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Dropping The Ball & Moving Out?

First I have to apologize for dropping the ball. Last week on the Outdoor Bloggers Summit blog, Kristine issued a challenge entitled Write About The Good. I committed to writing a post for the challenge.

From the OBS – “… encouraging all bloggers to find one local, grassroots program that is supported by people who hunt or fish and write about that program on your blog.”

I couldn’t have committed to something at a worse time. To be downright honest – mountaintop removal has taken over my life at the moment. I’m reading the book Coal River, I’m three quarters of the way through the dissertation mentioned in the last post, and I have just started reading the FPEIS (Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement) for MTR.

I do still plan to write a post concerning area Hunters Helping The Hungry. But I’m just going to miss the challenge week by a bit. In the meantime please go to the OBS blog and check out posts generated by its members for the challenge.

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The second thing – I may be moving out of Blogger. The past week has been a nightmare on this blog as far as things crashing or just going insane. Before I joined the battle to stop MTR this blog was nothing more than a hobby. It wasn’t a big deal before but now I use the blog as a tool as well as being a hobby.

I think the problems last week just highlighted my reason for wanting to move the blog. This blog is not mine – it belongs to Blogspot and as such is subject to issues with Blogger. I’ve been wanting to put the blog on it’s own domain for a while but haven’t for a few reasons. There are quite a few blogs linking here, the blog has a Google pagerank of 3, and Technorati authority at 250.

You might think – So what? – That is what I thought to. I’m not trying to sale anything here so all the ranking counts for squat in the big picture. Except that now I have taken on Ol’ King Coal, all of the sudden the ranking really matters to me. People that come here reading a post about ginseng are exposed to MTR. Awareness is the key.

Right now I’m stuck in the middle of trying to make the decision. To move or not to move? That is the question.

Bringing Down The Mountains

Bringing Down the Mountains:
The Impact of Mountaintop Removal Surface Coal Mining on Southern West Virginia Communities, 1970-2004

by Shirley L. Stewart Burns

Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History.

“In 1970, 45,261 West Virginia jobs were supplied due to coal mining and 143,132,284 tons of coal were produced. Thirty-two years later, in 2002, 15,377 people were employed by the coal companies and together they produced 163,896,890 tons of coal.“

“Surface mines destroyed people’s lives on a whole different level, and left them virtually helpless to stop it. Mountaintop removal mines polluted streams and filled in valleys. Some of these valley fills are among the largest man-made earthen structures in the world.“

“The massive machines on mountaintop removal sites have ensured that more coal can be obtained with less human labor and greatly increased productivity.The expansion of mountaintop removal in West Virginia since its inception in the 1970s has grown at an accelerated pace from forty-four permits covering 9,800 acres throughout the 1980s to the granting of permits covering 12,540 acres in a nine-month period in 2002 alone.“

http://kitkat.wvu.edu:8080/files/4047/Stewart_Burns_Shirley_dissertation.pdf

The above three passages copied with permission.

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I’m bringing this information to you for a couple of reasons. One of those is although I talk a lot on the subject of mountaintop removal rant style on this blog – everything I say is based in fact.

Something I have mentioned here before – one reason I feel so comfortable talking and ranting about mountaintop removal is because the reader doesn’t have to take my word for anything. The facts are there – all you have to do is look. The dissertation is full of facts with sources. If you are serious about learning the facts about mountaintop removal coal mining – the dissertation is a must read.

Shirley also wrote a book with the same title. (clicking the photo will take you to Amazon)

The other reason for bringing all this up – I want to introduce two new co-authors to the Stop MTR blog – Matthew Burns, a Wildlife Management Specialist, and his wife Shirley Stewart Burns who has her PhD in history.

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I love the way the Stop MTR blog is taking on a personality and a presence of its own. From its creation, I have been a little worried about the blog being directly connected to this blog. When I say that I mean most traffic to it was coming either from here or just a couple of other blogs. Although I am very fond of voicing my opinion – my opinions are not enough no matter how many blogs I author.

The Stop MTR blog now has five authors. It is ranking high in Google for MTR related search info and has been referred to a few times already as the best new source for mountaintop removal related info out there. Although that is a wonderful thing to hear from someone – being the best was not my intention. The intention was to supply the reader with all of the proof available. Nothing myself or anyone else tells you has to be taken at face value – it is easy research and we supply the research material. That was my intention. We are there to make the reader aware of all the devastating aspects of mountaintop removal coal mining and we have proof of what we tell you.

I hope you stop by and welcome two new co-authors to the Stop MTR blog and new to the blogging community but definitely not new in the battle against mountaintop removal coal mining.

Template Malfunction

I don’t know what is going on with Blogger but as regular visitors can tell this blog format has changed again. It wasn’t something I wanted to do and is actually my third attempt tonight at a stable template.

The post title fonts and a few other things went haywire. Two link lists were lost and had to be rebuilt from scratch and there is something wrong with Bloggers add link javascript as well. I had to add each link saving the changes and reopening the window after each link was added. That took forever. I’m one step closer to ditching Blogger. Like the popups the other day this issue came right out of nowhere.

Just thought I’d let folks know the reason for the changes. I’m still clueless as to what happen or if this template will remain stable.

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Adding – I found the problem to be caused by another piece of javascript code. The problem this time was caused by the Amber Alert code that displayed above my posts. Putting it there like it has been for months suddenly caused my post title to appear as regular font and it played heck with the now non-existent right sidebar.

For some reason Blogger seems to be choking on javascript at the moment. I have no intention of making any more changes. This blog will stay like this until Blogger flounders and rolls over.

Honey, don’t forget the dust masks.

Imagine having to put dust masks on your weekly shopping list.

What do you think caused this cloud of dust? Maybe it was an explosion on a nearby mountaintop removal site. Or, maybe there is a strong wind coming up the valley. Maybe it is just a fluke or anomaly.

None of the above. This cloud was created from the passing of one coal truck. The trucks pass by here day and night non-stop. Wouldn’t it be fun living here?

This is just another example of the coal industry not caring about the communities in which they took over to get rich (mine coal). The coal industry spreads their waste laden water everywhere else – why not put some on this road?

Wasting Away

A few days ago I wrote this post showing downed trees for a power line right-of-way cleared by Massey Energy.

The right-of-way is located on the Clear Fork side of Kayford Mountain. These photos detail more specifically what it is that bothered me about the clear cut.

The power line is laying in this ravine. The only reason all of these trees were cut down and left to rot is to facilitate ease of installation. Once the high power line is in the air – the cut trees no longer serve a purpose.

In these next two photos I am standing on a road with the ravine to my left and the knob to my right. You can barely make out the three power lines coming from the top of the poles in this photo.

Standing on the road half way up the mountain these lines are probably at least a hundred yards over my head. Except for a little natural gravity swag in the lines – they go straight across to the top of the ravine to my left.

This photo is a little blurry – I had to zoom in. But you can plainly see the poles and the line laying down the mountain. The line will be hung in the air and will end up being a couple of hundred yards over this ravine.

You would think if the trees were cut to use as a physical right-of-way that would be somewhat justified although it doesn’t justify leaving them to rot. Seeing as how the trees were cut down just so the job of hanging the line is made easier – I see no justification whatsoever.

Anytime I talk about the coal industry and it’s blatant disregard for anything environmental – this is what I mean. This right-of-way is only a very small piece of the overall destruction caused by the coal industry. It will take years for this hillside to return to anything close to normal all because the coal company wanted and easier day at work.

I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there was a law in this state that said they had to cut down all of those trees. If that is the case then there should be a law attached to it telling them to clean up their frigging mess. But there again, if it is a law it would be covered by the reclamation laws and those went out the window years ago.

So You Wanna Be A Seng Hunter

There are four stalks of ginseng in this photo. Can you spot them?

When I am in the woods anytime from spring to early autumn I can’t help but look for various types of plants. The main one being ginseng. With years of actively hunting the various plant species it is hard to go into the woods and not look.

The photo contains black and blue cohosh, fern, maple sprout, blackberry branch, garlic mustard and four stalks of ginseng. Plus a few plants I don’t know.

Click here to see the ginseng.

Some may notice once it is pointed out in the hidden photo it jumps out of the shown photo. That is the same way it is for learning to find it. Once you know it – it is unmistakable.

Walker Machinery Does It Again

For some reason, anybody high up in the food chain at Walker Machinery voicing their ridiculous opinions on mountaintop removal can bring the rant right out of me.

I’ve said it in the past, I’m all for one’s own opinion. The difference here is the opinions of Walker Machinery are motivated strictly by the bottom line. A person would have to be a fool to think otherwise. Maybe Walker Machinery is actually a bunch of well educated scientists that decided to drop everything and go into the heavy equipment business. They may very well be scientists – not sure about the well educated part though.

Roger Lilly is the marketing manager for Walker/Cat Machinery. Walker is a major supplier and service dealer for heavy equipment to mountaintop removal sites. That is it – they have no other function. They are like the little fish I told you about in an earlier post. You know the ones you see swimming with killer whales and sharks. They are there only for whatever scraps the whale (coal industry) decides to send their way. Scavengers – in other words.

Roger Lilly – Going green is beginning to make me see red
The Charleston Gazette – March 13, 2008

I highly suggest reading the story from the gazette. It is probably one of the worst pieces I have ever read.

There are a couple of things I want to point out in particular about the article although the whole thing shows how well educated this man is.

“I don’t recycle plastic because the government and the chemical industry don’t want me to. If they did, they would make it worth my time and gas to go out of my way to take them to the recycling center. (I live rurally.)” – Lilly

He wants to be paid to do his part.

From time to time I have said how the friends of coal would be quite happy if coalfield residents didn’t exist -

“Forgive me for worrying more about vacation homes on the rim of the New River Gorge than a mountaintop removal site 26 hard miles south of nowhere. America needs the energy. Desperately. West Virginia needs the jobs. Desperately. I’ve done the math. Win-win.” – Lilly

Phone call for Mr. Lilly – you know who it is.

The people in the coalfields couldn’t care less about vacation homes on the New River Gorge. Why? Because we live 26 hard miles south of nowhere. And as far as your math – I think you need to do it again. If you can’t do math – it is real easy research and available everywhere. Matter of fact a lot of people have already done the research for you. All you have to do is read. 125,000 jobs – 1950 / 20,000 jobs – 2005. Unless you were talking about the math that adds up your bottom line. In that case – I’m quite sure it is win-win, for you and the coal industry.

“Seventy cents of every dollar Walker Machinery makes comes from the coal industry,” said Roger Lilly, marketing manager for company in Belle.

“Lilly says the coal industry is under fire from extreme environmentalists, uncertainty in the courts and the shifting marketplace.”

Last two quotes from – The Register Herald – Feb 13, 2008

Good Code Gone Bad

This is a blogging community FYI.

A couple of days ago I started experiencing unexplainable popups on this blog. I’m not a fan of popups and I surely don’t want somebody else seeing them in relation to my blog. At first I thought it was an issue with Blogger itself. Simply because it came right out of the blue. I haven’t added anything in a while.

While Blogger support was looking in to the problem – so was I. Anytime you add javascript from another website to your blog or website you are adding third party functionality. In other words – somebody else has control of the feed to that particular piece of code. With that knowledge, I started removing all third party function to this blog.

The guilty code was coming from rankwidget.com. I had two widgets on here displaying Technorati ranking. You will notice those are gone now. As soon as I removed the rankwidget code the popups went away. Just to verify I put the site all back together with no popups and then added the suspected code. The popups came back.

So if you are having popup problems on your site and you use rankwidget I would suggest checking there first.

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I’m glad I deemed today Almost… Wordless Wednesday. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind but I thought this was important.

Almost… Wordless Wednesday

Country Roads – John Denver, 1971