Almost Heaven West Virginia
Skip Lineberg at Maple Creative has some additional thought on what this means for Charleston business? Jeff James at CreateWV provide more commentary in the post, "Is eBay the Killer App to Drive WV Broadband Adoption?"
Almost Heaven West Virginia

Sorry for a lack of substantive health care posting the last couple of weeks. The result of being just too busy with client legal matters.
We spent yesterday at FestivALL and Rick Lee captured some great shots on Capitol Street. More fun today!






As a follow up to my recent post about Charleston being featured in Kiplinger's Best Cities At Every Stage of Your Life it reminds me to mention that FestivALL is on its way (June 21-24).Friday night is party time on the river! Fund for the Arts’ Blues, Brews & BBQ will take place outdoors along the banks of the Kanawha at the University of Charleston with The Robert Cray Band and more. Phenomenal Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel will be in concert at The West Virginia State University Capitol Center Theater and A Gershwin Gala music and story tribute to the great George Gershwin will be at The Clay Center in a cabaret setting.
Saturday brings one of Charleston’s most popular events, Fund for the Arts’ Wine & All That Jazz, again outdoors on the U. of C. lawn. Smooth jazz sax man Eric Marienthal heads a bill that also includes the finest local and regional jazz artists and the fruits of local vineyards. Also on Saturday, The Capitol Street Art Fair fills two blocks with quality artists and crafts artists. They will be selling and, in some cases, demonstrating their work. On Saturday evening enjoy part one of The WV One Act Play Festival at The Clay Center. This year it will be topped off by a Late Night Cabaret performance. Also on Saturday night, at The WVSU Capitol Center Theater, you can hear the WV brother/sister duo of Tim and Mollie O’Brien in concert. Tim won a Grammy in 2005 for best traditional music recording and you may know Mollie as a long time regular on A Prairie Home Companion.
On Sunday, The Capitol Street Arts Fair returns and The One Act Theater Festival continues. On Sunday night, FestivALL 2007 ends with a very special edition of Charleston’s own internationally popular live music radio program, Mountain Stage.
On Wednesday, June 20, there will be a FestivALL West Virginia Day Celebration on the lawn of the Clay Center. It will feature popular local bands including the reunion of two of Charleston’s most popular 60’s and 70’s rock bands, The Mojos and Quiet. Later that evening, it’s the Gazz FestivALL Preview at Blues BBQ restaurant with more music and a discussion of FestivALL’s theme, “A City Becomes a Work of Art”, by city artists.
Check the Dance listings for performances by The Charleston Ballet, The River City Youth Ballet, West Virginia Dance Theatre, JADCO, Allegro and other companies. There will be 36 hours of free music on stages at Davis Park (blues, jazz), Haddad Riverfront Park (Charleston dance bands), Capitol Market (country and bluegrass), Charleston Town Center (eclectic mix) and at The Capitol Center FOOTMAD Stage (traditional Appalachian and folk). FOOTMAD will also be having a big Contra Dance Weekend.
Chalk artist Julian Beever will be coming in from Belgium to do one of his incredible “three dimensional” sidewalk drawings and the popular GO FISH catfish sculptures will be back in Brawley Walkway (Fife Street) and elsewhere. Street performers of all types will perform up and down Capitol Street. There will be family activities on The West Side and East End and, especially for the kids, The Kanawha Public Library’s Street Fair will take place on Saturday.
The City of Sistersville River Taxi will be ferrying folks across the Kanawha and last year’s extremely popular Location!Location!Location! “Ten Minute Play” contest winners, staged in the lobby of the Security Building, will be encored. Plus, a new contest, “A Streetcar Named…” will result in a twenty minute play that will be acted on a KRT Trolley as it makes its rounds.
In short, there will be plenty to keep the whole family entertained.
The preliminary lineup of events for Charleston FestivALL 2009 was announced today. Ten days of music, art, theater, entertainment, creativity and fun bring the city of Charleston alive from June 19 - 27, 2009. Where the city become a work of art!However, we can’t continue down this path without help. As everyone knows, our best resource has always been our people – and not just those who are here today living and working in West Virginia, but those who were born or raised in West Virginia and have left the state because they felt they had no other choice in order to make a living. Unfortunately, we are all guilty of teaching an entire generation that they couldn’t find a good job in West Virginia, so don’t even bother trying. Well, that’s absolutely not true today, and now our challenge is to reverse these thoughts and show those who have left that this is the perfect time to come home.These West Virginia born knowledge leaders bring a new direction that I hope West Virginia takes to transition itself into a state for the creative class to grow and thrive.
Some of the most successful people in the country are native West Virginians – Sylvia
Matthews, chief operating officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Wes Bush, president of Northrop Grumman; Ralph Baxter of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who has come home to West Virginia to co‐chair our 21st Century Jobs Cabinet and, of course, as previously mentioned, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems. And I know there are many, many more success stories out there, both large and small, that most of us aren’t even aware of – except for the proud mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who deep‐down wish their loved ones were achieving success here in West Virginia.
Regardless of your field of expertise, we need you, and your intellectual capital, ingenuity and work ethic, now more than ever. We need those of you who have an entrepreneurial spirit, or those who have accomplished your goals and are looking for a place where you can teach others all that you have learned. You’ll recognize much of what you left behind, but you’ll also find a work force and a business community that have made tremendous advancements.
While your coming home will help us to make this an even better place to live and work, it will also be rewarding for you as well, because you’ll be able to give something back to this place that I know you’ve always carried with you in your heart and is such an important part of who you are.
So to get the word out, we are going to start a “Come Home to West Virginia” campaign this year through our Department of Commerce. This recruiting campaign will be aimed at bringing former West Virginia residents back home to either work in West Virginia’s growing industries or to expand in West Virginia the businesses they have started in other places.
