In Season: Late-Summer Blackberry Soda

What's so special about the blackberry, in Appalachia or elsewhere? Taste for yourself with two delicious, kid-friendly blackberry sodas.

Years ago, when a friend gave me a book of poems by Robert Hass, I became an instant fan. I often think of the line from “The Beginning of September” that reads:

“they’re the kind of people

who let blackberries rot on the vine.”

What sad people! The line was intended as an insult. Only the most wasteful, backwards fool would leave perfectly good fruit to …