– Rachel Kleinfeld, Sept. 11, 2020

Current residents of the granite-top kitchens of Charlotte might look carefully at this map. The breadth of the Appalachian poverty belt has certainly narrowed since 1960. But in that year, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission, Mecklenburg was counted as a high-poverty county.

– By Dewone Wright, an NC winner in the 2024 Congressional Art Competition and a student at
Montgomery County Early College, via NC Forum 2024-2025 Impact report

About this site

This website has been used for a variety of purposes over time. It was launched as the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic took root as a way to sneak conversation past the lockdown. Subsequent experience shows that humans have been quite adept at doing so, with an explosion of online tools to make it happen. This site may prove a useful addition, if only as a more readily available archive.