Asheville's River Arts District, Revitalized

Impromptu arts installation in front of a building in the RAD as recovery efforts began. Image courtesy of Arts AVL.

By Remy Cox

Those who call Appalachia home are intimately familiar with Hurricane Helene, which pummeled the region, especially western North Carolina, over 6 months ago. The destruction was immense, and even now the death toll continues to rise. The French Broad River runs through the heart of Asheville and is a defining geographical feature of the aptly named River Arts District. As the waters of the namesake river rose over the banks, the work and livelihoods of hundreds of artists who housed their work in dozens of quirky studios along the banks were washed away. Countless buildings that had been defining elements of the area for decades were damaged beyond repair, and those that were still structurally sound had to be completely gutted.

Helene revealed both the latent danger in the river-laden land that Appalachians call home and the strength of our communities in times of crisis. Artists immediately came together to fundraise for their community and for their peers whose livelihood depended on the sale of the art that the river took. Venues like The Orange Peel and the Grey Eagle hosted supplies and handed out food to people from their parking lots, and as rebuilding efforts got underway the Grey Eagle provided a space for artists to come together creatively with other people who were impacted by the disaster.

Some of the most fascinating productions of the River Arts District’s path towards revival were in artistic endeavors. Erica Shaffel helped to create and fund raise The Flood Collection, a deck of cards and book compiled of art by Asheville creatives that were lost in the flood. The initial monetary goal was $15,000—they raised over thirteen times that. Artist-driven fundraising did not only take on physical form. Rusty Sutton, one of the contributors to the compilation album Cardinals at the Window, released just under two weeks after Helene and including the work of over 130 different musicians, wrote this in reflection about the storm—“[w]e’re river people. We identify as Mountain Folk, but the truth of it is, we’re river people. The rivers and springs of our home have been the lifeblood of our communities for generations…a friend of mine who stayed behind to spearhead aid efforts in his neighborhood shared these words earlier, and I think they’ll live with me forever: “Our terrain wasn’t meant to handle this storm, but our community was built for the aftermath.””

Now, six months after, there is so much of the River Arts District open for business that it is impossible to visit it all in a single day, and events like the upcoming RAD Renaissance on May 10th seek to bring visitor attention to this gem of Asheville. Although the waters have long receded, the marks remain, and it’s the work of those who bore the storm to rebuild in its wake.

The Wizard of the Blue Ridge Mountains

By Remy Cox

What makes a man worth remembering? The mountains of Appalachia are dotted with the legacy of larger-than-life men—Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and the Hatfields and McCoys are just a few Appalachian figures who have been excessively mythologized beyond their real-life actions. The mythologized versions of these individuals have been some of the most definitive images of the Appalachian region to outsiders for generations. Yet some, like magical tinsmith-turned-army-drummer Augustus “Gus” Reich have been practically lost to the annals of history.

Much of Reich’s life remains shrouded in mystery. Despite his fascinating life and legacy, any record of Reich is sustained by the work of merely a couple of scholars and a smattering of passionate laymen. The largest selection of information is in A Johnny Reb Band from Salem: The Pride of Tarheelia by Harry Hobart Hall, initially published in 1963. As for primary sources, the largest collection is in a handful of issues of the The People’s Press, a Salem-based newspaper that ran while Reich was an active magician. His wife Mary donated his collection of tinwork tools and box of magic gadgets to the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, what became of his birthplace.

Both existing photographs of Reich unfortunately obscure his face, coincidentally adding to his air of mystery. Reich is the man perched on the pole to the right. Photo courtesy of Old Salem Restoration.

Broadside advertisement for one of Reich’s shows. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.

It is not inaccurate to say that Gus Reich was a pillar of his community. He was born in Salem, North Carolina in 1833 to tinsmith Jacob Reich, who taught his son the craft. Growing up, he was fascinated by the magicians and circus workers that came to the local hotel on tour, learning the art of sleight of hand himself. When the looming threat of the Civil War came to fruition, Gus joined the Confederate army in 1861 as a percussionist in the 26th North Carolina Regimental band. By all accounts from his fellow band members, Gus was a unique and eclectic personality who often brought levity to his peers in the darker times of the war—although some of them might assert that he was a better magician than he was a drummer. As they traveled across the South, Gus would perform magic tricks alongside performances from the band to raise money for local hospitals and schools. Gus’ talents were in high demand—he performed as “The Southern Magician” for events as prestigious as Governor Zebulon Vance’s 1862 inauguration. He specialized in classic sleight-of-hand wizardry—card tricks, coin tricks, and other such things were trademarks of his shows, as listed in a pamphlet of instructions of his most popular tricks.

As the sun set over his twilight home of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, he turned to his wife and uttered the phrase that would come to define his character—”Mary, I am the Wizard of the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

Gus continued his magical practice long before and after the war. Despite his prowess for sleight of hand, stage magic was not his only talent, as he also constructed the original tin coffin for the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker meant to preserve them until autopsy, saying that it was “…the greatest job [he] ever done.” Newspapers claim that when the coffin was opened several days later, the twins were perfectly preserved. He seems to have performed his last show as a benefit for a primary school in Piney Grove, North Carolina, in the early 1910s. By the end of the decade, the Wizard of the Blue Ridge had died at age 84—his greatest trick yet.

Reich’s life story is fascinating and electric, yet known by shockingly few. Appalachia is home to countless legends who have had the truth of their lives overshadowed by their sensationalized legacies. What circumstances allowed for the deep cultural entrenchment of men like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, and not Gus Reich?

Mountain Heritage Center shines new light on the life of an esteemed Appalachian photographer

By Remy Cox

George Masa, an underrecognized conservationist and photographer, spent his life trapped in the process of remaking himself. A man of great mystique and intrigue, he took on several names in his lifetime—Shoji Takahashi, Shoji Endo, Masaharu Iizuka, George Masa Iizuka, and ultimately, George Masa. Much of Masa’s personal life could be described as ephemeral. He was born in Tokyo and moved to the United States at 23 years old, settling briefly in Seattle, Portland, and New Orleans before coming to Asheville where he would build his repertoire of photography and advocate for the regions’ national parks. Many odds were stacked against him professionally and personally—he struggled financially as an artist in the Great Depression, and he was the target of racial hostilities by the KKK. He had close ties with Horace Kephart, one of the most prominent writers on Appalachia. Yet, until very recently, Masa’s life and work went unrecognized in its’ significance to Appalachian environmental conservation.

A Stranger No More: George Masa and His Art, the newest exhibit at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center (MHC), is the product of the efforts of guest curators, the MHC team, and the MHC’s student workers. The exhibit stands apart from the typical exhibit staged in the MHC’s main gallery space, as the presence of physical objects is sparse—although Masa’s film camera dominates the center of the room. This presentation can be a challenge in a museum. It’s much harder for many visitors to connect with an image on the wall than an object that they share the space with. Yet, the MHC works around this. “You can easily imagine using a plow or a saw or wearing a beanie,” says Peter Koch, Education Specialist at the MHC, “…[t]he camera is the only object in the exhibit like that…[W]e try to [liken] images to the artifacts, to help people.” The walls are lined with a lifetime of his masterful photography documenting the vast natural spaces of the Appalachian Mountains. Visitors are invited to consider Masa’s photographs, each containing images of waterfalls, wildflowers, and mountains, and draw upon personal experiences and feelings evoked by his work.

George Masa’s film camera. Photograph taken by Ashley Evans.

When asked further about what stands out about Masa’s story and the lasting effects of Masa’s conservation work and advocacy, Peter Koch says this—“I think a big part of the story is Masa finding his way as an immigrant and then growing and developing into a consummate and well respected expert in his field [even in his own lifetime]…his work was more than just acreage and big mountains preserved. He was very good at putting out images that showcased the vistas, the flora, waterfalls. These have been used by boosters and promoters and that’s okay as it helped open eyes of the larger population to how beautiful this area is.”

A Stranger No More is a worthwhile visit. Prospective visitors will drive through the weaving roadways nestled in the valleys and forests that Masa documented on his film camera, and in the exhibit gallery, they can learn the story of the man whose near-forgotten life’s work has been remembered.

 

Society of Appalachian Historians to Meet in Asheville, May 21-23

This is a great group of scholars interested in the history of the southern mountain region. This year, we will be meeting at Pack Memorial Auditorium in Asheville. I will be moderating a panel on “Expressions of Land in 20th Century Appalachia.” I hope to see you there. Below find links to the program, along with a place to register.

https://www.etsu.edu/cas/sahconference/annual_meeting/conference_information.php

Ginseng Diggers Picks up Two Awards!

Ginseng Diggers won two awards in the past month, the James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature award, given annually by the American Botanical Council, and the Appalachian Studies’ Weatherford Award for Nonfiction. I couldn’t be more honored. To have my book listed alongside the other Duke and Weatherford winners is something that I will always cherish. I’d like to thank my wonderful family for their unwavering support. I’d like to thank Richard Starnes, my advisor at WCU who first validated my research interests, and my PhD advisor at UGA, John Inscoe, without whom I would have never come close to finishing this book. And, of course, I’d like to thank the good folks at the University Press of Kentucky, specifically Patrick O’Dowd, for their support and encouragement through this process. They put out one hell of a good-looking book.

I’d like to highlight some of the thoughtful and kind words by the Weatherford Award judges, all of which are very excellent Appalachian scholars.

Katherine Newfont: This is a remarkable--even transformational--work of Appalachian history. Through painstaking research in 19th-century records Manget reveals a world we had previously barely glimpsed, one that tied thousands of Appalachian people to global markets while also enabling them to maintain significant control over the terms of their own labor. Appalachian communities' ties to forests--both culturally and economically--predate extractive industry and are now re-emerging as coal and other industries increasingly abandon the region. At this pivotal moment Manget offers a brilliant exploration of ginseng, a forest product long used to sustain Appalachian livelihoods. This is a "usable past" indeed. This study could hardly be more impressive or more timely for the region.

Loyal Jones Appalachian Center: Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia opens a new way to think about Appalachian harvesting habits. It begins to illustrate how the interconnection between East Asian markets and Appalachian medicinal remedies influences the perception of Appalachia while intimately addressing topics on gender roles, class relations, forest use, and commons management. Manget introduces ginseng’s history in Appalachian culture by allowing for the staple root to showcase interdisciplinary impacts on the world while remaining focused to its origins, Appalachia, and how the root influences Appalachian culture today. He manages to incorporate original ideas about interdisciplinary understanding with a simple root that is at its core is ideas about interdisciplinary understanding with a simple root that is at its core is Appalachian which brings Appalachia to the center stage of global interconnection. It’s written so well that you’d think this unmatched understanding of Ginseng was simple knowledge, but it’s the first of its kind. It’s relevant, original, globally thinking, and it’s simply Appalachian.

Jeffery Keith: A model of the kind of Appalachian history the world needs now, Luke Manget's Ginseng Diggers uses seemingly lifeless documents, such as business ledgers, to resurrect a practice and a way of life that, as he points out, is best understood as dynamic. By contextualizing the work of diggers within local, regional, national, and global historical trends, Magnet shows how plant collectors participated in what Anna Tsing calls "salvage capitalism," while he deconstructs mischaracterizations of these important but mostly unsung actors in Appalachian history. By building up a better understanding of how various individuals made use of the commons, Ginseng Diggers illustrates how mountain people played a central role in the development of botanical medicine--a story that extends far beyond the mountains and one that continues to have an impact on contemporary Appalachia.

Dykeman Stokely: Luke Manget puts a new focus on Appalachian and American history through the lens of "commons commodities" (herbs and plants that through customary use belong to the gatherers and not to the landowners). He shows how these herbs, bolstered by early America's Jacksonian democracy and religious individualism, helped revolutionize American medicine. Furthermore, he describes how these "commodities" enabled the formation of supply chains from the gatherers all the way to the metropolis and beyond and permitted the region to survive and contribute to the war efforts in the Civil War and World War I. Manget looks particularly at ginseng whose final destination was China but whose great monetary value helped the gatherers to somewhat overcome the circumscription of the commons by state laws and the physical destruction of the commons set in motion by the coming of the railroad and extractive industries. But ginseng's symbolic value as a symbol of the wilderness was also large, and although the figure of the "sang digger" appeared in the late 19th century popular press in the shadow of the hillbilly stereotype, even in some local color novels these figures, though subordinate to characters representing technological progress, served as a counterbalance to the overcivilized American psyche. This renegotiation of gender (and the varied gender roles over time relating to ginseng as described throughout the book), is supplemented by the author in his epilogue by a renegotiation of class, specifically the labor class, which he feels the economy of "commons commodities" can serve as a model for, believing that the commons can be preserved without being exhausted through self-interest and discounting efficiency as a sole model.


Appalachian Forest Farming Webinar Series

The people with Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition are doing great work, and I wanted to get their information up here. You can visit their website at https://www.appalachianforestfarmers.org/. I’d also like to plug their webinar series, which offers some great tips and interviews with forest farmers on how to grow everything from ginseng to mushrooms. There are ways to both profit from this kind of agriculture and improve the health of the forest and broader mountain ecosystem, and this organization is helping to make that happen. Although the webinar series is over, you can still access the recordings here: https://www.appalachianforestfarmers.org/forestfocus?fbclid=IwAR3czJr46RKGqldgirQXYpc07Fzfe2K2BMMSUB-vI8kfPfd9mq62AspHRmo

My upcoming talks, March 23-24, 2022

I will be participating in two conversations about root digging in Appalachia over the next two days. Here are the links:

Wednesday, March 23, 2022, 6-7pm at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, NC [Virtual]. I’ll be chatting with Dan Pierce, historian at UNC-Asheville. Register HERE.

Thursday, March 24, 2022, 2-3pm. The Ethnobotany Webinar Series (Register HERE) with Ann Armbrecht of the American Botanical Council. Ann is the author of the fascinating book, The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry.

U.S. Forest Service unveils long-awaited forest plan for WNC forests!

View from Sam’s Knob in the Pisgah National Forest

After nearly a decade of studying and gathering public input, the U.S. Forest Service has released its final draft of the management plan for Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests. This plan will determine everything from logging projects to trail-building to wilderness designation. There are some very promising aspects to this new plan, including elevating the role of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee as consultants and the designation of the Big Ivy area as a “Forest Scenic Area.” Read about it here from the Carolina Public Press.

Also, read a condensed report from the U.S. Forest Service here.