Talk of the Town November 25, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is the Talk of the Town from Morgantown to Klerksburg.
If it's happening, we're talking about it. Call the show
toll free at one eight hundred seven sixty five eight
two five five. Now Here is your host for the
Talk of the Town, Mike Nolting.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
A good Tuesday morning.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
It is nine oh six rain in the area of
forty nine degrees in the University City. Welcome to the program.
I'm Mike Nolton. You'll find me out on x as
your news guy. Hopefully we can cross paths on that
platform producing the program. Today, we've got Ethan Collins. He
is also the voice of the Clay Bettel CBS. UH

(00:48):
they've got a big date with Cameron coming up this
weekend in the state tournament. You'll be able to get
Ethan at eight hundred seven sixty five eight two five five.
And when you call, maybe pass on some words of
encouragement to the CBS. Also, we have the text line
that number three four talk three oh four. Certainly hope

(01:08):
to hear from you today. Today we're going to spend
a little bit of time talking about the revival of
the American Chestnut Tree, and then we're going to go interstellar.
We're going to get the latest on Comet three I.
Now that is the object that has entered our solar

(01:32):
system that some believe could be a spaceship. Well, we've
got an expert coming on at nine thirty in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
We're going to pick his brain.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
We're going to find out what he knows, where this
thing came from, where it's going, and what it might
be doing while it is occupying our solar system.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Let's take a look at a couple of headlines.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Local developer Dave ba Force file the one point twenty
five million dollar defamation lawsuit against Morgantown Mayor Brian Butcher.
Attorneys for bfoor say Butcher made slanderous statements about Metro
properties and the bfour family. Now, the suit says death
threats have been lobbed back and forth by both sides.

(02:15):
That is alleged death threats. A document say, in one message,
and this message is in the court documents that is
attributed to Butcher, he calls before a federal criminal and
a psychopath. The statements are believed to have been made
during East End Village negotiations that are ongoing. We'll get
into that. A little bit deeper if we have time

(02:38):
later in the morning. Clarksburg resident Cassandra Nutter has been
charged with animal cruelty after an attack on a neighbor's
pet with a knife. Deputies from the Harrison County Sheriff's
Department said surveillance video shows Nutter calling the dogs to
the fence while swinging a knife. Nutter was injured in

(03:00):
that incident, and.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
It looks like here we go.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Deputies from the Marion County Sheriff's Department. They've charged thirty
seven year old Larry Broadwater with child abuse resulting in
injury after he allegedly through assault shaker at a sun
That incident happened Friday at their Barrackville home. The juvenile
suffered cuts and bruises as a result in Broadwater. He's
now being lodged in the North Central Regional Jail on

(03:27):
an eighty thousand dollars cash bond. It's another record setting
travel weekend for the holidays. More than eighty million people
expected to rack up more than fifty miles through the
Thanksgiving holiday. Jim Garrity, the TRIPAA representative here in the

(03:48):
mid Atlantic area. He says that now about fifty one
million I believe are going to be traveling by car,
another thirty million will be traveling by air, and certainly
falling as prices isn't hurting travel at all. As a
matter of fact, we saw during the pandemic and even
post pandemic that when gas prices went up didn't affect travel,

(04:12):
not in the least. Now and start in Star City,
they are preparing to improve the infrastructure in the town.
After years of conversations with the DOH and efforts to
get funding, it looks like they will be able to
use Tiff District funding for those sidewalk renovations that could
get underway after the first of the year. Marion County

(04:37):
Board of Education, we had Superintendent Donah Heston, President of
the Board, George Boyle's on the program. Recently, they've penned
a letter to state lawmakers calling for more support for
public schools, and state lawmaker State Senator from Marion County
Joey Garcia says, you know what, they're right. Sometimes we

(04:59):
go a little far in one direction or another. Maybe
it's time to bring that back. Dealing with some issues
here this morning, but I'll get through them. But anyway,
on Metro News talk line. Garcia said that you know what,
sometimes the legislature does get it wrong and this might
be a time for self reflection within the legislature. And finally,

(05:25):
Attorney General J. B. Mccusky has got a major announcement
this afternoon related to legal action against another company associated
with the opioid crisis. That'll happen at the state Capitol
at three thirty this afternoon.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Coming up next, we're going to.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Be talking about the revival of the American Chestnut Street
and Chestnut Tree here in the state of West Virginia.
There's a couple of different ways that you can do
it if you're interested in doing it. But we'll have
an expert coming on next to give us those details.
Right now, Rain now forty eight in Morgantown. We'll be

(06:05):
back with more on Talk of the Town on AM
fourteen forty FM oneh four point five WAJR.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Now back to the Talk of the Town.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well, good Tuesday morning, Idiots nine sixteen Rain forty eight
degrees in the University City. Glad that you're with us,
Mark Double in studio. Good morning, Mark, how are you?

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Good morning? I'm fine, Thank.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
You absolutely Now, Mark, you are an expert with the
American chestnut tree.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Give us a little bit about your background, please, Okay, sure.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
I represent the West Virginia Chapter of the American Chessnunt Foundation.
There are sixteen state chapters in the American Chesstun Foundation,
ranging from Maine down into Alabama and Georgia. And our
goal is to begin the restoration process of bringing back
American chestnut was lost to an invasive fungus back around

(07:09):
the early nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Okay, how did that happen?

Speaker 4 (07:14):
So over the course of twenty five million years, the
chestnut black fungus and Asian chestnut species that were talking
about Chinese chestnut and Japanese chestnut, that fungus coevolved with
those two species in Asia. And what happened was that
American chesnut had absolutely no resistance. And so probably in

(07:35):
the late eighteen nineties, this chestnut like fungus was accidentally
imported into New York City on infected root stock, and
that fungus found a species of chestnut, American chestnut that
had no resistance whatsoever. And over the course of about
fifty years, we lost four billion trees, and so American

(08:00):
used to be called the redwood of the East. The
largest recorded American chestnet was in western North Carolina in
the late eighteen hundreds. It was seventeen feet in diameter
and one hundred and twenty feet tall. So these were massive,
massive trees. There's a picture of a tree that was
cut in eighteen sixty five in North Carolina. It was

(08:25):
at sixty five feet off the ground. It was still
five feet in diameter. So the goal of the American
Chestnut Foundation is to begin the restoration process of trying
to bring back the American chestnut because the chesnut blate
fungus has two spore types, and those spores spread via
the wind, and over the course of fifty years, we

(08:47):
lost those four billion trees, and so places like West Virginia,
Pennsylvania that were heavily heavily populated by American chestnut, we
lost all those trees. And so it is functionally extinct.
It's not totally extinct because of the propensity of American
chestnut to sprout. It is a prolific sprouter, and so

(09:11):
what happens is that you have this cycle of you
have a mainstem that grows up to be about the
size of your leg. It becomes infected.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
It dives back, but it sprouts.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
Those sprouts come up, they become infected, they die back,
and so the goal of the American Chestnut Foundation is
to breed resistance from those Asian species into American chestnut.
And so the goal is to eventually get a tree
that will with stand chestnut blight and can be competitive

(09:41):
in the forest. Have the form of American chestnut, which
is straight and tall asan arrow. You take a lot
of those chestnut trees back one hundred years ago, it'd
be forty or fifty feet before you'd find the first branch.
They were that tall. But it was a cradle to
grave tree. The wood was really easy to work with,
so people constructed cradles out of it, they constructed coffins

(10:04):
out of it. But the tree, it was important a
lot because of the high tannin content of the tree.
So when you take a tea bag and you put
it in the hot water and the water turns brown,
those are tannins. And so American chessnut has a lot
of tannins. And so those tanners were used a lot
for tanning hides. Because of you in the seventeen and

(10:27):
eighteen hundreds living in Appalachia. You needed to tan your
hide so that you could you could make them pliable
so you could sew them together. And so tannins were
not only good for tanning hides, but it made the
wood resistant to decay. So you could put a chestnut
fence rail fence posts in the ground that maybe have

(10:48):
lasted one hundred years. And so as the United States
began to industrialize and move westward with railroads and telegraph poles,
almost all of those railroad ties and telegraph and telephone
polls were made out of American chestnut. Because of their
resistance to decay. You don't want to spend a lot
of time putting in railroad ties and have to dig

(11:09):
them up in two or three years because they've rotted.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Well, let me, why not go after the fungus.

Speaker 4 (11:16):
We have gone after the fungus, and so that's what
I retired from West Virginia University after forty one years.
I retired in twenty nineteen, and we worked on the fungus.
The issue with the fungus is it's extremely complicated. Well,
the whole issue of American chestnut is complicated. But if
you harken an analogy to human blood, types. You have A,

(11:38):
you have B, IF A, B and O, and so
if you are an A blood type, I can't give
you a transfusion if I'm a B. Well with the
chestnut blight fungus is somewhat similar, except there are sixty
four types of the chestnut blight fungus, and so back
in the nineteen fifties, so let's go back. So chestnut

(11:59):
blight was first found in the United States in nineteen
oh four. Europeans were extremely concerned about what was going
to happen to European chestnuts, and so what happened in
nineteen thirty eight in Genoa, Italy they found the chestnut
light as well on European chestnuts. So European chesnews were

(12:21):
grown mostly in orchard settings for nut production. And a
Swiss pathologist was roaming through the Swiss Alps in the
late fifties early sixties and he found a bunch of
European chestnuts that were beginning to grow again. They had
all died, just like American chestnut, and so he called
in an expert who worked on fungi from France, a

(12:43):
fellow by the name of Jean Grand and Grant took
some samples from those infected European chestnuts went back to
the laboratory. The chestnut blight fungus, whether it's in a
petri dish or on a chestnut tree, is orange pigmented.
So you can see infected infected chestnut trees from a
long way away because of this orange pigmentation that causes

(13:04):
these cankers on the trees. And so Grant when he
isolated the fungus out of those infected pieces of bark
from European chestnut, he didn't find an orange pigmented fungus.
This was a white pigmented fungus, and so he thought
he had a contaminant. Well, as it turns out, it
was not a contaminant. It was the same It was

(13:24):
the same fungus, the chestnut blood fungus. But he found
out it was infected with a virus. And so the
virus not only impacted the ability of the fungus to
produce pigment, it also impacts the ability to produce spores
and its ability to grow in the tree. So this
particular is it was called hypo virulent, meaning less less

(13:48):
than virulent. So what happens in a chestnut tree is
that a spore will find an aira in the tree,
a crack maybe from a bird talon or a frost crack,
and if that spor gets in there begins to germinate,
it grows, and when it grows around the entire stem
of a tree or a branch, everything distal to that

(14:09):
is dead. So in nineteen oh four, in the Bronx
Zoological Park in New York City in June, they saw
these massive American chestnuts that we're probably sixty to eighty
feet tall, maybe six to eight feet in diameter, had
brown branches in the middle of summer, and so they
began investigating what that was all about, and their conclusion

(14:31):
was it was the drought from nineteen oh three that
was the cause that was causing these brown branches to
be evident in the middle of summer. And so what
happened was in nineteen oh five they still had these
brown branches in the middle of summer, and that's when
they did some more investigation, only to find it it
was a fungus that was killing the branches and not

(14:54):
from the drought.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Okay, okay, now there are efforts to rea vitalize the chestnut,
but I think it's important to get the right strain
of chestnut.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Can you tell us about that, please?

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Sure? So the idea of the American Chessnam Foundation was
founded in nineteen eighty three in Minnesota, and the idea
was from a former faculty member here at West Virginia University.
And in the nineteen thirties, his name was Charles Burnham,
and doctor Burnham worked on corn. He didn't work on chestnuts.

(15:30):
He didn't work on trees at all. He worked on corn.
But he developed a technique in corn called the back
cross breeding technique. And so with his back cross breeding technique,
when Charlie retired in the eighties, he knew all about
chestnut because as a plant breeder, plant breeders had meetings annually,

(15:52):
and whether you were breeding blueberries or corn, or trees
or azalea's, everybody that was breeding would gather for an
annual meeting. So Charlie knew about the issues with American
chestnut because he was in Morgantown in the nineteen thirties
as chestnut blight came through northern West Virginia. So Charlie
had this idea that if there were only two or

(16:15):
three genes in Chinese chestnut responsible for resistance. Then he
thought his back cross breeding program might work with chestnut.
So that idea precipitated the formation of the American Chestnut
Foundation in Minnesota in nineteen eighty three.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
To test Charlie's hypothesis that.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
Two or three genes responsible might be able to bring
back American chestnut. Well, you fast forward now into twenty
twenty five, and there are not two to three genes.
There are probably more than fifty genes responsible for resistance
in Chinese chestnut. And so what the Chesnut Foundation has
been doing over the last forty some years is to

(16:58):
breed Chinese chestnut nuts and American chestnuts. So you take
female flowers on an American chestnut and you rub the
male catkins over the female flowers. There are three nuts
in a burr. In chestnuts, you do a lot of these,
a lot of these pollinations. You plant those nuts out,
you allow them to grow for six to eight to

(17:19):
ten years, then you inoculate them with a chestnut like fungus.
You take a little piece of bark out, you put
in a similar sized piece of the fungus from petrie dish,
and you see what happens. And so if those trees died,
they did not inherit any resistance. If those trees produce
a lot of callous tissue that walled off that fungus,

(17:40):
that tree you were interested in, so you would take
flowers from that tree and you would back across to
pure Americans. And you do that repeatedly, again and again
and again and again. And so that's where we are
in twenty twenty five. Are we now have what we're
calling the best times the best So over the course
of forty some years, we now have trees that we

(18:02):
think have maybe enough resistance to survive in the forest.
And we are actually West Virginia is going to be
the recipient of two of these best by best plantings
in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
One will go in Parsons.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
At the US Forest Service office there. The other one
will go in in Burnsville in the center part of
the state with the US Army Corps of Engineers. So
we're going to plant these two one hundred tree orchards
and then probably in five or six years, we will
inoculate those trees with the funds to see how they react.

(18:39):
And so the goal is to see if our predictions
in twenty twenty five actually come to fruition in twenty thirty.
If these trees are gonna produce callus tissue and wall
the fungus.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Off after they've been inoculated, what do you think we're
close on time?

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Okay, do you think this will work?

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Yes, this is a generational time. We're not talking about
corn here where you can have a new crop every year.
This is going to be something that we it's going
to develop, not in my life time, not in my
grandchildren's lifetime, but hopefully of the course of the next
eighty to one hundred years, we can bring back American chestnut.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
I certainly hope it works.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Mark Double with the American Chestnut Foundation, the West Virginia Chapter.
Thank you for coming in. You know, we could we
could probably go for a day.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
We probably could. Okay, thanks so much. Absolutely, thank you. Mark.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
We are talking about your town. Now back to the
talk of the town.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Good Tuesday morning.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
It is the nine thirty four some rain in the
area forty eight degrees now. ATLAS is an acronym stands
for asteroid a terrestrial impact. Last Alert System Now that
is an early warning system developed by the University of Hawaii.
It's funded by NASA. They've got four telescopes, two in Hawaii,

(20:07):
one in Chile, and another in South Africa. What they
do They automatically scan the whole sky several times at
night looking for things that may be just a little
bit off and huh lo and behold back. On July
the first, those telescopes picked something up. To tell us
about it, we've got Larry din Now from the Atlas

(20:30):
Lab in Hawaii. Good morning, Larry, and I really do
appreciate you doing this.

Speaker 5 (20:35):
Thank you so good morning, thank you. It's great to
be here.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Okay, good deal. Well, how's the weather in Hawaii?

Speaker 5 (20:42):
Tell us that it's always fantastic. We're in our rainy season,
but you know, it's something we just have.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
To deal with.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Okay, good deal, Yes, yes, okay, Larry.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Back on July first, those telescopes did pick up a
foreign object and in stellar comet.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Tell us what it is.

Speaker 5 (21:05):
Sure, so just a little bit about how the outlet
system works. What we looked for specifically, and what we're
funded by NASA to look for are asteroids in our
solar system that might hit the Earth right where. Part
of NASA's planetary defense program. So we're not only looking
for objects that are kind of off but have emotion
from the signature on the sky when we see them.

(21:26):
That kind of suggests that they're close to Earth and
could possibly hit the Earth. So on July first, we
found an object that was at the time looked pretty
typical for the kinds of objects we discover. And it
wasn't until a couple of days later that the trajectory
of this object going through our solar system was confirmed
to be interstellar, meaning that it was going so fast

(21:48):
through our solar system that our Sun could not capture.
It had to have come from outside of our Solar
system and would leave our Solar system. So that's what
kind of object this is.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Larry Dennaw with the Atlaslabin, Hawaii is with us. And now, Larry,
when did the talk of this possibly being I guess
a spacecraft?

Speaker 2 (22:08):
When did that start? And why?

Speaker 5 (22:12):
Well, it's hard to say why. But it wasn't until
really that the interstellar trajectory was confirmed that folks started
thinking about that. You know, in the if it's from
outside of our Solar system, you know, your imagination can
invent all kinds of things that it could be. And
so people started thinking about you know, what are the

(22:34):
possibilities that this could be a non natural object from
outside of our solar system. So I think it wasn't
until a couple of weeks after the discovery that that
kind of talk started happening, And part of the reason
was that so this object is, as far as we know,
a comet or very comet like, which means that it's
this frozen ball of dust and rock and ice that's

(22:58):
been cruising through oury for possibly billions of years, and
this could be the first time in billions of years
that this object has come close to a star close
enough to heat up the things that are on the surface,
so the ice and the dust and whatnot. So that
creates this coma that we're that we typically see with comments.
So this object looks like a regular comment from our

(23:19):
solar system. It has a few differences in the composition
as far as we can tell, but that's not necessarily surprising.
But because it doesn't look exactly like a typical comment
from our solar system, I think, folks, it's opened up
the can of worms that's allowed people to imagine other
kinds of things that it can be. And so that's
where they talk of possibly being a non natural object

(23:41):
to be. Once you open the door to being non natural,
you know, the possibilities are kind of infinite, and you
have to from the observations that we have, you know,
use those observations to explain what we're seeing. And right now,
it still looks like a commet and moves like a
commet as far as we can go.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Now, I did hear one scientist that the way that
this object moved when it passed across some part of
the Sun might have revealed that it could have been
under control as opposed to just you know, flying through
the atmosphere.

Speaker 5 (24:17):
So we haven't seen any evidence of that. You know,
the the trajectory through the Solar system is predicted by
basically the speed of the object and the gravity of
our Sun. And for the you know, four or five
months that we've been following it now, its motion has

(24:37):
been completely consistent with being dominated by the gravity of
the Sun. We haven't seen any you know, changes in
direction or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Okay, now, on about the middle of December, it's going
to be at its closest point to Earth.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Give us some details about that.

Speaker 5 (24:58):
I wish I could draw a picture for it. I mean,
the object came through the Solar or is coming through
the Solar System on this orbit that or this path
that just grazes Mars's orbit. So it was closest to
the Sun in October and then on its way out
the Earth is coming around from the other side of
our orbit, and that's going to be the time that
it's closest to us. It's not going to be very close.

(25:21):
So you know, our project's gold its mission is to
find things that might come close to the Earth. This
is not one of them. It's going to be about
can you remember the exact number, It might be about
two astronomical units away from the Earth when it's at
its closest point to the Earth, and so one astronomical
unit is the distance from the Sun to the Earth,
so it's going to be twice as far as that.

(25:42):
So suppose there's no threat to Earth in terms of
how close it's going.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
To come, will you take that opportunity to maybe be
able to use some of the other NASA resources to
get a closer look.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
At this.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
Well, directing NASA resources, it's not something that we you know,
recommend that that's way way over my pay scale. But
the problem with these objects is that they tend to
be going very very soft, much softer than typical spacecraft
that you know, we can uh put together quickly, you know,

(26:17):
are capable of going. And so that's that's the same
for this object. And so these these arrive as a
surprise and where you know, we don't have spacecraft sitting
on the pads that are ready to go chase an
object like this. So unfortunately, you know, the ones the
Mars spacecraft that took some pictures recently happened to be

(26:38):
you know, near Mars as it went by, and folks
have probably seen the pictures from them, you know. And
these space cuffs are not designed to look for things
out in space. They're designed to look at Mars a surface,
and so they don't have you know, the they're not
the greatest pictures of the object. We got them because
the opportunity was there, but to go chasing these. I mean,
it's interesting that the object is it's extremely difficult to

(27:01):
try to put together a space deaf that that can
keep up with this thing as it's moving through the
social system, and now unfortunately it's on its way out.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
What about the hubble that that was what I thought
that was the first thing that came to my mind.

Speaker 5 (27:15):
So the Hubble has taken pictures of it, I believe.
You know, the Hubble is in orbit around the Earth,
and so in terms of how much closer the Hubble
will be compared to just telescopes on Earth, the answer
is not very much. Right, Basically, we're in the same
part of the space because space is so big compared
to how far away this thing is. Okay, hubble can't
be you can't. Yeah, you can't change the direction of

(27:37):
Ubble and send it.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Following this, we've got Larry din Now he is from
ATLAS and that is an asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert
system based in Hawaii. So when something like this happens
on July the first, what is the action plan at Atlas?
Do you staff up or is it just business as usual?

Speaker 6 (28:00):
Well what happens, Well, our team is already pretty small,
so we don't staff up. You know this one, Uh,
this object is kind of object is super interesting. I
mean for us, it's super fun to find objects like this.
I mean they're they're scientifically very interesting, but they're not
really our bread and butter. This is not an object

(28:20):
that's going to threaten the Europe. And so after we
discover it, it goes into the big catalog of really interesting objects,
and other scientists who specialize in comment work or or
whatever spend their telescope time continuing to investigate it. So
take more images of it as it comes close to
the sun on its way out to try to understand

(28:42):
the coma what are the different elements that we see
coming up of this object. But for us, you know,
we don't staff up to to work on a single
object like this, that would be very unusual. The you
know that we found today, you know about twelve hundred
spreads that come close to the earth. A couple of
them have been very small and of hits, and and

(29:06):
we've found.

Speaker 5 (29:07):
About one hundred comments. And so most of the comments,
you know, are we find them, and we don't We
don't stop up or do anything interesting for those comments either.
The comments are not really our specialty. We find them
just because we're always looking at the sky for new things.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Well, what what kind of student involvement is there with
the University of Hawaii.

Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, there are, I mean, our institutes at the University
of Hawaii covers a really diverse range of astronomical interests,
and so there are folks who are interested in Solar
system things, so those are things in orbit around our
sum or other sums. There's folks interested in galaxies and
cosmology and whatnot. So the students who are here can

(29:54):
participate in research in all of these projects. So somebody,
for example, and who's interested in what Atlas does, might
be trying to, based on the objects we've discovered, make
a statement about how many there might be, how many
Near Earth asteroids there might be in total, you know,
that are yet yet to be found. That's a really
important question for us.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Definitely.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Larry did now from the app Atlas Lab in Hawaii
at the University of Hawaii. Larry, is there any opportunity
at all that somebody could see this thing with a
telescope or something like that?

Speaker 6 (30:29):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (30:29):
Sure, there are lots of observations of this object. Is
still I mean it's I think in December it's going
to be just because of the geometry that we're going
to be as close as we can be to it,
that it will be the brightest it's going to be,
and with a decent commercial telescope that somebody could buy, uh,

(30:53):
you know, amateur surroeners will be able to see it,
of course.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Perfect.

Speaker 5 (30:57):
Well, I don't very unlikely it'll be Sorry, I was
just going to say it's very unlikely it'll be bright
enough to see with your naked eye. It's too bad.
But with a small telescope you should be able to
see it.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Okay, great, Well, I just I bring that up because
you may or may not know, but this is one
of the emerging dark sky areas of the country and
recently the Department of Tourism invested into ten a framed
cabins that are up in the mountains in Cooper's Rock
and they you can rent the cabins. They have telescopes

(31:29):
and skylights and decks and.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
All that you need to be able to view the heavens.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
Oh that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, the dark sky thing is
very very that's impressive. And that's a really neat thing
to hang your head on.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Absolutely, and yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Okay, Larry did now from Atlas from the lab at
the University of Hawaii. Larry, really do appreciate your time
this morning, and I hope you try to stay dry,
have a good Thanksgiving.

Speaker 5 (32:00):
Thanks so much. I appreciate it you too.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Absolutely, take care of yourself.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
It is nine to forty seven rain in the University City,
forty eight degrees right now. When we come back, we're
going to spend a few minutes and talk about the
lawsuits between David b four, Metro Properties and Deputy Mayor
Brian Butcher. We'll do that coming up next on Top

(32:25):
of the Town. AM fourteen forty FM one oh four
point five W A Jr.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Join the conversation at one eight hundred and seven to
sixty five eight two fivey five. This is the talk
of the town.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Good Tuesday morning and happy pre Thanksgiving. How about that
rain forty eight degrees. The rain will continue in two
tomorrow and when the rain stops, going to be breezy
and cool for your Thanksgiving day, high temperatures hovering right
around the freezing mark. Found out yesterday afternoon that a

(33:12):
lawsuit had been filed on behalf of David before and
Metro Properties against Morgantown Mayor deputy against Morgantown Deputy Mayor
Brian Butcher. That suit was filed on the seventeenth.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Of October, and I believe that.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Brian Butcher's response to that complaint was filed on the
twenty first of November. The attorney representing the Bfoor's and
Metro properties that would be Mark Keppel, a Wheeling attorney.
I believe that Mark Keppel is from the Bailey and

(33:53):
Wyatt law firm and Brian Butcher represented by David Day
A m Atkins and David is with the Cipriani and
Werner law firm in Charleston. I'm going to read directly
from the complaint here just a couple of notes. Now,
this is an action arising from the defendants transmission in

(34:15):
publication of intentionally false and defamatory statements made to third
parties about the plaintiff. It's not an action against the
City of Morgantown arising from the defendant's position as a
councilman the City of Morgantown.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Neither it is.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
An action seeking any insurance money from the City of Morgantown,
nor is it seeking any insurance money from Brian Butcher.
They make it clear, says right here in the complaint
that because of all the allegations in this complaint, they
seek the recovery for the defendant's intentional conduct. Plaintiff seeks

(34:52):
recovery from the defendant's personal assets only, so the city
is out of this up until this point, going to
have time to do all this. We'll finish this up tomorrow.
But one of the interesting things was the North Central
West Virginia Business Association. They have signed on to this
lawsuit as an interested party. One of the things that

(35:14):
is mentioned in this lawsuit in regards to that it says,
to this end, they he made purposely defamatory and slanderous
statements motivated by his anti capitalist desire to wreck the
reputation of the plaintiff and otherwise cause others not to

(35:36):
associate with the plaintiff. And that was one of the
reasons that the I've got it right here that he
had actually threatened other members of that business alliance, and
that was why they signed on as an interested party
to that lawsuit. That full story is at WAJR dot com,

(35:56):
and of course we'll be diving into it much deeper
tomorrow on the program. That'll be tomorrow Wednesday, the day
before Thanksgiving. Right now, rain and forty eight degrees in
the University City. We'll be back to wrap things up
after this. On top of the town AM fourteen forty

(36:17):
FM one oh four point five w A Jr.