Speakers Bureau to be Formed

For more information, contact—

Robert Herrick, program officer
by phone at (304) 346-8500
by FAX at (304) 346-8504
E-Mail Robert Herrick (Program Officer)

Teachers'
Summer Institutes

Appalachian Culture: 
In the Mountain State

The faculty of Fairmont State College will identify and analyze Appalachian folklife and provide teaching methods. The WVHC’s recently-published In the Mountain State: A West Virginia Folklore and Cultural Studies Curriculum will be the major text. Lectures, demonstrations, and folk festival activities will accompany the seminar featuring folk culture specialists, authors, storytellers, and artisans, such as Jean Ritchie, Appalachian folk singer and folk music scholar, among many others.

Appalachia Goes to the Movies:
Film Literacy for Teachers

When: July 10-22, 2000  

Call for Nominations

or via e-mail to lerose@wvhc.com

Our Biggest Project:

Restoration work on the historic 1836 Hubbard    House is moving rapidly, with great strides made over the winter months. Contractors began work just before Christmas and haven't stopped for a breath since.

Update

Your Letters

Thank You for History Alive!

Dear Humanities Council:

    Thank you very much for making it possible for us to have Joseph Bundy perform for our Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration. His performance was fascinating, and he was very well received.  We had about 90 people attend. We appreciate the History Alive! program.

Mary Alice Milnes, Elkins

Shakespeare Seminar Tops

Dear Humanities Council:

The [Shakespeare] seminar was the highlight of my twenty-year teaching career.  It was more beneficial to me than anything I have ever done.  I have shared all of my pictures and experiences with my students; they have been very interested in even the smallest details of my trip. I have learned that incorporating more drama activities, such as the ones we did in Institute [at WV State College] and Stratford, help make the classroom really come alive.  My students are acting out scenes from stories, poems, and plays that we are reading on a regular basis.

Carol Davis, Summers Middle School, Hinton

 Reader Seeks Information on Historic Preservation

Dear Humanities Council:

I ran into your winter edition of People & Mountains in the Cabell-Huntington Hospital.  I'm glad you are getting a new home [in the Hubbard House].

We here in Mason County have a William Clendenin Historical Society, named for the "Father of Mason County." We are holding a joint meeting with the Mason City Historical Society, a group which looks after the former home of Virgil A. Lewis, the renowned historian who contributed so much to Mason County and the State of West Virginia.

The historical home is in a run-down condition. The roof leaks, the porch needs repairs, and it needs a new paint job.  An alarming state for such a noble historical building.

 I'm trying with this letter to find a starting place to help preserve this historic homestead. I'm sure there is plenty of in-kind help awaiting us if we just had some guidelines to present our members. A letter of encouragement with potential sources of philanthropy [will be appreciated].

 The old Virgil Lewis home is located in the town of Mason near the town library. The property is owned by the Mason County government. Perhaps this could be one of the topics for your new book, the West Virginia Encyclopedia.

Archie Henry, Gallipolis Ferry

 Thanks for writing, Mr. Henry. We are delighted when a single letter refers to both our big projects, the Hubbard House and the Encyclopedia! Joe Jefferds, our board president and a leader in Hubbard House fundraising, has written you with the names and addresses of state historical officials to contact regarding your project.  Start with them, though you will probably do your best fundraising locally. Philanthropy, like charity, seems to begin close to home. And yes, Virgil Lewis, father of the West Virginia Historical Society, will definitely be in the Encyclopedia—ed. .

Blackberry Cove Herbal

by Linda Ours Rago

Blackberry Cove is an Appalachian mountain farm, a few nearly level clearings tucked up between the rocky ridges. At the foot of its voracious spring it cradles a tiny cabin whose roof was raised by my family and a handful of friends one rainy April in l973.

   My grandfather had bought the abandoned farm in the 1920s to expand his river bottom holdings nearby and to reclaim the flat spots for orchards of apples and peaches, the sunny spots to grow tomatoes for market. By the time I was a little girl it had once again grown back to tangled blackberry thickets with only a few huge stones still stacked from the hearth of an ancient cabin whose logs had long since molded back into loam. For me it was always a magical place with its crystal water continually pouring from the gnarled roots of a huge sugar maple.

When my children were toddlers we lived in a narrow townhouse convenient to my husband’s city job in Washington. On Friday nights we would often bundle everyone up for the long drive from flat tidewater Virginia to our mountains of West Virginia. The rutted lane to the cabin jostled the children awake just long enough to be wide‑eyed at the crisp starry sky, undimmed by city lights, before we tumbled them into their beds and lit a warm fire in the stove.

Even before the sun came up over Long Knob we heard the song of spring peepers instead of traffic. There was no telephone, no television and the children learned water didn’t always come out of the spigot. It bubbled up in a sandy pool from the sweet limestone under the mountain.

We eventually moved from lowland Virginia to a more spacious old brick house in the village of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where the children grew up. But Blackberry Cove has always been a respite. The walls of our sitting room are covered with photos of the children marveling over salamanders, all of us searching for the first bloodroots and rocking on the porch. Whenever things got hectic or contentious, the cure was usually, “Let’s go to Blackberry.”

Now the blackberry brambles in the cove have been shaded out by tall hickories and black walnuts. Second‑growth sugar maples and white pines grow nearly as tall as the ancient chestnut oaks that have marked the farm boundaries for two hundred years. Fox grapes drape as gracefully as Spanish moss from tree tops, and the forest floor is clear and springy again.

The cabin has settled in as though it had grown like a brown mushroom from under the leaves piled against its walls. The generations of mud daubers on the eaves and the field mice families in the outhouse have become like shirt‑tail cousins.

My husband and I and the Shetland sheepdog enjoy peaceful days in the cove, away from busy village life with deadlines, responsibilities, and garden fences. And I have taken to slipping away alone to Blackberry Cove in every season, wandering slowly over her ridges, letting her life unfold around me. At first, I think, it was solace from a house grown quiet after my children moved out to their own lives. Now out of the mountain stillness I feel the low voices of Appalachian grandmothers, and grandmothers from Scotland and the Black Forest and even older forests. They say, “Listen carefully to the owl.”  They nudge me to the healing herbs and old books of folklore. They draw me outside when the moon is full and hum lullabies when nights are long.

Their quiet voices have all but been drowned out by shopping malls and cellular phones, but who among us would want to turn back the clock? Even among the fastest moving, though, a small voice often whispers persistently  . . . herbal medicine? . . . waxing moon? . . . spring fever?

In the dooryard herb garden at Harpers Ferry the tidy domestic herbs grow contentedly in neat clumps bordered by the old bricks.  Their ancestors were nurtured inside the wattled enclosures of village wisewomen or in the walled gardens of monasteries.

But the Blackberry Cove herbs have always been wild, free to spring up wherever the wind carries their seed. We have watched Mother Nature tend the garden at Blackberry Cove, observing her patterns and wisdom, and trying to walk as gently as we can on her intricate green carpet.

If the herbs are plentiful enough I cut the sprigs I need for “meate or medicine,” listening to the grandmothers and silently giving thanks, leaving enough to thrive and propagate. If the herbs are rare or scarce I savor their beauty and form, leaving them to be about their own task of living.

One of the wisest of the grandmothers, Rosalind Northcote, wrote in the early 1900s, “One must feel grateful that the idylls of the forest are still being acted, and that there are still those whose vision is quick enough to catch sight of them and whose pens have the cunning to put before others the glimpses.”

March in Blackberry Cove

Ragged furry mullein leaves (Verbascum thapsus)             lie flat on the ground in March, making a perfect             pale circle. Smaller leaves cluster upright in the center like cupped green hands around a treasure.

By late June the treasure, a sturdy six‑foot staff of mullein flowers, will have risen from that modest wreath. Golden blossoms on the great candelabra will welcome me all along the Blackberry Cove lane. I try to remember some of mullein’s folk names in the English language ‑‑ king’s candle, high taper, candelaria, torchwort, candlewick, hedge taper, Jupiter’s staff, Peter’s staff, shepherd’s club, and Aaron’s rod. It’s also called blanket leaf, flannel leaf, lady’s foxglove, old man’s flannel, velvet dock, beggar’s blanket, mullkraut, hare’s beard, longwort, bullocks lungwort, and Quaker’s rouge.

Every variety of mullein is an Old World plant. Our ancestors from Europe must have brought the seeds across the sea in their mattress stuffing, in fodder for their animals, or in their pocket lint. I can almost see the hardy seeds sprouting tentatively in the strange New World clearings and then bounding energetically throughout the countryside. Today mullein is a common weed in dry fields and along gravelly roadsides from New England to Missouri and west to the canyons of Arizona. It likes to be center stage, growing best where it is the only large plant.

The tall spikes are actually racemes of blossoms with each corolla consisting of five petals joined only at the base. If you look closely, the lower petals are slightly larger, the one‑inch flowers like little cups with tiny seeds inside. Although a single spike will stand until toppled by heavy snows, the flowers along it will open sporadically until late September.

Country people have attributed powerful magic to those tall wands in warding off evil. Dried and dipped in tallow, they were used as torches and lamps.

And the velvety white wool covering the entire plant glows silvery in moonlight. It you look at the mullein hairs with a magnifying glass, you will see each one is branched like a tiny tree, and they grow entangled in a frosty elven forest.

Seventeenth‑century herbalist John Gerard instructs us on how to gather the magical mullein. “Leaves which have not borne flowers gathered when the sun is in Virgo and the moon is in Aries and carried in one’s pocket . . ." will prevent fainting, worn by a maiden in her shoe will bring on her menses, and wrapped around fruit will prevent it from rotting.

Our practical grandmothers taught that mullein leaves could be gathered all summer to be used fresh or dried. Tea made with a handful of fresh mullein leaves (half as many dried) in a pint of boiling water, steeped for seven minutes and taken several times a day, is a good cold remedy. Fresh leaves laid on sunburn and other skin inflammations are soothing. Leaves were once dried by Appalachian grannies and smoked in their corn cob pipes to ease sore throats and coughs. Mullein leaves were also fed to mountain cattle to cure lung ailments.

Roots are best dug in the fall after the flowers have stopped opening. Boiled in water and mixed with honey or molasses, the root brew is given to croupy children and adults with an “old cough,” confided one mountain grandmother.

Mullein flowers are only used fresh. Here is the traditional recipe for an earache remedy. Steep one ounce of macerated flowers in one cup almond oil or olive oil. Let it steep in a warm place (like over a pilot light or on top of the refrigerator) for five days. Apply a few drops in the ear twice a day.

One night an old West Virginia woman with a twinkle in her eye told me how she and her sisters would rub their cheeks with the wooly mullein before their beaus came courting. It gave them a rosy glow!

Whether you use mullein on your cheeks, in your medicine chest, or just enjoy its stately beauty, honor it and remember how it has been our close companion in life. Let a few plants thrive where they spring up around your house, and they will surely bring you good fortune.

 March Hares were especially unlucky to meet when setting out on a journey.  If you saw one, you must call it a nickname like Wat or old Malkin. These March Hares were really shape-shifting witches.  Protection from them was assured by placing vervain or rowan leaves on a gunstock and shooting them with a silver bullet.

 —From "March 5" in The Herbal Almanac by Linda Ours Rago

Rago Continues to Explore Herbal Lore

Linda Rago's Blackberry Cove Herbal carries a subtitle:  Medicine and Magic in the Appalachian Wise Woman Tradition. It is this tradition that seems to enthrall Rago with herbs as much as their beauty and usefulness.  While she may have begun her study of these hardy plants with an eye to gardening and cooking, the themes that pervaded her early writing, increasingly she has concentrated on the lore surrounding women and herbs. 

Cases in point are her Herbal Almanac, a lushly illustrated little book that includes folklore with gardening tips, and Mugworts in May, devoted almost exclusively to the lore surrounding women and the herbs they cultivated in their kitchen gardens.

The Blackberry Cove Herbal expands this exploration of women and herbs, taking us outside the garden to the woods and hedgerows where wild herbs are found.  Appalachia has a rich tradition of foraging for useful herbs in the fields and forests that continues even today with rural residents venturing into the woods in search of the valuable ginseng — going "sanging" as it is sometimes called.

Watch for the Blackberry Cove Herbal in your local bookstores in May.

Herbs: 
A Gentle Obsession

by Jane Siers

Herbs are enjoying a renaissance in West Virginia and across the country. A little more than ten years ago herb gardening in my area of the Mountain State was more of a challenge than it is today. Plants could be ordered through speciality catalogues and nurseries or from the state's Department of Agriculture Market Bulletin, or "starts" could be had from another herb grower, if you could locate one. But common they were not.

My grandmother, insatiable reader of Burpee's and other garden catalogues and student of the forest's bounty, introduced me to herbs as a teenager, but it was not until years later that I began my own garden. I first saw plants at the Charleston Farmer's Market, where Pete Freed's Roane Grown nursery was the only source of herbs I found that spring. A friend and I spent  many a lunch hour haunting Pete's display, pinching and smelling, and of course, buying more plants than our little gardens could hold by the end of the season — herbs being glorified weeds and growing with the same abandon. When my raised beds were filled, I began filling pots around them. My husband accused me of becoming obsessed, but I found nothing more relaxing than sinking my hands into the earth and inhaling the myriad smells my herbs yielded.

By the next summer little flats of herbs began to show up at other nurseries' displays at the market. And soon I was able to find specimens even at Lowe's and other chain store garden centers. Today herbs are available almost everywhere gardeners or cooks can be found. Surf the "net" and you will find dozens of sites dedicated to herbs and their uses. Herbal "medicines" line the shelves of WalMart.

In our state, the West Virginia Herb Association is a source for all things herbal, bringing together nursery owners, retailers, and hobbyists. They publish cookbooks featuring herbal goodies, the latest of which is entitled Herbal Breads and Baked Goodies. Their 1998 membership directory listed fifty herb-focused businesses in West Virginia and just over our borders. It also listed scores of individual members, and the numbers are growing.

For  information about the WVHA or to order any of its cookbooks, contact —

The West Virginia Herb Association
c/o Dot Montgillion
Rt. 1, Box 263-SS
Weston, WV 26452-9535

Animation:
From Literature to Living Color

Mary Lucille DeBerry and Brad Stalnaker didn't start out to interpret Frank R. Stockton's short story The Griffin and the Minor Canon; in fact, they had an entirely different story in mind three years ago when they applied for Humanities Council grant funds to animate a short story by a West Virginia author. But fate intervened in the form of difficulties in securing rights to their first choice, and now the pair can't imagine their work without its immersion in Stockton's 19th-century morality tale.  The project has become a part of their lives, and the Griffin and the Minor Canon their good friends.

The tale revolves around a Griffin—the half-lion, half-eagle creature of mythology—who journeys to a town where his likeness is depicted in a statue above the church door. Those townspeople who are able flee the town upon his arrival, abandoning the old, the poor, the sick, and any other of the town's citizens who are unable or unwilling to leave.  The remaining townspeople look to the Minor Canon for help.

The Griffin insists that the Minor Canon take him to view his likeness on the church, and so begins their strange friendship, for the Griffin eats only at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and then only those he likes. In the Griffin's relationship with the Minor Canon and the townspeople lies the comedy and tragedy of Stockton's tale.

 Making the Griffin Fly

The process of translating prose into a visual medium is a long and painstaking one.  And while Griffin is not as well known as Stockton’s The Lady or The Tiger, the fact that it has been illustrated in the past by such a revered children’s artist as Maurice Sendak could have proved daunting for the production staff. But the team tackled the project with an enthusiasm that has continued unflagging throughout the involved process.

The visual medium demands that the viewer be shown the advancement of the plot and the development of characters rather than told it in a traditional narrative fashion. The first challenge then was to develop dialogue between characters as a substitute for Stockton’s long passages of description. A narrator would be used, but could not be expected to carry the story.  The attention of the viewing audience would be lost if the narrator simply told them that the Griffin had learned of his statue likeness from some woodland creature, as indicated by Stockton.  Instead, the team created the character of the Bird, who we see telling the Griffin about the statue on the church.

In addition, new characters needed to be added to increase the dramatic effect.  Characters indicated only as townspeople in Stockton’s story became individuals with specific points of view, providing the “conflict” necessary for any dramatic production. A family, with whom differing age groups of the audience might identify, was created to show the various reactions of the citizenry to the Griffin’s presence in the town. Attitudes and personality types were literally “fleshed out” with the creation of specific characters embodying them.

Finally, the story as envisioned for television had to be rewritten and cut to fit in a 30-minute time slot without losing its message. Then the production team could begin to make the story come alive through the animation process and voiceovers.

It was Brad Stalnaker’s job to translate The Griffin and the Minor Canon into dramatic and colorful visual images.  From rough story board sketches through more detailed line drawings to the finished color animation, Brad has sought to depict the team’s collective vision of the Griffin and his world, transforming it into an appealing whole.

As well as a coherent and dramatic story line and a quality visual interpretation, the production team wanted the 30-minute program to have a uniquely West Virginia flavor.  To ensure this they sought the guidance of several West Virginia literature experts, among them Drs. Judy Byers and Valerie Lastinger, Merle Moore, children’s author Anna Smucker, Phyllis Wilson Moore, and the late Dr. Ruel Foster.  Together they developed a plan to adapt the story for the spoken word in a way that would provide a West Virginia flavor while maintaining its appeal for a national television audience.

One of the ways they accomplished this was through the use of professional actors with recognized connections to the Mountain State as the voices for the story’s characters and narrator.  The end result was an ensemble of nationally recognized West Virginia actors using their talent together for the first time in one production.

Two graduates of West Virginia University, David Selby and Chris Sarandon, give voice to the Griffin and the Minor Canon.  Other West Virginia voices include Ann Magnuson, John Corbett, Kathy Mattea, Don Knotts, and Soupy Sales, as well as Linda Purl, whose parents were native West Virginians.  These, and other actors heard in the film, were charged with the responsibility for bringing the story and animated figures to life vocally.

 The Study Guide

In addition to making the best possible animated interpretation of The Griffin and the Minor Canon, the project staff and their team of literary experts proposed to create a written guide to using the film in the classroom, tying it to classes in West Virginia studies, American literature, the arts, computer sciences, media, and career choices. In addition to  interpretating the story as literature and placing it and the author, Frank R. Stockton, within the context of the late 19th-century literary world, the study guide will provide insight into the vision, imagination, and skills needed to transform a written work into visual and sound media.

Pulling It All Together

Now in the "home stretch" the production team has maintained its enthusiasm for the story and the challenges of bringing it to television. The finishing touches are being put on the production, due to air on West Virginia Public Television in fall of 2000.  But the Griffin will no doubt linger with the team long after their work is finished. He has become a part of their lives.  As in the line from one of West Virginia poet Kirk Judd's poems, which the team chose to soften the story's ending, "Nothing loved dies." 

 West Virginia Cast Provides Voices

David Selby as            The Griffin

Chris Sarandon as      The Minor Canon

Linda Purl as             The Narrator

Ann Magnuson as      Bird

John Corbett as          Father

Kathy Mattea as         Mother

Don Knotts and 
Soupy Sales as           Messengers

The Griffin
and the
Minor Canon

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Frank R. Stockton (1834 - 1902) is an American author who wrote both novels and short stories, perhaps the most familiar being his story The Lady or the Tiger. Beginning with the success of his collected tales Rudder Grange (1879) and continuing until his death, Stockton was one of the most popular humorists in the United States. He lived the last three years of his life in Charles Town, West Virginia.

Over the great door of an old, old church which stood in a quiet town of a faraway land there was carved in stone the figure of a large griffin.  The old-time sculptor had done his work with great care, but the image he had made was not a pleasant one to look at.  It had a large head, with enormous open mouth and savage teeth; from its back arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout legs in front, with projecting claws, but there were no legs behind — the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished off at the end with a barbed point.  This tail was coiled up under him, the end sticking up just back of his wings.

   The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it, also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the church, not very far from the ground so that people could easily look at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many other sculptures on the outside of this church — saints, martyrs, grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the church.

A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of the dreadful wilds scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been put up over the church door.  In some way or other, the old-time sculptor had seen him and afterward, to the best of his memory, had copied his figure in stone.

The Griffin had never known this, until, hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal, or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town.

Now, this Griffin had no idea how he looked.  He had never seen a mirror, and the streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into it, could not be found.  Being, as far as could be ascertained, the very last of his race, he had never seen another griffin.  Therefore it was that, when he heard of this stone image of himself, he became very anxious to know what he looked like, and at last he determined to go to the old church, and see for himself what manner of being he was.

So he started off from the dreadful wilds, and flew on and on until he came to the countries inhabited by men, where his appearance in the air created great consternation; but he alighted nowhere, keeping up a steady flight until he reached the suburbs of the town which had his image on its church.  Here late in the afternoon, he lighted in a green meadow by the side of a brook, and stretched himself on the grass to rest.  His great wings were tired, for he had not made such a long flight in a century, or more.

The news of his coming spread quickly over the town, and the people, frightened nearly out of their wits by the arrival of so strange a visitor, fled into their houses, and shut themselves up.  The Griffin called loudly for someone to come to him but the more he called, the more afraid the people were to show themselves.  At length he saw two laborers hurrying to their homes through the fields, and in a terrible voice he commanded them to stop.  Not daring to disobey, the men stood, trembling.

"What is the matter with you all?" cried the Griffin. "Is there not a man in your town who is brave enough to speak to me?"

" I think," said one of the laborers, his voice shaking so that his words could hardle be understood, "that — perhaps — the Minor Canon — would come."

"Go call him, then,"said the Griffin; "I want to see him."

The Minor Canon, who was an assistant in the old church, had just finished the afternoon services, and was coming out of a side door, with three aged women who had formed the seekday congregation.  He was a young man of a kind disposition, and very anxious to do good to the people of the town. Apart from his duties in the church, where he conducted services every weekday, he visited the sick and the poor, counseled and assisted persons who were in trouble, and taught a school composed entirely of the bad children in the town with whom nobody else would have anything to do.  Whenever the people wanted something difficult done for them, they always went to the Minor Canon.  Thus it was that the laborer thought of the young priest when he found that someone must come and speak to the Griffin.

The Minor Canon had not heard of the strange event, which was known to the whole town except himself and the three old women and when he was informed of it, and was told that the Griffin had asked to see him, he was greatly amazed and frightened.

"Me!" he exclaimed. "He has never heard of me! What should he want with me?"

"Oh! you must go instantly!" cried the two men. "He is very angry now because he has been kept waiting so long; and nobody knows what may happen if you don't hurry to him."

The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go out to meet an angry Griffin but he felt that it was his duty to go for it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the Griffin. So, pale and frightened, he started off.

"Well," said the Griffin, as soon as the young man came near, "I am glad to see that there is someone who has the courage to come to me."

The Minor Canon did not feel very brave, but he bowed his head.

"Is this the town," said the Griffin, "where there is a church with a likeness of myself over one of the doors?"

The minor Canon looked at the frightful creature before him and saw that it was, without doubt, exactly like the stone image on the church. "Yes," he said, "you are right."

The Minor Canon instantly thought that if the Griffin entered the town without the people's knowing what he came for, some of them would probably be frightened to death, and so he sought to gain time to prepare their minds.

"It is growing dark, now," he said, very much afraid, as he spoke, that his words might enrage the Griffin, "and objects on the front of the church cannot be seen clearly.  It will be better to wait until morning, if you wish to get a good view of the stone image of yourself."

"That will suit me very well," said the Griffin. "I see you are a man of good sense, I am tired, and I will take a nap here on this soft grass, while I cool my tail in the little stream that runs near me.  The end of my tail gets red-hot when I am angry or excited, and it is quite warm now. So you may  go . . ."