Appalachianista Blogs

Hotel Sign in Rainelle, West Virginia
(Image from the tremendous Field Guide to What's Good)

You know me - I love "technology" and the "internet." It makes me all giddy. Well, this morning while I was surfing during breakfast I decided to hit up the legendary (among bloggers) Technorati and perform a very particular sort of search - I decided to specifically look for those blogs claiming to be about Appalachia in general - 70 sites were listed for my blog-pleasure as a result. I decided to rank order them according to their authority rating and list 'm for you (editing out spurious or dead entries as well as sites which haven't updated since August of this year) for your life-pleasure. The results, maestro:

Authority of 77: Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Authority of 66: Hillbilly Savants

Authority of 53: Buffy Holt

Authority of 50: Shuck and Jive

Authority 0f 41: Appalachian History

Authority of 36: The Herbwife's Kitchen

Authority of 31: Pocahontas County Fare

Authority of 22: Among the Hills

Authority of 18: Appalachian Writers

Authority of 18: Quo Vadis

Authority of 15: Tales From Creekistan

Authority of 12: Rednecromancer

Authority of 9: Mari's Midnight Garden

Authority of 9: Tug's Life

Authority of 8: Beyond the 9th Wave

Authority of 6: Plummer's Hollow, Pennsylvania

Authority of 4: Quilts and Creativity

Authority of 2: Garysworld 'Appalachia'

Authority of 2: Mindracket

Authority of 2: Zezrie's Ponderings

Authority of 1: Dog and Pony Show

Authority of 1: epizoodiks. . .

Authority of 1: Guide to What's Good

Authority of 1: Life Through 4 Eyes

Authority of 1: pfly

Authority of 1: Pictures and Words

Authority of 0: Appalachia

Authority of 0: Appalachia and Beyond

Authority of 0: Appalachia's Best Mullets

Authority of 0: Appalachian Music Blogger - Henry Queen

Authority of 0: Cross-Cultural Encounter: Appalachia

Authority of 0: Oh, Appalachia!

Authority of 0: Reading in Appalachia

Authority of 0: Six Weeks in Appalachia

Authority of 0: Ups and Downs in Appalachia

So the final count is about 35 - we're a pretty elite group of writers, eh? Of course there are tons of localist Appalachian bloggers writing about a particular county, town, city, or sub-region, but wow - - - surprisinglicious. Anyway - if there are sites you haven't visited, you should check'm out (I'll be adding several permanent peer links in the next few days, in case you're wondering) - there are some gems in amongst this group. And stuff.

New Developments That Require Your Attention (and Stuff)

(Series of loud, high-pitched squeals)




Two key announcements coming up from your Emergency Hillbilly Announcement Jonx.

(Again, high-pitched onomatopoeia).

1. You may have noticed that we're re-working our links to our Kith and Kin (left column). Don't worry, the changes will continue. We're trying to localize them to specific towns and cities, so that people interested in those specific locales can focus on them at a glance. As you might notice, several of the blogs and sites lack grounding in any particular area, much less town. If you know their location, please let us know so we can, in turn, let our readers know. Right along with that, you may notice some towns and cities are underrepresented or entirely absent. We suggest that you suggest sites and blogs to us either through commenting or at hillbillysavants@gmail.com immediately, if not sooner. If you have recommended in the past and I have screwed up and not added you, apologies - I want to make it better, so recommend away again. Note: if it is bigoted or pornographic, we ain't adding it, so don't even bother. We need your help to make this place even more awesometastic.

2. Nathan Fortner has, through due diligence, procured a domain name for us - - - oh-ho-ho, eh?
Presenting (onomatopoeia of a drumroll):

www.hillbillysavants.org

Buya. Cheers and salutations to Mr. Fortner. Now, update your links and, when you tell your friends about our humble little site, they'll find it even more simple and pleasant to remember. So spread the word, chief.

Many thanks for your attention, and please have patience with us while we kick the tires and light the fires on the new link-set.

Adieu.

(series of dolphin-like shrills and clicks indicating end of pseudo-governmental blither-blather)

Lighten Up, Mr. Biden

During last night's YouTube Democratic Presidential Candidate debate, a couple of witty hillbillies identifying themselves as the "Red State Update" from Murfeesboro, Tennessee, asked a tongue in cheek question of the candidates about Al Gore's continuing unseen presence as a Democratic contender in the 2008 presidential race. Referencing the mainstream media's continuing interest in "Ole Al Gore", the two men, identifying themselves as Jackie Broyles and Dunlap asked the candidates, "What we want to know is, does that hurt ya'll's feelins'?"

Seeming to not understand or care about the intelligent satire implicit in the question, candidate Joe Biden seized on the opportunity to take up for the good citizens of Tennessee by responding, "I think the people of Tennessee just had their feelings hurt." While I didn't grow up in Tennessee, I grew up fifty miles from the Virginia/Tennessee border and I for one didn't have my feelings hurt one little bit. While I cringe at dumb Hee-Haw portrayals of Hillbillies, these guys are obviously smart and witheringly funny and while Mr. Biden might not realize it, these men are using humor to show the rest of the thinking world that hillbillies too have brains in their heads. It's irony, Mr. Biden, so please don't take up for us by putting down these creative gentlemen. While some of the well heeled country club types in Nashville might get riled up a bit by the portrayal, I'd like to think that most Tennesseans were rightfully proud of these fellows and their well portrayed parody.

A clip of the question can be accessed via YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_yVxv0I1_I and the Red State Update site is here.

I visited the site this morning and had a good chuckle. I hope we can laugh at ourselves without needing Mr. Biden to come to our defense. But thanks anyway, Joe.

Flattered? Yes...

Once again, we here at Hillbilly Savants have been honored with another Thinking Blog Award. In a virtual game of "gotcha-last", the Weenie Wonks (their name, not mine) over at The West Virginia Hot Dog Blog have reciprocated some high praise on us. Thanks folks, for reading and spreading the word about Hillbilly Savants! We hope we'll continue to cut the mustard for you.

Playing within the rules of a Thinking Blog Award, it's now our turn to nominate five more blogs for the same award (you can read all about our first award and nominees here). It's not an easy task to choose just five blogs. As you can see under our Kith & Kin section in the left sidebar, we like blogs. A lot of blogs. In a long, excruciating process that involved a little Scotch and a fair amount of reading, here are my nominees:

1) Living Green: As a home designer professionally and as someone planning my own home construction, Aaron Doyle's real estate blog focusing on sustainable living is a great resource. It's a subject that all of us face as urban sprawl creeps deeper into Appalachia and energy consumption becomes more of a conscious decision.

2) BLDG BLOG: It's not based in or on Appalachia but this blog is probably the best blog I have ever read. If you are a fan of art and architecture, click the link.

3) Squirrel Meat's Journal: Techically not a blog, but Squirrel Meat is friend of HS and to us contributors that attended Emory & Henry College. The journal is his way of telling us what is happening as he hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. S'meat completed a southbound hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2003 and is tackling the Canada to Mexico trail on the west coast as I type.

4) Blue Ridge Muse: Just down Route 8 from me, in Floyd, Virginia, Blue Ridge Muse is full of wonderful photography and writing. I like it because Floyd is kind of like Las Vegas, word of what goes on there doesn't reach us on the main drag via the mainstream media until we find it on the blogs. Blue Ridge Muse is just one of many great bloggers from Floyd County, the arts center of the New River Valley.

5) Fretboard Journal Blog: Anyone with a slight interest in music and instruments will find this writing worthwhile.

And again, the rules from the thinking blog:

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

That was that! Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! It is the first time I am starting something with my blog so I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me.

MAKE/Boing Boing: National Highlights on Appalachian Such-Have-Yous

Here at HS we pride ourselves as being, well, relatively blogtastic. Ahem.

Blogtastic: (adj.) 'bläg-'tas-tik, 1 - to blog in a blogrific fashion; 2 - to be able to recognize the attribute of blogrificness in other bloggers; Etymology: From Middle English blogtastique to recognize the attribute of endlessly talking about stuff and things; From Gaelic blaugh-tas'm, a spirit, ghost, or other phantasm endlessly spouting off at the mouth

That said, our blogtasticness is generally limited to regional blogs - that isn't to say that we don't read nationally oriented blogs - we certainly do - but that we usually don't cover them on herein. I used to think this was largely a product of our subject matter being fairly region specific - you know, it was mainly that we cater to a small, but (pleasingly) growing audience. Then I decided to pull a Technorati move - I went through and searched each of the 100 most popular blogs according to the Great Green Monstrosity's ranking system and found, much to my chagrin, that virtually none of the sites had entries with either the word Appalachia or Appalachian. I considered doing similar searches for states (e.g. West Virginia), cities (Charleston), and sub-regions (e.g. Watauga), but then decided that I'd rather not have my eyeballs melt from my skull. Gurgle.

Two sites on Technorati's list did manage to cover us, at least a little bit, that probably warrant a little note - coincidently they are two of the best damn blogs on the internet, in my opinion, and I check them out at least weekly, and often more than that. What are they, you're wondering? Tell us Eric! you're screaming. Well, alright then.

The first of the two sites is Make - to quote the by-line, "Void your warranty, violate a user agreement, fry a circuit, blow a fuse, poke an eye out... Welcome to the Make Blog!" Yeah, it reminds me of my friend Joe from high school as well. Ultimately, Make (and its mother magazine, Make) is about modifications (or mods, for the hip amongst us), or more specifically, about how ordinary people modify found and purchased goods with the intention of improving their operation or making them more aesthetically pleasing. Thus, it is unsurprising that the folks at Make have landed on the Foxfire series, if only long enough to post some links - check out the comments for a hint as to where to download free scans of the old reliables. Of course, Make is also kind enough to throw out a couple more links - one on on Heirloom Technology and one on Forgotten Arts and Crafts. All good stuff, even if all do take the Appalachia-as-a-living-archaeological-site perspective (though again, they are short entries, so they can't even do that too hard and rough).

The second site, and you're probably rolling your eyes that I'd even bring it up, is Boing Boing. That's right, the globally renowned "Directory of Wonderful Things." This blog, by the way, rules - even if they do get censored in Boston and China (long story - moving on). Boing Boing is run by several folks, but they build on a global recommendation base - folks write in, recommend sites, and if their description is quite adequate, well, they link'm up with a little commentary (or a lot of commentary, occasionally).

Enough gushing, on to the big dance. Boing Boing gives us three Appalachia-specific entries with plenty of meat on their bones and active links - I don't want to over describe them, so just hit'm up. Specifically, the subjects are:

1) Our friends over at Appalshop, described as "digital music for wired hillbillies," (with a reference to one of my favorite books on the region ever, Noah Adams' Far Appalachia);
2) Kevin Scanlon's railroad photography - for those of you who put up with us for our photo-contributors, well, this is a delicious dish - I know you'll like it; and
3) Gary Monroe's artwork, featuring snake-handling Christians is powerful - Albrecht Dürer meets pre-World War II murals.

Just thought you'd be interested.