2006 – Issue 5 (October)
Mountaintop Rmoval Lobby Week Shows Determination
For most of the past two years Appalachian Voices has been putting tremendous effort into building a base of citizen activists to advance the passage of the “Clean Water Protection Act” (HR 2719) in the United States House of Representatives. The Clean Water Protection Act would make it illegal to dump the waste material created…
Read MoreManaging Your Woodlands
Appalachian Voices is pleased to announce the arrival of our 2nd full-time AmeriCorps Member and the second edition of “Managing Your Woodlands: A Guide for Southern Appalachian Landowners.” We are partnering with Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and “Project Conserve.” This year Project Conserve is placing 15 AmeriCorps members with 12 conservation organizations and agencies across…
Read MoreAppalachian Voices Volunteer and Intern Update
Appalachian Voices’ volunteers and interns accomplished some amazing things in the last two months. We had 77 volunteers and interns working over 1200 hours for our Clean Air Campaign, Mountaintop Removal Campaign, the Appalachian Voice, and our Sustainable Forestry Program. Without the assistance of our volunteers and interns we could not accomplish as much to…
Read MoreBuilding a Bigger Choir
I remember, ten years ago, when Appalachian Voices founder Harvard Ayers first came to me with the concept of Appalachian Voices. He and a group of volunteers wanted to give the people of Appalachia a voice in the biggest environmental decisions facing the region. Their vision was to get information to all of us who…
Read MoreLast Song of Black Creek
Monday I went to fetch Jack home. It wasn’t my place, I know. I was his second-best, his nut-brown maid; I was familiar and base, fit only to serve. But I served him last, and I served him best. It was almost dusk when I saddled up Roan and led him from the barn. Granny’s…
Read MoreA Moment of Crisis for the Region’s Forests
images/voice_uploads/Deforestacion_02-.gif I have lived near Blowing Rock (always between Burke and Watauga Counties) since 1979. I, like many of you reading this now, remember Blowing Rock in the eighties with P.B. Scotts, The Farm House, Holley’s, Clyde’s, Antler’s, The Mayview Manor, and Blowing Rock as a different resort town than it is today. I watched,…
Read MoreBlaze Orange and Forest Green
Like just about every other 9-year-old boy in rural America in the 1960s, I received a Crosman BB gun as a Christmas gift. That present sent me down the trail of a lifetime of hunting, although I don’t remember killing a living thing with it. I did fire at a mouse once, while I was…
Read MoreAmerica’s Adopted Fruit
Many newcomers to the Appalachians lament the fact that a person is not defined as a native unless one’s family has lived in the area for generations. In the natural world, the definition is even more stringent. In short, if it wasn’t here when Columbus arrived, it is not native; though numerous Old World plants…
Read MoreThe High Cost of Coal
As this, the fall issue of the Appalachian Voice goes to press, millions of Americans are flocking to the mountains to see the gorgeous vistas of autumn foliage as they can only be seen in the Appalachians, home of the most diverse forests in the nation. According to a mapping project recently completed by Appalachian…
Read MoreStorytelling at Jonesboro
images/voice_uploads/Story.DonaldDavis2.gif David Holt makes a living playing music with the likes of Doc Watson, a legendary blind musician from the mountains of North Carolina’s High Country. But, Holt is also known to thousands as a storyteller. He’s known to spin yarns like a spider spins webs. “I usually either try to include music in the…
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