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- Callwords:allies, appalachia, coal, ecology, economics, link, nature, news, resistance, url, video, west virginia, wv
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More about Blair Mountain, one of the most important labor history sites in the country, which has recently been removed from the National Register of Historic Places and may soon be utterly destroyed.
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- Callwords:appalachia, coal, cultural studies, culture change, ecology, economics, news, resistance, video, west virginia, wv
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By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Washington Post, Friday, July 3, 2009 Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse? If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas -- while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens. Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws. And government claims of doing everything possible to halt the holocaust are simply not true. George Bush gutted Clean Water Act protections. Obama must restore them. First, the White House should fix the "fill" rule the Bush administration adopted in 2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste dumps. Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water Act, 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred under mining waste. Obama could reverse the "fill" rule to reflect its original meaning, which forbids waste matter from being dumped into waterways. Second, the Interior Department should strictly enforce the widely ignored "buffer zone" rule that forbids dumping waste within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams. Third, our laws require companies to restore mined areas to their original condition. The administration should end the absurd fiction that extraction pits filled with unconsolidated rocks and rubble where trees will never grow and streams will never flow are "reclaimed." Fourth, current law forbids the issuance of "fill" permits that will cause "significant degradation" to waterways. It is absurd for the Army Corps of Engineers to endorse the canard that filling miles of streams is not causing significant degradation. The president should require the Corps to deny and rescind permits where operations will cause downstream damage. Fifth, the Clean Water Act requires mining operators to prove that they can restore the "function and structure" of affected streams. Operators have never been compelled to make the functional or structural analyses of the aquatic ecosystem required by the act. Obama should order his officials to stop ignoring this requirement. Sixth, the administration should enforce the law requiring an environmental impact study for each permit when a mine "may have significant environmental impacts," individually or cumulatively. The Corps of Engineers routinely allows coal operators to escape this mandate -- an illegal practice that should stop. Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy. President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining -- then in its infancy -- that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street. The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine. Obama has the authority to end mountaintop removal, without further action from Congress and without formal rulemaking. He just needs to make the coal barons obey the law. The writer is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. - Callwords:appalachia, coal, culture change, ecology, economics, links, news, politics, resistance, url, west virginia, wv
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Here is part two of the "Mounds and Deo Pavo Work" ( Read more and see pictures beneath the cut... )
Part one is linked here.... Part three coming soon). - Callwords:alexander, altars, ancestors, animism, appalachia, art, culture change, ecology, feri, folkart, gods, magic, meher baba, pavo, peacocks, resistance, spell, theurgy, work
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This is the first of three posts about a recent spirit working. Much of my magic nowadays is very intuitive and is prompted by the relationships I have with Ancestors, Allies and Gods. My methods use the rational mind, but the work itself is something different. I feel that such work works on me and on the world. Altars are immanent, resonant, willful prayers and draw Spirit into our ken and into expression. This prayer/spell started with a request for an all-white altar with an offering of flour and egg, worked its way into the building of a small outdoor mound intended to be a first step in the mysteries of practical earthworks as well as a spell/prayer for the protection of the Appalachian mountains and the restoration of the American Chestnut tree. There were also some vague dreams about Mounds and about my past visits--they were more promptings than sources of information. Deo Pavo/Peacock Angel took over, weaving in my Wyrd allies, especially Meher Baba, and fire worship, and reached a stage of completion concurrent with Iranian elections and subsequent unrest (a surprise resonance that didn't factor into my timing, but which probably isn't utterly irrelevant given the political foci and the Irani connections in my background). So the energies that emerged in this working started with a Damballah/Paga Legba flavor, threaded through contemplation of the ancient Appalachian mounds I've made pilgrimage to in the past (including two in West Virginia and the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio) and moved into the court of Deo Pavo, who manifested with a very Irani/Zoroastrian flavor and brought Meher Baba and other Allies along with Him (adding some clarity to that nexus of spirit energies and refining my sense of what's going on with them). So the effect is to honor and grow closer to Spirits, though the intention remains connected to the spirit of place and the need to protect our mountains and restore the nearly extinct Chestnut. After some interest in mounds and making a mound emerged in discussion on Facebook, I also started a group there called "Appalachian Earthworks". Below are some links to historic mounds in the Appalachian region; on the Facebook page, I'm also posting links to folks using earthwork sculpture as art or ritual. I am partly exploring it as a parallel to the "Dragon's Nest" (a ring of organic material) as an organic ritual form, one perhaps well suited to work with spirits of place, the ancestors, and spells to stop mountain top removal. Here are pictures of outdoor phase 1, begun last Dark Moon. ( Ritual Description, Photos and Mound Links )
Part Two coming soon.- Callwords:altars, ancestors, animism, appalachia, art, culture change, ecology, folkart, gods, magic, resistance, spell, theurgy
- Locus:Temple of Great Good Fortune
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Police Remove 11 During Raleigh County, W.Va. Protests of Coal Sludge Dams and Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining; More Protestors Expected This Afternoon FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 23, 2009
CONTACT: Sludge Watch Collective 304-854-7372 COAL RIVER VALLEY, W.Va.-- This morning, eleven activists in two civil disobedience actions were removed by state police. As part of the continuing campaign to end mountaintop removal, six people locked themselves to mining equipment on a Patriot Coal-owned mountaintop removal mine on Kayford Mountain and another group floated a 20-by-60-foot banner on the surface of Massey Energy?s Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment near Pettus, W.Va. The activists are part of a coalition that includes Mountain Justice, Climate Ground Zero and concerned individuals. At noon today, more protestors are expected to converge at the gate to the Brushy Fork dam with hundreds of pairs of shoes to represent the number of immediate deaths should the dam fail. "The toxic lake at Brushy Fork dam sits atop a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines, " said Chuck Nelson, from Raleigh County, W.Va. "Massey wants to blast within 100 feet of that dam. The company's own filings with the state Department of Environmental Protection project a minimum death toll of 998 should the seven-billion-gallon dam break. EPA should override the DEP and revoke this blasting permit for the safety of the community." Nelson did not participate in the civil disobedience actions this morning, but is expected to speak at the Brushy Fork gate this afternoon. The floating banner unfurled this morning atop Brushy Fork read, "West Virginia Says No More Toxic Sludge." "If the dam fails, 7.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry will flood to 38 feet deep, 26 miles down the Marsh Fork of the Coal River, from Pettus, past Whitesville," Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero said. "These coal companies, the land companies and their corrupt politicians are destroying the headwater streams that supply drinking water to millions of Americans downstream." In the Kayford action, independent photojournalist and Rock Creek, W.Va. resident Antrim Caskey was removed from the direct action site by police. She previously had been cited three times for trespassing while embedded with Climate Ground Zero. "About 12,000-acres of Kayford Mountain has been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining," said Maria Gunnoe, Boone County resident and winner of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. "Not another family should be forced to move because a coal company is going to blow up the mountain above them, then bury and poison their streams." Gunnoe did not participate in the civil disobedience actions. The people who locked down on Kayford Mountain unveiled a banner reading, "Never Again." "The regulatory agencies that are supposed to be the people's watchdogs are acting instead as the industry's guard dogs," said Willie Dodson of Mountain Justice, one of the Kayford protesters. "Neither Governor Manchin, the DEP, President Obama, nor the EPA are enforcing the law, so we have no choice but to come out here and do it ourselves." On Feb 3, five people chained themselves to mining equipment and eight others were cited for trespassing while attempting to deliver a letter to Massey Energy insisting that the company cease all mountaintop removal operations on Coal River Mountain. Since then, four related actions have occurred in the Coal River Valley. "We are forced to take action today because we have exhausted our legislative and litigatory options," activist Charles Suggs of Raleigh County said. "We have walked the halls and pounded the doors of our state and national capitols, asked the DEP to complete studies, met with the EPA, filed lawsuits, and what happens? Our West Virginia legislature passes bills to let the destruction continue, and opposes bills that would stop poisoning our water and bring permanent, sustainable economic development to the state." NOTE: Massey's filing with the WVDEP that indicate sludge depth and distance are available upon request. Video, still images and breaking news will be posted continually to www.mountainjustice.org. | | |
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Published on Monday, May 4, 2009 by Daily Yonder Making a 'Sacred Zone' in Appalachia:
It's not enough to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. The goal is to build a new Appalachia.
by Bob KincaidWhen people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 3 April 1968
( Read more... ) </div> | | |
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April 6, 2009 Governor Manchin moves to delist Blair Mountain from historic register Landowners' objections may have been ignored
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Manchin administration officials moved this week to have Blair Mountain - site of the landmark 1921 coalfield labor battle - removed from the National Register of Historic Places. Randall Reid-Smith, director of the Division of Culture and History, wrote to the National Park Service to ask federal officials to take Blair Mountain off the register. The move comes a week after "the Keeper," the Park Service official who oversees the historic register, made the listing. Labor advocates, historians and environmental activists had been promoting the listing for years. Jacqueline Proctor, a spokeswoman for the Division of Culture and History, which oversees the state Historic Preservation Office, said the agency acted after a coal company lawyer raised questions about whether objections from area property owners were properly counted. "There were some that were sent directly to the Keeper, and we may not have counted them," Proctor said. Under federal rules, if a majority of property owners in an area proposed for the historic register object, that area cannot be listed. Originally, state officials counted 22 objections out of the 50 landowners in the Blair Mountain district. But after reviewing the matter, the state discovered there were actually 30 objections out of those 50 landowners, Proctor said Monday afternoon. Proctor would not immediately provide a list of the 50 landowners or of the 30 who objected. She said the state would not release them without a formal Freedom of Information Act request, which the Gazette forwarded to her Monday afternoon. Blair Gardner, a lawyer for three coal companies - Massey Energy, Arch Coal and Natural Resource Partners - raised questions about the count of landowner objections. Gardner's clients had previously objected to the historic listing, and raised questions about the way the state had drawn the map and whether the map allowed all proper parcels inside the historic district to be properly identified. Efforts to preserve Blair Mountain date back to the early 1990s, when UMW officials and environmentalists teamed up to fight strip-mining proposed by non-union Massey Energy. More recently, Massey and several land companies filed suit to stop the state historic preservation office's support for the national site designation. In 1921, armed union coal miners marched from Marmet toward Logan to confront Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, whose deputies and specialty commissioner guards were defending non-union coal mines from UMW organizers. Federal troops and airplanes eventually stopped the march. Many of the miners and their leaders were then prosecuted for treason. The battle that developed along Spruce Fork Ridge on Blair Mountain was the largest armed labor conflict in U.S. history, a pivotal event often forgotten today. A 1991 study had identified six critical historic sites covering about 30 acres, but preservation advocates expanded their nomination to include a much larger area. Three years ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Blair Mountain as one of America's 11 most endangered historic sites. The most recent nomination for Blair Mountain was presented by Barbara Rassmussen, a West Virginia University historian, and Harvard Ayers, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University. Ayers discovered 10 major battle sites along the 10-mile stretch covered by the designation, including hundreds of artifacts, especially along Crooked Creek near the crest of Blair Mountain. | | |
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Here's an interesting piece on labor history in West Virginia that provides some of the background to the 1921 Blair Mountain events. It's mostly about Eugene Debs' role in the 1913 strike (when martial law was first imposed), but provides lots of interesting contextual details. Here's the opening paragraph: Eugene V. Debs in West Virginia, 1913: A Reappraisal
By Roger Fagge
When Eugene V. Debs arrived in Charleston on May 17, 1913, he had no reason to anticipate the degree of controversy that would arise over his conduct during his short stay and the subsequent arguments that would take place. Debs, Adolph Germer and Victor Berger were members of a Socialist Party of America (SPA) committee sent to investigate the circumstances surrounding the year long miners' strike in the Kanawha district, and found themselves thrown into an environment where local socialists and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) were at loggerheads. Allegations arose that UMWA officials were conniving to maintain martial law and even supported Governor Henry D. Hatfield's suppression of the local socialist press. Additionally, confusion in the strike zone, the scene of unprecedented violence from the operators' mine guards and retaliatory action by the strikers, culminated in a messy "forced" settlement by the governor that pleased no one.
http://www.wvculture.org/HiStory/journal_wvh/wvh52-1.html | | |
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Yay! Maybe now this little bit of EVERYONE's suppressed history can be better known, as well as the reason some of us consider "Redneck" a name to bear proudly. (Please watch the video!)
Published on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 by Huffington Post Big Coal Defeat! Rednecks and Greens Announce Victory at Blair Mountain After 500 mountains in Appalachia have been blown to bits by mountaintop removal, one peak was most likely saved today: Blair Mountain in West Virginia, the site of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War, was officially approved by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places to be placed on the National Register. This is a huge victory, as the tide continues to turn in the movement to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia. Some consider it the Bunker Hill of the labor movement. But the great battle in 1921, when thousands of union coal miners and World War I veterans donned their uniforms and took up arms to liberate and unionize the last coal camps in southwestern West Virginia held hostage to ruthless outside coal companies, has emerged as one of the great symbols of Appalachia's fate today. Over the past several years, the Friends of Blair Mountain--an organization of community and labor activists, historians and environmentalists--have led an even more epic battle to save the sacred mountain site from a plan by coal companies to strip mine and destroy Blair Mountain through mountaintop removal operations. The mountaintop removal war might soon be over. The Rednecks won. According to the National Registry Federal Program regulations: "If a property contains surface coal resources and is listed in the National Register, certain provisions of the Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977 require consideration of a property's historic values in the determination on issuance of a surface coal mining permit." "Redneck" was the name given to the progressive miners, as William Blizzard recalled in his wonderful memoir, When Miners March, as they wore red bandannas around their necks to distinguish themselves from others. As the battle raged, and even bombs dropped, President Warren Harding was forced to intervene with military troops. President Barack Obama needs to intervene against mountaintop removal today. As three million pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil are detonated daily in an assault on Appalachia today, raining toxic dust on the inhabitants and devastating watersheds as part of the brutal mountaintop removal operations, it's time for the federal government to stop this egregious violation of human rights in the mountains. Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, and a great West Virginia coal mining native, should take note of the haunting parallels in history: While over 500 mountains have been destroyed, the once strong union movement has been gutted by highly mechanized strip mining operations, and now only 500-700 United Mine Worker members are employed on mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia. Let's repeat that: There are roughly 700 UMWA members employed at mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia today. It's time for Cecil Roberts and the United Mine Workers to stand up for the mountains, the historic Appalachian communities, and the economy, and demand an end to mountaintop removal, and a return to more responsible mining. Ken Ward at the Coal Tattoo blog recently looked at Roberts and mountaintop removal: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/03/25/umwa-to-epa-lets-talk/ To learn about other endangered American mountains, see: http://www.ilovemountains.org/endangered/
Denise Giardina, the nationally acclaimed novelist from the coalfields of West Virginia, and author of the epic novel, Storming Heaven, once wrote: "In the hundred odd years since the coal industry came to this part of West Virginia, land has been taken, miners have been worked to death, streams have been polluted, piles of waste have accumulated, children have grown up in poverty. But throughout all the hardships, the hunger, the black lung disease and other illness, and the scarring of the land, the mountains have essentially remained. They were symbols of permanence, strength, hope. No more. Nothing worse can be taken from mountain people than mountains. The resulting loss is destroying the soul of the people. "The destruction of the central Appalachian Mountains robs the region of topsoil, timber, of indigenous plants, of streams, and leaves behind floods, toxic brews of sludge laced with mercury, and flattened plains of inedible grass. But worst of all is the loss of the mountain landscape, those rugged crags that lift the spirits and touch the sky. "If one mountain were to be spared, one peak to bear mute witness to the devastation that has gone on all around, it might be thought that Blair Mountain would be such a summit. Blair Mountain, after all, has been the most dramatic witness to the struggle of legions of coal miners to be free." If only William Blizzard, the author of When Miners March, were alive today to take part in this celebration. His father, Bill Blizzard, the hero of Blair Mountain, was tried and acquitted for treason. For more information, see: http://www.whenminersmarch.com/reviews.htm Filmmaker Sasha Waters did a great documentary on the importance of Blair Mountain in her film, Razing Appalachia: | | |
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This is not only a totally unfamiliar sort of attention, it's also mostly a pack of lies (including at least doubling the actual population figures). And there's a good bit of creative camera work, making this look like a larger and more urban place. (Edit: looks like they're conflating the town population with the Monongalia County population--the whole county has between 80-90,000 people, not the city limits)Here's someone else's shots (soundless) that I like better. See how MANY trees we have? That's something worthy of pride and hope: | | |
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On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was reviewing hundreds of mountaintop removal coal mining permits. Two U.S. senators from coal producing states -- Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) -- introduced the Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696), which would amend the Clean Water Act to prevent the dumping of toxic mining waste from mountaintop removal coal mining into headwater streams and rivers. Can you contract your Senators today, and urge them to support (co-sponsor?) the Appalachia Restoration Act? http://ilovemountains.org/action/write_your_senators In introducing the legislation, Senator Cardin said: "My goal is to put a stop to one of the most destructive mining practices that has already destroyed some of America's most beautiful and ecologically significant regions. This legislation will put a stop to the smothering of our nation's streams and water systems and will restore the Clean Water Act to its original intent." "It is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal," said Senator Alexander. "Millions of tourists spend tens of millions of dollars in Tennessee every year to enjoy the natural beauty of our mountains - a beauty that, for me, and I believe for most Tennesseans, makes us proud to live here." Senator Alexander has it right. This is not an either/or choice -- it's about saving the environment and creating new jobs. Please, contact your Senator today and urge them to support this important bipartisan bill: http://ilovemountains.org/action/write_your_senatorsWith your help, the Clean Water Protection Act can pass the House and Senate this year -- and put a permanent end to the worst practices of mountaintop removal coal mining. Thank you for taking action. | | |
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- Callwords:ancestors, appalachia, coal, culture change, ecology, economics, links, news, politics, resistance, url, west virginia, wv
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It pisses me off that many people I know care so much about fair-trade coffee, but brew it with electricity that comes from Appalachia's toxic coalfields. They don't seem to care much that those mines, in their own back yards, take billions every year from the earth, but leave the workers and the communities sick, impoverished and desertified. The same folks will have caniption fits if the bones of indigenous people are disturbed. Trouble is, in the circles I move in backyard causes just aren't fashionable. God and the immediate community own natural resources. No one else--the other claimants are thieves. As far as I'm concerned, the "people" who invest in, order or perform this work should be shot on sight.
Seeking protection for coalfield cemeteries
By Dianne Bady, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition co-director DELBARTON, W.Va. -- Cemeteries are yet another casualty of "cheap" coal -- another heartbreaking loss that accompanies mountaintop removal and the overture of global warming.
A committee of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition members and members of the Sierra Club are working toward the passage of a state law that will protect family cemeteries in the coalfields. Written before this legislative began, we welcome your suggestions, questions, information and involvement.
Why are we working on the issue of family cemeteries? Because as a consequence of the mad rush to blow up mountains and dump them into valleys to get the coal out as quickly as possible, family cemeteries all over the coalfields are disappearing -- and many more are now being threatened. We've heard numerous stories about people being unable to visit their family cemeteries that are now surrounded by desecrated mountains. State law requires coal companies to allow people to visit cemeteries, but mining companies are refusing to grant access. Our committee took a copy of the law to Department of Environmental Protection and State Historical Preservation Office officials. The officials say that the law does not give any state agency the authority to enforce it. Worse yet are the stories of cemeteries that no longer exist. The stories of people's pain upon finding out that their loved ones' and ancestors' bones now apparently lie at the bottom of a valley fill or are part of the "overburden" used to shore up highwalls from old mining sites. Are family remains literally part of the "reclamation" that we hear so much about? Walter Young of Mingo County tells of his vanished family cemetery: "So the coal waste impoundment up above me is being constructed each and every day now, ever since 2001, I guess. It's being built in little stages, but upon completion and when full it will be 56 acres big, and could be allowed to expand. My ancestors were buried right at the toe of (what is now) that impoundment, in a little cemetery that I thought was safe. But it wasn't. When they built the coal waste impoundment, they ran an ad in the paper and then removed the cemetery. "I called up one Memorial Day -- my great-grandmother was buried there. And I asked the coal company because the cemetery is surrounded by mining, 'What's your rules or policy on me coming up to visit that cemetery?' "And they said, 'That cemetery is no longer there.'
"I said, 'Where is it at? My ancestors were buried there.' "The boy on the phone at the mining company says, 'Well, I'll find out for you and let you know.' "So he calls back a couple days later and says, 'I'm returning your call about the cemetery.' Yeah? Right. Where's my family at? 'I'm sorry, that's the reason I called. We don't know.' "They didn't know where they moved the cemetery to! Or the people that's in the cemetery." Another Mingo County resident says, "I went to Kayford Mountain and looked at Mr. Gibson's plight. I watched them set a drill right in the middle of a family cemetery that had been there over a hundred years. I watched them drill a borehole right in the middle of it." Stories like these will continue to multiply, and more and more pieces of our Appalachian past will disappear forever, unless we do something about it. If you'd like to get involved or have information or suggestions, please call Dianne Bady at 304-360-2072. Bady is co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and this article first appeared in OVEC's newsletter.
http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/mountainmemories/200902170759 | | |
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I'm pleased that some folks are interested to read a bit more of the "Appalachian Leaves" material I posted about yesterday. Here is the second sample, after which I'll use filtered/locked postings for this material. If you want to be added, please comment on this or the previous entry (now or if you're stumbling across it in the future and would like access to the rest): ( Appalachian Leaves II & III )Here is what I wrote in yesterday's intro:
I'm going to start posting the short "chapters" of something I wrote five years ago and would like to return to. It is not a novel--it is some sort of Jungian active-imagination, or a shamanic trek into Inner Appalachia, a mythscape or a culture-scape of mythic shards. It is postmodern in many ways, including stylistically, ideologically, spiritually and sexually. It's also an experiment in Tricksterish ideation, and requires surrender to a stream of consciousness. If you sincerely try to inhabit it at the conceptual level, it will make neurons fire differently. (Don't worry--you can come back :-).
After a few samples, I will post them in locked entries, one a day, since there will be at least 30. They are short, imagistic, archetypal "visions"... each operating under a different logic, and they are organized primarily by correspondence and association. It is also folkart, and the Joan of Arc character is definitely an active part of the spiritual me (Joan is one of my Allies).
If you want to be in the filter, please let me know by commenting and I will include you. I will post 2 or 3 openly.
These are "Work" and "Spirit Books" more than they are anything else, though they could provide the basis for something else. I want to see if I can return to the state of mind that generated these and get more, though. I have also wished to ask for certain kinds of random collaboration, too, and may do that as a further kind of postmodern experiment.
Go to yesterday's intro to read the first "chapter". | | |
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I'm going to start posting the short "chapters" of something I wrote five years ago and would like to return to. It is not a novel--it is some sort of Jungian active-imagination, or a shamanic trek into Inner Appalachia, a mythscape or a culture-scape of mythic shards. It is postmodern in many ways, including stylistically, ideologically, spiritually and sexually. It's also an experiment in Tricksterish ideation, and requires surrender to a stream of consciousness. If you sincerely try to inhabit it at the conceptual level, it will make neurons fire differently. (Don't worry--you can come back :-). After a few samples, I will post them in locked entries, one a day, since there will be at least 30. They are short, imagistic, archetypal "visions"... each operating under a different logic, and they are organized primarily by correspondence and association. It is also folkart, and the Joan of Arc character is definitely an active part of the spiritual me (Joan is one of my Allies). If you want to be in the filter, please let me know by commenting and I will include you. I will post 2 or 3 openly. These are "Work" and "Spirit Books" more than they are anything else, though they could provide the basis for something else. I want to see if I can return to the state of mind that generated these and get more, though. I have also wished to ask for certain kinds of random collaboration, too, and may do that as a further kind of postmodern experiment. Here is the first one, which is longer than any others (at seven double-spaced pages--most are one or two): ( Appalachian Leaves I ) | | |
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I did not realize until today that the Pentecostal "Church of God" I attended (on my own & briefly) as a child--a denomination headquartered in Cleveland, TN and now the second largest Pentecostal church, with more than 8 million members--had a more peculiar founder than I'd ever heard or imagined. Heard him mentioned on the radio this morning. Here's the Wikipedia on him: Homer Aubrey Tomlinson (October 25, 1892 - December 5, 1968), was a Bishop who planned to crown himself King of the World or "King of All Nations of Men" in Jerusalem on October 7, 1966. He founded the Theocratic Party and had been its candidate for U.S. President since 1952. [1] He died on December 5, 1968 in Jamaica, Queens. [2] His Church of God was headquartered in Cleveland, Tennessee. He was the son of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson. References - ^ "Homer A. Tomlinson". The New Yorker. 1966. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1966/09/24/1966_09_24_067_TNY_CARDS_000283992. Retrieved on 12 October 2008. "Profile of Bishop Homer A. Tomlinson, who plans to crown himself King of the World or King of All Nations of Men in Jerusalem, Oct. 7, 1966. As Bishop and General Overseer of the Homer Tomlinson Branch of the Church of God, he claims a following of 75,000 persons, or saints, and 600 ministers with churches in all fifty states, but greatest strength in Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and N.C."
- ^ "Bishop Homer Tomlinson Dies. Crowned Himself World's King. Preacher Carried Own Throne ...". New York Times. December 6, 1968. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F0061FFD3C5E147493C4A91789D95F4C8685F9. Retrieved on 12 October 2008. "Bishop Homer A. Tomlinson died Wednesday at Manhattan Veterans Hospital after a long illness. He was 76 years old and lived at 93-05 224th Street in ..."
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West Virginia has historically resisted government; its history includes one of the strongest anarchic elements, and one of the longest organic anarchic folk traditions, in the the Western world. This component of WV history has been neglected and suppressed.
To its credit on some points and demerit on others, much of West Virginia is unincorporated. Though I grew up in a small town with about 800 people (then--now half that), it was not incorporated. You couldn't fight City Hall because there was no City Hall. No administration, no public services. Those had to come from county or state government. This early pattern still makes it very hard for WV to resist industrial exploitation and results in inferior rural and small town infrastructures, and the economies of post-industrial, primarily unincorporated counties like Wyoming are comparable to reservation economies with the dependence on remote federal agencies).
The western mountains were an early refuge for many types of people and provided the original cross-cultural buckskin archetype of the American frontiersman. Tri-racial mingling began with the earliest contact and is attested in isolated populations and among Melungeon and "Black Irish" or "Black Dutch" lineages. Intermarriage between European men and Native women, following the early Jamestown pattern, is attested in early narratives (as is tension and violence, too). Significant numbers of slaves, white and black, indentured servants, retreating native peoples, criminals, explorers and religious visionaries all made their home here early on, and often as a matter of escape or avoidance of the broader culture. Many of the European settlers had cultural roots in Scottish, English and Irish civil conflicts, and included Germanic refugees from the Wars of Religion, and Huguenots and others... most representing iconclastic and anti-ecclessial protestant traditions, protestant illuminist traditions.
It wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that most mountain communities had churches with full-time clergy. Up to then, much of the region was served by circuit riders who might show up every-other-Sunday or once a month or once a year. Among pre-Civil War generations, there seems to have been a general suspicion of religious institutions; many here avoided religion altogether, many mountain Christians practiced alone or in denominational churches usually free of centralized authority. It is remarkably easy to found a church here. Some also developed strong suspicions of institutional churches during the coalfield conflicts, when the industry attempted to control ministers and congregations, especially within the confines of coal camps themselves (something well depicted in the Sayles movie Matewan). There are still many Christians here who are suspicious of clergy and church and who don't attend (my family, in the past and now, has many such people in it; religion for them is extremely intimate and personal), and there are many, many autonomous churches. Appalachian and black church share many points of comparison, and our rural roads have many of the kinds of places that would, in more populous areas, be storefront churches, a few literally still tar-paper shacks.
Unlike the more prosperous South, much of Appalachia avoided early class stratification. Agricultural "caste" never became developed or entrenched in WV in the ways it did elsewhere, and intense stratification became typical only after the Civil War and established industrial economy took root. While slavery was practiced in what became West Virginia, the entire economy and population existed on a smaller scale and the cultural relationship to slavery was distinct from regions further north or south; for us the Civil War was a revolution against Virginia, and was more about our founding than about slavery or state's rights; it took advantage of the war to sever exploitative economic relationships with the south and re-align with the north (which served WV relatively well until the railroads died, except that it's what shifted us from southern agrarian ideal to northern industrial ideal, and now leaves us with this bastardized economic nowhereland. From another perspective, WV was founded as an act of industrial espionage, a northern industrialist coup against a predominantly war-avoidant agrarian populace).
WV was a major center for union activity and for militant resistance, including some of the largest armed uprisings in post-Civil War American history. The Blair Mountain People's Uprising is a major example. The first state police organized in the US and the modern re-organization of the National Guard were to suppress these economic-democratic uprisings. (I live four miles from Star City, founded as a communist municipality by glass factory workers; it once had an impressive bridge funded by the Soviet Union. The NY Times called WV "Little Russia" in 1920s cartoons). WV attracted a significant counter-cultural influx in the 1960s and 70s (though other Appalachian states got more), but after the Civil War substantial freedom and anarchic self-consciousness seem to have gradually declined, and now the dominant note is one of fatalist despair or resignation. It is my belief that West Virginia is now experiencing a major increase in authoritarian politics/religion and racism, and that this has attended the last 20 years of economic decline.
When I went down south to visit family on Jan. 2, I saw poverty-scapes unlike anything I'd seen before... except in India. All the human-made stuff is getting uglier and uglier as it falls apart; there are multiple ghost-towns on any journey over a couple hours; increasing numbers of people are killing themselves with the cheapest and most damaging drugs; the very landscape is being turned from beautiful mountains to toxic bombsites through mountaintop removal mining... all very bleak, and seemingly likely to draw on the worst and not the best in our cultural history.
And industrial founders aside, the state's motto is Montani Semper Liberi, Mountaineers are Always Free. I love that.
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Briana McElfish sent a message to the members of Coal River Mountain Watch [Yahoo list and page on Facebook]. --------------------
Subject: Action needed in Huntington!!!!! Perry Stone, a world renown evangelist, is doing a special teaching seminar at Christ Temple Church in Huntington that will last all week. Last night, he kicked off the event with a pro-coal anti-environmentalist rant. He even went so far as to call environmentalists ANTI-CHRISTIAN tree worshipers. He told the crowd that if America would invest in coal, WV would be financially saved and the tithe would go up, and we would be blessed by God. WE NEED TO LET PERRY KNOW THAT AS A 'MESSENGER OF GOD' THAT HE NEEDS TO BE SENDING THE RIGHT MESSAGE AND THAT MOUNTAIN-TOP REMOVAL IS KILLING WV!!! The conference will continue all this week. Morning service starts at 9:30, evening service at 7pm (get there EARLY!) everyday this week. Christ Temple Church is off the 5th Street exit (ON THE ENTRANCE RAMP) in Huntington, WV. Please come with shirts/signs/buttons for solidarity. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR STATEMENT IS NOT OFFENSIVE TO THE CHURCH... remember... we want to WIN people for our cause... not turn them against us. | | |
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WV Dems narrowly voted down a platform position in favor of a moratorium on mountain top removal. A clear majority of state citizens favor such a moratorium. The effort was originated by environmentalist and Young Democrat, Daniel Chiotos. Audio Here | | |
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A scythe whose glint makes gasps and kissing of the hand.
The waxing Moon was gorgeous last night, set in a velvety-blue sky of extraordinary gradients, as though the transformation of turquoise to covellite. Hung above the dead and the silvery-gray of their rising stones. All around, dark silhouettes of undulating mountains make the walls of a bowl held aloft by whirling Geb.
The Tsalagi saw in these eastern mountains the body of a defeated serpent, cut down to spare the Earth. Now I invoke Sutekh, and taste the blood of Apep in the dew. Somewhere in this vastness, tomorrow will come. Somewhere, it is always today.
Inside the house and looking out, the Moon was framed by the exotic lines of tropical plants, and with its aesthetic power pulled soul and senses beyond time and space: a hook for flight wires or for a tensile bridge to ... somewhere, otherwhere, oncewhere. A vantage for sighting here. A reflector who unveils Himself, a gradual mirror, a place to stand to move the world, the monthly insemination of a self-renewing kosmos. | | |
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I heard a good radio essay this morning by Irene McKinney (a woman I'm proud to join the state in calling "Poet Laureate").
This essay is a meditation on food and class consciousness as well as the power of the old, old ways. She mentions this clearly, in fact. (I saw her on TV once with a Kali lunchbox on her shelves behind her ;-)
There's a surprising bit about Rapunzel.
Makes me aware that Lord Osiris, Possessor of Many Onions, arises first as ramps in our locale in early spring (along with Pan and Dionysos and a host of other green Mysteries dancing in Appalachian coves).
Very good for Pagan and/or Appalachian listening.
Here's the Site-link and Here's the MP3 Link (it's 5:20 in length--or so says the site, the pop-up says 7:00 something)
Here is one of her poems
The reporting of Emily Corio on the WVU scandals is very good, too, and available on the site. | | |
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"Too Many Shadows" and the sweetness of separation and longing.
Though this is an original composition, Goddess Isis bless Jean Ritchie for her preeminent role in collecting the songs of our ancestors and preserving the heart of folk culture. Ritchie gathered the scattered pieces and gave them new life with her love. She is considered to be the "Mother of Folk." She is a True Bard, and there is no greater scholar-practitioner.
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Panel: Bresch didn't earn M.B.A. Tuesday, April 22, 2008 A five-member panel has concluded unanimously that Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch, daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, did not earn an M.B.A. degree from West Virginia University and that administrators acted improperly in granting her the degree retroactively in October, according to a person familiar with the report. The panel's report, three months in the making, was delivered to WVU Provost Gerald Lang yesterday. It has not been released publicly.
I agree with this writer:The chain of events is sort of like this:
Fall 07 - Bresch is promoted to COO at Mylan and claims an EMBA on her resume.
Fall 07 - Someone feeds the Pittsburgh Post Gazette information that this EMBA is bogus
Late Fall 07 - PG starts digging and finds that her degree was awarded in Fall 07 retroactively because of administrative errors. Turns out that she is many [at least 22] credits shy of the requirement. She claims she was awarded credit for experience but that is not confirmed.
Winter 07/08 - PG files FOA requests to get phone records & e-mail records to see who has been talking to who within the WVU administration regarding this issue. Turns out that Garrison's office has had direct contact with Bresch and has been involved in talking with Records Office
A lot of detail left out but that is the Readers Digest version. Basically the PG started sniffing around, she got wind and placed some calls to "friends" to take care of the matter, WVU gets caught trying to give the degree and they get caught trying to cover it up. Bresch and Garrison are HS classmates and Garrison was one of Gov Manchin's top advisors. So it is another black eye for WVU and it has all the top dogs involved.
Garrison must go.
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Appalachian identity is important to me, and a lot of that is bound up with the extended family of childhood. Back then, there were almost twice as many people in the coal counties of southern West Virginia. I had about 50 "first order" relatives (grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles, and first cousins treated like siblings). Gatherings before the mid 80s were as large as 250 folks, all kin and most bound by ties to land that stretched into a pre-Revolution past; at holidays, 40-60 people would pass through my grandparents' house and sit at table...
I realized with SURPRISE today that there are only four members of my grandparent's family left in the state. I will be one of two within a few years. If things go as they generally do, in about 20 years I'll be the very last one in West Virginia. Our family will never be in one place again, and there may be nearly a score of them who've never been in Appalachia at all. What's left of my family hangs by one thin 93 year old thread. When she breaks, it really doesn't exist for me anymore. What will Appalachia be to me, then?
It's OK and has to be, but it's pretty incomprehensible to me. It's a fact, but it doesn't make much sense. Doesn't seem possible. It never occured to me that I could be the last one. Not once.
Family and culture... even mountains are ephemeral and passing. Mountains!
This must be partly why I've been so determined to stay here, why it's been a pretty fierce commitment. Some part of me must have decided that if there must be a last Charles Stewart familly member in the region, it's got to be me. Strange fate to pick a childless heir... | | |
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I have been inactively holding the WV Chair in the Pagan Unity Campaign for the last two years. PUC is a valuable advocacy network. Time obligations are minimal and there is no cost involved. It is mostly an annual "get out the vote" effort coupled with postcard campaigns aimed at making lawmakers aware of the existence of Paganism. There are PUC representatives in almost every state and territory of the US. I don't want this job and have mostly just been keeping the chair warm. Political involvement is not conducive to my personal spiritual wellbeing. I have too much animus in relation to the prevailing order, and for the last decade, political involvment has filled me with hatred and a paralyzing frustration. I despise each of this year's candidates and think I'm permanently done with voting. I am certainly done with politicized volunteering. If you'd be interested in filling this chair, please check out the PUC website and comment here and I'll put you in touch. Otherwise, WV will have no PUC representative in the upcoming election cycle. Copper Stewart | | |
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Hey, someone I work with found a new fish species in Elk River --
A WVU professor has discovered a new species of fish in the lower Elk River near Charleston. Stuart Welsh, assistant professor in the Wildlife and Fisheries Resources Program in the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences, named the new species Crystallaria cincotta, or "diamond darter." His findings were recently published in Zootaxa, an international journal for animal taxonomists. The diamond darter is a close relative of the crystal darter (Crystallaria asprella), a small fish found in the drainage basins of the Mississippi River. Diamond darters are translucent; adults range from 3-5 inches long. More at http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/news/page/6507/ 
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We live next to an old but still active cemetery, and by the grace of the Dead, have a peaceful, park-like environment on two sides of the house. It is good. Of course the snow always makes it extra quiet. Most of it has melted now. 
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