This Side of the Mountain

THIS SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN By Sidney Fair For this first Berea issue of Appalachian Heritage I wish that I could coin new words—words of power, beauty, and magic. The writers and visual artists featured here, however, have their own brand of magic and use it in distinctive ways. It has been my pleasure and privilege to help gather the words and images for this issue from more than twenty contributors whose works bring to mind our extended universe and our roots imbedded deep in mountain soil. James Still speaks of "Appalachia. . .that somewhat mythical region with no recognized boundaries." In one of her essays, "The White Deer," Wilma Dykeman uses words that vicariously invoke the pain which is part of the reality of life in Appalachia. Jim Wayne Miller talks about words, and poetry, and people, in his "Accepting Things Near." John Wallhausser, with sensitivity and insight , writes eloquently about the Primitive and Old Regular Baptist Churches in the mountains. In an interview, George Ella Lyon talks about herself as a woman and an Appalachian , as a writer and Virginia Woolf scholar. Gurney Norman experiments with what Annie Dillard calls narrative collage in an excerpt from his forthcoming novel, Crazy Quilt. Bill Best tells how a community helped a blind man stay independent, and Gerald Wood portrays Jeff Daniel Marion and his important work as poet and teacher. Garry Barker uses his own special style of words to tell the story of a mountain man, and Verna Mae Slone gives us a fictionalized version of the real-life experience of an elderly mountain woman. "Bob," by Marsha Walker, is this young writer's first published story. Anne Shelby has a mountain person retell the Cinderella story in "Ashy Lou and the Prince." James Still, Albert Stewart, Jeff Daniel Marion, Bennie Lee Sinclair, Rudy Thomas and Bettie Sellers are familiar names to our readers, while Lee Howard, William Lightfoot, Barbara Mabry, and Carole Murphy are making their first appearance in Appalachian Heritage. Also in this issue, as always, are pictures. Look at Tim Sizemore's 7 sketch and poem and observe the man's face and his surroundings and feel the unspoken words. Dan Short has also drawn several illustrations for this issue. And there are Warren Brunner photographs. Pictures are, indeed, worth ten thousand words. I am extremely pleased with all the different parts that make the whole of this issue. There are many voices in it, using a variety of styles of expression to illuminate universal truths and the Appalachian heritage. I hope you like it as much as I do. This is a new editorial venture for me and one of great responsibility. I am confident of your support and good will in helping to keep Appalachian Heritage alive and growing. It has had and will continue to have a solid bedrock of heritage to sustain it. Appalachian Heritage has been and will continue to be a regional magazine, featuring regional writing and regional viewpoints. We are now, I believe, moving into a new era of Appalachian literature. We will be adding new layers to the heritage for generations to come as we help create and reflect the contemporary consciousness of Appalachia. This magazine survived the difficult transitional years of the early 1980s. In the decade of the 1970s there were more than two dozen good Appalachian periodicals, but today only a few are left. Thanks to Albert Stewart's perseverance and to you, loyal subscribers and friends, Appalachian Heritage is alive and well. We will continue to provide a home for writers and artists and their fresh material. We want established writers to think of us first when they have new manuscripts. We also intend to be an outlet for new writers and visual artists. In the last decade there has been an outpouring of professional scholarship concerning the literature and culture of the region. Before that, scholarly work on Appalachia was written by scholars from outside the region. That is changing. Now we have a generation of home-grown scholars who are bringing a new perspective to the study of Appalachian literature and culture. I want to include some of their work to complement...