Post by: Rebecca Burch
Town: Spencer
Website: Carpe You Some Diem!

Post by: Bryan Stealey
Town: Morgantown
Website: Reversing the Numbness

My friend and coworker Laurel called me today to let me know she was going to be a little late in getting to the office. She had found a malnourished dog walking down the middle of the road, in traffic, and being the responsible animal lover she is, she picked it up and took it to the vet. It turns out the dog is well-known at the vet’s office, and they’ve been worried about it for years because of its irresponsible owner. Laurel can’t handle a third dog, but if the owner of the poor pooch doesn’t claim it in five days (knock on wood that he doesn’t), she already has a line on an awesome home for it. Well done, Laurel.

Which brings me to my rant: What the hell is wrong with people who don’t take care of their animals? Why even get a dog if you can’t be bothered to take care of its basic needs? Why? (I know the reasons; I just don’t understand them.)

When I was growing up, I knew some people who had two hunting beagles that they kept in a little pin in the back of their yard. (And by little, I mean 3′ X 6′. For two dogs. And the floor was made of two-by-fours with space in between them so some of the poop would drop out. It was a mixed blessing, because their feet would sometimes drop out too.) These were otherwise good people, but the dog thing was crazy.

I’m reminded of this kind of stuff every day, as I have to drive by this pathetic guy on my way home from work:

Fang

How bad would that suck? I did a post about this dog, who we call Fang, a year ago on Reversing the Numbness, and he’s still in this situation 24 hours a day. A lost cause on paws. Our kids often say “poor Fang” as we drive by.

To quote my friend Josh Williams: “Chaining a sentient being to a peg for its life is just not good juju.

tswhatI’msayin.

We have one more post to go with our Spring theme, and it’s a great one. First, I’d like to thank new poster and Grafton resident MK Stover for playing along this week. Welcome, MK! Now take a minute to head over to her blog, MK Stover, to read her submission, which contains a perfect solution to keep mud from getting on your pink and girlish footwear.

Post by: Susan Chipley
Town: Morgantown
Website: Chez Mama

Spring is a nice thing here in WV … especially after one of our cold grey/brown winters. One of the first signs of spring is the robins you begin to hear chirping as the sun rises. You know spring is here (or at least just around the corner) when you wake to the sound of birds.

Every year, a mama robin seems to find her way to our front-porch light to build her nest and lay her eggs. The kids and I think it’s so cool to keep an eye on the nest for eggs, then babies. The mama usually gets so used to us that she doesn’t even fly off when we go out the door! The babies are looking really cute now, and when we’re on the front porch we hear their soft chirps.

It’s hard to get a good photo. I have to stand on a chair and hold the camera up while pointing it down into the nest. I can’t really see what I’m shooting, and that makes it tricky.

Robin eggs

Baby robins

Post by: Bryan Stealey
Town: Morgantown
Website: Reversing the Numbness

What looks crappier than an old, empty pool on a really crappy day? Not much. Case in point:

The Stealey Pool

That’s the Stealey Pool, which was my summer haunt all the years of my youth. That place was awesome. Pretty much every kid in Stealey (including us Stealey boys) were members, and it was always one of the nicest places to swim in all of Clarksburg. Not only did spring mean the end of school, but it also meant the beginning of swim season and our daily trips up the biggest hill in the neighborhood to our beloved pool.

I was recently in Clarksburg for my Grandmother Stealey’s funeral, unfortunately, and my brothers and I spent a couple of hours driving around our old stomping grounds. It’s getting pretty run down in places, sadly, and I understand Clarksburg in general is going through some pretty tough times right now. Our trip up to good ol’ Stealey pool was an eye-opener. There it was, lonely, tired looking, its age showing in its peeling paint, its cracking concrete deck, it’s rusty fence. Add to that a gloomy day, a shallow pool of dirty grey water at the bottom of the deep end, and not another soul in sight, and the place just looked terrible. It looked dead, almost.

Even though the town is facing tough times right now, and I doubt the pool’s budget has an extreme makeover in the cards, I’m sure that the coming of spring will turn it into a completely different place. The surrounding hills will be lush with vegetation, the pool will be filled with clean, blue water, and the cracks in the deck will be hidden by slowly tanning feet of every shape and size.

I just love how spring makes dead things come back to life.

Post by: Rebecca Burch
Town: Spencer
Website: Carpe You Some Diem!

I know it’s really spring when Charleston’s cherry blossoms start to open up. These fragile flowers bloom only for a week or so before the delicate petals fall from the sky like the snow we were only recently wishing to never see again. It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life and forget to stop and look for these trees to bloom each year.

Cherry Blossoms

There are a few cherry trees in Charleston, including one huge, gorgeous, weeping cherry tree at First Presbyterian Church, next door to the school where I work. As soon as February’s out of the way, I start watching that tree for little buds to start popping up and turning green. Sometimes, I think that watching for those little green signs of hope does so much to get me through the end of winter. Just when it seems like the cold, grey days will never end, the buds appear and my mental focus turns to springtime.

Weeping Cherry

Once the cherry trees bloom, I know that other flowers will follow suit. My apple tree in the back yard isn’t far behind, and then azaleas and rhododendrons, redbud trees and snowball bushes. My dreary commute is rocked by the bright pinks and purples and yellow-green saplings of springtime, and the world seems to come alive again.

Post by: Rebecca Burch
Town: Spencer
Website: Carpe You Some Diem!

This is going to sound really odd coming from a middle-aged art teacher and mother of four, probably, but I’m going to post this, anyway.

I love the sound of a hotrod engine.

I know, I know… these cars are gas hogs, unnecessary driving is bad for the environment, and they’re a nuisance driving through your neighborhood … I know. But to me, the sound of a really well-tuned muscle car is a beautiful thing.

My husband, Mike, bought a 1966 Ford Mustang as a kid — yes, before he was old enough to drive it — with money earned from working in his father’s movie theater . Since then, he’s been building and tweaking to get every last little bit of horsepower out of the thing, and now the little red Mustang is a force to be reckoned with. The sound it makes is amazing — when it idles, it has this low growl, and then as it gets ready to take off, it literally roars like some sort of mechanical dragon! It’s not the whine of a modern sportscar; it’s the sound of pure power. You can’t NOT love it. Don’t even ask me engine specs and details — I have no clue. I just love the sound it makes when it’s ready to go, and I know how much work has gone into this thing. SO many hours of tweaking and grinding and doing the math and reworking systems have gone into getting even the most minute time gain at the track.

Well, okay … there are times when I would appreciate a “mute” button on the old ‘Stang … especially when I’ve just put the baby down for a nap and the guys are all working on their cars in the driveway. And after a day at the racetrack, I do welcome the silence of the ride home. This noise does have a downside. As much as I love it, there are times that the noise can be too much. But I’ll take it. I am looking forward to the racing season that is just starting up, and I know we’ll have fun at the track this year. The weather is warm and the hotrodders are already starting to congregate at my house to compare progress made during the cold months and plan trips to the track. The kids are chomping at the bit to go see Daddy race again. And I’m looking forward to spending some time outdoors with my family watching the culmination of all the work my husband and his friends have put into these machines of pure strength and beauty. Putnam County, here we come!

Link to Kanawha Valley Motorsports Park.

WV Hotrod

Bob Coffield, who writes the Health Care Law Blog, has posted an excellent entry for the PWV topic of Sounds. Please visit his excellent blog to learn more about Charleston’s FestivALL.

Also, in response to Moneytastesbad’s previous post on Mountain Stage, Bob pointed out that podcasts for some of the Mountain Stage archives are now available at the Charleston Gazette’s entertainment website, TheGazz.com.

Post by: Moneytastesbad
Town: Morgantown
Website: The 30-Year-Old Freshman

Mountain Stage — WV’s best little secret

REM

Richard Thompson

Regina Spektor

They Might Be Giants

Billy Bragg

Ralph Stanley

Yonder Mountain String Band

I could go on, but I will stop now.

Post by: Susan Chipley
Town: Morgantown
Website: Chez Mama

I’m sure most people reading this have heard of Jesco White, the “Dancing Outlaw.” His father, D. Ray White, was a legendary mountain dancer. Jesco aspired to be the same, and he has been to some extent. Jesco has lived a difficult life, and struggled to overcome poverty and addiction. He has become reasonably famous, as he has been featured on two documentaries made for Public Television. Sometimes I think that many of the Hollywood-types have exploited Jesco and used him to perpetuate the typical West Virginia and Appalachian stereotypes–something that we West Virginians have to continue to fight to overcome.

Cousin Wildweed wrote a song about Jesco, “The Ballad of Jesco White”. Here’s a video of that song, performed by Peckerwood. I’m not sure if it is actually Jesco dancing in the video or not, as the face is a bit blurry. His moves definitely remind me of Jesco, though!

Post by: Bryan Stealey
Town: Morgantown
Website: Reversing the Numbness

I love music, as anyone who ever visits my Friday Music posts will know. (If you’re the same way, consider swinging by RtN and helping make a weekly play list. It’s an open invitation.) While I don’t make it out to see local live music like I used to, I still like thinking about some of the bands I was into in college in the early to mid-’90s. I love when I find traces of this music on the internet.

Here’s a video of the Joint Chiefs from 1995. These guys were hugely popular back in the day and just did a little three-show reunion tour in Morgantown, Charleston, and Huntington (I believe) a few weeks ago.

I was very stoked to find out that Steve Rubin, the guitar player from rock-hip-hoppers Circle 6, has posted all of Circle 6’s recordings online at Eight Track Mind. Go listen! With Steve on guitar and the incomparable Billy Resh on the mic, Circle 6 always put on an awesome show in a similar vein to Rage Against the Machine (but with a little more rap). At one point Steve and I had a big plan to get some guys together and do a show covering both albums of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but we never did get around to it.

Eric Lewis and I did play a lot of Pink Floyd, but it was his gigs with his band Once Hush that I remember the best. He was my roommate and the guys in the band were some of my best college friends, so I probably saw this group a hundred times. I never felt like they got the credit they deserved, because they were all fantastic musicians and they wrote really good pop songs. You can hear some of their stuff on the Once Hush MySpace page. Eric and singer/guitarist Greg Riordan are still making great music.

So many other bands, I can hardly remember them all. Rasta Rafiki. Jolly Gargoyle. The Karl Shuman Band. Lester James and the White Flames. The Recipe. The Groove Tubes. The Tide (featuring Eric Hopper). Todd Burge (who’s still the pride of West Virginia) and his bands 63 Eyes and Triple Shot. Brian Porterfield (also still going strong with his band The Love Me Knots). Sandra Black.

That’s just the beginning of the massive collection of quality bands that graced Morgantown in the early to mid-’90s. Dozens — probably hundreds — of bands have come and gone through this town since, and I missed out on most of them. I think I got to see The Argument once before they broke up, and the same goes for The Emergency, though I think they’re still together. I’ve seen one-man punk band J. Marinelli a couple of times, and Billy Matheney and the Frustrations as well. I’m sure there are excellent bands in this town I don’t even know about.

I’ll end with one more Youtube video of one Morgantown’s most world-renowned bands, Karma to Burn. They’re no longer together, but their legacy of instrumental rock lives on in fans across the globe.

Post by: Susan Chipley
Town: Morgantown
Website: Chez Mama

When I noticed that Bryan had chosen “Structures” as a topic for PWV, I instantly knew what I wanted to write about. Moorefield is in Hardy County, about 12 miles from Petersburg, my hometown. I have spent lots of time in Moorefield, as my grandparents lived there and I had many aunts and uncles who lived there as well. My great-great-great grandfather, Captain John J. Chipley, built two beautiful homes right in Moorefield. He was Captain of the Company H, 25th VA Volunteer Infantry and Company B, 62nd VA Volunteer Infantry for the Confederate army during the Civil War. He built his first house, which is on Rt. 55 (Virginia Ave. in Moorefiled). I absolutely love this house. It is beautiful.

The second house is on the corner of Winchester Ave. and Chipley Lane. It was built in 1905, and remained in the Chipley family until 1970. My dad grew up in this house, and when he was in college my grandparents decided it was too much house for the two of them. They sold it to a friend, Kenneth Chambers, who operated the house as a funeral home. (He and his wife lived in the house as well.) My grandparents bought a house directly behind it. I learned to ride a bike in the parking lot of the funeral home, and played in and around the house often. In the mid-80s, the Chambers sold the funeral home, and it has been operating as the Elmore-Chambers funeral home since then.

Moorefield is a very nice, small West Virginia town. It is full of large, beautiful homes. Many of them pre-date the Civil War. Most of the homes are very well-kept. Every year, during the last weekend of September, Moorefield has Heritage Weekend. It is a celebration of the history of Hardy County. Many of the homes are open for tours, with guides who know the history of the homes. It is very cool, and I would recommend a trip to Moorefield for Heritage Weekend. They always have a great quilt show, Civil War re-enactments, and a large arts and crafts show where artisans from all over West Virginia show and sell their goods.

Post by: Bryan Stealey
Town: Morgantown
Website: Reversing the Numbness

Last weekend was the first meeting of the Morgantown chapter of Grateful Dads, a group of fathers who get together with their kids and go on hikes, have picnics, etc. It was a small group, with only three dads and four kids, but you have to start somewhere, right? We had a really good time and will be meeting again in June. If anyone is interested in hiking with us in June, contact me at bryan@picturewestvirginia.com.

Our first get-together was at the Virgin Hemlock Trail, near Coopers Rock. It was probably as tough a trail as we’d want to tackle with small children. Thanks to some relatively minor human intervention, we were able to make the full loop. I love untouched wilderness as much as the next guy, but it’s cool that some trails have been made to be family-friendly, thanks to some tasteful, well-placed structures.

Annelies and Jude make the climb

No bridge, no cross for the wee ones

Chris and Alec make it across

Post By: Rebecca Burch
Town: Spencer
Website: Carpe You Some Diem

Every year, as the heat of the summer begins to fade and the leaves just barely start changing their color, my thoughts turn to festivals — the Black Walnut Festival, the Pumpkin Festival, Bridge Day, and countless others. My favorite is the Black Walnut Festival, in my hometown of Spencer, WV. RVs and cars line the streets for about a week before the festival, and all the traffic is a nightmare in our tiny town, but I don’t care. I live within walking distance (straight uphill to get home, but walking distance, nonetheless) to downtown, so I can go without a car for a weekend.

I love festivals because they are a celebration of each area’s personal flavor. Though the rides, the craft booths, the parades, the food stands, and the activities are roughly the same at each festival, they are all drastically different because of the people who make it happen. The real gold is in the local performers. Come to the Black Walnut Festival, and you’re likely to hear Jake Krack, a fiddler whose skill was beyond most adults’, even before he was old enough to speak into the microphone (and has only gotten better since)! Visit the art exhibits and you’ll find some amazing pieces by local artists Margaret and Peter Arabia. See the local talent at the rest of the festivals, and you’ll be amazed at how diverse our talents are as West Virginians, and how our rich heritage has colored even the youngest of our artists and performers — not to mention our craftspeople, farmers, and other talented folks whose handiwork gets the spotlight during festival time.

I love the exhibits, but I can’t think about festivals without thinking about carnival rides. I used to dream of carnival time year-round as a kid, and I just couldn’t wait to climb into one of these machines. And though I’ve never been trapped on one, injured, or experienced anything bad on one, for some reason I have developped this fear of carnival rides. I can stomach the craziest rollercoaster you can show me, but put me on the Spider or the Zipper, and you’re in for a fight. I can remember being consoled by my then-four-year-old eldest son on a ride called the “Blackjack” — he was patting my knee with his tiny hand and saying, “Mommy, you’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure you don’t fall out.” Of course, I have never lived this down. No matter how many scrambler rides I complete, I will always be the World’s Biggest Chicken for experiencing sheer terror on a ride
that my four-year-old found no problem with.

As much fear as I have toward riding these rides, I love to stand in the middle of all of them and watch my kids play. The best time is when the sun is just beginning to set and the carnival lights start to turn on. These machines are really works of art, with their old-fashioned paint jobs and intricate lighting designs. Of course, I love photographing them, too, and the more I learn about photographing lighted, moving objects in varying amounts of atmospheric light, the more I enjoy the challenge of getting just the right shot.

Black Walnut Festival Ride

So here’s another excellent post I missed, thanks to my email gaffe. Sorry, Allclick — and thanks for the submission. I really like how you went with better and worse.

Post by: Allclick
Town: Hurricane
Website: http://www.allclick.blogspot.com

About one year behind schedule, Putnam County finally entered the 21st century this April by opening its first Wal-mart. Yes, the mega-super-ultra-all-selling-all-knowing-hyper mart institution is now available for everyone who had to drive those 20 minutes to Nitro. Ever since construction began I thought to myself, Will this be better for the community or worse? Here were some of my thoughts/suspicions.

Better:

Well, a big honking superstore needs people to work there, right? So more jobs in the area. Wal-mart say they are giving a lot of money away to local charities and organizations. I don’t disbelieve them, I just can’t verify that. Other stores are moving in near Wal-mart. I look forward to trying the new Rocky Top Mountain Pizza.

I’ll have to spend less on gas to get to Wal-mart. The prices are usually cheaper than Kroger. Kroger is now a lot nicer to shop at, as everyone is at Wal-mart.

So, a lot of benefits on a personal level and a community level. But didn’t I just see a documentary about how Wal-mart moves into a community and then all the smaller stores just close and die? Hmm.

Worse:

Potentially some of the smaller stores in Hurricane could close. There are a couple of family-owned superstores that probably aren’t too happy about the competition. The roads have become a little more congested now at the interstate exit there.

Yes, a new Dollar Tree moved in alongside Wal-mart … but to make up for this, they closed the other one over in Teays Valley. Which was nicer.

It’s a Wal-mart. Which means to most shoppers that they should ignore any etiquette that they have learned throughout life and just treat the place like their own playground. The parking up there still kinda sucks. I have no idea how that happened.

It’s a tough call right now. I can only see the roads getting worse and the other stores struggling more as time goes on. For now I’m pleased to have a convenient, cheap shopping location. Whether I’ll be quite as content as I line up in traffic everyday at the interstate I can’t tell you.