Appalachian Festival

On a beautiful fall weekend Frostburg State University welcomed the fifth annual Appalachian Festival to celebrate the rich cultural history of the region. People from all walks of life came out to enjoy the various homemade crafts and different festivities. Multiple tables were sat up under the tents to display all the homemade arts and crafts and items for sale. Children gathered at the 4H stand to participate in goat milking and to play with the baby goats. Participants gathered around to listen to various bands sing bluegrass melodies and people enjoyed the Amish made apple butter, cider and Marlyand style crab cakes. The festival was a traditional display of the areas deeply rooted mountain history.

Pacing through all the tables and stands one particularly interesting displayed was Carolyn Grove's Needle & Shuttle Tatting. Tatting invloves a traditional method of making embroidery lace by knotting thread together along the end of a needle. Much like crocheting or knitting, tatting is a favorite activivty used to embellish household linens. Tatting reached its popularity around the turn of the 20th century than slowly began to fadeout as in typical fad fashion. however, it has recently began to increase in popularity and now is being taught online my a multitude of people.

Another attraction was the Appalachian Independent stand. The online newspaper, a "Dialogue for Democracy" is comprised of citizen journalists who are "Giving voice to a diverse Appalachian Community." Raffling off a $120 Independent Ink gift certificate to entice bystanders to the table, they than handed out business cards and bumper stickers to better inform people of their business. The paper can be located at appindie.org, where people can create accounts and publish articles that pertain to community news, interesting culture, and various activities of the region. All the articles are reviewed by the newspaper's creators and website managers before publication. An article on the Appalachian Festival can be found at, http://www.appindie.org/index.php/appalachian-culture/55-appalachian-culture/1550-fsu-to-0host-fifth-annual-appalachian-festival.

The Western Maryland Chapter of the Archeological Society of Maryland table displayed various finds and information from the Barton excavation site. Items, such as ax heads and spears originated from over 12,000 years ago. The area was the location of a fenced in Indian village in the early 1400's. In 2006, the excavators found a house like structure in Keyser, WV, further digging later reveled charred bones, larger storage pits and ceramics. Josh Gilhart, a prospective archeologist was very intrigued by the stand stating, "I had no idea we had such a large digging site was located so close to Frostburg." Dr. Robert D. Wall of Towson University informed Josh that, "If you're going to go out digging its best to do it here and avoid all the spiders and malaria."

All in all the festival did a very good job at capturing our rich history and displaying the roots of our cultural backgrounds.