Mountain Talk Monday Every Tuesday!

In this episode we’re celebrating the 30th Birthday of an important youth leadership and media training center based here at Appalshop: the Appalachian Media Institute. First we’ll hear from current AMI Director Kate Fowler, and All Access EKY Project Director at Appalshop, Willa Johnson, who share their personal histories with the program, as well as an overarching history of the project’s 30 year legacy. Then, Oakley Fugate and Destiny Caldwell, two former AMI interns, who are still involved with the project today, share a few favorite memories and describe how AMI has shaped their lives.

Dollars & Cents: Race and Class in the West Virginia Coalfields is the second installment in the Hope audio series, commissioned and directed by the Mountain of Hope Organization, supported by the West Virginia Humanities Council and produced by Talking Across the Lines, LLC, www.folktalk.org; www.facebook.com/klinesacrossthelines/ Hope is an interracial documentary project conducted over the past 18 months in Mount Hope, WV—the heart of the New River coalfields. Michael and Carrie Kline, along with O.H. Jackson Napier, have collected more than 40 life story interviews from sons and daughters of coal miners. The stories focus on the whole fabric of what life and work in this small, diverse town was like a half-century ago. The defining occupation was deep mining with all of its attendant dangers, health hazards, and intricate working relationships. The resulting impacts on family and society come alive in this conversational audio documentary inter-weaving spoken memories from 60 hours of field recordings.

On this episode of Mountain Talk we're celebrating, remembering, and reckoning with mothers. Maybe you had the best mom in the world, or maybe the worst, or maybe (and most likely) your mom is a complex, contradictory, nuanced individual - deeply wonderful, and deeply flawed, and only human like the rest of us. Maybe you’re a mom, maybe you’re about to be a mom, maybe you were raised by two moms, or no moms. Holiday’s are complicated times for many people, and in this episode Appalshop staff share their gratitude and lessons, and their stories of resilience and healing from their relationships with their mothers. Others share dreams and hopes about types of mothers they aim to be. These aren’t all happy stories, and one person talks about childhood abuse (though not in great detail). But there are moments of joy and kindness and growth too. This one's for all the moms! And all the children of moms!

On this episode we’re learning about The Moth: a live storytelling series that will be here at Appalshop on Thursday May 10th! First, director Jenifer Hixson joins us on the phone to talk about some history and behind the scenes details of how The Moth works. And then, we hear two Moth stories recorded at live shows across the country. The first features Dame Wilburn who will MC the Moth event here at Appalshop, and in the second Wilburn introduces Australian comedian Jon Bennett.

It's Spring Fund Drive at WMMT and this week we're talking about radio! What is this thing, and why does it matter? Why is it unique in today’s world of constant visual media input? What makes community radio different than commercial? And, we’ll learn about the life-long professional and personal journeys of two super cool women in radio. Neenah Ellis’s parents ran a small commercial country radio station in northern Indiana when she was growing up. Neenah went on to work at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. for 30 years, before becoming the general manager at WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Sally Kane’s parents started a small community radio station in a coal mining community in Colorado when she was a kid, and she now directs the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Neenah & Sally talk about their histories with radio, their love for the form, and why they believe in the community radio model.

In this episode of Mountain Talk we're exploring approaches to agriculture as economic development in Eastern Kentucky - from a macro to micro scale. First WMMT's own Jim Webb interviews Jonathon Webb of AppHarvest about their plans to build a 30 acre high-tech greenhouse on a former mountain top removal site in Pike County, KY. Then, we hear a 2016 story produced by Benny Becker about the annual Appalachian Seed Swap featuring an interview with Joseph Simcox of Gardens Across America Project about his vision for community farm hubs in Central Appalachia to sell heirloom and rare crops to east coast markets. And finally, in 2017 Kelly Haywood interviewed Letcher County's Tim Sanders of Indian Creek Settlement Farm about his work to reclaim the family farm, and produce heritage livestock breeds to sell at local farmers markets.

We're celebrating National Poetry Month here at WMMT by bringing you a 2012 interview with Nikky Finney from Profiles, a show out of Bloomington Indiana’s WFIU station, where they interview notable artists, scholars and musicians. Nikky Finney is a powerful poet, born in South Carolina, who taught at the University of Kentucky for twenty years. She’s a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and her Book "Head Off & Split" won the National Book Award in 2011.

Our celebration of #NationalPoetryMonth continues! This episode of Mountain Talk comes from our archives, and features a presentation by Affrilachian poet Frank X. Walker at Alice Lloyd College in 2016.

On today’s episode we bring you audio from a recent event in Benham Kentucky. On March 29th Reverend Dr. William Barber II and Reverend Dr. Liz TheoHarris stopped at the Benham Schoolhouse Inn amidst their national listening tour with the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The Poor People’s Campaign is an effort to unite tens of thousands of people across the country in lifting up the need for a “moral revival” to address systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and environmental devastation.

We're celebrating National Poetry Month through spending time with the renowned eastern Kentucky author James Still. Still was born in Alabama in 1906, and lived most of his adult life on Dead Mare Branch in Knott County, Kentucky and the Hindman Settlement School. This episode features an interview with Mr. Still conducted by Judi Jennings at Appalshop in 1991, and audio of him reading some of his work from a recording made in the 1970s.

In this episode we bring you voices and ideas from a recent event we held here at the Appalshop. On March 31st, WMMT and Scalawag Magazine co-hosted a day long event focused on Ethical Appalachian Reporting, followed by a screening of Appalshop film Stranger With A Camera and a Q&A with author Elizabeth Catte. In this episode we’ll hear part of the community discussion about media coverage of the region, as well as Elizabeth Catte’s Q&A.

This episode of Mountain Talk is a tribute to Kentucky Women in Traditional Music and was produced by Rich Kirby and John Harrod. It features the music and stories of Lily May Ledford, Addie Graham and more!

As our #WomensHistoryMonth series comes to a close we celebrate organizing women in Appalachia. In this episode, we bring you voices of women on strike today, and voices of women from strikes past. We’ll hear from West Virginia teachers who walked out earlier this month demanding a pay raise and affordable healthcare for all public employees, and we’ll hear from teachers in Letcher County, KY who protested Governor Bevin’s proposed pension reform bill just last week. And finally, from the Appalshop archives we bring you audio of women in Brookside KY who supported miners on strike in Harlan County in 1973.

Our women’s history month series continues on this episode, with one of our favorite Appalachian women in music: Amythyst Kiah. Amythyst is a powerful singer, songwriter, guitar and banjo player from Johnson City, TN. In November of 2016 she joined WMMT’s DJ Aunt Bernice on Pine Mountain Morning’s Feminist Friday radio show for an interview. Later that evening she performed live in the Appalshop theater with the Local Honeys for the first ever Feminist Friday Live Concert. We’ll hear excerpts from both their conversation and her performance on this episode.

This month we’re celebrating Women’s History in the Mountains and beyond. In this episode, we’re drawing from our Archives here at WMMT. In 1995, then WMMT producer Maxine Kenny recorded 15 Appalachian women writers talking about their lives and reading their work. The recordings were edited into an audio series, narrated by Tennessee Poet Nikki Giovanni. The series is made up of interviews with Jo Carson, Lou Crabtree, Denise Giardina, Wilma Dykeman, Michelle Y. Green, Barbara Kingsolver, George Ella Lyon, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sharyn McCrumb, Rita Quillen, Mary Lee Settle, Ann Shelby, and Lee Smith. And with Marilou Awiakta and Nikki Giovanni whose interviews and readings you'll hear in this episode

This episode of Mountain Talk explores women's reproductive health and history in Southeastern Kentucky. It's brought to us by four young women who are Fellows with All Access EKY: an initiative coordinated by the Kentucky Health Justice Network, Appalshop, and Power to Decide. All Access EKY works with ten Southeastern Kentucky counties to build support for programs and services to ensure young people have access to the full range of contraceptive methods. This is the second episode in our month-long series celebrating Women's History in the mountains and beyond. Fellows interview women young and old about their experiences with reproductive health care in the mountains, and about gender roles in the mountains we call home.

This is the first in our month long series of Mountain Talks celebrating Women's History Month! Willa Johnson produced this hour long radio documentary honoring a community of women who have powerfully shaped her own life and the town of Hemphill, Kentucky. You don't want to miss this personal celebration of Hemphill women's strength, leadership, and commitment to their community!

This is the last episode in our long series celebrating Black histories, current realities, and futures in the mountains and beyond. We were joined in the studio this afternoon by the cast of KY Opera’s “OH Freedom.” They performed segments of the show, talked about the importance music and art in education, explained how opera singers amplify their voices without microphones, talked about the challenges of wearing a corset on stage, and spoke about the power of music to connect us across difference.

In this episode, we continue our month-long series celebrating Black Histories, Current Realities, and Futures in the mountains and beyond. Gabrielle Chapman joined us by phone to talk about her work with the Charleston, WV based CARE Coalition - CARE stands for Call to Action for Racial Equality. We end this program with an excerpt of a live discussion between legendary activist Angela Davis and anti-racist author Tim Wise. The excerpt comes from the Making Contact Radio Program.

Game Changer: Football as a Catalyst for Peaceful School Integration is the first installment in the Hope audio series, commissioned and directed by the Mountain of Hope Organization, supported by the West Virginia Humanities Council and produced by Talking Across the Lines, LLC, www.folktalk.org; www.facebook.com/klinesacrossthelines/ Hope is an interracial documentary project conducted over the past 18 months in Mount Hope, WV—the heart of the New River coalfields. Michael and Carrie Kline, along with O.H. Jackson Napier, have collected more than 40 life story interviews from sons and daughters of coal miners. The stories focus on the whole fabric of what life and work in this small, diverse town was like a half-century ago. The defining occupation was deep mining with all of its attendant dangers, health hazards, and intricate working relationships. The resulting impacts on family and society come alive in this conversational audio documentary inter-weaving spoken memories from 60 hours of field recording