Monday, June 1, 2009

Mountaintop Removal Week 2

Week 2
24 May
Day 1 (8)
Today I finished sending letters to all of the members of the US Senate and started sending letters to member of House. I got half way through California.

25 May
Day 2 (9)
Today I finished letters to California House members and Colorado. We did a lot of work around the house today, moving books and supplies into the office, cleaning and revamping the kitchen, organizing the kitchen: lots of handy work. Tomorrow we officially start work. The head of Christians for the Mountains is coming tomorrow and the mattresses are arriving in the morning!

26 May-29 May
Days 3-6 (10-13)
I did a lot of digging in the garden this week and learned a bit about planting with the cycles of the moon. I started to till up a new garden but it started raining. I organized the office: it looks better now that we have filing cabinets and such. The house is also set now. Rebekah has been painting her bedroom and our bathroom (they look much better). We cleaned house for the arrival of our guest.

30 May
Day 7 (14)
I went to a local sustainability fair today in Charleston, WV. It wasn’t impressive at all. We didn’t have a table since we’re just getting started and moved in, but we will have one at a Christian music festival coming up. Our guest Abby is a joy. I learned a lot from her about reaching out the people in effective yet gentle ways. It’s been pretty basic this week. We’re still settling in to the house and office. We’ve made a bunch of local connections with churches, a rafting company, a bookstore, and many others. We also keep getting calls from all over the nation from people wanting to stay a week or so to help out. Basically support is increasing exponentially: it’s great! I went for a hike today. The forests here are mixed mesophytic temperate rainforests: the most diversity in the Western hemisphere and the most diversity of all temperate rain forests in the world! It was pretty exciting; I ate sassafras and wintergreen, walked through giant rhododendrons, smelled amazing blackberry bushes, short needled pine, lots of oak, and some chestnut. The giant rhododendrons were the coolest: I’m used to what my family grows in the garden. The end of the trail brought us out to a ledge looking over the New River Gorge National Scenic River with a famous arched bridge arching over the gorge. It was breathtaking. Truly a work of God.

2 comments:

JW said...

Hello,

I work on legislation that would curb mountaintop removal - the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310) and Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696) - on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.

It is extremely exciting to see young folks such as yourself who are being so active to help save the land and people of Appalachia from mountaintop removal. It is having an incredible impact here in Washington.

The bill already has 150 bipartisan cosponsors and we hope that through the work of yourselves and others in Maine that we can get Congressman Mike Michaud (ME-02) to become a cosponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act.

Congressman Michaud generally cares about water legislation, and he sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure where the bill will first be heard. His vote is critical to passing legislation to end mountaintop removal.

Thanks for your continued work!

peace,
JW
Appalachian Voices
jw@appvoices.org

Anonymous said...

I met someone you work with,Steph Pistillo (spelling?), at MJ camp this summer.

I sent an email to Michaud about the legislation a couple weeks ago. He sent a pretty positive, however vague, response back. I'll email it to you.