About CSA
Catch the
Spirit of Appalachia, Inc.
A 501(c)3 nonprofit heritage organization
29
Regal Avenue, Sylva, NC 28779 • 828-631-4587
Celebrating 17 Years as a Grassroots
Non-Profit Organization
Vision and
Mission
Artwork by
Doreyl Ammons Cain shows CSA's dedication to all children and their heritage
The Purpose
Established in 1989 as a nonprofit
organization, the purpose of Catch the Spirit of Appalachia (CSA) is to awaken
people of all ages to their self-worth, to the wisdom of their ancestors, and
the beauty of their natural environment and culture. Situated in Jackson County,
North Carolina, our organization’s main thrust is to draw attention to the need
to conserve, protect and save the natural and human heritage of the local
mountain people in our region. Our mission is to accomplish our goals through
environmental and cultural education in the primary grades and by involving the
community in honoring and preserving the local heritage lifestyle.
The People
 CSA Cofounders Amy Ammons Garza, Appalachian Storyteller, and Doreyl
Ammons Cain, Visual Artist, a team known as The Ammons Sisters, are dedicated to
reaching every child they can with the message that they are creative, can
achieve success and have the heritage background that will sustain them
throughout their lives. The sisters are actively promoting literacy and
awareness of self-worth in all children and adults.
The CSA board of Directors is a group of local
people who believe in the mission of the organization and extend themselves,
involving the goals of CSA into their private lives. Many members of the board
have been with the organization since it's inception 16 years ago: Dr. Ray
Menze, Elmer and Irene Hooper; followed closely by long time members Gail
Stillwell Cooper, Cathy Stillwell Gibson, and Dr. David Teague. With more than
two years involvement is Gail A. Nolen, Etheree Chancellor, Pam Dengler, Vera
Holland Guise, and Terry Michelsen. Newer members are Carl Hooper, Mary Jo
Hooper Cobb, Becky Nelson, and Dot Conner.
Regional advisors to CSA have been Jenny Johnson, Director of
the Swain County Center for the Arts; Leesa D. Sutton, a development office for
the area's Division of Tourism, Film, and Sports Development; Denise Ballard,
Manager of the Cherokee Youth Center Boys and Girls Club; and Davey Arch,
Cherokee Storyteller and Crafter.
The Presentations
 Heritage
Alive!
Storytelling and Spontaneous Artwork
Presentations: Stories of two Jackson County 7th generation girls with
Scotch-Irish Heritage come
alive through music, dance & song, mountain
storytelling, a colorful mural created before your eyes with a fun-filled
Canhouse Band! The Ammons Sisters perform as a team to demonstrate their
own childhood in the mountains.
• Special Example:
Legislators’
School for Youth Leadership Development, Cullowhee, NC
Back by popular
demand, the Ammons Sisters, along with bag piper Joshua Bulla once
again presented ‘Heritage Alive!” to two WCU Rural Education’s Summer
Legislator’s School workshops. With a motto of “Respect, Trust,
Commitment—You, The community, The country, The world,” these workshops
have been offered to specially chosen high school youth from all over North
Carolina.
Workshops & Residencies
 “Word Pictures & Picture
Words” Residency
These programs can benefit any audience, but the
best scholastic results are with 4th - 6th grade students and/or
the teachers who teach them. Focused on fostering the discovery that
everyone is creative with special talents and unique heritage, this
workshop is based on the right and left brain concept--right being the feeling
side, speaking with pictures; and left being the structural side, speaking with
words. A balance between the two sides creates harmony, and
participation encourages increased self-confidence, which in turn affects
increased scholastical performance. Each class is held inside the regular
classroom with students and teacher.
• Special
Example:
VanStory Elementary School, Montclair Elementary
School
The above two schools in Fayetteville, NC were schools the Ammons
Sisters traveled to in January and February of 2006 to work with the 4th grade
before the state writing tests. This trip made the eleventh year in a row
that CSA was contracted to return to the Cumberland County School
District.
Drama
Workshops
These workshops are designed to enable young people to
completely create a play from their own knowledge—plays that incorporate their
heritage,
environment, peers, spontaneous reactions, and their
dreams in the drama in their own lives. Each child is encouraged to interview
their elders at night to learn about the stories and ways of life of prior
generations, and to come back to the classroom with the chestnuts of
wisdom to inspire and guide their own dramatic story. These experiences
serve to enlighten children as to the uniqueness of his/her
heritage.
 • Special
Example:
Cherokee Little Theater, Cherokee, NC
Two years in a
row, the Ammons Sisters worked with the Cherokee Boys & Girls Youth Center
with the the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades to produce the
play written by
the children with the help of CSA, entitled “Ghost Legends of
Tsa-La-Gi.” Indeed a success, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America picked
up on the story, and published the news about the play nationwide. In
the second part of the year, CSA worked with the teenagers of Cherokee to write
a play entitled “Life on the Rez.” The staff of Cherokee
Youth Center now deem they had learned enough through CSA’s endeavors to
produce the play “Life on the Rez” themselves.
Community Work
Greening
Up the Mountains Festival, Downtown Sylva, NC
 CSA's mission in the Greening Up the Mountain Festival is to celebrate
mountain life through the creativity of its children and to present a
"story" of the heritage of Appalachian life through old-time living
demonstrations: canning, quilting, preserving
fruits & vegetables, soap-making, weaving spinning, chair-caning,
sewing, and the music and talents of the region's people.
The board of directors for CSA believes that transferring
knowledge of our unique heritage to the next generation through creative
experience promotes pride and a sense of place and better educates visitors to
the regioabout who we are.We accomplish these goals through:
* A Regional
Essay Contest
* A Costume Contest and entry in The Parade of Many
Colors
* Opportunity to perform on The Founder’s Stage in the Youth
Talent Contest.
In 2006 we will present the Heritage Program in the 9th
annual Greening Up the Mountains Festival.
Great Smoky Mountain Railroad Railfest, Bryson City,
NC
CSA celebrates, once again, the music of the mountains by
providing local entertainers who present old world folk, traditional mountain
folk,
bluegrass and gospel music to the public at the annual Railfest
in Bryson City. CSA & the GSMRR work together to recognize the local
youth
by sponsoring a second Youth Talent Contest.
Bear Lake Reserve Craft Demonstrator's Day,
Tuckasegee, NC
In Bear Lake Reserve’s first Open House, CSA was
commissioned to provide local traditional demonstrators. Among those
traditional crafts provided were: White Oak Basketry by
Geraldine Walkingstick, Chair-Caning by David Ammons, Story-Quilting
by CSA board members, Beeswax Ornaments by Jean Pittillo, Visual Natural
Art by Heather Pittillo, Rivercane Basketry by Sarah Thompson and Pottery
by Mary W. Thompson.100 corn husk dolls by Annie Lee Bryson were sold to
Bear Lake for welcome basket gifts.
 “The Trail of Light”
Interfaith Drama, Cullowhee, NC
In 2006, CSA and its board members
will celebrate seven years of working with the Trail of Light drama team to
produce a stunning pageant involving 150 people living in five WNC counties, and
including over 30 churches. The play tells the story of the lineage of Christ
from Adam and Eve to
the birth of Jesus, and beyond two years—when the
Wisemen came to Bethlehem. In 2005, the script of the “Trail of Light,” written
by CSA cofounder Amy Ammons Garza, was published on nextsunday.com, becoming the
first interfaith drama to be placed online as an “E-Drama” by Georgia publisher
Smyth & Helwys.
Foley, Alabama/Maggie Valley
Cultural Exchange, Foley, Alabama
 CSA represents Western North Carolina in a the first ever Cultural
Exchange for the state of North Carolina.The town of Foley, Alabama presented an
national award winning festival idea to Maggie Valley, to exchange the culture
of each area with one another. In July, 2004, Foley brought a scrimp boat to
Western North Carolina with whistle stops throughout the area, bringing their
food and entertainment to a final festival destination at Maggie Valley,
NC.
In turn, Maggie Valley Chamber of
Commerce desired to return the favor with entertainment and vendors from Western
North Carolina. Bill
Miller, Executive Director of Maggie
Valley’s Chamber contracted Catch the Spirit of Appalachia to put together the
entertainment of the area for
Heritage Harbor Days in Foley on
November 4-7, 2004. Amy Ammons Garza wrote a script “The Settling of the
Smoky Mountains” and put together a group of entertainers to reflect the pioneer
story. The trip was hugely successful, with the Foley Chamber stating that
it was the best
entertainment they had ever had because of the
education involved. Entertainers were: The Ammons Sisters,
Joshua Bulla, Emily Geisler, John Grant Jr, the McDowell Family Band, Judy
Rhodes, The Bravehearts—about 30 people in all.
Awards
Women to Match our
Mountains
The Western Carolina Women’s Coalition is a
regional organization devoted to advancing women in the mountain region
through education, advocacy and cooperative collaboration. Each August they
sponsor the Women to Match Our Mountains celebration of the
19th Constitutional Amendment that gave women the vote and recognize
distinguished women from the mountain counties for their leadership and
innovation. Amy and Doreyl, known as the "Ammons Sisters" were recognized
as Women to Match Our Mountains for Jackson County in 2004
for "their vision and leadership in making such a great gift to the
mountains as Catch the Spirit of Appalachia."
1999 - 2005 Mountain
State Fair in Fletcher
The CSA booth entry for the Mountain State Fair,
representing CSA’s yearly accomplishments has won 1st place in the community
booth division 4 years and 2nd place for two years.
The
Future
In April, 2006, CSA will celebrate its 16th year.
The organization’s main thrust has been creative writing, visual art, and drama
workshops and “Heritage Alive” performances for children and adults, with
community festivals and publishing books written by the local people coming in a
close second. Our most recent published book is “The Life and Times of Mary Jane
Queen.”
Our workshops and performances are booked locally
and throughout the South, whereas our community work mainly reaches Jackson,
Macon, Swain, Haywood, and Buncombe Counties. The audiences we draw are family
oriented and are interested in honoring and preserving the heritage of the area.
The future looks bright for CSA, with the following endeavors:
1) We have
just established the “Catch the Spirit of
Appalachia Endowment Fund” with the NC Community Foundation to support
and publish writers, artists and craftspeople of Western North Carolina.
2)
Partnership with Appalachian Homestead Farm & Preserve on Tilley Creek to
establish a living, working homestead and a “Spirit of Appalachia Folklife School for Children” with our second partner, Dogwood Crafters of Dillsboro.
3) Partnership
with Jackson County Parks & Recreation Center to provide two new festivals at the Rec Center: The
Patchwork Fabric Festival on June 3rd, 2006, and the Appalachian Arts &
Crafts Bazaar on October 21, 2006.
4) This new website detailing all of CSA’s endeavors on an
ongoing basis.
CSA Co-founders Amy Ammons Garza, Appalachian
Storyteller, and Doreyl Ammons Cain, Visual Artist, a team known as The Ammons
Sisters, are dedicated to reaching all children with the message that they are
creative, can achieve success and have the heritage background that will sustain
them throughout their lives. The sisters are actively promoting literacy
and awareness of self-worth in all adults and
children.
The board of CSA is a group
of local people who believe in the mission of the organization and extend
themselves, involving the goals of CSA into their private lives. CSA would like
to acknowledge and thank those people who continually support our endeavors
monetarily as well. We say a big thank you to Candy Scopelite, Irene and Elmer
Hooper, Martha Hix, Patricia Kadish, Etheree Chancellor, Laura Green, Yvonne
Vish, Barry & Serena Dossenko, Nancy Humpins, Pat Miller, Denise Horne, Ray
Menze.
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