Composer and Huntington native Nate May recently finished production on an original two-person music-drama, called Dust in the Bottomland.
When he began studying music at the University of Michigan Nate May decided to write an opera about some of the issues facing Appalachians.
His friend and fellow student at the University, Andrew Munn, collaborated with him to create Dust in the Bottomland, which they performed last year in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New York City. The piece uses only one instrument and one vocalist. May plays piano, and Munn sings bass.
“Some people ask, ’Where’s the Appalachian influence in the music?’ And I say, ‘Well, all of it. It’s me, who’s writing it and I grew up in Appalachia,’” said May.
Dust in the Bottomland is about a young man who grew up in West Virginia but moved away. Since he’s been gone, his parents and sister have been displaced from their home, due to mountaintop removal mining. They still live in West Virginia, though they now live down in the valley.
The main character is returning home after 10 years because his sister has overdosed on pain pills. During his return home, the protagonist also visits the site of his family’s home and sees the changes that mining has done to that landscape.
“I think the story hit home to a lot of people because a lot of people, even not from the area, know people affected by addiction,” said May. “The other issue that people were affected by was homecoming. And going away and coming back.”
Credit Nate May
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Album cover for Dust in the Bottomland. Shows Bev’s Flower Store in Oceana, West Virginia.
Nate May and Andrew Munn are now talking about composing a chamber ensemble version of Dust in the Bottomland, which will include more instruments.
Credit Abigail O’Bryan
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Andrew and Nate, during a break from rehearsing at Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan.
We often hear about urban cities, like Detroit, that are dealing with abandoned, dilapidated buildings. But some communities in West Virginia are struggling with neighborhood blight too.
The WV Hub is working with partners across West Virginia to plan a three day event in Huntington this October. The summit will help people across West Virginia who are working to fix blighted, abandoned and dilapidated properties. Civic groups in Huntington have been collaborating on this type of work and have made great strides recently.
And in Charleston, two non-profits are working to rebuild and remove dilapidated homes in their neighborhood, known as the West Side Flats.
Credit Roxy Todd
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This building was once Dr. Hopson’s office
At the heart of the West Side Flats neighborhood is Mary C. Snow elementary school. This neighborhood has the second highest percentage of African American residents in West Virginia.
The school itself is named in honor of West Virginia’s first female African American principal of an integrated school. Snow was not only an educator- she was also known for her civic engagement in this neighborhood. And for most community organizers here, like Reverend Matthew J. Watts, the memory of the real Mary C. Snow is a reminder of what individuals can do to help revive the West Side.
“Some people just stay here, they want to see it turn around again, and we believe that it can. Despite the vacant houses, there’s still 4,000 reasons on the broader West Side, those are the kids. That is why we should fight. They deserve a chance to live a safe, wholesome, healthy place that inspires them,” says Watts.
Watts is the CEO of a non-profit called HOPE Community Development Corporation. He says the dilapidation of buildings reduces home values and can become a magnet for crime.
Credit PBS NewsHour/Sam Weber
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Roxy Todd speaking with Reverend Watts on 2nd Avenue, in front of one of the homes that Bob Hardy and the Charleston Economic Development Corporation built.
“On those four blocks, there are 61 vacant structures—61. And they pose a public health threat in terms of public safety, health, etc. for the children and families. And we believe that it contributes to the overall negative feelings this neighborhood has.”
But as Watts walks along 3rd Avenue and points to homes with fresh flowerbeds out front and houses that are well maintained, he says its clear that not everyone on the West Side has given up hope.
Credit Roxy Todd
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A vacant lot on 3rd Ave. that is being maintained as a green space
Many of the houses here still posses a historic charm from the days when this was an up and coming neighborhood for middle class African American families.
During segregation, this was also the cultural center of activity for the black community in Charleston, including tourists who were not allowed to stay downtown. But now, middle class families have moved away.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Vacant home along 3rd Ave.
In the last year, Reverend Watts and his organization has spent $250,000 to remove asbestos and prepare 12 vacant homes for demolition. The removal of these structures was a partnership between HOPE CDC, the city of Charleston, and the Charleston Urban Renewal Authority.
Bob Hardy has been helping this neighborhood since the 1990’s. Before anyone else had a vision to restore this neighborhood, Hardy was working to rehab dilapidated homes along 2nd Avenue.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Bob Hardy, standing in front of one of the 10 affordable houses that he helped build
Hardy’s father was a shop teacher, and he is a licensed contractor himself. As executive director of the Charleston Economic Community Development Corporation, he has helped build 10 new homes in the West Side flats neighborhood. He’s helped rehab about 50 houses.
Hardy grew up in the West Side Hills, which looks down into this neighborhood. His vision for restoring this area came because he believes it’s like the front yard of the entire West Side. He sees the potential here to develop affordable housing because of the neighborhood’s close proximity to downtown.
The community here has been supporting a large part of these efforts, even though 1 in 3 residents here are living in poverty.
And though he’s been involved in this work for over 20 years, Hardy says he believes the neighborhood is going to turn around and the people here are going to pull themselves out of poverty.
“The race is not given to the swift or to the strong, but to those who endure until the end. My mother gave me that. Never quit.”
Together, Hardy and Watts working to continue to rehab homes here on the West Side. They are each cautiously optimistic that Charleston officials can partner with them more in the future to restore the West Side flats neighborhood.
During the tour of the West Side flats neighborhood, Roxy Todd met up with a few correspondents from the PBS NewsHour who were visiting the Mary C. Snow school. Their story, “Summer slide: the year-round solution”, will air on September 7 on PBS NewsHour Weekend.
Credit PBS NewsHour/Sam Weber
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Reverend Watts speaks with PBS NewsHour correspondent Alison Stewart
It’s Saturday night and the dance floor of the American Heritage Music Hall is crowded with couples swinging, stepping, and shaking to live country and rock ‘n’ roll music.
The music hall is spacious and makes a perfect venue for live music. Its walls are strewn with banjos, guitars, and photographs of early country music stars.
A lot of the folks in attendance are regulars, like Marjorie Hamrick, from White Sulphur Springs. “I’ve been coming to the music hall, probably about 10 years. I love the people, and the dancing, and the music.”
Charlie Massie founded the American Heritage Music Hall back in 1998. “We started, Jeannie Crane and I and Fred Bolt. The three of us started jamming in her family room, my basement, and Fred’s garage. We kept inviting musicians in, and we outgrew our basements and family room,” Charley remembers.
Credit Dan Schultz
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Charlie Massey founded the American Heritage Music Hall along with friends Jeannie Crane and Fred Bolt.
Tonight’s band is Nashville Departure, from up the road in Alderson, West Virginia. At set-break everyone in the venue grabs a seat at a table or files to the back, where a potluck dinner of pastas, pizza, and salad is served.
Credit Dan Schultz
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Randy Goodsonsings and plays guitar and keyboards with the band. After Music Hall co-founder Jeannie Crane passed away in 2013 Randy was asked to become vice president of the organization.
“We’ve had this place packed. It’s a lot of fun,” says Randy.
Despite the older makeup of the crowd here, the music hall still draws lively crowds. In a way, Charlie and the music hall organization are looking to Randy and his wife Renee to continue the tradition of the venue and possibly help inject new life into it, too.
“The people here are just really nice. It’s so family oriented, it’s like one big family.”
On a sultry summer evening, three women are killing harlequin beetles in an effort to save the greens at the SAGE micro-farm on Rebecca Street that they landscaped themselves.
Last year, Kathy Moore, Jenny Totten and Meg Reishman completed 18 agriculture and business classes through SAGE, which stands for Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurs. Kathy says she loves getting to take home an unlimited supply of fresh vegetables each week.
“Oh my goodness, the green zebra tomatoes were absolutely my favorite. They are just absolutely luscious!” says Kathy, who works a day job, like most of the other growers, outside the SAGE micro-farm. She and the other SAGE growers also earn a few hundred dollars apiece at the end of the year based on the group’s produce sales.
The food is grown on Charleston’s West Side, in a high-crime area with many vacant lots. Over the past two years, the SAGE program has transformed two of these lots into working micro-farms.
New this year is the Rebecca St. garden, with its unusual swirling starburst shape. At the center of the beds of squash, kale and tomatoes is a bright circle of sunflowers, zinnias, basil and cilantro. Kathy is surprised that the garden’s design has been so successful.
“I had no idea that it would be so inviting. So, yeah. It’s a really nice design, and people are excited just to come and look at it.”
Credit Roxy Todd
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Rainbow chard and collard greens have been some of SAGE’s best sellers this year
Credit Roxy Todd
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SAGE sells edible flowers to a local restaurant in Charleston called Mission Savvy. The flower and herbs are grown in a circle at the center of the Rebecca Street garden.
Credit Roxy Todd
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The SAGE program teaches growers like Meg Reischman how to make a business plan and how to choose the most profitable types of produce.
“I was having a difficult time sitting down and figuring out what my break even price was, and whether it was worth growing it or not, making a plan,” Meg says.
Many of the students struggle with these questions, says SAGE instructor Dr. Dee Sing-Knights, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics with West Virginia University’s extension services. She teaches the SAGE growers how to manage small businesses and how to market their produce. She tells the growers to make sure the public knows that SAGE’s organic produce might cost a little more than supermarket vegetables, which often come from larger, more mechanized farms.
“I always tell them, you have to tell your customers that listen, the reason this costs more is I squashed my bugs by hand!” says Dr. Singh-Knights. The SAGE growers are also learning to educate more potential customers about the value of spending money inside the community, versus sending the money out of state by buying food at a chain store.
Even if the 18 SAGE graduates never become full time farmers, this morning for breakfast they are probably all making food using at least one ingredient they grew themselves.
This year, the group has seen an increase in the sales of produce and flowers at their local Saturday markets, as more customers are enjoying the fruits of their labor, too.
After contracting polio as a young boy, Glen Irvine spent most of his life in a wheelchair, but his mandolin almost never left his side.
Although he’s virtually unknown outside of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, Irvine–or Dude, as he was known–was one of the area’s most gifted musicians. One of the founding members of the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, Dude was a virtuoso, self-taught musician. Although Dude passed away at the age of 52 in 1973, his bluegrass band continues to play all around West Virginia today.
One of Dude’s nephews, Richard Hefner, says he used to wait up for his uncle every Saturday Night. It was the only quiet night inside his family’s Civil War era home, in the house that was almost always full of music whenever his uncle was home.
“Uncle Dude, lived with us most of the time, taught us all how to play music, he played in beer joints all the time. Just about every Saturday night. Somebody would come and carry him out,” said Hefner.
“They’d carry him out, put him in the car, and then they’d carry him in the beer joint and set him in the chair. I’d usually stay up until Dude would come home at night, listen to his tales.”
These tales usually included whatever beer joint brawl or late night escapade had taken place that night at the square dance. In that house that may or may not have been haunted—there are a few tales of possible ghost sightings—Richard grew up idolizing his uncle.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Bill Hefner (left), Richard Hefner (middle), and one of their sisters Susan, remembering their Uncle Dude inside the old Civil War-era home in Mill Point, W.Va.
When he was 14, Richard began going with his uncle to the beer joints—they definitely didn’t card people back in the 50’s. There was one beer joint he often took his uncle to, called High Rocks, in Stompin’ Creek. Richard remembers when a bad fight broke out at the High Rocks bar, right next to his uncle Dude.
“I guess I was 16 and had my license, and I took him up there. He was playing with Virgil and Vincent Rider. Dude played the mandolin. And there was this real small place, it was a small as this room, narrower,” he said.
“A bunch of guys came from Richwood. And Richwood and Marlinton, at that time, didn’t like each other. That guy come off there and said something to him and boy he come off there and hit that guy. I grabbed Dude and slid him back behind that stove, and grabbed his case and slid it back behind the stove. Two of them went right through the front door, tore the whole door off the beer joint. Went out in the parking lot! There was five or six of them that just got whipped up pretty bad that night.”
“But, just like always, you know, just as soon as they get everything settled down, I slid Dude back out in the floor, got back in tune, started playing again.”
Dude taught himself to play harmonica when he was 5 years old. He later taught himself to play mandolin, banjo, ukulele, slide guitar, and on the guitar he could finger pick any Chet Atkins tune. Night after night, musicians would come to the Hefner home to play with Dude.
Credit courtesy of Susan Kershner
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Hefner siblings as children, playing with their Uncle Dude’s instruments. Bill Hefner (l), Jimmy (c), and Richard (r)
“There was always somebody at the house playing. Everybody on my mom’s side of the family played and sang. And uncle Dude always had somebody in here playing. And they did all kinds of country and blues. Old county, you know, when country music still was country music.”
Dude learned music by ear by listening to radio shows like the Grand Old Opry or the Wheeling Jamboree.
“So they got to mixing in country and Honky Tonk, Elvis, Chet Atkins tunes, and everything else,” Richard recalls.
He and his siblings remember that Dude didn’t let his physical limitations drag him down. He was born with a condition called Hydrocephalus, which causes fluid to swell near the brain. For some, this impairs mental intelligence.
But in Dude’s case, he was probably above normal intelligence—he taught himself to read and write, and even helped his own siblings with their homework. Because he suffered from polio as a little boy and couldn’t walk, Dude spent part of his childhood being pulled in a wagon, until one of the neighbors bought him a wheelchair. He never had a job, except for the cash he earned playing at local square dances and beer joints.
Credit photo courtesty of Susan Kershner
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Glen Irvine, or “Dude”, as most people called him
“I remember one time Dude, they played for $5 a piece. And he come home and he said, ‘Gilbert gave us a raise. He’s paying us $6 now.’ He was tickled to death, you know, because he got a dollar raise.”
Eventually, Richard and his brother Bill learned to play from their Uncle. Hamp Carpenter had been playing with Dude for years, and his son Harley Carpenter got to meet Bill Monroe in Maryland. Soon they all began playing more and more of Bill Monroe’s tunes. This was in the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s, around the time when they formed the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys.
“There wasn’t much Bluegrass. There wasn’t any Bluegrass around here, until we started playing.”
Soon, the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys began writing their own songs, and in 1971 they recorded their first album, “Pure Old Bluegrass”. It was the only one of the band’s albums that Uncle Dude played on.
The Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys are still playing today-although most of the faces have changed. Richard Hefner is the only founding members who is still in the band. They play throughout West Virginia, including every Friday night at the Sweet Shoppe in Lewisburg. More information about the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys and other bands that regularly play near US 219 can be found on the Mountain Music Trail website.
BlackMountainBluegrassBoys219.mp3
Another story about the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, by Dan Schultz and the Traveling 219 Project.
Summertime is always the high season at animal shelters, and many homeless pets end up being put to sleep. The Kanawha Charleston Humane Association is trying to buck this trend. In the last 5 years the shelter has cut the number of animals it’s euthanized by almost 95%.
Two years ago, a group called Dog Bless began working to help foster dogs from the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association shelter. Some animals find permanent homes nearby. But each month about 50 others are transported to rescue groups in Philadelphia, Jersey City and New York City, where rescue groups have offered to help.
"If people don't adopt and foster, they will just continue to stack up here, and we would be forced to return to euthanizing for space."- Chelsea Staley, director Kanawha Charleston Humane Association Shelter
On Fridays, the trip up north begins here, at the edge of the parking lot of the shelter around 6:30 in the misty early morning. There are some tears today, as 22 dogs are loaded into the transport van, including Luke Skywalker, a black and tan shepherd who is saying goodbye to his foster mom, Debra Null.
This is Luke Skywalker
“I just want to help with the mission of keeping the dogs alive–the new mission of the shelter and not euthanizing them.”
That new mission began last September, when the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association changed its policies and started trying to save all adoptable animals. The KCHA could do that, in part, because of Dog Bless. Cathy McClung co-founded the volunteer-run organization.
“We started rescuing from the shelter when it was a high-kill shelter, and they allowed us to start pulling dogs for rescue. And now that the shelter has changed a lot of its practices, Dog Bless’s mission is still to reduce euthanasia at the shelter. And rescue is a part of that equation.”
In 2009 the KCHA euthanized 4,160 animals between January and June. This year the shelter has only euthanized 211. Dog Bless is part of the reason, but the shelter also made a difficult decision when it changed its policy. It reduced the number of animals it takes in–by half. All strays are automatically accepted, but owners wanting to surrender their pet are often put on a waiting list.
Credit Anthony Cassis
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Adam Batty, foster volunteer with Dog Bless
Credit Roxy Todd
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Credit Roxy Todd
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Pebbles is a one and a half-year-old beagle mix
The KCHA shelter isn’t exactly a nice place, but for about 278 animals it’s home. It’s loud with the cacophony of dogs barking, and even with the constant cleaning of the cages, it smells.
Even the director of the KCHA helps with the chores. Chelsea Staley is mopping the floor just before the shelter opens for the day.
“Our intentions are good. We want to save every animal that comes through our door. But we can’t do it. We can’t continue to hoard animals. So moving them out of here is absolutely key.”
Credit Roxy Todd
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Also, the KCHA now wants to be the last resort for people that need to surrender their pets–not the first option. Last month, the shelter adopted just over two-thirds of all the animals it did accept.
The shelter also still depends on Dog Bless to help get many dogs as possible to rescue groups across the country. Before they leave West Virginia, the dogs are placed into foster homes temporarily.
Chad and Angela are some of the most active of the foster families with Dog Bless. In addition to the three rescue dogs they already own, this month they are hosting 6 dogs from the shelter, including one mamma dog and her 1-week-old puppies.
Chad and Angela both work day jobs, but they spend their evenings, weekends and even their vacations with the dogs. They spend more money on dog food than on their own grocery bills.
Angela and Chad’s own dogs have served as role models to help socialize the fosters and get them ready for their new home.
“Yeah they help each other. And I think that’s what we’ve learned the most about having dogs is they help each other. And they help us. They fill a hole…that sometimes you don’t even know you have.”
Credit Anthony Cassis
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Foster volunteer Lindsay Smith
The Kanawha Charleston Humane Association hopes more people like Angela will be willing to open their hearts and their homes to these animals and increase their adoption rate. Shelter director Chelsea Staley says that increasing its local adoption rate is key to its success of shelter’s mission of reducing euthanasia.
“If people don’t adopt and foster, they will just continue to stack up here, and we would be forced to return to euthanizing for space. And we just certainly do not want to do that.”
For more information about Dog Bless, click here, or email them: dogblesswv@hotmail.com. To find out which dogs and cats are available for adoption in Charleston, click here, or call (304) 342-1576
Credit See spot rescued
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See Spot Rescued is a rescue group in Jersey City where many of the dogs are transported when they leave the Charleston shelter. Chibi found a home with the help of See Spot Rescued.
To see more photos from one of the rescue shelters in New Jersey that regularly finds homes for West Virginia dogs, visit See Spot Rescued’s facebook page.
