WestVirginiaVille

‘Mentoring Matters,’ a recently completed video for The Education Alliance, profiles the work of angels being done by mentors in West Virginia schools who aim to keep at-risk students moving forward.

What do you do with ten seconds of fireworks exploding over the state’s gold dome? Run it through the filter machine on Final Cut Pro X and see what comes out the other end.

The mayor is in. A video profile of the popular, sometimes controversial, ever-a-good-quote mayor of the chief burg of West Virginia.

I thought a group video interview with eight elderly West Virginia couples, ages 70 to 90, who were renewing their vows for Valentines Day, would be unwieldy. I was un-correct.

In honor of their CD release concert at the Empty Glass, take a listen to the Carpenter Ants version of “He Saved My Soul,” by Claude Jeter of the Swan Silvertones.

Al Peery serves up two striking photographs of the capital city of West Virginia, one by day and one by night.

WestVirginiaVille News received a reassuring phone message from Charleston, W.Va., sculptor P. Joseph Mullins as the region picks up its lawn chairs and recovers from the earthquake that recently rattled Charleston.

So, this bright-eyed young fellow started showing up at the the weekly Meditation Circle of Charleston gatherings. He’d just got back from China and had three words for the rest of America: ‘solar water heaters.’

There are far smaller disasters that no one outside of a region knows about – just a handful of people killed. And yet these events are no less seared into a local community’s consciousness.

This video above is no great shakes and is hardly one for the ages. But it does demonstrate the first-ever example of crowdsourcing a video for the state newspaper of West Virginia.

So, we’re doing this space opera. But first we need a sign. In the first of an occasional series, a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of Third Eye Cabaret, where much of “Saint Stephen’s Dream” takes place.

Today’s Song of the Day is not quite new – actually, it’s more than a quarter-century old. In honor of Larry Groce’s turn as a headliner Saturday in Charleston, a taste of “Junk Food Junkie” and how it got to be a smash hit.

These are not the sort of videos that will make the Charleston Convention and Visitor’s Bureau happy campers.

FestivALL Charleston has added “Saint Stephen’s Dream: A Space Opera” as an official event to this year’s citywide cultural event in late June. So what is a ‘space opera’ anyway?

Hundreds of colorfully dressed marchers met in the middle of the South Side Bridge in Charleston, W.Va., as part of a worldwide event to meet on bridges on behalf of women’s rights around the world.

Interstate bridges might be the last thing you’d think a painter might wish to paint. Not Ellie Schaul, whose depictions of the coming of the interstate are a form of local history and high highway art.

What weighs 198,000 pounds, is 64-feet tall, looks like a wrecked rocket ship and will surely get a reaction from you? Albert Paley’s monumental Charleston sculpture seen from several vantage points.

In honor of today’s first snowflakes over the International Headquarters of WestVirginiaVille here’s a music video featuring Heidi Muller’s gorgeous song “Snowdance.”

Scenes of Urban Appalachia by Walker DeVille and contributors: What will the air be full of tonight?