WVPB
Vials of Pfizer s coronavirus dose sit on a table at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown on Tuesday, December 15, 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exacerbated societal inequities.
Black and Latino populations have suffered higher infection rates. People working low-income jobs are more likely to be considered essential and therefore required to work in-person while others have the luxury of working remotely.
The pandemic has pushed many people who were already living paycheck to paycheck out of work. Despite programs to provide rental and utility relief, some have lost their homes. At one point last summer, 60 percent of people in West Virginia said they were at risk of being homeless, according to a study by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
Producer Chuck Kleine films Rosemary Ketchum
Scratch the surface of most any grassroots movement in Appalachia, past or present, and you’ll find women at its heart. Strong women feature prominently throughout Appalachian history, and they continue to push the region forward today.
This week on
Inside Appalachia, we’re revisiting a show that originally aired last fall, that prominently features bold mountain women who are making a difference in their communities.
We hear what happens when Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei combine Appalachian and Chinese folk music. We also meet the driving force behind a family-owned Black newspaper that’s been publishing since 1939. Claudia Whitworth began working there for her father in 1945, and three quarters of a century later still takes an active role as publisher of the Roanoke Tribune. And we’ll meet Rosemary Ketchum, a community activist who ran for city council in Wheeling, West Virginia. We’ll learn how she became West Virginia’
Chum s hotdog stand in Marmet, W.Va.
For some, winter can be a difficult time dark and cold. For others, time outside in the winter is a powerful experience. After everything we’ve been through in the past year, getting outside can be one way to help with the stress. Taking a break from social media and the news, getting bundled up and venturing out into nature, even just for five minutes, can help.
In this episode of
Inside Appalachia, we’ll go outside into a cold, crisp forest on a winter hike. We’ll hear why the winter months actually provide unique opportunities to hear birds.
Food has the power to connect us to past generations sometimes across hundreds of years of history.
Just over a century ago, a wave of Lebanese immigrants flowed into Appalachia. They left their families and homes in the Middle East, and traveled to cities like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Roanoke, Virginia and Wheeling, West Virginia in search of jobs and economic opportunity. They brought a rich culture that flourished and also a vitality to the places they settled.
But now, generations have passed, and Appalachia’s Lebanese communities are seeing a familiar dynamic as young people move out and older generations pass on.
Colt Brogan and his co-worker Crystal Snyder.
Communities throughout Appalachia struggle with shrinking populations. As a region, Appalachia is losing people in the prime working years (ages 25 to 64) even as the rest of the country is seeing growth in that demographic, according to a 2018 report from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The latest census figures indicate West Virginia alone lost approximately 10,000 people in the last year and has lost nearly 65,000 people in the last seven.
Each year, thousands of Appalachians move away from their hometowns to find opportunities elsewhere. Local leaders often talk about a “brain drain” referring to young people who get their college degrees and move out of the region to a city with more job opportunities.