Saturday, April 02, 2005

PBS special on Appalachia

We wanted to let you know that a 3-part PBS special about our region, called "The Appalachians," will begin airing this evening on some PBS stations. The series is a major television event narrated by Naomi Judd and Marty Stuart.The series will run on different dates on each PBS station. To find out when "The Appalachians" will be shown in your area, check your local listings or click here:

http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=25687282&u=233350

The film series focuses on Appalachian culture, and we've heard that it includes quite a bit on mountaintop removal. We hope you'll tune in!

More information from PBS: "The Appalachians" is a special television event that will present a comprehensive, coherent and dramatically human historical and cultural overview of this distinctive region. This three-hour television special will document the unique legacy, courage, character, arts and cultureof the central and southern Appalachian people.

Following a historical chronology, the narrative thread will feature the human voices of this mountain region through filmed interviews, journals, and letters of common people; the writers, poets, scholars, and historians; the artisans and the haunting music that have evolved with the culture. This is a portrait framed with truth, passion, and respect for the Native Americans and the people who came to this land from Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Africa, Mexico, and virtually every other nation.

"The Appalachians" is the definitive program on this region and will provide a fresh perspective on this rich part of American heritage. Past and present are linked with a passionate and intimately personal portrait of the land and people in a powerful, entertaining, and enlightening showcase of a culture that is still alive and vital today. It is the story of perhaps the most diverse culture in America in the process of reinventing itself. It is the story of a people whose legacy has been ignored by mass media.