In the library this morning

I'm in the library working on my draft of our last essay. I just read over Mary's paper, and I'm impressed! Ask Mary for tips on becoming a successful student! One thing I've noticed: she gets started on her assignments immediately; the draft I read this morning is already four pages long, and she hasn't even gotten to HER project yet! Good work, Mary. She's agreed to bring in copies for a workshop on Monday morning, so all of you in the 8am class, we'll be in the classroom on Monday.

For my 12:40 students, let's meet in the classroom today. I'm curious to see what kinds of sources and research you've done. Bring your developing drafts to class. Sorry that I missed the library group on Wednesday. About 10 of us took a walking tour of their guerrilla gardens, and then Jordan and I ended up on the other side of campus, checking out the ag programs plant sale! If you're interested in buying locally grown plants, check out the greenhouses over by the satellite dishes. Think of it, you could guerrilla garden campus with seedlings sprouted by students here at MTSU! Kind of incestuous in a good way!

I'm very encouraged by initial reports from Evan. Apparently, he's recruited a few friends and they had a very successful mission the other night. I can't wait to see their work. Over by the music building, right? Also, Elizabeth gets the golden spade gardening achievement award for her extensive snap-dragoning of the MTSU marquee in front of the Murphy Center. Well done!

So I'll see you later. Bring your work and your good ideas to class.

Good morning, MTSU

Wonderful morning. Birds singing. Coffee brewing. Seeds sprouting. Sprouts growing. Garden waking up!

Yesterday evening was my maiden voyage in new kayake. Put in on Stones River below the old dam close to Florence Road. I had seriously underestimated the current on my recon trip with Chloe Wednesday night. We hiked to the river farther downstream where the current is far more lazy. The water coming through the dam is swift; fortunately, the water's up, braiding the stream in and out of the flood plain on either side of the main channel, so I was able to paddle out of the swiftest current and into an eddy before I was carried too far downstream. And I sat, floating idle, thinking about that Kenneth Rexroth poem that starts out with him in a canoe, hands and feet over the side, floating idle (not the "Signature of All Things"?)...

Picked up some mussel shells and vacated snail shells for Chloe. Inspected a good portion of the river bed along the eastern shore and found it sufficiently intricate and fascinating!

Oh, yeah...

Now I've posted pictures from both classes. If you're not included, forgive me. I tried my best to make sure everyone was represented.

Check Up

I'm sorry to say that our libary's holdings don't include the two texts on guerrilla gardening (that I requested several months ago). You can use the databases, however, to find some articles and reviews. guerrillagardening.org also contains links to excerpts from Reynolds book and postings from Reynolds that will help you inform you in order to compose a background report.

Remember, get busy gardening. Ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there (on a daily basis) could be the difference between a successful, meaningful experience and an experience that is rushed, haphazard, and ultimately unsuccessful.

I look forward to the emergence of great things!

Afternoon Gardening with Students

I just posted some photos of our gardening experience and seed bomb workshop from last Friday. Thanks again to Nicole for operating the camera. Sorry I couldn't post them all. Maybe later. For our first experience turning the soil, I have to say that it went off without a hitch. I think everyone played some part--weeding, hoeing, aerating, planting seeds, patting out seed bombs, mixing compost and clay, and so on and so on. Hats off to Michael Benton and Danny Mayer for making the trip down from Lexington, KY to share the experience with us and tell us a little about their experiences with guerrilla gardening and community gardening.

I hope everyone has identity their "plot" (ha, a nice pun for us writing-types--so many connections between writing, reading, and gardening!), thought about potential seeds appropriate for that plot, and maybe even stirred some soil. The clock is ticking. Remember, you're not reforesting the desert; you're just taking responsibility for a little piece of earth and transforming it, adding value, adding expression... Remember to document your work--both field notes and photos.

I'm excited to see your handiwork. And remember, we're playing the believing game: believe for a moment (or the next week or so) that your experiment matters and will make a difference. And guess what? It will!

See you tomorrow.

Class tomorrow

Dear members of Project Green Thumb:

I'm cancelling class tomorrow. I'll be in Knoxville all day for the "Writing Green Conference" sponsored by East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists. I thought the conference was the last week in April, but I thought wrong! I hope to spread the word about what we're up to here at MTSU (with our Green Roof proposal), and I hope to gather some good ideas and news from other eco-writers. We'll meet on Monday. Over the weekend, I'd like for you to fill out the proposal (to the best of your ability). If you get stumped on a particular section, just move on to the next. Also, be sure to let President Obama know how you feel about the EPA's latest decision and encourage him to keep the pressure on. I noticed last night that the Coal Industry is stepping up their "Clean Coal" campaign with new TV ads. I can only imagine that this is in direct response to the EPA's decision to halt MTR and MTR permitting. If coal companies can attract enough popular support, they'll have more political clout. Keep your eyes open for their ads; you all are fast becoming experts on the coal industry. Let's give these advertisements a close reading and discuss next week. Take care.

New Music from Wes

Dear friends, acquaintances and strangers all,

You're cordially invited to check out the latest musical offering, "Speedballer," by Murfreeboro's most revered compiler of American Tragi-musical crots! The one in question is yet another installment of the Jeannie serial about that bad-eyed, loveless, and karmically depleted composite-girl, who parts the world before her like a Titanic and leaves a tragic wake of chewed-up iceberg innards behind her but miraculously manages to keep on plowing forward, seemingly oblivious but intrinsically aware of the mess (and at times using feigned ignorance as a tool--don't we all?). I haven't let you down. This one has a helping of pot-smoking no-good-doers, a tender touch of sex-for-drugs miscreants, and an ever-so-light basting of honey-smoked regrets. For those of you unfamiliar with the nuances of narco-semiology, "speedballing" refers to a lethal combination of oxycotin (or methadone) and xanax. Not at all a good way to "get your buzz-coat on." I recommend forgoing the narcs and reposing with a Pinot Noir, preferably on your backporch in the spring while your rosy-faced, toe-headed children dig for tiny treasures with tiny spades in your herb garden. Ahh...humans are tragic, but life is good.

Yours truly,

Westerfield

www.myspace.com/wesleyhoup

More

Here's the link. Consider calling President Obama, congratulating him on this bold and long overdue action, and remind him that this is just his first step in a long journey (a journey that many people have been on for a long time) of abolishing this horrendous practice.

http://www.ilovemountains.org/

A Victory in the War Against King Coal!

Hey, folks. As I was kicking back after a full day of gardening last evening, I nearly fell off the couch when Jim Lehrer of PBS Newshour announced that the Obama administration (through the EPA) has halted all Mountaintop Removal Mining Permits for further review. This means that over 200 current and future MTR operations are on hold! Amazing. The potential for "change you can believe in" is palpable; it is within the president's grasp (and our grasp) to put a permanent end to the coal industry's practice of destroying Appalachia for profit. Go to the ilovemountains.org link on my list of links (to the right) for details of this historic, momentous, incredibly promising development. Most major news sources covered the story last night (CBS, MSNBC, PBS to name a few). I'm stoked! When this semester began, I had very little hope that significant changes would be made, particularly after the 4th circuit court overturned a lower courts ruling that MTR mining permits violated the clean water act (back in February). As it turns out, it was the 4th circuit's ruling (misruling!) that has pushed us to this new threshold!

Revision of Wednesday's Activities

I'm going to postpose the second quiz over Reece's book until after spring break. You can also have until Friday to post your two new precis. Tomorrow we're going to start thinking about our third project in addition to satisfying last minute concerns about your second essay. See you in class.

For Monday, March 2

Bring a draft of your essay to class today for a charted reading. We'll be working on organization, cohesion, and transitions.

For Wednesday, March 4

I'd like for you to post two more precis covering new articles that you're using for your arguments. We'll talk it over in class today.

New Directions in Reclamation

Hey, folks. To the right, I've posted some new links to beekeeping sites. "Coal Country Beeworks" represents a project to reclaim MTR sites by planting native, bee-friendly tree species, particularly the sourwood tree, which is found only in Appalachia. The project, spearheaded by Apiculture specialist, Tammy Horn, seeks to find innovative ways to address the destruction left in the wake of coal mining--ways that will not only restore the land, but also hopefully benefit the residents of the areas. Horn's interest is in exploring the viability of beekeeping as a cottage industry for the coalfield region of Eastern Kentucky. This is an interesting prospect for us to consider because it represents an intersection of issues related to the environmental degradation caused by mining and the strategic "gardening" and cultivation of native species of trees and plants to support apiculture and address historical economic problems of the region. Check it out!

For Friday

Friends, bring in a hard copy draft for Friday. Let's get to work checking our sources/citation (how we use and attribute them) and the arrangment of our ideas. Don't bother coming to class if you don't have a draft. I want to hear (and see) each of your emergent arguments.

In the library

I was pleased to see that most of you have a really good start on your arguments. Remember, these essays have to be evidence-based, that is, researched! Make sure you're supporting your particular claims with evidence that you've researched. You can use sources that you used in Essay 1. Only now, you're using them to support and lend credence to the argument(s) that you're making. Make sure that you're using MLA to document these sources as well. You should have an in-text parenthetical citation each time you use a source in your paper, and you'll need a Works Cited page at the end that provides a complete bibliographic entry for each source (just like your first essay). I won't be able to accept essays that lack research.

My last post dealt with my response to Obama's speech last night, particularly his inclusion of "clean coal" in the discussion about alternative energies. Some of you might want to consider clean coal in your essays. You could use this as a "pro" coal argument, as the coal industry is touting clean coal technology as an "alternative" for the future and as a means for America to wean itself from Middle Eastern oil. Given your understanding of the coal industry and mountaintop removal, it shouldn't be hard for you to refute the clean coal argument. Will a shift toward (and investment in) clean coal stop/change/or even address the environmental calamity that is MTR? Will finding smarter, cleaner ways to burn coal result in finding smarter, cleaner ways to mine coal? Is there such a thing as clean, sustainable mining? Is there really such a thing as clean coal? I don't think so. Clean coal is a textbook oxymoron. Is there such a thing as cruel kindness? Kind cruelty? Joyful depression? Safe disasters? No. Again, clean coal is the coal industry's advertising coup d'etat, and the more charismatic leaders like Obama repeat the phrase, the more the American citizen/consumer will buy into the idea. This is one way that lies become truths: you float them out, let them drift around in the public psyche, reinforce them through unelaborated repetition, and before you know it...snap, crackle, pop...deliberate misinformation becomes factual. Last November, we dispensed with an administration that perfected this process. Case in point, the flatout fabrication that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind (or even connected to) the September 11th attacks. While we knew it was untrue, Rumsfeld and Cheney purposefully equated Saddam and 9/11 every time they had the opportunity. And guess what? Many Americans came to believe there was a direct connection bewteen the two. It was a lie that gained factual weight.

So...let's not let anyone, no matter how good the intentions and how much admiration we might hold (and I do admire Obama!), float the clean coal lie without being challenged. Let's not let this fairytale become a reality. Even if we develop the technology to sequester carbon molecules from lumps of coal, we will still have to suffer the consequences of a irreversible degraded environment.

Clean coal anyone?

In President Obama's address to congress last night he laid out an ambitious plan for economic recovery--a plan that included both short term and long term fixes. It was gratifying to hear the president talk about health care, education, and (most importantly) energy. He seems committed to alternative sources, namely wind, solar, and biofuels. Just when I was nodding in agreement (and thinking "Yes. Go, dog, go!), he uttered that euphemistic, spirit-sinking noun phrase "clean coal." What's more, he uttered it in series with true alternatives such as wind and solar. Perhaps he's just giving lip-service to the coal industry and his real plans exclude investing billions in the dirty rock that's been the root cause of so much ecological and human tragedy. But I'm not so sure. Is he serious? Does he honestly believe in the fairytale that is "clean coal?" Doesn't he see "clean coal" for what it really is--a billion dollar rebranding of the culprit as the hero? If he is serious about clean coal, not just classifying it along with other sustainable alternatives but actually pursuing the development of clean coal technology, he's not the candidate of "change" that I (and millions of other Americans) thought he was because clean coal equals more of the same for the coal industry. In fact, the coal industry will have a progressive stamp of approval to continue obliterating Appalachia--its mountains, its streams and rivers, and, most tragically, its communities. Just because the industry claims it's going to sequester carbon and produce a cleaner burning coal doesn't mean they're going to enact cleaner methods of extraction. Clean coal offers the industry a green light, not only to continue leveling Appalachia, but to hasten their efforts. Think of the pressures the race for clean coal will exert on regulatory agencies. They'll be pressured to make the mine-permitting process as "snag-free" as possible, because, after all, the coal industry represents an alternative energy. This is a scary, scary proposition, and I wish Obama would stop endorsing what we all know to be a lie--clean coal.

The Ghosts of Gardens Past

Gardens have been a part of my life since the beginning. As a kid in High Bridge, Kentucky, my folks raised wonderful gardens. Their goal was to raise enough of everything to last for most of the year. They would try to can at least 52 quarts of everything they planted. A noble and time-consuming goal. Of course, it didn't always work out that way. Dry weather, root-rot, groundhogs and other garden-loving critters played foil to their domestic agrarian dreams. But battling the elements of nature is half the fun! At least in retrospect.

I raised my first garden with my greenthumbed wife, Laura, in 1994. We grew tomato plants and a variety of herbs in old whiskey barrel halves on our deck. The joy and sense of accomplishment that come with plucking your own ripened tomato is second to none! You really feel special, as you should, by god. You've done something. You've helped make goodness. Since then, we've increased our gardens over the years, both in size and varietal scope. Our staples are tomatoes, beans, corn, squash, potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, peas, broccoli, and a variety of greens. Now we always grow a flower/herb garden as well. Herbs are particularly satisfying because many of them will make it through the winter and can be enjoyed for four or five years (particularly if you live farther south).

At our previous house in Wilmore, Kentucky, I started a wild flower garden. I was (and still am) quite proud of this small, dazzling plot of purples, reds, pinks, yellows, and blues. Most of the specimens were transplanted from our old farm along the palisades of the Kentucky River. I started out with Wild Columbine. I dug up a fine specimen from a precarious limestone ledge 200 feet above the river. The next year I added Dutchman's Breeches, Larkspur (white and purple), Fire Pink, Twin Leaf, Wild Hyacinth, Trillium (Wake Robin), False Rue Anenome, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit. My last addition was Shooting Star. Since my parents now live in our old house, I can still tend to this small but vibrant patch beneath the Catalpa tree whenever I visit. I plan on starting a wildflower garden here in Tennessee and have found a nursery that specializes in indigenous species--Viola Valley Wildflowers.

The image to the right is last years flower/herb garden in Wilmore. Each time I look at it, I feel sad. I miss our old house and yard--hearing Chloe and Henry playing under the trees and singing silly songs while Laura and I fussed over each plant. But fills me with excitement, too. I know a new garden is waiting in the very near future. In less than a month, we'll get to start all over again.

Potential gardens

Alright, I'm seeing some potential garden plots popping up on your blogs. Well, done. Keep the pictures coming. Hopefully, next week we'll take a walking/journaling tour of your sites. Let's all start thinking warmer thoughts... How did you all like Amanda's presentation? Isn't she awesome? We're lucky to have her (and her husband, Jason) on campus.

Montgomery Hollow, by Richard Hugo

Birds here should have names so hard to say
you name them over. They finally found
the farmer hanging near the stream.
Only insect hum today and the purple odor
of thyme. You'd bet your throat against
the way a mind goes bad. You conquer loss
by going to the place it happened
and replaying it, saying the name
of the face in the open casket right.

People die in cities. Unless it's war
you never see the bodies. They die in print,
over phones in paramouric flats.
Here, you find them staring down the sun,
flies crawling them like bacon. Wives
scream two days running and the pain is gone.
Here, you find them living.

To know a road you own it, every bend
and pebble and the weeds along it,
dust that itches when the August hayrake
rambles home. You own the home.
You own the death of every bird you name.
To live good, keep your life and the scene.
Cow, brook, hay: these are names of coins.

Sunday's Lesson

Hey, folks. Here's shout-out to my Modern Grammar students in the form of the complete AUX rule including passive voice:

AUX = [TN, MOD] (HAVE + EN) (BE + ING) (BE + EN)

Yippee!

My Students are Crazy

My students are crazy. If you check their blogs, you'll find that they're talking to seeds! Amazed? You betcha! They're talking to little plastic bags full of seeds.

Parker Palmer on Moyers Journal

Bill Moyers interviewed Parker Palmer on Journal tonight. Palmer's a well-known author and sociologist (I've read The Courage to Teach and recommend it for anyone who plans on teaching as a career). He talked about his idea of the "tragic gap"--a place between reality and hope where illusions are finally stripped away (thus, the tragedy) and real possibilities and potentials are recognized. A compelling notion, to say the least. He eloquently articulates what millions of Americans are only recently realizing--that American identity has been fattened on illusions. Finally seeing through the fog of illusion is painful but essential to realizing healthy, sustaining possibilities for the future. Go to pbs.org, find the link to Bill Moyers' Journal, and check out tonight's episode. It's worth your while.

For next week

Remember folks, Amanda Moore is coming on Monday to talk about her experiences as an environmental lawyer in Eastern Kentucky. She dealt directly with families who suffered hardships as a result of MTR. She's written eloquently about her experiences, too, so she'll be an important resource for our own writing. On Wednesday, we'll meet in the library (to work out the kinks some of you are experiencing with your blogs and to continue to research for our second essay). You need to have at least a two page draft. Go ahead and post it to your blog; I'll be checking prior to class on Wednesday. And you need to identify, photograph, and consider the merits (on your blog) of at least two potential sites for some guerrilla gardening. The tentative list of characteristics is as follows: 1) assess sunlight conditions, 2) assess "ease of watering" conditions, 3) assess traffic conditions (is it safe from stampeding herds of students?), 4) assess mowing conditions (is it safe from weed-eater wielding or mower-riding grounds-keepers?), 5) aesthetic propriety (is it visible to walkers-by?). These are just a few things to consider to get you started. Post the images of your chosen places on your blog so that we can judge their merits. Most importantly, have fun discovering!

Charles Haden, US 4th District Circuit Court

"When valley fills are permitted in intermittent and perennial streams they destroy those stream segments...If there are fish, they cannot migrate. If there is any life form that cannot acclimate to life deep in a rubble pile, it is eliminated...No effect on related environmental values is more adverse than obliteration."

In class we've been discussing how our guerrilla gardening efforts might constitute a response to the coal industry's destruction of Appalachia. Obviously, we can't go reclaim a leveled mountain, but we can sow seeds in distal affinity with the flora that's being lost beneath the bulldozers and draglines! We can reclaim little areas, little plots in our own habitat in response (in memoriam and solidarity with) to the destruction of other habitats. According to the Surface Mining and Reclamation Control Act of 1977, coal companies are supposed to restore mining sites to their "approximate original contour" (AOC) when they're finished. Anyone who's ever played in a sandbox will understand the difficulty of building (or re-building) a mountain. You can only pile sand so high before it all starts to slide down the sides. In other words, you CAN'T rebuild a mountain. Coal operators know this, too. So with the help of their handmaidens in congress, they added a provision into the law that basically allows them to run an end-around the AOC stipulation. Coal companies can obtain an "AOC variance" if they can prove that the mined land will be put to a "higher and better use." At first, this higher use was envisioned as commercial, industrial, or residential, but over time (with a serious lack of businesses and individuals rushing to stake their claims on these newly formed toxic plateaus) higher use has degenerated into simply...pasture. Recap: You can obtain an AOC variance if you promise to turn this ecologically fragile, unique and diverse forested mountain into...yep...a rubble-strewn pasture. Brilliant! This makes perfect sense. Appalachia is in desperate need of toxic, topsoil-less, rubble-strewn pasture land.

Today we decided to adopt AOC, put it through some rapid, ameliorative semantic change, and use it to identify our local reclamation efforts. So "approximate original contour" becomes "Active Organic Cultivators." We will not be applying for AOC variances.

Neighbor (by Richard Hugo)

The drunk who lives across the street from us
fell in our garden, on the beet patch
yesterday. So polite. Pardon me,
he said. He had to be helped up and held,
steered home and put to bed, declaring
we got to have another drink and smile.

I admit my envy. I've found him in salal
and flat on his face in lettuce, and bent
and snoring by that thick stump full of rain
we used to sail destroyers on.
And I've carried him home so often
stone to the rain and me, and cheerful.

I try to guess what's in that dim warm mind.
Does he think about horizoned firs
black against the light, thirty years
ago, and the good girl--what's her name--
believing, or think about the dog
he beat to death that day in Carbonado?

I hear he's dead, and wait now on my porch.
He must be in his shack. The wagon's
due to come and take him where they take
late alcoholics, probably called Farm's End.
I plan my frown, certain he'll be carried out
bleeding from the corners of his grin.

What's in a name?

Alright, I'm seeing some of your posts about your seeds. I'm really digging the names, too (i.e., Al Green rocks!). Keep a close (creative) eye on them; they can be tricky and do interesting things while your note watching. For instance, I'm pretty sure that Karl Marx (my #1 seed) was writing a little, bean-sized manifesto on the paper towel last night while I was watching "Lost." When I went to check, he tried to pin it on Charles Darwin.

Germination Assignment

Be sure to name your seeds. Again, I'd go for names that are easily recognizable and memorable to you. For me, I'm using the following: Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Aldo Leopold, and Grover. Be sure to note their progress each morning or night and post your observations. The first week or so should be outwardly uneventful, so you'll need to be creative! Imagine what's happening inside. In a Bakhtinian sense, each seed is a microcosm of the world, of all life. I'd be inclined to wax philosophical. Also remember to post your emergent argument. What is the most convincing evidence against MTR? Fashion a position that reflects this evidence.

Spring Weather

Folks, looks like we'll be in the classroom for the entire hour today (a perfect vantage point from which to appreciate the spring-like weather). Today's agenda: go over the precis; drive asunder any doubts about what we're doing with the blogs; discuss the 4th circuit court's ruling last Friday concerning MTR permitting; discuss a recent article in the Journal of the North American Benthological Society, "Downstream effects of mountaintop coal mining..."; discuss Essay 2; germinate seeds! See you soon.

Enlist

Friends, check out the link to Richard Reynolds' Guerrilla Gardening website (at the right). It's an interesting site and an exciting proposition for us! Consider enlisting as a guerrilla gardener; later, we can tell him about what we're doing. Given the government and court sanctioned destruction of Appalachia (ask me about the latest set-backs to the case against MTR in class) and the deep budget cuts in the state of Tennessee that are having an adverse effect on the taken-for-granted aspects of life on MTSU's campus (such as grounds-keeping, maintenance of all things green and growing), becoming a guerrilla gardener not only offers you the opportunity to do something fun and educational but also something that is of immediate value to the local community. Somebody's got to take up the slack! Let's not let our campus wither up and die like the economy seems to be doing. By becoming guerrilla gardeners, we can contribute to the overall health and beauty of our community in a time when health and beauty don't seem to be a priority. If it's true that MTSU is going to be "hotter, colder, and dirtier" due to budget shortfalls and cost-cutting measures, then we can "fight the filth with forks and flowers."

For Wednesday

I've been checking out your posts. So far, so good. Most of you seem to have little difficulty, so hats off! You're blogging.

For Wednesday, I have several activities in store. If the weather permits, we might reconnoiter some potential garden locales. If at all possible, do not wear your Sunday best. You might get dirt on your hands, or at least your shoes (or at the bare minimum, you'll have to look at some dirt). You need to bring a notebook. I recommend purchasing a small notepad exclusively for this class--something you can fit in your pocket and produce on the spot to take note of such important things as soil type, available sunlight, future water conditions, relative safety of spot, potential plant varieties most suitable, etc. If the weather doesn't cooperate, we'll start germinating some seeds. I'll bring all the necessary fixings; you'll just have to care for them, see that they get sunlight and an occasional encouraging word to reassure them that growing is the thing they want to do. We'll also go over note-taking. I'm thinking of dialogic (or dialectical) notes--notes about notes! We'll discuss in class.

In the meantime, get your rhetorical precis posted if you haven't all ready.

Catch you later.

Hey, folks. Here's some work for Monday.

I'll be out of town on Monday, so in lieu of class I'd like for you to practice posting material to your blog. In class today, we'll cover the Rhetorical Precis. I'd like for you to practice summarizing some of the articles (or chapters) you've read and utilized for Essay One. I'd like for you each to post at least two summaries for Monday. Each one should be about 3/4 to a page in length. I'd also like for you to start formulating your second essay over MTR--your argument. This will also be posted on your blog. Think about the most compelling arguments you've encountered so far--environmental, social, economic, legal, etc. Start considering the most compelling cases that could help support an argument.

Lastly, I'd like you to "follow my blog" so that your screen name (and image if you have one) appear in the sidebar of my blog.

Cheers.

Planting the Seed

In a passing discussion (about MTR and an upcoming presentation by Dave Cooper from the Mountaintop Removal Roadshow) with the chair of my department, he mentioned the need for a rooftop garden on top of Peck Hall (our office and classroom building) as a energy-saving measure. I hadn't thought much about the topic before, but it dawned on me that having students write Green Roof proposals might be a fruitful activity. When I took the job here (at MTSU) last fall, I remember the chair telling me about the Green Energy initiative that students had passed a few years back (the largest student-voter turn out in school history) whereby each student pays an additional 8 bucks on their tuition every year so that the school can purchase "green energy." Half the money goes toward the purchase; the other half goes into an energy conservation fund that's available for other conservation projects. So...now the wheels are spinning. There's money to be had to convert some unsuspecting rooftop into a garden oasis--or at least a green roof.

Now I'm telling my students that there's a localized, sustainable, and fun answer to their question "what can we do locally to address the raping and pillaging of Appalachia?" You will propose a green roof. In other words, we will help our university save energy and by saving energy, use less. Use less what? Coal, of course. We're in the heart of TVA country, and TVA is one of the biggest consumers of Appalachian coal in the world. Sure, they sell a little green energy here and there, but the vast majority of their power generation is fueled by dirty rock. The vast majority of our university's energy comes from coal. If we can reduce our consumption (and it's proven that greenroofing, particularly in the hottest months, can dramatically reduce the amount of energy consumed by absorbing the sun's heat and putting it to good use--photosynthesis--thereby keeping buildings naturally cooler inside and eliminating the need to turn the air-conditioning way down), we can reduce the demand. This, obviously, won't stop the coal industry from pursuing their business, but it is a way for people, institutions, businesses, municipalities to see their own connection to the problem and take a little step toward a better, more informed future.

Seeds of a project

Okay. It's 7:30 on a Tuesday evening, and I'm setting up a blog for a second time. The starts weren't aligned yesterday.

For several years, I've been using the issue of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) in my writing courses as a catalyst for talking about civic responsibility, ecological literacy, informed energy consumption, community and grassroots activism among other things. This is my fourth semester with the topic, and sadly not much has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse. Entire mountains are being REMOVED--yes, exterminated--right now. The Appalachians, particularly the Cumberlands, are under seige.

Each class starts out more or less at the same point: researching the topic in order to form some picture of the terrain. We read what's been published. This semester we're reading Erik Reece's Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia (2006). Several fascinating and troubling accounts of MTR have appeared in print in the last few years [I recommend Michael Shnayerson's Coal River: How a Few Brave Americans Took on a Powerful Company--and the Federal Government--to Save the Land They Love (2008) and Penny Loeb's Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal (2007)]. I chose Reece because his account, for the most part, represents the kind of first-hand, experiential, close observation that research writers need to practice.

After students come to a clear, detailed understanding of the tendrils of the issue (i.e. the history of coal mining in Appalachia, how the coal industry came "to own" the coal, the various regulations on strip mining written into the 1977 Surface Mining and Reclamation Control Act, the rise of MTR as a preferred, "cost-effective" method, ballooning coal production and the corresponding retreat of mining jobs, the impact of MTR on the human and natural environment, how we are all connected to the issue through our informed or uninformed consumptive patterns and behavior, and the tragically comical re-branding of the coal industry with such misnomers as "clean coal" to name a few), they are in a position to formulate their own arguments and suggestions. I always try to present students with opportunities to research, write, and act for authentic reasons, reasons that transcend the confines of "an essay for my English class." Sometimes the tasks have been simply yet democratically profound: write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Other times the tasks have been much more focused, weighted with more civic responsibility, like the time students submitted researched comments to the Office of Surface Mining concerning a change to "the buffer zone" rule that was open for public commentary. We've developed brochures, pamphlets, and newsletter for dissimenation around campus; we've held public awareness rallies, complete with poster sessions detailing the true ecological, social, and spiritual costs of "cheap" energy.

But in the end, students still ask "what can we do to make a real difference?" And while I try to assure them that writing with passion from an informed perspective and gaining "a voice" on the issue is important, a sense of futility remains: "So I've submitted my opinion to an electronic recepticle in some building of some colossal bureaucracy in Washington D. C. What have I accomplished? What have I done that has lasing value? How will this change the status quo? Who, exactly, is listening besides you, our teacher, and some government lacky who has to sift through our emails.

Stay tuned for a locally-based, homegrown response.