Appalachian Heritage Week better acquaints students, faculty, and staff with their mountain home
Appalachian Heritage Week (AHW) is a tradition that celebrates one of the most important, distinct, and influential aspects of Lees-91探花: our location. This annual week of programming seeks to celebrate all things Appalachia through events that highlight the region’s culture, food, history, natural resources, and more, and this year’s celebration was full of everything we love about living in the High Country.
Weaving and other fiber arts are some of the traditions associated with Southern Appalachia. Not only is this a beautiful and artistic craft, but fiber arts were also a necessity born of the isolated communities that required Appalachian people to be self-sufficient. According to a blog post for the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area titled, “,” the practice also brought people together and served as a means of community building.
The first event of the week celebrated this cherished tradition and replicated the social circles it strengthened. Local fiber artists Michelle Dearmin, Angela Wheeler, and Dean of the Library Jess Bellemer gathered in Swank Park along with woodworker Lacy Snapp and ceramicist PJ Boyajian to display and sell their work and give passersby an inside look into their creative processes.
Students had another opportunity to explore their creative side with a painting and planting mini workshop outside The Summit. Students got in touch with some traditional food crops of Southern Appalachia by nestling heirloom seeds into the soil of their hand-painted pots.
The week of celebration also included talks from local poet and storyteller Jane Hicks and former Appalachian State University faculty member Liz Rose. Hicks is an East Tennessee native and much of her work focuses heavily on Appalachia. As part of AHW she delivered a talk about the many Appalachian writers who have inspired and encouraged her work, which included selections from her own poetry collections. She also met with students and signed copies of her books.
Her works include three books of poetry, “Blood and Bone Remember,” “Driving with the Dead,” and her latest collection, “The Safety of Small Things,” which was published in January of this year.
Rose was a professor of Expressive Art Therapy at App State, the echoes of which could be seen in her AHW talk, “Weaving an Ecology of Food and Medicine with Wild Plants of the Southern Appalachians.” Rose is a community herbalist, a term referring to an herbalist who focuses their practice on the traditional and historical uses of herbs.
Some of the herbs Rose discussed included chickweed, nettles, wood violet, dandelion, and plantain, each of which have herbal and medicinal properties in some traditional and folk healing practices. Rose discussed how she uses herbal medicines in conjunction with pharmaceuticals to boost her health and shared a number of recipes that use native plants.
Following Rose’s talk, the exploration of the natural world of Southern Appalachia continued with a campus nature walk led by Assistant Dean of Natural and Health Sciences Shinjini Goswami and Assistant Professor of Wildlife Biology Alex Glass. Southern Appalachia is one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet, and much of that diversity can be found right here on the college’s campus.
The nature walk began at the Rock House. As the group explored campus, participants were able to become more well-acquainted with the plants, big and small, that they pass each day on campus. On the nature walk the participants took note of some of the plants mentioned in Rose’s talk, including dandelions and wood violets.
Programming on Friday highlighted some of the unique musical traditions of Appalachia with performances by local musicians who played traditional Appalachian old-time music. Campus Operations Specialist Susie Hepler delivered a performance on her dulcimer, a fretted string instrument that is laid across the lap while it is played. Following Hepler’s performance was the local band John Bill and the Academics, whose four-man lineup includes a guitar, fiddle, banjo, and standing bass.
The music of Appalachia is hard to pin down to one sound or category, and genres such as blues, jazz, bluegrass, country, and gospel are often associated with this region of the United States. Despite its varied influences, many use “old-time” to refer to the musical traditions of Appalachia.
According to a blog post called “” for Gold Tone Music Group, old-time music typically highlights the fiddle and banjo, which play the melody while other instruments carry the rhythm.
“Old-Time is one of the earliest examples of traditional North American music, coming in second only to Native American music. Old-Time has roots in so many cultures from around the world. England, Ireland, Scotland, Africa, and Germany just to name a few. Old-Time music began as a music of necessity, often implementing the use of handmade, improvised instruments such as the ,” writes Gold Tone Music Group.
Friday's event also featured several food trucks serving traditional Appalachian fare, including fried pies and kettle corn.
