Chris Schulz, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Winter Storm Highlights Housing Issues In Morgantown

Meteorologists are predicting anywhere from one to seven inches of snow and wintry mix across the state tonight and into Saturday. The storm is a stark reminder of the dangers unhoused West Virginians face even as the region inches into Spring.

Community members in Morgantown have been gathering coats, sleeping bags and heaters for those who will be on the streets during the big storm.

Folks can get out of the cold and stay in the city’s warming shelter. But with space for just 28 people, housing advocates like Morgantown city council member Brian Butcher say it’s not enough to meet the community’s needs during this type of weather event.

“It’s heartwarming, and it’s amazing the level of support that people can get throughout our community,” Butcher said. “That level of support should not be required. In my opinion, we should have a structure upon which we could get people in housing during the winter, you know, even just a temporary shelter.”

Butcher spoke as part of a forum on warming shelters and winter resources hosted by the League of Women Voters of Morgantown and Monongalia County Thursday night, during which advocates discussed needed improvements in the city and state’s response to housing issues.

Executive director of Milan Puskar Health Right Laura Jones said that a single shelter is inadequate. Some people may not want to use a particular shelter for a variety of reasons.

“Those folks are always out there, there are always people that have difficulty with the rules or with the structure of the shelter,” Jones said. “It would be even better if we had an alternate space for people who don’t feel comfortable going to the current shelter.”

Temperatures are expected to drop into the 20s Friday night and continue to drop into the low teens Sunday morning.

Lawsuit Filed Against Suddenlink One Month After State Fines

A class-action lawsuit was filed Monday against cable provider Suddenlink for failing to provide reliable cable TV and internet service.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of West Virginia on behalf of a St. Albans resident, as well as all West Virginia Suddenlink customers from 2016 to the present day.

The suit names Suddenlink’s parent company, Altice, as a plaintiff in the case and argues that Altice’s cost-cutting practices have contributed to a decline in service.

On February 9, the company was fined more than $2 million dollars by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia for failing to provide reliable service. The Commission also ordered Suddenlink to locate a call center in West Virginia, amongst other requirements aimed at improving customer service.

The penalties stemmed from an investigation into what the Commission called, “a staggering number of quality of service complaints.” These included delays in service restoration and billing errors. The investigation found that the company had ignored thousands of customer complaints while intentionally reducing its maintenance work and budget.

The lawsuit makes repeated reference to PSC’s findings. The order specified Suddenlink’s cable services, but the suit argues to extend the order’s provisions for service improvements to Suddenlink’s internet and phone services as well.

The filing further accuses Suddenlink and its parent companies of binding customers by an unsigned agreement that the plaintiff argues is unenforceable in West Virginia.

The plaintiff is seeking an injunction to stop Suddenlink from doing several things, including hiring technicians from parent company Altice, routing customer calls out of the state, and utilizing outdated equipment.

Unique Partnership Brings Shakespeare Into W.Va. Homes

With theaters still closed last spring, West Virginia Public Broadcasting collaborated with West Virginia University’s School of Theater & Dance to create an opportunity for their students by filming a production of King Lear.

The film will be broadcast on WVPB channels starting March 13. To find the WVPB channel near you, visit wvpublic.org

Chris Schulz spoke with director Jerry McGonigal about the unique production process.

Schulz: Professor Jerry McGonigal, thank you so much for joining me today. Why King Lear of all the different plays that you could have put on?

Mcgonigle: It was supposed to be originally a part of our season. You know, we do five or six shows every year. Those are chosen for a lot of different reasons, which students we have, and what are the educational needs.

It was pithy, challenging, and it also created an opportunity for us to bring in a guest artist. So quite often, we like to bring in a professional actor to work alongside. Well, then COVID came, and it was pretty clear, it wasn’t going to be good in terms of public performance.

Schulz: You chose to do a full film production and treat this like a movie. What went into that decision?

Mcgonigle: I think even my colleagues would agree with me that I complicate things a lot, because I always feel like it’s the best experience for the students. And everybody around the country was facing the same thing. How do we give them a production experience, when we can’t even have an audience come in the theater? So I don’t really know why, except that ambition and the rise to a challenge. I don’t know, I thought it would be a lot more fun.

And over the last probably eight to 10 years, I’ve incorporated a lot more acting for the camera in our training for young actors. We also really steeped them in Shakespeare. Mainly because if you can handle the language of Shakespeare, you can handle almost anything. So I thought, ”My God, this is an opportunity to do both.” To bring all of the training from the camera class, and the Shakespeare class into one room.

Before you know it, I’m standing in a room with all the WNPB crew and cameras everywhere and microphones and lights, and the students are right in the middle of that doing Shakespeare in front of a camera. I mean, I don’t think it could be cooler than that. I just thought it was an incredible experience for them.

And these guys I’m working with, Larry and Aaron and Chuck and the gang. They’re just amazing. I trusted them every single bit of the way. And actually, that was one of the other things in terms of what happened in the room that was pretty special, too. John and Jason, the camera people, were right there with students, showing them how things worked. And the students were like, enthralled by it. And they were so patient. It was the perfect relationship of professionals and students. And I hope we get to do it again.

Schulz: What can you tell us about the production? I mean, how was it you know, with COVID restrictions, and then also the added requirements of filming?

Mcgonigle: It was crazy. We followed all of the guidelines that were in place for the Screen Actors Guild.

I never saw the actors’ faces perform the piece until the camera was rolling. We rehearsed for about four weeks in the fall on Zoom. And then we did five weeks of rehearsal to prepare for shooting where I staged it and had to figure out, Larry and I, the director of photography, consulting on how to shoot it, and how do I block it? But we did all that in masks.

The actors get on stage, we’re in the middle of a TV studio kind of feel. And then the assistant director says, “Okay, masks off.” Literally, I’m watching the monitor while they’re acting and for the first time I’m saying, “Oh, that’s the facial expression on their face while they’re acting.” I haven’t been able to see that.

There were probably 70 people interacting in and out of the room over the course of a week of shooting, including actors, technicians. We did not have one infection. We did not have one person.

Schulz: It’s been a year since you went through all that and all the filming. How are you feeling to see it next week on the screen?

Mcgonigle: I’m really excited. The post production period has been a real challenge too, composing music and sound effects. But when you put those finishing touches on and then there’s music, and then there’s sound effects. And you suddenly go, “Oh my God, this just came to life.” It’s really exciting.

It’s amazing that we made it to the end. We frankly thought that at any point, we could be deep into act five, and something could happen and we’d have to shut down and never get to finish it. So when we made it to the finish line, I was like “Oh my, this is amazing.”

So now to see it all put together is…There’s a rush that you get as a director when the audience comes at opening night, it’s mixed with incredible nerves. I get that rush when I see what we’ve cut together. And to see these some young actors put together some pretty fine performances. I’m proud of them.

Schulz: What do you think the audience is going to get from seeing this production and the story of King Lear?

McGonigle: Yeah, it’s about leadership. It’s about leadership that falls apart. It seemed kind of appropriate for today. It’s very much about the responsibility of leadership, it’s about the responsibility of passing on power, and giving up power, which is another theme in our world today.

But in some ways, it’s like a family drama. And we’re doing it in the midst of a pandemic, you know, that we’d never seen before, and it was kind of surreal. This king is going mad and we’re all struggling to breathe with our masks on while we’re making it. It just seemed kind of timely and appropriate.

One of the parts of this experience that I think will become even more important once this airs on TV: this is now accessible to students throughout West Virginia.

This is now something that was made here. I think it’s really good for West Virginia to see ourselves not just as a coal mining state or beautiful mountain state, but that we are also a state full of artists and that we can make something like this.

If I do a play at the Creative Arts Center, a little over 1,000 people got to see that play. This is limitless. We’re creating all kinds of resources for teachers. So there’s an educational component.

I’m just really excited about the idea, it really makes me happy inside to think about students in a classroom watching this or sitting at home with their parents, or even parents in the southern part of the state getting to see this. And I think it’s really good for our state to know that we can do this kind of thing.

West Virginians Eye Local Bridges After Pittsburgh Collapse

Congress and President Joe Biden have committed to spending big dollars on roads and bridges. However, Biden’s recent visit to Pittsburgh to discuss the infrastructure program was punctuated by the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge. Since then, residents of West Virginia have been spurred to ask questions about their own bridges.

A recent analysis of National Bridge Inventory data shows that 7 percent of all bridges in the U.S. received a poor rating. West Virginia has the highest rate in the country, with more than 20 percent of the state’s bridges considered structurally deficient or in poor condition.

On January 28, the day theFern Hollow Bridge collapsed, Morgantown resident Stephanie Shepard began researching the conditions of bridges in her area.

“I’m from this area originally, I’ve been over that bridge many times. So I started to wonder if there were other bridges that were at risk in the area, or if that was the only one,” Shepard said.

Like a lot of people looking for answers in the aftermath of the collapse, Shepard heard that the Fern Hollow Bridge had been rated poor on the NBI, and she quickly searched the database for poor bridges in Monongalia County.

The database, compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, has information on all bridges and tunnels in the United States. During her research, Shepard discovered it had been created largely as a response to the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, W. Va. in 1967, a key event in the Mothman legend.

Shepard found that more than one out of every six bridges in Monongalia County were rated poor, like the bridge that had collapsed in Pittsburgh.

Shepard made a map of all the bridges’ locations, and posted it to a Morgantown community page on Facebook.

“I wanted that knowledge to be available to people,” Shepard said.

A screenshot of the interactive map of bridges rated “poor” in Monongalia County created by Stephanie Shepard.

Shepard and others like her across the country have cause for concern, and have started asking questions about the nation’s infrastructure.

The West Virginia Department of Transportation did not respond to requests for comment, but in just the last few months, politicians have started answering.

Governor Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity program has identified more than 150 bridges it will be working on with the program’s projected $2.7 billion. The state is also expected to receive over $500 million for bridge repairs alone from the federal infrastructure bill over the next five years.

These planned expenditures come at a time when more attention is being placed on the nation’s aging infrastructure.

“It is not uncommon to have such distress in these bridges, especially with those bridges that have been in service 50 years plus,” said Hota GangaRao, Ph.D. He is the director of the Construction Facilities Center at West Virginia University, and has been studying and helping to build bridges in the state since 1968, almost as long as the NBI has existed.

“Believe it or not, we have about 50 percent of our bridges that have a service life of 50 years plus in the country today. So we have a major issue that needs addressing,” GangaRao said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the causes of January’s collapse, but structural failure due to faulty bridge parts is rare in the United States. More commonly, bridges fail due to external factors such as flooding, overloading, or collisions by boats.

So while concern is warranted, and much work is needed, GangaRao says the bridges Shepard and others have identified are stable.

“Poor rating does not mean that it will collapse tomorrow or tonight, ” he said.

Age is a major factor, but more than anything is the quality of the bridge’s deck. That’s the surface of the bridge, made of concrete or asphalt, that you walk and drive over. If the deck is in good condition, GangaRao says it will protect the larger structure from the corrosive effects of road salts and other chemicals.

GangaRao points out that the Fern Hollow Bridge’s decking was almost 10 years past its planned service period.

For community members like Shepard interested in taking action to protect and improve local bridges, GangaRao suggests reporting any visible issues to the appropriate authorities.

“I’m not at all saying one should take anything into their hands. Alerting the appropriate authorities will help a great deal,” he said.

Another thing he recommends is advocating for local bridges to be washed regularly.

But that still leaves questions for Shepard.

“I have to wonder why they’re still in poor condition, and why they haven’t been repaired,” Shepard said.

One of West Virginia’s most enduring symbols is a bridge: the New River Gorge Bridge. And while that great arch might get most of the world’s attention, the more than 7,000 other bridges in the state need some attention as well.

Morgantown Project Promotes Listening To Heal Racial Divides

Two activists in Morgantown are organizing a listening project they hope leads to greater racial understanding in the community.

Chris Schulz spoke with Susan Eason and Eve Faulkes about listening with intent, and finding common ground.

Schulz: Susan and Eve, thank you so much for joining me today. I’d first like to start out by asking you if you could explain to us what exactly the Listening for Racial Understanding Project is. Susan, why don’t we start with you?

Eason: Okay, sure. We’re trying to bring together people of different races to have conversations, really to increase greater understanding and empathy towards each other. Because we believe that that’s what’s really going to help improve the racial climate within our community and our country.

Schulz: Eve, do you want to take a pass?

Faulkes: I’ll add to that. Maybe this is a time to talk about the process? A little bit?

Schulz: Yes, absolutely.

Faulkes: We’re using an approach called active listening, where you’re not sitting there imagining what you’re going to say next, when someone’s talking to you. Your job is to listen to them so intently that you can then repeat verbatim back to them, as much as possible, what you just heard. And then you ask them if that’s what it was that you heard correctly. And they can either say yes, or add to it or. And that tends to be, you would not believe we’re sitting there watching someone’s face who’s being heard, when that reflection is coming back to them. They’re laughing, they’re nodding. That’s the difference between a regular conversation and active listening. And then that other person responds to the same prompt. And eventually they go off track. But by that time, they’re very comfortable talking to one another.

Schulz: What was your inspiration for wanting to pursue this?

Eason: Well, I would say my inspiration really came out of the summer of 2020, after the death of George Floyd. Just kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back in racial issues and racial tensions in our country. And, like Eve, I just felt like we’ve got to do something to bring people together. And I really felt like I needed to be a part of a solution. And one of the things that I wanted to do was give people the opportunity to hear one another, learn from one another, understand each other.

Schulz: Yeah, Eve?

Faulkes: I probably came at it from having grown up in an all white town in the middle of West Virginia, like so many West Virginians have. I’ve taught, for the last 10 years, a design for social impact class at WVU. And so we’ve been exploring that. And I’ve long since been exposed to a lot of people of color and every other kind of way we divide each other up because of students at WVU. And we’ve worked on this, and this, it really did seem like we have to do all we can to make people hear one another. Designers are communicators. And we’ve learned a long time ago that you can put the message out there, but if you haven’t figured out the way for someone to receive it and hear it, it’s a lost chance, lost opportunity. And so, being able to look at the whole picture, the whole context, see what people’s barriers are to hearing, and try to find a way around those is part of the process.

Schulz: So, Susan, if you can tell me what do you hope for the people listening to get from what they hear?

Eason: Well, I think our hope is that people will hear things that they haven’t ever heard before. That by hearing two people talking to each other honestly and openly, and reflecting on experiences: One, they might hear something about another culture that they had never heard before. But the other really neat thing that they might hear is that they’re very similar. Because we see, when two people talk together of different races, that many times they have a lot of experiences that are profoundly the same, and generate the same type of experiences, and feelings and emotions. So I think people observing that can begin to connect with those people themselves and see, “Wow, I too have something in common with this conversation.”

Schulz: Eve, what do you hope listeners will get from this experience?

Faulkes: Courage to do the same. You do see the common ground more than anything. In fact, there’s no group, there’s no pairing we’ve had yet that did not find common ground, something that they felt just like and you could, you could feel that. And Susan and I are sitting there laughing with them and crying with them. Trying not to make any noise as we do it. But it really is, it’s a beautiful thing.

Schulz: When do you hope to start releasing these to the public?

Eason: I would say, kind of our timeline is to complete these recordings, within the next three weeks, develop the montage over another month, have artists respond in April, to these conversations as well. And then maybe in June, have an art opening, where we invite people to come and see the art pieces. We hope to have a QR code, where you can really zoom in on the conversations that were held that are depicting the art there. And then also invite some of the people who experienced these conversations to come and talk about what it was like to be a part of the experience.

Faulkes: And so far, 21 of the 22 people want to be sharing that on stage or wherever they can.

For those interested in participating in the project as listeners or as artists, you can contact Eve Faulkes at faulkeseve@gmail.com and Susan Eason at susanceason@gmail.com

Morgantown Club Brings Olympic Sport to W.Va.

Curling is one of those sports you only really hear about every four years when the Olympics come around.

Four years ago, Morgantown Curling Club president Jeff Ryan was swept away watching the USA men’s team win gold in Pyeongchang, and he knew he wanted to try the sport for himself.

“They’re pushing a rock, about 150 feet down the ice, there’s these crazy sweepers that are somehow helping that rock get to where it needs to be, there’s a lot of strategy to the game. It’s kind of like 3D chess,” Ryan said.

But after driving three hours round-trip to play for 90 minutes in Pittsburgh, Ryan decided to start a club closer to home. He met up with other local curling enthusiasts, set up a GoFundMe, and before he knew it, Ryan had created The Morgantown Curling Club. It is the first and only curling club in the state.

“I’m in a rental agreement with USA curling. They gave us three sheets of stones – a sheet is the lane in curling ,” Ryan said. “So it was 48 curling stones.”

The stones – which are made of granite from a select few islands in Scotland where the sport originated – weigh over 40 pounds. Ryan and a friend drove all the way to Wisconsin to pick up a literal ton of stones to make play in Morgantown a reality.

Part of the agreement with USA Curling is to hold ‘Learn to Curl’ sessions to get the word out about the sport and to teach potential new members the way of the stone.

At a recent event at the Morgantown Ice Arena, the Morgantown Curling Club took to the ice just after 9 p.m.

Club members had no time to waste in transforming the rink from a skating surface to curling sheets. While curling doesn’t require its players to wear skates, it does require a special preparation of the ice, and time is always a factor.

“You’re watching us run around crazily, because there are X number of jobs, once the zamboni dry-cuts the ice,” Heather Barclay said.

Heather and her husband Kevin started curling when they lived in Pittsburgh, and were still making the drive to play there before they became founding members of the Morgantown club.

Preparations include melting starting blocks into the ice – called hacks – chilling the granite and measuring out the playing field.

“A couple of the other men draw the house because the house is a particular size,” Barclay said.

The house is the target curlers aim for, and the Morgantown curlers draw theirs by hand using permanent markers and a homemade, wooden guide.

Unlike the lines for hockey, the curling lines are temporary. The Morgantown Curling Club has to share the ice with hockey teams and skaters, and are lucky if they can get eight sessions – each lasting two to three hours at most – in one year.

Finally, a gravity-fed sprinkler is used to dapple water across the three sheets quickly taking shape on the rink.

Those pebbles act like ball bearings that allow the game’s granite stones to glide across the ice. That’s where the sport’s most iconic piece of equipment – the broom – comes into play.

“You sweep to melt the ice,” Barclay said.

As the group prepared the ice, 24 or so participants for the club’s ‘Learn to Curl’ session waited patiently. Two of those newcomers were Jason and Christine Gossett

“Yeah, this has been something we’ve wanted to do for several years. We’ve watched curling on the Olympics for years. We’re finally excited to get a chance to actually do this tonight,” Jason Gossett said. Christine – whose brother curls in Wisconsin – said they were grateful to finally live in a town that had access to the sport.

Club members rush through all that setup to ensure that participants like the Gossetts have as much time as possible to learn and hopefully enjoy the sport before they have to leave the ice rink at f 11:15 p.m. Every moment preparing the ice is a moment someone’s not curling.

With the 2022 Olympics games underway in Beijing, demand for curling has increased across the country, and as the only club in the state, Morgantown is no exception.

“I wanted to dedicate this year to teaching people and now that we’ve got some folks that are excited about it and want to come back, hopefully we’ll have more just scrimmaging dates next season,” Ryan said.

For now, West Virginia’s pioneering curlers are just happy with the time they can get on the ice, and their biggest hope for next year is simple: more time.