Good Night, Irene

Dear Irene,

Was this picture taken in your office?  Maybe at home, but I'm guessing from the style of phone  it's at West Virginia Wesleyan. Frostburg used the photo for your reading in  September. Did you help them pick it out? It looks to me like a black and white version is used in part by the Intermountain in Elkins, so I'm guessing your family likes. So do I.

Talbott Funeral home says they're receiving friends from four til nine tonight and it's already 3  p.m.  I could drive the four plus hours to Belington and still make it if I leave within an hour, but I haven't gotten any work done today, since I've spent the last four hours thinking on you.

I haven't got any work done and they're still blowing up our mountains (Doh, of course nothing has miraculously changed since Saturday) I'm still looking for a community fund to apply for a Knight grant to  train more voices in our region  to tell their stories.  And  interest the national press in better explaining what's going on.  Knight's  "live chat" is tomorrow at noon, just about when they will be in the midst of the celebration of your life.  I could slip out, even though I don't own a laptop.  Google tells me the library over on Elliot is open all day and has net access computers.  I just liked  the library's page on facebook.  So that makes

I could drive the nine hours round trip, meet your family and friends.  Even walk around town and imagine your childhood.  Ask directions to the farm. But besides the grant, Dendron needs help stopping a new coal plant and in Giles they're still dumping ash on the banks of the New. A friend in the Scott wants to complain about facebook and how not everybody has and The Guardian has published me since December.

But you're a higher priority. That song Leadbelly made famous  echoes in my mind.  Not the verses, mind you--the context is off--but the chorus:

Good night Irene
Good night Irene
Good night Irene
I'll see you in my dreams.

Made me wonder what you thought of that song?  It's been recorded since by so many folks from The Weavers and Johnny Cash to  Michelle Shocked and Tom Waits.  Heck I was just now readying that even Raffi has a version.

I can't  ask you anymore in person or in letters or facebook unless I imagine your reply, which isn't usually my nature.  Although that WOULD make an interesting writing prompt. The Gazette says they're burying you tomorrow, but not sure about the four plus hour drive.  I do plan to sit shiva for at least the next week.  It's not like you were Jewish, nor am I close enough kin as it's usually defined.  But, that phrase comes to mind as an explanation: kindred spirits.

I thought about how I'd say we're connected, when I was looking for a photograph to use at the top of this post. 

It looks like the same one the used, although in black and white. But not only did that image come up for several of your readings but also on a review of Jayne Anne Phillips Fast Lane on Critical Mob.

Looking at the page, I couldn't see why. And when I search for you on the site, there wasn't an entry. Then I saw it tucked away on a tab labelled "connections." And not on the one marked "influences." I can't claim that you influenced my writing. I hadn't read enough of you, even though you were named poet laureate years before we met in Charleston. But we were (and I am) writing from a set of common concerns, if not backgrounds.

Thanks to Vic, I'm listening to you reading three of  your poems from that October when I last saw you:

• "Homage to Hazel Dickens"
• "At 24"
• "Sunday Morning, 1950"

I'll research later and try to add links to written versions or check with your sister, Eileen Martin, and see how to get permission to transcribe them here  if I can't  find them.  But until then,  folks can listen here:

(I hadn't noticed when Vic posted it to his blog last April, but the West Virginia Book festival posted it in a remembrance. )

I'm also listening Llewellyn McKernan interview you at the West Virginia Writers Summer Conference:

• your approach to how to start writing writing memoir, how she adapted her draft to write essays to be recorded on NPR and the feedback loop to the memoir
• your  take on the status and history of the development of Appalachian literature from the times of Louise McNeill  and James Still, and
•  your thoughts on writing process and teaching creative writing.

Just wish I had known about it before the Book Festival.  I might have asked you to continue the discussion, either when we were sitting on that bench together or during your reading when you asked for questions from the audience.

Irene, think of this as a poem for you without line breaks.  Or NaNoWriMo by a poet and ten months early (Jean Larsen asked me Thursday night at Hollins, was I ever going to write a novel.) Don't know if I'll have more time to write you today.  I've been sitting here now, pushing aside other things for a good five hours before I even took a break to get something to eat. The emergeny Lemon Luna Bar I keep in my purse was long gone. The Lightlife organic Tempeh tastes like after several days the last bit has turned.

Don't know if I'll have more time to write you today. If not, goodnight, Irene.  I'll hear you in my dreams.

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Irene McKinney, ¡Presente!

This will be brief as the library is closing. I just wanted to let folks who loved Irene know, if they hadn't heard the sad news. The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine hasn't even posted the news yet at her bio, as I write this. I'll add to this post later. The service is 11 a.m. Wednesday at Talbott Funeral Home in Belington,, WV ((Barbour County), where she was born and grew up on her family's farm. That's about 2 1/2 hours from Charleston, 4 hours from here.

The picture is of Irene and Denise Giardina and Jayne Anne Phillips at the West Virginia Book Festival. It was taken by Vic Burkhammer for a post at his Charleston Gazette blog, Mountain Word. Here is a description from the festival of Irene's

Phillips, who comes from Buckhannon, WV--where McKinney taught--told the Charleston Gazette,

She is a great loss to the state of West Virginia...She made West Virginia real, sensory and important in all its timeless variety, the land, farms, the people and animals, the rituals. She knew the meaning of home place.

I last saw Irene McKinney that Sunday in October 2010. Before her reading, she sat next to me on one of the benches in the cavernous Charleston Civic Center, talking about how excited she was to start a new low residency MFA Creative Writing Program at West Virginia Wesleyan and asked if I had any suggestions for faculty. I told her about Katie Fallon, whom I knew from her time at Virginia Tech. Irene's announcement followed the first week in November.

The program offers interested writers the opportunity to explore the connection between place and identity, focusing on their home area, one of the field study destinations, such as Ireland, or the Appalachian region itself. The program will officially launch in July, 2011 with a three-day literary festival, and the deadline for applications is March 1, 2011.

Irene was so approachable, so enthusiastic, treating folks as her equal. Outspoken and ironic, she often repeated the words which can be found penned in the introduction to the 2003 anthology "Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia."

I'm a hillbilly, a woman, and a poet, and I understood early on that nobody was going to listen to anything I had to say anyway, so I might as well just say what I want to.

Or in the poem "At 24",

"I don't know who I am, but you can't have me."

I had only met Irene once before, when I got to participate with her and Denise Giardiana as part of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition's West Virginia Writers MTR project. I already knew Denise from Hindman and Jeff Mann from Virginia
Tech, as well as Chris Green and Edwina Pendarvis, who had edited an anthology that included one of my poems, as will as Diane Gillam Fisher, whom I had just met that March at the Appalachian Studies Association conference. The project was where I met Katie, Bob Henry Baber and Rob Merritt.

UPDATE 2/7/2012  Good Night, Irene

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"Dark Wednesday" : Proposed internet laws antipiracy or anti--freespeech?

Illustration is a screenshot from Mozilla.

January 18, websites are joining the Electric Frontier Foundation in calling for an end to current internet blacklisting legislation S. 968 PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and  H.R. 3261 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. Under the current drafts, courts could order credit card firms, online payment companies like PayPal and advertising networks to stop doing business with those websites. They could also order search engines to stop linking to them and internet service providers (ISPs) to block their customers from accessing them.

Sounds like China?  No, we're talking about the USA.



Currently sites must remove specific copyrighted content if presented with a properly filled out DMCA takedown request. The notices require that the complainants must identify exactly what pages the content is on, and  prove that they are indeed the owners of the content. Even then, this process is often abused according to the Electric Frontier Foundation.

SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content.  Instead they focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.

Thus, if the AG served a site, it would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. Does this sound like free speech?

Think not?  Then join us and write and  call your Senators and Congressperson  to tell them to stop this legislation.

And to read about how to particpate in other ways, see this excellent rundown by Ars Technicha (h/t to Dan Radmacher)

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Tanner Cultural Center: A Legacy to Preserve and Celebrate

In April 2010, a tornado ripped through Newport, Tennessee, damaging the roof of the Tanner Cultural Center. Although money to conduct repairs was distributed to the City through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to William Isom II and Friends of the Tanner Cultural Center, the City is now talking about demolishing the center.  This despite a the National Trust’s Rosenwald Schools Initiative to save the remaining Rosenwald Schools, of which Tanner Center is one.  Not to mention the National Rosenwald Schools Conference: 100 Years of Pride, Progress, and Preservation to be held at Tuskegee University in Alabama June 14-16, 2012.

 We need to ask that the City of Newport act as responsible stewards for this beloved community space of such great cultural significance. Won't you join me before January 10 by writing Scott Collins newportadm@newporttn.org or calling 423-623-7323 ext 18 and asking that the City of Newport instead proceed without further delay on the needed repairs and clean up of the center. (Please send a cc of your email to Issom william@800northfourth.com.)

Constructed in 1924, as a Rosenwald School with local funds and a donation from Sears-Roebuck magnate Julius Rosenwald, to serve the educational needs of the Black students in Cocke County, the Tanner Building is special because of its status as a surviving East Tennessee Rosenwald School and its utilization as a community space for the Black and rural populations of Cocke County.

There are many surviving alumni of the Tanner School living and working in the neighborhood in which the building is based. Groups that have been displaced from this structure include; AA, Families First, East Tennessee Human Resource Agency, Clean Water Expected in East Tennessee, Community House Cooperative, Head Start, The Farmers' Market, and Veteran's Affairs to name a few. The building also provided meeting space for other groups, community events and computer lab access to the neighborhood.

As noted in the the Cocke County Heritage Development Report from 2008 conducted under the direction of Dr. Carroll Van West, the school is a "legacy to be preserved and celebrated."

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Let's Remember Mary C. Snow: An Open Letter to The Charleston Gazette

 Photo is from a screenshot of  WCHS television's video.

*

Thomas Carlyle is reputed to have written, "Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers."

As a lover of your newspaper, that's why I was disappointed today when I checked your archives and couldn't read more about Mary C. Snow, an educator in Kanawha County, West Virginia Schools for more than fifty years and the first African-American principal in the area. By contrast, WCHS television still has a January  video online. Perhaps that's because Wes Armstead, now Managing Editor at the station remembers Snow as one of his teachers.

Mary Snow passed away in January at the age of 97.  Now, as you report, many in the community have asked that West Side Elementary School be renamed in her honor as a remembrance of her dedication to the community's children. And yet, reading the virulent comments on the articles, I'm wondering how many folks know in any depth about the accomplishments of Ms. Snow and her importance in the history of Charleston and of West Virginia.

As the December 19 editorial in The Daily Mail noted of the School Board's 3-2 not to rename the school,

It's a crying shame, and a missed opportunity to teach history.

Snow, who died in January at age 97, was a shining example of the power of public education.

The school should have been named for her - not so much because it would properly have honored her, but because it would have extended her teaching career.

Nothing would have pleased her more.

Born in 1913, the oldest of seven children in a poor family, Snow lost her father to violence when she was 13. Her mother took in laundry to support her children.

But Mary C. Snow overcame poverty and racism to graduate from West Virginia State College and earn a master's degree from the University of Cincinnati.

She went on to serve as a teacher, principal and inspiration on the West Side for more than five decades.

Like West Side educator Isom Cabell before her, she changed history.Snow's story resonates as strongly today as it did when her generation was in elementary school.

As my friend filmmaker Jordan Freeman noted on facebook, "It's very representative of WV government's disrespect of its own citizens that the school board won't name the school after a well-respected community teacher, a small thing in the scheme of things, but a very clear example of unresponsive state government."

Community leaders including Reverend Watts are circulating a petition that already had 500 signatures as of December 15, according to your paper.

Jordan is planning a petition on Change.org (the same site that Molly Katchpole used to used to persuade Bank of America to cancel its $5 debit card fees. Jason explains, "They've been doing great on-the-ground organizing to get this name change, as the tip of the iceberg about basic community respect. An online petition will hopefully help further that effort." (I'll include a link when the petition is online.)

The Gazette has special reports which open its archives on scoundrels such as bank robber Roy Plummer and disgraced politician Jerry Mezzatesta. Also on some of the scourges that let outsides stereotype WV and Appalachia, in general, as benighted: drug overdoses, mining disasters, mountaintop removal. How about a special report on one of its outstanding assets, Mary C. Snow?  A good place to start might be the articles on the current controversy, as well as your obituary and the February 16, 1996 interview and the March 24, 1996 story on Ms. Snow's role in the origins of unity day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is reputed to have said, "Sin writes histories, goodness is silent." Please don't prove him right.

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SB 1751: If coal ash is so safe, the utility and coal company executives should eat it!

If you were to believe the above coal ash "facts" circulated by the American Coal Ash Association 's Educational Foundation, coal ash is safe.

Or, "Coal ash offers our society extraordinary environmental and economic benefits without harm to public health and safety when properly managed." One wonders who is going to make sure things are "properly managed?" Not the Environmental Protection, if that group and the coal companies have their way, right now they're pushing hard for passage of S. 1751 to stop the EPA's plans to regulate coal ash, especially the Democratic senators from the states of North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Montana and Alaska, all of whom are undecided on S. 1751. This despite the legitimate arguments that:

•     S.1751 endangers the health and safety of thousands of communities: it will prevent the EPA from ever revisiting a federal coal ash rule even if it is found that coal ash dumps pose an even greater threat.
•     S.1751 is a dangerous bill: it would allow the construction of coal ash dumps that don’t meet drinking water standards for arsenic, lead and other pollutants.
•     S.1751 will cost American jobs: An October 2011 study by a Tufts University senior economist Frank Ackerman (email, bio)  found that strong coal ash regulations, such as the one proposed by the EPA in 2010, would generate 28,000 jobs annually.
•     S.1751 will hurt recycling: once coal ash is dumped into water, which this bill would allow by permitting the construction of new coal ash ponds, it cannot be recycled.
•     S.1751 fails to address the current threat: this bill will not phase out dangerous ash ponds or prevent another tragedy like the coal ash spill in Tennessee in 2008.
•     Coal ash is hazardous to our health: the cancer risk from drinking water contaminated by arsenic near some coal ash ponds is 1 in 50, which is 2,000 times greater than the EPA’s acceptable risk level
•     Coal ash is a national problem: it is the second largest industrial waste stream in the U.S.

Emily Enderly, also at Earth Justice, sent me a chart that compares the presence  or absence of regulatory requirements for coal ash under four different regulatory schemes:

(1) EPA’s proposed subtitle C (special waste) rule;
(2) EPA proposed subtitle D (nonhazardous waste) rule;
(3) the municipal solid waste (household trash) regulations found in 40 C.F.R Part 258.
(4) Coal Ash Bill (H.R. 2273 (passed 267 - 144 on October 14) which is identical to S. 1751

I've set up a link on google docs where you can view, print and/or download it:

Comparison of Coal Ash Regulation under Four RCRA Regulatory Schemes

If you don't want to register for google and would like a copy of the chart, email me.

Background information:

• Senate Bill 1751 as introduced
• Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Members
• Senate Bill 1751 Sponsors
• Senate Bill 1751 Status  (may not be up to date if we've got insider info)
• H.R. 2273, as introduced to Senate
• Senate contact list

Please remember that if you live near an existing or proposed coal ash dump, you can sign on to the letter below being organized by Environmental Integrity  by sending your name and address-- including city, state and zip code-- in an email  to Sam Flenner <samf.environmentalintegrity@gmail.com > and cc LaToya Archibald < latoya.s.archibald@gmail.com> by noon, December 12 Eastern Time. If someone doesn't have email, you can send  their name, address, city state and zip code (Phone and email optional) along w. the copy below.  And if you're lucky enough not to have this problem pass this on to others who might.

No matter where you live, you can  email, fax or phone your Senator to tell them that coal ash is dangerous and SHOULD be regulated, vote AGAINST Senate bill 1751.

Okay, here's that form and  letter...

*

DON’T FORGET US LETTER PERMISSION

The following give their permission to (name local sponsor org) to include their names name and addresses on the letter entitled Don’t Forget Us addressed to members of the US Senate.  They and their family are My are directly impacted by lax state disposal safeguards of coal combustion waste.  They urge their federal Legislators to support the EPA’s rulemaking process under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and oppose any actions or legislation that would impede the EPA rulemaking process to set common-sense safeguards for the disposal of this waste.

Name: ____________________________________

Address: __________________________________ 

City: _____________ State: ___ Zip Code _______ 

Phone: ____________________ (optional)     

        

Email: ____________________ (optional)             

*


October 20, 2011
US Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator ____:

We understand that you may soon vote on a bill that would leave oversight of coal ash dumps to the states, and prevent EPA from taking action against polluters who threaten our air and groundwater. We are referring to S. 1751, which is identical to the industry-backed bill that cleared the House of Representatives on October 14. We know Congress has already heard from industry lobbyists, big contributors, and state bureaucrats. We live near these dumps, and put up with their pollution year after year. Please hear our voices.

We know what it is like to suffer through the daily onslaught of blowing ash, drink water from faucets contaminated with ash leachate, and see our wetlands and creeks poisoned with toxic metals like arsenic. We have complained again and again about the endless noise, dust and pollution from trucks dumping coal ash near us while we become more stressed out or sick and the value of our property plummets, with no real response from our states.

Some of us are also joining this letter because a new ash dump has been proposed nearby or because we are concerned about the growing threat of coal ash in our area and its impact on our health and the quality of life in our community. More than two years ago, we were promised that the US Environmental Protection Agency would finally set national standards to clean up these sites, and close the most dangerous ones.

Now we face legislation that would stop EPA in its tracks, and replace real standards with imaginary state “plans” that polluters could ignore without fear of enforcement by EPA. After what is already known about the danger from storing millions of tons of coal ash in unlined ponds, why would you tie the government’s hands from ever stopping this practice?

Do our lives matter to you?

Is protecting coal ash “recycling” from a “stigma” more important than our health or the quality of our water? Even those who believe “stigma” is real cannot seriously argue that shielding leaking dumps from EPA enforcement somehow makes recycling easier. And ash mixed with other wastes in leaking ponds – now a common practice – cannot be recycled at all.

What will you accomplish by requiring federal and state bureaucrats to review, and then approve, disapprove, and reapprove state plans that can never actually be enforced by EPA against polluters? If your own family’s drinking water was being contaminated, would you think haggling over “plans” the right response?
States have had decades to improve their management of these dumpsites, and have done nothing – or next to nothing – as contamination has spread, even after the Kingston dam collapse manifested the problem. We know good, hard-working people in our state agencies, but budget cuts, political pressure, the power of local polluters, and the lack of any serious oversight or enforcement from EPA make their job impossible.

Put yourself in our place. What if you lived near a power plant’s landfill or ash pond like we or our neighbors do, and found out that the water you and your children drink may be unsafe to drink? How long would you want to wait for your state agency to do something about the problem? Three years? Five years? Ten? We have waited that long, and are waiting still.

As the Americans who live next to our nation’s ash dumps, our opinions should matter. These dumps should have permits that we can comment on. We should be able to object to any permit or plan that threatens our lives and property, and the government should be given a deadline to respond to our concerns. Dumps that contaminate groundwater should be closed, and the groundwater cleaned up. And EPA should be able to crack down on polluters – without having to wade through endless “planning” —or the bill will mean nothing.

As you consider this legislation, please don’t forget about us. We are not against the coal industry. We simply want laws that protect people and that they be enforceable. We appreciate your time and consideration.
Sincerely,

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U.S. District Attorney Goodwin: Alpha "not a life, it's not a being, it can't go to jail."

Editor's note: This was my draft of an article commissioned by The Guardian which appeared later the same day as, Who will pay for the Upper Big Branch mine disaster?: "Massey Energy's owner makes a $209m settlement, but safety violations that killed 29 miners in West Virginia go unpunished"


Montcoal, WV.  3:27 PM on Monday, April 5, 2010.  It was the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years.  Twenty months ago, just across the river from Coal River Mountain  on Cherry Pond Mountain near its mountaintop removal mine, Massey Energy's underground mine at Upper Big Branch exploded.

We learned right away that at least twenty-five men had been killed, two more injured, one gravely. Four days dragged on, while we hoped for a miracle, but four missing men were dead. Over the course of time we learned from an independent report and another by the United Mine Workers that Massey had failed to maintain its ventilation systems properly causing methane levels to increase to dangerous levels.

According to Ian Urbina and Michael Cooper, writing April 6 in the New York Times,

In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

Finding blame

Flash forward to 3:00 p.m. on December 6, 2011, thirty miles away in the state capital of Charleston. The U.S. Mining Safety and Health Administration released its investigation report concluding that the disaster was "entirely preventable," caused in part by a pattern of major safety problems and Massey's efforts to conceal hazards from government inspectors. A summary video is here.

Earlier, at 11 a.m., U.S. District Attorney. Booth Goodwin announced that his office, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Labor had entered into a non-prosecution agreement which will cost Alpha Energy Resources, Inc., which had acquired Massey, $209 million.

Massey’s reputation was probably beyond repair.  Writer Jeff Goodell had profiled its CEO, Don Blankenship, as the "Dark Lord of Coal Country, the industry's dirtiest CEO. In southern Appalachia we knew Blankenship only too well.As Goodell described him, accurately,

he grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia, received an accounting degree from a local college, and, through a combination of luck, hard work and coldblooded ruthlessness, transformed himself into the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the business and politics of energy in America today — a man who pursues naked self-interest and calls it patriotism, who buys judges like cheap hookers, treats workers like dogs, blasts mountains to get at a few inches of coal and uses his money and influence to ensure that America remains enslaved to the 19th-century idea that burning coal equals progress. And for this, he earns $18 million a year — making him the highest-paid CEO in the coal industry — and flies off to vacations on the French Riviera.

Blankenship left Massey in December 2010.  December 6, ABC News tells us Don Blankenship accepted a $12 million golden parachute. Other parting gifts included an additional $5,000-per-month to serve as a Massey consultant for two years, paid health insurance, a secretary, residential property rights and accrued pay from his employment, including performance bonuses. In return, Blankenship agreed not to compete with Massey for two years and to cooperate with the company to resolve any litigation that arose during his tenure.

And yet, Kentucky records, alluded to by ABC, show that on January 26, 2011, Blankenship signed as president in a corporate filing for McCoy Coal Group. The corporation had previously registered its incorporation on January 11, under a slightly different name.


When Alpha announced January 29, 2011 that the company would spend $7.1 billion to acquire Massey, Alpha CEO Kevin Crutchfield said that "At the end of the day, we were actually able to get comfortable with the exposed risk" and Massey's estimated $150 million in losses related to the disaster was "appropriate." Massey had already taken a charge of $128.9 million during 2010 to cover costs from the explosion, including workers' compensation, restitution for the families of the miners and expected litigation costs.

But not prosecution

Under the December 6 agreement, Alpha will make payments and safety  investments totaling $209 million:

• $46.5 million in restitution (at least $1.5 million for each worker)
• $80 million for safety improvements
• $48 million for safety research over the next two years
• $10.8 million for fines for the accident and
• $24.2 million to resolve pending civil penalties at all of its other former Massey operations

As Cecil Roberts, of the United Mine Workers pointed out in a newsrelease I received,

We have repeatedly heard from the current congressional leadership that they were not prepared to act until they knew what happened at UBB. Now they know.

He called for strengthened whistleblower protections for workers who want to report safety issues and official standing for the families of the victims in the investigative process.

With regard to the non-prosecution agreement, Alpha Natural Resources says that it acquired Massey

more than a year after the tragic explosion at their Upper Big Branch mine. Alpha believes the settlements announced today provide the best path forward for everyone. The bulk of the settlement will fund safety training, research and advanced technologies that the company believes ultimately will create a safer work environment for coal miners throughout the industry.

Ry Rivard, capitol reporter for the Charleston Daily Mail quoted District Attorney Goodwin as saying the non-prosecution agreement represented a "balance" and that Alpha was "not a life, it's not a being, it can't go to jail."

So who pays?

Twenty-nine men dead. Two more injured. Two hundred and nine million gets Alpha off the hook for prosecution? So much for the personhood of corporations. Stay tuned to see if any individuals get prosecuted other than Massey's security director. At least this time, the government didn't sign away its rights to do so.

Goodwin made his announcement at the Robert C. Byrd federal courthouse in Charleston, WV, named after that state's late beloved U.S. Senator, who has since been replaced by its former governor Joe Manchin. Although Byrd was generous in his support of the coal industry, towards the end of his life he was losing patience with Massey and its record of reckless disregard of its workers safety.

The old chestnut that “coal is West Virginia’s greatest natural resource” deserves revision. I believe that our people are West Virginia’s most valuable resource. We must demand to be treated as such.

As Vernon Haltom, of Coal River Mountain Watch told me in an email interview,

Spending on 'major safety initiatives' after 29 miners were killed is closing the barn door after the horse is out. The executives who routinely place profits above the lives of miners and community members must be held accountable for all their crimes. Until then, there will be no sense of justice where the coal industry leaves a legacy of death and destruction.

Goodwin assures us that the criminal investigation continues. He says that Alpha, and by extension, its predecessor Massey is not a person and can't go to jail. But what about Don Blankenship?

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