Busy busy busy busy: Brief notes from recent travels

photo by Cheshire Tongkat

Just back from a truly amazing, and challenging, and inspirational, and difficult, and extraordinary experience in West Virginia: Appalachia Rising: March on Blair Mountain. I had the privilege and honor and delight of working with some of the most amazing organizers and participants imaginable, and we overcame some pretty extraordinary obstacles. Five days of marching on narrow busy roads through two of the most pro-coal counties on earth to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, culminating in ~775 people marching on Blair Mountain, and around 148 of those walking up to the historic battlefield, one scene of the largest armed labor uprising in modern American history: the Battle of Blair Mountain. Yeah, run-on sentence, what?

Drove back yesterday through some of the worst driving weather I've ever dealt with: it was basically nonstop driving wind, thunder, and lightning from the VA/TN border, all the way back to Atlanta via Knoxville.

Now unpacking, and putting stuff together to ride a century tomorrow with a friend.

Need to book travel to Afghanistan, for which the departure will be very shortly after returning from Peru, in early August. Like maybe the next day.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures to come, I promise. Now I have this burning desire to shower, shave, eat breakfast, listen to public radio, and drink good coffee.