Back From the Dead (With Charon's Recommended Appalachian Assorted Links and Stories)

Bam. I am back. You may have noticed I have been AWOL for an age. Reason? Well, (1) I moved most of my stuff to Christiansburg, VA from Knoxville, TN, then moved it back (long story), (2) I finished editing and defending my dissertation, now rendering me Doc Smith, (3) I put together a fund-raiser to help fight cancer (concert/art show), and (4)have traveled up and down the length of the Southern Appalachians repeatedly (e.g. Radford, Virginia; Greenville, West Virginia; Bastian, Virginia; Kingsport, Tennessee; Salem, Virginia; and so on) for everything from weddings to job interviews. But as I (re)settle into my life here in Knoxville, opportunities to blog are more readily available. Which is awesome.

That said, I haven't gotten together anything too mind-blowing yet. Sure, I'm working on a football preview, and yeah, I have been reading up on native American political-economies and societies so I can write up some jibba-jabba on the great Shawnee culture, and I'm putting together a link on Islam in Appalachia, but let's be honest, those require sustained attention that I'm still not capable of. And stuff. So, in the interim I'm going to return to my tried, true, and relatively interesting method of putting together some contribution to this hodgepodge of hillbilly heuristics - a long list of links. Enjoy and stuff.

Paper that looks like one of my students
turned it in from the San Jose Mercury News

China, West Virginia, and Lawyers

Alligator (you can tell from the snout)
from Southwest Virginia Community College

The Community College I Can't Get a Cell Signal At

Sweet, delicious blueberries (not Gummi Berries)
from Virginia Tech's Virginia Cooperative Extension

Undermining Capitalism, Undermining Small Farmers,
Annoying Developmental Theorists (Cough.)

The Honaker mountains by Volker. B. Radek, a German bicycle enthusiast.

The Ghost That Smokes Cigarettes in an Educational Setting

Image from Ed's Old Blue Bus

Empathy For Humans Who Brave the Dark to Give Us Light

Repetition of negative word from swissmiss

The Swiss/New Yorker and the Knoxville Awesome


Birds on drawing of quilt from the Center for the Quilt

A Poem About Something Wooly and Un-Wooly Simultaneously

Devil Anse from Sid Webb

The Devil and the Breaks

Liquor and tomatos from the Purloined Letter.

Vittles in Ashevegas

LBJ in the E-KY from Time's Election 2004 "Campaigns in Time."

Hillbillies, Democracy, and Propaganda.