Mountain Talk Monday Every Tuesday!

Host Kelli Haywood discusses small town economics with a group of politically diverse members of the local community - Harry Collins of CANE, Betsy Whaley of MACED, and Ben Fink of Appalshop and the Letcher Co. Culture Hub. What does it take to transition the economy of a small coalfields community? Economic diversity. But, why are some residents wary of diversification of business and the entrepreneurial spirit? Can arts and cultural play a critical role in that economic diversification? The group discusses these topics and much more.

Journalist, critic of music and food, and Appalachian foodways writer Ronni Lundy visited Appalshop Gallery in early December 2016 to read and discuss her newest cookbook - Victuals. This podcast features that reading, and her prior appearance on WMMT's Honky Tonk Jukebox show with radio's Elizabeth Sanders and Mimi Pickering.

In this Mountain Talk Monday, WMMT's Benny Becker takes us to a special gathering at the Appalachian Media Institute's Boone Motor Building Youth Drop-In Center to hear the story of death row exoneree - Randy Steidl. Randy Steidl spent 17 years in Illinois prisons, including 12 on death row, before his exoneration in 2004. He was wrongly convicted and sentenced to die for the 1986 murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. But an Illinois State Police investigation in 2000 found that local police had severely botched their investigation, and that the case was riddled with political corruption that led all the way to the Illinois Governor’s office.

On Mountain Talk Monday, host Kelli Haywood talks with Shawn Lind, director of Mines to Minds. Sign up before Jan. 5 for Mines to Minds, a technology training program from SKCTC & Appalshop. Financial aid is available & after the short 16 week program, a tech job could be yours. The two Accelerated Certificate options include Systems Administration (IT Networking and Support) and Multimedia Design and Implementation (Designing, Creating, marketing, and branding using High Tech Creative Software tools and websites). And, hear the entire 3 Part collaboration of WMMT's Benny Becker for the Ohio Valley ReSource with NPR.

WMMT brings you Anthony Flaccavento’s recent book talk held at the University of Virginia at Wise. His book Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real-World Experience for Transformative Change was published this year by the University of Kentucky Press and features six components to building a sustainable economy in regions going through the worst economic hardship. Flaccavento highlights those six components in his talk and gives real world examples of their effectiveness in communities across the country.

f you’re on social media like us, you’ve likely heard about Standing Rock — the Dakota Access Pipeline and the water protectors who are working to stop it. We set out to educate ourselves on what’s going on and how we’re connected here in the mountains. For this edition of Mountain Talk Monday, we speak with Crystal Willcuts Cole, a Lakota woman living in Big Stone Gap, VA, with connections to Standing Rock; DL Hamilton and Karan Ireland, from Charleston, WV, both of whom recently returned from Standing Rock; and Christopher Boulay, a military veteran from Evarts, KY, who is in voluntary deployment to Standing Rock with thousands of other veterans. We also bring you a song from the camp and the latest on yesterday’s Army Corps of Engineers announcement and the response from Energy Transfer Partners (who own the pipeline). Join your hosts, WMMT Community Correspondents Tanya Turner, Jonathan Hootman, and Elizabeth Sanders for Mountain Talk Monday: Standing Rock.

Carrie Mullins joins host Kelli Haywood in WMMT studios for this edition of Mountain Talk Monday. Carrie’s debut novel, Night Garden, was released by the Lexington small publisher Old Cove Press in 2015. In Night Garden, Carrie tackles the issue of substance misuse and addiction in Appalachia from the eyes of 17 year old Marie Massey. Kelli speaks with Carrie about the process of writing her book, the realities of the Appalachian experience with addiction, solutions, and the importance of literature tackling the hardest issues working in our communities.

In this episode of Mountain Talk Monday, host Kelli Haywood welcomes to the studio representatives from Hospice of the Bluegrass. Novemember is Hospice and Pallitative Care Awareness Month, and the group discusses questions and concerns that families might have when their loved one is receiving or may need such care. The Hospice team describes their multifaceted form of care, all the services they provide, and the many volunteer opportunities for the community. Also, several great upcoming events are highlighted, including the “Before I Die” wall.

In this special edition of Mountain Talk Monday, host Kelli Haywood takes you on an exploration of an Appalachian Halloween! The episode begins with a general history of the holiday tracing it back to the Celtic New Year – Samhain, which was later transformed by the Catholic church into All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween. From there, you will hear tales of ghosts and mischief pulled from the WMMT archives and told by our staff and volunteer DJs. Add in a few good old-time murder and death ballads, and you got yourself one scary good time. Listen and share this episode with your friends! Happy Halloween!!!

In this episode of Mountain Talk Monday, host Kelli Haywood interviews author Willie Dalton from Duffield, VA about her debut novel – Three Witches in a Small Town. The pair talk of second sight, herbal cures, divining, prayers of protection, publishing with a small press, and much more.

Benny Becker talks to University of Kentucky Engineering Professor Gail Brion Ph.D, who is also a waterbourne illness expert. Brion and Becker discuss our crumbling water systems infrastructure in the eastern Kentucky coalfields. The pair also relate the current efforts to remedy these issues with the early movement of environmental activism to show how the distinct difference between environmental justice and environmental change are behind the lack of action we see today.

Host Kelli Haywood is interviews Harlan Co. native and resident Austin Rutherford. Austin works as a production assistant on Hollywood movie sets, big studio TV shows, and creates his own horror/sci-fi/and costume masks and special effects make-up. How does a good old mountain boy end up working for Hollywood?

In this episode of Mountain Talk Monday learn more about the EPIC Program - Enhancing Programs for IT Certification that is being offered through the KCTCS community colleges in our area! Guest host Mimi Pickering speaks with Tracie Davis, David Dixon, and students who are participating in or are graduates of the program.

For this episode host, Kelli Haywood speaks with guest New York Times reporter Sheryl Stolberg who recently wrote a feature for the newspaper on the effort toward economic transition in eastern Kentucky. The pair discuss the responsibility of a journalist in representing a culture not their own, effects of mainstream media on public perceptions, hillbilly stereotype, Trump vs. Clinton in coal country, economy, and more. Read the entire article here - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/us/beyond-coal-imagining-appalachias-future.html?_r=0

In this edition of Mountain Talk Monday, host Kelli Haywood speaks with Dr. Ellen Hahn who is a Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing and the Director of the Kentucky Center for Smoke Free Policy. Jean Rosenberg, a community advocate from Prestonsburg, Kentucky and a former consultant for the Floyd County Health Department also joins the conversation. The topic is local smoke free policy. What does it take to make your businesses and public spaces free of the harmful chemicals found in second hand smoke? Why should you advocate for smoke free policy in your community? Is smoke free policy discriminatory? Listen today and learn more! Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kysmokefree Website: http://www.breathe.uky.edu Quit Line: 1-800-QUIT-NOW

This edition's guest is the medical anthropologist Claire Snell-Rood who has been studying depression in Appalachian women for the last three years. Snell-Rood and host, Kelli Haywood, discuss the upcoming WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Planning)-- a community lead treatment program that is about to get underway in Hazard, Kentucky, how women in eastern KY deal with depression, and a whole lot more. Snell-Rood completed a similar evaluation of the women in the slums of Delhi, India which she documented in her book -- No One Will Let Her Live.

In this edition of Mountain Talk Monday with host Kelli Haywood, Jenny Williams and Matthew Druen with the Kentucky Community and Technical College system come by the studio to discuss an exciting upcoming project for the 9/11 Day of Service – The Big Dip Redux. Learn how college students and community members from around the region will participate in water testing that will bring us real data on our water quality while boosting potential possibilities for future jobs in eastern Kentucky.

In this episode of Mountain Talk Monday, hear the voices of the 2016 Appalachian Media Institute summer interns. This year’s cast are all from eastern Kentucky! The work of AMI youth producers has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Sundance Film Festival. AMI helps young people explore how media production skills can be used to ask, and begin to answer, critical questions about themselves and their communities. This year’s interns tackled the issues of discrimination, the struggle to stay in the mountains, to whom does old time Appalachian music belong, and sexual/gender identity. In this hour, the interns discuss why they applied to AMI, how they chose their topics, the experience of the institute, and what they hope to see in the future of their Appalachia.

On July 14-18, Appalshop and Imagining America, a national consortium of 100 colleges and universities based at Syracuse University in rural upstate New York, co-hosted a gathering. 45 people — faculty, students, and community members — sponsored by nine institutions of higher education from Oregon to Ontario,Canada to Florida came to Whitesburg and Letcher County to learn about the economic revival just beginning in our mountains. The participants’ goal was to take lessons home. In this episode of Mountain Talk Monday, some of those who made the trip speak about what motivates and challenges them to work for better economic, political, and cultural opportunities for everyone back in their home towns.

On June 22, 2016, Gov. Matt Bevin presented Kentucky HEALTH, a comprehensive plan to transform Kentucky’s Medicaid program, which he says will empower individuals to improve their health and well-being while simultaneously ensuring Medicaid’s long-term fiscal sustainability in the commonwealth. See the proposed changes here – http://chfs.ky.gov/…/0/62216KentuckyHEALTHWaiverProposal.pdf As a means of receiving public feedback, the administration held a series of public forums. WMMT reporter Mimi Pickering attended the forum in Hazard, Kentucky. This episode of Mountain Talk Monday presents the overview of that forum. Many Kentucky citizens are concerned that the proposed changes will be a drawback to the positive changes we’ve seen in coalfields, Kentucky and for those previously uninsured Kentuckians. The public comment period ends on July 22nd @ 5pm. Written comments on the Kentucky HEALTH waiver proposal can be mailed to: Commissioner Stephen Miller Department for Medicaid Services 275 E. Main Street