This Morning

This has been a pretty good morning...

laid out by my stove looking at the fire for a while last night. That was pretty nice.

Got a bunch of stuff done this morning and'll be moving on to get more done later on after I get me some lunch

cleaned a bit of my bathtub, ordered a songbook (singing rocks with people or alone, just belt out some songs), and cleared out my email account of about 1800 unread messages. I mean, i didn't read em...i just marked em as read.

emails pretty big, so i figure i should keep that tidy.

gotta take my clothes off the line later on and if it keeps as a hell of a nice day, mow my lawn.

i think i'm gonna drive up to lewisburg today and check out this health foods store up there, though. Farmers markets are done here, and I didn't can any (don't know how), so i've gotta switch over to stockpiling shit from the health food stores. i hope that the store up there has some good stuff.

looking into living more responsibly, I'm making progress I think. Playing guitar a lot more, around a half hour to hour per day. getting to know the chords...but never did have much rythym. Oh well, its playing for fun and life so I don't need to be good.

Gonna be dropping a mini disc player by this artsy woman today so she can interview these artsy kids whose work she displays in her shop. I'm pretty excited about that. I want this station to inspire people to the arts and show them that they can do it.

Workin on making this station cooler and cooler.

Yep

Hell yeah, well things are allright here. Not so extraordinary, but are going pretty well. Got a little bit of time before we put the news together, so i'll write in here a bit.

The past weekend was pretty damn badass with all kindsa different young folks from a lotta different towns & universities around Appalachia. I went over to Rock Creek in the Coal River Valley to meet other young folks who are interested in trying to stop mountaintop removal and move towards more sustainable jobs & lives. A lot of music and inspiring people. Went up to Larry Gibson's land on Kayford Mountain, which was pretty hardcore...mine cracks are forming quick on his land and you have to start to worry about where you step. So, hopefully we can keep up momentum and this shit can keep growing and growing.

Talked with David Morris last night for an hour or an hour and a half and he just started naming off old-time music contacts that he has around the state and gave me the contact information for thirty or forty people. So, hopefully I can be calling them sometime over the next month and can get some music from them. This station has got potential to be real cool and focus on Appalachian Pride in culture and music and art and life...but we're not anywhere near there yet.

I'm wondering how long I'll last down here. I have a real strong feeling of missing Tominda and family and Shepherdstown...it gets pretty hard sometimes.......

I do like being so close to the Coal River Valley and I like being in the Mountains a lot. I feel like I'm part of something strong, and I don't want to leave it and I would miss everything. Damn, if the people who are up in Shepherdstown were down here, we'd have a hell of a time.

The news will be getting a coupla high school volunteers pretty soon here. They'll be starting up over the course of the next month. Hopefully I can train them, then they can be reporters and contribute about a story a week sometime in the late winter/early spring. I am not interested in babysitting anyone, so they'll be getting shit done.

Hot Damn & A Bag of Chickens!

Yep. Sittin here in my house, just finished breakfast. That was pretty rewarding, PB&J + Green Beans, making for a bit of a fulfilling morning. I usually just have coffee for breakfast, so having some food in the belly helps out.

Things are allright here with the radio station, I'm not too excited about the people I work with, but I'm real excited about the possibilities for the station. Monday was a pretty crazy day with accusations flying at me and a lot of pent up anger released by people. So, that was real weird, I'm just trying to get the news on the air and people hooked up with the station. We'll see if things improve, and if they don't and its a conflict ridden place, then there's no point to bring in community volunteers and no point for me to be there.

But, things are still coming along with the news, I'm interviewing a local artist in about an hour. I've been putting 2 stories/interviews a day, which takes a lot of time, but there's some time left for outreach. There's a coupla older folks who are going to be going around and interviewing local artists.

There'll be a weekend in December where a bunch of college folk who are fighting MTR will come down and help this group of people out with oral histories. This group is trying to go around and collect up as many histories and stories from people as they can, but they're doing it in a very time consuming way, so they've only been able to do 5 people so far, and older folks are passing away. So, hopefully like 10 people can come down in December and help to collect up those histories. As soon as we collect up enough of them to make it bi-weekly or monthy, I'll throw them on the station. Beatin the drum of Appalachian Pride, hell yeah

Met up with a Concord U group yesterday that was real cool and working on MTR issues. The Progressive Alliance they're called & they're pretty right on politically. Looking forward to meeting up with them this weekend in the Coal River Valley.