoken Problem

While the subject of the Clay County feuds is often seen nowadays as something akin to old west nostalgia, as per the Hollywood treatment of the Hatfield/McCoy variety, or even a History Channel presentation a few years ago of Clay County’s “Hundred Year War’ it is to many local people a subject of the untwist […]

Read More