News Release:

Ethan Fischer grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Cornell University and the University of Pittsburgh, studying science and English.  After earning a law degree from the University of Michigan, he practiced neighborhood law before going on the road as an actor and playwright.  Ethan worked with Bear Republic Theater on the West Coast and later with the Video Buddies (Gross National Product) in DC.  He was general editor of Antietam Review and co-producer of the Rumsey Radio Hour. Ethan’s poetry, essays, and interviews were published in journals across the nation, and his writing workshops for “children of all ages,” as well as his campus and radio work, allowed him to share his love of poetry and fascination with language. Ethan taught literature and creative writing at Shepherd University, was Director of the WV Fiction Competition, and was a founding editor of the Anthology of Appalachian Writers.  His poetry collection Beached in the Hourglass was published in 2004.

The Ron Rash volume of the Anthology of Appalachian Writers features the work of both Rash and Fischer, as well as three winners of the 2011 West Virginia Fiction Competition: Jim Koenig’s “Carry Me to the River,” Paul Kessler’s “The Water Beneath,” and Jeremiah Shelor’s “The Tragedy of Woodrow Monroe.”  Rash selected the winners and wrote critical reviews for each of the finalists in the state-wide competition, co-sponsored by The West Virginia Center for the Book.

Storytellers, poets, and essayists from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Iceland contributed to the volume.  The book also features heritage writer Willa Cather and one of her Appalachian stories set in Winchester, Virginia—Sapphira and the Slave Girl. In addition to the work of Rash and the WV Fiction Competition winners, the anthology features the award-winning poetry and prose by Grace Cavalieri, Rob Merritt, Jim Lewin, Dave Hoffman, Marc Harshman, Randi Ward, Sue Silver, Wesley Browne, Jenny Preston, Anna Egan Smucker, Sue Dunlap, Wendy Miles, Stephanie Whetstone, Zack Davis, Robert Amburgey, Larry Kinder, Judy Strang, Jacquelyn Markham, Lisa Res, among others.

The book also contains a poem by the Byrd Center’s archivist, Marc Levitt, which is his first published piece.

Readings from the anthology will take place September 25, 2012, at 7:00 p.m., at the Robert Byrd Legislative Center at Shepherd University, and a reception for the writers and photographic artists in the volume will follow at 8:00 p.m. in the Scarborough Library Reading Room.

These and other events will be part of the 2012 Appalachian Heritage Writers Project (AHWIR) and Appalachian Heritage Festival, featuring this year the work of Gretchen Moran Laskas.  The AHIWR project is co-sponsored by The Shepherd University Foundation and The West Virginia Humanities Council. More information about the Appalachian Heritage Writers Project and the Appalachian Studies Program at Shepherd University, can be found on their website.  Keep up with Appalachian Heritage events and the Appalachian Studies Program at Shepherd University on FaceBook.

A brochure and button from Senator Byrd's Presidential Campaign in 1976.

The May 8, 2012 West Virginia primary is almost here.

In 1976, Senator Byrd won the Mountain State Democratic Presidential primary as a favorite son candidate, defeating Alabama Governor George Wallace with 89 percent of the vote.  Byrd gained 31 convention delegates, but released them before the convention because Jimmy Carter had garnered enough delegates during the primary season to win the nomination on the first ballot.

In his autobiography, Byrd states that he did not mount a full-scale presidential campaign because he preferred aiming for the post of Senate majority leader, which he won in January 1977.

The lecture can be viewed on YouTube and you can also view the text of the lecture.  Ray was introduced by Dr. Matt Wasniewski, the president of the Society for History in the Federal Government who is the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The West Virginia Humanities Council is a private, nonprofit organization providing lifelong learning opportunities to the state’s citizens.  The council serves as a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Through grants, fellowships, programs, publications, and special events, the WVHC’s goal is to help and encourage all West Virginians to enjoy a rich, engaging, and mind-expanding experience through the humanities. One of the council’s premier projects is the West Virginia Encyclopedia, a fascinating online resource about the history, people, and culture of the Mountain State.

I had the great pleasure and honor to be asked to give the University of Maryland History Department’s Distinguished Alumni Lecture on April 5, 2012. It was great to return to College Park, where I did my graduate studies in history and to see old friends and colleagues and some new faces too.  I never had a conventional career as a university history professor but I have been actively engaged as a professional historian for almost a half century. So my talk is a reflection on the history profession over the past half century and some stories about my own journey along the path of my chosen profession. You can read the entire talk by clicking here.  I would love to get your reaction to it. Let me know what you think of it.

From left to right, Ray Smock, Byrd Center director; Matt Wasniewski, Historian, U. S. House of Representatives; Charles Johnson, Parliamentarian, U. S. House of Representatives (ret.).

From left to right, Mike Donaghue, Sam Walker, David Kepley, Ray Smock, Whitman Ridgway, Pete Daniel, Steve Goodell.

Review by Ray Smock

I just read a remarkable book by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. It is The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government.  I highly recommend it as a big gust of fresh air to clear out the dense, stale, gases we have all been breathing when it comes to how we talk about politics and citizenship. It is time to break out of the prison of left/right thinking that has made politics so mean spirited in recent years.

The authors label themselves as progressives. They are critical of old left politics as well as the right wing politics that, as I write this, is moving even farther to the right. The recent announcement that Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), a highly respected moderate, will not seek re-election is just the latest example that the Republican Party has no centrists, those willing to compromise to move America forward. Senator Snowe cited the poisonous partisanship as a reason for her retirement.

The left has been stuck in a rut for a century, getting most of its ideas from the progressive era and the New Deal in the early decades of the 20^th century. That was a time of rapid industrialization, followed by the worst depression in American history, and then followed by even greater industrialization in World War II. This is not to say that all the liberal thinking of the past century has been wrong. But it sure could stand a fresh coat of paint.

While the left seems mired in the past, the right is flying off helter-skelter into space and changing the face of the Republican Party in a manner that has many Republicans wondering what happened.  Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan look like liberals compared to the Republican Party of the 21^st Century. The current Republican presidential candidates seem lost as they try to find a steady message that will suit a volatile base.

In The Gardens of Democracy the authors invite us to think outside the box and embrace a new metaphor for politics and government that sees the process of governing like tending a garden. There is something in this new metaphor for both the left and the right. To be a good gardener takes compromise with the soil, the plants, and the weather. Gardens need to be tended to be successful. You cannot just plant them and leave them alone and expect to get a bumper crop. Gardens need to be weeded. The right seeds need to be planted.

Now take this metaphor and apply it to politics. We fight over government regulation. Some say we need no regulations, others want more. Should government regulate business? Of course it should, but the question is one of balance. Should a gardener weed a garden? Regulation is like weeding. You keep out the bad stuff so the good stuff does better.

Today we are locked in combat over the inequity of income that exists in the country. We talk about the 1% that controls so much of the wealth of the nation while the poor and the middle class get squeezed out of the American dream of raising a family with a roof over their heads and being able to plan a future and look forward to a secure retirement.  But if someone suggests we “redistribute” the wealth more equitably, through the process of taxing the rich more, there comes the loud cry of socialism.  “Redistribute” becomes a bad word leading to the evil of socialism. We are trapped in this debate by the tyranny of how we define this process. We all become trapped by how we define words. This book helps to free us of the dead weight that the tyranny of words can place on all of us.

In The Gardens of Democracy, the authors use the word “recirculate” rather than “redistribute.”  It requires us to take a fresh look at what we mean by “government spending.” Money the government spends is not lost. It is recirculated. Here is how Liu and Hanauer explain it:

…government does not spend money; it circulates it. It does not redistribute money; it recirculates it. Social Security is the largest line item of government “spending” in the budget. But Social Security is simply a collateralized savings account. Understood as circulation, Social Security’s main benefit isn’t to keep the elderly from living in cardboard boxes, although that is a fine thing, but to ensure that they continue as dynamic consumers in our economy. Social Security circulates money back to the citizens who contributed to it in the first place, and is circulated again by them, generating increased economic activity that allows others to be paid, to contribute to Social Security and then to receive those benefits in the future, in an endless and essential positive feedback loop that sustains and expands our economy.

I’ll have more to say about this remarkable book in future postings. In the meantime, if you have read it or plan to read it, let me hear from you. I leave with one final thought that ties The Gardens of Democracy to the late Senator Byrd. In 1991, cartoonist Linda Headrick, drawing for The Journal, published in Martinsburg, West Virginia, created a marvelous cartoon showing Senator Byrd as a gardener in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. I love this cartoon because it shows the positive side of earmarks, where funds go to improve infrastructure, create institutions, provide future jobs, benefit the local and state economy, and ultimately the national economy. This is money that is truly recirculated for the benefit of future generations. Senator Byrd kept this drawing on the wall of his Senate office.

Image from the Robert C. Byrd CLS Collection

Senator Byrd was often called the “King of Pork” for the earmarks he directed to West Virginia during his long tenure on the Appropriations Committee. He took this derisive designation and made it into a badge of honor. He was planting seeds for the future in West Virginia soil. Today politicians are falling all over themselves claiming earmarks are an evil and the ruination of the nation. They say earmarks are a great flaw in government spending and that is it nothing but waste.

Senator Byrd was one of those who knew how earmarks could help a region or a state to prosper. Today most members of Congress who are serious about their roles as legislators and appropriators know that earmarks are the most directly democratic aspect of the federal budget. It is money spent at the request of citizens in all 435 congressional districts in the nation. We can, of course, find an occasional bridge to nowhere and a few other boondoggles among earmarks. This is true in all aspects of federal spending. But I ask: how do we make our garden grow?

Try the metaphor on for size, read the book, and let’s see if we cannot have a healthier dialog on what it will take to keep America moving forward for all of us. Is it possible that if enough of us think and act about politics and the economy as gardening, that we could inch a little closer to that first garden, in Eden?

Photograph from the Robert C. Byrd CLS Collection, courtesy of Jim Nobles

Byrd Center director Ray Smock presents Congress Investigates to Pamela Coyle, director of the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Public Library.

On February 16,  Ray Smock gave a talk at the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Public Library on the first Congressional investigation in U. S. history, St. Clair’s Defeat, an all but forgotten chapter in American history from the wars with Indians in the Northwest Territory from 1785 to 1795. President George Washington sent General Arthur St. Clair at the head of a 1400-man army to conquer a confederacy of Indian tribes under the leadership of Miami Chief Little Turtle and Shawnee Chief Blue Coat. It turned out to be the worst disaster in the history of the U.S. Army in terms of the percentage of casualties. St. Clair’s army suffered 1,000 casualties including an incredibly high percentage of dead, with 657 soldiers killed.

The investigation in the House of Representatives, which received the full cooperation of President Washington, established the precedent that the executive branch might consider some papers and records to be so private that they should not be made public. This principle became known as executive privilege, and has been a presidential power since that time.

The story of St. Clair’s defeat and 28 other major congressional investigations can be found in Congress Investigates: A Critical History with Documents, published in 2010 as a Congressional Research Project of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies.

In January 2012, the Byrd Center digitized the newspaper columns, making the entire run widely accessible for the first time.  All of the columns have full-text search capability to facilitate research and can be accessed on the Archive page.  This digital archive groups the issues by year and title for easy browsing.  The Center also has hard copies of the columns in our collection, supplementing our holdings of Senator Byrd’s extensive writing career.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting announced the opening of the archive which you can listen to here.

The Roger R. Trask award is named for the late pioneer federal historian whose long and distinguished scholarly career included service as historian for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Defense, and the General Accounting Office.  Previous recipients of the Trask Award are Roger Lanius, chief curator at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, Richard Baker, Senate Historian Emeritus, and Philip Cantelon, founder and chairman of the board of History Associates.

Matt Wasniewski, SHFG president (l) presents Trask Award to Ray Smock. Incoming SHFG president Marc Rothenberg is on the right.