Author: Liz McCormick

Liz is WVPB's Webmaster/Digital Coordinator and Eastern Panhandle Bureau Chief, based in Shepherdstown, WV on Shepherd University's campus. Liz is a native of Charleston, West Virginia. She received a M.A. in Strategic Communication from American University in 2022 and a B.A. in Communication and New Media from Shepherd in 2014. Prior to her role as webmaster, Liz was WVPB's Eastern Panhandle reporter from 2014-2022, the House of Delegates reporter on "The Legislature Today" from 2015-2017, and she covered K-12/higher education from 2020-2022. Liz has also worked as a technical assistant and associate producer on "The Legislature Today."

Q&A With Clawhammer Banjo Player, Chelsea McBee

For many West Virginians, the banjo represents a sense of home. That’s certainly the case for Shepherdstown-based musician, Chelsea McBee. The 29-year-old banjo player is a regular on the West Virginia music scene now, but that wasn’t always her plan.

McBee grew up in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. She graduated from Shepherd University with a degree in Photography, and she was sure she wanted to be a photographer. But during her last year at Shepherd, she discovered a love for the banjo. She even learned a unique playing style called clawhammer.

Q&A

How did your upbringing inspire your musicianship?

“I didn’t actually start playing the banjo until my senior year of college, here at Shepherd, but as soon as I started learning those old time tunes, it really, it’s all so connected, that even having grown up in West Virginia, and not necessarily played the instrument growing up, it just ties everything together, all the geography, and the history, and then the music.”

Did you ever meet people who were surprised to see a female banjo player?

“The most common reaction that I get is people are excited that I’m a woman playing this instrument, and…they can get…where once they see that, they get past, like, oh it’s not just a singer, and isn’t it so cute that she plays banjo, like, oh, I can really sit down and play a tune, and that’s…it’s good. I have a lot of young girls that come up and say they want to play, they want to perform, and I’m just like, yeah, do that, get started, play whatever you want!”

What is the clawhammer style?

“I’d say that the most recognizable style of banjo playing is the three finger picking style that is used in Bluegrass music traditionally, and the clawhammer style is more of a rhythm keeping kind of strum, and the way that you hold your hand, it kind of looks like a claw on a hammer, which is where the name comes from. So your fingers are curled up in a claw, and they hit the four main strings, and then your thumb is used to hit the top string as a drone.”

Why did you pursue the banjo?

“When I first learned a West Virginia old time tune, from a friend, he grew up in Romney, West Virginia, and played old time banjo, and he showed me my first couple tunes, and it is really cool, and I hadn’t heard stuff like that before necessarily, and it just really, really spoke to me. The music that I was listening to at the time, there was a little bit of banjo in there, but I wanted to see what else I could do with it, so really once I got started, then the process of getting to know the instrument is really what kept me intrigued and really what made me pursue playing and what else I could do with it, and that led into songwriting, and here we are today.”

Colin McQuire of the Fredrick News Post described your voice as if “Nora Jones and Dolly Parton could have a daughter and that daughter just happened to grow up in West Virginia,” does this quote effectively represent your style, and are these women musical influences for you?

“I was thrilled when I read that quote, because it’s…their two voices are, and their presence in the music scene are ones that I look up too, certainly, and are inspirational. I mean, they’re both women that have done a lot of stuff for themselves, and…so I was honored that he would use that comparison, and I think it does fit. I’ve had a couple different people…I’ve used that quote on the website and on a couple posters when I’m travelling out of the area to give people some sort of idea, and I’ve had a couple people come in because of that quote, and say, that was really intriguing. We wanted to know what that, and he’s absolutely right! So that was great. I thank him very much for that.”

How do you see yourself evolving in the future, and has your path changed since you started your musical career?

“I think the fact that I see it at all as a musical career now, has changed, and the more and more that I play, and the more that I’m exposed too, industry-wise, the more I want to do. So that feels really good to feel inspired to continue in one direction instead of wanting to experience all the things that I was experiencing before, you know, trying to take photographs, and play music, and you know, everything else that I get excited about. So the fact that I can see that as a pretty clear path of music career, is certainly something that’s changed. And as far as evolution, I hope that it continues to grow and to evolve, and you know, I can tell a big difference in my playing and singing and writing now, you know, has changed so much since I started, for the better. I hope it keeps growing and keeps getting better.”

Chelsea McBee performs around the region – solo, and with her group, the Random Assortment, and she often plays with West Virginia’s Christian Lopez Band. On the first Thursday of every month, Chelsea hosts a First Thursday Artist Series at the Opera House in Shepherdstown.

Gov. Tomblin Appoints New Managers in Parks and DNR

Governor Earl Ray Tomblin named new heads for two sections of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. Sam England will be the new chief of the Parks and Recreation section of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, and Jerry Jenkins is the chief of the Law Enforcement section.

A news release from the Governor’s office says each has more than 30 years of public service. Commerce Secretary, Keith Burdette thinks that both men have the talent, skills, and motivation to move the Division of Natural Resources to the next level.

England has a wildlife biology degree and has worked in various parks around the state including North Bend and Stonewall Jackson. Jenkins has a forestry degree and has served as a natural resources police officer.

England and Jenkins fill the positions left by the recent retirements of State Parks Chief Ken Caplinger and Col. David Murphy.

Jenkins was sworn in yesterday, and England will assume his post Friday, July 25th.

Some Say West Virginia Can Survive the New EPA Regulations

West Virginia can actually thrive under new U.S. Environmental Protection Regulations that aim to reduce greenhouse gasses, according to three panelists participating in a public forum last week in Shepherdstown.

West Virginia must cut back its carbon emission rate by 20 percent by the year 2030 under the EPA regulations. The panelists leading the forum, entitled EPA Carbon Rules: How Can West Virginia Lead? voiced confidence that the state can meet that goal and create jobs as well. The West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club organized the event. Jefferson County resident Mary Anne Hitt is director of the organization’s Beyond Coal Campaign

“There is a lot of misinformation out there about this rule, and what it requires of coal or gas or energy efficiency,” Hitt noted, “and the fact of the matter is, here in West Virginia, we can meet the standard through energy efficiency, through wind and solar. Through clean energy that’s going to provide a lot of new jobs in the state, and it’s a really exciting opportunity, and we all know that we’re struggling with low employment here in West Virginia, and we need more economic opportunity, and this is a great way to bring it to the state.”

Aside from Hitt, two other panelists seemed to get the most reaction from the audience. One was David Levine who is a leader in the West Virginia solar industry. Levine is founder and CEO of the company Geosteller Solar which is based in Martinsburg.

“This regulation is not job killing regulation,” said Levine, “It really is going to spur a whole new energy economy, which is really good for consumers, and that’s actually going to lower their utility bills, and it’s going to spur jobs, because solar creates many more jobs per Megawatt than big centralized nuclear power plants or coal plants, or natural gas power plants.”

Levine says that the installation process is frighteningly simple.

“Our business is solar energy marketplace, and the idea is we match people who want to go solar with the right solutions. We tell you exactly how much energy you can produce on your particular rooftop, and then the value of that energy based on the energy you’ll displace. So if I used to have a monthly energy bill of $120 a month, it says your new total electricity cost with your solar, plus what you’ll still paying your utility company for a reduced usage might be down to $80 a month, and that’s what we compare.”

Levine says once Geostellar Solar does a site assessment of your home, it takes a licensed contractor about a day to install the panels. But if it’s so easy, why aren’t more people taking advantage of it?

“The reason people aren’t going solar today is because they don’t have role models, where it’s still so sparse, there’s not a sense of oh, it’s common. It’s hard to say when the tipping point is going to be, it’s like the movement from the horseless carriage to the automobile. You know, cars were foreign, it was like, how can this possibly move without this horse. It’s going to be the same thing at some point. People aren’t going to talk about solar energy, it’s just going to be energy.”

Marketing Consultant and Jefferson County resident Sean O’Leary, says the numbers involving jobs in coal just don’t add up.

“From the time West Virginia hit its peak in employment in 1940 with about 130,000 jobs, we have dropped down to only about 19,000 jobs now,” explained O’Leary, “but in the meantime, the extraction of coal has actually increased. The bottom line is that employment in the coal industry has not ever, at least since 1929, been driven by the volume of coal that’s being extracted, and so consequently when politicians say that by defending the industry and increasing the…helping to increase the use of coal, they’re defending West Virginia jobs, it simply isn’t true.”

The conversation about how the new EPA regulations will impact the country will continue at a public hearing in Washington DC on July 29^th. The Sierra Club is sponsoring a bus to take Eastern Panhandle residents who are interested in attending.

NASA Teacher's Workshop Brings Robotics and the Universe into W.Va. Classrooms

Local elementary and middle school teachers in and around the Martinsburg area attended a NASA Teachers Workshop, Wednesday, hosted by STARBASE Martinsburg. Going on its twelfth school year, STARBASE has hosted these workshops each summer to better prepare educators in the ever-evolving field of science and math. But the question is, with all the demands teachers face during the school year, can they effectively take the time for these new resources in their own classrooms?

Pam Casto, a NASA certified trainer, led STARBASE’s NASA Teachers Workshop in Martinsburg. She taught two lessons titled, “WeDo Robotics!” and “Afterschool Universe,” aiming to help guide teacher’s keep their students engaged in the classroom as well as teach new and effective approaches to science and math, and Casto assures that incorporating these new lessons into teachers’ already busy schedules will be easy and fun.

“So far all the teachers that I’ve encountered in my workshops are very enthusiastic about learning new things to take back to their classroom,” said Casto, “but they do have problems, they often have budgetary problems, and so NASA and West Virginia has over a million dollars’ worth of equipment we will loan them for free, and we will show them how to use the equipment in their classrooms, and then they can borrow it from us for free to use in their classrooms.”

For third grade teacher, Heather McCain at Tomahawk Intermediate, her biggest concern is getting her hands on the equipment.

“My concern is when can we sign up, and how long will it take to get the materials, and things like that,” said McCain, “so as long as I have that, as far as putting it into my curriculum, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

Teachers work together to build and program their group’s robot.

To acquire the equipment, all a teacher has to do is attend one of NASA’s teachers workshops to learn how to effectively use the equipment and care for it. Matthew Collier, the head of the science department at Hedgesville Middle School says, it’s worth it.

“As a learner when I was growing up, I learned a lot better hands on and it made the lessons stick,” Collier noted, “so I think it’s actually worth the time, the extra planning, and the travel to have these resources, because it really drives a lesson home.”

Angela Pittenger, a second grade teacher at Berkeley Heights Elementary School, thinks it’s important to change up the old and make way for the new, even if old ways may be stubborn to leave.

“To do this,” Pittenger began, “one of the things that you do, is you kind of modify things to go around it, so if we’re doing something with robotics, maybe we bring in that with literacy as well, where we do something to do with robots, and things like that, and with common core, and it’s a matter of just modifying things as you go, and trying it out.”

Pam Casto, a NASA certified trainer, teaches lessons in improving the science and math curriculum for elementary and middle school teachers.

In the morning lesson, “WeDo Robotics,” the teachers learned to build, program, and engineer robots from lego kits, which could be used to teach concepts in math, social studies, and science. In the afternoon, the teachers focused on an activity kit titled, “Afterschool Universe,” which holds twelve activities that focus on looking at the universe beyond our solar system.

“Today in Afterschool Universe, they will be going outside, and they will reenact the lifecycle of a star, the birth of a star, how it forms, as they wander around on the playground, and if they come in contact with somebody, gravity attracts,” explained Casto, “So they will go back to their classroom to do these activities, and the types of activities we do really fulfill the new science standards and the next generation way of teaching science and math.”

The small group of teachers left the workshop this week feeling positive about the changes they’ll now be able to implement in their own lesson plans.

Mon Power, Potomac Edison Work to Restore Electricity

Mon Power, a FirstEnergy Corporation utility, continues to try to restore power to customers in West Virginia following the summer storm that downed trees and wires in the region beginning last night.

Mon Power spokesmen, Todd Meyers says about 71,000 West Virginia customers lost power during the storm. Meyers says as of 3:00 this afternoon only 24,000 are still without power.

The company says customers lost power as the summer storm downed trees and wires. Meyers says restoring service to all Mon Power customers is expected to take several days. He expects 95% should have power by Friday night.

Mon Power serves much of north central West Virginia, and of those areas, the hardest hit included Parkersburg, Clarksburg-Bridgeport, and Lewis and Preston counties.

Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for Potomac Edison, which is a sister company to Mon Power covering Berkeley, Morgan and Jefferson counties says just over four thousand in those counties are still without power, and he does not expect for those counties to be fully restored until Saturday.

Surgeoner says Hedgesville, Martinsburg and Berkeley Springs were hit the hardest by the storm.

The Infusing Technology Conference Leads Teachers On a Road Toward the Future

Encouraging educators from across the state to take hold of new teaching and new learning opportunities is the focus of a three-day conference hosted by the West Virginia Center for Professional Development. It’s called Infusing Technology, and its overall theme is for educators to learn how to effectively teach in a digital age.

The Infusing Technology Conference welcomed approximately 100 educators from across West Virginia. The event will host more than 40 sessions during the three-day conference to help teachers bring technology into all aspects of their teaching. That includes classroom management, lesson planning, and project-based learning. Keeping students engaged during this technological boom and making the criteria personalized for them is the overall goal. Michelle Tharp, the Coordinator for Technology Integration at the West Virginia Center for Professional Development says teachers have to keep up with their students.

“So what we’ve seen is that our students aren’t engaged with worksheets anymore.” said Tharp, “They don’t want to be a part of a flat piece of paper. You know, instead of doing a book report on a piece of paper that only their teacher may see or maybe their parent may see, they can do, you know, a book report, and have it to be oral and have it to be videoed and then on YouTube, and the whole world could see. So it’s much more engaging, they want to engage in that digital, global world, and we have to be a part of that to inspire them.”

Michelle Tharp, the Coordinator for Technology Integration at West Virginia Center for Professional Development speaks on some of her favorite apps and programs.

This three-day training will focus specifically on a variety of iPad apps and resources that have been used effectively by other educators in their classrooms. Instruction will also introduce the web-based equivalent for those apps, so that teachers relying on computers rather than iPads may still use the resources. But iPads are heavily encouraged.

“For me with iPad, tablet technology, it’s accessibility. So when we talk about a mobile tablet technology, that student has access to all the resources that are available. I mean, that, to me is just amazing, and then, before our students come to us, as a young toddler, their whole entire learning process is through exploring their environment, and then we ask them, this is the only time you learn, and then they’re done, and so what we’re saying, no, we want you to continue that lifelong journey and be inspired to want to learn more, and by giving them that mobile technology, they can access whatever they want at home.”

Linda Mundy, a 5^th grade teacher at Cross Lanes Elementary School in Kanawha County will be entering her 41^st year teaching. She is very eager for the technological advance and push for iPads in classrooms. She notes that during this past year she had ten iPads in her classroom.

“It’s a time when we can be exposed to a lot of different apps and strategies,” Mundy said, “to hone or broaden our horizons, and ways to reach out and motivate our students, and a way to see the bigger picture in all of this, cause it is a digital world, and this is the way the children see things and a way to reach these children. Not a paper, pencil world anymore.”

Educators learn of ways to use their iPads effectively in the classroom at the Infusing Technology Conference in Charleston.

Kanawha County is said to be providing iPads for all middle and high school students during the upcoming year, and as a result, teachers and administrators are seeking more training to fully utilize these technologies.

This year’s Infusing Technology Conference will conclude on Thursday, June 26th.