2001 – Issue 2 (June)

The energy plan recently released by President Bush is an ill-conceived effort which takes advantage of our current short-term energy problems to push bad long-term policies. The plan, developed behind closed doors by oil man Vice-President Dick Cheney for oil man President Bush, offers a feast for the coal, oil, and nuclear industries, while providing…

images/voice_uploads/fiddle.gif The Fabulous Fifties had arrived, and things couldn’t get much better. The Great Depression was ancient history, World War II a fading memory, and Americans were back on their financial feet, striding confidently and blissfully down the road to eternal prosperity. Most of them, anyway. Young folks who hailed from the misty ridges and…

In Wise County, way down in southwestern Virginia, Black Mountain forms part of the Virginia-Kentucky border. On the Virginia side, Black Mountain’s ridge curves protectively around the upper Powell River watershed, which, along with the watersheds of the Clinch and Holston rivers, forms the headwaters of the Tennessee River system. The Nature Conservancy calls this…

Down in the far southwestern toe of Virginia, the forested mountains are rugged and wild…and endangered by rapacious exploitation by extractive industries. And these days, down in Scott and Wise counties, the High Knob area of the Clinch Ranger District of the Jefferson National Forest is on the chopping block. The Clinch District, with its…

images/voice_uploads/HWA.gif The recent discovery of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) infestations in Graham, Macon and Yancey counties is a major setback in the battle to keep Eastern and Carolina hemlocks alive in southern Appalachian forests. “Until a few months ago, we thought the adelgid hadn’t spread beyond the northern tier [of North Carolina] counties,” says Fred…

Richard Cartwright Austin may be a Presbyterian minister and internationally known theologian, a high-brow intellectual and refined aesthete, but he’s also something of a Sybarite. I found this reassuring, in a man who might otherwise intimidate. What gave him away was his hot tub, set into a gracious deck with beds of summer flowers and…

What does it mean for a young person to study “science”? It can involve textbooks, tests and exams, a microscope here and there, and more textbooks. The typical public education of biology, ecology, botany, silviculture and chemistry — if public education includes these subjects at all — often lacks the hands-on integrative teaching methods on…

Just as families are an integral part of our society, so are forests an especially important and central part of our environment. How fitting, then, to combine the two in a festive outdoor event celebrating the interaction of people and nature? Appalachian Voices did just that, teaming up with other non-profit and local governmental agencies,…

images/voice_uploads/ashbypam.gif Ever since the Wilderness Act was signed into law in 1964, it has been subject to misconceptions and innuendo heaped upon it by those who disagree with its purpose of permanently protecting areas of public land in a wild, untrammeled state. Many of these “wilderness myths” persist today, and not surprisingly, those perpetuating these…