City Garden: Gardening at Night

Posted in Food, History & Culture on June 29th, 2011 by marklynn
City Garden: Gardening at Night
As you might recall, planting a city garden is one way I bring a little bit of Appalachia into my east coast life. Well, things are a growing like mad. The corn has silk; the beans are big and drooping down to the dirt; we’ve already eaten one tomato; and the carrots are crowding each other out. (Probably should have thinned them more.) See the progress for yourself in these nifty night time shots. Read More »


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Take the Survey: Win a Gift Card

Posted in History & Culture on June 25th, 2011 by marklynn
Take the Survey: Win a Gift Card
Thanks to you, The Revivalist is growing by leaps and bounds. We’re about to hit 2000 Facebook fans; our Web traffic has nearly quadrupled in the last six months; and amazing comments pop up daily. I am smiling like a preacher on Sunday as I type this, and I’m wondering, “What can make The Revivalist even better–moonshine recipes? videos of singing bobcats? an annual 4-wheeler derby?” Weigh in now by taking the qui Read More »


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Rising Appalachia: A Revolutionary Band

Posted in Music on June 19th, 2011 by marklynn
Rising Appalachia: A Revolutionary Band
You better watch out. Sisters Leah and Chloe Smith have turned music into a weapon. Under the moniker Rising Appalachia, they are tearing across the country and around the globe in a bio-fueled bus, schooling everyone they meet in the ways of progressive mountain music. With banjos, fiddles, and washboards in tow, they have travelled from their home base in Asheville to Italy, to Scotland, through the Caribbean, and across Latin America. Everyw Read More »


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Your Favorite Swimming Hole

Posted in Outdoors & Travel on June 12th, 2011 by marklynn
Your Favorite Swimming Hole
It was a sweltering day in North Carolina, unusually hot for May. We decided to take a break from Asheville’s buzzing downtown and look for somewhere cooler. We headed south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’d never driven this stretch. In fact, I’d never driven the Parkway beyond Floyd, Virginia, where I always stopped to visit my grandmother or listen to old time music at the town’s famed Friday Night Jamboree. It being Memo Read More »


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Virtual March for Blair Mountain

Posted in Coal, History & Culture on June 8th, 2011 by marklynn
Virtual March for Blair Mountain
If you’re like me and unable to make the remarkable March on Blair Mountain in West Virginia this week, don’t worry. The Virtual March is on. Each day, you can demonstrate your solidarity with the physical marchers and take real steps to help save Blair Mountain, the site of a massive uprising by as many as 15,000 coal workers in 1921 which is now threatened by mountaintop removal mining. Here are the Virtual March actions so far: Read More »


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Appalachian Women, Living Full Throttle

Posted in Art & Lit on June 5th, 2011 by marklynn
My Mother What is it about Appalachian women? Take my mother for instance. She is 64 as of today (happy birthday, Momma!) and still a tornado of a woman. Two weeks ago, I listened as she scolded neighborhood hoodlums from her porch in Southeast Roanoke. These were probably shirtless boys, thin to the ribs, running around in baggy jeans, maybe with knives, maybe with guns. Riotous packs carouse her neighborhood day and night. Mother doesn’t mind Read More »


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