Message in a Bottle - I love the mountains

Mimi has come up with a cool new meme called the Message in a Bottle Meme. My message in a bottle is below. You may have to click inside the graphic below to read the message which I put in the graphic Mimi created. Note Mimi has set up a new site just for all these messages in a bottle so check them out at Message in a Bottle.
The way this meme works is you copy the blank graphic from Mimi's site on her Message in a Bottle Meme post , you can then put your own message in the bottle and post it. You are supposed to tag a minimum of five people or your whole blog roll. Since I'm too slow for tag, if you want to participate, consider yourself tagged by me and please let me know so I can see your message in the bottle. For anyone who has read my blog, or who knows me, it is probably not too surprising that I'm not going to stop here. Yes, I am going to jump up on my soap box. If anyone is here from Mimi's Mr. Linky and doesn't want to hear my long winded explanation for my message in the bottle, this would be a good place to stop. However, I thought some of you might be interested in the I love the mountains effort.
I love the mountains and I love the beach. Somehow I liked the idea of my message, coming ashore on the blogosphere's beach, being about the I love the mountains campaign to end mountaintop removal. Similarly if I buried a message in a blogosphere mountain, it could be about the destruction of the fragile shoreline ecosystem. I am fortunate to live in a state with mountains at the western end and beautiful beaches at the eastern end. The state I live in, North Carolina, isn't currently using mountaintop removal for mining coal, but when I went to the site about this practice and plugged in my zip code, I found out that my energy company does use coal mined from this practice. Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are literally blown up -- and it is happening here in America on a scale that is almost unimaginable. If you go to the I love the mountains site you can learn more about this practice which is going on in KY, VA, TN, and West Virginia, and you can join with others who are trying to stop it.
I should mention that so far as I know, the photographs I'm using for this post are not directly related to the issue. The photographs were taken by me this fall at the James River Park in Virginia. The industrial plant that I shot was on the way to the park from Bedford, VA where we were staying. If you look at any shot of a mountain range and imagine it being blown us so the tops are flattened, you can get an idea of what this practice does. One of my MPIP friends who lives in KY has become involved with a grassroots effort in her community to stop this practice. She attended the I love the mountains rally which you can read about on the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth site. I was pleased to see photographs of people of all ages involved in this cause. Mountaintop removal is devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia; polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; and destroying a distinctly American culture that has endured for generations.
The appalachian mountains are near and dear to my heart. My mother grew up in Boone, NC and her mother lived in the mountains her whole life. For that matter, my father grew up near the NC coast at the eastern part of the state. I have roots in, and an affinity for, both of these vulnerable eco systems. It doesn't matter either whether it's in one state or another. It's all part of our finite planet. I also realize that economics come in to play and communities have to be concerned with jobs and the welfare of the people in a particular area. Sometimes it isn't initially clear that accepting certain industries and practices into a community that promise jobs can actually end up destroying the welfare of the people by polluting the streams and air. These can be very complex issues.I've talked before on my blog about how surprising, at one level, it was when Bill and I were struck by a similarity in our respective grandmother's perspectives and how different they were from ours. My grandmother lived in Boone, NC and across the mountain Bill's grandmother lived in Bristol, TN. Both of our grandmothers wanted to show us new developments and shopping centers in their towns. Too us it was sad to see these ugly developments in what were small mountain towns. To our grandmothers who both lived through the depression these were signs of progress, jobs, improving economies. However, if either of our grandmothers were still alive, I have no doubt that they would be deeply saddened to see mountains literally blown up, not to mention the water pollution and wide range of environmental consequences. So here ends my message in the bottle. Between now and earth hour (the top of my blog has information about earth hour), I will try to post about some of the issues that concern the planet we live on.