Alien Information Theory Bookclub

05/18/2025

Chapel

The Southern Rock Opera Seminarians Sunday School

Scopes Monkey Trial Centennial

Chattanooga Tourism

01/02/2025

01/02/2025

Salute!

SFA is saddened to learn that Dr. Bernard L. Herman, a leader in Southern foodways, material culture, and folklore studies, passed away this week.

Bernie Herman most recently served as the George B. Tindall Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of award-winning books on architecture, art, and culture, including 2019’s A South You Never Ate: Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, which was excerpted in a essay at the link in our bio.

SFA honors Herman’s contributions to Southern studies as a researcher, teacher, mentor, and friend. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.

12/16/2024

The Southern Rock Opera Seminar
Intro to Women’s Studies

bell hooks may be best known for her writings and activism around feminism, race, and class, but she was also of Appalachia and wrote from the heart about Appalachian experience often.

We honor that profound work today, work that so many have found kinship with over the years. We miss you, bell. Rest in power.

12/15/2024

A cartoon by Edward Steed.

See all the cartoons from this week’s issue: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/9A8yio

12/10/2024

It is with such great sadness that we share the passing of poet Nikki Giovanni on December 9, 2024. The evocative words of her poem, "Knoxville, Tennessee" (shown here in the Lawson McGhee Children's Room) feel especially poignant this day, and will continue to resonate for generations, along with her legacy of artistry and activitism.

"...and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep."
—Nikki Giovanni

12/10/2024

Barefoot kids at a mobile book cart in the Appalachian Mountains.

12/10/2024

The Southern Rock Opera Seminar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VffiVqmgnHg // The Carroll County Accident ( #2 c&w, 1968) / porter wagoner
Round 2
50's/60's porter wagoner vs 1975/76 buckingham-nicks fleetwood mac, pt 2
i give the bay area peninsula twerps a big fat zero, and the two remaining original 1968 fleetwood mac members get a 15 yd penalty flag for even letting themselves be seen in the same room as twerptards steeevie and that lindsay dweeb

this on the other hand is a danged good song --
THE CARROLL COUNTY ACCIDENT
(Bob Ferguson)

Carroll County's pointed out -- as kind of square
The biggest thing that happens is our county fair
I guess that's why it seemed like such a big event
What we all call the Carroll County accident

The wreck was on the highway just inside the line
Walter Browning lost his life and for a time
It seemed that Mary Ellen Jones would surely die
But she lived long enough for her to testify

Walter Browning was a happy married man
And he wore a golden wedding ring upon his hand
But it was gone nobody knew just where it went
He lost it in the Carroll County accident

Mary Ellen testified he flagged her down
Said he was sick and could she drive him into town
No one even doubted what she said was true
Because she was well respected in the county too

I went down to see the wreck like all the rest
The bloody seats, the broken glass, the tangled mess
But I found something no one else had ever seen
Behind the dash in Mary's crumpled-up machine

A little matchbox circled by a rubber band
And inside the ring -- from Walter Browning's hand
It took a while to figure out just what it meant
The truth about the Carroll County accident

By dark of night I dropped the ring into a well
And took a sacred oath, that I would never tell
The truth about the Carroll County accident
Because the county ordered my Dad a marble monument
I lost him in the Carroll County accident