West Virginia History

Emergy provides a general accounting mechanism that allows us to view the economy and the environment on the same income statement and balance sheet. This allows an auditor to verify the economic picture by checking it against a more complete representation of the flows and storages of real wealth as measured by emergy. In this study, we constructed emergy accounts for the state of West Virginia in 1997. The income statement showed annual production, consumption, and flows of emergy and dollars into and out of the state. The balance sheet evaluated the storage of emergy in some of the state's assets. Emergy indices were used to answer questions posed by managers and gain insight into the state's economic and environmental strengths and weaknesses. West Virginia has great wealth in nonrenewable resources (9E14 sej m−2 or 17 times the U.S. average). The investment ratio of emergy purchased outside to indigenous renewable and nonrenewable emergy was 2.2:1, which indicates a high potential for future development. However, the environmental loading ratio (14:1) was already 1.5 times higher than that found at an average location in the U.S. Twice as much emergy was exported as received and standard of living indicators showed that people have largely failed to benefit from their state's wealth. We propose that, just as in business, where decisions made using financial accounts ensure solvency; decisions governing the environment should be made based on an emergy accounting of activities, assets, and liabilities for the combined system of humanity and nature.

From the late 19th century until World War Two, agrarian southern Appalachia was a patchwork of small, close-knit farm communities. This historic rural settlement pattern is locally recorded in community case studies by ethnographers and historical geographers but has not been mapped systematically. This paper explores the hypothesis that GIS analysis of historic topographic maps adequately identifies the boundaries of bygone southern Appalachian agricultural neighborhoods. Using the ArcGIS cost allocation analysis function, least cost regions are generated around neighborhood nodes based on the energy cost of foot travel relative to distance and slope. These prospective agricultural neighborhoods closely match ethnographers and historical geographers’ spatial descriptions. Mapping historic Appalachian agricultural neighborhoods provides an important basis for comparison with past and present settlement patterns. The research method is significant because it is easily replicated and may be extended across southern Appalachia and the past century.

“The first thing that came in my way of book learning was the number 18,” wrote Booker t. Washington in his memoir Up From Slavery.  He then goes on to explain that in the darkness of the salt furnaces where he and his stepfather worked, the boss would go around and mark each barrel with an identifying number. Washington’s stepfather was always “18,” and Washington recalls that “after a while I got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters” (18).  While Washington spends much time extolling his own hard work in mastering book learning in his later years, the ambiguity of his initial phrasing is telling –that something “came in my way.”  The phrasing opens up the interpretative possibilities that this essay seeks to explore –by the way of what things did he encounter book leaning ?  And, equally, how were those same things obstacles?  A complex exchange of signification and power underlying the ambiguity of this phrase can be seen in Washington’s memoir, especially in the scenes that illustrate the mastery of literacy.  These scenes use troubled terms quite unlike the traditional equation of literacy and freedom common to antebellum slave narratives.  Indeed, Washington’s sense of “play” with the codes and sign systems used by white society seems barely congruent with the portrait of the literal-minded and doggedly pragmatic leader he came to be known as in his adulthood.

In February 2018, teachers and other school personnel in West Virginia went on strike over persistently low salaries and a series of other defunding and deprofessionalizing legislative proposals. Over nine days, teachers created signs that argued their cause and showcased their messages on roadsides, in their own communities, en masse at the state capital, and in media outlets across the globe. In this article, we describe five themes that emerged from a discourse analysis of 50 protest signs. In response to circulating dismissive and demeaning discourses, teachers positioned themselves as professionals, content specialists, moral authority figures, valuable resources, and inheritors of cultural legacies.

This conference presentation explores the double life of lepidopterist and coal baron William Henry Edwards’ (1822 – 1909).  Although born in New York, Edwards spent most of his adult life in Coalburg, a small town outside Charleston, West Virginia.  As a co-founder of the Kanawha and Ohio Coal Company, Edwards moved to Coalburg in order to be closer to his mining operations.  However, the real love of his life was butterflies and despite managing the day to day operations of his coal mining operations, Edwards spent thirty years of his life capturing, descripting and producing the greatest nineteenth century masterwork on Lepidoptera.

An overview of the bibliography of the Clarksburg, West Virginia-based UFO book publisher Saucerian Publications and the biography of its proprietor, Gray Barker. Paper presented at the conference "Sacred Literature, Secular Religion," hosted by the LeMoyne College Religion and Literature Forum, Oct. 1-3, 2015.