The Great Panther Hoax

30 years have now passed since the onset of the AIDS crisis. An HIV diagnosis used to be a death sentence, but effective medication therapies have turned the disease into a chronic – but manageable – condition. Urban areas have born the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, but recent studies have shown alarming trends in the rise of the disease in more rural areas.
Right here in West Virginia, some feel like they are being left behind in the fight against AIDS. Despite having higher rates of poverty and prescription drug abuse - risk factors for contracting the disease - patients and health workers in southern WV have a hard time accessing even basic services. After all, what good is the best medication when you can’t get to a doctor?


Fighting AIDS in Rural West Virginia

Curator Playing - Sound - Sculptures

Curator On - Recording - Reels

Curator Monotypes

Today we'll enter the world of historic re-enactors. With the 150th anniversaries of various Civil War events looming, these extreme history buffs are getting a boost. Traveling 219 producer Jessie Wright-Mendoza recently checked out a local re-enactment of the Battle of Droop Mountain. 

The Battle of Droop Mountain...149 Years Later

Gentrification - It's a loaded word. 
For some it's a social good, the upper middle class flocking back to urban areas, bringing economic stimulation and regeneration to blighted neighborhoods. Others see it as modern-day colonization, the privileged classes moving in, hiking up prices, and pushing out deep-rooted but poor communities. 
Either way, it's happening in cities all over the country, and the people at the center often find themselves living with a lot of racial and economic tensions while these communities figure out their new identities.
We'll visit one Brooklyn community where the neighborhood school landed at the heart of a struggle between old-timers and newcomers, and see what happens when we all have to figure out how to get along.

The Fight for P.S. 84

In honor of National Poetry Month, Traveling 219 produced this story on Karl Dewey Myers, the first poet laureate of West Virginia. Very little is known about Myers or his time as Poet Laureate, an honor he was awarded in 1927 and held for nearly a decade. What is known is that Myers was born severely disabled and never walked, a misfortune that was the first of several tragedies that plagued his life, and led to an unfortunate end for a man whose contributions to West Virginia history have been largely overlooked.
