keeping tracks and speaking up

post #177
       First, Appalachian residents we need and appreciate -- even if we are not sure what all they do and which tracks are whose:
      

Can you find three tracks??  Was the squirrel jumping up or jumping down??!!!

A vole-like creature? 

someone please please please tell me what makes this lovely design!

a deer on the move

     It is still snowing almost every night around here!  I find it hard not to notice, which is why I mention it at all.  Luckily the relatively warmest day of this past week was Wednesday, when I was able to be one of many taking part in the annual I Love Mountains Day in Frankfort, our state capitol.   Kentucky is by necessity having to reexamine its energy dependence on cheap coal, both because there is less available coal and because there is more awareness of the environmental devastation of such practices as mountaintop removal mining.  Coal has not been kind to the health of communities it affects, where the true cost of coal has been carried by the residents of the region, many who live in poverty with impaired health issues.
      Anyway, here is a photo I took from an airplane ten years ago.  This still happens.

                                                     a "gone mountaintop"


      Here are some photos from Wednesday's march and rally at the Capitol:

I love the generations in this photo.

yes!

    It might be obvious that I see a connection between the richness of the wild life in our area and the urgent necessity to speak up to keep the natural world from being destroyed.  The diversity of our amazing forest and our clean water sources ("We all live downstream.") is not a guarantee. This means speaking up and being involved in preserving our Appalachian heritage by envisioning brave new solutions to the energy we also depend on.  It feels in these times as if greed has a stronger say than common sense!  So thank you, voles, and thank you, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and other groups with vision.