On this West Virginia Morning, two committee chairs discuss the most pressing issues in their committees, including foster care and the state budget. And local cryptid Veggie Man inspires a new zine.
Updated on Wednesday, March. 5, 2025 at 9:40 a.m.
On this West Virginia Morning, two committee chairs: Del. Adam Burkhammer, the chair of House Human Services, and Sen. Jason Barrett, the chair of Senate Finance spoke with Curtis Tate on Thursday’s episode of The Legislature Today. They spoke about the most pressing issues in their committees, including foster care and the state budget. Here’s a portion of that interview.
And our Song of the Week is by Hugh Masekela, the South African trumpeter and activist who performed the popular anti-apartheid song “Bring Him Back Home” (referring to Nelson Mandela) twice on Mountain Stage. This version is from the latter appearance recorded in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1994 – two days before Nelson Mandela was inaugurated president of his home country. Hugh Masekela died in 2018.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Maria Young and Randy Yohe.
Eric Douglas is our news director. Teresa Wills is our host. Maria Young produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
**Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include information about the Mountain Stage Song of the Week heard in the episode. An earlier version of this post listed an Inside Appalachia story that ran March 3.
Folk music is not the easiest way to make a living, but artists still find a way to balance making music with putting food on the table. Mason Adams traveled to MidMountain arts collective in Virginia, where he spoke with both veteran folksingers and emerging talents.
This story originally aired in the Jan. 12, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.
The sun shines down on Elsa Howell and two family members as they run through rehearsal for a concert set.
Howell’s voice echoes across the fields and hills at MidMountain, a venue just above the James River outside Glasgow, Virginia. She strums guitar and sings, alongside her father Isak Howell on banjo and cousin Jaden Bowman on guitar and backing vocals.
Elsa Howell is 22. She recently graduated college and now lives in Fredericksburg, where she works part-time as a nanny and transcribes interviews for the Virginia Folklife Program at Virginia Humanities.
And like so many people before her, she’s trying to decide how her music fits into her life.
“I don’t know if this is a career for me,” Elsa says. “It could be an intermittent career for a very long time. I mean, it’s not my dad’s career, but he has been doing it my whole life, and long before I was born.”
Her father, Isak Howell, is a journalist-turned-lawyer who regularly plays in the Black Twig Pickers and other groups. Isak says Elsa’s been surrounded by string music her entire life.
“I think we drug her to fiddler’s conventions when she was too young to object,” Isak says. “I think there were a lot of musicians around and a lot of playing around when she was very young.”
Elsa Howell sings while rehearsing during her residency at MidMountain.
Photo Credit: Mason Adams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
When Howell was just a child, her parents gave her an iPod full of songs, ranging from Neko Case to Sonic Youth, that became her first sustained exposure to music. Her father also played in Howell’s first-ever band: an ad-hoc group, formed for a talent show at her school in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.
It was there that Howell first met a musical mentor — Elizabeth LaPrelle.
Back then, LaPrelle was performing with Anna Roberts-Gevalt, as Anna and Elizabeth.
“Elizabeth was there with Anna doing a crankie demonstration and lesson,” Howell says. “I remember they were there singing and doing the crankie and then I think showed us how to make little tiny ones.”
It was a few more years before LaPrelle noticed Howell’s singing.
“I think my first memory is of seeing her sing at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention Folk Song Competition, and being like, ‘She’s good,’” LaPrelle says. “Well, that and through collaborating with your dad occasionally,” she says to Howell.
“You were giving me lessons for a while,” Howell responds.
“Which your dad did instigate,” LaPrelle says. “He said, ‘I want to gift Elsa some lessons with you for a birthday’ or something. And then once we’d done a few lessons, you had the idea to, ‘Let’s apply to this apprenticeship program.’ It was a brilliant idea.”
Howell and LaPrelle paired up for an apprenticeship through the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities. LaPrelle, after all, has been singing folk songs her whole life, too. It wasn’t too long ago that she was the apprentice, learning from other folk singers.
“I’m lucky there have been so many women singers who have been so encouraging to me, especially when I was starting out,” LaPrelle says. “A big one is Ginny Hawker, and she heard me singing at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention Youth Folk Song Competition. And then Sheila Kay Adams, who I took her class for one week, but I fell in love with her style. Jean Ritchie is another one. She didn’t have to go out of her way, but she did to encourage. So if I can live up to that, I would be very happy.”
Elsa Howell and Elizabeth LaPrelle at MidMountain in October 2024.
Photo Credit: Mason Adams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Now, a year after the apprenticeship concluded, Howell and LaPrelle are both here at MidMountain, a venue operated by an arts collective near Natural Bridge, Virginia. Artists stay at MidMountain for 12 days, collaborating on a zine, making art and practicing performances to be played at a festival examining murder ballads.
Howell’s days have followed a pattern. Some of it involves practicing her set with her cousin and father.
“When they’re here, we’ll rehearse,” Howell says, “and when they’re not here, I’ll spread this blanket out somewhere on the grounds here and just play, write new songs, research those old songs and see if they have music written already to go with the lyrics. And if they don’t, maybe write melodies for old lyrics.”
The flier for MidMountain Fest 2024: Reclaiming Appalachian Murder Ballads.
Courtesy MidMountain
The nearly two-week residency has provided a clear space for Howell to focus on her music. Her cousin, Jaden Bowman, produced an EP for Howell that was released on streaming platforms a few weeks ago. This festival will be the first time they’ve played her songs to a live audience.
For Howell, this residency comes at a pivotal moment in her life.
“I graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 2023,” Howell says. “I think I just got to a place where I was like, ‘Okay, this era of my life where everything is mapped out and decisions are already made for me is over. I am the sole decision maker.’ Whether it is paying my bills or not, I’m never gonna be in a place in my life where I don’t want to sing or I don’t want to pick up my guitar, or where making music is not going to be where I go when I need to reset or process.”
LaPrelle has spent her whole life making the same calculation, and figuring out the balance between making art and making a living.
“There’s a lot of ups and downs,” she says. “When I started doing music professionally, a lot of that was exciting, and a lot of it was kind of scary. Here I am still eking it out. It’s the only career I’ve ever had. It’s also about connections. I think that’s one of the most wonderful things about folk music, is that it is still a form that you can do, not [just] professionally, that you can do it just because you love it.”
When the MidMountain Fest finally arrives, Howell looks excited as she takes the stage with her cousin and father. The audience includes family and friends. The crowd moves closer to the stage amid the deepening darkness of the October day.
From left, Jaden Bowman, Elsa Howell and Isak Howell perform at the MidMountain Fest near Natural Bridge, Virginia.
Photo Credit: Mason Adams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The crowd responds enthusiastically. Elsa Howell looks thrilled between songs. After the set ends, she sounds giddy with excitement.
“I feel great! I feel amazing!” she says. “I mean that was great. Just, people are so nice. People are just so nice! I feel like I’ve gained some confidence.”
Howell’s future is unwritten. It’s a long road.
Studies show the average person today will work five to seven different careers in their lifetime. If her mentor, Elizabeth LaPrelle, is any indication, this is a balance Howell will wrestle with for decades to come.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia.Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
On this West Virginia Week, we’ll look at flooding funding, we talk to Gayle Manchin, and we’ll delve into efforts to support first generation students.
On this West Virginia Week, we’ll look at the history of plans to address flooding without funding. We’ll talk to Appalachian Regional Commission co-chair Gayle Manchin about the commission’s accomplishments. And we’ll delve into Marshall University’s efforts to support first generation students in their pursuit for higher education.
We’ll also hear from the state’s Senate delegation on Joe Manchin’s retirement. And we’ll hear more about updates to PEIA, as well as some lawsuits against local ordinances and pollution.
Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.
West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caelan Bailey, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick, Maria Young and Randy Yohe. Learn more about West Virginia Week.
An exhibit at the West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) at WVU invites the public to explore influential traditions for today and tomorrow.
The term “folklife” can evoke the sounds of fiddles and banjoes, or black and white images of grandparents on the old family farm. And those can both be true.
But an exhibit at West Virginia University invites the public to explore how the traditional still influences us today — and how new traditions might influence tomorrow.
Catherine Rakowski is the research and exhibition specialist for the West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) at West Virginia University in Morgantown. The center is currently displaying a piece of folk art she wasn’t sure she would ever get a chance to show off to the public.
“It’s called a friendship quilt,” Rakowski said.
Rakowski said it’s one of her favorites, and with good reason: some 20 hand-embroidered squares, each containing a floral design, and more importantly the name of its maker, are bordered with pink and white fabric borders.
“Somebody, they’re going to be in charge of all this, they send out squares to friends, relatives, square cloth, and ask the person they’re sending it to to embroider their name on the cloth with the design, and send it back to her,” Rakowski said. “This is the result, and she would piece it together. They always came with maps so you knew who did what.”
It’s the kind of thing most people today only get to see as a family heirloom. But the example on display at the WVRHC made by Emily Myers Gump and her friends almost 100 years ago, is on display as part of the “Living the Folklife: Monsters, Music, Medicine, Myths, and More” exhibit.
“It’s the culture of Appalachia, southern Appalachia, particularly, and West Virginia, of course,” Rakowski said. “What we do with our exhibits, we focus on what we have in our holdings, our collections, and that’s how we build our exhibits and to feature in what we have here.”
That includes what you might expect: fiddles and displays highlighting local legends old and new. But visitors to the exhibit can also see portable, luggage-sized recording equipment used in the 1930s to preserve West Virginia folk music, handmade children’s toys and even a pot still once used to make moonshine.
“We went into every area of folklife, folk art, folk medicine, folk speech, folk food, folk festivals, folk tales, that kind of thing,” Rakowski said.
Portable recording equipment used by Louis Watson Chappell in the 1930s and 40s to collect and preserve folk music across West Virginia is displayed at the West Virginia and Regional History Center. Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Rakowski said folklife – as the exhibit’s name implies – goes hand in hand with life in the Appalachia and its role as a melting pot for European, Native American and African cultures.
“That’s a culture, and it all blended together because the mountains divided us,” she said. “You couldn’t get anywhere. Infrastructure was a problem. So, like I said, it blended together. That’s how I see it. Anyway, geography had a lot to do with it.”
Rosemary Hathaway recently retired as an English professor at WVU. She helped open the exhibit on West Virginia Day with a presentation on folklife.
“The best definition, I think, of folklore, is sort of the art of everyday life, in the sense that it’s the things that people say or do or create that give their lives meaning and give expression to their values or their communities,” Hathaway said.
According to Hathaway, West Virginia has always been conscious of the importance of its folk traditions and supportive of them. The exhibit highlights the work of folklorists like Louis Watson Chappell and Patrick Gainer, who formalized their work with state support at WVU.
Hathaway pushes back against the idea of an isolated region giving rise to the rich folklife explored in the exhibit. But she does agree that a sense of place has kept many traditions alive.
“This perception of Appalachia as this place of otherness and difference and poverty and kind of the stereotypes about Appalachia, I think, rather than making people feel ashamed of their traditions or replace them with something modern, I think it’s had the exact opposite effect,” she said. “I think it’s really made people appreciate that this is valuable.”
The WVRHC is tucked away on the sixth floor of the university’s Downtown Library. Most come here on a mission, seeking out research material for a dissertation or genealogy info for a family tree.
But Hathaway said it’s worth taking a trip up to the center to learn not only how the old ways live on, but also how new traditions like cryptids – popular creatures like Mothman that lack conclusive evidence of their existence – fit into the folklife mosaic.
“They might think about music, but they might think about that in a really limited way, too.” she said. “You know that, ‘Oh, it’s an old guy sitting on his porch, playing his fiddle.’ I think this exhibit really will open people’s eyes to the breadth of what counts as folklife in West Virginia, and not just in the past. But what are people doing now, right? What are the kinds of traditions that people are engaging in presently, that count as folklife?”
Rakowski said you might even learn something that could come in handy down the road.
“It’s a link. You’re linking yourself to the past,” she said. “And I’ll tell you what, maybe someday we might have to go back to stringing beans again. You never know, but it’s a wonderful tradition to do that, to preserve.”
The folklife exhibit is open to the public during regular library hours through the spring semester.
Feed sack clothing and a fiddle are some of the historic pieces displayed as part of the “Living the Folklife: Monsters, Music, Medicine, Myths, and More” exhibit at the West Virginia and Cultural History Center Nov. 12, 2024.
On this West Virginia Morning, an exhibit at WVU explores folklife old and new, and from the Allegheny Front, the shortfalls of community engagement with hydrogen hubs.
On this West Virginia Morning, an exhibit at West Virginia University invites the public to explore how traditional folklife still influences us today — and how new traditions might influence tomorrow.
And the Allegheny Front, a public radio program that reports on environmental issues in the region, explores the shortfalls of community engagement with hydrogen hubs.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Maria Young produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
When Cierra Pike crochets, she feels peaceful. It’s rather ironic, because she crochets on the couch at night as her husband and sons race around the house, shouting and playing.
“I crochet to help me relax and everything during the evening because I’m a working mom,” Pike said. “I love to be able to sit with them, enjoy their sounds, while I also regress into my own little world.”
A resident of Rural Retreat, Virginia, Pike is creating — or more accurately, commemorating — a world within her crocheting by making a temperature blanket. Each row represents a day in the year she has chosen to capture in yarn. Different colors represent a temperature range.
Pike explains the concept as a way to track important moments in life.
“That’s how that went, how the weather was that day. I never would have thought about that. But that was really special,” she said. “You can kind of look back and they’re all different colors. They’re all the same colors in each row. But it all tells a story.”
Cierra Pike sits in Folkways reporter Wendy Welch’s yarn room, explaining the color scheme to her temperature blanket.
Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Some crafters stick to colored stripes rendered in a single crochet, the simplest of stitches. Others choose more complicated patterns like granny squares or rippled rows. What the blanket records can be as casual or deeply layered as its creator chooses.
Pike has chosen to dive deep with her current blanket, which uses a color scheme inspired by Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” She uses a raised puff stitch that looks like a little pillow to commemorate other special events.
“Date nights, games that my boys have played, things that I know I’ll be able to look back on and just be like, ‘Oh, that was a really special day,’” Pike said.
She does regret missing one day, which she had already crocheted past before realizing she wanted to commemorate it.
“The one that I really wish I would have put on there, we saw an otter in a local pond. We didn’t even know otters lived here, and it was the cutest thing ever,” she said. “So he’s probably getting a charm.”
Charms or buttons can mark special events. During the COVID years, people wove black ribbons along a row to commemorate a loss. Many still do this, plus use white, blue, or pink to note family additions.
Part Of An Ancient Tradition
Textile storytelling is common to most cultures, but Pike got inspired after watching a documentary about Aztecs and Incas weaving and knotting symbols into clothing and calendars.
Dr. Veronica Rodriguez is a Spanish professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Her studies include how ancient Mesoamerican cultures used symbols in clothing. She sees temperature blankets as just another example of a long-standing, cross-cultural tradition of people using textiles to tell stories.
“Textiles were used to record history. The colors meant something, the design meant something,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s great that people are using those fabrics to tell a story, because it’s handmade and it’s art and they learn from their grandma and mom. It’s an ancestral sort of thing. And I think that’s something that we don’t appreciate.”
The oldest preserved example of a story on cloth is arguably Europe’s Bayeux Tapestry, completed in 1077 to commemorate the Battle of Hastings. In Appalachia, telling stories using quilts appeared with the first settlers, while Indigenous weaving and embroidery depicting community events were here long before they arrived.
Lost In The Zone
Chris McKnight is a retired pharmacist from Wise, Virginia. McKnight sees making temperature blankets as a combination of family documentation and affection. She has made temperature blankets for her husband and brother, chronicling significant years in their lives.
Chris McKnight has made three temperature blankets so far. She relished the challenge of creating a design that tracked data specific to a special year.
Courtesy Chris McKnight
“It increases the thoughtfulness of the gift when you can say I made this for you and I chose this year because it meant something in your life,” McKnight says. “So it’s not just a blanket to put over you but it has a little bit of meaning behind it and I hope that you realize I was thinking of you with every row I put in the blanket.”
McKnight made this afghan for her husband in his favorite team’s colors. It commemorates temperatures the year they met.
Courtesy Chris McKnight
Her husband’s afghan documents the year they met. McKnight used his favorite sports team’s colors, which necessitated hunting down six shades of purple and three of gold. But it isn’t just the recipient McKnight thinks of as she crochets. She also thinks of the person who taught her more than 55 years ago, her grandmother.
“I like keeping it alive. It keeps me close to her, even though she’s gone,” McKnight said.
And sometimes, McKnight can’t identify what she was thinking about as she moved her hook through the yarn in a repetitive, fluid motion. Even when concentrating on a complex pattern, she finds herself lost not in the memories she was capturing, but in a zone of Zen.
“In that zone where I’m thinking about something else, but my hands are working, and I’ll get to the next row and think, ‘What was I thinking about five minutes ago?’,” McKnight said with a laugh. “Because I can’t get my hook in this stitch!”
Karen Long, an armed forces widow living in Hillsville, Virginia, also likes zoning out while crocheting. Long learned from an important elder figure in her life as well.
“My husband’s grandmother came to visit one weekend, I told her, I said, ‘Grandma, I want to learn how to crochet,’” Long recalled. “And I went and got some yarn and a crochet hook and she sat down with me. And by the time she left, I had made a pair of slippers and a triangular type poncho thing for my daughter.”
Karen Long is making a blanket of 2024’s high temperatures for herself.
Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Long followed those up over the next thirty years by making an afghan for each of her 12 grandchildren. This includes a posthumous one for a granddaughter murdered by her partner. That blanket was donated to a domestic violence fundraiser. Long is glad her granddaughter’s blanket served such a good cause.
This is the afghan Long donated in honor of her granddaughter who died by domestic violence.
Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Long is currently making two temperature blankets for herself. One records high temperatures for the year, the other lows. They give her space to think about whatever she wants, like the highs and lows of her life. Or not to think at all.
“I enjoy keeping up with it because it gives me a sense of hey, I’m sticking with this,” Long said. “I can sit and do it and watch television at the same time. Or just kind of space out while I’m doing it.”
Long, McKnight, and Pike share that sense of “groundedness”-meets-zoned-outness when making these afghans. And, as Pike points out, they are also knitting the past and the future together through crocheting.
“Memories are what make the world go around. They keep us grounded. They make us strive for more, and if you can have a visual representation of that in front of you, every day, it’s something that’s going to go for generations,” Pike said.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
