Most of this People & Mountains is given over to the Council’s 2001 Annual Report, covering the fiscal year that ended October 31. It is a good report because it was a good year. The facts and figures reflect solid, continued growth, of which all of us here are proud.

Nonetheless, we know that we have plenty more to do. Our challenges continue, and they include—

• Raising the remaining funds for the MacFarland-Hubbard House. We spent about $970,000, including interest, to purchase this National Register of Historic Places property and to restore it as a working headquarters for the humanities. So far we have raised about $780,000. That puts us well past the scary part, but leaves a fifth of the funds yet to be found.

• Furnishing the house’s formal rooms and restoring the grounds. We have received furniture, books, and art from friends of the house, and board member Jennifer Soule rallied her gardening group to take on the yard, but much remains to be done.

• Restoring the adjacent carriage house as a mini-conference center, to serve our meeting needs and the needs of others who meet here.

• Increasing grants demand. It took me a while to catch on to the fact that our Council, just like a business, is driven by product demand. Our product is the money we grant to support the humanities statewide, and we grow as our grants volume grows. If you have a good proposal, send it here.

• Continuing to increase the portion of our budget devoted to programs and grants. A key measure of the efficiency of nonprofits such as ours is the extent of “program services” reported annually on IRS Form 990. Our programs services ratio increased from 71 to 77 percent over the last five years, and we hope for continued improvement.

In considering these issues, I use the word challenge literally, and not — as often is the case nowadays — as a euphemism for problem. These are not problems, for nothing especially bad will happen if we ignore them.
We can keep up the payments and retire the mortgage in a few years, even if we never raise another dime specifically for that purpose. We can leave the flower beds and the finest parts of this fine old house largely empty, and continue to use the carriage house for rough storage. We would still have better working quarters than ever before — even if we fell short of what the public expected in entrusting us with this landmark property. And certainly we can rest on programming accomplishments which are more than adequate, enjoying the fruits of a budget which already has grown by 50 percent in recent years.

We can coast, in other words.

What is lost in doing so is the good that comes from positive action. The historian Arnold Toynbee said we grow by responding to challenges. (He also said, in another context, that we poor Appalachians “are no better than barbarians” and have “relapsed into illiteracy and witchcraft,” but we’ll let that go for now.) Toynbee clearly was right as regards the stimulating effect of challenge. We grow if we challenge ourselves wisely, and we must grow to meet the growing need before us.

So look for us to tackle the challenges above as the new year unfolds. As always, we will rely on the help of friends. You may help by contributing funds, furnishings, or your best ideas for the humanities in West Virginia.

Ken Sullivan
Executive Director

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Thank You for Holocaust Education

Dear Humanities Council:
The two-week intensive study of the Holocaust [Summer Teacher Institute 2000] has truly affected me both as a teacher and a person. As I teach life skills to my students at Crum Middle School I now include how important it is that we remember the past offenses of humankind and never allow ourselves to stoop to that level again.

Not only did I return to Crum to share my two-week study with my students, I also invited Dr. Levy [institute instructor and Holocaust survivor] to meet and talk with them. We conducted a school-wide study of the Holocaust with each student choosing a topic and presenting a project and research paper. While visiting us Dr. Levy did a presentation on her experiences as a Jewish child growing up during the Holocaust. It was an amazing opportunity.
I received many reactions from my students, but the most sensitive was that of two girls in my seventh grade class. As they studied, they would come to me in tears from what they had uncovered.

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to have studied the Holocaust in this manner. I often think of the teacher institute as the most powerful and successful educational experience I have ever participated in. I have become a better teacher, a better person. It has shown me how important a teacher can be and that the information I present to my students may change the world —or at least change theirs.

Victory Ramey
Crum

Responses to New Deal Art

Dear Humanities Council:
I enjoyed reading Karen Vuranch’s article in your Fall 2001 issue, “The Post Office Murals of West Virginia: New Deal Art in the Mountain State.” It might interest your readers to know that GOLDENSEAL featured this topic as our cover story in our Fall 1998 issue in an article written by Larry Bartlett. This issue, including additional photographs, a locator map, and brief descriptions of the artwork, is still available from the GOLDENSEAL office.
To obtain this back issue or to subscribe to GOLDENSEAL, readers can call us at (304)558-0220, ext. 153.

Keep up the good work!

John Lilly
editor, GOLDENSEAL

Dear Humanities Council:
Dr. Emory Kemp passes his copy of your People & Mountains around the office here at the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology. In the fall issue, there are two articles in which I love the visuals: The New Deal post office murals and New Deal photography.

Keep up the good work.

Meredith Pearce
Morgantown

Praise for Autumn Civil War Tour

Dear Humanities Council:
Kudos to you for a well-planned, well-organized, and well-run, most interesting trip. We enjoyed every moment of it. I hope you will be able to put together another tour.

Happy travelers . . .
Lawrence and Bea McElhinny
Dunbar

Dear Humanities Council:
Many thanks for your hard work on the Civil War tour. I enjoyed it very much and felt that it was most successful. I hope that other trips will follow.

Mary Alice Elkins
Lewisburg

Dear Humanities Council:
Thanks to you for making the Civil War tour available to us. It was a super event — informative and fun — and made the 1860s come alive. “First class” all the way. Thanks so much. Let’s do it again!

Jeanette Alexander
Charleston

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While the upcoming West Virginia Encyclopedia will be a massive tome, a thousand pages and a million words long, the published book will represent only a fraction of the research which went into producing the one-volume reference. The ongoing process of fact-checking has produced a body of corroborative material which will exceed the size of the Encyclopedia itself. At this point, it is clear that each published page will be supported by one or more additional pages of unpublished research and documentation.

So if the Encyclopedia is the proverbial tip, call this mass of supporting material the rest of the iceberg — or lumber pile in the case of the following item from Roy B. Clarkson. Clarkson, professor emeritus at WVU and West Virginia’s leading logging historian, was responding to a question concerning the stacking of lumber for air-drying at sawmills.

I am very familiar with the procedure for piling lumber
for air drying, for I worked as a lumber piler for the Mower Lumber Company at Cass for two years, 1944 and 1947, when I was just out of high school and after coming home from the army.

A lumber dock is a long, wooden tram-road built at an elevation of 16 feet, 18 feet, or 20 feet. This ran from the sawmill for a distance of several hundred or even a thousand feet down through the lumber yard. The lumber dock had light rails in its center, on which handcarts were pushed. The handcarts had four flanged metal wheels similar to small railroad wheels. These were about 15 inches in diameter.

The handcarts were pushed to the sorting area of the mill, or bull pen, where they were loaded, each with a certain grade or species of lumber. The yard men rolled the loaded carts down to the pile being made of that particular size, grade, species, etc. The lumber was then taken by the pilers and let down by one man to the man on the pile, as shown in the picture. The man on the lumber pile wore a heavy leather apron reaching from chest to knees. He also used “hand leathers” over the palms of his gloves. These enabled him to allow the boards to slide down freely, but under his control, from the lumber dock. Piles would be made on each side of the lumber dock. A large mill had several lumber docks which resulted in long parallel lines of lumber piles.

Now, to your questions. How did they get the piles so high? The lumber dock is 16 to 20 feet high; the pile could be extended above the dock for an additional 16 feet or more, making the completed pile 32 to 36 feet high. For drying, the layers were separated by crosswise one-by-four stickers or sometimes by pieces of the lumber being piled. Piles were usually 12 feet wide and 16 feet long. A completed pile was roofed by roofing boards which extended beyond the pile at the back end and were overlapped to keep out most of the rain and snow. Lumber was air-dried for several months before being shipped as air-dried lumber or taken to the dry kilns for further drying and manufacture into flooring, ceiling, or other products.
Piles were made on foundations of heavy blocks of wood. These were placed to give a slant to the pile with the front end somewhat higher than the back. Blocks were placed to support the ends of the pile, and the stickers were placed at proper intervals across the pile to prevent the boards from warping.

I’m sure this is much more than you wanted to know about lumber piling. But if you have more questions, let me know.

Roy B. Clarkson

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Resource Kits Complement Folklore Curriculum

What's New in the Humanities

Folklore resource materials are now available through every RESA (Regional Education Service Agency) to complement the Humanities Council’s In the Mountain State, a West Virginia folklore and cultural studies curriculum. The materials come in a portable case, making transport of the kits from classroom to classroom and school to school easy.

The kits include audiocassette tapes produced by The Hill Lorists; three folktale collections: Greenbrier Ghost and Other Tales, Green Hills of Magic, and The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales; Mountain Heritage, a resource on cultural topics; Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems by the late West Virginia Poet Laureate Louise McNeill; American Folk Toys by Dick Schnacke; One Room School Games, edited by Maxine Scarbro; and six volumes of Traditions: A Journal of West Virginia Folk Culture and Educational Awareness.
To identify the RESA in your area, contact the State Department of Education website at http://wvde.state.wv.us/ed_directory/resa.html.

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2002 Fellowships in the Humanities Award

The West Virginia Humanities Council extends an invitation to all West Virginia college and university humanities faculty to apply for our 2002 Fellowships.
These fellowships, unique in West Virginia, offer an opportunity for teachers, college faculty, and independent scholars who need encouragement and support for research and writing projects.

The awards provide scholars with a stipend of $2,500 for research and writing in the humanities.

For applications and technical assistance, please call —
(304)346-8500 or email lerose@wvhumanities.org.

Deadline: February 1, 2002

Considering September 11

The West Virginia Humanities Council is seeking minigrant applications for programs that encourage dialogue regarding the issues related to September 11, 2001.
Topics such as constitutional and foreign policy issues, modern Islam and the rise of fundamen-talist Islam, Middle Eastern culture, ethics of war and peace, and terrorism are among the possibilities waiting to be explored.
Please contact Pam LeRose for further information and applications at — (304)346-8500 or email lerose@wvhumanities.org.

Application Deadlines: February 1, April 1, June 1, August 1, October 1, December 1

Upcoming Grant Application Deadlines

Major Grants: February 1, 2002
Mini Grants: February 1 and
April 1, 2002
Fellowships: February 1, 2002
For more information on our grants program or to request an application, contact Pam LeRose by phone at (304)346-8500 or via e-mail at lerose@wvhumanities.org.

An Invitation to Teachers:
Summer 2002 Teacher Institutes

The West Virginia Humanities Council invites teachers to apply for our 2002 Teacher Institutes. These two-week seminars provide a select group of teachers the opportunity for intensive study to enhance classroom teaching. Participants are chosen competitively based on their applications. Room, board, and books are provided. Teachers must pay a $400 travel fee for the Shakespeare institute. Graduate credit and continuing education hours are available.

The year’s topics —

Writing A Life: Expressing Appalachian Folklife
June 16 - June 28
Fairmont State College
For information and applications please contact —
Dr. Judy Byers
Phone: (304)367-4286
Email: jbyers@mail.fscwv.edu
Deadline: April 1, 2002

Updating Shakespeare: Text, Context, Stage and Film
July 14 - July 27
West Virginia State College/London/Stratford
For information and applications please contact —
Dr. David Wohl
Phone: (304)766-3186
Email: dwohl@mail.wvsc.edu
Deadline: March 1, 2002

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