Sherry Chandler

Coal

This year’s Appalachian Writers Workshop featured many readings from good works on mountaintop removal.

MotesBooks has published We All Live Downstream: Writings about Mountaintop Removal, edited by Jason Howard with writings by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry, Earl Hamner, Ashley Judd, Silas House, Denise Giardina, Erik Reece, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bob Edwards, Penny Loeb, Hal Crowther, Jean Ritchie, Terry Tempest Williams, Jeff Biggers, Ann Pancake, George Ella Lyon, Ben Sollee, Maurice Manning, and many more.

Wind Publications has published Missing Mountains edited by Kristin Johannsen, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall.

Ann Pancake read from her novel Strange as this Weather Has Been (Shoemaker and Hoard/Counterpoint). A detail from Jeff Chapman-Crane’s sculpture, The Agony of Gaia (pictured above), is featured on the cover of that novel, and on the night of Pancake’s reading, he brought the sculpture to the Great Room of the May Stone Building for all of us to see. (You can download a podcast of Ann Pancake reading from this novel at A River & Sound Review, episode 13.)

University Press of Kentucky has published Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal by Silas House and Jason Howard. The book is a collection of oral histories. Embedded below is a podcast from the University Press featuring Silas and Jason.

Unfortunately, the protests against mountaintop removal are being cast as a fight against jobs, and my friend Jeff Hess has drawn my attention to this article on confrontation between local residents and protestors: Violence Escalating Against Anti-Coal Activists. I am given to understand that some of these counter protestors are on the coal company payroll, though I can’t document that statement. The fact is, though, that mountaintop removal mining creates very few jobs. It doesn’t take many workers to blow the tops off the mountains and push the rubble into the valleys with bulldozers.

On Friday, we stopped for gas at the Mi-Dee Mart, which sits at the end of the Jethro Amburgey Bridge, just across Toublesome Creek from the Hindman Settlement School. Workshoppers stroll over to the Mi-Dee Mart to pick up forgotten toiletries or to buy a pop (forbidden inside Settlement School buildings). It’s about the only store within walking distance and Settlement School Director Mike Mullins has been known to say “If you can’t get it at Mi-Dee Mart, you don’t need it.”

As I stopped by to pay for my purchases, I was dismayed to see, prominently displayed by the register, leaflets advertising a rally in support of the coal industry.

Update: Coal Group Reveals 6 More Forged Lobbying Letters

A Retreat of One’s Own

A Retreat of One’s Own
The Gathering of Writers and Songwriters
May 17-19, 2009
Greenbo Lake State Park

This retreat, sponsored by Motes Books, is designed especially for writers of fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry, and for songwriters. Silas House, Anne Shelby & Kate Larken will teach during this event; Marianne Worthington & Sue Massek will be guest presenters. Gather with us at beautiful Greenbo Lake State Park May 17-19 for an inspiring, creative experience. (Application deadline is April 25.)

Details at the link.