The 2013-2014 Preserve WV AmeriCorps year is coming to a close. Members, staff, and supervisors gathered yesterday to celebrate a successful first year and to discuss ways to improve the program. Old Hemlock Foundation in Bruceton Mills (Preston County) hosted an afternoon of good food, sharing ideas, and enjoying each other’s company. PAWV Executive Director, Danielle LaPresta, led a discussion on improving the Preserve WV AmeriCorps program and developing ways to collect data more efficiently. All members gave excellent input, and their responses will be used in applying for more grants and measuring the effects the program is having in communities all over West Virginia.
For the 2013-2014 program year, members are serving at Craik-Patton House (Charleston), Cockayne Farmstead (Glen Dale), Downtown Wheeling, Inc. (Wheeling), PAWV (statewide), Wheeling National Heritage Area (Wheeling), Main Street Morgantown (Morgantown), Main Street Fairmont (Fairmont), Old Hemlock Foundation (Bruceton Mills), Marion County Historical Society (Fairmont), Adaland Mansion (Philippi), and National Coal Heritage Area (Oak Hill). This year has been so successful that we are expanding to more sites for 2014-2015. More information on that soon. The Preserve WV AmeriCorps is made possible through a grant. However, it requires a lot of PAWV staff commitment that is not paid by the grant. If you are interested in showing support for this program and PAWV, please consider giving a tax-deductible donation to PAWV HERE. Your donations are used to expand services and this program. The PreserveWV AmeriCorps program is Preservation Alliance of West Virginia’s statewide service initiative to promote cultural heritage tourism and enhance historic resource re-use and redevelopment projects in West Virginia. Particular focus is placed on non-profit capacity building through organizational policy development, volunteer management, and community engagement. AmeriCorps members’ service will contribute to West Virginia’s economic development and environmental stewardship. AmeriCorps is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency whose mission is to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. To learn more about AmeriCorps see www.americorps.gov. The PreserveWV AmeriCorps program is sponsored by Volunteer West Virginia, the state’s Commission for National and Community Service: www.volunteerwv.org/ By Jake Dougherty, Preserve WV AmeriCorps at Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation My great story comes from an event I helped lead called Show of Hands. Show of Hands is an event meant to gain community support around positive programs happening in downtown Wheeling. The way it works is: people working on projects in downtown apply to present at the event. The selection committee chooses four projects based on location, need in the community, and void filled. The day of the event, attendees make a suggested donation at the door, and with that, they receive a vote. Attendees hear the presentations and vote on the one they like the most. The project with the most votes receives the money raised at the door, plus $1,000 courtesy of a global law firms whose headquarters are in downtown Wheeling. After many hours spent building this concept, recruiting projects to present, doing promotions to get attendees there, the event started. With the expectation of about 40 attendees, we were blown away when 40 people were already in the building just 10 minutes after the doors opened. By the time the program began, there were close to 115 attendees and already $720 raised at the door.
After making the announcement of the winning vote getter, we announced this plan and the audience gasped, some even said that they got goosebumps from the announcement.
It was such an incredibly shocking moment, but it has so much more than shock value. 1) From the beginning the concept of Show of Hands was met with incredible support. The program received $5,000 in financial funding (before the unexpected announcement at the event), plus thousands in donated expertise, time, and products. 2)The community turnout was more than we ever could have expected. That shows the need for innovative solutions to get projects started, and that the community wants to get behind these projects. 3) We built new community partners, and they are enthused to be a part of the community. 4) After the fact, all four of the projects that pitched have started their projects and have an immense amount of community support. This is my great story because through my service my goals were to work with historic resources like buildings and help get them utilized, build organizational and community capacity, and build a culture of social engagement. Not only was this done through a small concept implemented by just a few committed volunteers, but it completed transcended my impact. It has become a well respected project that is supported by many and impacts many. I grew up in Wheeling. When I decided to leave the city or event during internships during college in town, I never would have expected this program to be this successful. It is something special to see my hometown come together more and more to become a innovative and wonderful place to live and be. Help us smile. Support Preservation Alliance of West Virginia in a new way: do your online shopping on smile.amazon.com. It’s easy to register; simple search for Preservation Alliance of West Virginia with our EIN number: 31-1028713. All your other Amazon.com account settings will remain the same. When you have selected us you will see it listed at the top-middle of the webpage as “Supporting: Preservation Alliance of West Virginia.” All your purchases through smile.amazon.com will donate 0.5% to PAWV! Anymore questions see: http://smile.amazon.com/about. Make sure you smile today.
The workshop will take place in the historic Spring Hill Cemetery – the oldest, most historic, large, publicly-owned cemetery in and about the city. Its heritage stems from the early 19th century. Along with being the resting place of one Confederate General, Albert Gallatin Jenkins, and one Union General, John Hunt Oley, Spring Hill Cemetery contains six Veteran sections. There is an African-American Veterans section, Soldiers Field, Soldiers Rest, the Union section, the Confederate section, and a newly-developed Veterans’ Companion section for Veterans and their spouses. Spring Hill Cemetery also represents many cultures and religious beliefs. Situated on the grounds’ northwest promontory is the Marshall Memorial dedicated in 1971 to those who passed away in the tragic 1970 Marshall football team plane crash.
To register for the conference, visit our EventBrite page. By Alex, PAWV VISTA
Smoke Hole Caverns is located in Grant County on Route 55, between Seneca Rocks and Petersburg, WV. Formed over 200 million years ago from an underground stream, this extensive cavern is named “Smoke Hole” by early settlers after the smoke that often wafted out of the cave when the Seneca Indians it for smoking meats. Because of the vastness of the cave and separated rooms, it was often used as shelter. During the Civil War both Union and Confederate soldiers used it as a resting place. Later, use of the caverns included the making of West Virginia corn whiskey. It is speculated that as many as 20 moonshine stills operated at one time. An original still remains on display and can be seen as part of the tour. The caverns opened to commercial visitors in May 1942 and have been open for tours ever since. Smoke Hole Caverns is also home to the world’s largest ribbon stalactite, measuring 16 feet long, 13 feet wide, and weighs approximately 2.5 tons. Other features include ‘Crystal Cave Coral Pool’, the ‘Queen’s Canopy,’ and the ‘Room of a Million Stalactites.’ Smoke Hole Caverns has some of the highest ceiling clearances in the world, making the tour and easy walk through the underground. The Smoke Hole Caverns tour is a guided tour lasting approximately an hour. A guided tour is the only way of viewing the caverns. Visitors are told to bring a jacket as the cave stays at 56 degrees year round. Prices for the tour are the following: $15.00 Adults, $13.00 Senior Citizens/ Military Personnel, $10.00 Children (Ages 5 thru 12 years of age) and no charge for children under the age of 4. A large and elaborate gift shop stands beside the caverns. Tickets for the tour can be purchased here. The gift shop features many West Virginia souvenirs and a café. In November 2009, the gift shop and restaurant suffered a devastating fire but have since rebuilt and are now a thriving WV tourist stop, known as the largest gift shop in West Virginia. We are so honored to have representatives from all of these organizations participating as speakers and presenters at the 2014 Historic Preservation Conference: From the Ground Up. The conference will be September 25-27, 2014 in Huntington, WV.
For more information about the conference agenda and presentations, as well as registration information, please visit our website. The First Ward School in Elkins was built in the early twentieth century. It served Randolph County students for almost the entire twentieth century. Eventually, it was turned into storage when new schools were built all over the county. In 2009, First Ward School was recognized on the revived WV Endangered Properties List. The school was deteriorating badly and in need of a new roof. This listing motivated partners to come together to revitalize this building. Partners included C-HOPE, the Randolph County Housing Authority, and AU Associates. In 2013, the First Ward School was preserved and converted into 16 affordable housing units for seniors. It is a preservation success story for Elkins and West Virginia. WBOY Channel 12 featured the First Ward School project recently, and PAWV awarded this project with the 2013 Best Use of Historic Preservation Tax Credits Award. Enjoy this video to learn more about the project. PAWV honors projects all over the state during the annual awards banquet. This year, the awards banquet will be held in Huntington at the Palms Reception Hall on Sept. 26, 2014, in conjunction with the historic preservation conference: From the Ground Up. Full details about the awards banquet and conference are available HERE. The banquet is open to everyone to attend. So even if you can’t make the conference, we encourage you to join us for a fun evening of drinks, dinner, and celebrating historic preservation partnerships like this one.
By Malina, Preserve WV AmeriCorps In my last post I explained how I, a newly minted PAWV Preserve WV AmeriCorps member, was able to travel to Japan to interview a woodworker about his life, his craft, and his American friend, Janell Landis. As I knew very little Japanese going in, and my project partner, Paula, is a historian of Japan and has studied the language for nearly eight years, I decided to let her do the talking and relegated myself to equipment duty and appreciative observer of the sites. Skipping over the nitty-gritty travel details, I will say only that my first, and most lasting, impression of Japan was how clean everything was. On the train ride north from Tokyo it was nearly impossible to distinguish the old buildings from the new, not just because of a combination of government-led housing construction and modernist concrete architectural design, but because there was no trace of dirt on building walls from pollution and many structures seemed freshly painted—it was all so clean. Walking around the city of Sendai, and later Akiu, I remarked to my personal translator and cultural guide, Paula, that there was so little litter. And she replied that it always amazed her that, despite the fact that there are very few public garbage cans, littering is very frowned upon in Japanese society. People just carry their trash with them over the course of the day and throw it away at home or work. This was by far the most noticeable difference to me in terms of urban spaces, which I have spent a lot of time thinking about since my tenure at Main Street Fairmont. The mountains of the Tohoku region where Sendai sits are surprisingly reminiscent of Appalachia. We were fortunate to come at a time of the year when everything was green and the weather was sunny and mild. As is evident above, I found the built environment of Japan to be fascinating, especially the small town of Akiu which had, in addition to the traditional Japanese inn where we stayed, several high-rise apartment buildings in a town of roughly four concentrated blocks. However, architecture was not the cultural resource we had come to document.
Oral History is an energy-intensive process for interviewer and subject. We interviewed Hiroi-sensei for a total of 6 hours over two days. The rest of the time we spent at his home was taken up by exploring the work on sale in his shop, touring the other shops nearby, and meeting some of the people in Akiu who spend their time helping to preserve the artisan traditions of Japan. Hiroi-sensei lives in a planned neighborhood specially designed to house artisan masters and help them sell their art for a living. Each artisan lives in a small house with an adjoining shop. Other kinds of traditional Japanese artisans live and work in this ‘craft village’ as well. We were able to patronize two kokeshi doll makers, a woodworker, a furniture maker, a fabric artist, and others. The village also included an information center with some of the artisans’ work on display and free tea and coffee for visitors. On our last day at the Akiu Craft Park we were able to sit down and talk with a young couple who volunteer their time at the information center and manage the Akiu Craft Park Facebook page. The young man, Takahashi-san, works at the local TV station and produced several short documentaries about the artisans in Akiu, including Hiroi-sensei. These young people are working consciously to promote Akiu, Sendai, and the larger Tohoku region as a viable tourist destination for Japanese people. The Japanese economy is significantly boosted by domestic tourism, but since the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Sendai in 2011, many Japanese people have been avoiding travel to the region. By educating the public on the availability of traditional crafts in Akiu, the community there hopes to foster an atmosphere of preservation. In his own way, Hiroi-sensei is also a preservationist, his family has passed down the particular way of making edo-goma, and he is passing it down to apprentices, like Janell and the two young people he is currently teaching, Maida-san and Misa-san. His process and materials are the same as those his father used and therefore, that process and the artworks he creates can be a similar window into history as any historical work of art or architecture. His process is interpretation while at the same time his art can be interpreted: though not historical themselves, they are artifacts ofhistory. We hope that, through our own efforts and those of Takahashi-san and others like him, traditional artisans like Hiroi-sensei and his neighbors will continue to practice their work and enrich Japanese culture for generations to come. By Malina, Preserve WV AmeriCorps In my two terms of AmeriCorps, one of the most exciting aspects of the program, for me, has been meeting new people who are taking on meaningful projects and networking with them. There are so many venues for AmeriCorps members to help each other with their projects and initiatives. Simply being in such a cooperative atmosphere can rub off on your other networks as well, and like-minded advocates and go-getters can be found in the most surprising places. Before I began my service with PAWV’s Preserve WV program, I had started working with Paula R. Curtis on Carving Community: The Landis and Hiroi Collection as a favor to friend, and as a fun side project during my job search. When we started the project, we had no idea how far it would take us. Paula is an incredibly impressive and smart person who was my sister’s roommate in college and is currently a PhD candidate in History at the University of Michigan and a Fulbright scholar. She runs a widely read blog entitled “What Can I Do with a BA in Japanese Studies?” That blog was the way a woman named Jane Heald first got in contact with Paula on behalf of her neighbor, Janell Landis. Janell is a former missionary who spent over thirty years living in Japan and teaching English at a women’s university in the region of Sendai. In 1981, after she had already been in Japan for nearly three decades, Janell met a local artisan who makes edo-goma(traditional spinning-tops) and began learning his craft. Janell gets such joy from these little wooden art-pieces that she has amassed a collection of nearly two hundred distinct tops. At 87, she began to think of the future of these precious items and wanted to find a museum to which she could donate them. She turned to Jane and Jane, after a simple Google search, turned to Paula. Paula was so intrigued by Janell’s story that she turned to me. As a graduate student in Public History, I gained some experience with oral history. Thus, Paula’s idea was to interview Janell as a kind of PR for the collection. We toyed with the idea of writing a journal article with the information from the interview, but decided that the publishing process would likely take too long and there could be no assurance that we would be printed at all. I turned to my advisor from graduate school who gave us the idea of an online “exhibit” website of our findings in the interview. The project never would have begun without the incredible network of each person involved.
In October, Paula and I travelled to Janell’s home in Tennessee and conducted the interview over three days. There was much to discuss including her life in the US during World War II, her decision to become a missionary, her training, her life in Japan, how she met her sensei and what his work meant to her. She demonstrated the workings of the tops and introduced us to some of the people in her community who had also spent time in Japan. She asked us if we would be willing to travel with her to Japan when she planned to visit for the last time in May. We were evasive: how could we afford to? But the idea was planted in our minds, and it opened up the possibility of filling in the gaps of the narrative we started. If we could interview her sensei, Hiroi Michiaki, we could understand his intent in creating each piece and his history with his only American and first female pupil. Thus, instead of transcribing the interview we had and posting the video we had taken in Tennessee, we devoted our time to writing grants and promoting a successful Kickstarter campaign aimed at buying the AV equipment we would need to take with us. With a generous grant from Paula’s department at Michigan and a little more money from the Kickstarter than our original goal, we both joined Janell in her journey from Nashville to Sendai, Japan. This was a project that started with nothing: an email from a retired woman on behalf of her friend that resulted in an international journey and a museum home for Janell’s collection. Thanks to another member of Paula’s University network, the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach, Florida will be adding Hiroi’s tops to their collection of traditional Japanese art works. Janell is overjoyed that people from all over the country will be able to view and appreciate the work of her teacher and friend. In Part 2, I will discuss my impressions of Japan, our interview with Hiroi-sensei, and some surprising preservation work going on in the town of Akiu, Japan. Charles B. Yuill presents “Integrating Airborne and Terrestrial Laser Scanning with GPS for Heritage Site and Structure Documentation, Management and Monitoring in West Virginia’s Industrial Landscape”
On Friday, September 26, 2014, 3:15-4:40 pm in the Visual Arts Building Charles Yuill works with landscape architecture and environmental design at the Davis College at West Virginia University. His presentation, designed with colleagues Peter Butler and Adam Rielly, focuses on the use of terrestrial laser scanning for heritage and cultural resources. He will delve into case studies including Fallingwater, Arthurdale, the Virginia Iron Furnace, and Blennerhasset Island that have used airborne and terrestrial laser scanning with GPS within these sites. In his presentation, Yuill will focus on the application of drone use to historic structures and landscapes of West Virginia. Don’t miss it! Register for the conference at our EventBrite page. The activity has been financed in part with Federal funds from the National Park Service, Department of the Interior and the WV Division of Culture & History, State Historic Preservation Office. Regulations of the U.S. Department of the Interior strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination in departmental Federally Assisted Programs on the basis of race, color, national origin, age or handicap. Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility operated by a recipient of Federal assistance should write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, DC 20240. |
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