This week's premiere broadcast of Mountain Stage was recorded on the campus of West Virginia University at the Canady Creative Arts Center. On this episode, we hear live performances from Duke Robillard Band, Cedric Burnside, Sam Weber, Las Cafeteras, and The Black Feathers.
WVPB news anchor and journalist Beth Vorhees is retiring today. We invite you to watch this look back on her three decades of excellence covering West Virginia public affairs:
Beth founded or shaped the programs that have come to define West Virginia Public Broadcasting: The Legislature Today, Inside Appalachia, and West Virginia Morning.
She also leaves her mark as a mentor to dozens of journalists, including Death, Sex & Money host Anna Sale, NPR Newscaster Giles Snyder, and her replacement on The Legislature Today, Ashton Marra.
(Watch this video from former colleagues George Manahan, former Mountain Stage executive producer Andy Ridenour, and Inside Appalachia host Jessica Lilly.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96rO2xSqlc
Today, a group of WVPB members have pledged $12,000 in additional gifts when 200 or people people make a sustaining gift to West Virginia Public Broadcasting in honor of Beth’s career: https://secure.wvpublic.org/donate/
Elliott Stewart has been making zines since he was 13 years old. His ongoing zine “Porch Beers” is an incisive look at Appalachian culture, through the eyes of a queer trans man.
School boards have become the latest front in America’s culture wars — especially when it comes to books in school libraries that some people think are inappropriate for students. That situation has been playing out in Rockingham County, Virginia, which sits midway down the Shenandoah Valley.
Every spring, violets bloom across Appalachia, a carpet of purple, white and yellow. These unassuming flowers do everything from spruce up a cocktail to fight cancer. Here are a few of the ways herbalists use them for food and medicine.
On this West Virginia Morning, when your power goes out, water bill comes in or your nearby fire hydrant looks ancient, there’s a state organization keeping tabs on all of that and more. Randy Yohe talks with Charlotte Lane, chair of the West Virginia Public Service Commission, on how this regulating entity balances public protection with keeping utilities viable.