Graphic below: Roses, oil by Patricia Moore, East Tennessee
"I had to escape/
The city was sticky and cruel/
Maybe I should have called you first/
But I was dying to get to you/
I was dreaming while I drove/
The long straight road ahead, uh huh yea/
Could taste your sweet kisses/
Your arms open wide/
This fever for you is just burning me up inside/
I drove all night... to get to you/
Is that alright?/
I drove all night.../
Crept in your room/
Woke you from your sleep/
To make love to you/
Is that alright?/
I drove all night/
What in this world/
Keeps us from falling apart?/
No matter where I go I hear/
The beating of our one heart/
I think about you/
When the night is cold and dark, uh huh yea/
No one can move me/
The way that you do/
Nothing erases this feeling between me and you/
I drove all night... to get to you/
Is that alright?/
I drove all night.../
Crept in your room/
Woke you from your sleep/
To make love to you/
Is that alright?/
I drove all night...."
-- I Drove All Night by Thomas F. Kelly and William E. Steinberg
Their guilt
is not so very different from ours:
— who has not joyed in the arbitrary exercise of
power
or grasped for himself what might have been
another’s
and who has not used superior force in the
moment when he could,
(and who of us has not been tempted to these
things?) —
so, in their guilt,
the bare ferocity of teeth,
chest-thumping challenge and defiance,
the deafening clamor of their prayers
to a deity made in the image of their prejudice
which drowns the voice of conscience,
is mirrored our predicament
but on a social, massive, organized scale
which magnifies enormously
as the private dehabille of love
becomes obscene in orgies.
-- Their Behavior by (deceased) South African poet/activist/professor Dennis Brutus
"The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness. The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and oldest mainspring of scientific research. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." -- Albert Einstein
"Lord, give me strength just for today/ to do the tasks that come my way,/ to say the word, to think the thought/ with which real strength of soul is wrought./ Lord, give me courage to resist/ the urge to worry or persist/ in borrowing from future years/ troubles unknown or futile tears./ Just for today, Lord, let me find/ true strength and faith and peace of mind;/ and I will for tomorrow pray/ when it becomes a new today." -- Prayer For Today by Winifred Brand, Silent Unity
"A tree can stand all winter without greenery, but not a day without its roots." -- unattributed
Graphic above: Waves, acrylic by Susan Tipton, Erwin TN
Table of Contents
(Updated for February March April 2010)
Video below, Barefoot Movement performing at Jonesborough's weekly early spring to late fall Music on the Square staged before the town's historic Courthouse building (Click here for more of this great band's music and info)
Country
Inscriptions
BY FAITH ALONE Servants and armies of the Light "Sincerely, God"
and "Mirandy Musings" COUNTRY RECKONING Regional short stories, verse and articles by Dr. Jonathan Farley and A. J. Stone "Inequalities... in Math and Science" DISTILLED SPIRITS Musings from a naturally poetic land by Nap Kembe Gillaine "Precious Friends...." HOLLER NOTES Historical stories, articles on Appalachian lore and genealogy by Don Silvius "Okay, I Get It Now." (ALL THAT) JUBILATION JAZZ Joys and delights of town and country life by Jeannette Harris "Flu Flop" MOUNTAIN EMPIRE Observations and insights on Appalachia by Linda Poland "Faces of Haiti" NATIVE DAYS Every day life by various authors "We The People: Silence of Years" OCCASIONAL TREATS Unexpected, unscheduled gems of interest and variety byMichael Paseur "Hillbillies and Rednecks" PEAKS OF UTTER High points in literary expression and experience by Wilson Roberts "The Serpent Handler's Daughter" RIVERS SIDE Country prose and verse by Caroline Freedom Ross "Living Large" RUSTIC REFRAIN Articles, prose and poetry on traditional life and pastimes by Dr. Frances Lamberts "The Science Is Irrefutable"
and "Coal Combustion Waste" WHOLE WOMAN Exploring experience and consciousness by Jeanne Cope "Resolutions for 2010"
Mountain
Features
A DIFFERENT DRUMMER quotes from the region and nation APPALACHIAN HOME Notes on the scene and environment by Kim Upton "Home Schooling for Hillbilly Mystics" BACKWOODS RECIPES Down-home cooking section COUNTRY CALENDAR Reviews of recent regional events with links to resources byJeannette Harris "Small Town America Lights Up" COUNTRY TALK Mountain/Valley sayings and colloquialisms GAS LAMPS AND COBBLESTONES Valley and hill culture notes by Oona "Nutritious Wholesomeness" GLORIA! A celebration of spirit in prose, poetry and graphic arts by Sunn m'Cheaux "Pablo's Daughter" WINDING ROAD Life's ups and asides, curves and bends, dips and drop-offs byJeanne Cope "Simply A Gardening Lady" and
"The Beauty of a Begonia"
Appalachian Scenes Graphics, listings, links to regional attractions Bridgeworks Multi-spiritual informational and inspirational messages from throughout history and around the globe Links to Appalachia Regional website listings, including genealogy sources Quote Closet Famous and near-famous regional to inter/national quotes Site Credits Corporate membership and positions Site Scene Publishing info TripLink Travel around the world via internet websites Up-To-Date Archives Archive of articles, essays, poetry, columns, short stories, and graphics XYZ Index Title reference and links by author
"... A member of the Unicoi County Historical Society and an avid collector of stories told to her by mountain people passed down from their ancestors, [Janice Willis Barnett] was inspired to do a photographic history of Unicoi and Limstone Cove [TN] by suggestions from fellow members of the society. This is the first book ever concentrating on the history of those two communities, and it includes more than 200 vintage photographs, many never previously published. The book is part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series.... [I]t includes several firsts: The only existing photograph of Dr. David Bell, whose farm was the site of a bloody Civil War massacre in 1863; Details of the military service of Eugene Adkins, who helped man the famous World War II bomber Memphis Belle; The lumber mills that sat at Furnace Flats in the early 1900s; A never-before-published photograph of the central icon of early Unicoi: the old Victorian Hotel that sat on Massachusetts Avenue.... As it turned out, the logged-over mountains became part of Cherokee National Forest, the main attraction to outsiders of Unicoi County today. Unicoi was also home to Camp Cordell Hull, a Civilian Conservation Corps outpost during the Depression, and in more modern times it has become famous as being the growing center for the late Wayne Scott's strawberry empire...." -- James Brooks for Johnson City Press
(Video below thanks to the Publisher's little sistah in California)
ACR Cover