All across Appalachia, communities have historically leaned on music to help get work done. Whether tending the garden or marching along the picket line, music has been a way to keep people motivated and rally them around a cause. In the small town of Lansing, North Carolina, community organizers recently hosted the first annual Fly Around Music and Arts Festival. The event was a celebration and continuation of a months-long effort to recover from Hurricane Helene, which hit western North Carolina in 2024.Fly Around Fest took its name from the song “Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss,” a traditional tune recorded by old-time giants Frank Blevins and Ola Belle Reed, who were both from around Lansing. With a nod to the area’s musical roots, the festival was a testament to the endurance of a community bound together by interconnected traditions of community work and music making.
In this final episode of the 2025 season, Ash Hanson and Anna Claussen dive deep in conversation with Kyle Mesteth. Kyle is the founder of Ground Control, a skate park and community center in Pine Ridge, SD, whose mission is to provide a space where skateboarders, artists, and creators come together to dream, collaborate, and bring their visions to life. Ground Control works to inspire self-expression, fuel innovation, and build a community that pushes boundaries in art and movement, and Kyle shares how he creates a collaborative leadership environment that supports everyone to "bloom where they are planted."
Este episodio explora los sentimientos de soledad comunes en la experiencia de los inmigrantes rurales y presenta estrategias probadas para su inclusión. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio ofrecen una vía para alejarse de las políticas y prácticas de exclusión y avanzar hacia culturas de pertenencia que fortalezcan a toda la comunidad.
Este episodio analiza las diferentes barreras lingüísticas que enfrentan los inmigrantes al adaptarse a la vida rural estadounidense. Las historias que presentamos muestran cómo, al añadir el idioma a las dificultades de acceso que enfrentan casi todos los estadounidenses rurales, los desafíos de la vida se intensifican. Estas historias también ofrecen perspectivas sobre la fortaleza que se puede alcanzar en las comunidades multilingües.
Este episodio explora el proceso de adaptación a la vida en un nuevo lugar, conservando las costumbres que nos hacen sentir como en casa. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio abordan los desafíos de la asimilación y ofrecen ejemplos de una mejor manera de hacerlo: preservar las culturas personales, aprender de otras y encontrar oportunidades interesantes para combinar lo antiguo con lo nuevo.
Este episodio analiza la participación de los inmigrantes en la economía rural. Las historias que se presentan explican la influencia de las industrias en la determinación del lugar de asentamiento de los nuevos inmigrantes y ofrecen perspectivas sobre el costo de alcanzar el sueño americano como recién llegado.
Este episodio desmiente conceptos erróneos comunes sobre la inmigración en las zonas rurales de los Estados Unidos. Las historias presentadas en este episodio describen los patrones de inmigración a los EE.UU. a lo largo del tiempo, los factores que influyen en la difícil decisión de un inmigrante de abandonar su hogar y resaltan las contribuciones vitales que hacen los inmigrantes cuando encuentran nuevos hogares en las zonas rurales de Estados Unidos.
On this episode, we’re taking a look at how farmers and gardeners are helping maintain the region’s biodiversity. Our first stop? A seed swap.
With the summer gardening season at its end, many growers throughout Appalachia are turning their attention to seed saving. It’s a practice where gardeners select the seeds from their best crops, and then save them over winter to plant the following spring. This past April, we visited the annual Appalachian Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky. We learned how important seed saving and swapping are for maintaining Appalachia’s biodiversity. And for creating a tasty meal.
Next, we travel to Richmond, Kentucky where Brian Chadwell is growing something unexpected. He’s a fourth generation farmer and he’s using his family's land to grow rice.
In this episode of Beyond the Clock, our hosts Ash Hanson from Department of Public Transformation and Anna Claussen from Voices for Rural Resilience engage in deep conversation with rural Texas-based artist, Viktor le. Ewing Givens, aka Southern Android, who weaves poetry and ritual into his place-based creative work. Through unspoken language, layered memories, exploration of death and release, ancestral play, and acts of repair, Viktor invites us to examine our relationship with time and place and call in our past, present, and future kin to rematriate our connections to place. Find out more about Viktor's work at http://www.southernandroid.com.
Ginny Hawker is a singer and mentor in the Primitive Baptist tradition, an acapella style with roots in Appalachia. This style of singing inspired bluegrass legends like Ralph Stanley, along with country stars like Patty Loveless and Ricky Skaggs. Hawker is passing this music tradition on to a new generation.
The final episode Routes to Roots, Better Together, explores feelings of loneliness common to the rural immigrant experience and illuminates tried and true strategies for immigrant inclusion. The stories featured in this episode offer a pathway away from policies and practices of exclusion toward cultures of belonging that strengthen the whole community.
Episode Four, Lost In Translation, surveys the different kinds of language barriers that immigrants encounter as they try to adapt to rural American life. The stories featured in this episode show how, when you add language to the access issues that almost all rural Americans deal with, the challenges of living intensify. These stories also provide insights around the strength that is possible in multilingual communities.
Episode Three, The Cultures We Carry, explores the process of adapting to life in a new place, while keeping hold of the customs that help you feel at home. The stories featured in this episode consider the challenges of assimilation, and offer examples of a better way–preserving personal cultures while also learning about others, and finding interesting opportunities to combine the old with the new.
Learn more here.
This episode, Making A Living, discusses immigrant involvement in rural economics. The stories featured in this episode explain the influence industries have on determining where new immigrants settle, and offer insights about the cost of pursuing the American Dream as a newcomer.
The first episode of Routes to Roots, Movement Across Time and Place, pushes back on common misconceptions about immigration in rural America. The stories featured in this episode outline the patterns of immigration to the US over time, the factors that influence an immigrant’s difficult decision to leave home, and highlight the vital contributions that immigrants make when they find new homes in America’s rural places.
Our final episode goes beyond the silver screen to talk about real-world aliens – or at least, how people think about aliens in the real world. How have tales of UFOs and abductions been transformed into modern-day folklore? And how have rural communities been shaped by the search for extra-terrestrial life, both real and fictional?
Films discussed include: Roswell (1994), Roswell (1999 television series, rebooted 2019), Small Town Universe (2024).
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This episode looks at rural alien movies through an ecological lens. Aliens can function as both extractive forces and as symbols of nature’s raw power. How do aliens both embody nature and battle with it? And how can alien invasions in films warn us of our own environmental degradation?
Films discussed include: Avatar (2009), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Nope (2022), The Faculty (1998), Signs (2002)
Honoring ancestors is a human tradition that crosses all cultures. In the southeastern United States, this often takes the form of Decoration Day. That’s when families come together in specially decorated cemeteries to celebrate their roots—sometimes with music and prayers, and almost always with storytelling and a feast.In rural Pickett County, where Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim collide, one family maintains one of Decoration Day’s oldest traditions: a swept graveyard. Reporter Lisa Coffman takes us to the 200th anniversary of their Decoration Day.
This episode explores alien movies set in the Western United States and the mythology of the American West. Through deep dives into a variety of fascinating films, the spectacle, intrigue, and vastness of this unique landscape is analyzed (Nope, 2022; Asteroid City, 2023). The West’s violent history of expansion and colonization is also highlighted as aliens can become symbols for both colonizers and the oppressed (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011; District 9, 2009).
Welcome to Crop Circle Cinema. This episode discusses the paranoia embedded in rural alien movies. What do aliens reveal about our anxieties around the government, neighbors, strangers, and friends? Who do we believe? And who can we never trust?
Films discussed include: Signs (2002), Independence Day (1996), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Faculty (1998), The Vast of Night (2019), World’s End (2013), Cowboys & Aliens (2011).