Defining Appalachia

How does one define the Appalachian culture? Is it the language, music, or clothing, there’s so many ways to define it. In finding the definition I found stereotypes like all the people in Appalachia eat cornbread and beans. Why does everyone outside the Appalachia region think all we eat in Appalachia is beans and cornbread?  We’re a very diverse place when it comes to food.  All types of cultures (Italians Germans, English, Scots, Irish, Spanish) blend together to make very down home meals that define Appalachia. Some meals are a little back wood than others, but their delicious no matter what everyone thinks.  Pepperoni roles is a really common snack in Appalachia, it originated out of West Virginia.   A lot eat them outside of the Appalachia region to, but yet everyone still thinks we eat beans and cornbread.  Beans and cornbread is really good, but we eat a lot of wild things to. The deer jerky here is the closest thing to heaven… besides the scenery.  There are some that some will never try; well that’s what makes the food here unique.  The things that an area does that are different and unique define the culture. Appalachia is unique in their food from baked raccoon to pepperoni rolls; the self reliance of the region contributed the meals in Appalachia. This is how food describes the culture in Appalachia.

                                                                                                                                                               -L

Cooper's Rock

One of the first things I saw when we came house hunting in West Virginia was Cooper’s Rock State Park.   It was July, 2008, and I remember that we were practically in the woods when we were eating under the shelter that held the picnic tables.  Indiana wasn’t like that.  In the outskirts of Bloomington, if we were in a state park, there was always a huge clearing to house a picnic shelter.  But here in West Virginia, it was under a canopy of trees.  When I went to the famous overlook of Cooper’s Rock, I was amazed.  I literally fell in love with what I saw.  On the overlook, you can look all around and see thousands of trees.  Any gaps between the branches were filled in with big, fat leaves in different shades of green.  To the left I saw the Cheat River.  It looked so still, almost glassy, and when it did make its small waves, someone was taking advantage of the beauty to enjoy a summer evening on their boat. 

My favorite time to visit Cooper’s Rock is in the fall.  It’s gorgeous with the red and orange leaves, standing out against the clear blue or crisp smoky sky that compliments the colors so well.  A friend of ours is coming to West Virginia in November, and I don’t think we’ve ever been able to take her to Cooper’s Rock.  I’m so excited for her to come! Even though there are dozens of other states in the country that change with the seasons, none of them compare to the views of West Virginia, and none of the places do a view justice other than Cooper’s Rock.  Here’s a picture I found online of Cooper’s Rock in the fall.  Thank you, Google Images!   

Cooper’s Rock always has and always will be one of my top five favorite places in West Virginia.  I hope it will be preserved, because everyone deserves to see this.

-K

Wild and Wonderful

Writing about the variety of West Virginia’s topics in a blog is something I’ve never thought about until now.  I’m pretty new to the area, and although I’m not a born-and-raised West Virginian, it’s where I tell people I’m from.  It’s beautiful, and in exchange for being so welcoming, I’ve called it home.  Having only lived here for four years, when most of the people I know have lived here forever, I feel like I have a different perspective on the viewpoints of stereotypes.  I see things the way an outsider would, with the rednecks or hillbillies and poverty.  But unlike some people who criticize that, I accept it, and even embrace it.  I like the idea that somewhere in West Virginia, there are people who are still living like they did two hundred years ago.  It keeps a history alive, and I think that throughout the world those things we read about at school aren’t being preserved. 

When you cross the border from any state into West Virginia, there’s a sign that says Wild and Wonderful.  I love that! The first time I saw that sign I thought of the gorgeous state parks, and the giant black bears, the lush green of summer, and the golden colors and excited spirit of fall.  I’m not a huge football fan, but I still love the energy that the Mountaineers and the football season bring.  In Kingwood, West Virginia, the Buckwheat Festival comes every September.  It honors the historic story of how Preston County relied on the buckwheat harvest during the Great Depression as a way to get more money in the area.  My family tries to go every year, and we eat the bitter but delicious pancakes and enjoy everything that people make their living on: different jams and arts and crafts.  There are even animals that you can look at and a barrel rolling contest in the water.  It’s very entertaining.  And when we’re getting ready to leave, we share a big bag of hot, freshly popped kettle corn.  It’s amazing to watch the people pop the thousands of kernels in the huge bucket.  They work so hard but enjoy every bit of it.

West Virginia is my favorite place in the world.  Yes, there’s poverty, but I’m so glad to be here and share the culture and activities of the area with friends and family.  They all have a wonderful viewpoint and opinion of the state.  Come visit! You’ll feel good.

-K

Not an Ignorant Redneck, so Stop Calling Me One

    West Virginia – Appalachia in general – is full of a rich and unique culture. Though some of our traditions are different from the rest of the United States, we aren’t the backwards rednecks we have been portrayed to be.

     Yes, we have regional dialects and accents. Doesn’t every state? Put one person from every state all in one room, and after speaking for just a few minutes, you can probably discern where each person is from. So please stop mocking our accents. We don’t mock yours.

     The one common trait amongst all Americans is that we very rarely speak in grammatically correct sentences. It’s not a trait limited just to Appalachia. Everyone does it. Ever heard of slang?

     Appalachians do in fact own and wear shoes. Hard to believe but true. I can honestly say the only people I’ve ever seen barefoot in Wal-Mart were babies. Every child has played barefoot at some point in their lives – no matter where their childhood was. I’m willing to bet in adulthood or young adulthood – again, it doesn’t matter what state you live in – you’ve gone out into your backyard and walked around barefoot because you were too lazy to put on shoes.

      Now, I will present the reason for my rant. The Elvis Duran Show, which airs nationally, made a social faux pas the other day, and it still has my blood boiling. One of the cast members was complaining that her co-workers had taken pictures of her dirty bare feet and posted them on the internet. Without missing a beat she exclaimed, “I might as well live in West Virginia where they don’t wear shoes.” (This is not the exact wording, but close enough for our purposes.)

      It is those types of misconceptions and stereotypes that make me blow my top. We are not heathens here in West Virginia or anywhere in Appalachia! Poking fun at us was funny for a few decades, but two-hundred-some years later, the jokes have grown old and tired. Grow up!

     What makes it worse are outsiders coming in looking to verify those stereotypes. Journalists and newscasters from out of state will come into a town and find the one person with no teeth, can’t speak, has no hair on their head, and a beard so long it touches the ground. This is not an accurate depiction! So many documentaries have tried to portray all of Appalachia as living in poverty and squalor. Yes, we have poverty, but so does every other state in the Union! You cannot show a minority and let them represent the whole region or state.

     Case in point: if you google search images of ‘appalachia,’ there are two primary types of pictures that appear. The first are beautiful scenic pictures of natural wonders like waterfalls or fields filled with bright, colorful flowers. The others are black and white portraits of dirty farmers wearing ripped clothes, children with barely any clothes, all obviously living in poverty. Like the picture to your right. That came from an actual google search of ‘Appalachia.’ There are more facets to our culture! Don’t drink the Kool-Aid and believe poor farmers and a pretty view are all this region has to offer.

     We have such a beautiful and unique culture here in Appalachia. We love our neighbors and smile at strangers. Our music ranges from blue-grass to country to rock to pop. Family is important, but we don’t have to be constantly breathing each other’s air. Yes, we have some “rednecks,” but we accept them as a permenant fixture in our society and a reminder of an older way of life that some days seems like something we should get back to. Most importantly, we wear our West Virginia heritage like a badge of honor. Hopefully one day the rest of the world will see what we’ve always known: being Appalachian isn’t something to feel ashamed about, it’s a source of pride.

-J

Protesting the War on Coal

I was driving with my boyfriend over the summer when we got stuck in traffic behind this truck. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to take a picture to show this year’s new Appalachian Liturature class. I lunged for my camera while exclaiming wildly that I had just watched a documentary on this in school and that I had to put it on the blog – which, of course garnered me a few strange looks. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to get a picture of the entire back of the truck before it started driving away. The other side was decorated with two more of the smaller sticker shown above. (For any who can’t read the smaller sticker, it says ‘Save the world. Fire Obama!’)

When I took this picture, I had no idea that I would be in this class again. Hopefully this year, we touch on some of the same topics we discussed in last year’s class, such as ‘the war on coal’ as depicted in the documentary The Last Mountain. That was my favorite topic that we went over last year, and I’m excited to see some of the new views on coal from this year’s class.

-F



Appalachian Music

                Appalachia has its fair share of cultural distinctions, the same as many places. Although things like our food, dance and dialects separate us from others, I find our music to be one of our regions most recognizable aspects. People forget that over the years, our voice has been most successfully heard through country and bluegrass, rather than shouting protestors.

                Most commonly associated with bigots and hicks, the sound of fiddles and banjos is commonly misconceived as another hindrance for our region. Few people have considered the fact that the music that now only sits in the shadows has played one of the largest roles in shaping our culture. The roles of music in the 19^th century were much different than those of today’s music.

                Today, the only involvement in protesting is people standing in front of government buildings with signs, or going to extremes and physically intervening in an issue. Years ago, songs and books spoke for so much more. Appalachian music fueled the protests of coal wars and made our state’s opinions so much louder.

                Although efforts are being made to keep Appalachian music alive, I doubt a revival is possible. People have simply lost interest in music actually speaking out about something. All I think we can do is to push support for local artists still playing cultural music.

-L

Stereotypes and the Big 12

As WVU is entering its inaugural season in the Big 12 football conference, it will be exposed to a broader audience of football fans as they will be playing teams such as Oklahoma and Baylor. These teams are a huge step up from playing teams such as Pitt and Rutgers in the Big East Conference. With seven home games this season, including five Big 12 Conference games, the Appalachian region continues to receive a vast amount of media attention to cover the football game. Of course, there are lots of inaccurate stereotypes about this region reported on networks such as ESPN because WVU is in Appalachia. Visitors to the region might rethink some of the stereotypes they learned about people in West Virginia to realize that this region is just as unique as any other place in the United States.

With every football game you have the local crowd made up of students and residents of Morgantown and surrounding areas, and then you have the visitors from the opposing school. Since all of WVU’s Big 12 opponents this year are from the Midwest region of the US, they probably have a false misunderstanding that the people of Morgantown are crazed hillbillies who get drunk before games and smash cars and burn couches. That’s not always true. Visitors from other regions can experience pieces of Appalachian culture in Morgantown in different places, such as the many restaurants in the downtown region or by interacting with the locals. A majority of locals are extremely friendly with the tourists and are happy to show them the best places to experience a true part of West Virginia. Because of the friendliness of the locals, the visitors may consider coming back to Morgantown on a non-game day weekend to experience more of Morgantown or might even explore other areas of Appalachia.

With the Appalachian region comes many stereotypes about how people look, dress, and act. Visitors come to this region, whether it is for WVU or not and sometimes has an experience completely opposite of what they expected. Many of the common stereotypes about the Appalachian region are:

·         Everyone is poor and lives in run down cabins

·         All men are coal miners

·         Nobody wears shoes

·         The only music that is played is bluegrass with fiddles and banjos

·         The main beverage is Mountain Dew

·         Everybody is illiterate and doesn’t receive a basic education

If there’s one thing that ties WVU’s roots to Appalachia during a football game, it is the Pride of West Virginia’s pregame show.  The band runs through the tunnels of the stadium and plays songs such as “Hail West!” and “Fight Mountaineers,” but then the show turns to “Country Roads” and “Simple Gifts,” two songs that have deep ties to the Appalachian region. Most people in the country know these songs and easily connect them to West Virginia, including the Big 12 conference members. For any visitor attending a WVU football game, the Pride grabs the attention of everyone in the stadium for their superior sound and powerful appearance. After hearing the Pride for the first time, anyone who thought West Virginians couldn’t play quality music will rethink the stereotypes they previously had about the region.

As football season begins, the teams of the Big 12 and their fans attending games in Morgantown will be astounded by how little they know about who Appalachians are and how they have a good time at a game. With the new conference will come many challenges, but fans of WVU will always remain loyal to their team in a festive manner and will always welcome visitors to the area who are experiencing the Appalachian culture for the first time.

                                                                                                         

                       -C

Appalachian Dialect

So many people outside the mountains (foreigners, if you will) associate the accent and grammar of the Appalachian speech with a lack of education, poverty, and bare feet and beer guts. That is simply the way the media has molded them, and it has molded us all as well. We begin to think our native dialect will hold us back in life. As a result, we drop it around those foreigners, adopting the accent most commonly used on TV, which is a total non-accent.

In consequence, we are losing that wonderful, rich vocabulary and unique patterns of speech in the cities here. Living in Morgantown, I know that no one around here speaks the full dialect. Even my grandparents, who worked blue collar jobs and lived in a way that was extinct in the rest of the country, sound mostly “normal.” Even so, as a young child, I was embarrassed by how they spoke. Now, I’m glad they still talk like that. It’s special here. No one at school says “worshcloth” for washcloth, or “Boosh” for former president Bush. No one else lives in a “holler,” or can rhyme “fire,” “tire,” and “wire” with “jar” (so that a tire shop becomes a tar shop).

These are quirks that maybe don’t present us in the best light, due to media-enforced stereotypes, but they are a part of us. Just because we live in a holler doesn’t make us less intelligent. Appalachian English has roots in some of the oldest forms of English. It may not be the Queen’s English, but it’s still special.

-M



Clogging

          In today’s culture, not many think of clogging as a form of dance. When I hear the word “clogging,” I think of people with pastel colored patchwork skirts with the long flowing woven shirts and the wooden shoes with pointy toes. The clogging clothing reminds me of Appalachia and the stereotypical style of clothes most people wore. Although Clogging is rarely used for things such as dance competitions today, clogging was a common part of Appalachian culture during the 1700s.

          Clogging was a common cultural hobby in the 1700s. It was introduced by the Irish, English, and Scottish that settled in the Southern Appalachian mountain area. Though we call it clogging today, some more common names for it were “jigging, flat-footing, buck dancing, and foot-stomping.” There was no real correct way of clogging back then. Everyone had their own personal touches to make it into their own form of dance, but joined with others to dance to the same sort of music. It once was an individual dance, but as it grew more popular people did it together to where it seemed more like a square dance. Clogging is similar to tap except how in clogging the heel emphasizes the downbeat. The typical music they danced to while clogging was bluegrass.

          Today, Clogging is not used in the same context as it was in the 1700s. Clogging has become a dance for groups to travel and make into competitions. The only people I know who listen to bluegrass anymore are hillbillies. Clogging is done today to much more modern music. In today’s society, precision clogging is what the dance is called. Precision clogging is different in the sense all the dancers do the same steps at the same time.

          Although you hear about clogging as if it was something everyone did on a Friday night in the 1700s, I never hear about anyone clogging in modern day. I feel like tap dance is the new clogging. I hear clogging is harder which might be why more people have switched to clogging. I used to take tap, and I think tap and clogging both take a lot of preciseness in the sense of not getting off beat. Once you’re off beat, it’s hard to continue on with the dance. I don’t really see clogging making a comeback anytime soon.

-M

When you Google the Mountains

When you Google “Appalachia,” what do you find? First you’re going to scroll down through a few web pages created to persuade those hesitant tourists why their trip to Illinois couldn’t compare to Appalachia, National Geographic’s hand out on the mountains, and maybe a handful of natives advertising their peach butter or hand sewn quilts, and why they love the mountains. These Appalachian websites will give you either an unbiased or local’s perspective on what the Appalachian home is and how its people live. But eventually those viewpoints will begin to become fewer and fewer, and you’re going to start to come across several people giving the outsider’s, and evidentially commonplace, view of Appalachia.

You’re bound to run into the cliché hillbilly stereotype first, thanks to the media’s portrayals of what “mountain people” are (i.e. The Beverley Hillbillies, Wrong Turn); it’s a typecast that seems to run synonymous with the word Appalachia itself. The “hick” label will be elaborated on as you begin to look closer; Appalachians are illiterate, Appalachians are unwashed and drunk half of their life, Appalachian people only eat cornbread, veal, and beans, Appalachians lack the basic modern electric necessities, Appalachians all carry a gun on their person. The list goes on and on and is then added to by missionary groups who explain their plan for tending to the third world country in their own backyards.

Saying that these views are an exaggeration is obviously an understatement. But it leads one to wonder: what the cause of these negative stereotypes is, and do they hold any merit?

Appalachia has a bloody history. The family feud between the Hatfields and McCoys and the Battle of Blair Mountain, brutally and bluntly recorded in nineteenth century newspapers, must have something to do with it.

The bloodshed scared the rest of the nation, and suddenly the mountains were known for the people who had willingly taken up arms against their employer and their neighbor and (in the case of Blair Mountain) caused so much trouble that the U.S. Army had to be called in. Not many happy pictures were derived from that, and suddenly the media mainly focused on the problems of Appalachia while it ignored the good. Today’s media has only elaborated.

-R

Sweet Home Appalachia



I’ve lived in West Virginia my entire life. I speak intellectually, I don’t like cornbread, and yes, I wear shoes. And this may come as a shock to all the outsiders who either don’t recognize us as a state (“western Virginia”) or stereotype us as incestual hillbillies, but I have all my teeth, and they are white and straight. These same facts apply to almost everyone I know, so where did these stereotypes come from?

Let us first review some of the many crude stereotypes that my beautiful state endures. Incompetent speech: all ya’ll city-slickers think we talk like fools. We don’t. Severe poverty: almost every girl in our school carries a Coach purse. I’m not a fan, but regardless, they don’t come cheap. Music consists of hammer dulcimers and fiddles: I am in a classical string orchestra, and our school band is performing in the Rose Bowl in 2013. Everyone mines coal: I don’t even know a coal miner.  Turn or burn Christianity: one of my best friends is Muslim, another close friend Buddhist, and a few don’t believe anything at all. As for the inbred characters depicted in “Wrong Turn”, that was just plain mean.

 ‘How strange’ you say, then where did these vivid, not to mention wrong, stereotypes come from? Hollywood. No matter where you go, if you dig around, you will find strange things. Every state has a freakish family where everything stays in the family, every state has uneducated, bumbling fools, and every state has poverty. And yet, movies such as “Beverly Hillbillies” put the pin for every backwards behavior this side of the Mississippi in Appalachia. We are the Mountain Martyrs.

However, I will step off my soap-box for a moment. Stereotypes are often exaggerated truth… you mustn’t misunderstand me, if you go far enough down state, you will find people who speak in the classic slurred speech, you will find people whose lives are coal, and you will find poverty. But believe me when I say that that is not Appalachia as a whole. Just like how cowboys aren’t the Midwest as a whole. The point I’m trying to make is that anywhere you go will have people with strange habits, and if we can see pass the strange minority in other places, why not in Appalachia?

Appalachia is beautiful. The rolling mountains that melt into deep valleys, the explosion of chlorophyll in spring, the wild flowers in summer, the deciduous forests in fall, the evergreens laden with snow in winter…it’s all breathtaking. Focus on that. Not on meth labs and overalls.

-C



Waking Up

Summer has nearly passed with its unusual tea kettle screeching temperatures; as the weather begins to make its gradual downfall into cooler days, school sets back in session, and thus a new year commences for MHS's Appalachian Literature class. The blog shall climb in activity once again as new students bring forth mountains of posts for readers to follow. And to mark this new beginning, I've refreshed the blog's aesthetics! A bit less Blogger-default looking, it's more unique than the last layout yet keeps simplicity.

With college students returning, autumn leaf assortments only hesitating to paint the forests, and football about to kick-off, be expecting stacks of news from these little voices from Appalachia.

Taryn