First Things RSS Feed - Seth Williamson https://www.firstthings.com/author/seth-williamson en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:51:54 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/seth-williamson 60 Blue Ridge Modernity Blues https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/02/blue-ridge-modernity-blues https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/02/blue-ridge-modernity-blues Sat, 01 Feb 1992 00:00:00 -0500 It’s a mild winter evening in the Blue Ridge mountains. The faint sounds of banjo and fiddle from Cockram’s General Store and the first cries of a distant night bird waft over my back porch in the little town of Floyd, Va. (pop. 396). Roaming the misty ridges that vanish over toward Panther Knob and Rock Castle Gorge, they say, are the ghosts of murdered moonshiners and mountain girls who died for love. The Washington Post recently did a story on this place⁠—“the legendary town where time has stopped,” they called us, where “it’s always 1930 or 1905.” For many of us who moved here from elsewhere, that’s just the way we like it.

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