The Talking Appalachian Podcast

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In this episode, I research the history of "Fixin' to" (as in "I'm fixin' to put up the holiday decorations.) Add the very old (middle English) dialect feature "a-prefix" and you've got "I'm a-fixin' to put up the holiday decorations.) Then, I'll tell you about the link between our dialect and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" song (bet you didn't know you're Talking Appalachian when you sing it). Finally, listen for an excerpt from Knott County, KY native Verna Mae Slone's book How We Talked, a book she published later in her life that preserves so much of her eastern KY dialect.

Sources in this episode:
Yale Grammatical Diversity Project (online)
American English by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes
How We Talked by Verna Mae Slone
Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community, Eds. Amy Clark and Nancy Hayward

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*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
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*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

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Part II begins with a story about how Napoleon Hill's influence reached all the way to the Kennedy White House. Then, Executive Director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation and bestselling author, Don Green, continues our interview with what he knows about the four uses of money from years of experience, lots of books, and discussions with some of the world's most successful people, who credit Napoleon Hill for their achievements. Mr. Green shares the reasons why most people never move out of the survive mentality and what everyone should consider in order to thrive.

Get a bonus episode and more when you subscribe to our Patreon community.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Long before Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, became a global bestselling author, he was a poor boy from Pound, VA in the mountains of Wise County, running through the woods with a rifle, stirring up trouble. His stepmother bought him a typewriter and the rest is history. His groundbreaking book Think and Grow Rich has sold millions of copies, and is still cited by some of the world's wealthiest businesspeople, U.S. presidents, and celebrities as the inspiration for their journeys. In Part I of this episode series, I'm talking with Don Green (also from Wise County), who is Executive Director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation and knows the most about Hill's influence, which has remained constant for nearly a century. A success story himself, Don shares what he has learned from Hill's principles of success, which has resulted in several books and invitations worldwide to share his expertise. 

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

It's a 't' where no 't' ought to be....we call it "the intrusive -t" as in once't, across't, and kil't.  In this episode:

• I talk about the Appalachian delicacy of "killed lettuce"
• You'll hear some clips of storyteller Ray Hicks and his use of the intrusive -t and -n
• Listen to a Civil War soldier's accent and how he used the intrusive -t 100 years before Hicks
• I'll tell you about the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), a great resource for researching dialects

Ray Hicks audio clips: Alan Lomax Archive and Association for Cultural Equity
Voice of Civil War letter: Bernard Manatu V
Music: Landon Spain

Thanks to our newest Country Roads and Kindred Spirits subscribers: 
HH Reed and The Southern Drifter

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

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The Legend of Bouncing Bertha was a story I heard straight from an eyewitness several years before he passed away, but I'd heard about little Bertha my whole life as a ghost tale, told and retold at spooky season. What made this Depression-era Appalachian ghost tale so scary was that by all accounts it was true. Years later, I researched and wrote about her, collecting photos and interviewing her cousin, Ralph, who went to school with Bertha and lived nearby. He recounted seeing the events you'll hear about in this episode....events so ghastly, no other family wanted to talk about them. News of her haunting spread worldwide, making her a child celebrity for a short period of time.  Listen and decide for yourself: hoax or haunted?


Original article published by Amy Clark in Blue Ridge Country Magazine
Photo by: Virgil Wacks courtesy of son Stephen Wacks
Music from Just Off the Wilderness Road

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Bestselling author and western North Carolinian Ron Rash joins me to talk about his latest novel, The Caretaker. We also get into some of his other works, the importance of voice and dialect (he contributed to Part II of the Talking Appalachian book), cemeteries, and family stories.

Welcome new Patreon subscribers: The Southern Drifter-David C., and Allison M.!

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Crystal Wilkinson, author of the forthcoming Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts (PenguinRandomhouse) was Kentucky's Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023. She is the award-winning author of Perfect Black; The Birds of Opulence; Water Street; and Blackberries, Blackberries. Join us as we talk about using authentic voice as a revolutionary act, and why she says she embraces, in her words, "the voice of my people." 

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

Appalachians call the process of making molasses a 'stir-off.' The word 'molasses' becomes 'lasses' or 'molassey' in the local dialect, a vernacular blend resulting from English, German, and Scotch-Irish migrants who flooded the Appalachian mountains in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Kentucky writer Jesse Stuart was among the first to put 'molassey' to print in his 1938 memoir Beyond Dark Hills. Whether they are talking about several jars or just a teaspoonful, 'molasses' is referenced by central Appalachians in the plural, a southern grammar pattern recorded as early as 1895, according to the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Molasses-making was an annual event in my family for years, so I'm sharing the process of a molasses 'run' and why we count it among our favorite memories.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

In part II and a separate interview, Silas and I discuss the pride and prejudice associated with Appalachian dialects, and he reads from his essay "In My Own Country"  from the book Talking Appalachian.  Teachers, you'll want to hear this one. (You'll never hear the word "oil" the same way again.) We also discuss class prejudice as it pertains to dialect, and the Appa-la-cha/Appal-ay-cha controversy.

We sat down for this interview in April, 2021.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain

What did you think of this episode?

In part I of this two-part interview series from August 2023, Silas House joins me on the campus of UVa.'s College at Wise to talk about accent, making art about the complexity of Appalachia, and (ironically, since we're sitting by a pond) how mountain people seem drawn to water.

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels — “Clay's Quilt” (2001), “A Parchment of Leaves” (2003), “The Coal Tattoo” (2005), “Eli the Good” (2009), and “Same Sun Here” (2012, with Neela Vaswani) — including his most recent, “Lark Ascending,” which was a Booklist Editors' Choice and is the winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize. Four of his plays have been produced. He is also the author of the 2009 book of creative nonfiction “Something's Rising” (with co-author Jason Kyle Howard). In 2022 he was the recipient of the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBTQ writer in the nation. The same year he was named Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll. In 2021 House was given the Artist Award as part of the Governor's Awards in the Arts.

His writing has appeared recently in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Garden & Gun, The New York Times, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tri-Quarterly and many more of the country's leading publications. House is a former commentator for NPR's “All Things Considered” and is the executive producer and one of the subjects of the documentary “Hillbilly,” winner of the LA Film Festival's Documentary Prize and the Foreign Press Association's Media Award; the film ran on Hulu, where it was seen by millions of viewers, and is now available to stream on all platforms. His 2018 novel Southernmost is currently in pre-production as a feature film.

As a music journalist, House has worked with Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Lucinda Williams, Tyler Childers, S.G. Goodman, Lee Ann Womack, Kris Kristofferson, and many other musicians. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the recipient of three honorary degrees, and has been given such honors as an E.B. White Award, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Lee Smith Award, the Caritas Medal, the Hobson Medal and many others. In 2015 he was invited to read at the Library of Congress.

House teaches at Berea College, where he is the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair, and at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Creative Writing. This year he is serving as one of five judges of the National Book Award in Fiction. A native of eastern Kentucky, he now lives in Lexington.-(Bio from Kentucky Arts Council)

Subscribers to our Patreon page will get a bonus episode with more of the interview with Silas.

Support the show

*Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and review the podcast (if you like it)!
*Support the show by sharing links to episodes on social
*Subscribe to support the podcast on the Facebook Talking Appalachian page, or here at our Patreon page to get bonus content:
Talking Appalachian Podcast | Covering the Appalachian Region from North to South | Patreon
*Follow and message me on IG, FB, YouTube: @talkingappalachian
*To sponsor an episode or collaborate: [email protected] or message me at the link here or on social.

Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain