Review: Strange as This Weather Has Been

/images/AppalachianVoice/Jan_2008/strange_circle.gif Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake Shoemaker and Hoard Some novels are so good you can’t put them down, but Ann Pancake’s book is not one of those. Strange as This Weather Has Been is the better sort of book, the kind you have to put aside every few pages just…

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Saving Place: Art in Nature

Theresa L. Burriss is an assistant professor at Radford University. She is currently working on a book entitled Women of Change, Women of Courage: Appalachian Activists, to be published by the University of Tennessee Press. Natural beauty abounds in Appalachia, and it inspires artists and scientists equally. In a discussion at Radford University entitled “Saving…

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Hiking in the Highlands: The Virginia Creeper Trail

You can hike it. You can bike it. You can take it by horseback or on cross-country skis. Zipping across most of eastern Washington County, the Virginia Creeper Trail is a multi-use recreational trail linking downtown Abingdon to the North Carolina border near Grayson County’s Whitetop community. The 34-mile-long trail is the former site of…

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Wise power plant foes turn out in Richmond

Hundreds of opponents of Dominion Power Company’s proposed $1.8 billion coal-burning power plant traveled to Richmond in early January to voice their opposition at a hearing of the State Corporation Commission. The commission will decide on the need for the 585 megawatt plant and whether the type of technology the utility has chosen is appropriate.…

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Big Trouble for Coal Plants

Big coal is in big trouble. You can see it in the statistics compiled by the Sierra Club: Nationwide, courts or state governments have forced the cancellation or delay of 59 out of over 160 proposed new coal fired power plants, according to a Sierra Club database. In 2006, almost 50 new power plants were…

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