West Virginia, its culture and people are in a state of superposition, says writer poet and Kanawha Valley native Crystal Good.
Charged by her Affrilachian poet peers to combine her thoughts and observations of West Virginia with principles of Quantum Physics, Good delivered a lecture at a TedxTalks event in Lewisburg in July.
In an attempt to understand the state’s people, culture and history (and future), Good examines our complex nature:
"West Virginia, for example, is the Southern-most Northern-est and the Northern-most Southern-est state in the Eastern Time Zone. West Virginia isn't really even west of Virginia but kind of up and over. West Virginia was both Union and Confederate in the Civil War. Today, West Virginia is a democratic state that votes Republican. And West Virginia is a state sitting at the crossroads, teaming with billboards that read 'Coal Keeps the Lights On', yet we're one of the poorest states in the nation."
It’s through those dichotomies and the example of Schrödinger’s Cat, where Good argues that West Virginia can be viewed through the lens of Quantum Physics.
You can listen to Good’s interview with West Virginia Public Radio Broadcasting at the top of the page or stream a video of her TEDxTalk here:
Crittenton Services has been serving women and children in West Virginia for over a century. Over that time span they’ve collected some powerful insight…
Crittenton Services has been serving women and children in West Virginia for over a century. Over that time span they’ve collected some powerful insight into challenges the state faces regarding poverty, especially concerning women and children.
0904Crittentontwo.mp3
Part Two: Breaking Cycles
A History of Helping Women
It all started when a bout of Scarlet Fever killed a four-year-old little girl named Florence in 1882. Her father, Charles Crittenton, was devastated. A preacher in New York suggested that he deal with his grief by helping women of the streets.
He began preaching to the immigrant wives and daughter and mothers of men who were off working in factories and mines throughout the country. Many of these women resorted to prostitution to support themselves and their families.
Kathy Szafran, President and CEO of Crittenton Services, Inc. in Wheeling, says that Crittenton would go and preach, “Go forth and sin no more,” until it occurred to him that many of these women had nowhere to go. 130 years later, she says, their organization’s mission is still basically the same as his: to help women become independent and self-sufficient.
She explains that today the national Crittenton Foundation connects 27 independently operated and governed Crittenton centers in the country—all of them dealing with unique challenges in a variety of ways.
A Residential Program for Teenage Girls and Teenage Moms
Over the years, the center in Wheeling formerly called the Florence Crittenton Home has morphed from being a safe place for prostitutes, to being a place where the wealthy would send unwed mothers, to today, being the only licensed maternity care, behavioral health center in the state. The Wheeling-based agency has evolved into four programs which all serve a mission of helping children and families in need achieve self-sufficiency.
One of the programs that has been the cornerstone of Crittenton Services for all these years and remains the core of the agency is their residential program which caters to girls 12-18.
The program operates with a constant waiting list. It’s licensed to house 42 people, ten of which currently are babies. All of the adolescents have behavior issues that have landed them in this facility.
Meet Bessie
Bessie is from Southern W.Va. She’s 17. She was skipping school, she had complicated problems at home, and then she got in trouble for fighting.
“That led me to getting on a bond, and I broke my bond by not going to school and saying, ‘Who cares?’ And then I got put on probation till I was 18.”
Bessie explains that she found motivation to behave because she didn’t want to be “sent off.” Bessie also, at this time, got pregnant and had a baby. Her little girl is now nine months old. She was born with a cleft pallet and had to undergo several surgeries, required special bottles, and special care.
“We didn’t have daycare or nothing because it’s a small town. The nearest day care was probably thirty minutes away and I didn’t have a car. I had no help,” Bessie says.
That’s when her parole officer told her about Crittenton—the only place in the state that would take both mom and baby.
The Residence
Bessie showed us around the Crittenton’s residential hall in Wheeling. It’s a dorm-like building with rooms large enough for two girls and two cribs each on the top floor. The first floor houses a daycare, a kitchen, and a health clinic where there’s a nurse and all the basic medical needs of the girls can be met.
Down stairs there are classrooms, meetings rooms, and recreational spaces. Bessie says normally it’s a crazy environment, but we were there while things were relatively calm. Girls were rotating in and out of the program and many were out on an off-site trip to a nearby flea market.
“When I first got here everything seemed so loud and so crazy and then I was like, ‘OK, they’re just like me. They just had to be here for a little bit and deal with new changes and being away from home. It’s fine.’ But I cried so hard when I first got here,” she remembers. But she says she adjusted.
Bessie explains that she’s now what’s called a “positive peer.” It’s a privilege that comes with good behavior, but she says it’s a role that comes naturally to her because she has a nurturing personality.
Bessie’s situation isn’t typical because she enrolled herself and her baby into the program. Through the education program which continues year-round at Crittenton, she’s caught up on her high school classes.
“This place has taught me a lot about independence, so I’m going to go get a job. For sure. I’m going to get a job, a part time job, because I know that my baby is more important than any job or any schooling. But I need that, too,” she says referring to the job, “to have a future.”
She was able to get a food handler’s card while at Crittenton, so now her plan is to get part time work at a fast food restaurant, go to school, and spend evenings with her baby.”
“I think I made the right decision to come here and get the help that I need,” she says, “and I think that I’m ready to go back home.”
Even if she wasn’t ready, Bessie turns 18 this month, and as a legal adult without a court order, there’s nothing keeping her in the program which would usually continue for another two to five months.
Bessie plans to return home to live with her father.
Cycles of Abuse and Poverty
“What’s really happening to us today? Why do kids have these behaviors? Why are we managing such poverty issues? It would be so simple to say that if we gave everybody an education, if everybody had food in their bellies and a roof over their head, that would end poverty.”
But CEO of Crittenton Services, Kathy Szafran, says it’s not that simple.
Her organization has been managing the side effects of poverty in West Virginia for over a century—dealing largely today with girls displaying behavioral problems. She says together with the National Crittenton Foundation, they’ve amassed certain insights about human psychology that could hold keys to breaking patterns of abuse and poverty—two things which, turns out, go hand and hand.
“You can take any of these girls and without dealing with their trauma,” Szafran says, “you can get them in school—doubt if they’ll stay in; you can get them in a house—sure they’re going to struggle; and the odds of them reliving that cycle of abuse would be very good.”
Complex Trauma
What is trauma? What does it look like? What usually springs to mind are severe scenarios like rape, physical abuse, loss of a parent. These are, unfortunately, common experiences that can take long term toll of an individual, but as Tracee Chambers explains, even more common and equally harmful are small abuses that build up from very early ages. Chambers is the clinical intake specialist for the residential program at Crittenton. She says she trains staff to recognize behavioral symptoms that can come from what’s called complex trauma.
She says ,any of the girls at Crittenton have similar backgrounds: “Mom and dad were using and not responsive when they cried, or mom and dad didn’t bother to feed them regularly, so from the period of infancy when you’re learning how to trust the world and that you can have your needs met based on your cues, they don’t feel like they have any control and they don’t have trust that their caregivers can meet their needs.”
Chambers says the trauma compounds as a child grows and develops.
“As they start to develop into toddlers and they start to try to explore environment and stuff like that, parents either restrict their movement and throw them in a crib for the day so that they don’t get to explore and learn, or they’re very punitive and negative when they get into things, or they’re exposed to this chronic chaos.”
Chambers says this chronic developmental trauma from intermittent love and neglect can create individuals who find it difficult to build trust, or feel helpless or hopeless to have an impact on what goes on around them. She says that a variety of behavioral problems are typical.
“It’s hard to get a kid in to a school to learn their ABCs when they’re worried about what happened last night,” Chambers says, “or if they haven’t eaten in a couple days.”
Szafran refers to some of the girls who then, eventually land in Crittenton’s residential program. She says without learning how to cope, the infant, turned toddler, turned adolescent is often ill-equipped to rise out of the impoverished circumstances in which she lives.
“And then she gets pregnant.”
Szafran is adamant when it comes to teen pregnancy. She says high teen pregnancy is not about lack of access to contraceptives or education. It’s about girls making the decision to have a baby.
“She got pregnant because it was something she could choose to do,” Szafran says. “And she will have someone to love her. And it may be her ‘way out’ because This Guy is promising her the world.”
Then, Szafran explains, she’ll most likely recreate the only reality she’s ever known.
Breaking the Cycle
The programs at Crittenton aim to allay behavioral symptoms by instilling healthy alternatives that teach someone how to self-regulate so that they can rise above the chaos. Resiliency tools are used to that end—things like having a daily routine, good nutrition, and how to recognize healthy relationships and unhealthy life patterns like addition and abuse.
“Our kids don’t realize that they’ve been abused until they’ve had a couple classes and then they say, ‘Well yeah, that happened to me,’” Chambers says.
She says they also teach teenage moms how to connect with their babies: positioning, eye contact, how to use real words and a positive tone of voice—reciprocal nonverbal contact that builds trust and a positive connection. She says these are basic, fundamental, and critical skills. They build resiliency in the mother and in the child.
“The more connected and attached they become to their child,” Chambers says, “the more likely they are to protect them from people who would harm them, and the more likely they are to work hard to get them what they need.”
And that, she says, can break the cycle of abuse. A resilient, happy child, she says, can overcome obstacles and find her way out of poverty. Or at least, she’s more likely to.
A West Virginia-based pharmacy chain is hoping to combat the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine by stocking a tamper-resistant form of the drug used…
A West Virginia-based pharmacy chain is hoping to combat the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine by stocking a tamper-resistant form of the drug used in its production.
Fruth Pharmacy, which has 27 locations in West Virginia and Ohio, announced it will begin stocking a drug called Nexafed. The tablet contains the active ingredient pseudoephedrine, similar to the popular brand-name allergy drug Sudafed.
But if an abuser tries to extract the pseudoephedrine out of Nexafed to make meth, it breaks down into a thick gel that thwarts production. That’s all thanks to a technology developed by Illinois-based Acura Pharmaceuticals.
Vice President of Marketing for Acura Brad Rivet said the product, which has been on the market since last December, is comparable to similar, more familiar drugs you may already have in your medicine cabinet.
“We’ve done a comparative study with the branded pseudoephedrine product to show that, in humans, the rate and extent of absorption in the bloodstream is virtually identical. So, the efficacy that people have come to expect with older drugs that don’t have this technology will be there for them with Nexafed,” said Rivet.
Fruth pharmacies will continue to stock other pseudoephedrine products that offer different dosages from Nexafed. The company plans to replace traditional pseudoephedrine products with the new drug as more dosages become available.
Lynne Fruth, president of the company that bears her name, admits the pharmacy may take a hit to its bottom line because of brand loyalty and those still managing to use pseudoephedrine for illicit purposes. However, she says it’s important the company plays a role in protecting the community.
“If they’re looking for the purposes of meth, they aren’t interested in buying this product. We’re having pharmacists tell us that when they say, ‘We don’t carry straight Sudafed except in the Nexafed’ then some people say ‘Well, I don’t want that stuff.’ Which, that tells us that’s probably not a legitimate purchaser of the drug,” said Fruth, who also chairs the board of her Point Pleasant-based company.
Lawmakers and policy makers try to address the growing problem in West Virginia
In West Virginia, 288 meth labs were seized last year. So far in 2013, authorities have seized over 300 meth labs, most of which were discovered in Kanawha County. In mid-May, The Charleston Gazette reported state police estimated that meth lab seizures for 2013 were on pace to double last year’s numbers.
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito attended Fruth’s Nexafed roll-out announcement at the Lee Street location in Charleston. She suggested legislation that might curb meth production by requiring a prescription to purchase pseudoephedrine could be considered at the state level.
Credit Dave Mistich / State of WV
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State of WV
Lee Street Fruth Pharmacist Sam Arco explains the new product Nexafed as Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and Lynne Fruth, president of the company, look on. The product contains pseudoephedrine but cannot be used in the manufacturing of methamphetamine.
“I think that’s something that’s been considered in the state and I think that’s something that, if the problem continues without a solution—or attempted solutions like the ones we’re seeing—I think that’s probably something that would be considered,” said Capito regarding a prescription requirement for the drug.
Currently only two states, Oregon and Mississippi, require a prescription for the purchase of products containing pseudoephedrine. In an op-ed from 2010 published in The New York Times, one law enforcement official from Oregon has said that tactic is translating to fewer meth lab busts.
Recent legislation passed in West Virginia keeps all products with pseudoephedrine behind the counter and puts a cap on the amount allowed to be purchased or posessed. Sales of the drug are tracked and customers must also show identification for purchase, yet Lee Street Fruth Pharmacist Sam Arco noted that meth manufacturers often outsource the purchase of pseudoephedrine to others known as “smurfs.”
“The monitoring method doesn’t really take care of everything because I can buy a box, Congresswoman Capito can buy a box and Lynne can buy a box. All of the sudden we have three boxes out there. We don’t know where it’s going. You just don’t know that all of the time,” Arco explained, hypothetically.
Even despite the use of the National Precursor Log Exchange tracking system, known as NPLEx, West Virginians are still purchasing traditional, potentially meth-yielding pseudoephedrine products at a rapid pace. About 40,000 boxes per month of the sinus medication have been sold so far this year, according to data from the state pharmacy board.
Such high sales and skyrocketing lab busts brought Del. Don Purdue (D-Wayne) to ask Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to investigate manufacturers of pseudoephedrine. The Beckley Register-Herald recently reported that Purdue intends to revisit a bill that would require a prescription for the drug.
Are smaller, independent pharmacies the key to curbing meth production?
Fruth said past the monitoring system and any legislation on the books, the ultimate decision lies in the hands of those working behind the counter.
“It is totally at the pharmacist’s professional discretion to decide if they’re going to sell pseudoephedrine. One of the things as a local family-owned company, you tend to know your customers and a lot of our pharmacists will often opt if it is somebody from out of state or a customer who is not known to them,” said Fruth.
Rivet said Acura has intentionally targeted smaller pharmacies around the country like Fruth because of their heightened ability to influence consumers.
“We started with independent pharmacies because the pharmacist at that level is obviously aware of the need in his community and they see the need for a product like Nexafed,” said Rivet.
“Because they’re their own decision makers, they can immediately choose to put Nexafed in and start stocking it and recommending it, unlike a chain pharmacist who sees the same needs—they have to get headquarter approval before a product is brought in. So, we started with the independent pharmacies, especially those in those high meth-awareness states.”
Rivet said Nexafed is currently available in over 1,400 pharmacies nationwide.
Photographs depicting life in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia have long been the subject of controversy. One documentary photographer with roots in the state’s southern coal fields is seeking to change that through his work but also has motives far more personal.
“The pictures have this visual context of Appalachia, or at least the mountains. Even if you don’t even know what Appalachia is, you can see this rural, country, mountain way of life,” said documentary photographer Roger May as he spoke about his project Testify.
He affectionately refers to the project as a “visual love letter to Appalachia.”
Credit Roger May
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“What you can’t see but you need some sort of back story is my looking for something to sort of hold onto from my childhood and something to sort of carry with me and identify these things that are often not exactly how we remember them,” he said.
Born across the river in Pike County, Kentucky and raised in Chattaroy in Mingo County, May has lived in Raleigh, North Carolina since the late ‘80s. He recalled his formative years in the southern West Virginia coal fields and his mother’s reasons for relocating the family to North Carolina.
“I was becoming more aware that we were poor and we were on welfare. And my mom, as a single mom of two boys, she didn’t want our only option to be to work in the coal mines. She felt like if we stayed, and if I stayed through high school, that’s pretty much what was going to happen,” said May.
Although he’s returned to the area often to visit family, just over six years ago May began what he calls “making photographs” of the people and the area he still calls home.
Credit Roger May
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“I try to be very deliberate when I say ‘I’m making pictures’ or ‘making photographs’ rather than ‘taking’ because, that one letter, so much hinges on that. These people have been taken—they’ve had enough taken from them already—I don’t want to be another taker in a long line of takers,” he said.
Initially compiling a body of work that protested mountaintop mining, May’s focus eventually turned into a reflection on his childhood and upbringing in the Tug Fork Valley.
The photographs from Testify document the spectrum of scenery in the state’s southern coalfields, from landscapes of the mountains to mining facilities—even the people May calls his own.
At its core, Testify, serves to champion the place where May is from, but also attempts to reconcile his memories of growing up with the reality of life in the area.
Credit Roger May
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“This project has just been a creative process to kind of work that out. I say ‘memory versus reality’ and memory is a real thing and reality is a real thing. Those don’t always line up. Somewhere in the middle is probably a more accurate reflection of what actually happened,” he said.
May’s limited edition collection of photos will be published by Horse & Buggy Press. It is scheduled for release in September and was entirely funded by a Kickstarter campaign he launched earlier this year.
Eight years ago three friends at Shepherd University started a band. The Demon Beat’s popularity grew from the restaurants and pubs around Shepherdstown to audiences across the state and region. The band just made a run around the state before taking a hiatus.
“Personally whenever I hear terms like ‘this is a garage rock band’ or ‘a back to basics raw sound’, those are just really tired phrases when you hear people talk about that,” said Morgantown musician and close friend of the band, Billy Matheny.
“When you listen to The Demon Beat and when you see them live, in both cases, I think it’s everything a rock experience should be. It is raw and it is immediate. More than anything, it’s fun to listen to. That’s kind of everything you want out of that experience,” he added.
Being so incredibly loud and raw musically speaking, it seems ironic the three members of The Demon Beat are so quiet and unassuming about making a last run of shows around the state.
But the band, formed in Shepherdstown in 2005 and currently living in Martinsburg, did just that at the end of this past week, performing at 123 Pleasant Street in Morgantown on Thursday, the Boulevard Tavern in Charleston on Friday, and Huntington’s V Club on Saturday. None of the appearances were advertised as final shows, though.
Matheny, whose own band The Frustrations played the show in Morgantown with The Demon Beat, comments on the band’s humble approach to hanging things up.
“This is a situation where most bands, like 90 percent of them would be, ‘Alright, I’m going to cash this in. We’ve got three big shows, last time to see us.’ Basically like kind of turning it into a cash cow thing and doing what KISS would do, or something like that. The big farewell tour. They’re cooler than that,” said Matheny.
The reason for the indefinite hiatus of one of the state’s most beloved rock outfits? Guitarist and vocalist Adam Meisterhans is headed to Nashville at the end of May to pursue other musical endeavors. While excited about the future, he admits stepping back is difficult.
“It’s hard not to do it. But, at the same time, I get more excited about what’s going to happen next than bummed out. Because it’s not like any of us are dying. We’ll still hang out and still talk a lot,” said Meisterhans.
Since its inception, The Demon Beat has toured and recorded relentlessly, garnering not only a following in their home state but throughout the region. But everywhere they went, they were quick to point out they were from West Virginia. Meisterhans notes the band’s sense of pride about West Virginia was met with stereotypical ignorance.
“Basically, we would hear the same question every night. People basically ask us about Jesco White, or Wrong Turn, or if we live near Roanoke,” he said with a laugh.
Aside from some sort of geographical or cultural chip on the shoulder, Bassist Tucker Riggleman says being from West Virginia instills a do-it-yourself ethic.
“I think it made us kind of have to learn how to do a lot more on our own, being from West Virginia. It’s not like it is New York or somewhere where you can play a million different places. You kind of have to get your butt in gear and figure out how to go travel and play other places and make connections and figure out how to record your own stuff and how to push it and make your own merch,” said Riggleman.
“There’s nobody to do it for you around here like there might be more opportunities in different places for that. I think you get a sense of pride from that,” he added.
Drummer Jordan Hudkins jokingly comments on the role each played in the success of the band.
“Tucker decided to try his hand at booking and, lo and behold, he’s really good at it. He’s awesome at it. It’s hard to do; it’s really hard to do. Adam started writing songs and, lo and behold he’s really good at it. Turns out I’m really good at buying a minivan,” said Hudkins.
Credit The Demon Beat / Funny / Not Funny Records
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Funny / Not Funny Records
Yet Hudkins is merely being modest, as his skills in visual art are responsible for the artwork on the band’s albums.
Meisterhans says virtually every facet of the band was a matter of trial and error.
“As we kept going, we kept wanting to do more stuff and then we had to figure out how to do that other stuff, whether it was making a record or booking a tour. We didn’t know anything about it, so we just tried to do it. Then, when we tried to do it and messed it up, we thought about what we did wrong and tried to do it again.”
Hudkins echoed those sentiments with a less serious tone.
“It’s like a recipe for a meatloaf or a casserole. You have all the ingredients there and you think you know what it is but, then you accidentally spill something into it or you don’t cook it right and it comes out and it tastes awful. But, it’s yours,” he explained.
As Hudkins’ comments might indicate, the band’s sense of humor is also worth noting. On their latest record, Less is Less, he Photoshopped all of the band member’s faces together for the album cover.
Titles of songs from the record mimic pop music hits, like Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall”, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and Oasis’ “Wonderwall”. There’s even a song called “Teenage Wasteland,” an obvious play on the often mislabeled Who song “Baba O’Reilly.”
While all three admit it’s difficult to hang things up for now, Meisterhans isn’t the only one with musical ambitions.
Hudkins has recently been switching focus to his project Rozwell Kid, which released an album in February. And Riggleman has been building up his own collection of songs with Bishops.
But even still, The Demon Beat is a band that will surely be missed. Dave Lavender, arts and entertainment writer for the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, said the band’s prowess in the live setting left an indelible mark on the local scene.
“I think that The Demon Beat—I don’t think they ever kind of over thought their music. They always thought that it should punch you in the gut and bowl you over. Any time I saw them they just blew the roof off the joint, even if that joint was an open sky,” said Lavender.
The band plans to play a handful of one-off shows in the region before Meisterhans heads to Nashville.
