editorial

With some regret I announce that this will be the last issue of The Highlands Voice with me as editor. Some of you might have not known that I resigned last October. We worked out an extension of my editorship to provide for a seamless continuity.

We will have moved the Voice up into a new level of excellence, since the new editor will come on for the March issue in the person of John McFerrin, our past president and doer of many good things for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. In his personal life he is also a new committed father, a husband and a provider of other kinds of community services. John and I have been off on the by-ways here in southern West Virginia since most of our membership is concentrated in Charleston, Morgantown and the Highlands area. E-mail has turned out to be a great binder of dedicated activists separated by geography.

John has taken lessons on how to layout the Voice on the computer, something I should have done long ago.

I want to do a brief review of my tenure. Making the projection through this issue I have been on board for 58 months, just short of five years. I started out as a complete greenhorn on this thing (I had done a small newsletter for the U-U fellowship in Beckley, but it was nothing like this) and feel that by now I know how to turn out a pretty fair Voice. I learned it all pretty much by the seat of the pants – computer operations and all else.

Things started off badly – the first computer system I bought malfunctioned from the start and by the time I had a new one operational it five months had gone by. John McFerrin most graciously let me use his computer while I was working on getting one that worked right.

In these 58 months, there have been 50 issues put out. In 1999 I went berserk and served up 12 issues , all but one of which were 20 pages long.

An editor is no better than his writers. There are so many fine writers that I have been most fortunate. I will leave out some names, but that is the way things usually work – I will mention the principle ones and not necessarily in any order of dedication or competence. Hugh Rogers who not only reports but can amuse at the same time. (I loved it when he referred to Robert C. Byrd as "Candyman!") John McFerrin who was very strong early on in providing me poignant material; Michael Hasty, there through thick and thin beating the drums for revolt ( I admit to encouraging him on this); Jack Slocomb with the poetic prose in his essays on the beauty of West Virginia’s wilds; Dave Saville who did his best to keep me from wandering off into the outer limits of Lower Slobovia rather than doing the West Virginia thing; Judy Rodd with her tomtom (husband?) in a constant cadence for the Blackwater Canyon preservation; Frank Young who would come in as the heavy hitter when things need to be dealt with like wind turbines; last but certainly not least – our own Don Gasper who really set some kind of record for submissions. I think the WVHC should publish a book of all his articles that never made it to publication in the Voice.

I’d like to offer a special tribute for one who was one of us in actuality and is still one of us in spirit even though she has gone over to that fine other organization, OVEC. Vivian and I are sort of brother and sister as far as what we deem important in this world. She has provided me with a lot of excellently written material which frequently makes the front page of the Voice. Others: An environ- mental hero, Julian Martin, who cuts an awesome pace in the Movement; sometimes, Gary Zuckett, Rupert Cutler, Jim Kotcon, and earlier, Jim Sconyers, Tom Degen and Norm Steenstra. Paul Salstrom who did the fine reviews from his perch in that midwest college, St. Marys of the Woods. Apologies to those deserving folks I’ve left out.

The Voice is on the portals of a new era. To reflect the growth and increasing stature of the Conservancy, John McFerrin will be the ideal editor in making the Voice shine along with the rest of the organization.

I’m not sure what my role will be now with the Conservancy and environmental activism in West Virginia. That will settle itself out. I still plan to keep active – have not as yet accepted the word "retire" in my lexicon. I think I may do a bit of writing but don’t know even the nature of such. It will need to have a "message" for sure.

Hopefully, I’ve not omitted some statement of special importance as I leave the editorship. The best of luck to the new Editor and to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.