Music For Change

Want to help Tom Neilson win an independent music award in the social action category? Check out The Independent Music Awards website for how you can vote this song in. The more widely circulated the more people learn about the issues of mining and coal ash in the region. Pass it along!

Soltice Morning
Tom Neilson

Over a billion gallons of sludge and coal ash
Where Kingston Fossil been keeping their stash.
Those coal ash ponds are a ticking time bomb
Of chromium, cadmium, and barium.

Clean coal's a fairy tale we don't need
Just a corporate sale of pollution and greed
Arsenic, mercury, nickel, and lead
All lining the banks of the river bed.

Don't eat the fish, don't swim in the river
Water birds die just from eating their dinner
Don't drink the water, breathe the air bouquet
Cause you're suckin coal ash from the TVA

See also:
Coal Country Music
Music of Coal
Music Saves Mountains
Independent Music Awards
Appalshop

Rep. Yarmuth Defends Kentucky Mountains on House Floor

Political Winter Storms in the West Virginia Coalfields

In the old days, in the coal towns of West Virginia, winter was a time when folks hunkered around the pot-bellied stove and whiled away time spinning stories. At times, someone would fiddle with the draft, poke the coal embers, and release an extra dollop of acrid coal smell. Houses were drafty. Your front side facing the stove could be burning up, your backside shivering cold.

This winter, the politics of coal is burning red-hot. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) vetoed an earlier permit granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would expand Arch Coal’s Spruce Number 1 mountaintop removal mine. Without the veto, surface mining would claim 2,200 mountainous acres and bury 7 miles of stream. Environmentalists who had fought the proposal for ten years celebrated. The coal industry steamed.

The EPA has jurisdiction through the Clean Water Act. Yet EPA has used its 404 veto authority only 12 times since 1972, while processing about 80,000 Clean Water Act permits a year. EPA based this ruling on science, finding that “in streams where valley fills were proposed but not yet constructed, water quality was within scientifically defensible, acceptable levels to support native aquatic life.” Yet in streams where the upper headwaters were buried or disturbed by mining, “water quality as measured by conductivity levels was substantially above levels believed to cause excursion of water quality standards or significant degradation.” Clear enough?

The coal industry cried foul. After all, a permit had been granted by the Army Corps of Engineers. How could the industry make plans if the “rug could be pulled from under them?” King Coal, marionette meister that it is, jerked hard its strings, and all our politicians danced their jig.

West Virginia Senator Joe  Manchin echoed Arch Coal’s lament, that “they [Arch Coal] made every effort to comply with the EPA consultant’s recommendations and simultaneously maintain an economically viable operation.” A previously secret engineering study then came to light that Arch Coal refused to consider a plan that would have cut the stream impacts by half with an additional added cost of 55 cents per ton, a 1 percent additional production cost.

Acting West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin issued a “Call To Arms Rally for Coal” in the state capitol. The “call to arms” wording was later changed to “alert alert alert.” State Sen. Mike Green, (D-Raleigh), chair of the Senate Energy, Industry, and Mining Committee, said the “unprecedented action” by President Obama’s EPA was “nothing short of a reckless abuse of power.” The state Senate unanimously passed a resolution opposing the EPA decision. At the rally, the invocation was delivered by Rev. Mitchell Bias, from the Delbarton Regional Church of God. “Coal is your will. You placed it here on earth. It is part of your master plan,” Bias stated. Some people attending the rally wore black “Friends of Coal” T-shirts reading, “Pro-Christ, Pro-Life, Pro-American, Pro-Guns, Pro-Coal … Republican.”

During a counter demonstration, Maria Gunnoe said, “Mountaintop removal is no longer a jobs issue. It is a health issue. They are killing us by destroying our mountains and destroying our water.”  Gunnoe’s point was underscored by the January death of anti-mountaintop removal heroine Judy Bonds, who died at age 58 from cancer. More than 400 people commemorated her life at a memorial service, vowing to continue the fight.

January was also the month that Vermont State Senator Virginia Lyons introduced a precedent setting resolution into her legislature as a first step toward a U.S. Constitutional Amendment. Hopes are high that it will pass. The resolution proposes, “an amendment to the United States Constitution that provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.”

Winter is still cold and dark, yet daylight is getting longer, the sun brighter.

(Story by Allen Johnson, co-founder of Christians for the Mountains, via blog.sojo.net)

Wendell Berry @ I Love Mountains Day Rally

Live Stream of the Kentucky Sit-In

Free live streaming by Ustream

Exclusive Videos From the Frankfort Sit-In

The Latest On The Sit-In

A Statement from Wendell Berry, February 12, 2011, 10:58 a.m.

It is now Feb. 12.  By now we expected to be either in jail or bailed out.  Instead, by Gov. Beshear’s invitation, we are staying in his reception room in the Capitol.  We have had a good night’s sleep and are feeling fine.  The governor and his staff, the custodians and security staff of this building, all have treated us with hospitality and perfect kindness.  We have spoken much of this and of our gratitude.

A little to our surprise, the Governor spoke with us at some length yesterday, and listened evidently with care as our people bore witness to the abuses they live with every day.  He conceded graciously to two of our requests: that he would visit the home places of some of our people to see for himself what they are telling him about.  The conversation otherwise was a standoff.  We are far from agreement on most of our agenda of grievances.  But we feel that the conversation was useful because it made our differences utterly clear.  The Governor conceded our right to our opinions, but he believes that our accusations against the coal industry and its allies in state government are matters merely of opinion and personal feeling, without standing in fact, in law, or in principle.  He believes, moreover, that surface mining can be, and apparently that it is, carried on without damage to the land, the people, and the water supply.

We, of course, respectfully disagree.  We are relieved this morning by an accumulation of evidence that the first goal of our protest has been achieved.  State government’s official silence on the grave issues of surface mining has been broken.  Those issues have now entered the public conversation as they never have before.  Obviously, we are determined to stop the abuses of the coal industry, and to that end we are determined also to keep this conversation going.  We look forward to continuing our discussion with the Governor, and with anybody else who may want to talk with us. 

We wish to say further—and this is extremely important to us—that our protest is against methods of mining that are abusive.  We do not oppose mining per se.  Our purpose is to protect our land and water.  And we most certainly bear no ill will against those who work in mines.

For the latest on the sit-in check the newly created Kentucky Rising blog

SIT-IN UPDATE: 3:30pm EST: Sleepover at the Governor's

Heading into the weekend, the Governor has opened his office to the sit-in protesters for "as long as" they wish. Thirteen protesters, including Wendell Berry, Teri Blanton, John Hennen, and Stanley Sturgill will spend the night in the governor's office.

Jeff Biggers full coverage of the sit-in is HERE

Check these sites for a live video stream from the Governor's Office:

KFTC: http://www.kftc.org/blog/archive/2011/02/11/live
UStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kepentz

Wendell Berry Joins Retired Coal Miners and Residents in Kentucky Rising Capitol Sit-in

Over six years after Kentucky became the first state in the nation to introduce a bill that would halt the dumping of toxic coal mining wastes into headwater streams and effectively reign in the devastating fall-out of mountaintop removal operations, a group of affected coalfield residents, retired coal miners and bestselling authors have launched a sit-in in the office of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear this morning.

Joined by legendary author, farmer and philosopher Wendell Berry, retired coal miner Stanley Sturgill, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth activists Teri Blanton and Mickey McCoy, among others, the Kentucky activists declared their intent “to remain in his office until the governor agrees to stop the poisoning of Kentucky’s land, water, and people by mountaintop removal; or until he chooses to have the citizens physically removed.”


Only days since the anniversary of the historic Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina, which triggered the Civil Rights Movement in 1960, organizers are hailing this breakthrough event as the advent of the “Kentucky Rising.” Twitter updates will be posted @jasonkylehoward and @kftc

“This is not something we’re doing for pleasure,” said Wendell Berry, who has been active in the movement to abolish mountaintop removal mining for years. “We’re doing it because it’s the next thing to do after all our attempts to attract serious attention to these problems have failed. We’re doing this as a last resort. Our intention is to appeal first to our elected representatives and the governor, and failing that, to appeal over their heads to our fellow citizens.”

Read the rest HERE

Black-and-White Duo Allerton & Alton Occupy Special Place In Country Music History

Portland, Maine, 1947. Two teenagers, one white, one black, rummaged through the record bins at Knight’s Used Furniture store.

The two didn’t know each other, but they scavenged for the same music: Mostly harmony-rich records of duos from the south. Back then it was frequently called “hillbilly music,” and it often arrived in Portland via military personnel who had traveled from southern homes to their Maine station. When recruits were called overseas, they’d often sell their 78 RPM hillbilly records to Knight’s for 15 cents apiece, and the store would sell them to kids like Al Hawkes and Alton Myers for 25 cents each.

But there weren’t a lot of kids like Hawkes and Myers, searching for the plaintive sounds of the rural south, up in Maine. The fact they were of different races seemed less important than their similar taste in music.



“When I saw Alton, I probably thought, ‘Well, he’s a little different,” said Hawkes, now 80. “But we liked the same music, and he told me he was learning guitar. And I said, ‘Why don’t we try to play some music together?’ ”

They did, and though the music did not make any charts, it made long-hidden history. Billed as Allerton & Alton, the pairing of Hawkes and Myers constituted what is believed to be the only black-and-white duo ever in country music. After more than 60 years, their live recordings from Maine radio stations are now available, through Germany-based Bear Family Records, on a set called Black, White and Bluegrass.

“This is a fascinating piece of American musical history,” said John Rumble, senior historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “These guys were standing up there as co-equals, in a duet. Considering the racial climate of the nation then, it really was unusual to have a black man and a white man making music together. It’s something far out of the ordinary.”

As Rumble is quick to point out, African-Americans have contributed to country music as forerunners, influences and stars. Harmonica player DeFord Bailey was a prominent performer on the Grand Ole Opry from 1926 until 1941, when he was dismissed from the show in a decision that held ugly racial overtones: “Like some members of his race and other races, DeFord was lazy,” wrote Opry founder Judge George D. Hay in his 1946 history of the program.

Bailey is now a Country Music Hall of Famer, as is African-American Charley Pride, who notched top hits from the ’60s into the ’80s. Today’s country radio playlists regularly feature Darius Rucker. And a 1998 Country Music Foundation boxed set — From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music — illuminated country multi-cultural roots and branches.

But the notion of an integrated and equal country duo...that’s something else entirely.

Read the rest of the story HERE

(Story and photo via http://blogs.tennessean.com)

Wildcat Coal Lodge Will Have Tribute To Coal

The University of Kentucky's new $8 million Wildcat Coal Lodge won't just refer to coal mining in its name. According to the agreement between the donors who gave the money—many of them coal operatives—and the University of Kentucky, a tribute exhibit to the coal industry will greet visitors and residents when they come in the front door of the new residence planned for the UK men's basketball team near Memorial Coliseum.

Joseph W. Craft III, who heads Alliance Coal, organized a group of donors to give $7 million for the building; an anonymous donor later gave an additional $1 million, UK officials said. The UK Board of Trustees approved the building's name in 2009. The lodge will be 20,000 square feet and house 32 students.

The gift agreement, obtained by the Herald-Leader under the state's Open Records Act, says the building "will include an exhibit in the primary entrance lobby which presents in print, photographic, sound, video, DVD and/or other format, a discussion of and tribute to the importance of the coal industry to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which exhibit shall be reasonably acceptable to Craft."

The proposed name already has caused an uproar on campus, and it spurred famed author Wendell Berry to pull many of his personal papers from the UK archives because he said it indicated the university was in a "manifest alliance" with the coal industry.

Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth said Wednesday she would like to see a tribute to all the miners who have lost their lives digging for coal in Kentucky. "Coal has not been good for Kentucky," she said. "I don't think UK is making a good decision."

Read the rest of the story HERE

(Story and photo via Lexington Herald-Leader)

By The Numbers

It's interesting about this blog. It takes some time pulling interesting stories, videos, events, and news bits together, but not all that much, really. If someone stumbles upon it, that's great, and if someone else spends twenty minutes or an hour a week sorting through what's here, that's really great, and if I'm the only one here, that's okay too. But I'm not the only one, apparently. Started poking around with some web stats and found some interesting info about you all. In January, for example:

• Folks from 30 countries visited the blog, including Israel, Thailand, Sweden, Brazil and Hungary (The US, obviously, is ranked #1).
• Within the US, folks from 35 states wandered through--North Carolina and West Virginia being the highest ranked.
• In the last two months, visitor traffic is up 320%.
• Most of you are coming from the Radical Roots website. Other high traffic sources are Facebook, Google, and catholicanarchy.org. Hmmm.
• Most people like videos, and anything Wendell Berry related is hugely popular.
• 58% are Windows people, 37 are Mac.
• And so on...

So whoever you are, thanks for stopping. Stay awhile.

From Kentucky to Shanghai with Abigail Washburn

Abigail Washburn has a lovely, lilting, strong voice, and her music is a fascinating blend of bluegrass, woven with old threads of 1930s Americana and traditional songs, then globally spiced with Chinese melodies and Chinese language. On this recent NPR concert she talks about her local to global musical connections, the influence of Doc Watson on her playing, and other connections to Appalachian culture and music. Her new album City of Refuge came out in January. (Note: Yes, she did marry Bela Fleck last year and yes, Ben Sollee is a member of her Sparrow Quartet).

And, for all you Ashevillians out there, here's the latest from her Twitter feed: "Asheville! Thank you for the Early Girl Eatery. Thank you for the Grey Eagle. See u tonight! 8pm... Special guests revealing themselves."

A Few Words On James Baker Hall

I know--the blog's getting a bit Berry heavy these days. I just keep running into these gold mines of people and photographs and writings and there he is. Like James Baker Hall's website. Sorting through some of his work I came across this incredible slideshow of the Wendell, Den, and neighbors harvesting tobacco at Lanes Landing probably in the 70's. And those great shots of Wendell and Gurney (see below)--that was J.B. Hall's lens. So here's a tribute to Mr. Hall, a profound thinker and genius artists from the hills of Kentucky. Here's a bio from his site:

James Baker Hall (1935-2009), significantly known for his work as a writer, was a former Poet Laureate of Kentucky and the author of many essential works of southern literature. He was an equally prolific art photographer, lecturing widely on the medium. He was a former contributing editor for Aperture, and his own work published in over half a dozen collections of photographs. He was a member of the famed Lexington Camera Club and the trusted colleague of such photographers as Minor White, Richard Benson, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. His photographs are part of public and private art holdings, including the permanent collections of University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington, KY and 21C Museum in Louisville, KY.

Wendell Berry

Anne Frey

Ed McClanahan

Gurney Norman

Wendell Berry and Gurney Norman

Wendell Berry harvesting

(Photos and bio via www.jamesbakerhall.com)

Wendell Berry Interviewed on Indiana Public Media

"We’re members of each other—all of us—everything. The difference is not whether you are or not, but whether you know you are or not. Because we’re all under each other’s influence. We’re all are affected by one another’s others lives and decisions. And there is no escape from this membership."
 
Shana Ritter hosts this "Profiles" interview with American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer Wendell Berry. Aired on January 21, 2011.



(Audio: Indiana Pubic Media, WFIU)
(Photo: Berry and Gurney Norman circa 1973, Appalachian Heritage)

A Road In Kentucky

A Road in Kentucky

Robert Hayden

And when that ballad lady went

to ease the lover whose life she broke,

oh surely this is the road she took,

road all hackled through barberry fire,

through cedar and alder and sumac and thorn.

Red clay stained her flounces

and stones cut her shoes

and the road twisted on to his loveless house

and his cornfield dying

in the scarecrow's arms.

And when she had left her lover lying

so stark and so stark, with the Star-of-Hope

drawn over his eyes, oh this is the road

that lady walked in the cawing light,

so dark and so dark in the briary light.

(Image via the Nite Tripper: Sand Lick Road, Caldwell County, KY, 1930's)

Appalachian Media Institute

Appalshop is a multi-media arts and cultural organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky that strives to develop effective ways to use media to address the complex issues facing central Appalachia--a declining coal economy, a legacy of environmental damage, high unemployment rates, and poor educational opportunities and attainment.

In 1988 Appalshop staff members founded the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI), a media training program for central Appalachian youth.  Using the technological and artistic resources of Appalshop, AMI helps young people explore how media production skills can be used to ask, and begin to answer, critical questions of themselves and their communities. With opportunities to have input into community dialogues, and frame those dialogues themselves, young people develop the skills and critical thinking abilities necessary to become leaders in creating sustainable futures for their communities.

AMI, a kind of higher tech version of Foxfire, has helped youth put out dozens of great shorts over the years. It's amazing to see what happens when youth are empowered to use their creativity and knowledge of place in such great ways. Here's one about banjer pickin'.


Banjo Pickin Girl from Appalachian Media Institute on Vimeo.

Hollerin' Back Across Through Yonder

Mark your calendars--we'll, not quite yet--but make note that the 43rd Annual National Hollerin' Contest in Spivey's Corner, NC is just around the corner. 

The good folks at folkstreams.net have a short documentary on the art of hollerin' and some nice stage shots from the contest. Can't seem to add the video, but check their site for the film. Here's a blurb:

"Every year, on the third Saturday of June, in an otherwise sleepy borough of southeastern North Carolina known as Spivey's Corner (population 49), some 5,000-10,000 folks gather from far and wide to take part in the festivities and entertainment in the day-long extravaganza known as the National Hollerin' Contest.

Hollerin' is considered by some to be the earliest form of communication between humans. It is a traditional form of communication used in rural areas before the days of telecommunications to convey long-distance messages. Evidence of hollerin', or derivations thereof such as yodeling or hunting cries, exists worldwide among many early peoples and is still be practiced in certain societies of the modern world. In one form or another, the holler has been found to exist in Europe, Africa and Asia as well as the US.

Each culture used or uses hollers differently, although almost all cultures have specific hollers meant to convey warning or distress. Otherwise hollers exist for virtually any communicative purpose imaginable--greetings, general information, pleasure, work, etc. The hollers featured at the National Hollerin' Contest typically fall into one of four categories: distress, functional, communicative or pleasure."

Film by Kier Cline
Copyright: 1978, Kier Chine
17 minutes, Color
Original format: 16mm

Good Beer, Good Music, Good Cause

An Anouncement :: An Apology

Near the end of my interview with Wendell Berry some time ago, we talked about facebook. The conversation started with farming, strip mining, local knowledge, topics you might expect with Wendell. It covered politics, civil disobedience, democracy, citizenship. And then we talked about facebook.

"I might have heard something of it," he said, but couldn't understand why someone would ever wish to spend so much time in front of a screen. How could you be a "friend" to another without sharing something tangible together, without having the chance to be useful to each other? I had no answers, and was sort of glad that I didn't.

"Wendell, you have facebook, you just don't know it." He laughed, and I explained how someone put up a fan page for people to post dashing comments about his life and work. I didn't bother mentioning the "Wendell Berry Haters Association," a group of probably high school students who apparently hate literature, the environment, social justice, and Wendell himself.

I asked Wendell if he was ever curious about what people say and write about him, if he might ever join something like facebook. He said no, and then I said, "Okay, deal. Me neither."

A year and a half later, here I am.

It's a dilemma; if the world was ever divided, it's now between facebook people and non-facebook people. Those who use it love it, though most I talk to quickly admit their enslavement to it and their desire to quit. Those who don't use it have a number of fine reasons: never heard of it, prefer real people, abstain as a form of protest, or just don't see it's value.

Wendell, if I may speak for him, would check all of the above. Instead of updating his status or "poking" people, he writes letters and visits with friends and family on the porch or around the fireplace. He takes walks, cooks with his wife, and visits his daughters winery a few miles down the road. And he works, a work tied to the people, community, and land that make his life possible. (Our conversation was cut short as the sun was setting and the lambs needed to be fed).

But I also made another promise, not to Wendell but to Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson in the mountains of West Virginia. I promised I wouldn't be just one more "journalist" who comes to snap a shot and scribble down a story. I promised I would do something more. This is what they asked of me, that their work--the struggles and accomplishments--would not be stuck in a folder someone but told to the world--printed in magazines, displayed on walls in galleries, talked about at conferences, shouted from mountaintops.

With the passing of inspiring leader and activist Judy Bonds last week, and with Larry's continued fight against mountaintop removal in West Virginia, this is least I can do to share with you their struggles. I don't know where things will go from here, but this is a start.

And Wendell, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?

(If you feel so inclined, come "Like" the Radical Roots Project on Facebook, whatever that means).

Huge MTR News

Today marks a historic victory in the efforts to protect Appalachia and end the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its decision earlier this morning to protect mountain communities and the health of Appalachian citizens by vetoing the largest single mountaintop removal coal mining permit in West Virginia history, the Spruce No. 1 Mine.

Today’s decision will protect more than six miles of high quality streams from being buried under 110 million cubic yards of toxic coal mining waste--streams whose water tables provide drinking water for the region. In addition to protecting water quality and the health of local citizens, this decision protects more than 2,200 acres of mountains and forestlands in Logan Co, WV that would have been destroyed.

For more check out: www.ilovemountains.org

Judy Bonds, Remembered

On Saturday, a memorial service was held for inspiring leader and activists Judy Bonds in Beckley, West Virginia. The following was read at the service: "Judy’s passing from this mortal world shall serve as a call to rise. Her work will not be finished until we finish it for her. Although Judy has physically left our earthly world, let us acknowledge her spirit to live within each of us. Judy sometimes quoted “you are the one you have been waiting for.” Let us now call upon unity in this movement; Big Green groups, grassroots, top to bottom, bottom to top, to speak with one voice, to rise to a new level, re-energized, re-focused as never before."

A website has been created to share memories, explore photographs, and donate to Coal River Mountain Watch. http://judybondsmemorial.com. Be sure to browse through the memories and leave your own if you feel inclined.

Also, YES! Magazine, an excellent publication that highlights real people working for a better world, reposted my Judy Bonds interview. Check here for the full story: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/interview-with-judy-bonds

(Photo by Chad A. Stevens)

Judy Bonds Interview Available Online

The Institute for Southern Studies posted the full length transcript of my interview with Judy Bonds on their website. The Institute, founded in 1970 by veterans of the civil rights movement, has established a national reputation as an essential resource for grassroots activists, community leaders, scholars, policy makers and others working to bring lasting social and economic change to the region. Helen Lewis first turned me onto their journal Southern Exposure after showing me a piece she wrote for them called "It Smells Like Money." Lots of good writing in there, be sure to check it out.

(Portrait of Judy Bonds by Robert Shetterly, part of his "Americans Who Tell the Truth" project).

Julia 'Judy' Bonds Washington Post Obituary

By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 4, 2011; 11:28 PM 

 

Julia "Judy" Bonds, the spitfire daughter of a West Virginia coal miner who worked as a Pizza Hut waitress before she became, in midlife, a leading voice of the grass-roots resistance to mountaintop strip mining, died Jan. 3 of cancer at a hospital in Charleston, W.Va. She was 58. 

Ms. Bonds was one of the most visible and outspoken activists against what is sometimes called "mountaintop removal," a mining practice peculiar to Appalachia in which peaks are sheared off with explosives to expose the coal seams below. 

A coalfields native who scraped by working in restaurants and convenience stores, Ms. Bonds was equivocal about the risks of mining until the 1990s, when the A.T. Massey Coal Co. arrived in Marfork hollow, one of the narrow, green valleys that wind through the Appalachian Mountains in southern West Virginia.

Ms. Bonds lived most of her life in that hollow, as did generations of her family before her. In childhood, she had come to know its fishing spots and swimming holes; later, as a young single mother, she had raised her daughter in Marfork. 

"There is nothing like being in the hollows," she once told the Los Angeles Times. "You feel snuggled. You feel safe. It seems like God has his arms around you." 

But when Massey Energy Co., as it is now known, began blasting, the air became filled with dust and cacophony, and families began moving out. Ms. Bonds refused to go. Marfork was home. 

Then her 6-year-old grandson - who, like other children in the hollow, had developed a case of asthma that couldn't be ignored - asked her a question: "What's wrong with these fish?" 

He was standing in the local creek, holding fistfuls of dead fish, with more floating belly-up around his ankles.

"I knew something was very, very wrong," Ms. Bonds told Sierra magazine. "So I began to open my eyes and pay attention." 

She discovered that Marfork was one of many West Virginia hollows dealing with the effects of mountaintop mining, which was developed in the 1970s but whose use began accelerating about two decades ago. And she learned that Massey had planned a dam farther up Marfork hollow - an impoundment that would hold millions of gallons of coal sludge. Her family would be in danger if the dam failed, and such dams had failed before - including in 1972 at Buffalo Creek, W.Va., where 125 people were killed in the toxic flood. 

When she heard her grandson concocting escape plans in the event of a dam break, Ms. Bonds - the last holdout in Marfork - knew that it was time to move and time to call attention to the threats of mountaintop mining to clean air, clean water and the Appalachian way of life. 

She became a volunteer with and then executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch, a local grass-roots group. She taught herself how to challenge the mining companies' federal and state permit applications.

Embracing her hillbilly identity, she shrugged off the argument that rural people needed the coal industry's jobs. 

"If coal is so good for us hillbillies," she said at a 2008 Appalachian Studies Association conference, "then why are we so poor?" 

Massey - the subject of scrutiny after an explosion at its underground Upper Big Branch Mine killed 29 West Virginia miners in April - was a frequent target of Ms. Bonds's. She confronted coal industry executives, organized marches, lobbied at the West Virginia statehouse and in Washington and traveled the country talking to young people. 

Her message was consistent: The health and safety of Appalachia's poor were being sacrificed for the profits of energy companies. 

"We're a colony here, and the coal companies rule," the writer Michael Shnayerson quotes her as saying in his 2008 book, "Coal River." "We can complain all we want, but those complaints are just swept aside in the name of progress and jobs. It's like we're selling our children's feet to buy shoes." 

She stood her ground despite insults and threats from neighbors and coal workers, who felt their livelihoods were threatened by her forthrightness and her rage. At a protest against Massey last year, a woman clad in an orange-striped miner's shirt slapped Ms. Bonds while other Massey supporters cheered in approval. 

"Judy always insisted that the story of coal and mountaintop removal was a human story, a human rights story," said Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign and a longtime ally of Ms. Bonds's. "She personified that story at great personal risk." 

Ms. Bonds was earning $12,000 a year at her job as an activist when, in 2003, she was awarded the prestigious $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize. After paying for her grandson's braces, helping her daughter buy a car and paying off the family's mortgage, Ms. Bonds donated nearly $50,000 to Coal River Mountain Watch - an amount equal to the organization's annual budget. 

Once little known outside the coalfields, mountaintop removal has in recent years become the subject of environmental and public health controversy with a national profile. 

A plotline in one of the most celebrated novels of 2010, Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom," tells the story of a hardscrabble West Virginia community uprooted by a mountaintop removal project. Last October, more than 100 people were arrested at the White House during a protest against mountaintop removal. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, between 1985 and 2001, debris scraped from hundreds of thousands of acres choked more than 700 miles of streams. Under President Obama, the EPA has sought to restrict new permits for the practice and tighten safeguards for natural resources.

Such recognition of the problems related to mountaintop removal is "due in no small part," Hitt said, "to the leadership and the sacrifice of Judy Bonds." 

Julia Belle Thompson was born Aug. 27, 1952, at the family home in the Birch Hollow part of what is now called Marfork. When Ms. Bonds was growing up, the place was better known as Packsville, said Ms. Bond's daughter, Lisa Henderson. 

Ms. Bonds was one of eight children, two of whom died at birth. Her father retired from working in underground coal mines at 65 and died several months later of pneumoconiosis, better known as black lung disease. Besides her daughter, of Rock Creek, W. Va., survivors include a brother, three sisters and a grandson.

"See that? That's the ironweed," Ms. Bonds once said, pointing out a purple-flowered plant to a visiting reporter. "They say they're a symbol for Appalachian women. They're pretty. And their roots run deep. It's hard to move them."

A Sad Day For Appalachia

In October of 2009 I spent a Saturday afternoon with Judy Bonds at her house along the Coal River in Boone County, West Virginia. Collecting her story for the Radical Roots Project, she described her experience growing up in the Marfork holler, the struggles she's faced being an activist in the coalfields, and the many victories and personal accomplishments she has achieved fighting against mountaintop removal. She was passionate and articulate, with a deep sense of hope often missing in the environmental movement.

Most interviewers, including myself, sit with Judy amazed at her strength and courage, wondering how, in the midst of such danger, she maintains the energy in her work. Her answer was honest, even prophetic:

"I know I'm rocking the boat, but what else am I supposed to do? I can’t unrock it. I can’t not fight after what I've seen and experienced. If I were to just stop doing this work one day, I think I’d put myself in an even more vulnerable position. When you’re standing face-to-face with the enemy and you take one step back, that gives them a one step advantage. Sometimes all it takes is that one step for them to run right over you. I say this to you and I say this to anybody out there reading this, we will not back down, not a single inch.
          Before this fight is over with, I fully expect one of the local activists—Maria Gunoe, Larry Gibson, Bo Webb, myself—one of us if not more will have a serious accident or one of us will be killed. I don't know how it's gonna happen but I fully expect it. This is a difficult fight, and I have the highest praise for anyone has the integrity and courage to stand up, even knowing the risks."

Vernon Halton, Co-Director of Coal River Mountain Watch, sent an email yesterday with the sad news of Judy's passing:

It is with great sorry that we mourn the passing today of Julia “Judy” Bonds, Executive Director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Judy was more than a co-worker, friend, and mentor: she became family. She inspired thousands in the movement to end mountaintop removal and was a driving force in making it what it has become. I can’t count the number of times someone told me they got involved because they heard Judy speak, either at their university, at a rally, or in a documentary. Years ago she envisioned a “thousand hillbilly march” in Washington, DC. In 2010, that dream became a reality as thousands marched on the White House for Appalachia Rising.
          Judy will be missed by all in this movement, as an icon, a leader, an inspiration, and a friend. No words can ever express what she has meant, and what she will always mean. We will tell stories about her, around fires, in meeting rooms, and any place where people are gathered in the name of justice and love for our fellow human beings. When we prevail, as we must, we will remember Judy as one of the great heroes of our movement. We will always remember her for her passion, conviction, tenacity, and courage, as well as her love of family and friends and her compassion for her fellow human beings. While we grieve, let’s remember what she said, “Fight harder.”

Check out Jeff Biggers tribute to Judy in the Huffington Post HERE. I'll keep you posted on anything else I hear.

Here's a tribute to Judy by Coal Country filmmakers Jordan Freeman and Mari-Lynn Evans.