West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
A special feature on the mind behind the film A Beautiful Mind, John Nash. Also, WVU's Solar Decathlon team competes in CA. Those stories and more.
A special feature on the mind behind the film A Beautiful Mind, John Nash. Also, WVU’s Solar Decathlon team competes in CA. Those stories and more.
New environmental regs, coal a tourism draw in southern W.Va, an historic clock in downtown Lexington Ky. restored and Big Stone Gap Va. gets a taste of…
New environmental regs, coal a tourism draw in southern W.Va, an historic clock in downtown Lexington Ky. restored and Big Stone Gap Va. gets a taste of Hollywood.
WVU Professor on EPA Regulations: With the proposed regulations targeting new coal-fired power plants, one West Virginia University law professor is predicting new challenges for the region’s coal industry.
Coal Tours: Coal mine history is providing a tourism boost to southern West Virginia. A tour guide company that specializes in the mine mars has been showing guests through the region for three years now.
Historic Clock: For eight decades, a clock in front of Skuller’s Jewelry Stores on Main St. helped Lexington, Ky., residents measure their day. But, over time, the clock became erratic, until finally its hands stood still. Now, after a facelift and significant repairs, the clock is again ready to keep time.
Sounds of Fall: The first day of fall is upon us, and the season brings visions of the brilliant foliage- but what about the sounds of fall? West Virginia Public Radio’s Jim Lange reflects on the symphony fall brings, both manmade and natural.
Big Stone Gap Movie: Big Stone Gap, Va., is getting the big screen treatment. The governor’s office says a film version is being made of author Adriana Trigiani’s novel of the same name. In 2011 Trigiani spoke with West Virginia Public Radio about her career as an Appalachian writer.
Yes, the cicada announces the season’s change like no other. I wanted to know more about cicadas and their cacophonous songs. I spoke with entomologist Dr. Tracy Leskey.
So, what exactly are cicadas?
Dr. Leskey: Well, you know cicadas are insects that belong to what we call the order Hemiptera which is the order of insects to which the true bugs belong. Not all insects are bugs, but there are a group of insects that are literally referred to by entomologists as bugs and cicadas are one of those.
Are they special in any kind of way?
Oh yeah. Cicadas are really interesting. Cicadas are conspicuously known because of their interesting developmental attributes and one of these, in the case of our annual or dog day cicadas, is their very conspicuous emergence during the later part of the summer.
The cicadas actually have a really interesting life history-sort of how they grow up. In that the juvenile stage of adult cicadas, the nymphs, live in the soil, but what’s interesting is those nymphs that are in the soil, they actually spend two to five years in the soil completing their development. So, you know some of the dog day cicadas that you see emerging literally are the same age of some of our kindergarteners going to school this year.
And how do they make that sound?
Well, that’s the adult stage and so in this case, it’s the males that make the sound. The females do not make those sounds. The males have what we would call almost a pair of built-in drums in their abdomen and we refer to these as tymbals. And these tymbals produce the sound based on this very tiny ribbed membrane that is there on their abdomen and then it is powered by muscle contractions. So, those muscles contract and relax and as they do that, it creates a sound. The other piece that’s interesting is the male’s abdomen is nearly hollow and so this allows the sound to be amplified.
These are males calling to females? Why are they doing this?
So, yeah, the males are doing this literally to find a mate. They are trying to attract females to their location. So, it may sound like a bit of a cacophony to us, but you know it’s sweet music to a female cicada. (laughter)
So, while we hear this…
(Sound: cicada buzzing)
Female cicadas might be hearing this…
(Music: Sinatra/Jobim- Baubles, Bangles and Beads)
Some fans of the stage are already feeling the loss of one of the state's largest theaters. With the loss of Theatre West Virginia, state theater buffs…
Some fans of the stage are already feeling the loss of one of the state’s largest theaters.
With the loss of Theatre West Virginia, state theater buffs are already feeling the pain. A former employee says he’s going to miss what it brought to Southern West Virginia.
Jim Stacy is a Morgantown lawyer, and Beckley native, who spent several years going to shows at Theatre West Virginia.
He even worked on its house staff for a short time. He says upon hearing the news the program is closing its doors, one emotion immediately came to mind.
“It genuinely made me sad. Living there, being a kid who started loving theater early, that was the first place I saw there. It was a very special place to see theater, because of the setting. That beautiful outdoor backdrop. To see that end, takes a little piece of me away, I think,” he said.
Stacy says it brought a great deal to not only fans of theater, but to all southern West Virginians.
“We have to be able to think about what’s going to be able to boost the culture of a state, of the region, of the nation, it’s the arts that always do that,” said David Beach, an English professor at West Virginia University and a director at M.T. Pockets Theatre in Morgantown. It’s a community theater company.
Theatre West Virginia flourished in the Beckley area for more than 50 years.
A documentary look at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival -aka Clifftop – where many of the participants are musicians. Each night at any given moment,there are literally a hundred jam sessions going on. The documentary also explores the evolving concepts behind Old Time. Also featured are interviews and performances of legendary West Virginia fiddler Lester McCumbers.
The West Virginia Small Business Development Center showed a crowd of entrepreneurs and business owners how technology can help tackle small business needs.
In the third of five planned workshops throughout the state, the West Virginia Small Business Development Center walked entrepreneurs through the process of beginning their own business. This workshop focused on the necessity of technology to make it in today’s market. Justin Gaull is the Technology Commercialization manager for the Center.
“An SBDC business coach works to serve as a connector so we help the entrepreneurs in West Virginia find resources that they can use to move the businesses or their ideas forward. We also serve as a coach and help them through the leadership and strategy issues of their business and also on a personal level is business right for me,” Gaull said.
Gaull said begin the tackling the tasks of starting a business. Last week’s session focused on everything from the early stages of development justification for innovation, how to analyze the market for the product and how to get to the level they want to attain. Gaull said the process can look like a mountain to climb at the beginning.
"It sometimes appears daunting to try to get in and try to commercialize some new product or technology and what we try to do is walk them through that visionary process that is sometimes negated in the very beginning," Gaull said.
“It sometimes appears daunting to try to get in and try to commercialize some new product or technology and what we try to do is walk them through that visionary process that is sometimes negated in the very beginning. Someone has a great idea and they bring that prototype into the office and they’re ready to move forward from that point and sometimes that’s not the best thing and sometimes that’s not the best move, sometimes they need to back up and ask those key questions,” Gaull said.
Pryce Haynes of Huntington attended the conference with the idea of using college logos on different kinds of merchandise. He said it definitely seems like a larger undertaking.
“I think right now we’re opening a can of worms if you will, you look at the business model and maybe there are five steps or however many steps there are to it, well each step contains 30 more steps, so on and so forth. So there are a lot of angles and things to consider along each step of the way,” Haynes said.
Tom Minnich is the Director of Special Projects and Business Development with the Robert C. Byrd Institute in Huntington. RCBI is a non-profit training service that provides small businesses access to what they need to continue developing their business. The institute serves as co-sponsor of the workshops. He says the workshops are essential because many people that come to them with ideas aren’t prepared.
“There is people out there that did not do their homework and did not do their searches, they have an idea, but the sister product is already out there on the street and then some people come in with a real realistic idea, but they don’t know how to get to the next level with it, it’s still in their head and not reality,” Minnich said.
Previous workshops were held in Bridgeport and Charleston and the next two will be held in the eastern panhandle and once again in Bridgeport.
