https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon

I had never heard this word until today.

Melungeon = Member of a triracial (black, white, native) group that supposedly is most prominent around Cumberland Gap, not that far from where I grew up.  I saw an article suggesting that Abraham Lincoln was a melungeon.

The melting pot effect: we're all related whether we admit it or not.

I think the title is "Sweet Carolina" but in my mind the title ought to be "Pockets full of Dust" or something like it. This song is about how a lost soul can end up in a lonely place.

I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen this.

Just ran across a nice southern article about eating the leaves as salad, and painting the skin with the toxic berry juice. I have been taught to use an alcohol extract of the root as a "lymphogogue" meaning it is supposed to stimulate lymph movement, or at least a strong immune response. Far as I know there is no science to support this use. The juices of the root are very strong and caustic, and it should not be handled with bare hands.

Statistics show that the "stroke belt" is also where you have the highest likelihood (in the US) of dying of cardiovascular and lower respiratory disease (smoking), cancer and accidents. Obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome are probable causes, but what about accidents? Why do southerners have the most accidents? Bless their dangerous little hearts....

SOURCE
http://consumer.healthday.com/cardiovascular-health-information-20/heart-attack-news-357/southeastern-states-have-highest-number-of-preventable-deaths-687436.html

Ingredients
( thanks SusieCollapse )

This is very interesting for anyone interested in regional accents. Answer ten or so questions about your words for things, and it will tell you where it thinks you come from. It had a hard time localizing me though I attempted to use my childhood words for things, but some people it totally pegs. My language is most different from the Great Lakes area, which makes sense because I've never been there.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?

I am a river runner. From way back. My father got me started, in canoes first. When I was very small he would put me in the bow of the canoe, tell me to paddle, and surf the canoe in river waves. We used to camp by creeks up on the plateau, and he'd let us take the insulite pads that we slept on and go hiking up the stream to float back down on the thin beige mats. I got my first kayak when I was 11. It was a cut-down Mark 4. I was already too big for it, or at least, it was uncomfortable and I always got fiberglass in my arms and legs when I used it. I only used it a few times, once when I got hypothermic on the Nantahala and had to be plowed to shore by my dad's canoe, and once when I got tangled in vines on the Green and completely panicked. I didn't paddle for several years recovering from these experiences.
( ruminations provoked by another woman's story of becoming a guideCollapse )

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

You can check out the progress of America's increasing BMI by state, since 1985, on this govt page. The South leads the charge.


Colorado is the Rocky Mountain holdout but they are sliding too.