Tag: Arts & Culture

Berkeley County celebrates the apple

The 32nd Apple Harvest Festival took place Oct. 17-20, 2013, and featured a 5k run, pancake breakfasts, a craft fair in the historic Martinsburg, W.Va., roundhouse with entertainment, music on the town square Friday evening and a Grand Feature Parade Saturday afternoon.

The Festival usually includes agricultural tours but the web site says those were cancelled this year because of the partial shutdown of the Federal Government. But there were apple centric contests to determine who baked the best pie or grew the best fruit.

On Saturday afternoon people lined King and Queen Streets through downtown Martinsburg to watch marching bands, floats, community groups, politicians and celebrity guests parade by.

WVU baseball team celebrates groundbreaking of new stadium

West Virginia University’s baseball team is going to have a new home in a few years. A groundbreaking on the stadium occurred Thursday.The stadium is…

West Virginia University’s baseball team is going to have a new home in a few years. A groundbreaking on the stadium occurred Thursday.

The stadium is located in the community of Granville just west of Morgantown near I-79. That part of Monongalia County is growing by leaps and bounds. With the stadium will come a new interchange for easier access from the Interstate  to the ballpark. It’s been a lot of change for Patricia Lewis, mayor of Granville. She’s been the mayor since 1991.

“In my wildest dream, I never could have imagined that a small town in Monongalia County could become home to a WVU sports team. We are excited, it’s a wonderful thing,” said Lewis.

The baseball stadium will also host entertainment events, like concerts, as well as games for a minor league baseball team. Lewis says it’s hopefully going to bring even more growth to her community.

“This is an exciting chapter for us, we are a small community. All the development up here has been wonderful for our economics, for our small town,” said Lewis.

"If you want to be nationally competitive with teams like that, your facilities have to be competitive. I think we are not only going to be competitive, but I think we are going to surpass some teams in the league with the facility we plan on building." WVU Coach Randy Mazey

Randy Mazey, the head coach of the WVU baseball team, says this new stadium will play a vital role in the stability and success of his program.

“With the move to the Big 12 conference last year, it’s one of the best baseball conferences in the nation. If you want to be nationally competitive with teams like that, your facilities have to be competitive. I think we’re not only going to be competitive, but I think we are going to surpass some teams in the league with the facility we plan on building,” he said.

Officials hope the stadium will be ready for the 2015 baseball season. The minor league team expected to make the stadium home will be from the New York Penn League.

The Great Textbook War

Charleston native Trey Kay examines the 1974 textbook controversy in the radio documentary, “The Great Textbook War.”

In 1974, Kanawha County was the first battleground in the American culture wars. Controversy erupted over newly-adopted school textbooks. School buildings were hit by dynamite and Molotov cocktails, buses were riddled with bullets, journalists were beaten and surrounding coal mines were shut down by protesting miners.

Textbook opponents believed the books were teaching their children to question their authority, traditional values and the existence of God.

Textbook supporters said children needed to be exposed to a wide variety of beliefs and experiences, and taught to make their own decisions.

To stream the full piece, use the streaming player at the top of the page.

Man strives to restore Philippi theatre

While the International Film Festival gets underway in Charleston, in another part of the state, a man is working to bring film back to his small town.

Russ Stover is trying to restore the Grand Theatre in downtown Philippi, to make it an attraction to cinema enthusiasts in the area. Stover says in that part of the state, it’s very difficult for film lovers to go see movies.

“I want to open instead of just another theater showing new movies, I want to open a revival theater. I can show what the people want to see, and that is something that isn’t done around here. If you want to see a documentary, you’ve got to go to Pittsburgh or Morgantown if you’re lucky, or you have to wait until it comes out on disc,” Stover said.

Stover would like to screen older movies at the theater, like films from Alfred Hitchcock and other iconic movie makers. But getting it open won’t be easy.

In other parts of the state, older theaters have been demolished, like the two downtown theaters that used to be in Fairmont.

Others are vacant and basically abandoned, like the Warner Theatre in Morgantown. But there is at least one example of what Stover is trying to accomplish, in Shepherdstown, where a restored historic theater shows movies and hosts concerts. Stover is  certain a restored Grand Theater, like the one in Shepherdstown, will be successful.

“I’ve seen too many of these wonderful old places turn into parking lots. A place like Philippi that appreciates its history, it’s something you want to save. With the way the college is expanding, I’m surprised other businesses haven’t moved into Philippi,” said Stover.

Stover is trying to raise the money for the theater, and he’s far away from that goal.  But he’s hoping he’ll be successful in bringing cinema back to Philippi.

1st annual WV Tattoo Expo kicks off in Morgantown

Tattoo artists and ink-fanatics alike traveled from all over the country to the first ever WV Tattoo Expo in Morgantown Oct. 11-13, 2013.

Credit Glynis Board
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Tattoo contests, a Miss Tattooed West Virginia competition, and tattooing seminars were among the featured events at the expo.

“Right now we are in the main event room of the Morgantown Event Center. We have over 150 tattoo artists doing their thing,” says Rocco Cunningham, a tattoo artist from Clarksburg and organizer of the weekend event.

“Right now there’re people everywhere looking at artwork, looking through portfolios, sitting in chairs getting tattooed, waiting to get their tattoos. Everybody’s excited. The atmosphere is outstanding.”

Luna Alba travelled from Northern Virginia when she heard about the expo and is getting tattooed for the 10th time.

“Honestly, I find it pretty therapeutic after a while, because the adrenalin just kind of goes through your whole body. After the first maybe 20 minutes, it’s kind of relaxing,” she says with a wince as the needle starts working.  “It’s pretty painful,” she admits. “It’s on my hip. So, yeah. It’s pretty bad.”

Alba’s tattoo artist is well-known. Rick Cherry. He’s been drawing permanent art on bodies for 43 years.

“I got my first professionally-done tattoo in Washington DC, when I was 14 years old,” Cherry remembers. “I was hooked, I had to do it. I was convinced that I was going to have to learn how to do it.”

Cherry also sells his own hand-made tattooing equipment. He says it’s a dying art, but he’s passionate about machining his own drills.

“In my shop at my house I have milling machines, I have lathes, I have welders. I have to cut out all the metal, braise it together. The coils that operate the machine—I cut the cores for them, I hand wrap the electrical wire, solder everything together. Hand-cut springs. The only thing I don’t make are the screws and the washers. ”

Hundreds of people came out to the event in Morgantown. Men and women, young and old.

“What we really wanted to do was try to represent the tattoo community the best we could and also represent the state of WV the best we could,” Cunningham says. “We have the opportunity to meet a lot of great artists and a lot of great people and to promote the art form. Tattooing is the most ancient form of art in the world.”

Rafters furloughed: how the federal shutdown impacts the Grand Canyon

Kathy Zerkle is a river ranger for the National Park Service who works in Fayette County in New River Park, and, you guessed it, she’s out of work these days. Furloughed. And while she’s concerned about what that means for the safety and well-being of the New River Park and the public that visit, and her personal future financially, she’s also concerned about how the government shutdown impacts the Grand Canyon—or at least her ability to experience it.

Zerkle says the National Park Service has already been operating in a limited capacity under the government sequestration, and now, what was a staff of about 100 has been cut to 9. She says she’s frustrated by policy makers’ inability to balance matters of public safety with partisan agendas, but moreover, now she’s seeing her dream of rafting down the Grand Canyon dashed as well.

“I certainly didn’t want to see the President give in to the tactics of the Republican Party, just so that I can go on the Grand Canyon, but it sure would be nice to go on the Grand Canyon! We’ve been planning this for over a year.”

Zerkle explains, in order to raft down the Colorado River that carved out the Grand Canyon, you have to pay a fee and enter a lottery a year before you hope to float.

“A year ago, February, I went ahead and put in for this year and was awarded a date, which happens to be October 25th, and I can take a maximum of 16 people for 21 days down the Grand Canyon.”

Food, gear, transportation—that’s all up to whomever gets the golden ticket—so to speak. Zerkle says she and her friends have been preparing, investing, and there’s a mountain of gear sitting in her home, ready to be driven across the country. But she’s not sure if she and her cohorts can afford to trip-it all the way to Arizona just to be denied access at the gate. She says 22 groups have tried to put-on since the shutdown and they’ve all been turned away.

So why, right? Even though the National Park Service is furloughed, rafting continues in West Virginia. It’s one of the busiest times of the year, in fact. Zerkle explains that it really comes down to access.

“A lot of the properties within our boundaries are owned by private entities, the roads are state roads, there’s private property at the end of the government roads and even at the end of the Park’s roads, so we can’t block access. Plus, I like to think that in New River, our superintendent, coolers heads prevailed and they were able to find a way to say that the New River and the Gauley River are navigable water ways and the only people who can shut down access to navigable waterways is the US Coast Guard.”

But it’s a different story out West. All the property surrounding the Grand Canyon, all the roads, all the concessions, the put-in areas, plus the permitting process, the required check-list that has to be verified, the required orientation procedures that teaches the public how to protect the resource during the three-week excursion—it’s all is under the control and management of the National Park Service.

So Zerkle’s livelihood and her dream of rafting down the Grand Canyon are on hold. While it makes her feel ill, she says her priorities are still in line, and her biggest concern remains the future of the nation. Her opinion of Washington? Her faith in leadership?

“We are really just pons in the Big Game. It bothers me that these people that are elected officials who are supposed to be here for the good of the group are really more concerned about what I feel their personal agendas are.”

In the latest developments, over the weekend, The Grand Canyon and other national parks were opened to the public, but only because states have come up with the money to support them. And while that bodes well for some tourists–and the businesses that rely on them–it’s a temporary deal. It costs in the ball park of $100,000 a day to operate a park like the Grand Canyon. States have only been able to promise about a week to the public which means, Kathy Zerkle and her friends, who are scheduled to visit the canyon October 25th, are still in limbo, hoping legislators will strike a deal, and soon.

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