When I lived on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, one of my favorite annual events was the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall. I would visit with people from the featured parts of the country, try food from those areas and listen to music. It was a good way to spend a Saturday.
On a winter day in 1992, Brooks Blevins walked into a cramped, windowless office in the attic of the Alphin Building on the campus of what s now Lyon College in Batesville. The man I consider the authority on the Ozarks had no idea at the time that he would spend his career studying the region.