Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Bookshop|Amazon) is about the foodways and folkways passed down through five generations of a Black Appalachian family. The book, by novelist and...
There are lots of colloquial phrases to explain away the cacophony of a thunderstorm: The potato wagons are rolling, The tater wagon’s going over the bridge, The potato wagon broke down, and God is dumping out potatoes and washing them off. In...
Rose in Lebanon, Virginia recalls a phrase passed down from her great-grandmother: The night before the first day of school, parents would come into the children’s bedroom and say in a singsong voice: School butter, school butter. This...
If you make a beeline for something, you’re taking the shortest route possible. You’re also mimicking bee-havior! After a bee has visited enough flowers to gather nectar, she flies straight back to the hive. And: Even a word like...
In parts of Appalachia, the southern United States, and a few other places, the expression I don’t care to is understood to mean “I wouldn’t mind to.” In other words, I don’t care to may mean exactly the opposite of...
In Appalachia, if you’re being lazy, stupid, or idle, you may be told to quit your footercootering. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Quit Your Footercootering!” Here’s a handy word I’m adding to my...