Eastern Kentucky, like much of central Appalachia, has been hard hit by lay offs in the coal industry in recent months. Since the first of 2012, hundreds have lost their jobs. But in the midst of such uncertain and trying times, our communities have also been pulling together to support each other. That was clear […]
In the 1960s Anthropologist Helen Lewis established one of the first Appalachian Studies programs in the country, at what was then Clinch Valley College in Wise County, Virginia. Here Helen joins one of her former undergraduate students, lawyer and community leader Frank Kilgore of St. Paul, Virginia, at the site of the new Dominion energy […]
Last December the Environmental Protection Agency issued rules that limit the amount of mercury that coal-burning power plants can put into the air. Mercury is a nerve toxin, especially dangerous to children and the unborn, and the mercury rules had been a long time in the making. Like other actions of the Environmental Protection Agency, […]
A WMMT report from the East Kentucky Leadership Conference, recently held in Prestonsburg, KY. One conference session engaged participants in discussion of a number of possibilities for the region’s economic and social future, including the establishment of permanent severance tax funds to support economic transition in the coalfields, Helen Lewis’s vision of “a clean glass […]
