Giving Compass' Take:

• Pacific Standard discusses John Lingan's book Homeplace, an exploration of country music and class divisions in Virginia — and the role legend Patsy Cline played in breaking through boundaries.

• The battles that Cline fought against sexism and classism are still around today, inside the music industry and certainly outside as well. What lessons can we take from her struggles and triumphs?

• Here are some ways to revive coal country through music, theater, and sports.

Deep in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, you can find a honky-tonk both timeless and antiquated, "the only twang-and-sawdust roadhouse left in the Virginias," nestled high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, accessible by a single winding road. The Troubadour Bar & Lounge serves as the centerpiece for John Lingan's Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk, a careful, thorough exploration into the makings of a Southern town, its wealth and class divisions, and the local country legends it has historically shunned.

At the heart of the book is Jim McCoy, a country music tastemaker in his eighties at the time of Lingan's story, whose radio broadcasts during the 1950s and '60s enabled him to rub shoulders with country giants and to launch the career of local talent Patsy Cline — although his own singing career never left the ground, and the "music industry he loved outgrew his style and never returned his devotion," as Lingan puts it. Through conversations with the folks of Winchester, Virginia, and detailed tours through the historic sites of Cline's life, Lingan pieces together a picture of a hard-working, gritty woman from the wrong side of the tracks who, despite her rising stardom, was never accepted into the wealthier, primmer echelons of her hometown that "chose to see itself as a New World Camelot or Rome" and "still talk[s] about [local hero] George Washington like he just ran out to grab a beer." Cline broke barriers and changed the sound of country music forever, even as she faced astounding sexism and classism, but, as Lingan reports, it was not until this past decade or two, when "finally the local money needed her enough to pay respect," that her memory has been honored in Winchester.

Read the full article about Patsy Cline as a boundary pusher by Leah Angstman at Pacific Standard.