Blue Ridge Country May/June 2024 - 16

BOOK NOTE
West Virginia Buzz
New Bee Campus in Morgantown
A
Many Blue Ridge region colleges are looking out for pollinators.
plethora of pollinators has found
a welcome at a West Virginia University's
Morgantown campus-this
year's first Bee Campus USA designee,
based on its work building native
plant gardens and nest sites.
A bevy of beneficial bugs and birds
will be welcomed back to campus at
the first pollinator garden planted
in 2022. They will also discover the
newly redeveloped " cattail garden "
filled with " more than 100 pollinator
and water-loving " species created in
the fall of 2023.
The original program (Bee City
USA®) was founded in Asheville,
North Carolina, and has expanded to
include Bee Campus USA. Both are
initiatives of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate
Conservation. While bees
are the focus (with more than 3,600
native bee species in the country), native
plants help reverse the significant
decline of all pollinator species.
According to Bee City USA®,
" Pollinators are keystone species in
essentially every terrestrial ecosystem
on earth, assisting in plant reproduction
and supporting other species of
wildlife.
Y
35
YEARS AGO
Some say it was the devastation
of the South's economy
after the Civil War that killed
Sweet Chalybeate Springs.
Others say it was railroad
politics. But over 100 years
later, a West Virginian is
playing a role in rebuilding
one of the region's grand old
healing springs. "
-Contributing Editor
Joan Vannorsdall
in her May/June
'89 piece on the
spring which, alas,
has not achieved a
comeback after all.
Additionally, healthy native habitats
require less maintenance and
no pesticides. Visit beecityusa.org for
details.
Of the 180 total Bee Campus Affiliates
in the USA, many are in the Blue
Ridge region:
 Chattanooga State Community
College (TN)
 University of Tennessee Knoxville
(TN)
 University of South Carolina
Upstate (SC)
 Blue Ridge Community College (NC)
 Warren Wilson College (NC)
 University of North Carolina
Asheville (NC)
 NC Arboretum (university affiliate)
(NC)
 Appalachian State University (NC)
 Surry Community College (NC)
 Berea College (KY)
 Morehead State University (KY)
 Virginia Tech (VA)
 Virginia Western Community
College (VA)
 Randolph College (VA)
 University of Virginia (VA)
 James Madison University (VA)
-ANGELA MINOR
16 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Jeremy B. Jones. Bearwallow: A
Personal History of a Mountain
Homeland. (Blair, 2014). 253 pp.
t's not easy to classify Jeremy
B. Jones' " Bearwallow, " cited as
the best Appalachian nonfiction
book of the year in 2014. You'll
do best understanding what
Jones set out to do in his first
book by considering the Author's
Note at the start: " This
book is a memoir, not
only about my life, but
also about the life of a
place. "
I
Having left his home
in western North
Carolina for college
and, then to teach in
mountainous western
Honduras, Jones discovers himself
" working back to Bearwallow...finding
residues of home. "
He returns to Edneyville to teach
English as second language at
his elementary school, renting a
house " dead in the view of Bearwallow
Mountain. "
Over the course of the year,
Jones works with immigrant
families who have come north to
work the orchards. He teaches
himself clawhammer banjo and
bikes the mountains. He digs
deep into his family history, all
the way back to his Dutch ancestor,
Abraham, a veteran of the
Revolutionary War who at 75
" set off into the wild...to an area
labeled on the map only as " the
Wilderness. "
And he ponders the " The
Grand Highlands at Bearwallow
Mountain, " the planned development
on top of Bearwallow
that will change his homeplace
forever.
Jones takes on a lot in his book:
centuries of Carolina mountain
history; generations of family history;
local politics and development;
his own ambivalence about
what it means to be Appalachian:
I have trouble knowing what to
do in these mountains. I find myself
fighting a constant battle between
escaping and settling. So I do both.
Jones manages exactly that in
" Bearwallow. "
-JOAN VANNORSDALL
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http://www.beecityusa.org http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
Blue Ridge Country May/June 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country May/June 2024
