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 […]
The Reverend John Jay Dickey was a traveling minister who spent a good deal of time both chronicling his journeys through the mountains of early America and his attempts to set up churches in schools in towns. The Dickey Diaries paint an amazingly clear picture of the daily life (and frustrations) he observed. Each time […]
This is part of my So Far Appalachia Kickstart project. We’re just 62 hours away from finishing. It’s now or never! Even though we’ve reached our first goal, we’re still hoping to reach $12,000. If you are so inclined, please donate! * * * In Pennsylvania, the earliest gunsmiths that can be documented are Robert […]
Ask any college student and they will tell you this: Group work sucks. The reason: In a group of four people, the workload generally breaks down like this: 1 person does nothing, who angers… 1 person who controls everything, who annoys… 2 people just trying to survive the process. Put students into groups, and you […]
“The borderlands — as this region was known — were remote and lawless territories that had been fought over for hundreds of years… And when they immigrated to North America, they moved into the American interior, to remote, lawless, rocky, and marginally fertile places like Harlan that allowed them to reproduce in the New World […]
This is part of the So Far Appalachia book project. If you enjoy what you read, please visit my Kickstarter page (and pass this along to any friends who you think might find this interesting). * * * Robert Lee Baker, Sr, my great-grandfather, was the last man killed in the Clay County War. There are […]
This is part of the So Far Appalachia book project. If you enjoy what you read, please vist my Kickstarter page (and pass this along to any friends who you think might find this interesting). * * * Growing up, I always considered Appalachia as some mystical place forgotten in time. I say this full well […]
Community. That’s a word with which I never associated as I grew up, left the Midwest, and headed into the world with delusions of writing grandeur. Life was short, and there was little time to consider what was happening around me if I wanted to succeed. These days, I move a little slower and I […]
A few years ago, a former colleague of mine started working on a little movie project. Before long, he had a big movie project. And now, well, he has this: Revelation Trail: You can check out the film’s YouTube site or it Facebook page.
A few years ago, it seemed as if the MMORPG world had passed Richard Garriott by. He’d had two rather contentious breakups with corporations, Electronic Arts and NCSoft, and he seemed more interested in pursuing his dream of going to outer space. Two years ago, Garriott re-emerged at the SXSW Accelerator, an event I emcee […]
My friend Jessie made this, which debuted at SXSW Film this year: She also made Who Killed the Electric Car?: Revenge of the Electric Car: and “Death by Fire” for Frontline: