This week on Inside Appalachia, we remember Travis Stimeling. The author, musician and educator left a deep mark on Appalachian culture, and the people who practice and document it. And, grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive. Plus, it’s not just you. There are more deer than ever these days. A writer explores the long, complicated entwinement of people and our wild kin.
Inside Appalachia remembers Travis Stimeling. The author, musician and educator left a deep mark on Appalachian culture, and the people who practice and document it.
And, grab your dancing shoes and learn about a movement to make square dance calling more inclusive.
Plus, it’s not just you. There are more deer than ever these days. A writer explores the long, complicated entwinement of people and our wild kin.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Remembering Travis Stimeling, A Musician, Scholar And Mentor
Travis Stimeling, a WVU professor and noted scholar of traditional Appalachian music, died in their home on Nov. 14, 2023.
Photo Credit: Ellen Linscheid
Travis Stimeling carried the torch for bluegrass and traditional music in Appalachia.
It was a shock when the author, musician and West Virginia University (WVU) professor died abruptly in November at the age of 43. News of their passing prompted an outpouring of remembrances from colleagues, former students and friends.
Some shared their stories with Folkways Reporter Zack Harold, who brought us this remembrance.
Traditional Dance Callers Updating For Inclusivity
A multi-generational group of dancers follows Becky Hill’s calling at the Augusta Heritage Center in July 2023.
Photo Credit: Lydia Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The use of they/them pronouns signals more than a change in language; it’s also a cultural change that allows for people to be identified as they see themselves. And, it’s happening even in the region’s dance halls.
Folkways Reporter Lydia Warren brought us the story.
The Age Of Deer
Erika Howsare explores our relationship to deer, which has been long and complicated.
Courtesy Photo
Few animals are as polarizing as the white tail deer. They’re graceful and majestic — and kind of cool to see up close. But they can also ravage gardens, and drivers hit countless deer every year.
Yet, there seem to be more deer than ever.
Erika Howsare is the author of The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors.
Producer Bill Lynch spoke with Howsare.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Amythyst Kiah, Watchhouse, John Blissard, Yonder Mountain String Band and Larry Rader.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
In 1995, when the internet was still in its infancy in terms of use in online commerce, 33-year-old Ken Allman started an online business in his one-bedroom apartment in St. Louis, Missouri.
Allman, a native of Hinton, WV, designed the business as a link between physicians looking for a new position, and hospitals and other facilities looking for medical staff.
“Those were the days when not all of us had email. There was a lot of uncertainty about my ability to make a go of this, and I really didn’t have the financial resources, it was just an idea,” Ken Allman said recently.
Four years later Allman moved the headquarters of his growing business back to his hometown in Summers County, and soon after was employing more than 20 local people.
“Coming back to Hinton allowed me to learn. It was an inexpensive way to operate an online business in a small town, and I think it was one of the best things I could have ever done.”
Today it’s the nation’s largest online physician job bank.
“PracticeLink is really a very simple business model,” said Allman. “Hospitals, medical groups, healthcare systems, academic institutions, government agencies, the military – they often struggle to get all the physicians they need by specialty, or in quality or in quantity.”
“And so physician recruitment is an important part of healthcare behind the scenes,” he said.
“Ken Allman is a very interesting individual in that he has more ideas in 5 minutes than I’ll have in 5 years,” said Greg Rogers, a Hinton businessman and childhood friend of Allman’s. “His mind is always working.”
“He’s always thinking. He’s a visionary,” said Rogers.
In the last couple of years, the entrepreneur, now 54, has expanded his focus to the transformation of downtown Hinton, a town proud of its railroad history.
Together with family, colleagues and local residents, Allman helped lead a restoration of numerous buildings including the local Ritz Theater, and has opened new businesses that cater to both locals and tourists.
Jack David Woodrum, President of the Summers County Commission, acknowledges that over the years many people have had ideas to redevelop and restore Hinton, but Ken Allman had the money and the heart to do it.
“We’ve been able to do little things on our own,” said Woodrum. “But what Kenny’s been able to bring to the county, I mean you look around, it looks like you’re looking at a postcard.”
“The facelift that he’s given the town and the inspiration he’s provided to others to do the same has been tremendous,” said Woodrum.
Today Hinton’s Historic District is one of the largest national historic districts for a town its size in the country.
Allman says there’s more to come.
Allman is one of 3 leaders profiled in West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inspiring West Virginiansprogram airing tonight, Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 8pm with encore broadcasts Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 at 1pm.
One of the fastest growing fields in astrophysics is gravitational waves – what scientists call ripples in the fabric of space-time, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915.
A hundred years later, in September 2015, they were actually detected by ultra-sensitive lasers.
But others are searching for gravitational waves with pulsars – the dead relics of massive stars. Astronomers detect pulsars by the radio pulses they emit at regular intervals.
Enter Justin Ellis, just 30 years old, from a rural area outside of Charles Town in Jefferson County, WV.
“I work on gravitational waves and pulsar timing,” said Ellis at his lab. “Gravitational waves are a major prediction of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and many other theories of relativity other than Einstein.”
Ellis is one of only a small group of scientists worldwide looking for gravitational waves using pulsars. Once detected, gravitational waves will lead to a revolution in astrophysics and astronomy – rather than looking at the universe, scientists will also be listening to it.
As an Einstein Fellow, Ellis is working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The 3-year post-doctoral fellowship is among the world’s most prestigious fellowships in astrophysics. He also has an appointment at the California Institute of Technology.
“He’s smart, he’s tenacious when he gets a problem, he’s happiest when he’s doing academic detective work,” said astrophysicist and colleague, Stephen Taylor.
“When a new problem or a new interesting topic arises, he really goes at it with gusto,” said Taylor. “He likes to get to the bottom of things, and he’s an incredibly smart guy.”
The millennial is an unlikely science star. Until Ellis went to college, his main interest in life was racing dirt bikes, which he did a lot – and won numerous Motocross competitions.
Then while attending Shepherd University Ellis was inspired by science professor Dr. Jason Best, who has since watched his former student’s amazing career, the potential impact of which he doesn’t underestimate.
“I hope that Justin will continue to not only find joy in studying the universe, but will be able to bring to others that joy of the universe, that respect for our cosmos, and to keep helping others find the deeper understandings, the deeper meanings that he has been able to find,” said Best.
Ellis is one of 3 national leaders profiled in West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inspiring West Virginiansprogram which aired Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.
Remember when Volkswagen got busted last year for cheating on emissions tests? A settlement that could reach $20 billion is still being negotiated.
Well here’s the back-story – how a car-obsessed country boy from West Virginia became one of the world’s great emissions engineers, uncovering one of the biggest scandals in automobile history.
Forty-six year old Dan Carder of Wood County, WV is a WVU graduate, a mechanical engineer, and runs the Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions (known as CAFEE) at West Virginia University.
That means Carder leads a team of faculty members, staff engineers, technicians and more than 30 Masters and PhD students. They carry out pioneering emissions research and testing – from mining equipment to refrigeration units to heavy-duty trucks to passenger vehicles – using all kinds of fuels, including diesel, gasoline, biodiesel, hybrid and electric systems.
The Center is trying to find that perfect balance among competing needs of power, fuel economy, fuel efficiency and low emissions.
“I believe our future looks very bright,” said Carder. “I’m driven by the need to try to figure out a way to bring opportunity and economic development to the state.”
It was here at CAFEE that Carder led a small team that developed the world’s first mobile on-board emission testing system. This led to detecting Volkswagen’s effort to intentionally deceive its customers through the use of a cheating device on their diesel vehicles.
The research was so significant Carder was named to TIME’s 2016 list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People.
WVU President Gordon Gee says the impact that Carder’s work has had on the university, the state and the nation is profound.
“CAFEE has become one of the most central places in this country – if not in the world – where emissions tests take place, because it’s now become a gold standard,” said Gee.
The world class engineer says there’s no place else he’d rather be conducting his research than in the Mountain State, his home.
“I want my future to be here in the state,” said Carder. “I want my kids to be able to grow up here and have opportunity.”
“And I want to be able to make a difference. When I’m retired, and look back and say, ‘now that was a good thing we did and look at all those jobs and opportunities we developed,’ that’s what we need to focus on.”
Carder is one of 3 national leaders profiled in West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inspiring West Virginians program airing Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 8pm with encore broadcasts Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 at 1pm.
The seventh and final season of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inspiring West Virginians radio series will premiere Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 8 p.m., with encore broadcasts at 1 p.m. Dec. 30 and Jan. 2.
“It’s been quite a ride,” Producer/Host Jean Snedegar said of the series, which profiles outstanding scientists, engineers and business people from the Mountain State.
This week’s program takes listeners from a town of 2,600 in southern West Virginia, to a state-of-the-art laboratory at WVU, to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. We’ll meet a rising star in astrophysics, the emissions engineer who brought Volkswagen to its knees, and an entrepreneur who moved his business back to West Virginia, transforming his hometown in the process.
“That brings to 29 the number of people I’ve had the privilege to meet through this radio series,” said Snedegar, an independent producer from Elkins, W.Va.
Over the course of the series, Snedegar and West Virginia Public Broadcasting also produced television profiles about nine of these West Virginia natives.
“All of these folks are known across the United States and in most cases they are global leaders in their fields – yet they were happy to be profiled for Inspiring West Virginians – partly because they want to inspire the next generation of West Virginia leaders in science, engineering and business,” Snedegar said.
Among this impressive list of Mountaineers are three physicians, three astrophysicists, two paleoclimatologists, a field biologist, a biochemist, a pharmacologist, a computer architect, a biophysicist and electrical engineer, two energy engineers, one structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, an aeronautical engineer, one mathematician, three business entrepreneurs, three social entrepreneurs and four top CEOs in software, fashion, government and IT.
“Our mission is to tell West Virginia’s stories,” said Suzanne Higgins, WVPB Executive Producer.
“Jean brought us profiles of John Nash, Brad Smith, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Adrian Melott, Linda Powers, Homer Hickham and Lewis Cantley among others – absolute super stars in their fields, and winners of the most prestigious science and business awards.”
Higgins said with her vast experience as a broadcast journalist at the BBC, Snedegar has delivered sound-rich stories that not only reveal the intimate, personal side of each of these West Virginians, and their background and humanity, Snedegar has also explained some very complicated scientific and mathematical principals and projects in a way that is readily understandable to her radio audience.
“It’s extraordinary to be able to do all of that in a single segment,” said Higgins, who has served as senior producer of the series since its inception in 2010. “We’ve been so proud to work with Jean on this project, which will preserve these important stories for years to come.”
In the newest Inspiring West Virginians program, we hear a “David and Goliath” story – about how a West Virginia engineer, 46-year-old Dan Carder, led a small team at West Virginia University to discover one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers had a cheating device on their diesel vehicles.
Credit Jean Snedegar
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Dan Carder is named to TIME’s 2016 list of the world’s “100 Most Influential People.”
It’s one of the biggest scandals in automobile history, resulting in a record $20 billion dollar fine for Volkswagen.
Carder was subsequently named to TIME’s 2016 list of the world’s “100 Most Influential People.”
Listeners will then travel to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for an on-site visit with astrophysicist Justin Ellis, born and raised in Jefferson County, W.Va.
Considered absolutely brilliant by his colleagues, this 30-year-old is one of only a few scientists worldwide looking for gravitational waves using pulsars.
Credit Jean Snedegar
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Scientist Justin Ellis is in search of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime.
And he never really thought about a science career until a professor at Shepherd University inspired him.
Ellis won the very prestigious NASA Einstein Fellowship – and he’s won some very coveted Motocross competitions as well.
The last profile in the Inspiring West Virginians finale is appropriately about a small-town boy who brought his extremely successful business back to his home town, and is leading additional local economic development projects.
Ken Allman, of Hinton, left the Mountain State and started PracticeLink.com, one of the oldest and largest online physician job banks in the country, from a one-bedroom apartment in St Louis, Mo.
A few years later, Allman decided to move the headquarters of his growing business back to his hometown in Summers County, and soon after was employing more than 20 local people.
Credit Jean Snedegar
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Entrepreneur Ken Allman is back home, inspiring a revitalization in Historic Hinton.
Allman then turned his attention to transforming downtown Hinton, a town proud of its railroad history. Together with family, colleagues and community members, Allman helped lead a restoration of numerous buildings, and has opened new businesses that cater to both locals and tourists.
Today, Hinton’s Historic District is one of the largest national historic districts in the country.
Allman says there’s more to come.
Since 2010, Inspiring West Virginians has been made possible by the generous support of the Myles Family Foundation – inspiring West Virginians to soar.
With a combination of local and national programs, pianist Bob Thompson’s “Joy to the World” once again takes center stage. The producers of “Mountain Stage with Larry Groce” celebrate this 23-year tradition with jazz arrangements of holiday favorites new and old, featuring special guest vocalist Lena Seikaly. This year’s episode premieres Monday, December 19th at 9pm, with several repeats scheduled. A Joy to the World mini-marathon is also planned for overnights during the Christmas weekend.
Local productions during the season include specials with The West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and The Appalachian Children’s Chorus, as well as the unveiling of 2016’s Inspiring West Virginians.
