Nat Reese, ¡Presente!

Photo of Nat Reese from the website of  West Virginia Culture Fest, held at the  Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem. As you'll see in the comments the photographer was John Maeder, who took it in Nat's living room in Princeton, WV.

This post was first published on June 9 at  6:45 p.m. and then updated as additional material became available.  The current version was published at 4:05 p.m. June 15. H/T to  Mike Gangloff and Dana Stoker Cochran for helping me hunt down recordings.  And to fellow poet Edison Jennings, whose new-found enthusiasm for Reese spurred me to continue writing on this post.  Also to Jon Lohman and John Maeder for their encouragement.

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The late West Virginia blues and gospel wonder Nat Reese had Virginia connections

Nathaniel H. ‘‘Nat’’ Reese  was born March 4, 1924 up the road from here in Salem, Virginia on Water Street --where his father worked for the coal and ice company in Roanoke and did custodial work at Hollins College. Reese maintained his musical links with our area, playing often in Roanoke (where he was often the highlight of the Blue Ridge Blues Society's Blues and BBQ Festival), Blacksburg (where he played with Doc Herling at the Cellar) and Floyd (at FloydFest and the Pine Tavern.)

Now comes  sad news of his death on June 8 from Jon Lohman, director of the Virginia Folklife Program (VFP) (email) of the Virginia Foundation of the Humanities.

Seaver Funeral Home in Princeton says the service there will be open to the public, with Reverend Barry Early of Harvest Outreach Center, Princeton, officiating:

11 a.m., Saturday June 16
Seaver Funeral Home
1507 North Walker Street
Princeton, WV

Memory book

Goldenseal Magazine,which has posted wonderful photos on fb.  One of my favorites shows Reese with his grandson in 1987 taken by Mike Keller, used courtesy of Goldenseal.

Virginia Folklife Program and Reese

Reese's most recent recording, "Save a Seat for Me, " is still available as a CD from VFP. John Maeder (email, fb portrait business page) wrote the  bio for the CD and  Jon Lohman included Reese's explanation for each song.  I've included the explanations with each videos I was able to locate, which you'll find below. I've got the track list at the bottom of this post.


In "A Man and a Half," Lohman writes,

One of his favorite lines to sing was “If you make it into Glory before I do, save a seat for me.”

I have no doubt they did.

So, in Reese's memory, here's a video from the Virginia Folklife Program of Reese singing the title cut  from the VFP CD.
 
"Save a seat for me"
 

On the liner notes for the CD Reese says,

That was from Archie Brownlee with the Five Blind Boys out of Mississippi, not the ones from Alabama. He died in 1955 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Archie’s real name was Wickerson, I mean his blood people. He was raised by the Brownlee family in Shady Side, Michigan. Archie would come up to Detroit every year to sing in that quartet contest downtown. Archie would come over to the house three and four days a week and just set around and play music and sing. He was sitting there singing The Lord’s Prayer and he said, “I got a good song!” He sung it over and over again. One of his buddies was a baritone. So Archie started singing it again and he started singing that baritone part and I started singing tenor and playing the guitar. Then it began to kind of sink in a little bit. I began to like it. Then I fell in love with it. And that’s how I learned it, singing it with Archie in my house. That was on Mullet Street in Mt. Clemens, back in 1955.

"Too Many Bad Habits"

Lest you think Reese had only heaven on his mind, Reese's repertoire included this  bawdy song by Johnny Nicholas, who owns and runs a café outside of Fredericksburg, Texas.  Here's a video of Reese performing the number at the 2010 Floydfest:

Reese, on the liner notes explains that he only sings this song in adult company:

I was awful cautious never to use profanity in my songs. I don’t use it. I do a family show, and you can bring your children to my show. Too Many Bad Habits is as far as I ever bend over with a song.  And a lot of times I won’t do it until the last part of my concert, and if I see a child in the audience I won’t sing it.I know that might make me too of a high-handed of a guy, but that’s just the way I am. And I won’t change on that.

Here's a 9 1/2 minute video of a version I like even better of Reese performing "Too Many Bad Habbits"  at the Blues and BBQ Fest on July 21 2007  It come via Hoppy Vaughan (email, website)  who is playing with Reese,  my friend from New River Free Press Days, Rich Rittenhouse of  Chicken Wings and Gravy (website) and Red Ricks. Rich posted an short excerpt at YouTube here.

And video of the same song from 2011, with an introduction from Jon Lohman.  Reese is playing solo in a a bit more melancholy style  at Floyd Fest.  It comes from the Roanoke Times channel at You Tube via the paper's music reporter Tad Jenkins at his cutNscratch blog.  I've just been in touch with Tad and he's planning to write something on Reese for the paper.

"Just A Dream"

Here's video of Reese performing at the 2010 Floydfest.

Reese comments:

I was about 18 years old and I heard a song almost like “Just a Dream” and I never could get the right tone and the right sound of the verse so I made up the rest of it.  It wasn’t that version, it was another song, but it ended up what I call “Just a Dream.”

He describes the song as a "blues and a love song combined in another this video of a 1995 performance in Germany  in which his long-time partner "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, plays not fiddle, but mandolin and does back-up vocals.  Contrast these versions with those of the songwriter, "Big Bill Broonzy" performing it in the film Low Light and Blue Smoke by Belgian filmmaker Jacques Boigelot.  

And one last version, a (slightly mistitled)  video of a performance at Gary Bowlings House of Art in Bluefield, WV uploaded to YouTube in 2008.

 

"Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do"

In this video, Reese sings at Culture Fest in Pipestem in 2009.  According to Maeder he learned the song off a Billy Holiday recording. (Maybe 1951?)  For contrast, here's Bessie Smith's 1923 version and Eric Clapton's re-creation. The reference to "ham and bacon" seems to be from Jimmy Witherspoon, but Reese sings a version that talks about sharing money with his lover, rather than fighting and shooting her, that can be found there and in other versions.

"Exactly like you"

This video is from the same gig of another romantic song, according to Maeder from the 1930 Broadway production “International Revue.”  He says that Reese learned it from several 78rpm recordings by different bands.

Slippin' Around

B.B. King wrote this as “Sneakin’ Around With You.” Jon Lohman noted that Reese always sang the lyrics as "slippin' around," which I find interesting because country star Ernest Tubb used that expression in his own song about infidelity. Here is a video Reese with Chris Sutton of C and S Railroad behind the cultural center at the Vandalia Gathering which Sutton posted to YouTube in 2008.

I got that from one of BB King’s shows I saw on TV.  My grandson recorded it for me.  It’s one of the songs BB likes to sing.

Other songs not on the CD

Here's a  video of Reese in Huntington singing, "WV Blues Man" at the 2010 Diamond Teeth Mary Blues and  Arts Festival.

I love this video of  Reese performing  "Since I Fell for You"  with Phil Wiggins at the 2010 Richmond Folk Festival, when the theme was "From Maritime to Mountain Time."

My absolute favorite, though,  is Reese on mandolin in the video below performing "John Henry" with Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong playing an extraordinary fiddle. (Armstrong is singing and Graham Anderson is on contrabass.)

Reese talks about the move to WV and coal mining

 In this  interview with Michael Kline of Elkins, WV  (email, website),  published in Goldenseal Magazine in 1987, Reese recounts his life up until 1981. Reese had been in West Virginia since 1928, when his father moved the family to Itmann in Wyoming County because coal jobs were plentiful there.

You know how rumours go - you can shake money off the trees! So he decided he'd kind of like to shake a couple of these trees. He came out here and worked on the Virginian Railroad for about 58 years, and he still didn't find that money tree.

In early 1934, his family moved to Princeton in Mercer County, where he was living at the time of his death.

Once in Princeton,  Reese musical ranging from big-name jazz musicians to local black musicians to the country performers on radio shows such as the Grand Ole Opry. He learned to play guitar, as well as piano, organ, bass, and string harp.  After classes at Genoa High School, he'd work in the mines. As he told Kline,

Oh, I first went in about 17 or 18, somewhere along in there. I would work a while and then I would go to school, and then I'd work a while and then go to the railroad. I guess I had about eight years in the mines, something like that. I worked in a lot of small mines up this way, you know, these little one- and two-horse mines up here in Matoaka.

Back, say, in the early '40's and back in there, boy, you had to do your own shooting. You'd blow your holes, cap up your own powder, and boy, that put out a smoke and a gas that was hard to inhale. And you'd have to get that out and move that rock. Oh, you'd have to go back on that powder. You shoot it and then you take your shovel, a No. 4 shovel, and fan the smoke, to go back in there so you can hurry up and start loading, set your timber and start loading, you see.

And you had to do your own brattice work. Brattice is nothing but burlap, you've seen burlap bags. It was cut in great big sheets and you would nail it on the posts, on your timbers, and that's how you got air to the coal face where you worked. And it didn't work good. Now, I'll just tell you, it didn't work good.

Well, now they got a law, said you must have 10 years, or better, or you wouldn't have black lung. Well, two could be loading in a place, and that dust would be so bad 'till I couldn't see you over there. I know you're over there because I can hear you shoveling, but I can't see you.

And, oh my God! you cough that stuff up. I bet you the last mine I worked in, it was three years afterwards that I was still coughing up black. And I don't know how many years that it was just brown, just like I was chewing tobacco, or something. Two or three years of that is black lung. I've got it now. I passed my test for it.

A few more biographical notes

Reese played jazz and blues on Bill Farmer’s Saturday night show on radio station WHIS Bluefield and attended Bluefield State College for two years. During and after his college years, he was part of a dance band that played jazz, polkas, and blues throughout the southern coalfields.

Reese only left West Virginia to serve in the army during World War II and then in the early 1950's to work construction jobs in Michigan. He returned to West Virginia in 1959 to work for the State Road Commission and then  as a photographic silkscreen printer at Rockwell International’s aviation plant in Princeton from 1962 until 1975

Reese's discography

 According to the online WV Encyclopedia, recordings by Reese include Just a Dream and West Virginia Blues by the West Virginia Blues Man [sic].

Just a Dream

(Elkins, WV: Augusta Heritage Records, 1988)

With  with his late partner "Louie Bluie" Armstrong on fiddle and Ralph Gordon
on bass (whom you  may know from Trapezoid and Freda and the Acoustic Attitude.)

1.  Just a dream
2. There'll be some changes made
3. Since I fell for you 
4. Ain't nobody's business
5. Hello baby
6. You left me
7. The preacher and the bear
8. Darlin' I love you 
9. Key to the highway
10. Shanty town

West Virginia Blues Man

I could only find the mention online of this CD through an archived copy of the website for Fiddletunes out of Logan West Virginia. I'll check with Keller, who has worked on the Encyclopedia to see if he knows what happened to the company.  Here's a picture of the album cover and the tracklist:

1. Ain't Gonna Throw This Away
2. Don't Leave Me
3. I Got a Sweet Little Angel
4. Tired Of Slippin' Around
5. It's Your Time Now (It'll Be My Time After a While)
6. Shanty In Old Shanty Town
7. Sick and Down
8. The Lonesome Laundromat
9. Since I Fell For You
10. Ain't Nobody's Business
11. There'll Be Some Changes Made
12. Key To the Highway

Always Lift Him Up



Reese played "Black and Blue Blues" on this 2007 album.

Save a Seat for Me

1. The Preacher and the Bear--George Fairman (1881-1962)  of Front Royal Virginia (audio)
2. Just a Dream--William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy (1893-1958)
3. Exactly Like You--Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh
4. There’ll Be Some Changes Made--Billy Higgins and W. Benton Overstreet
5. Take My Hand, Precious Lord--Thomas Dorsey (1899-1993)
6. Down And Out Blues--Arthur L. Sizemore
7. ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do--Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins
8. Juice Headed Woman-- RL Jones of North Carolina a.k.a. “Guitar Gabriel.” (audio)
9. Laundromat Blues Sandy Jones Jr. 
10. I Ain’t Gonna Throw It Away--Howard Armstrong(fiddler and Reese's late performing partner)
11. Key To The Highway-- Big Bill Broonzy 
12. Too Many Bad Habits--Johnny Nicholas of Fredericksburg, Texas.
13. Don’t Deceive Me (Please Don’t Go)--Chuck Willis
14. On The Sunny Side of the Street-- Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh
15. Slippin’ Around--B.B. King
16. Save A Seat For Me-- Clifford Driver

Honors

 Reese received the John Henry Award in 1988 and the Vandalia Award (West Virginia's highest folklife honor) in 1995.

In 2003, Reese was one of the featured performers at the Smithsonian's 37th Annual Folklife Festival on the National Mall, Washington in DC.   The Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage had chosen as one of the festival's themes "Appalachia: Heritage and Harmony," in celebration of the  75th anniversary of the "Bristol Sessions."

In 2009, the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame inducted him as a member. Here's a video from the Hall of Fame which goes into greater detail than I have and includes some of his music.  At the site, there's also an audio recording of "Blues Jumped a Rabbit."

So let's  close the video section of this post with a (fuzzy) one of another performance of "Save a Seat for Me."  Below, on the occasion of his induction in the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in Charleston, Reese performs with harmonica virtuoso--and one of my favorite musicians--Phil Wiggins (email, website). (Warning turn down the audio--the applause will deafen you if you're wearing earphones.)

Reese and Cephas and Wiggins at Augusta

Wiggins, of course, played with guitar player John Cephas, who died in 2009.  Both of them knew Reese from the annual Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops at Davis and Elkins College where they all taught.

On the liner notes for the cut of "Down And Out Blues" Reese told  Maeder that Cephas once told him at Augusta,

You got one of the most original blues voices that I ever heard in my life. There’s something about your voice that I ain’t got and a lot of these other guys ain’t got either.

Reese replied,

Well, I come from old stock and somewhere I learned something from somebody or stole something from somebody. But I got it and I’m using it!

If there's a heaven, I'll bet Reese is using that blues voice with Cephas right now...

If Trees Fall in the Forest...

Scott Parkin, in DC to lobby Congress to put an end to mountaintop removal,  posted this picture yesterday to facebook.  He captions it "Standing Up For Tennessee's Mountains By Sitting-In" and writes, "Vickie Terry and Jack McNelis were arrested today for refusing to leave Rep. Duncan's office. Rep. Duncan refuses to acknowledge that mountaintop removal even exists in Tennessee."  This post was first published at 1:36 p.m. on 6/7/12 and last updated at 6:45 p.m. on 6/13.

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Out of the  21 (or 22) arrests yesterday, at least six and probably seven occurred at the office of our own Ninth District's Morgan Griffith.  Another two were of folks sitting-in at the office of  TN's John Duncan.  So here are my questions:

Why are the media outlets in Virginia and Tennessee running a story datelined  KY? 
Why is there more attention on that "coal porn story" than the destruction and how to stop it?

If Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone can take the time to write a piece which includes information on why are the media outlets in Virginia  and Tennessee running an AP piece by Dylan Lovan datelined Louisville KY?

There's plenty of material online if reporters want to cover yesterday's protest at Congressional offices to end the destruction of mountaintop removal.  Just got to twitter and search on the hashtags #endmtr and #Apprising.

I've  heard from both Vickie Terry and Jack McNelis that it's fine to use their picture, shown above, which wasn't part of the Appalachian Rising photo pool.  Press releases from Appalachia Rising included Terry's statement.

I told my Congressman that he should know better than to get between a mother and the safety and health of her children. I am so frustrated they continue to destroy our mountains and our health, and I would do anything to protect the health of my children and grandchildren.

McNelis just emailed me from a friend's laptop to add his own take on things:

It's disgraceful that congressman duncan shows such disrespect to his constituents and the health of tennesseans. he proved his cowardice to me personally by making up excuses for not meeting with us, accusing honest members of the communities in his district of being rude and making personal attacks at him when in actuality it was the other way around. our action isn't going to get through his thick head that he is allowing us to be poisoned but it may show the voters that he could care less how much he really cares about us.

 The reason I ask is two-fold. 

First, folks don't get arrested just so their friends will know.  They want to get a message out to the general public. I'm guessing those members of the public want to follow what's happening in  their own state. A Virginia (or Tennessee) headline with all the quotes about Hal Rogers seems a bit of a bait and switch.  And an AP story--especially one from out of state-- seems like what it is, an easy fix--better than nothing but...

 Second,  no reporter is calling Griffith or Duncan and holding them accountable.  If we're not reaching a larger audience, why should folks want to get arrested?  Why should folks want to send in money to bail them out?  If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears...

Contrast this the coverage by the other two Appalachian states cursed with mtr

 In West Virginia, , as pointed to by Jeff Goodell, you'll find a  a podcast and transcript by Glynis Board of West Virginia Public Radio.  Board includes interviews with Dana Kuhnline and Maria Gunnoe, with most of the other information gleaned from a news release. Ken Ward, Jr., however, in his reliably enterprising fashion, has a piece up at his Charleston Gazette blog, The Coal Tattoo entitled "Rahall and coal:  What's a W. Va congressman to do?"

In Kentucky, Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald Leader took the time to not only write a story last night, but update it this morning. He includes an interview with KFTC's Canary Coalition organizer Kevin Pentz, who was one of the (non-arrested) folks sitting in at Rep. Hal Rogers of KY's office.  Estep also includes the results of calls he made to Roger's office and to the Capitol Police.

Could we use the eyes balls on that other story, please, to hold politicians accountable?

Goodell  uses the arrests as a frame for his interview with Maria Gunnoe on the story with more buzz.  Yeah, you know the one.  As I wrote him and others, it sure would be nice if all these eyeballs on the porn story would actually call and write and tweet and fb Congress and the Obama administration and Romney about their outrage at the lack of will put a stop to the destruction. (of maybe not lack of will, but a matter of political contributions?)

Brandon Hill's (website, email) video of Virginians occupying Griffith's office features Jane Branham talking about how folks were handed back the signs they tried to use to "redecorate"including, "We can't afford to buy our own politician."

The treatment of the current controversy is especially ironic if you remember the Dylan Lovan story on the billboard featuring mtr opponent Ashley Judd that went up at a coal tournament sponsored by the  Friends of Coal and the Pikeville-based Coal Operators and Associates.  The  billboard (for which no one would claim credit) included a semi-nude picture of Judd accompanied by the slogan, "Ashley makes a living removing her top. Why can’t coal miners?”

 Here's how folks from all over can join the fight.  

If you want to help you can click here  using your zip code to confirm the name of your representative. Then check to see if he or she is a co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act..  If so, thank them.  If they are not, here's a script to ask them to sign up from the organizers at Week in Washington:

Hello, my name is ______________ and I live in ______________ . I’m calling to request that Representative ______________ cosponsor the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1375), a bill that would help to end mountaintop removal coal mining — an extreme form of coal mining that has already destroyed over 500 mountains in Appalachia and over 2,000 miles of streams. A number of recent scientific studies have also shown that mountaintop removal poses serious health risks to local citizens. I urge Representative ______________ to cosponsor the Clean Water Protection Act today.

This Congress, the Clean Water Protection Act has 124 cosponsors (check current number here...1 sponsor _ 123 co-sponsors = 124). Please become a sponsor by contacting Tuley Wright in Congressman Pallone’s office or Michelle Tranquilli in Congressman Reichert’s office.

They also suggest that you add something personal.  Mentioning a local treasure that you would not like to see destroyed.  For instance you wouldn't want to blow up Mt. Rushmore for coal. Similarly, our mountains in Appalachian are a national treasure that the whole country must work together to preserve.

And you can actually become part of the Congressional Record through June 15, 2012

The Congressional Record is officially open through Friday, June 15, 2012 according to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, where Maria works. As such, you can send an email via naturalresources@mail.house.gov  to the The House Committee on Natural Resources, its Chairman "Doc" Hastings, The Subcommittee  on Energy and Mineral Resources and its Chairman Doug Lamborn.  Ask for a public apology to the family of the young child in the photo, the photographer and to Maria Gunnoe, whom the committee detained for police investigation because she wanted the committee to see the photo of a little girl force to bathe in toxic coal pollution. Make sure you include this at the beginning, if it is to be included in the official record:

I wish to submit the following letter for the public Congressional record of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Oversight Hearing on Friday, June 1, 2012, at 10:00 AM, entitled “The Obama Administration’s Actions Against the Spruce Coal Mine: Canceled Permits, Lawsuits and Lost Jobs.”

You'll be in good company, as Lexington Herald-Leader's Editorial Board and the staff of the Goldman Environmental Prize.  In fact, you just might want to point that out in the letter, or  Jeff's article and/or any others that you've read.  If you need to find some articles, just Google (or Bing or DuckDuckGo "Maria Gunnoe + Katie Falkenberg."

Oh, and if you want to help just a bit more, why not add a comment at the posts and say what you've done and invite them to do the same.



Will you lend a hand? Trees are literally falling in Appalachia

They are being cut and dumped into valleys as part of the "overburden" that gets in the way of mtr mining.  That leads to flooding.  And the crushed  mountains dumped in the same valleys release toxic chemicals that poison the water , as shown that picture.

 I'm not sure why mtr hasn't gained the traction of the Keystone pipeline, despite coverage by Goodell and others, but we need more than luck or the courage he writes about.

Scientific studies have shown we need to act now to prevent future destruction and to protect Appalachia for future economic opportunities.

Appalachians Occupy Congress!

Photo of retired underground coal miner Stanley Sturgill from Kentucky, whose op-ed, "The Cost of Being Number One in Mountaintop Removal" appeared in The Hill on 6/4/12.  Appalachia Rising reports that Sturgill was one of 22 arrested--of the approximately 4 dozen deployed--2 from VA, 7 from WV, 7 from KY and 6 from TN.

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In a continuation of the direct actions I last reported on from West Virginia on May 24, this morning at 10:34 residents from my home state of Virginia,  joined those from three other states severely impacted by mountaintop removal coal mining to conduct a sit-in in protest of their Congressmen's  refusal to protect their communities in the offices of  Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Nick Rahall (D-WV), Hal Rogers (R-KY), and Jimmy Duncan (R-TN).

I first posted at 10:47 a.m. and am updating this,  having heard back at 3:53 pm from Lieutenant Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Police that

Names aren’t yet available and defendants are currently being processed @ U.S. Capitol Police Headquarters. 

She provided an outline of places, times and number of arrests, all 21 for unlawful entry.  The number is off by one and the allocation by state is rearranged from what Appalachia Rising reported, so I'm checking back:

• Longworth Bldg., Room 1108, approx. 11:30 am  is the office of Morgan Griffith
  7 arrests (v.s.2)
• Rayburn Bldg., Room 2406, approx. 12:26 pm is the office of Hal Rogers
  6 arrests (v.s. 7)
• Rayburn Bldg., Room 2307, approx.. 12:58 pm is the office of Nick Rahall
  6 arrests (v.s. 7)
• Rayburn Bldg., Room 2207, approx. 1:49 pm is the office of John Duncan
  2 arrests (v.s. 6)

Here's a (blurry) screen shot (at 58 seconds) of this of several live videos posted at about 2 p.m.  It shows the eventual arrest of West Virginian Larry Gibson by Capitol Police.  Folks were singing  John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."

And here's a screen shot  (at 17 seconds  in this video) of Jane Braham, a retired nurse who lives in Wise County and a member of  Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards.  She's standing outside Morgan Griffith's office and folks are singing her original song, "Stop Tearing the Mountain Down."

Jane explained her participation in the sit-in to Dana Kuhnline of the Alliance for Appalachia before it started:

We have no choice...My health is failing; we have some elderly people with us today. It is very hard for us to come all this way. But we are here fighting for our very survival.

 Her fellow member Laura Miller,  a retired professor who was not arrested, told Kuhnline, 

What I’d really like to see is for Griffith to get his head out of the sand and represent the people of our district instead of selling his soul to the coal industry....I’m fighting for a future and a hope that we can have a sustainable economic situation in the areas of Appalachia that have suffered because of coal. I’d like to see future generations able to stay in the homeplaces where our families have been here for centuries. We need to stop mountaintop removal YESTERDAY.

Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette has written in an eloquent essay about coal politics and how it seeks to ignores "[t]he solid scientific consensus about mountaintop removal’s damage to our environment — not to mention the growing evidence of its impacts on public health."

MTR's  "strip mining on steroids" results in staggering public health costs and districts with mountaintop removal face some of the highest poverty rates in the United States.  More than similar counties with no mining. Branham and the others list of demands for Representative Griffith are that he:

1. Schedule a visit before October to tour Wise County with residents of communities affected by mountaintop removal  (including Inman, Roda, Andover, Exeter, and Appalachia)

2. Cease attacking the EPA because that agency is the only one enforcing the regulations designed to protect Appalachian communities.

3. Stop slandering constituents who are working to defend their communities against the adverse impacts of mountaintop removal.

4. Represent the people in his district, rather than the coal companies, by signing on to co-sponsor HB1375, the Clean Water Protection Act.

The demands for Rayhall, Rogers and Duncan are similar.

Why do I think Griffith won't listen?  Is it because he (and Democrat Rick Boucher before him) would rather represent the coal companies?    When Griffith was running against Boucher, I wrote him on 7/29/2010:

I don't expect that you'll remember me, but I was the founding Executive Director of New River Community Sentencing and we chatted once about railroads at some judicial function. I'm wondering what your position will be on the EPA's regulation of fly ash and on supporting the Clean Water Protection Act, to stop the dumping of top soil, trees and mine waste resulting from the current methods used in mountaintop removal coal mining.

This is one place where you might distinguish yourself from Mr. Boucher and win support in the northern part of District 9, as well as a significant number of folks living in the coal fields who do not like their mountains being blown up.

 I didn't hear back until August and then it was from campaign staffer and subsequent executive assistant Mary Stafford, who wrote on 8/25,

I appreciate your email to Morgan - and I apologize that I have just now found it. We had a major email error that would not allow us to access the email account to which you wrote.

Morgan believes in a balance of protecting the environment but not to the point of onerous regulations making it difficult to do business. Fly Ash is an interesting topic to understand and treat responsibly. Do you have a more specific question I can pass on to Morgan for you?

I appreciate your patience, and again apologize for the response time.

I wrote back that same day,

Thanks for getting back in touch...my questions are as follows:

1. What is Morgan's position on the Clean Water Protection Act which seeks to stop the dumping of waste from Mountaintop removal in streams?

2. What is Morgan's position on regulation of fly ash as a hazardous waste by the EPA.

If he needs more information on these issues I will be glad to send it to him.

That was almost two years ago. I'm still waiting for Morgan Griffith to respond...

Sick of Soot: Is EPA close to settling?

Photo  from Earthtimes.


First ozone and now soot.  The EPA's failure to issue standards on particulate matter has been costly in terms of public health.

According to  Sick of Soot, recent data shows that updated standards could have prevented more than 35,000 premature deaths each year and reduced health care costs by $280 billion. I propose to interview medical experts, lawyers, members of Congress and staff at the EPA about why the Agency has failed to regulate particulate matter  as mandated by Congress.

 American Lung Association v. U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (12-cv-00243) filed February 14, 2012 by  attorneys David S. Barron (email) and Paul Cort  (email) includes the  National Parks Conservation Association, as well as states-- including  New York, California, Maryland, Oregon and Washington--as parties to the suit U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia.

In response,  the EPA asked Judge Robert Wilkins to allow a  August 15, 2013 to adopt new standards, almost two years past the legal deadline.  EPA  issued its last standards in 2006 and a federal appeals court ruled that the existing standards were deficient and should have been updated by October 12, 2011. May 31, Judge Wilkins gave the EPA one week to sign a proposed rule and scheduled a hearing for June 11 on a December 14 deadline for final regulations,  the date proposed by the plaintiffs.


Today, the EPA the asked Judge Wilkins to give it until June 14 to sign the proposed rule. Paul Billings, vice president of the American Lung Association opposed the motion for delay, according to  Mark Drajem<mdrajem@bloomberg.net>.  The parties did, however, file a joint request that the Judge allow an extension so that the two sides can work out an agreement on the final regulations. See documents provided to me by Drajem here and here.

Of course December 14 is still 14 months late.  Earth Justice had filed a brief  May 11, complaining that there was no acknowledgement of the human costs of delay. The EPA had asked the Court "to endorse its decision to flout the law," on the grounds that its proposed schedule is more "reasonable"  in violation of the separation of powers.

Congress has dictated a time frame for reviewing national ambient air quality standards. EPA has ignored that schedule...[I]t is up to the Court to ensure compliance with the directive of Congress. An agency may not “avoid the Congressional intent clearly expressed in the text simply by asserting that its preferred approach would be better policy.” (reference).

More Coal Porn

June 1, U.S. Capitol Police questioned Maria Gunnoe on child pornography when she brought to a photograph of a Kentucky young girl, Makayla Urias, bathing in a tub of brown water as part of her testimony on mountaintop removal before the House Natural Resources Committee.  Gunnoe had permission from both the child's parents Rully and Erica Urias and the photographer, Katie Falkenberg (shown above with her photo about her gallery talk showcasing her series series "Mountaintop Removal Mining: The Human Toll.")

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The committee staff  had told Maria that a baby in bathtub photo was inappropriate and they will not let her show it. My first thought, when I heard the news shortly before the Congressional hearing was to start:  it's not the state of the child that's an obscenity, it's the state of the water she has to bathe in, after mountaintop removal mining (mtr).

Merriam Webster has an student dictionary that defines the obscene as something which is:

 1 : REPULSIVE, DISGUSTING
 2 : very shocking to one's sense of what is moral or decent

Sure sounds like mtr  to me.   Mountaintop removal mining has been called "strip-mining on steroids."  And yet the police--at the behest of Republican Committee members--question  Gunnoe about whether it's proper to show members of Congress such a  photo at a hearing on the EPA questioning the Spruce Run mtr permit? As a warning to my readers, a lot of the hearing was a gag-worthy dog-and-pony show for the coal industry, the Chamber of Commerce, et. al., by their minions in the House on their meme of The War on Coal.

A 2009 Harvard study showed that conservatives--at least according to their anonymised credit-card receipts--were the biggest customers of  a major "online adult entertainment provider."  Did the Republicans on the Committee really think that Makayla's picture was designed to invoke sexual excitement? If so, they are more sick and twisted than I would have believed.  Do they watch movies on mountaintop removal such as Black Diamonds, Coal Country and Burning the Future as a kind of snuff porn?  We keep hearing about the EPA and Obama's War on Coal.  What about the War By Coal?

The above illustration is mine adapted from stock photos.

The harassment of Maria Gunnoe is especially ironic, given the billboard I've written about that went up at a coal tournament sponsored by the Friends of Coal and the Pikeville-based Coal Operators and Associates,  denouncing Ashley Judd for standing up against mtr.  As you might remember, the billboard (for which no one would claim credit) included a semi-nude picture of Judd  accompanied by the slogan, "Ashley makes a living removing her top.  Why can't coal miners?"

Even the Democrats at the hearing kept on extolling natural gas as the replacement for coal.  Which made me think, "What the Frack?"  Yeah, just like those who would profit by uranium mining in Virginia and the nuclear industry tell us how THEIR energy is clean and safe.  When are we going to stop kicking the ball down the road and start working on efficiency and better alternatives such as wind and solar?

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Fifty years ago, writing in The Atlantic, Letcher County Kentucky lawyer Harry Caudill called the more "benign" contour mining "The Rape of Appalachians." Five years later, then-West Virginia Governor Hulett Smith, echoed that phrase in talking about strip mining when he declared that "the rape of West Virginia has occurred."

While some fought for abolition of strip mining, Congress chose to pass the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) in 1977. The results have led credence to author and activist Wendell Berry's warning that "you cannot regulate an abomination." Under that law, mountaintop removal has been allowed to go forward, ravaging more than 500 mountains and burying more than 2,000 miles of streams in Central Appalachia.  And then in 2002, as folks were winning lawsuits against mtr on the basis of the Clean Water Act, Bush gutted the act by magically changing mining waste into "fill."  Since then there has been a lackluster effort to pass the Clean Water Protection Act.  The latest iteration is H.R. 1375 (as everything starts over every two years with a new session of Congress.)

Kind of makes one wonder why Congress is not hearing of the extent of the destruction, when the story has been told eloquently by the likes of  Penny Loeb (for U.S News and World Report in 1997),  Michael Shnayerson (for Vanity Fair in 2006) and John McQuaid (for Smithsonian in 2009). And recent peer-reviewed studies have shown devastating health impacts; citizens near mountaintop removal are 50% more likely to die of cancer and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects compared with other people in Appalachia.

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Over 150 citizens will be joining Gunnoe in DC to urge an end to the obliteration for the Alliance for Appalachia's Week in Washington. On June 4 - 6, they plan to meet with members of Congress to urge passage of the Clean Water Protection Act, H.R. 1375, as well as with officials at federal agencies charged with enforcing current laws to protect their health and land. Events will conclude with a  rally and national day of action to end mountaintop removal on Wednesday, June 6, starting at 11:00 a.m. at the Upper Senate Park at New Jersey and Constitution. The latter is a followup to Appalachia Rising, the September 2010 demonstration that resulted in 125 arrests.

If you're not coming to DC, you can still write your members of Congress in support of the Clean Water Protection Act.  And while you're at it, why not write the members of the  House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from your state.  If you're not a constituent, you can bypass the house email system (which will pretty much ignore you) by looking up the Chief of Staff for the Congressmember here in order to send a direct email in the form .


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Makayla's father, Rully Urias, has had to deal with the destruction mtr has wrought on land which has been is family since 1825.  He was quoted as saying three years ago,

I want a better future for my little girl, my wife and family and our community.”

I'd bet that was his intent--and that of Makayla's mother's Erica--when they gave permission for her picture to be taken and subsequently used...Do we really think that's coal's agenda?

Let's hope Congress can recognize what is truly obscene and put a stop the "rape of the Appalachians."

June 1: Poetry of Provocation and Witness

 Poster design is mine...


Thanks to an invitation by fellow-writer Su Clauson-Wicker, I'll be reading my poetry as part of Downtown Blacksburg's Art Crawl this afternoon at Cafe de Bangkok from 4:30 to 4:45

Here's what I've selected:
Old Wives Tales
Olga Korbut on Chernobyl, 1991
Green Beans

Red Onion hunger strike ends? Peace Studies Advocate Giarratano formerly imprisoned there

Another graphic from the Red Onion Hunger Strike, this one from SF Bay View.

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This morning, The Washington Post's Anita Kumar reported in the Virginia Politics blog  that Department of Corrections officials at Red Onion stated that as of Saturday no prisoners were refusing meals.  I have my doubts and will be interested in hearing what the solidarity group reports.  If their statements contradict the DOC, I hope she will follow up.

I wrote about Red Onion on Friday and talked that day to Roanoke Times journalist Laurence Hammack who had written extensively about abuses at the Red Onion. This afternoon Hammack sent me a copy of the first story he wrote on on the supermax "back when it opened in 1998. More to come..." 

In looking to see what might be available already at the paper's online archive I stumbled on a brief 2006 article on Joseph M.Giarratano, whose death sentence had been commuted in 1991 by then-Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder.  The former scallop fisherman, pleaded guilty to capital murder in the strangling of 44-year-old Barbara Kline and the raping and stabbing of her 15-year-old daughter Michelle in the Klines' apartment, which he shared with them in Norfolk. His conviction was based on circumstantial evidence and his own confessions, which he later recanted, saying he had awakened from a drug-induced sleep on the  couch, discovered the bodies and assumed he was the killer.

Giarratano and his lawyers later sought biological evidence such as vaginal and cervical swabs that were lifted from the victims' bodies, arguing that DNA tests of that evidence could exonerate him as they have others convicted of decades-old crimes, but authorities maintained that the biological evidence in the case was destroyed years ago.

Joe Giarratano imprisoned at Red Onion prison after return to Virginia

Joe had ended up at Augusta Correctional Center after then-governor  Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted his death sentence ---within  36 hours of execution--without explaining why.  Later Wilder would say that he was troubled by Giarratano's inconsistent confessions to police. Joe had set up the peace education program for the other inmates with the help of former Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy, the founder of the Center for Teaching Peace.

Then-Attorney General Mary Terry turned down Giarratano's request for a new trial, even though it would have made him vulnerable to a second death sentence. The Department of Corrections closed his peace studies program at Augusta Correctional Center in  1995, then sent Giarrantano on to the mental health unit at the Powhatan Correctional Center and from there to the Buckingham and then Utah and Illinois before he ended up back in Virginia at Red Onion.

I actually got to meet Joe Giarratano at Augusta Correctional Center

This above photo  shows Joe as I remember him.  The year was about 1992, when I was writing for the New River Free Press.  I've worked in corrections and met some scary folks, but Giarratano was not one of them. He had a bit more swagger than the typical peace activist--probably necessary to hold his own in the prison population--but he was articulate and had maintained a sense of humor.

Joe hardly fit  Lt. Perry Ratcliff description to visitors touring the Wise County prison at the time of its opening, as cited by Hammack:

The inmates we're getting here at Red Onion are going to be the worst in Virginia...We're getting the worst of the worst.

Of course, Joe Giarratano had been a thorn in the side of the Virginia Department of Corrections for his high profile.

Giarratano is now at Wallens Ridge, but  time in SHU has left its toll

Here's a more current photo from of Joe, which accompanies his handwritten letter, which you can find posted--along with a transcription--on the site of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union.

My 8 years in SHU made me less sociable. I get extremely uncomfortable being around or in groups of people. I have experienced panic attacks in these situations. Since being released to g.p. [general population] and transferred here to WRSP [Wallens Ridge State Prison], I have probably gone to the mess hall 6 - 10 times in 5 years, I can’t tolerate the crowd, being locked in that small space with them and being that close. I survive by eating out of the prison commissary: p- butter, crackers and ramen noodles. Seriously. I generally do not initiate conversations. I do respond if someone speaks to me. I have become much more of an introvert. Depression remains a problem.

The psychiatrist at Red Onion was responsible for getting me out of SHU and transferred. Initially I was placed in a “progressive housing unit,” but not in a double cell as was the routine. I was placed on single cell status for almost a year before I transferred to WRSP general pop.

If solitary confinement can so damage a person such as Giarratano, imagine its effects on a psychologically weaker, more isolated prisoner.

Solitary confinement in supermaxes lead to severe and often permanent damage

Boston psychiatrist and authority on solitary confinement Stuart Grassian would not be surprised by the changes in Giarratano.  He writes that isolation “often results in severe exacerbation of a previously existing mental condition or in the appearance of a mental illness where none had been observed before.”  Grassian argues that supermaxes produce a syndrome characterized by “agitation, self-destructive behavior, and overt psychotic disorganization.” He  notes memory lapses, “primitive aggressive fantasies,” paranoia, and hallucinations.

Most scholars concerned with solitary confinement agree. Peter Scharff Smith of the Danish Institute for Human Rights writes, “Research on effects of solitary confinement has produced a massive body of data documenting serious adverse health effects.” Those effects may start within a few days, involve as many as three-quarters of supermax inmates, and often become permanent.

Psychiatrist Terry Kupers adds, “being held in isolated confinement for longer than three months causes lasting emotional damage if not full-blown psychosis and functional disability.

Virginia's assignment to Red Onion differs from accepted correction's practice

Jamie Fellner is a senior advisor for Human Rights Watch who has spoken out about prison conditions during the recent hunger strike.  She outlines how the basis for assignment to Red Onion differs from accepted correction's practice in her May 1, 1999 Human Rights Watch report, "U.S.: Red Onion State Prison: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Virginia."  You can find her footnotes at the link.

...corrections professionals know that many-perhaps most-inmates who have been sentenced to long prison terms even for violent crimes are not management problems. (Indeed,most inmates in prison systems are well-behaved; they want to do their time and get on with their lives.) The usual practice in many jurisdictions is to place inmates in the general population of maximum security facilities if they have been convicted, for example, of murder and have life sentences. They are then reclassified after a year or so, and depending on their behavior may be transferred to less restrictive facilities.

Many  have demonstrated by actual behavior that they are neither violent nor difficult

Fellner continues,

The decision to use length of sentence as a basis for assignment to Red Onion is particularly difficult to justify in the case of inmates who were already behind bars before Red Onion opened and who have demonstrated by their actual behavior that they are not violent or difficult inmates requiring the extensive controls of a supermax.

Yet we have received various complaints from inmates in just this situation. One inmate with a life sentence, for example, had spent six infraction-free years in prison only to be transferred to Red Onion. One inmate told HRW that he was sent to Red Onion even though he had a classification score of eighteen and had gone years without any infractions. Another said he had been behind bars for twenty years on a life sentence and had no record of violent conduct, yet he too was sent to Red Onion. Another inmate told HRW he was sent to Red Onion even though he had an “impeccable” institutional record. When he asked DOC personnel why he had been transferred “they merely told me because of the length of my sentence (life plus fifty years) and also because I was an ‘in-fill’ inmate. In other words, they did not have enough assaultive disruptive inmates in the prison system to fill Red Onion. They have lied to the public about the need for these prisons in Virginia.”

Real reason for supermax incarceration in Virginia:  lack of dangerous inmates

Red Onion seems to be a case of "build it and they shall come."  Fellner explains,

That Virginia does not have enough inmates who have displayed dangerous conduct to fill Red Onion and Wallens Ridge should come as no surprise. Virginia has never had a particularly violent inmate population. In fiscal year 1997, the DOC had only 72 assaults on staff and 86 on inmates out of a total prison population of 28,034.The total beds at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge constitute 6 to 8 percent of Virginia’s projected prison population.We are not aware of any DOC analysis that indicated such a high percentage of the state prison population could reasonably be expected to need super-maximum security confinement.

On January 1, 1997, for example, Virginia had 852 inmates in administrative segregation, or 3.5 percent of its total prison population. Before Red Onion opened, the DOC retained a national expert in classification systems, James Austin, to undertake a classification review of its prison population. The study analyzed such factors as history of institutional violence, severity of current and prior offenses, escape history,and institutional disciplinary records.The study showed that while a relatively large number of Virginia inmates have been convicted of crimes that earn long sentences (in large part because of the abolition of parole), few engage in institutional violence or escapes. According to Mr. Austin, “Virginia does not have a prison population with high levels of assaultive behavior. It is the length of sentences that gives Virginia its high proportion of maximum security inmates.” Austin’s analysis showed that only .9 percent of male inmates who had been in prison a year or longer had prison histories of assault and battery with a weapon; only .7 percent had escape histories. Only 1.6 percent would be reclassified to maximum security because of institutional misconduct (as opposed to other factors such as severity of commitment offense).

Jack Wright: Memorial Day: Thinking of the Ones I Knew From Home

I may not be online tomorrow and want to post something for our veterans. This piece is written by my friend filmaker Jack Wright and used by permission:


 This Memorial Day weekend I'm thinking of the ones I knew from HOME. Lost, all these years gone but not forgotten Danny Mullins and Scott Dotson from Pound, Virginia, and from Wise, Don Stallard, Don Buchanan, Carl Dingus, Michael Hopkins and Marvin Wyatt.

And the boys from my unit, the First Cavalry Division too numerous to name here. All their names are on the long black wall at the Vietnam Memorial with the other 50,000 US soldiers not to mention the ones who came home and later died of psychic injuries resulting in suicide, or agent orange. Lord forgive us. Bless our troops, our dead, AND damn the Masters of War.

"You that fasten all the triggers for the others to fire
While you sit back and watch while the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansions while the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud...
And I hope that you die and your death'll come soon.
I'll follow your casket on that pale afternoon
And I'll watch while your lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave till I'm sure that your dead."

(Masters of War by Bob Dylan)

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Here's another piece, Jack sent me: "Decoration Day memories for Hindman." Decoration Day is what I first heard it called when I was a boy growing up in Wise County. I knew it was a holiday, but I did not fully understand how or why it was celebrated. I remember gazing up on the hill that overlooked Wise's main street and seeing flowers and flags decorating certain graves in the town cemetery. My Aunt Nell Elliott explained respectfully that these graves were the war dead. She went on to say that our family was somehow lucky. Her brothers and uncles and grandfathers had all been in wars dating back to 1861 but God had spared their lives. As I grew older the name, Decoration Day, seemed to vanish, replaced by Memorial Day, but the stories associated with it remain vivid.

At a family reunion in 1976, my cousin Ruth Maxwell--the family genealogist and historian-- told a story about our great-grandfather, Charles Barker, who had served in the Civil War. His Confederate unit was guarding Cumberland Gap and their position was under attack. Federal troops charged up the hill from the Kentucky side. As the Confederates were about to be overrun, my grandfather jumped up and shouted, “Don’t shoot, I’m a Whig! I’m a Whig!” This so startled the oncoming platoon that “Grandpap” and his comrades escaped back into Lee County, Virginia, where most of them lived. From then on my cunning old great grandfather went by the nickname of “Whig”-- the name he carried to his grave in 1925, a site decorated by a Civil War marker. My family has continued to be lucky.

None of us were lost at war. I returned safely from Vietnam in 1967. I’ll miss coming home for Decoration Day this year to visit gravesites with family and friends. But I’d like to mention several Wise Countians from my generation who died in Vietnam, some of whom I was fortunate enough to know personally as we grew up.

On the U.S. National Park Service’s Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial seventeen are listed from Wise County, among 1,304 dead from Virginia and 58,178 nationwide. Of course, there are others who come to mind. There are those who died after returning from war. The effects of the war were often hidden deep inside, resulting in later suicides or other self-destruction. The forgotten. They died from war just the same but are not mentioned in any official lists and are not celebrated in the same way.

After seeing the recent Vietnam movie, “We Were Soldiers,” I visited the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall website and discovered a most fitting tribute written on September 11, 1999 by a veteran who served with the late Danny Mullins of Pound. Dale R. Sabine had posted a message in honor of his fallen leader. He said, “Daniel Lee Mullins was a brave officer, I was the last one to talk to him. He saved my life in the Soui Cat ambush. I was talking to him when the mine went off, I was the only one of five to walk away. One other lost his legs but survived. [Lt. Mullins] was a credit to his rank, and one of the finest men I ever served under. He had no fear when it came to his men, always there when needed. I carry him in my mind and heart to this day, and forever until we meet again. God bless you brother, I didn't have a chance to say goodbye before you were gone. One minute we were talking, then you were gone, for some reason God spared my life. My mind relives it every day and I find no rest. God bless you Daniel Lee Mullins, my brother, rest in peace.”

This Memorial Day we pay respect to the dead and honor them all equally. Indeed, we miss them all. Rest in peace, brothers and sisters. Amen.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page is dedicated to honoring those who died in the Vietnam War. Since it first went on line in 1996 it has evolved into something more. It is now also a place of healing for those affected by one of the most divisive wars in our nation's history.(http://thewall-usa.com)

Hunger Strike at Supermax Red Onion: Rally in Roanoke

Author's note:  I am waiting for promised photographs and video from today's  rally.  I originally posted at 11:55 am, before I left for Roanoke and then started and update.  Instead, I've posted a graphic from The Wingnut.  BTW, I have another post on Red Onion and how Joe Giarratano was imprisoned there here.

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It would have been nice if the Western Regional Office of the Virginia Department of Corrections had not locked up and hidden behind closed blinds.  That was the staff's apparent response when at 1 p.m. on Friday May 25, about 20 folks from Solidarity with Virginia Prison Hunger Strikers showed up at 5427 Peters Creek Road in Roanoke, Virginia. 

It would have been nice if Regional Operations Chief, G. K. Washington was coming to the phone, or if "Heather," whom I got when I dialed "0" hadn't answered (over and over again) that I needed to call Richmond and speak Larry Traylor, Director of Communications, even after I told her that Mr. Traylor was also not answering his phone.  Of course "Heather" gave her name.  The first operator I had called when I asked for Mr. Washington and was told to call Mr. Tralor,  told me she didn't have to tell me her name.  

Finally the protesters decided to  read their list of ten demands on behalf of the hunger strikers in two units at Red Onion State Prison, Pound, Virginia in Wise County.

The Richmond Times Dispatch calls Red Onion "Virginia's toughest prison."  The "supermax" isolates inmates for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement.  It has has long been a topic of attention in Virginia and beyond.  In 2000, a Roanoke Times investigations of the Wallens Ridge and Red Onion state prisons revealed that guards at both supermax facilities used excessive force in dealing with inmates and that inmates at these facilities receive poor medical treatment.  By 2006,  Laurence Hammack (email) was saying nothing much had been done.


In the late 1990s, then-Gov. George Allen (R), now a U.S. senator running for re-election against another former governor, Tim Kaine (D), had a get-tough corrections policy that resulted in the abolition of parole and the lengthening of criminal sentences. He also went on a prison-building tear that included the construction, including two "supermax" (or level S facilities for their maximum-security features) to house the supposed expected flood of violent offenders. A surplus of cells resulted, which were then rented out to other states with overflowing prisons, resulting inappropriate incarceration of low-threat offenders from urban areas.

Both of the intended supermaxes--Wallens Ridge in Big Stone Gap and Red Onion--are in Wise County, where local residents in Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) and their allies have been fighting against mountaintop removal and the construction of the coal-fired Dominion electric plant. Wise Country officials (and probably those from surrounding areas--I need to look up the information) plagued by the mono-economy of coal, actively lobbied for them, seeing them a source of jobs. Wallens Ridge has now been classified as Level 5, rather than S according to the DOC.

Originally   Harold Clarke, director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, took the attitude of "hunger strike, what hunger strike" when interviewed, but having just returned from the rally, I can tell you that Anita Kumar of the Washington Post is writing that he just admitted the strike exists for the first time. I hope to interview those rallying.  I also hope to interview DOC officials and families of the strikers (if I can locate them) as well as documentary filmakers at Appalshop who have reported on the prison in their film, "Up the Ridge." In addition I would interview Jamie Fellner, a senior adviser for the New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, which investigated conditions at Red Onion, and wants access to the prison and to meet with Clarke, the Red Onion warden and prison inmates. Fellner specializes in U.S. criminal justice and prison issues, including segregation and isolation, and wrote a highly critical report in 1999.

Feller told the Times-Dispatch that "complaints about cleaning supplies are one thing, but 'I am concerned and was troubled to hear (allegations that) they have indefinite segregation without clearly defined ways for inmates to work their way out.'"

Supporters say is a protest over alleged abusive conditions there and announced 10 inmate demands that range from an end to indefinite terms of segregation to better materials for cell cleaning. They say that the strike began Tuesday and as of Thursday, as many as 40 to 45 prisoners scattered in segregation pods are participating in the hunger strike.

 Harold Clarke, director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, told the Times Dispatch on Thursday that the inmates began turning down meals Tuesday but have not explained why: "We are not strangers to hunger strikes." He also said that he would be glad to speak with Fellner but that he had concerns about her meeting with inmates. "We don't want to interject any controversy or do anything that gives the offenders the impression that it's OK for them to act out in the way they are....We want them to feel the responsibility to comport themselves appropriately." He also contradicts Fellner, saying,"There has always been a way for them to get out...Quite frankly, I'm not sure what they're concerned with because the things they have listed are all things that we are satisfying."

Some background: The Appalshop documentary "Up the Ridge" from  The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA).  On  October 7, 2006, Bill Sizemore wrote the film

focuses in part on the deaths of two Connecticut inmates, a 20-year-old drug offender who apparently hanged himself and a 50-year-old rapist who died after being zapped repeatedly by guards with a stun gun. Beyond that, the film examines the effects of the distant mountaintop prisons on inmates' families. At one point the camera crew rides along with the Watson family of Newport News, who rented a van to visit their relative in Wallens Ridge. The 10-hour, all-night trek drives home the isolation those prisoners endure. "There's no bus service. There's no airport. There's no train service. There's no cab service," said Szuberla. "So unless you have a vehicle and the will to get out here, it's pretty tough." The filmmakers got only limited cooperation from the state Department of Corrections. They interviewed the director, Allen appointee Ron Angelone, in his last week on the job in 2002 but were not allowed to tour the prison or talk to wardens or guards, even off duty. 

According to Sizemore, Clarke said,

The inmates at Red Onion earn their way to Red Onion. They are individuals who either are notorious criminals or they were so disruptive in other institutions that they earned their way there." He claims that most will someday leave prison, and inmates are given chances to earn their way back to less closely controlled prisons. "We don't want anyone — if we can avoid it — leaving Red Onion straight back into the community."