West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
This week’s special broadcast from the Mountain Stage archives looks back to 1989, when we were joined by the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe. Here he plays what many consider to be his signature tune, “Uncle Pen.”
Find your local affiliate and listen to the entire show this week.
Mountain Stage, founded in 1983, is celebrating their 30th Anniversary this year. The show recently recorded it’s land-mark 800th episode. A capacity crowd at the Clay Center was in attendance to see performances by folk-singer Ani DiFranco, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Dave Mason, California rockers Dawes and the high-energy, horn-driven Brooklyn group Red Baraat. WV Public Radio listeners can hear the entire show Sunday November 10 at 2pm.
Mountain Stage recordings continue throughout the months of October and December. Here’s a complete list of upcoming recordings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMpxHeV0BdA
Thumbing through a copy of Opera News, an article on opera composer Ricky Ian Gordon revealed some very provocative words:
“The twentieth century is littered with a lot of composers who were terrorized out of writing what they heard-out of writing in …their authentic voice. There was such a critical backlash against…tonal music. I mean you could write…you were just laughed off the map.”
What is music? Such a simple question. Such complication behind the answers.
The early 2oth century composers were in a real bind. Were they going to be followers of Serialism, Indeterminacy or Neoclassicism? Tonality, for all intents and purposes, was an anachronism-something so quaint that only the inferior or less serious composers would chose as a musical language.
(Think this attitude is gone? A few years ago, one of my colleagues made an off-hand remark about the 12 Tone System and a listener wrote that anyone with any knowledge knew that the last serious (read important) works were written in this style. So, we must remain in a prison based on a system that began in the 1920’s?)
Or worst choice of all: write the music they heard in their own minds?
We all talk about the arts in terms of freedom, but there’s always a quid pro quo. The questions become: why are we writing? Who are we writing for?
If there’s a shadow hanging over your shoulder of what you “should” be writing or a host of critical voices in your mind, you’re never going to write the music that is your true voice.
Mr. Gordon is writing no less than three operas.
I doubt he has much time to listen to the voice of doubt or to the ghosts of musical eras past.
The fourth series of Inspiring West Virginians features one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, John Forbes Nash, Jr, a 1994 winner of the…
The fourth series of Inspiring West Virginians features one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, John Forbes Nash, Jr, a 1994 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Nash grew up in Bluefield, West Virginia, and the town still holds an importance for him. Now 84, John Nash is currently a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University in New Jersey.
His life was the subject of the 1998 best-selling biography, A Beautiful Mind, and the 2001 Hollywood film (which won the Best Picture Oscar) of the same name. Other contributors to the Nash profile are Nash’s sister, Martha Nash Legg; Cliff Hawley, Professor of Economics at West Virginia University; Steve Shreve (a native of Greenbrier County) and DejanSlepcev, both mathematicians at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Also in this season:
Diane Lewis, founder and CEO of Action Facilities Management, a security and facilities company based in Morgantown. Her company, which started in 2001 with one employee (her 17-year-old son!) now employs more than 300 people in nine states. Lewis, a native of the Adamston neighborhood in Clarksburg, is currently the Small Business Person of the Year in West Virginia. Lewis also serves on the Board of Governors of West Virginia University and is a leader in the Teaming to Win events for small businesses in West Virginia.
She and her husband Kenny Jackson run a non-profit organization, Members of Diversity, which helps youngsters from minority groups to develop the skills they need to find jobs. Also contributing to the profile are Lewis’ sister, Donna Jean Forge, Brad Calandrelli, Director of Facilities at the High Tech Consortium in Fairmont and James Clements, President of West Virginia University.
Rodney Bartgis, State Director of The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia and one of the region’s most respected scientists in field biology and ecology. Since he was a child in Berkeley County, Bartgis has discovered dozens of rare plant species in West Virginia, and many naturalists agree that he knows more about the natural history of West Virginia than anyone alive. To help protect the state’s amazing biodiversity, Bartgis, along with colleagues at The Nature Conservancy and others, has helped to conserve some of West Virginia’s most unique wild places – in the New River Gorge, Canaan Valley, the Smoke Hole Canyon, Cranberry Glades, Panther Knob and Pike Knob, among many others.
Other contributors to his profile include Bartgis’ father, Bob Bartgis; Elizabeth Byers, plant ecologist with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, and the team of men who have been hiking the Mountain State with Bartgis for more than 35 years.
Linda Powers, a bio-engineer at the University of Arizona in Tucson, builds instruments that use light to look for life in extreme environments – from microbes in hospital operating rooms, to microbes in remote deserts to life on Mars. She is considered the top person in the world in this field, with many of her projects funded by the Department of Defense and NASA. She is the Thomas R Brown Distinguished Professor of Bio-Engineering at the University of Arizona, and is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Powers, a native of Beckley, is a former winner of the West Virginia State Science Fair and the national Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now funded by Intel) sometimes referred to as “the nation’s oldest and most prestigious” science competition. Powers placed among the top five science students in the nation.
Other contributors to her profile include colleague and bio-engineer Walter Ellis; scientist and engineer Lois Wardell, and former Woodrow Wilson High School classmate, Kathy Smith Simmons.
Inspiring West Virginians,the West Virginia Public Radio series which profiles leading scientists, engineers and business people from the Mountain State, is produced and presented by Jean Snedegar, an independent producer based in Elkins. Suzanne Higgins is the Senior Producer for West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
Press Room Photos Available Here
The series is made possible by the generous support of the Myles Family Foundation – inspiring West Virginians to soar.
Bio-safety-level-2 laboratories in the Bio5 Building at the University of Arizona Medical School is where Linda Powers has designed and built several…
Bio-safety-level-2 laboratories in the Bio5 Building at the University of Arizona Medical School is where Linda Powers has designed and built several impressive and important scientific instruments.
“Here we handle microbes that can make you sick, but generally not kill you,” said Powers on a recent tour.
But the 64-year-old Beckley native, now the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Professor of Bio-Engineering at the University of Arizona, does handle microbes that can kill you.
“Yes, that’s a BSL-3 Laboratory, and that is highly regulated by the CDC,” she explains.
Powers is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a professor of bio-medical engineering.
She described one of her technologies, a handheld biosensor small enough to take in a backpack into the wilderness or the desert that can detect microbial contamination in real time.
“The light shines on the surface, like my hand here, and the light comes from these LEDs. And this is the detector, so the light captures the florescence – and you read it out here on this small computer,” said Powers.
“When I was in the Arctic we used a PDA – just a little handheld thing,” she added.
The microbes are visible instantly.
“We can’t tell you what species they are, but I can tell you there are microbes there and the microbial load,” she continued. “The reason that’s important is because microbes are communal, and if you have large communities, you will have pathogens living in there.”
The instruments that Powers has been building for the last 15 years are aimed at looking for life in extreme environments or life in places where it is very difficult to do the standard microbiological or biological testing.
She’s been designing instruments that can measure the tiniest amounts of microbial contamination on surfaces, including food preparation surfaces, the hospital operating theater, hospital surgical instruments, and in air, water, and other fluids.
Powers’ instruments have many applications.
They can test the quality of a city water supply or a well in an African village.
She also designs and builds instruments for the Department of Defense and NASA. Much of that work is secret, but one of her instruments can detect possible bio-terrorism; another, life on Mars.
Powers was a pioneer in the use of something called “synchrotron radiation” as well as “x-ray absorption spectroscopy”.
She says she’s always been a science “geek” and that she’s been interested in light since she was a kid in Beckley.
“That was 3rd grade. I wanted a telescope for Christmas and I got a telescope, and I was hooked,” Powers said. “Then I got interested in chemistry, and then I got interested in light, and I got interested in explosives and I got interested in rockets.”
“It was there and it was a very strong force in my life.”
When she was in the 8th grade at Beckley Junior High, Powers won first place at the West Virginia State Science Fair for a project using light.
It was one of many science fair awards.
“My mom in particular didn’t understand half of the things that got me excited but she would sit by the hour and listen to me rant and rave about it,” she recalled.
Powers’ father worked for Eastern Associated Coal and her mother was a stay-at-home mom.
“I came home one day from high school and said, ‘I want to go to college,’ and my father’s eyes got huge, but nobody said ‘no’.”
Up to then, no one in the Powers family had gone to college. To see if she was really interested, her parents suggested she take some courses at Marshall University the summer before her senior year of high school.
“I took courses in chemistry and I did some experiments that turned out far beyond what anybody could have anticipated,” said Powers. “I wrote it all up, and that was what I wrote to the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, which I won in my senior year in high school.”
Powers was among the top five science students in the nation. Westinghouse Science Talent Search awarded her a major academic scholarship.
After graduating from Virginia Tech, she got a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University. From there Powers was recruited to lead her own research group at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, which at the time was considered the finest research laboratory in the world.
Powers says throughout her years at Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley, college and at Bell Labs, she had a series of teachers and mentors who encouraged her to reach for the sky.
“The sky is the limit. And in West Virginia, that sky is even closer!” said Powers. “There’s no reason for you (any student) to have any problem doing what you want to do. If you want it, do it!”
“Somebody will take notice along the way and help you,” she said. “They certainly did me, and this was back when girls didn’t do things like that.”
“Don’t let anybody stand in your way! You’ll be surprised at the people you’ll find who will support you, especially in West Virginia.”
Linda Powers is among those featured in the documentary Inspiring West Virginians, produced by Jean Snedegar with Senior Producer Suzanne Higgins.
Fifty-four-year-old Rodney Bartgis, state director of the West Virginia Nature Conservancy, stood atop Cave Mountain in Pendleton County, an elevation of…
Fifty-four-year-old Rodney Bartgis, state director of the West Virginia Nature Conservancy, stood atop Cave Mountain in Pendleton County, an elevation of 2,777 feet.
“It almost looks like the Rocky Mountains,” said Bartgis. “This is the biggest uplift of limestone in the eastern mountains of the United States, and a lot of the rare plants and animals in this canyon are associated with this limestone,” he said.
The 200-acre mountaintop property on which Bartgis stood had been owned by the Puffenberger family since 1965. But last year they agreed to a conservation easement, negotiated by Bartgis, which protects it from development.
Perhaps more than any other person alive, Bartgis has helped to keep the “wild” in West Virginia.
He can point out several plants found nowhere else in eastern North America – Prairie Flax, the Death Camus lily, Indian Grass, Sideoats Grama and Big Bluestem.
Bartgis was the first person to identify these unusual species in West Virginia, among dozens of botanical discoveries he’s made in the state since he was a boy in Berkeley County.
He grew up on a small, 10-acre farm near Hedgesville, with cattle, hogs, gardens and a lot of work.
“Growing up in the country, which is now pretty much suburbia, gave me a chance to not only explore the countryside, but to tap into the knowledge of people that had grown up and been there for decades,” said Bartgis.
“So I could learn from my dad and my uncles and my granddad.”
Bartgis’ family has been farming in Berkeley County for ten generations. They’ve always felt close to the land.
“My paternal grandfather, who never made it past 8th grade, while dirt poor made his living from trapping and a little bit of dirt farming and from gathering herbs,” explained Bartgis. “He could show me in the woods, or along the creeks or in the fields, how certain plants grew in certain places.”
“If you’re looking for goldenseal, you’d look in one type of woods. If you’re looking for ginseng, in another, and so forth across the whole spectrum of plants that he would dig and sell.”
While still in high school Bartgis discovered the first White Showy Orchid in West Virginia.
It was a time when the Washington, DC suburbs were beginning to encroach further and further into the Eastern Panhandle.
“As a result, a lot of the places that I grew up hiking, botanizing and bird-watching on, were being chopped up and turned into houses,” said Bartgis. “So I also got interested in conservation.”
Bartgis went to Shepherd University to study biology, and then finished his Masters in plant ecology at West Virginia University.
Just after that The Nature Conservancy hired him to find unique and unusual places in the state that might be important to protect.
Those early years with The Nature Conservancy gave Bartgis the opportunity to explore most of the state – on foot – looking for rare plants, special habitats and unique natural areas.
A colleague at The Nature Conservancy, Andrea Brandon, echoes what many people say about Rodney’s encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world of West Virginia.
“You could blindfold Rodney Bartgis and put him on any mountaintop in the state and when you took off that blindfold, not only could Rodney identify every bird in the sky and every single plant and tree that’s growing on the ground, he could tell you by looking at his surroundings exactly where he’s at,” said Brandon.
West Virginia Division of Natural Resources vegetation ecologist, Elizabeth Byers, says most don’t know that West Virginia is a national hotspot of biodiversity.
“So protecting this is incredibly important,” said Byers.
“Among scientists, Rodney is universally respected. He is the person we go to when we have exhausted other resources, because he will very likely know the answer,” she said.
Along with colleagues at The Nature Conservancy, Bartgis has helped protect some of West Virginia’s most unique wild places, including areas in the New River Gorge, Canaan Valley, the Smoke Hole Canyon, Cheat Mountain, Cranberry Glades, Bear Rocks on the Dolly Sods, Panther Knob, and Pike Knob.
The Nature Conservancy works to preserve natural areas for many uses – biology, ecology, hunting, fishing, hiking and other recreational activities.
It takes the cooperation of land owners, donors, local, state and federal government and others to make it happen.
“We’ve protected about 120,000 acres of West Virginia over the 50 years,” said Bartgis of The Nature Conservancy. “That sounds like a lot, but in every decade there will probably be 300,000 or more acres of West Virginia converted from natural habitat to something else.”
Byers said Bartgis’ legacy will be a vast amount of protected area throughout the state.
“He’ll be leaving behind hundreds of species, thousands of acres of just sheer beauty, mystery, and wonder,” said Byers.
“He has an unbelievable legacy – most of it will be unsung, but it’s huge what he will leave.”
Rodney Bartgis is featured with others in the documentary Inspiring West Virginians, produced by Jean Snedegar with Senior Producer Suzanne Higgins.
