Until the mid-twentieth century, Ansted, West Virginia was a bustling coal camp. In 1950, the coal company that operated the local mine pulled out, leaving the community with a sense of economic depression. In the years that followed, residents banded together and re-inspired a pride in their mountain region, eventually rebounding the local economy through a thriving tourism industry.

The town of Ansted and surrounding Fayette County possess an abundance of natural and historical resources. The region boasts the stunning confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers at the head of the New River Gorge, one of the most beautiful sights on the Eastern seaboard. The county also hosts the watershed of these rivers, as well as stunning views of the New River Gorge and Kanawha County. Visitors from all over visit Fayette County to paddle and fish the local rivers and hike mountain trails. Bald eagles and Peregrine falcons soar across regions of hardwood forest rich with fauna and flora. And prime farmland and natural springs still provide food and water to the local communities.

Father Roy Crist, the missioner of the New River Episcopal Ministry, became involved with efforts to save mountains when the county received an application for a mining permit on the backside of Gauley Mountain near the Gauley River and New River National Parks. Since mining began, the National Park Service noted no less than 16 violations of water quality. As mining continued, trout populations ‘coincidentally’ dwindled in Rich Creek, which drains the new mine sites on Gauley Mountain.

Local residents, including Father Crist and Cary Huffman, a retired coal miner, formed the Ansted Historic Preservation Council to protect the local mountains and streams from potential mountaintop removal. Signs of exploration and road construction have residents concerned about plans for more mountaintop removal.

As Father Crist explains, “People say coal mining is a part of our history, and yes, it is. But destroying the mountains by blowing the tops off of them is not a part of our history.”

And Cary Huffman, a retired coal miner, says that “if the coal companies take it away by taking the top off these mountains, filling in the valleys, shutting down our water supply… there’ll be nothing here for our kids in the future. They will have to leave.”

3) Endangered: The Story of Gauley
Take a few minutes to watch the lastest installment of the series — then, forward the video on to all your friends and family who love our nation’s mountains and rivers, and ask them to join us in standing up to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

In the video, you’ll hear what the locals have to say about Big Coal’s plans to blow the top off of Gauley Mountain.

4) Featured Activist
Father Roy Crist, the missioner of the New River Episcopal Ministry, became involved with efforts to save mountains when the county received an application for a mining permit on the backside of Gauley Mountain, near the Gauley River and New River National Parks. Local residents, including Father Crist and Cary Huffman, a retired coal miner, formed the Ansted Historic Preservation Council to protect their community’s mountains and streams from potential mountaintop removal.

As Father Crist explains, “People say coal mining is a part of our history, and yes, it is. But destroying the mountains by blowing the tops off of them is not a part of our history.”

To support Father Crist, Cary Huffman and their community, contact: Ansted Historical Preservation Council, SaveGauleyMtn@gmail.com

5) Mountain Music of the Week:
One of my favorite new old-time artists, the Crooked Jades perform “Let it Show” live, complete with dobro, jaw-harp, and…milk jug? If you like this, I recommend their album “World’s on Fire.”

The Crooked Jades are on a mission to reinvent old-world music for a modern age, pushing boundaries and blurring categories with their fiery, soulful performances. Innovative, unpredictable and passionate, they bring their driving dance tunes and haunting ballads to rock clubs, festivals, traditional folk venues and concert halls across America and Europe.

And I had to include this old picture from Anstead…

Thats it for this week!
peace,
JW

Via the Energy Information Administration this morning, we have gotten the shocking news that central Appalachian coal is suddenly pushing $140/ton.

This is a tremendous jump of 350% in just one year.

While we see a long-term skyrocketing of central Appalachian coal costs, production has decreased dramatically over the last 8 years.

For perspective, central Appalachian production in June ’07 was 19.8 million tons, while in June of this year it was 18.8. In Virginia, production is down 17% compared to this time last year.

The central Appalachian Basin is where almost all mountaintop removal mining currently takes place. The obvious conclusion is that we can not mine our way to cheap energy.

The price of operating new coal-fired power plants is increasing exponentially. With $140/ton coal, not only is a Draconian operation like a coal-fired power plant getting pricey, but electricity rates and any related fossil fuel based energy process (CCS, liquid coal, “clean” coal, etc.) is getting dramatically more expensive to implement.

Thoughts? Will $140/ton coal be the deathnell of coal fired electricity? The good news is that we can create real cheap, clean energy through homegrown wind power.

Welcome to Mountain Monday, spreading the word about mountaintop removal, and celebrating the best Appalachia has to offer.

Take a look at the region carrying the heaviest load for American coal production, and you’ll see that we are definitively beyond “peak coal” in Appalachia. The US Geological Survey, and other crazy assorted “experts” on “science” have been telling Appalachia that our coal has a what-we-call a “finite” production span. In fact, the USGS has estimated that we have around roughly 10 years of high-quality thick coal seams left.

“Sufficient high-quality, thick, bituminous resources remain in [Appalachian Basin] coal beds and coal zones to last for the next one to two decades at current production.”

– United States Geological Survey (USGS), 2000 AD

But now, thanks to citizen activists, the blogosphere, and environmentally conscious Americans throughout the land, there is now a much more powerful thing than “science” telling us that we have no choice but to get off coal in the next decade.

Thats right! Mr. Al Gore himself has thrown down the gauntlet to America, telling us that we have just 10 years left of coal, before our energy infrastructure is entirely rebuilt from renewable sources.

A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power – coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal – have radically changed the economics of energy.

…

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.

And with the price of a ton of Appalachian coal at more than $135/ton (up from a low of $40 just a year ago), its about time we start looking towards a way to create energy at a way that preserves our mountains, puts the Appalachian people to work, and remains cost competitive, we need to start looking at projects like the “Coal River Mountain Wind” project in West Virginia. (Also, congrats to Texas for approving a new $5 billion wind-energy project!) The change is coming!

Also, as an Appalachian citizen, I would especially like to second, and thank Mr. Gore for the following sentiment:

America’s transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them.

Esteemed scientists, distinguished (if a tad-casually-dressed) citizen bloggers, Mr. Vice President; welcome to Mountain Mondays.

With the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) co-sponsor count at 147 and growing, follow us to the flip for this weeks…

1. Featured Blogs for July 15-21th

Rich Treves over at the Google Blog gives high marks and critiques the innovative “Appalachian Mountaintop Removal layer” in Google Earth:

This project is an excellent use of Google Earth for two main reasons: the 3D topography is a key part of the story and the problem of mountain top removal is difficult to explain because before Google Earth it was very difficult to see the scale of the problem.

The Sierra Club has a great article about the Coal River Mountain Wind project over at TreeHugger:

In Scarbro’s case, Marfork Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, has applied for four permits (two have been approved) to mine 6,600 acres of Coal River Mountain, including land bordering Scarbro’s. The permits would also allow for the construction of at least 19 valley fills, which means mining waste would be desposited in nearly every headwater stream originating from the mountain.

Scarbro and a coalition of environmental and community organizations aren’t taking this news from Massey lying down. Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) and these groups have an alternative they say the state coal association claims coal opponents never have: The Coal River Wind Project.

Erin Shaw over at RealitySandwhich also gives us her thoughts on the wind project.

Another human story at EndMTR Denny gives us a missive and interesting photoblog on Larry Gibson:

If you could ever lay out one piece of ground and call it the front line in the battle against mountaintop removal, Kayford Mountain would be it. Larry Gibson and a host of friends on one side, Massey Energy on the other. For Larry, the front lines have been moving closer for nearly twenty years.

On the candidate front, some Virginians would like to dis-nominate coal-lovin Tim Kaine from consideration for Obama’s VP. Kaine, as many of you know, backed a dangerous, expensive, and unneccesary coal-fired power plant in Wise County, VA.

Taylor over at BluegrassRoots says that Democratic Governor Steve Beshear “Must be Confused” for saying:

‘mountaintop removal can be done environmentally under existing regulation

2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week

“Sufficient high-quality, thick, bituminous resources remain in [Appalachian Basin] coal beds and coal zones to last for the next one to two decades at current production.”

– United States Geological Survey (USGS), 2000 AD

AND…

The price of coal from Central Appalachia (which is where most mountaintop removal takes place) has risen from a low of $40 last year, to more than $135 currently.

3) Mountain Movie/Image of the Week:
Vice-President Gore speaks about mountaintop removal at “Netroots Nation.” (thanks WVBlueGuy, who was able to ask this question!)

4) Featured Activist:
David Beaty, Fentress County, TN

Mr. Beaty, a former County Executive for Fentress County, has made countless trips to Washington, DC to fight the practice of mountaintop removal in Tennessee. This week he and several other Americans who live in communities affected by mountaintop removal came to DC to advocate for the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) on behalf of “The Alliance for Appalachia.” Since they have begun making these trips last month, Clean Water Protection Act advocates have gained an additional eight co-sponsors, including a Republican (Dave Reichert from Washington state,) in their fight to stop mountaintop removal.

5) Mountain Music of the Week:
Long considered some of the most groundbreaking song-writers and pioneers in the emerging alt-country mountain music scene, here are the inimitable Avett Brothers with “Will you Come Again.”

Thats it for this week!
peace,
JW

(h/t wvblueguy over at WVaBlue)

It doesn’t always occur to us that our electricity comes from somewhere.

But for many people on the east coast, every time we flip on a light switch, we are connected to the blowing up of the oldest mountains in the world – the Appalachian Mountains – where coal is being extracted using a barbaric form of coal-mining called mountaintop removal.

This weekend, not only did the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge hit 300 participants (woah!), but I witnessed several incredible citizens who realized that they were connected to mountaintop removal put on an incredible 3 day event in NYC called New York Loves Mountains, in order to raise awareness in New York about the destruction of Appalachia, and the fact that EVEN IN NEW YORK Americans are using electricity generated by mountaintop removal. In fact, 13 power plants in 11 NY counties purchase and burn coal from mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. Speakers came from all over the east coast, including West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia in order to meet New Yorkers who are engaging their peers on the issue.

Not only are New Yorkers engaging their peers and fellow statesmen, but they are engaging their Representatives in Congress regarding the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169). The bill would stop the dumping of toxic mountaintop removal mining waste into our headwater streams.

So far, the citizens of New York are responsible for getting an astounding 22 of 29 NY Congressional Reps of BOTH political parties on-board as co-sponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act, and you can help us by doing something similar in your neck of the woods.

Thanks to the leadership of Congressmen Pallone (NJ-06) and Congressman Shays (CT-04), the Clean Water Protection Act now has 144 bi-partisan co-sponsors from all over the country. Congressman Shays says, “The Clean Water Protection Act would end the practice of mountaintop mining, where the top of a mountain is literally blasted away to provide easier access to coal seams below the surface.This common-sense legislation will prevent the debris generated from this blasting from falling or being dumped into valleys, polluting streams and rivers.”

See if you are connected to mountaintop removal at the “My Connection” page at iLoveMountains.org, and check to see if your Congressman is a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) here.

We also need you to join the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge. We just hit our 300th participant, but we need to spread the word until every American and every politician is hearing about mountaintop removal on a daily basis.

1. Featured Blogs for the week of July 7-14th…

This week’s must read piece is over at “A Mountain Journey“:

…Though only the most crass coal company propagandists exhalt the aesthetic and environmental benefits of mountain top removal, it is common to hear a visceral “people gotta live” when the practice is challenged. Mountain top removal is thus justified as a “necessary evil.” Nobody wants to destroy the earth, but when it comes to burrying streams and wildlife or losing health insurance: “people gotta live.” This is the ultimatum the coal industry and its choir of politicians have successfully popularized. Is this account rooted in an inalienable reality? If not, how can a new and better reality be reconstructed from the ruins?…

Check it out!

2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week
There were once over 150,000 coal-mining jobs in West Virginia. Because mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining are heavily automated, that number has been reduced by roughly 90%, and there are now around 15-20,000 coal-mining jobs. Meanwhile, those living around mountaintop removal remain some of the most impoverished communities in America.

3) Mountain Movie/Image of the Week:
Part of the “America’s Most Endangered Mountains” Video Series, check out Carl Shoupe talking about his community, and the threat mountaintop removal poses to Black Mountain, KY.

4) Featured Activist:
Stephanie Pistello/HeadHeadwater Productions.
Pistello, a native Kentuckian, is the Founder, Executive Artistic Designer, and Producer for Headwater Productions, a Brooklyn based Production and Theatre Company. Headwater Productions describes themselves as “the artistic and civilian voice working to connect urban and rural communities who are challenging the implicit social law that the corporation’s rights to the land, air and water trump the people’s rights to the same. They create live events and collaborative workshops that depict and champion the cause of individuals in both urban and rural communities, working to preserve the health and vitality of their home places. Our work promotes the ideal that it is possible to steer the future of our planet in a direction that benefits us all and celebrates our common cultural background and development in America.”

They site their inspiration as “sprung from the tradition of theatre for social change pioneered by Bertolt Brecht and advanced by Augusto Boal. It aims to engage the spectator in dramatic action that challenges the bounds of social law. Its goal is to provide an example for and build confidence in the spectator to carry out social change.”

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a reading of their up-coming production “Current Changes in Empire,” written by Sarah Moon, which is a piece meant to both challenge and change perspectives on American’s complacency towards mountaintop removal. I can tell you that the final picture is going to be amazing. If you are in New York, please check out Headwater Productions work. You can also help by giving generously, so that they can continue to spread the word.

5) Mountain Music of the Week:
Doc Watson, from a holler in western North Carolina, has been dazzling audiences worldwide for decades. Here is he performing “Deep River Blues.”

Thats it for this week!
peace,
JW

Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.

A man defending his home is worth 10 invaders.

There is no place like home.

Home is home, be it ever so humble.

These phrases may have graced our ears 3,592 times, but ponderings on the meaning of home mean a little bit more to those of us in Appalachia these days. You see, in many ways, Appalachia isn’t what it used to be. We have lost more than 1 million acres of land, along with 1000+ of miles of our once pristine streams, and 90% of our traditional coal jobs to mountaintop removal mining. This barbaric practice has reduced much of our home to rubble, and further damaged our perennially struggling local economies. The jobs are gone. The people are leaving. The water is toxic. And they are blowing up the mountains themselves.

But the face of Appalachian resistance to “Big Coal” is changing. Not only are we seeing unprecedented national and international media like NPR, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal run with stories about the Appalachian people’s struggle to end mountaintop removal, but we are seeing 100s of online activists and bloggers participate in helping us spread the word through the iLoveMountains Bloggers Challenge.

Mountain Mondays will be a weekly celebration of our mountain home in Appalachia. It will be posted at 9AM every Monday morning at iLoveMountains.org and the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog, and cross-posted widely. These posts are intended to be simply a place to encourage activism and knowledge in regards to Appalachia. We also want people to be aware of mountaintop removal, and the growing movement to end the practice. There will be music, movies, images, and coffee. I hope you’ll all make it a regular Monday morning habit to check on the post, recommend it up, and offer your thoughts on home, mountains, energy, coal, or whatever suits you.

1) Featured Blogs for the week of June 31-July 7:…
All you fledging hillbillies and nature-pickers better pick up the new copy of Blue Ridge Outdoors, which features several articles about mountaintop removal including “Clean Coal: Dont Try to Shovel That” from Jeff Biggers, and “The Faces of Mountaintop Removal,” which features some of the American’s working hard to protect their homes from mountaintop removal.

Cat-Chapin Bishop over at QuakerPagan offers us “Lifestyle Changes OR: How my Kitchen Sink and my Gall Bladder are Conspiring to Save the World“, recounting the analogous struggles and sacrifices for her own health and the health of our planet.

I am a typical American in so many ways. I battle a waistline that bulges as a result of my ready access to so many edible goodies. And I produce more than my share of carbon and other waste, as a result of my ready access to so many consumer goodies. Both my body and my carbon footprint suffer the effects of that American disease, affluenza.

I’m not especially good at battling either one.

Appalachian Voices and iLoveMountains.org were featured at Grist.org, as Kate Sheppard details the Bloggers Challenge campaign and Appalachian Voices’ efforts in Congress with “In the dumps: Mountain advocates and legislators take on mountaintop removal”

the House, 142 legislators are backing the Clean Water Protection Act, which would amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify that fill material cannot be comprised of waste. That would cut mining companies off from what’s become their free dumping ground.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), has gathered 141 co-sponsors since it was introduced in May 2007. The site ilovemountains.org is following the bill closely and has the resources to write your representative in support of the measure.

They’ve also got a neat interactive map where you can see your connection to MTR. And their most recent addition is a video series on the country’s most endangered mountains.

2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week
The EPA expects mountaintop removal to double in the next 10 years if we do nothing to stop it.

3) Mountain Movie/Image of the Week
Virginia citizens working to defeat a coal-fired power plant in Wise County recently delivered a mile-long petition to Dominion Energy Shareholders and Governor Kaine. Dominion and Governor Kaine are going forward with the building of a new coal-fired power plant in Wise County, where 25% of all the land has already been destroyed by strip-mining and mountaintop removal

4) Featured Activist: Larry Gibson of Kayford Mountain, WV
Blue Ridge Outdoors profiles Larry here

There are 107 “Open for Business” road signs welcoming visitors as they enter West Virginia. Set against a backdrop of pristine Appalachian grandeur, the greeting is grotesquely appropriate: the mountains of West Virginia sit atop multiple seams of valuable low-sulfur coal. In order to extract the coal, mountaintops are dynamited and dumped in a process called mountaintop removal mining.

But before the blasting can begin, residents who find themselves in the direct path of mountaintop mining must first be bought out and displaced by the coal industry. Most of them fold under the industry pressure or accept the payoffs. Larry Gibson is one of the few who have refused to sell. Gibson has devoted his life to saving his 50-acre chunk of Appalachia, with its simple encampment of sheds, a log cabin, and a family cemetery dating back to the 1700s. Massey Energy wants him off of it.

Gibson managed to save his beloved parcel when he established it as land trust. His tiny green island is surrounded by 12,000 acres of biologically barren mining moonscape. In total, there are 187,000 endangered acres surrounding Gibson’s property, whether operating as active mountaintop removal sites or waiting in line for the dozer to see them next. But the 62-year-old Gibson, short in stature, with his third-grade education, refuses to give up the fight.

Check out the whole article

5) Mountain Music of the Week

The Carolina Chocolate Drops sing and dance their way through “Salty Dog”

Thats it for this week!
peace,
JW

Appalachian Voices and iLoveMountains.org are helping to spear-head an effort to stop mountaintop removal by working with small local blogs from around the country, the success of which is based on the participation of the blogging community and of new journalists like YOU. To supplement the organizing going on in the coalfields, we have instituted the “Bloggers Challenge.”

Over 230 people have already participated in the iLoveMountains Bloggers Challenge, and every Monday, we will come here to highlight their work and ask you to participate in the bloggers challenge by writing a post on mountaintop removal this week.

1) Featured Blogs for the week of June 23-30:…

…

Kevin at Bartoy wrote a piece called “George Bush doesn’t care about Appalachia“.

…In my opinion, Kanye West didn’t go far enough with his statement.

The truth of the matter is that George Bush doesn’t care about poor people and neither do most Americans.

Sound crazy?

Well, take a close look at the rape of Appalachia and tell me that my statement isn’t true.

You see, in 2002, the Bush Administration changed a single word in the Clean Water Act to help out their wealthy cronies in the mining industry. And, that single word has literally moved mountains. I suppose that it hasn’t so much moved them as it has blasted them off the face of the Earth….

Over at Little Green Animals we have What Coal Means to the Mountain

Mountaintop removal coal mining is an extremely destructive form of strip mining found throughout Appalachia, with some mines as big as the island of Manhattan. Coalfield residents say that it tears apart communities, destroys any chance of economic development, poisons water supplies, pollutes the air and destroys our nation’s natural heritage – while only making the climate crisis worse.

Here’s what Wendell Berry has to say about the coal industry — an industry that so far, no presidential candidate has turned her or his back on:

“The only limits so far honored by this industry have been technological. What its machines have enabled it to do, it has done. And now, for the sake of the coal under them, it is destroying whole mountains with their forests, water courses and human homeplaces.

Over at www.endmtr.com, Denny Gives us America’s Mountain Majesty at Risk.

…advocates for the mountains and coalfield residents today launched a new series of online videos showing the looming danger to some of America’s most special places: the Appalachian mountains, which are home to a vibrant and indelible culture, stunning biodiversity and enormous economic potential….

Britt Bravo over at HaveFunDoGood gives us a great entry with ILoveMountains.org Blogger’s Challenge (You Can Help If You Aren’t a Blogger Too!)

That’s why iLoveMountains.org came up with the What’s My Connection tool. It allows you to type in your zip code and see how you are connected to mountaintop removal.

For example, when I type in my zip code in Oakland, CA, it tells me, “Your electricity provider, Pacific Gas Electric Co., buys coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal.”

Over at WVBackwoods Drifter, Denny again drops probably my favorite quote from the bloggers challenge so far.

Using mountaintop removal coal for energy is akin to using drug money to buy girl scout cookies. It may seem like a good thing in the end but no matter what, you can’t get past where it comes from.

A must read over at CorinaCorina called Fossil = DoDo = Fossil (coal = coal = coal)

My father was a coal miner, but not before he was a logger. He lived the paradox of loving the trees and the woods of his youth, relished his work with the men who were clearing the trees to make way for new towns.. Then came the war, World War II, every 10th man sent down the mine, and down the mine he went for 5 long years. Long years to a young man who lived outdoors but no comparison to the coal miners who spent all the decades of their working lives underground and carried the legacy in their lungs, with all the respiratory distress that goes with digging coal.

All this lit up in me when this “true cost of coal” came over my desk this morning. The trauma of the coal industry’s demise in England can still be keenly felt. But here, once again, the externalized cost of extracting coal is as real as when it was the lungs of men; now it is literally laid bare on the land as the coal-extracting techniques have scaled up to the ‘might’ to remove mountains, and the land is scraped bare and black as the lungs of our fathers, exposed for all to see.

Over at bethechangeinc.com, Kate is leading the way for y’all non-easterners with I Love Mountains:

Although (or maybe because) I’m from the Midwest, I love mountains. They’re huge, gorgeous landmarks, and create an amazing landscape – and they’re in danger.

A few sources have led us to iLoveMountains.org – a very cool website that seeks to end mountaintop removal.

From the heart of West Virginia, Ron’s Thots gives us a stunning entry with “The Mountains.” Another absolute must read with great local flavor.

..re we willing to get rid of our mountain friends so that the country can have a cheaper source of energy? I for one am not willing. I for one love these mountains, and I don’t think that I am alone in that love.

When our mountain tops are removed for the coal, and our valleys are filled with the waste we have become little more that a moon-scape. The beauty of our heritage has disappeared. The glory of our mountains are gone forever. The steep mountain valleys become another place for a shopping mall or a parking lot, or worse just a barren pile of rocks and dirt. We are no longer proud Mountaineers, but rather we have been reduced to poor folks who once again took a “screwing” (pardon my slang this day)…

Alex from Connecticut over at ItGettingHotinHere recalls meeting young Appalachian activists fighting mountaintop removal while at Bonaroo, and coming away very impressed, and more than a little engaged in the issue.

t first, I just sat there when they were giving their spiel, because I didn’t feel informed enough about mountaintop removal. However, after hearing these awesome folks do their thing for a day or so, and after talking to them about their campaign, I became more confident. At first I just hooked bypassers (“Hey, have you heard about mountaintop removal?”), then even gave people the full lowdown. I was amazed at the growth I felt over the course of the weekend. I’ve always been nervous talking to people in that way, but just by spending time around folks who were more experienced, I became more confident and was able to contribute something valuable to the movement.

Over at Thinking Outside, we have a great entry on Dr. John Todd’s vision for economic recovery in Appalachia as we move beyond coal.

In the past, efforts at restoration have been geberally localized and at times half-hearted, conducted by the same companies that did the damage in the first place. What’s needed is a systematic plan that works on the same scale as mining itself, setting up a process by which the land air and water are all restored, from the surface to underground waters poisoned by the pollution from mining.

At When All Else Fails…Make a List, fledging journalist Amanda gives us a story of how she got mountaintop removal noticed in her local paper in East Tennessee.

You can put in your zip code and it automatically tells the plant that supplies your power and what mines they purchase coal from.

In this area, our power is supplied by the John Sevier Plant in Hawkins County. The site gave me a map of the various mines that supply the plant. One particular plant in Rawl, West Virginia supplies a large amount of coal to this area. The site features a story about a family who is facing major health problems because of the sludge area behind their home.

And last but not least, Jervey at sustaiNYC gives us NY Loves Mountains and previews an exciting gala event which will be held in downtown NYC next month focusing on ending mountaintop removal.

fascinating site launched recently that lets New Yorkers see what–if any–their connection to mountaintop removal coal mining is. NYLOVESMOUNTAINS is the locally targeted branch of the broader I Love Mountains campaign that draws very direct connections between electricity customers and the Appalachian communities that are effected by mountaintop coal removal.

2) Mountaintop Removal Fact of the Week

Roughly 5% of America’s energy comes from mountaintop removal. The electricity produced by coal from mountaintop removal could be replaced using less than a third of the wind resources in North Dakota OR just 4% of Arizona’s concentrated solar power potential. Theres also good old fashioned conservation and efficiency.

3) Mountain Image of the Week
Appalachian citizen activist and grandfather Ed Wiley, with Vice President Al Gore. Gore says that “mountaintop removal is a crime and ought to be treated like a crime.”

4) Appalachian Music of the Week

“the everybodyfields of East Tennessee play us Magazines.

5) And for your reading pleasure, check out some of the other great entries in the bloggers challenge.

Y’all git to writin’ on them tubes!

peace,
faithfull

Appalachian Voices, in conjunction with iLoveMountains.org is pleased to announce the America’s Most Endangered Mountains video series.. We are trying a new grassroots technique called the Bloggers’ Challenge to spread the word about what mountaintop removal is doing to our beloved mountains in Appalachia.

The cutting edge Bloggers Challenge program will be run through the most powerful communications tools in the new media – blogs – and it’s success will depend on your participation, by writing about mountaintop removal on your blog.

You have dozens of widgets and HUNDREDS of videos about mountaintop removal coal mining at your fingertips. Its easy, just:

Step 1) JOIN the Bloggers’ Challenge
Step 2) WRITE a post about mountaintop removal coal-mining using the tools in our blogger’s sandbox. You will even get personalized “Spread the Word” widgets for your blog.
Step 3) SPREAD THE WORD using our innovative “Bloggers Round-up” feature, and see who else is writing about mountaintop removal in your neck of the net.

Have fun, be creative, and enjoy!

Check out our friends Bo Webb, Chuck Nelson, and Larry Gibson with Morgan Spurlock, star of “Supersize Me.”

Spurlock’s show “30 days” will feature mountaintop removal starting June 3rd at 10PM on the FX channel.

When I saw the clip of the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart apeing a misinformed West Virginia voter last week, I had a flashback to a Saturday Night Live “Appalachian ER” skit, which featured rocker Neil Young embroiled in a mess of incest and depravity.

How the media loves its hillbillies.

Makes me wanna holler: The hand-wringing aftermath of the recent presidential primaries in Appalachia — from western Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky — says more about the media’s prejudice and misperception of the Mountain South than any insights into the voting ranks and their racism or religious narrowness.

In the process, most pundits missed the two best kept secrets about Appalachia: In a region that has historically witnessed tremendous industrial upheaval and transition, there is no single Appalachia or Appalachian culture. Secondly, Appalachia has been a burning ground of change and an arena for rebellion and innovation for the past 250 years.

Yet, for a media quick to scapegoat or collect a soundbite for the evening news, the ignorant hillbilly gets trotted out of the woods as the exclusive symbol of the region, or, in fact, as the last acceptable slur in the country. Just as SNL has never aired a “Jewish ER” or “Black Sambo ER” skit — thank God, recognizing that our nation has grown up on these matters — the Daily Show’s host probably will never track down and mock an elderly Jewish voter in Florida or an older African American in Michigan. Let’s hope not.

Take hillbillies, on the other hand. Dating back to the 1850s, when George W. Harris created the character of Sut Lovingood, the “durn’d fool” with his “brains onhook’d” from eastern Tennessee for a New York newspaper, the media has obsessed over hillbillies, as if they have cornered the market on provincialism or racism in America. From bloggers on the liberal Daily Kos to untold television interviews, this same obsession has reared its ugly head in one commentary after another, blinding the writers from any historical truths about Appalachia.

One guest blogger for the environmental website Grist, a wonderful venue for investigative writers, completely wrote off the region as the “Deliverance” vote. Did this blogger ever consider the fact that the “Deliverance” vote in West Virginia overwhelmingly elects liberal Democrat Jay Rockefeller and anti-Iraq war icon Robert Byrd to the Senate, or that both senators have endorsed Obama?

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan, hands down one of the most insightful writers in the country and one of my literary exemplars, simply concluded in his latest missive: Goodbye Appalachia. (New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, who launched the newspaper on its course for world acclaim in the 1890s, came from Appalachia and modeled the Times on his Chattanooga editorial approach.)

Let’s compare the coverage of the West Virginia with Rhode Island primaries. Unless we want to split hairs, a similar number of voters — 8% versus 5% — ranked race as the SINGLE most important factor in their vote for Senator Hillary Clinton. The media, though, never raised any concerns about racism in Rhode Island. This is New England, home of the free and brave, and the leaders in our nation’s historical pursuit for independence, emancipation, and a higher literary purpose.

In West Virginia (and Kentucky), on the other hand, disregarding the fact that the Clintons have had a several decades-long relationship with southern Democrats in West Virginia, that Bill Clinton’s folksy southern accent still goes down among the aging electorate like molasses, that Sen. Barack Obama ran a poor operation and did very little campaigning in the state and mainly invoked his Illinois coal state credentials in an anachronistic pitch for votes, the media preferred to dwell on the region’s perceived legacy of backwardness. In truth, Obama blew it in Appalachia; Hillary reaped the rewards of the Clinton legacy.

Still, most reporters, exclusively interviewing older voters, went out of their way to find the most outrageous examples to confirm their hillbilly-biased pronouncements.

Outside of NPR, most of the media completely overlooked a new generation of deeply rooted activists, extremely organized around the critical issues of mountaintop removal and sustainable development, that has emerged as a strong voice in Appalachia.

Sut Lovingood and Jon Stewart notwithstanding, if the media had done a little homework on the true legacy of Appalachia, they have might had the chance to take a more profound look at the region’s voters.

Consider this: Though Obama was trounced in the coalfield regions, the United Mine Workers of America holds the distinction of being one of the oldest integrated unions in the country, and in fact, endorsed Obama this week; that Black History Month founder, Carter Woodson, emerged out of the coalfields of West Virginia, as did 19th Century African American spokesman Booker T. Washington, and pioneering black nationalist Martin Delany; that the legendary John Henry pounded those rails through Appalachia. In more recent times, imminent African American critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at Harvard University emerged out of the West Virginia experience, as did acclaimed novelist William Demby, one of the last living writers from the Harlem Renaissance.

A brief look at the larger mountain region further debunks this backward misperception.

Long before Rhode Island bucked the British Crown or their Boston neighbors tossed a little tea into the harbors, backwoods folks in Appalachia had already declared their independence from the British in 1772, incorporated their own articles of association, elected their own courts and sheriffs, and declared themselves the District of Washington.

A generation before New Englander William Lloyd Garrison launched his anti-slavery crusade, Appalachians launched the first newspaper dedicated to the anti-slavery issue in 1819, sent out abolitionist emissaries to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and eventually trained the famed Boston liberator. Garrison recognized Appalachian preacher John Rankin as the godfather of the anti-slavery movement.

In 1861, Rebecca Harding, a young woman writer from western Virginia, shattered the indifference of New England’s literary elite to the working class and immigrant travails by publishing “Life in the Iron Mills,” the first story of literary naturalism in the hallowed Atlantic Monthly and the nation. Harding Davis went on to deal with the issue of race and misperceptions by outsiders as early as the 1870s.

Nearly a century later, self-proclaimed “radical hillbillies” at the Highlander Folk School in Appalachia trained the shock troops of the Civil Rights Movements — including Rosa Parks, four months before her historic refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 — and refashioned and taught the anthem “We Shall Overcome” to young civil rights advocates as early as 1946. The first school to graduate an African American youth from its integrated high school ranks took place in the Cumberland mountains of Tennessee.

Random examples of Appalachia’s progressive heritage? No, this is the backstory on our contemporary elections that should have informed some of the knee-jerk reactions to the region’s complex role in the Democratic Primaries.

Perhaps the media, and Sen. Obama, will make a better attempt to understand Appalachia in the general election in November.

Sam Seder, on Air America Radio, has a must listen interview with David Novick – director of “Burning the Future“. David goes into detail about mountaintop removal’s negative impact on local economies, coal company intimidation, and the myth of “clean coal.”

Listen here.