Jillian Kenny is a junior at Appalachian State University and an intern with Appalachian Voices’ Water Team. She does the dirty work of monitoring coal companies’ water pollution records, but her commitment to clean water extends beyond her intern hours.

I had the amazing opportunity to be on a team of students at Appalachian State University that has been working over the past school year to create a miniature wetland to install in the local salon Haircut 101. Bobbie Jo Swinson, the project’s student leader, received a $15,000 grant for the project last year from an EPA P3 Phase I grant. The purpose of EPA’s P3 — People, Prosperity, and the Planet — is to inspire students to design sustainable solutions for world issues and bring their ideas into the marketplace.

Our project, Grow Clean Water, was inspired by Bobbie Jo’s work as a hair stylist and her experience watching chemicals from hair treatments lost down the drain. Students from appropriate technology, biology, chemistry, interior design, and sustainable development worked to design the biological graywater system to treat the hair salon water using aquatic plants before being recycled through the salon’s toilets for flushing. Graywater is the water from sources such as baths, sinks, and laundry machines; it is not to be confused with blackwater, which contains fecal matter. Aside from removing contaminants, we also wanted the system to function as living art that would educate the community about recycling graywater.

A few weeks ago, Appalachian Voices was on the happy end of a rousing night of rowdy rock and roll and vintage and alt country, thanks to the generous hearts of a few North Carolina musicians.

Molly McGinn, sultry-voiced siren from the Greensboro, N.C., collaborative band, Wurlitzer Prize, and David Brewer, the massively talented musician often fronting Americana r&r favorites Possum Jenkins, hosted a fantastic evening of music as a benefit for Appalachian Voices and our work to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

In addition to a seriously fun radio “appearance” set up by the resourceful Molly, listening to some fantastic tunes by Wurlitzer Prize and Possum Jenkins into the wee hours of the night (Molly’s voice really is amazing and the Possum is always a rabble-rousing good time), and a very generous gift of the proceeds, we made some great new friends in the Triad City and hope to go back again soon.

This month marks 8 years together for Possum Jenkins — the Boone/Winston-Salem group recently released “Carolinacana,” funded entirely by fans — and is the third time David Brewer has donated his time and talents to help raise funds for Appalachian Voices.

Wurlitzer Prize is a project put together by musicians hailing from a number of well-known bands in the North Carolina Triad area, including Possum Jenkins, Amelia’s Mechanics and the Emma Gibbs Band.

A hearty thank you to both of these amazing groups — please be sure to check them out!!

• Visit the Possum Jenkins website
• Visit the Wurlitzer Prize website

<<< Friends, we're thrilled to share this exclusive piece from Jim Dipeso of ConservAmerica (formerly “Republicans for Environmental Protection”) on the conservative case for stewardship. Former White House advisor Van Jones offers the progressive viewpoint in the upcoming issue of The Appalachian Voice newspaper. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Jim and ConservAmerica to the Front Porch! We look forward to your contributions anytime. – jw>>>
—
by Jim Dipeso, ConservAmerica

What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one who is committed to protecting and holding close the things by which we live… And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live—our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it. – President Ronald Reagan

President Ronald Reagan spoke those eloquent words in 1984. Reagan was a man of the land. On trips to his beloved Rancho del Cielo, he spent much time outdoors enjoying the hills and horizons.

For Reagan, stewardship of the land was as central to the conservative ethic he championed as was individual liberty and limited government.

The land is central to Appalachia’s culture. The mountains hold generations of family tales and community lore, of births, weddings, and passages, of stories told at church socials, of secret fishing spots grandfathers shared with grandsons. Ridges, woods, hollows, and streams keep alive those memories that are the warp and woof of mountain culture.

Blowing up mountaintops and burying streams under rubble does immense harm to Appalachia’s land, water, and wildlife, as scientists have documented in abundant detail. Mountaintop removal mining and stream obliteration does more, however. It disfigures the land that has shaped Appalachian life for generations. It brings noise, stress, anxiety, and disruption to families and communities.

Opposing mountaintop removal mining and dumping of waste into streams does not mean opposing coal mining. Nor does taking such a position make a conservative less conservative. As Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) has said, “Coal is an essential part of our energy future, but it is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal to meet our needs.”

Senator Alexander is correct. Now and for years to come, coal will have an important place in America’s energy portfolio. Our task is to find better ways to produce and use coal, to lighten its burdens on our land, water, and air. Finding those better ways will be hard but America excels at doing hard things.

The land gives us riches and it embodies our heritage. Being better stewards of the land is the gift we give our children, as Ronald Reagan reminded us.

In his newest book, Rebuild the Dream, green economy pioneer Van Jones reflects on his journey from grassroots outsider to White House insider, shares intimate details of his time in government, and provides a blueprint to reinvent the American Dream. Along the way, he contrasts the structure and rhetoric of the 2008 Obama campaign, the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street. Below are his thoughts on cheap patriots versus deep patriots, and the way forward to reclaim, reinvent, and renew the American Dream. You can order the book here.

CHEAP PATRIOTS VERSUS DEEP PATRIOTS

The time has come to turn things right side up again and declare that America’s honest, hard-working middle class is too big to fail. The aspirations of our low-income, struggling, and marginalized communities are too big and important to fail. The hopes of our children are too big to fail. The American Dream itself is too big to fail.

And we are not going to let these things fail.

Of course, it will not be easy to stop the dream killers. Tax policy that burdens working families and gives the biggest breaks to the super-rich has helped to keep more and more of our national wealth locked in the private safes of the top 1 percent. This alarming economic polarization, combined with the constant flow of good-paying jobs overseas, threatens to end our status as a middle class nation. Too many of our big banks and largest corporations are behaving in a manner that is both irresponsible and unpatriotic. Their conduct makes it that much worse for the many patriotic and responsible businesses—especially small businesses—that follow the rules and provide good jobs to their employees.

Additionally, many well-intentioned people have been recruited into a powerful crusade—the Tea Party movement—that promises the American people economic relief by slashing taxes and taking a wrecking ball to America’s government. The impact of the Tea Party’s reckless policies would be to financially decimate our government, further dismantle America’s middle class, and strengthen the chokehold that the top 1 percent has on the economy. Nonetheless, the Tea Partiers effectively seized the public narrative in 2009 and congressional power in 2010, quelling the wave of hope generated by the 2008 election. They have succeeded at painting their agenda “red, white, and blue.” If we are to have an economy that works for the remaining 99 percent, this kind of “cheap patriotism” must be sidelined in favor of a “deep patriotism”—one that honors the accomplishments of our parents and grandparents. After all, they used the tools of both free enterprise and democratic government to build a society that sets the global standard.

THE BATTLE IS JOINED

Fortunately, a new force has emerged with the long-term potential to both repair America’s democracy and renew the American Dream. A massive protest movement has risen within the United States, eclipsing the Tea Party…