I can think of no place I would rather have been. I spent this past weekend at the first annual (hopefully the only one needed) Mountain Aid festival at Shakori Hills, NC. It felt good to discuss mountaintop removal openly without the backlash and the name calling. In other words, without the friends of coal clouding/confusing the issues.
I came back from Mountain Aid feeling a little obligated to talk about all the talented and passionate people and the effort they put forth every day to bring awareness to mountaintop removal coal mining. I will say this, I’m proud to call them my friends.
I do have a few photos from the event I would like to share. Four groups that performed at Mountain Aid I did not, for whatever reason, get a photo of. They were – Donna the Buffalo, Andrew McKnight & Beyond Borders, Those Darlins, and The Beast.
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Larry Gibson – “The biggest little man on the planet.”
Friends of the mountains…
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A little about the next photo. In it the boy is attempting to feed a probably not so wild anymore turkey his peach. The turkey seemed to want the peach but I believe it would have preferred to get it from the ground instead of the little boys hand. I get enjoyment out of watching scenes such as this one play out. They were both nervous of the other and the distance you see them in the photo is as close as they got to each other. The turkey never really trying to get away from the boy and the boy never really trying to catch the turkey.
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Taking care of old business -
The poll in the right sidebar was a smashing… uh, failure. Seems as if not enough people care one way or the other. There were not enough participants to even warrant this small paragraph. Although my opinion apparently goes against the grain on both sides of the issue, I stand firmly in my conviction that the coal battle should not be in an elementary school classroom… period. Good thing I don’t have kids in elementary, I’d be raisin’ hell to the power of ten.
