Award winning author Laurence Leamer is known for his best selling book King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson and his trilogy of books about the Kennedy family. But in his newest work, The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption, Leamer turns his attention to the long legal battle between independent mine owner Hugh Caperton and former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankeship. The book’s main characters are the two Pittsburgh lawyers who represented Caperton, Dave Fawcett and Bruce Stanley. Leamer says it was a previous experience in West Virginia that made writing this book attractive.
One of the two lawyers featured in the book,
Bruce Stanley, is a native of the southern West
Virginia coalfields. Stanley
says it was his work as a journalist that uncovered a culture of injustice, and that
motivated Stanley to
become a lawyer. Jessica Lilly has more.
While many colleges and universities try to do
their part to train potential future workers, economic developers across the
region work to bring job opportunities. In mining regions of Appalachia,
that might mean turning a flattened piece of abandoned mine land into a
business park, golf course or airport. Ashton Marra spent time with economic
developers in Mingo County
and talking about their plans to attract new industry and jobs.
Its spring-
and plants are sprouting up in gardens and farm fields across Appalachia. Something else is sprouting in
mall and shopping center parking lots- traveling carnivals. In the age before
television and the internet, traveling carnivals brought a more exciting world
to the modest everyday lives of regular folks across the country, including the
rural towns of the Alleghenies. These traveling carnivals roamed from
town to town, offering a glimpse into an extraordinary production of shows,
games, rides, and displays of the exotic and the bizarre. The Traveling 219 Project visited with Ina
Clair Hicks of Friendsville, Maryland, as she shared her stories of the
traveling carnivals that came through town in the 1930s.
Another spring time ritual is picking and eating
strawberries. The small red fruit has been eaten in the Southeastern
United States since around 500 B.C.,
archaeologists say. For food writer Fred Sauceman, springtime
strawberries are a welcome reward after a winter of anticipation. When
strawberries are ripe, word spreads fast in East
Tennessee.
As West
Virginia celebrates its
Sesquicentennial this year, the winners of the State History Bowl find victory
especially sweet. West Virginia Public Radio’s Suzanne Higgins visited the team
of Raleigh County
eighth-graders as they prepare to receive the coveted, traveling trophy.