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Mountain Justice Part 2 - Creature Comforts and Contradictions

5/26/2012

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This is for Sophie, Julia, Carol Judy, Matt and Billy P., Wendy, Rachel, Dave, Lou, Patty, Joe, Matt Landon, Stacey, Larry, Jason, Gabby, Junior, Sid, and Dana, and many many others. Thank you for sharing your ideas hearts and minds with me and so many others over the last week.

Creature Comforts - oh so important 
  • Accomplishment - I pitched my tent in 20 minutes! It was tight and tidy. Slept great the first night. Second day, around noon, I headed back into the tent to grab my notebook, and found a carpet of ants - crunchy icky wiggly ants - under my sleeping bag. See, we had been warned not to have food in our tents (because of bears - ants were not mentioned) but I decided to sneak in a Pop-Tart before snuggling into my sleeping bag. I thought I had put the wrapper in a zip-loc bag, but had accidentally left a tiny one inch square piece of foil that the ants just could not resist. Plus, I had pitched the tent right on top of a giant ant hill. So... swept it out and moved it to a new location. Got to sleep a couple of nights later through a great thunderstorm but stayed dry. 
  • Porta-potties are not too bad, as long as they are emptied and cleaned regularly. And as long as you can figure out the whole latch system - had one brief period where I was locked in and couldn't figure out how to release the door. Whew. Or pee-yew.
  • GREAT food - Lots of tofu and tempeh - and eggs and apples and bread and also fresh veggies from the farm nearby. Much more food than I needed. 
  • MUSIC! Monday night we were gifted with the music of The Missing Parsons Report - headed by brothers Matt and Billy - mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle - old old old folk songs. The highlight - Matt singing Dark as the Dungeon  mining dirge, a cappella. 
  • The best part of it all - the people - hugging, serving food, washing dishes side by side, sharing ideas frustrations and plans, singing.
  • True confession - headed to the Pipestem State Park Lodge after the fourth night in the tent where I had a ceramic toilet, shower, and, more importantly, a little space on my own just to think.
Contradictions - stretched my mind...
  • Tuesday morning we spent several hours digging into anti-oppression talk. We began with what initially seemed to be a pretty simple small group exercise with two questions - When have you felt excluded? When have you excluded others? Okay. Not so simple, it turns out. There was lots of pain evident as folks recalled times when they had very actively and blatantly or even subtly been excluded - as young children, in high school of course (lots and lots of those stories), as adults. More surprising - many people talked about how they isolated or "excluded" themselves from groups or activities, often from fear of being rejected or misunderstood. And there was pain in the memories of times when we had not been so kind - either deliberately or unintentionally - and in our efforts to understand why this had happened. 
  • Oppression? Related to physical, mental, intellectual abilities. To race, class, ethnicity. To sexual orientation or gender identity. To religious beliefs and practices. To military status. To educational status or work life.... too many ways that we sort people out and put them into categories, weighing their value in such odd and unimportant ways, resulting in so much damage.
  • Talking about this stuff was important as we moved into talking about how we can work with others in respectful ways in our efforts to stop mountain top removal - members of the mountain communities, politicians, miners, other activists who think or act differently. We put mega-buckets of energy and effort into talking and thinking about this. It was hard but necessary - and uncovered parts of my mind and heart that had not seen light for awhile.
  • Early afternoon on Tuesday, I took a ride into town, needing a little time by myself to process all that we had talked about. I turned on the radio, by happenstance tuning into an American Family Radio station. Within ten minutes, I heard two brief stories that kind of blew my mind. One, a talk show guest, who represented himself as a Christian attorney, took a call from a pastor who described a troublesome situation at his church - a man had recently started attending the church, sometimes accompanied by a service dog and sometimes alone but using a cane to help him navigate. The caller's question - was the church legally obligated to allow the man to attend with the service animal? The parishioners found the man "odd" and thought it was "strange" that he sometimes had the dog, and sometimes didn't. The attorney assured the caller that the church was within its legal rights not to allow the service dog in the church, in effect leading to the exclusion of the new church-goer. Well. Second, two talk show hosts voiced anger and disgust that a Macy's employee had been disciplined for not allowing a transgendered individual to use the women's restroom - "I would have said, 'Dude, use the dude's bathroom.' HE's the sick one - HE is the one who should be in trouble." This conversation was presented in sarcastic, snarky tones.
The world is full of contradictions, isn't it? Hurtful contradictions - hard to fathom - divisive - counter-productive - hateful - ignorant. But it is so so so very important to face these contradictions and to dig down deep for the courage both to unearth our own cruelties and to  speak up - respectfully and firmly - when we observe the cruelties of others... to speak up about the value of every human being, about their rights to live in a home, a natural environment that is protected from the life-killing toxins related to particular industry practices.

Our natural world breathes - miraculously alive, ever-growing and changing.
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Mountain Justice, Part 1

5/24/2012

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What a week. I am not sure where to start - or even if I should start. My week at the Mountain Justice Summer Camp has been - inspiring, confusing, disturbing, mind-stretching, soul-feeding, humbling.

I have been trying to figure out how I ended up at the camp, what led me to sign up for this week in Pipestem, WV. The best that I can recall - about a year ago, I read the Post-Gazette reports about the investigation into the Upper Big Branch mining disaster, and it made me ill - the callous disregard of coal mine owners, particularly Don Blankenship, for the health and well-being of the miners and the mining communities and the "look the other way" practices of publicly funded regulatory bodies made me ill. Shortly thereafter I decided to participate in the March on Blair Mountain, wanting to understand the issues better, wondering if and how they might connect to Western Pennsylvania's own fracking controversies. So I went to Blair Mountain, and then continued to read and listen, and somehow ended up at the Mountain Justice camp in the heart of the Appalachians.

My parents grew up in Harlan County, KY, in the small US Steel-owned coal-mining town of Lynch. They shopped at the company store, and lived in company-owned homes on the clearly socially-stratified main street of town (an old story - it was a little scandalous that my mother, who lived in the No. 6 block, married my father, whose family lived in No. 5). As a child, we visited Lynch often - the smell of the mountains this week took me back immediately to Lynch. 

None of my grandparents or uncles worked in the mines, but my dad's cousins and uncles did. I remember stories about black lung disease, and mine injuries. I also remember what I heard a lot about this week - the boom and bust cycle of being a miner. Boys I knew became miners as early as possible - this was in the boom years - and had big cars and married young. A few years later, they were poor. Back and forth, up and down.

My parents lived in Lynch for awhile after they married, then left when my dad decided to go to the University of KY to study engineering. But to my mom, Lynch was "home." So learning - or re-learning - about mountains and mining has pulled at me over the last year in ways that I can't quite understand or explain.

The camp took place at the Appalachian South Folk Life Center - a pastoral setting looking out on breathtakingly beautiful mountains. Each morning, I sat at the top of a hill looking out over the misted mountains, listening to the birds. And all day into the evening I attended workshops about mountain top removal from all angles - Appalachian culture and history, rural vs urban activism, facilitation practices, solidarity economics, non-hierarchical organizing. I was one of only a few folks older than 40 (okay, I was probably the oldest person there), and I had the privilege of learning from much younger people who were either born in some part of Appalachia or have chosen to live and work there, all serving as social justice activists. I don't know what I expected - I don't know that I had any particular expectations - but what I experienced was unexpected. 

The people in Mountain Justice, and related groups such as Radical Action for Mountain Peoples' Survival, Coal River Mountain Watch, Larry Gibson's Mountain Keepers, and others, work with community members to understand, monitor, plan, and act to stop the practice of mountain top removal. The movement to stop MTR is based upon the devastating destruction to the ecosystem of the mountains and related long-lasting harm to the physical, communal, social, and emotional lives of community members. There is a substantial body of research documenting the damage done to water systems, wildlife, human health, economic stability, community life.

And yes, the opponents of MTR are allies with others involved in fighting extractive industries, those involved with extracting coal, gas, and oil - with a particular focus on opposing the manner in which the industries operate, again with little regard for the immediate and long-term damage to human life and the ecosystem. So yes, this movement to end MTR is related closely to the efforts in Western PA and elsewhere to stop hydraulic fracturing for natural gas - better known as fracking.

What else did I learn? I got to spend time with people who defined themselves variously as radicals, activists, and anarchists, who question and are committed to swimming upstream against mainstream ideology and against business as usual, when this business hurts people. Today, two groups of campers participated in direct actions - one involving five people who chained themselves to a coal-carrying barge in Charleston, WV (yes, they were arrested) and another involving dozens of people who blocked a road leading up to an MTR site, making it impossible for the trucks that transport coal and other materials to pass through. 

And I also learned that I have a whole lot more to think about. Not sure where I fit into this whole scenario, or where I go with what I learned. More later... about people, and food, and music, and stories...

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Back in touch

6/22/2011

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Whoa. It has been too long since I have written. Even though I was in West Virginia for only a few days, it took many more than a few days after I returned to absorb all the experiences I had and to get back on track.

As you can see from my picture, the march on Blair Mountain was both exhausting and exhilarating. Friends have asked questions about the march and issues related to it, so I have tried to continue my own education.

For example, I have been learning more about what the process of mountain top removal (MTR) actually involves - how it is done and what happens to the nearby environment and people during and after the MTR. There are several steps to the MTR process: 
  • clearing all topsoil and plants - that alone sounds painful and bleak
  • blasting through 500-800 feet of mountain surface to reach the seam of coal 
  • digging and removing coal and debris with a huge machine which actually does the work that in the past was done by people
  • dumping waste, known as overburden or spoil, into valleys and stream beds - typically filling or burying the streams
  • processing - or washing and treating - the coal, creating waste water, known as slurry or sludge, which is then stored in impoundments that are often open, poorly supported and unstable ... slurry is made of a mixture of water, coal dust, clay, and toxic chemicals including arsenic, mercury, lead, copper, and chromium
  • reclamation which is supposed to involve stabilization of the land and revegetation ... a not very closely monitored or regulated process
Below is a photo of an Appalachian mountain - followed by a photo of the mountain post-MTR - followed by a different "reclaimed mountain." What do you think?


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photo from Graham Mountain Foundation
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photo from Graham Mountain Foundation
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photo from ilovemountains

What are the effects of this devastation, really? 

The drastic changes to the landscape increase flooding (which includes runoff that contains toxic chemicals). The ongoing blasting associated with MTR damages the foundations of homes, property values, and quality of life. Blasting also randomly sends boulders and debris down onto yards in the communities below the MTR sites, creating safety risks. Slurry and sludge poison drinking water and increase realities of disease in nearby communities. These are immediate and short-term changes.

Let's look to the past, then far into the future. In 2009, the Smithsonian Magazine reported that...

Since the mid-1990s, coal companies have pulverized Appalachian mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Peaks formed hundreds of millions of years ago are obliterated in months. Forests that survived the last ice age are chopped down and burned. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2012, two decades of mountaintop removal will have destroyed or degraded 11.5 percent of the forests in those four states, an area larger than Delaware. Rubble and waste will have buried more than 1,000 miles of streams.

The rate and scope of this destruction is incredibly short-sighted. Centuries of work by Mother Earth gone and, on top of that, toxic substances introduced into what is left. Without extensive intervention, this threatens much needed biodiversity (all of life is interconnected and interdependent for survival) and causes harm to the health and well-being of plants, humans, and other animals for hundreds of years to come. 

And no intervention can truly re-create what has been destroyed - particularly the culture of the mountain people in the communities affected by MTR. I witnessed the strength and integrity of the people from Appalachia at the march - outspoken, impassioned, but respectful and honest.

Hazel Dickens fought MTR - she was one beautiful voice rising from Appalachia. She was to have performed at the Blair Mountain March but, sadly, passed away in April before the March.


More later... in the meantime, let me know what you think.
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March on Blair Mountain - June 11, 2011

6/13/2011

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From March on Blair Mountain:

We march to preserve Blair Mountain, abolish mountaintop removal, strengthen labor rights, and an investment in sustainable job creation for all Appalachian communities.The March on Blair Mountain is a peaceful, unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. The march commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when 10,000 coal miners rose against the rule of the coal operators and fought for the basic right to live and work in decent conditions. Currently, Blair Mountain is threatened with obliteration by mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, and it is here that a new generation of Appalachians takes a stand.

In the spirit of the original march–which consisted of mountain peoples, African-Americans, and immigrants from all over Europe–we reach out to a diversity of groups to march in solidarity for the workers, communities and mountains of Appalachia. If you stand with us, you are one of us — a true mountaineer.
Lessons from the Mountain ~
  • In late summer 1921, over 10,000 miners marched the 50 miles from Marmet to Blair Mountain to protest work conditions and to call for unionizing
  • The miners were met with strikebreakers, the police, and, eventually, the US Army
  • Over a million rounds were fired - 50-100 men were killed and hundreds more wounded
  • Almost 1000 miners were arrested
  • The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in our nation's history, matched only by the Civil War - the immediate effect was diminished union strength, but in 1935 under FDR the unions became strong and continued through the 1970's
  • Nevertheless, the 1921 march drew attention to the horrid conditions facing miners every day
  • Beginning June 6, 2011, several hundred citizens from many states and even different countries began the fifty mile march from Marmet to Blair Mountain, replicating the 1921 event - the stimulus was the threat of mountain top removal by coal companies - I will write more about the effects of MTR on the health and well-being of individuals, families, communities, the mountain and its environs, and the mountain culture
  • The marchers walked several miles a day - the main glitch came when camp sites that had previously agreed to host the marchers at the end of a day's march reneged - some acknowledged that they had been asked/told not to support the marchers
  • On June 11, 2011, a truly diverse group of people came - over 1000 came together for the morning rally at the base of the mountain and almost 800 climbed the mountain to the battlefield of the miner's 1921 struggle - union members, students, retired miners, Quakers, ordinary citizens who have become activists - all races, educational levels, and income levels were represented - all ages, from in utero to 90 years +
  • Marchers included at least three Chatham University faculty - Lou Martin from History who walked the entire 50 miles, Greg Galford from Interior Architecture, and me - Lou and Greg both have West Virginia roots and I have eastern KY roots
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an environmental attorney, spoke - he noted that, if a corporation were threatening to chop off the top of a mountain and to dump the dirt and rocks into streams in the Catskills or Adirondacks, this would be called criminal activity and the corporate heads would be held accountable for the destruction
  • Kathy Mattea, singer and activist, spoke and sang - and urged the marchers to hold all people in their hearts, even those who were supportive of surface mining and mountain top removal
  • Many many amazing citizens from West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia spoke from the heart
  • In early afternoon, the long march up the mountain started - first, three abreast, then single file, uphill for over two miles in temperatures in the high 80s
  • Marchers sang, shared water, chanted, and helped one another
  • Many state police units were present, ensuring the safety of the event
  • As hoped and planned for, it was a peaceful, inspirational, and respectful activity - there were very few counter protesters on the day of the march - there were no confrontations or ugly scenes 
  • Check out the Inspiration page in the next few days for some cool songs, pictures, and speeches and the Blog for more stories
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March on Blair Mountain update...

6/7/2011

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Lots of good stuff is happening in West Virginia as I write. Visit these sites for current news about the March on Blair Mountain:
  • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
  • Kentucky Rising (on Facebook)
  • March on Blair Mountain
We have had beautiful weather in Pittsburgh this week - great for hiking, walking, and biking, and just sitting and listening to the birds. It is raining heavily today - hope the marchers in WV are staying dry.

I am planning to go to the last two days of this event - going for a training session on Friday and the march up the mountain and rally on Saturday. In preparation, I have been reading the 2008 Silas House/Jason Howard book - Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal - through interviews with and stories of many mountain people, I am learning and remembering a lot. 

My brothers and sisters and I used to spend some weeks each summer in Lynch, KY, the site of the highest mountain in KY - Big Black Mountain - where my parents grew up and my grandparents lived. Half of Big Black Mountain is in Lynch, KY and half is in VA. The half that is in VA has been decimated by mountain top removal. The people of Lynch and nearby Cumberland and Benham are fighting the forces of A and G coal to preserve their part of Big Black Mountain.

I think about Lynch a lot. I remember the smell of coal dust - not unpleasant, but what did I know? - and the rattling sound of coal-carrying trains, and the sights of the miners clomping up the road in their heavy boots at the end of a shift, white eyes in coal-darkened faces, some as young as 14 or 15. I also remember, back in the mid-late 1960s, seeing the separate bath houses labeled for "colored" and "white" miners. 

Although my older brother and I were born in Lynch, our family moved away from Harlan County when my father entered the University of KY to study engineering, funded by the GI Bill. Lexington was a big city compared to Lynch. I often wonder what this change was like for my mom - who eventually was the  mother of five children. I wonder what it was like for her to move from such a small town, far away from her home, friends (who are close friends to this day), and parents - to a city with bluegrass and softly rolling hills, a city that was so different in culture and topography than her mountainous home. 

In my childhood, the only way to get back to Lynch for a visit was over twisty mountain roads, torture for this little girl who was prone to car-sickness (particularly when adults smoked cigarettes and cigars - oh, how times have changed! no seat belts then either - all five of us climbing back and forth over seats, elbowing and stepping on one another). 

In college, I came across Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (1965),  by Jack Weller. This was written about Appalachia pre-cable TV -- actually, probably, pre-access to much TV at all - the signals just couldn't come in. This was written when many people actually did live up in the hollers. It was fascinating to read Weller's ideas about tendencies of children in the mountains to express stress and anxiety psycho-somatically - through tummy aches and headaches - particularly when the worry was about separation from home and family. 

Makes sense when you think that many of the people had not ever traveled much outside of their small community or county. I could certainly identify with that. Our homes, where we have grown from deeply-planted roots, really shape who we are. 

Makes me wonder about what it would be like NOT to have deep roots in a particular place. Do you then root yourself into something that is different, that you can carry with you wherever you go? What or where would that be?

Oops - off track here! I am really looking forward to my trip later this week, and I will let you know how it goes. Hope to have stories and pictures to share.

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Work

6/5/2011

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Work, by Ford Madox Brown
I love the print posted here, called simply Work. Ford Madox Brown, an English painter, depicts English folks at work during the mid-Victorian era (~mid-19th century). What strikes me about this scene is the people - work involved bumping up against, talking or arguing with, sweating beside people.

I browsed Google for other images of work -- so many of them were focused on computers, desks, chairs - and often there were no people included at all! I looked at several dictionaries for definitions of "work" - the first definition in most volumes was about effort - "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result" from Merriam-Webster. I guess computers and other machines "work" - but to me, effort is a purposeful phenomenon, complete with choices and behaviors, most often done by humans or other animals. What do you think?

I remember something that my anthropology professor at Transylvania University said -- that, throughout history, most of human effort has gone toward figuring out how to work less. True or not? 

Why do we work? Do we work primarily to earn money for food, clothes, shelter, medical care, and some extras? Is it one of the ways that we find meaning in our lives? Is it something that we do that contributes to the well-being of others? All or none of the above?

I love my work for which I am paid. I do find meaning in it, and I get pleasure and satisfaction from it. It helps me support myself and the family. And I believe/hope that it contributes to the well-being of others outside of my family. Most of all, I love (most of) the people I work with. We may not sweat much or bump up against each other, but we do talk, argue, and, thankfully, laugh a lot. I do admit that some of the time work is work - it is hard. But I am always grateful for the job that I have and the work that I feel called to do.

Do you feel secure in your work - your job or career? We are living in times when things don't feel so secure. Unemployment figures for the last month were just released a couple of days ago - and it wasn't good news. It's hard not to feel some anxiety or worry - or even anger - when reading news about the national work scene.

A different question - do you feel safe at work? Is your work setting physically safe? Emotionally safe? Does your work involve risks or dangers for you, your community, or society?

The March on Blair Mountain, happening today into next weekend, is in large part about work - people are gathering to advocate for safe, fairly-compensated, humane work that does not harm their homes or sense of well-being:

Hundreds of people from Appalachia and across the nation will embark on an historic march to demand an end to mountaintop removal, the strengthening of labor rights, sustainable job creation in Appalachian communities, and the preservation of Blair Mountain. 

Does your work nurture or threaten your sense of well-being? Work often requires people to move away from home, even though for many people being near family and loved ones, living in a place that feels like home, is central to a sense of well-being. Nathan Hall, a young environmentalist from Appalachia, left his Kentucky home to pursue bigger and better things, but kept feeling pulled back to the mountains. He came home and worked in deep underground mining, hoping to learn all that he could from this work so that he could, with integrity, challenge the status quo in his community - so that he could truly understand how mining work both fed and damaged his people. He will do his important work in his home-place.

Others are not so fortunate. David Bacon is a photographer and journalist who brings us stories about immigrants. In 2008, he wrote of "the right to stay home" or "derecho de no migrar," a human rights movement in which laborers in Mexico and other parts of the world that have been affected by globalization demand the right to be able to support themselves from work in their home communities. Immigration and migration are thorny issues, from any perspective. On the one hand, some Americans act as though those who migrate to the US, "illegally" or not, are "taking" something from them. Reading Bacon's words reminds us that, in some situations at least, those who come to our country might rather find meaningful and viable work at home.

Do you do work for which you are not compensated? How does that fit into your life? Most of us work in our families and communities to take care of one another - I would argue that this is the most important work of all, though it is woefully undervalued by many. I would not trade my years of being a mom of young children, taking care of Michael and Julie, for anything - and I would call it work - purposeful effort devoted to nurturing two little people toward becoming good family members, friends, workers, and citizens. Yes, I would call it work, and I would say that it was not always easy.

Dealing with the "grand challenge" of global climate change, as individuals, communities, and nations, is also work and it is also not easy. What is often easy, however, is denial of this challenge, a turning away from it, stuffing it into a dark seldom-visited corner of our lives. Coming to terms with the changes in our economy, natural environment, physical and emotional health, that are related to climate change and environmental degradation will be work - it will take purposeful effort, both mental and physical, to find new ways of doing things together. We must rise to this challenge for which we do not have ready answers and solutions. We must take on this work - we must be people working together.


The Real Work 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work, 


and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey. 


The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 

The impeded stream is the one that sings.  

~ Wendell Berry ~ 

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A Greek Tragedy

5/24/2011

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Donald Blankenship from RS article
Friday morning, I was sitting at my regular table at the Square Cafe, eating my lemon ricotta pancake and drinking iced tea, helping Jim with his crossword puzzle, and enjoying the easy start to the day. Spring was finally here. Graduation was scheduled for the weekend. A fresh semester would start Monday - with me teaching some great students who would be new to me. Life was (is!) good! 

I picked up the Post-Gazette and noticed two front page articles - front and center - and began reading.... and lost my appetite. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and an ache in my heart, and, yes, I admit it, anger and fury - all over my body where those feelings reside, I felt their heat and intensity.

The articles that fired me up? (1) A story about the newly published independent review of the Upper Big Branch coal mining explosion that took the lives of 29 coal miners on April 5, 2010. The finding - gross neglect - primarily on the part of Massey Energy's shoddy oversight of mine safety, and the federal and state regulatory officials who had counted and cited several hundreds of safety violations and yet never closed the mines. AND (2) the first person accounts of the men who survived the mining disaster. 

As noted in the first story, the independent review does not read like a dry technical report written by sterile bureaucrats. It reads like a thriller - a record of a historical event that rivals stories of war, natural disasters, plagues. Its main characters are humans - archetypes that have existed for centuries. An extra-big villain - Don Blankenship, a West Virginia native with an uncanny facial resemblance, though with a little more flesh, to another despot with a tiny black mustache - Mr. B is known as the dark lord of West Virginia coal country. 

Rolling Stone magazine published an expose of Mr. B's work and his response to the mining explosion. Shortly after the article appeared, he resigned as CEO of Massey Energy - with a mighty big golden parachute, I might add. His salary had spiked in the months before the disaster. And even though he saw a drop in salary of 48% by the end of 2010, he still walked off with millions and will sit pretty for the rest of his life. The people most directly affected by his actions and non-actions related both to the explosion and the mining-related environmental devastation could most certainly use some of that money - for health costs, for pain and suffering, for de-valued homes, for educational funds for spouses and children left without a husband and father. Yes, they sure could use - and most certainly deserve - such help.

Don Blankenship may be one of the big villains. There are lesser bad guys galore - many of whom look the other way in order to keep their jobs and salaries and, sometimes, their political seats - or maybe, because they are human, to avoid conflict and confrontation. 

Those in the middle - the ones who know that the jobs they work both keep food on the table and poison the creek out back - these people often just feel stuck. These are the folks who don't see or understand alternatives, or fear change, or don't trust that things could be better, so they stick with the familiar.

The heroes and/or victims - they are the coal miners, and their families, and future families who will face the vast destruction associated with the mountain top removal typical of Massey Energy and similar companies, and with the dark underground mining in dank and dusty caves. Many of these heroes and victims come from a long line of miners and have deep roots in the mountains of Appalachia. The drivers of the plot - greed, neglect, inaction and passivity, ignorance, acts of God (according to Mr.  B), bogged down bureaucracy, and many others.

Not so much talked about though? The chorus of this drama - the reporters and observers who do not necessarily act in big parts. You and me. Watching television reports about the explosion, reading newspapers, talking to friends, maybe signing petitions to voice our disgust with big coal operations, and.... flipping on light switches, recharging our multiple devices, typing away on our keyboards, TiVo-ing our favorite shows, and generally living our day to day lives without really seeing the men and the families of men whose labors feed the energy that travels the wires to our homes.

To really understand the fix we are in, we need to recognize that fossil fuels have supplied cheap, abundant and effective energy of all kinds for over a century - much cheaper than in most other parts of the world, much cheaper than the price of alternative energies that aren't yet built to scale, cheaper today than the long-term costs associated with the use of fossil-fuel driven energy. We review our electric bills, maybe shop around for a lower rate, turn off lights when not in use, perhaps even unplug the coffee-maker and other LED-lit appliances. We do that, most of us, without really understanding or even actually thinking about the fact that most electricity in our country is powered by coal burning plants... which are fueled by coal.... that is dug from deep underground by men in hazardous conditions (even in the 21st century) or sheared off the surface by giant machines doing mountain top removal that destroys the natural environment and the health of the people who live nearby. 

Can those (we) in the chorus be villains or heroes, or are we limited to the passive roles of observer and reporter? When we see disaster coming, can we intervene and prevent chaos and destruction? Can we warn the heroes and victims-to-be? I think the authors of these dramas can have the chorus do whatever they want. I think we can even become authors of the dramas, or at least co-screen-writers.

We don't have to do it alone. We have options - one coming soon is the March on Blair Mountain in West Virginia - from the web-site:

We march to preserve Blair Mountain, abolish mountaintop removal, strengthen labor rights, and an investment in sustainable job creation for all Appalachian communities.The March on Blair Mountain is a peaceful, unifying rally involving environmental justice organizations, workers, scholars, artists, and other citizens and groups. The march commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when 10,000 coal miners rose against the rule of the coal operators and fought for the basic right to live and work in decent conditions. Currently, Blair Mountain is threatened with obliteration by mountaintop removal (MTR) mining, and it is here that a new generation of Appalachians takes a stand.

In the spirit of the original march–which consisted of mountain peoples, African-Americans, and immigrants from all over Europe–we reach out to a diversity of groups to march in solidarity for the workers, communities and mountains of Appalachia. If you stand with us, you are one of us — a true mountaineer.

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    Mary Beth Mannarino is a licensed psychologist who provides coaching in the areas of leadership, career, life, and parenting. She is also an environmental and climate educator and activist. Dr. Mannarino is professor emeritus at Chatham University where she continues to teach courses to students in health professions related to environment and well-being.

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