By Russ Barbour and Kristin Murdock
It’s been 40 years since the release of Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman. Before filming began, a Huntington family introduced Newman to parts of West Virginia that helped him produce one of his most legendary roles.
By Anna Sale and Bob Wilkinson
In the 1950s, Felix Krasyk lived in New York, and he filled canvases with his oil paintings in his spare time. He moved back to West Virginia, and for nearly 50 years, those paintings just sat in storage. He dusted them off a couple of years ago, and he ended up selling nearly all of them in local shows. Now 80 years old, he’s painting again – but figuring out how to do it has been a creative pursuit. Anna Sale and Bob Wilkinson produced this story for the program Outlook.
By Anna Sale with Scott Finn
WV is known for its coal, oil and natural gas. But Thursday, state officials focused on the state’s potential to provide renewable energy – solar, wind, and biomass. State officials held a public hearing in Charleston as part of an effort to develop a state energy plan. Jeff Herholdt leads the state Division of Energy.
By Todd Swillich, Capitol Hill Bureau
Congress has sent a bill to President Bush expanding health insurance for children. The president is promising to veto the legislation, and West Virginia’s entire congressional delegation appears to be against him.
By Charles Davis, Capitol Hill Bureau
The U.S. Senate voted to create an independent commission to examine wartime contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both West Virginia senators voted in favor of the measure, which now heads to the House.
W.Va. Senator Not Saying Whether He’d Cut Off War Funds
By Scott Finn
Senator Robert Byrd has been a leading critic of the war in Iraq from the very beginning. And when Democrats retook Congress earlier this year, Byrd regained his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
Those two roles came together Monday in a speech Byrd gave on the Senate floor. Without going into specifics, he threatened to use the power of the purse to force the President to change course in Iraq.
Then on Wednesday, Byrd chaired a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee about the President’s upcoming request for more war funding. But the meeting descended into chaos. Byrd threw rowdy war protestors out of the room, and two Senators had a heated exchange over gays in the military.
C-Span carried it live, the Washington Post wrote about it, and the Associated Press distributed video of it throughout the world. After all the fireworks, we’re still don’t know whether Byrd plans to use the power of the purse to force an end to the war.
By Anna Sale
asale@wvpubcast.org
Last week, Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper told us about a series of public hearings on video lottery parlors. The hearings begin in October. The state Legislature is not due to reauthorize the parlor licenses until 2010. West Virginia Amusement & Limited Video Lottery Association President Herk Sparachane says counties should leave the lottery parlor question to legislators.
By Greg Collard
gcollard@wvpubcast.org
Arch Moore is certainly one of the most controversial governors in WV history. He was also a persuasive public speaker. But there was a time he thought he would never speak again after he was shot in battle. This segment ran on the radio program West Virginia Morning, and the television program Outlook.
W.Va. Senator says he’s “beginning to think” about using budget power to end Iraq War
By Scott Finn
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote today on a bill that would re-authorize and expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. The bill has already passed the House of Representatives, with the support of most Democrats and several Republicans, including West Virginia’s only Republican in Congress, Representative Shelley Moore Capito.
About twenty-five thousand children in West Virginia receive health coverage through CHIP, and another four to five thousand could receive coverage if the bill becomes law.
But President Bush is threatening to veto the legislation. He says it is too expensive and an unnecessary expansion of government. The cost is thirty-five billion dollars, paid for by an increase in taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
One of the original architects of the CHIP program is Senator Jay Rockefeller. He says he’s mystified and a little angry over the opposition to the CHIP bill.
Rockefeller also is weighing in on comments by West Virginia’s other senator, Robert Byrd, about the Iraq way. Byrd says its time to use Congress’s budget power to end the Iraq war – and Rockefeller says that Byrd might be right.
By Anna Sale
It was 50 years ago next week that the Russian satellite Sputnick was launched into space and flew above Homer Hickam’s hometown in McDowell County. It inspired Hickam and a group of friends to figure out how to launch their own rockets. The story became the basis for Hickam’s best-selling memoir Rocket Boys, which was later made into the feature film October Sky. Hickam will be back in McDowell County on October 6 for the ninth annual October Sky Festival in Coalwood. He spoke to Anna Sale on the program West Virginia Morning.
By Scott Finn
When people talk about climate change, a word you hear a lot is “consensus.” Everywhere you look, it seems like former skeptics of climate change, including big oil companies and President Bush, are joining the fight against global warming.
This week California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former vice president Al Gore received a warm reception at the United Nations Summit on climate change. President Bush is hosting his own summit on climate change later this week.
But in coal-rich West Virginia, there is far less consensus on climate change. That was evident Tuesday night, when a controversial climate change skeptic received a warm welcome from an audience in Charleston. He says the earth might be warming, but it’s not our fault – and it may even be a good thing.
A former general manager of WCHS-TV in Charleston will be the next executive director of the Educational Broadcasting Authority.
The EBA announced the hiring of Dennis Adkins this afternoon. The EBA is the licensee for West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio and television network.
Adkins is a resident of South Charleston. He worked at WCHS for 25 years, including 12 as general manager. He most recently worked as a general manager in Colorado, where he oversaw the development of a five-station commercial network.
Governor Joe Manchin made the final decision to hire Adkins. In a prepared statement, the governor said that Adkins’ “professional background and enthusiasm for this position make him a great catch.”
Adkins takes over for Rita Ray, who is retiring November 30th. His first day on the job is December 1st.
By Scott Finn
For the past six years, Shawn Shumbera has lived at Bateman Hospital, a state mental institution in Huntington. His doctors have said he could live on his own – with help from the state’s MR/DD Waiver program.
But state officials have rejected him three times from the program. They say he’s not disabled enough to qualify – even though he’s disabled enough to stay at a state-run institution.
Shumbera is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state Department of Health and Human Resources. The non-profit group Mountain State Justice says that DHHR officials routinely discriminate against people like Shumbera, who has been diagnosed as both mentally retarded and mentally ill.
Now, his lawyers are leveling another accusation against DHHR. They say top officials at DHHR and Bateman Hospital have intimidated their employees so they will not testify on Shumbera’s behalf.
By Anna Sale
Government health insurance for children is at the center of debates of Washington this week. A bill in the House and Senate would expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, by 35 billion dollars. President Bush has threatened to veto the legislation if it grows by more than 5 million dollars. Meanwhile, the whole program could end if not reauthorized by Sunday, when it’s set to expire. WV CHIP director Sharon Carte talks about what this means for children in West Virginia.
By Pat Sergent
The Pennsylvania native attended WVU at the beginning of World War II. He was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and comments on its vital role. The former Army tank commander illustrates his war stories with memorabilia gathered from North Africa and Europe.
West Virginia’s unemployment hit a record low last month: 4.7%, the lowest rate for August on record. Charleston Daily Mail Business Editor George Hohmann took a closer look at the numbers – and finds big shifts in where West Virginians are earning their paychecks. The upshot – West Virginia workers are moving from industrial mills to shopping malls. Hohmann spoke to Anna Sale on West Virginia Morning.
Antoinette Arkle of Morgantown, better known as Toni, is now deceased, but not forgotten. She recorded this oral history in November of 2003 as part of the Veterans History Project at WVU. This segment was produced by Barbara Griffin, a journalism graduate student at WVU.
By Cecelia Mason
The West Virginia Board of Education is working on a formula for a salary schedule that takes into account cost of living. The board is reacting to a lawsuit filed by several Eastern Panhandle organizations that want a 1990 law enforced.
Read Story – BOE lawsuit
For the past two weeks, we’ve been horrified as details emerged about the rape and torture of a woman in Logan County. It’s been a difficult case for investigators to sort through. And it’s been a difficult story for the media to cover.
On our television program “Outlook,” we examined how the media have treated this story. Beth Vorhees moderated the discussion with Charleston Gazette City Editor Rob Byers, West Virginia Public Broadcasting News Director Greg Collard, Charleston attorney David Fryson, and Corley Dennison, dean of the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Marshall University.
Read transcript – Media Discussion
By Scott Finn
The abuse of prescription drugs has reached epidemic levels in many parts of West Virginia, especially the southern coalfields, according to law enforcement officials. In Logan County, police say prescription drug abuse has become a much bigger problem than illicit drugs like cocaine. The area’s coal mining legacy may have helped spark the problem. Injured miners need powerful painkillers, but those same drugs can be misused, stolen or sold on the streets.
A recent survey shows that area residents were mostly unaware of the problem. But local officials are trying to change that. Police, health officials, educators and others came together yesterday for a drug summit at Chief Logan State Park.
Click here to read story: logandrug.doc
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