Bittersweet, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to promoting the lore, crafts, traditions and culture of the people of the Ozarks and to portraying the characteristics of the land that have influenced their life and development.

The board of directors of Bittersweet, Inc. continues the work of the students by publishing - and encouraging others to publish - new books, both fiction and nonfiction, about the Ozarks, by giving talks and presenting programs and by teaching both college and Elderhostel classes about the culture of the Ozarks.

Board of Directors:

President:

Ellen Gray Massey

Vice-President:

James E. Baldwin

Secretary-

Treasurer:

Delilah Amos Shotts

Board Member:

Dalton Wright

Board Member:

George Kastler

Bittersweet conducted, taped and transcribed 476 interviews, published 482 stories and took 43, 406 black-and-white and 5,859 color photographs.

The first settlers in the Ozarks often led frugal lives of almost unremitting toil in a scenic wilderness of abundant plant and animal life.  Now the living is easier, and many of the old customs have disappeared.  But the knowledge of them is preserved for us by the young writers of Bittersweet, who tell how it was and of the changes brought about by man's interference with nature in one of America's most beautiful regions.

The Bittersweet magazines and books use an oral history approach to the Ozarks that encompasses the total life and culture of this fascinating region of America, a beautiful rugged land of self-sufficient people who carried on frontier values into the twentieth century.  This approach is similar to the Foxfire books of the southern Appalachian region of Georgia and North Carolina.

The Bittersweet publications are treasure troves of authentic information for researchers, students, and the curious to learn about American rural life before the age of technology.  Researched and written with understanding and insight by students descended from the earliest settlers, the material captures the real culture and heritage of the Ozark people.  It is of importance not only to the study of the Ozarks, but also for appreciating the contribution of an Americana that persisted in the arrested frontier of the "deliberately unprogressive" people of the hills and valleys of the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.

Bittersweet began as a special English class at the Lebanon, Missouri, High School in 1973 with Ellen Gray Massey as the teacher/adviser.  For ten years the students traveled over an area from St. Louis to the Kansas border in Missouri and from New Franklin, Missouri, on the Missouri River, to Mountain View, Arkansas, interviewing, recording and photographing many aspects of the region and its people to publish their own quality magazine, Bittersweet, the Ozark Quarterly.  There were articles, stories and photo essays about subjects spanning the region's history from the ancient Ozark Bluff Dwellers to modern residents who still carry on the post-pioneer ways.

Included are features ranging from prairie plants to woodland streams and caves; from one-room schools and children's games to spinning, weaving, woodcarving and many other cottage crafts; how mothers raised their babies with only twelve cloth diapers; how to split rails, make wooden shingles and prepare traditional foods; folksongs, fiddle music, singing with shape notes and the more recent bluegrass music; and verbatim reminiscences of men and women who grew to adulthood at or before the twentieth century.

To assure authenticity the students canoed down the rivers, crawled and splashed through the caves, and inquired into every aspect of Ozark tradition.  They even helped cultivate cane crops and took part in all the processes of making sorghum molasses for three consecutive years.  The result is reading that is fun as well as informative.

Gathering edible wild greens in the spring, picking blackberries in the heat and among the snakes in summer, and making apple butter outdoors as part of a neighborhood project in the fall are among the activities described in realistic detail.  One can almost smell the bubbling apple butter and taste the cool, sweet milk from an old-time springhouse.

Hewing railroad ties and rafting them downriver, crossing a mountain stream on a man-powered ferry boat, and clinging to a swinging foot bridge above a flooding river are some of the early-day experiences shared with the readers of today.