By the time a group of high school students showed up at Richard Moss' home in 1980, he was an old man in his 80s. He was a master of shape-note singing — a remarkable old style of music he learned from his elders, who learned it from their elders in the mountains of northern Georgia. The students wanted to document the tradition for their magazine, Foxfire . Named after a bioluminescent fungus that glows in the hills of North Georgia on certain summer nights, Foxfire started in 1966, when an English teacher in Rabun County was having a difficult time engaging his students. Out of ideas, he let the kids design the lesson. They chose to publish a magazine that would document the mountain culture all around them. For 50 years, Foxfire students have recorded the disappearing traditions of Appalachia , and the stories of the region's mountain folks. They've told the stories of blacksmiths, moonshiners and woodworkers. The program's impact has rippled across the country: Projects modeled
↧