This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain James Gage Editor's note: We make room, as we go to press, to note the passing ofJames Stephen Brown (1916-99), a pioneer in Apalachian Studies. Born in Pike County, Brown graduated in economics from Berea College. After studying economics briefly at Yale, he transferred to Harvard and was taken under the wing of pioneer sociologists Pitirim Sorokin and Carle Zimmerman, who taught him rural sociology and encouraged him in his desire to study an eastern Kentucky community. His dissertation study, later published as Beech Creek: A Study of a Kentucky Mountain Neighborhood, was an ethnographic study ofmountain people migratingfrom a rural community to the industrial cities ofsouthern Ohio. Brown kept a warm relationship with the people he studied all his life. A whole new generation of sociology students, inspired by Brown at the University ofKentucky, have continued his work so that numerous papers and books havefollowed in the path he blazed, enlarging our knowledge of mountain people. James Brown was a kind and generous humanitarian scholar, but one that always spoke his mind, sometimes heatedly, on behalfand in defense ofmountain people. Sidney Saylor Farr has edited Appalachian Heritage for the past fourteen years, while working as an assistant librarian in the Department of Special Collections at Berea College's Hutchins Library. During her tenure she has gained many readers and friends for the magazine by publishing the work of the region's luminaries as well as encouraging the efforts of many new and unknown writers and visual artists. Since graduating from Berea College in 1980, Sidney has authored a major bibliography of women in Appalachia, a volume of poetry, three cookbooks, and a book exploring near-death experience. She has also taught numerous elderhostel classes and worked as a performing artist. Now Appalachian Heritage has a new editor, the magazine has moved into Berea's Appalachian Center, and Sidney Farr will retire from the Berea College Library in December to turn her attention more fully to her own writing and research. Newcomers as well as readers who have enjoyed the magazine for the last decade and a half will be pleased to find selections from Sidney's own poetry in this issue, and they will be thoroughly engaged by the story of this remarkable mountain woman which unfolds in Loyal Jones's interview. For twenty-six years, Appalachian Heritage has been committed to publishing the best poetry, short fiction, nonfiction articles, and visual art concerning southern mountain life and culture. This will remain the magazine's commitment. However, longtime readers maybe surprised at the inclusion of a scholarly essay—Elmer Gray's proposal to utilize central Appalachia for the preservation of genetic diversity among food crops. While many scholarly efforts are too narrow for general audiences and require specialized skills of their readers, Appalachian Heritage invites scholarship as meaningful to mountain folks and their environment as Professor Gray's. In the Summer 1999 issue, Sidney Farr noted that letters to the editor are always welcome and encouraged. Indeed, they are. Printed below are a congratulatory note to the outgoing editor, which arrived too late for the last issue, and a letter regarding the symposium "Issues in Higher Education in Appalachia" whose proceeds were published in the Spring 1999 issue. I hope the pages of Appalachian Heritage will continue to inform and challenge readers and to encourage dialogue regarding issues of importance to the people of the Appalachian region. Letters should be directed to Appalachian Heritage, College Post Office Box 2166, Berea, Kentucky 40404. Sidney: Sometimes people leave a legacy in the hearts and minds of people they never met. To enjoy life is a success. Writers often have competitive egos. I thank you for publishing what I have written several times. Everybody and their brother around Pikeville claims to have talked to you. I tell people it's the people you talk to is what is important (both in what you say, what you publish and what you write). People, especially writers, often want to share their worldview . Appalachian Heritage has respected and reported those with divergent world-views—that is the hallmark of your tenure. And, in closing, something I learned from...