Poverty is one of the big themes in So Far Appalachia, particularly how the relationship between local, state, and national governing bodies impacts the region. In The Road to Poverty, researchers found that as rural areas were pulled into the national economy, the long-term effects (at least in Clay County) undermined the local economy. One […]
I’ve grown quite fond of fan films throughout the years, particularly clever shorts. “Reality Forgotten” is one that is more clever than film, and anyone who has ever played D&D will recognize this particular scenario. Author Jack Vance Passed Away Author Jack Vance, who had a profound impact on Dungeons & Dragons, passed away. Here […]
Twelve years ago, I wrote a short 3-part series at Wired.com that focused on the disconnect between Appalachia and emerging technologies, particularly broadband access and high-tech business development. The crux of the issue was that rural counties far away from the national highway system had nearly no access to universal high-speed broadband coverage, which meant […]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my friend, Lali, with whom I shared a very intense friendship twenty years ago. We had one of those inexplicable connections that tethered us together for years. As I was traveling to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I wondered if maybe her family was from here since this is Mennonite country […]
The most common question I ask myself while researching: Why? This seems like an easy question, but it’s precisely the easiness of it that causes you to continually return to it. If you can answer a series of repeated whys (along with a few whens) you can construct a meaningful timeline of not just what […]
“If you do it will be, in the writer’s opinion, almost a copy of the German jaeger rifle because these Bakers were making guns from 1717-1754 — the earliest gunsmiths I have found in this area of Pennsylvania.” — Sam Dyke, 1972. “The Baker Family of Gunsmiths in Lancaster, County 1717-1754 The problem with history […]
I arrived in Lancaster just a little after noon today after surviving a drive that took me through the foggy Appalachia mountains, torrential rain down pours, and hours of driving time without mobile cell service. As some severe weather is headed my way, I skipped some of the preliminary research today and instead got my […]
One of the themes we explored in Dungeons + Dreamers was the computer game designers attempt to graft the real-world interactive and communal experience of paper gaming with the virtual world experience. This is a powerful idea because virtual spaces remove geography and time from experience. When you remove those two elements from an experience, […]
While the subject of the Clay County feuds is often seen nowadays as something akin to old west nostalgia, as per the Hollywood treatment of the Hatfield/McCoy variety, or even a History Channel presentation a few years ago of Clay County’s “Hundred Year War’ it is to many local people a subject of the untwist […]
A Kickstarter project and film produced and directed by a few compatriots of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley.
Video Games: The Movie I just came across this Kickstarter campaign to help fund the post-production for this documentary on video games: I’ll be donating to the cause on June 1, and you should consider it as well. I never grow tired of hearing designers and developers discuss how they made games. However, I look […]
This Sunday, I’m packing up my car and heading east to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is the home of American gun making. The reason: before the Bakers settled in Clay County, Kentucky, the family lived in Lancaster, where they helped make the Pennsylvania Rifle (also known as the Kentucky Rifle or the hog rifle). According to […]