Sam Adams Books

T.D. and the Tater in Radio Land

2011-07-21T23:22:00.003-05:00

I'll be reading from T.D. and the Tater and Other News from Augusta County at 5 p.m. July 25 on WMMT-FM. I'll be on Appalachian Attitude with host Jim Webb. The station is at 88.7 FM, and streams live on the Internet at Live365.com.

T.D. -- The Kindle edition

2011-07-11T07:41:00.003-05:00

The Kindle edition of T.D. and the Tater and Other News from Augusta County is available now on Amazon at http://amzn.to/oITV5R

T.D. and the Tater in serial

2011-07-08T18:26:00.005-05:00

I will be posting T.D. and the Tater, the title story in my new book, T.D. and the Tater and Other News from Augusta County, on my Facebook page and on Twitter in serial format. The first posts went up today. The story will be posted a piece at a time each day until the entire story is published online.

The story can be found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Adams-Reports/162246950468946 and at http://twitter.com/SamAdamsKY. To read everything posted until now on Twitter, search for #TDAnd.

T.D. and the Tater is here!

2011-06-27T13:56:00.005-05:00

My new book is out! It's called T.D. and the Tater, and Other News from Augusta County.

T.D. and the Tater is a collection of short stories about the misadventures of T.D. Duff, the only reporter at the only newspaper in the postage-stamp town of Wakefield.

When he inherits the newspaper from his editor, he has to deal with the eccentric residents of Augusta County all by himself. There's Clarence (with one syllable), proud owner of a potato that looks like Tom Selleck; Nosh Jones, who is locked in mortal combat with rival snakehunter Roger Shepherd for the title of Most Famousest Snake Hunter in Augusta County; and Kyle Pelphrey, one of T.D.'s best friends and a game warden who encounters the meanest possum ever.

You can buy it at http://www.bodminbooksltd.com/catalog.html. The Kindle edition is coming soon!

New book set for May publication

2011-03-24T21:23:00.002-05:00

The past few months have largely been taken up with preparing for publication of my next book.
T.D. and the Tater and Other News from Augusta County (2011, Bodmin) should be available in bookstores by early May.

Chromium-6 found in 31 water supplies

2010-12-20T18:56:00.001-05:00

A new report released Monday says a suspected cancer-causing form of chromium is contaminating the water supply in at least 31 U.S. cities.
The report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found chromium-6, also known as hexavalent chromium, in the public water supplies of 89 percent of the cities it sampled.
Chromium-6 is the same chemical discovered by legal researcher Erin Brokovich in the water supply of Hinkley, California. That discovery led to the largest medical settlement in history paid by Pacific Gas and Electric.
The EWG report is the result of laboratory tests of tap water in 35 cities across the U.S. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires water utilities to test for total chromium, which includes chromium-3 or trivalent chromium, and chromium-6, but does not require tests specific for Chromium-6.
Chromium-3 is a naturally occurring chemical often found in runoff from surface disturbances such as construction, road building and mining. It is not thought to be carcinogenic. Chromium-6 can occur naturally in some geologies, but is typically the result of human activities. It is an ingredient in industrial lubricants and degreasers, and has been shown to cause intestinal tumors in laboratory animals in some studies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not yet made a definitive statement that chromium-6 causes cancer.
In my own community of Letcher County, Kentucky, hexavalent chromium was found in three streams during initial tests in 2005. Retesting in 2007 did not show hexavalent chromium, though chromium-3 was still present. The tests were conducted by Headwaters Inc., a nonprofit watershed group on whose board of directors I serve.
Tests on tap water for Letcher County were not immediately available.

The science of getting to the climate conference

2010-12-04T08:15:00.000-05:00

So, a funny thing happened on the way to the climate talks. Actually several funny things, and some not so funny, and these things promise to continue through the end of the COP16 because, well, people are stupid.

I’ve written a lot about the logistics of this place, and they really are horribly, horribly bad, but to be fair to the United Nations and the 194 separate countries participating, it’s not all their fault. Much of it is the fault of the people, many of them my brothers and sisters in the media.

Take passing through security. It’s difficult, but I haven’t seen a single full-body scanner, no one here is “touching my junk.” I feel like I should moo every time I start through the line, but it’s really not an onerous process.

Unless there’s someone in front of me who just doesn’t get it.

Here’s a hint, if you want to pass through a security line quickly, stop talking on your cell phone and put it in the tray. You know, the plastic thingy that the security guard is gesturing wildly at, while you continue to be oblivious to the fact that he’s even there.

This isn’t rocket science, especially for people who travel. Of course some of the people doing it aren’t rocket scientists either.

I was behind a woman television reporter a couple of days ago who hasn’t learned this lesson. She wobbled along the tiled portico toward security on impossibly high heels, with a short skirt, carefully quaffed (blond) hair, and strong evidence of a plastic surgeon with a dirigible fixation.

As I waited impatiently to pass through and board the bus to the conference room, she stood in front of the metal detector, blocking the way, and continued to giggle into her I-Phone in a language I didn’t recognize. (I’m not sure what country she was from, but I think if was Brassiere.)

Finally recognizing that walking and talking are in fact possible at the same time, she walked through the detector with the phone still pressed to her head.

Buzzzzz. Wrong.

No, the security guard told her, motioning for her to go back. On the third try, she placed the phone on the x-ray belt and walked through again, her name tag with the large metal clip on it still around her neck.

Buzzzzz. Wrong again.

After two more tries, neither of which included removing the name tag that the guard was pointing at, the weary man finally waved her onward and I was able to pass through the machine. I’m only glad that the machine wasn’t capable of detecting silicone. I might never have gotten to my press conference.

Where the information super highway ends

2010-12-02T10:05:00.001-05:00

You can learn anything on the Internet, including what time journalists get up for the COP16 in Cancun. It’s between 6:30 and 7 a.m.

I know because that’s when the Internet tanks. It suddenly becomes impossible to post my reports, do my research, or often check email. All hope of communicating with the outside world suddenly disappears, and doesn’t seem to come back until sometime after I’ve gone to bed.

Which, by the way, was 12:30 a.m. this morning.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but could the U.N. possibly have chosen a worse logistical location for COP16? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful place to be – the cooling ocean breezes, the waves crashing outside my hotel window – it’s a just a terrible place to report on a conference of 10,000 people, 99-percent of whom have laptops and are all trying to use them at the same time.

December 1, while I was thankfully away from the city in the Yucatan, a colleague tells me Internet access crashed all over the city. It came back on, allegedly, before I got to the hotel, but that’s difficult for me to ascertain since I still could not post to my other blog.

Telephones aren’t much better. Cell phone signal seems to be surprisingly widespread, but it’s extremely expensive, and I can’t get voice mail because I keep getting a message that says I must register my phone. I already did that. Twice.

Top that with the fact that at a world conference dedicated to reducing carbon emission, nearly everyone has to travel 18 kilometers or so to the security check-in.

By bus.

Which runs only once every half-hour from 6:30 a.m. until 10 a.m., once every hour until 6 p.m., then once every half-hour again until 10 p.m.

Once there and checked through, everyone has to get on another bus to ride to a hotel several more kilometers back in the direction we just came.

If negotiations are no better than logistics, there’s no hope of an agreement.

Ain't no big thang

2010-11-13T12:47:00.003-05:00

Climate change is a big deal, but some of the measures that can be taken to fight it aren’t.

The U.N. is demonstrating some of these small things at its Conference of Parties to the Framework Conference on Climate Change (COP16) to be held in Cancun, Mexico, November 29-December 10.

One very small thing that COP16 officials expect to make a difference in the carbon footprint of the conference is the dress code. For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, outside the tropics, early December can be downright chilly. The mean temperature for December in Kentucky, where I live, is about 38 degrees. But the mean temperature for the same month Cancun is about 80. Combine high outdoor temperatures with hundreds of people packed into meeting rooms in business attire, and you need air conditioning and lots of it.

The COP16 answer? Ditch the business attire.

No, U.N. delegates aren’t going nude, but they aren’t wearing the worldwide corporate and government uniform, either. No coat, no tie, no hay problema.

Instead, U.N. organizers are recommending guayabera shirts and light-cotton dresses, traditional Mexican attire adapted to deal with the warm climate. Air conditioning will be minimized in order to reduce the impact of the large, multi-national gathering.

My personal recommendation? Ditch the air conditioning all together. Hold the meetings on the beach.

Clinging to coal

2010-11-09T08:07:00.002-05:00

A new post is up on Going Green in Denmark. You can find it at http://greenindenmark.bloginky.com/2010/11/09/clinging-to-coal/

Reporting soon from Cancun

2010-10-27T18:49:00.005-05:00

I have been named an Earth Journalism Network fellow and will be reporting on the COP16 from Cancun beginning in late November. I'll post updates before that, including the url for a new blog about the conference.

Like the Denmark trip last year, the new blog will be newsy, while this one will continue to focus on the lighter side. You can also follow me on Twitter @SamAdamsKY.

Coal should heed Senator's words

2009-12-03T22:23:00.004-05:00

Finally, some common sense from a coal-state Senator.

Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest serving Senator in history, calls it as he sees it. If only someone would listen.

Sparks, anyone?

2009-12-02T09:31:00.003-05:00

Why do cars have ashtrays?

I know people smoke, but really: Why do cars have ashtrays? If you've ever ridden in a car with a smoker, you know they don't use the ashtray. They roll the window down just a crack, and stick the tip of the cigarette out to knock off the ashes.

If you've ever been behind a car with a smoker in it, you know they seldom put the cigarette out in the ashtray either. They just shove the damn thing out the window.

Of the few who do use the ashtray, most only use it for temporary storage of the butts. As soon as they get to a parking lot, they pour the contents out on the pavement beside the drivers' door.

So again I ask, "Why do car's have ashtrays?" What they really need is smoke alarms.

Two arrested in alleged Danish terror plot

2009-10-28T19:58:00.003-05:00

It's not really a close call, but it still makes you think.

Federal authorities have arrested two men in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to be carried out in Copenhagen, Denmark. The first arrest occurred a day before I left for the Danish capital.

The FBI arrested David Coleman Headley at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Oct. 3. Police say he had espoused the view that the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed should be punished, and had met in Pakistan with members of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, a group the U.S. government says has ties to Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist group.

Agents also arrested Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen.

Headley, who the FBI says was bound for Pakistan again, was carrying video of the newspaper entrance and Copenhagen Central Station, the city’s main train station. The station was about a five minute walk from my hotel, and the station where I arrived from the airport and departed on my way out of Denmark.

A sad statement

2009-10-12T17:50:00.008-05:00

Back on the ground in the states, and it was a jarring landing. Not the airplane – that was great. I mean the realization that our security procedures in this country are way more intrusive and aggravating than they need to be.

Getting on the plane in Denmark, I passed through three security checkpoints and a passport control station, showing my passport at each spot. The metal detectors were easy. I had to take literally everything out of my pockets, but I got to keep my shoes on, and no one frisked me. The screeners were always very friendly and courteous.

I got to Atlanta, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents greeted me with smiles and a “welcome home” as I went through passport control. Agents at baggage claim and the agriculture check station were very courteous as their dogs sniffed my bags and they asked the required questions about food items, and my visit to a farm.

Then I got to the TSA. That was end of smiles and courtesy.

First, the woman at the x-ray machine snarled at me for not laying the paper bag with my duty-free items flat, and for putting my shoes in a basket rather than directly on the conveyor. Then I forgot to take my belt off before I went through the metal detector. I have only one thing to say to Mr. Sideburns-and-Beer-Gut manning that machine: Being a jerk doesn’t make my travel any safer. It just makes me write a hostile blog.

And it wasn’t just me. They were universally nasty to everyone who passed through.

I realize that we’ve been attacked here, and I realize that we need security. But how much is too much?

While in Denmark, I had the chance to visit two government offices – the Center for Green Transport and the Climate and Energy Ministry. At the Green Transport building, we had only to walk through open front door and up the stairs to a receptionist.

A minister is essentially like a cabinet secretary in the U.S., though Danish ministers also serve in Parliament. Going to Minister Connie Hedegaard’s office required no sniffing, no metal detector and no snarling security officers in paramilitary uniforms. We walked through a glass door by the receptionist, and were then shown upstairs to her office.

That same night, during Copenhagan’s annual Kulturnatten (Night of Culture), hundreds and possibly thousands of people wandered through Minister Hedegaard’s private office, shaking hands and making small talk with her. There was not even one guy in sunglasses, dark suit and ear piece. And Connie Hedegaard, as nearly as I can tell, is the Hillary Clinton of Denmark.

Just as refreshing was the trip to Amalienborg Palace, home of Queen Margrethe and the Royal Family. No gates, no fences, no concrete barriers. Cars drove through the palace courtyard unimpeded. The only guards in view were a handful of Royal Life Guards, one at each of several small guard stands along the outer walls of the courtyard. In their bearskin hats and 18th century-style uniforms, they stood in front of small guardhouses and stared straight ahead, making no move to stop, question or search tourists and citizens coming into the palace yard.

The White House, on the other hand, is surrounded by an iron fence, concrete barriers and a very conspicuous police and Secret Service presence. No one drives through the gate or walks through the gate without an invitation.

How did we get to this place in our country? Presidents used to let the masses into the White House on Inauguration Day, one even had his clothes stolen while skinny dipping alone in the Potomac River.

It’s a sad statement on the world climate that our president, an officer elected by the people, has become more secluded and more guarded than a European monarch.

Random shots in the dark

2009-10-09T15:06:00.006-05:00

It's my last night in Denmark, and I'm too tired to put together a very coherent blog. Here are some random thoughts on the week.

The bike lanes in Copenhagen really are a safety necessity. On streets that don't have them, cyclists will run down innocent pedestrians without blinking. More than once, I saw guys pedaling madly through the middle of crowds at Kulturnatten, an annual festival of Danish Culture that draws probably hundreds of thousands of walkers onto the streets to bounce from one museum to another.

Cab drivers in Copenhagen are crazy. Take a train.

Finding a train station in Copenhagen is easy. You walk approximately 8 kilometers to your destination and the station is across the street. The other end is in an undisclosed location.

The letter 'd' is pronounced like the letter 'l' unless it's at the beginning of a word. The letter 'r' is pronounced like you have fish bone caught in your throat no matter where it appears in the word.

There are more than 200 places to see during Kulturnatten. They're all on a map that will show you how to walk in a circle without finding the one you're looking for.

Given a choice of visiting an art museum, Danish Parliament, or the Danish Design Center, Copenhageners will crush each other getting into the milk and cheese exhibit in the agriculture building.

A kroner is like a miniature dollar. It's shorter and it buys less. If you go, take a wheelbarrow.

One other random thought: This is the most beautiful city I've ever seen. It's worth taking the wheelbarrow.

Once again, for a more serious look at Denmark go to http://greenindenmark.bloginky.com.

A burger is a burger, but a smørrebrød is an adventure

2009-10-07T17:12:00.004-05:00

I have seen only one Danish restaurant since I arrived in Copenhagen on Monday morning.

There are Indian restaurants, Middle Eastern restaurants, Turkish restaurants, Greek restaurants, Thai restaurants, Mexican restaurants, joints that sell pizza and kabobs, and Italian cafes, but you don’t see much down home Danish cooking.

So far, the only ethnic place I’ve eaten in was a Thai restaurant in an alley off Vesterbrogade, after which I was afraid to breathe near the sprinklers in my hotel room. The peppers were hot enough for me to light the way back to the hotel just by opening my mouth.

But with the dearth of Danish Restaurants, I have still eaten true Danish food several times now. The Danes are nothing if not hospitable.

I spent much of this morning listening to an in-depth discussion of insulation, during a meal of what can only be described as gourmet smørrebrød.

For those of you who haven’t looked it up yet or haven’t been to Denmark, smørrebrød (pronounced something like “shmoorbrool”) can be almost anything

I first took it to mean the same as the Americanized word Smorgasbord, which is a corruption of the Swedish meaning “belly up to the trough and eat everything you see.” The translation for smørrebrød, however, is something like “all-you-can-eat-of-everything-the-cook-couldn’t-find-enough-of-for-a-full-meal-but-could-put-together-to-make-a-full-meal-on-one-slice-of-rye-bread.”

And it’s cold.

Today, smørrebrød included a couple of pieces of smoked salmon with dill, some sort of ham, spiced sausage called rullepølse made from rolled up meats sliced thin enough to read through, cooked onions, a mushroom, some pieces of roasted tomato, a piece of cheese, a piece of rare steak, a spoonful of caramelized nuts, a slice of cinnamon apple and several things I could not identify, but tried anyway. The idea is to put as much of that as possible on a piece of bread.

Yesterday it was sliced roast turkey, cucumbers, tomatoes, orange slices, lemon, lime, parsley, beets, a liver paté, some boiled shrimp, boiled eggs, yogurt, beef, some thinly sliced cured pork, and several other things that I couldn’t identify.

These were food combinations I would never have thought of. The surprising thing is, it’s really good. It has also opened up entirely new possibilities for me when I get home.

“I don’t need to go the store, honey, we can have smørrebrød.”

As long as we have bread, I’m on solid ground with that argument.

Read a more serious account of Denmark and ways to fight climate change at Going green in Denmark, my blog on kentucky.com/greenspot.

A more serious side to Denmark

2009-10-07T02:01:00.007-05:00

Just a reminder that you can read a more serious account of my trip to Denmark at http://www.kentucky.com/greenspot. The blog there is called Going Green in Denmark.

The latest post is on wind energy and democracy on the island of Samso. Later today, I'll be posting something on energy-efficient housing.

Later still, I'll post the day's or week's absurdities and stream of consciousness here.

See below for a post on speaking Danish to Danes.

Irritatingly polite

2009-10-07T01:41:00.006-05:00

OK, I’ve done it now. I’ve pissed off the Danes.

Before leaving home, I decided that I would not be one of THOSE Americans. You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones who assume everyone in every country should speak English, and we, being from the greatest superpower on earth, should not be required to learn their language.

So in late spring, I downloaded a free language software called BYKI, and started learning Danish. A week ago, looking into the so-called Copenhagen Card that allows tourists to travel on buses and the subway and visit museums free (after buying the card), I was very pleased with myself when I was able to read the Danish web site enough to understand the requirements. Then I went off happily to the airport and boarded a flight for Copenhagen. All was well with the world.

When I arrived, my first stop was the train ticket office.

“Hej. Jeg vil gerne til Vester Søgade,” I said.

The ticket agent, ever the polite Dane, answered with a smile and a ”Hej!” (hello), and said something back to me. What she said totally evaded me, so I fell back on a tried and true phrase.

“Jeg forstår ikke. Kan du engelsk?”

The clerk frowned at me. “Of course I speak English.”

I got my ticket, but she seemed rather annoyed.

Again at the information desk at Copenhagen Central Station, I asked, “Kan du engelsk?” Again the annoyed look, and the clerk promptly switched languages and gave me directions to my hotel.

I vowed not to ask the stupid question again, but I still wanted to be as polite as possible, so I approached the hotel desk with the appropriate phrase: “Jeg har lavet en reservation.”

The clerk nodded, asked my name and I replied in Danish. That’s as far as I got. She spoke the rapid-fire language and I must have looked befuddled, because she certainly looked concerned. I quickly employed my most useful phrase: “Jeg forstår ikke,” (I don't understand). This time, I decided it best not to ask if she could speak English, I just made it clear that I was ignorant of the language. “Jeg er amerikaner,” I explained.

Again, a quick switch to English, but this time with no annoyance. “Have you been to Denmark before?” I told her I had not, and got a surprised look back. “How did you learn to speak Danish???”

I vaguely answered, got my key and went to my room. I’ve got the hang of this, I thought. Off to get some dinner that night, I walked past the strip clubs on Gammel Kongevej to a 7-11. (Side note: there are approximately 7,711 of these within a 100-yard radius of my hotel.)

The Indian clerk had locked the door to go the restroom, but he gestured for me to wait and came back to let me in momentarily, greeting me in Danish. I didn’t attempt an answer, simply nodding and saying, “Tak,” (thanks) as he opened the door for me. I was perusing the glass case of sausages when he finally asked a question in Danish that required an answer. So I again employed my favorite Danish phrase.

“Jeg forstår ikke. Kan du engelsk?”

Again the annoyed look. “Of course,” he said with a flawless British accent and pointed again at the sausages. “Would you like a hotdog?”

After two days here, I now know that Danes not only speak English, they speak it better than I do. Apparently, so do Indians who live in Denmark. Even the waitress and the manager at the Thai restaurant where I had dinner last night speak English better than any Asian I’ve ever seen in America.

Camilla Steffensen, a spokeswoman for Dansk Energi, explained it to me in her near perfect American accent. Danes begin learning English in school in third grade. They already hear it from their parents and in businesses all around them. Also, there are only 5 million Danes and the language is difficult anyway. They have to know other languages to communicate with the rest of the world.

And finally, the most important reason: “We watch a lot of American television.”

I’ve also learned that the advice a well-traveled friend gave may be more appropriate than I thought. The friend, a former U.S. vice consul to India, said there is one phrase Americans should learn in the language of every country they plan to visit.

“Don’t shoot – I’m a Canadian.”

The knees knows

2009-10-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

They say that when it comes to riding a bike, you never forget.

My knees definitely remember riding a bike yesterday. I cycled seven or eight kilometers (70 or 80 miles, I’m not sure of the conversion) around Copenhagen, Denmark, on a tour with the chief lobbiest and the project leader for the Denmark Cyclist Federation and four other bloggers/journalists.

Most of me loved it.

My knees were the exception. My left one has asked my thigh to tell me it’s never going to speak to me again. My right knee cut out the middle man and gave me the message personally.

You see, I haven’t ridden a bike for any distance in probably seven years, and the distance then was less than a mile. Since then, my biking experience has consisted of swinging a leg over my son’s bike and walking it out of the carport so I could air up the tires for him.

In Copenhagen, everyone rides. Lise Bjørg Pederson, the lobbiest for the cyclist federation, said there are 30,000 bicycle commuters in Copenhagen, compared to only 15,000 automobile commuters. All of them passed me yesterday.

I was so slow, parents taking their kids along for the ride in cargo cycles (think pedal-powered SUV – SUC?) passed me. There were little girls, young women, men of all ages, grandmothers. Everyone was pedaling – fast. The thing that impressed me as an American is that there were no fat people, unless they were the few driving by in Mercedes and Audi cars.

Suffice it say that there must be a huge market for talcum powder in Copenhagen, and a very small market for gasoline, er, petrol.

Today I’m off to the island of Samsø, where 100 percent of the energy comes from renewable sources. More on that tomorrow.

New blog is up and running

2009-10-02T07:00:00.004-05:00

Going Green in Denmark is now up on Kentucky.com's Greenspot. You'll also see items from me soon on The Daily Yonder, as well as here.

I arrive in Copenhagen on Sunday, and I'll be writing about a variety of subjects. You can learn more about what to expect by reading today's post on Going Green in Denmark.

New blog coming up

2009-09-28T06:29:00.003-05:00

Beginning next weekend, I'll be writing another blog -- this one attached to the Kentucky.com's Greenspot, the online environmental section of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.

The blog will chronicle my upcoming trip to Denmark to explore the environmental infrastructure and culture there, and see how some of that technology and mindset might be adapted to Appalachia.

"Going Green in Denmark" will be in the blog list on the right side of Greenspot, just below Easy Being Green and The Kentucky Pride Blog.

Turning the Black Gold Economy Green

2009-09-15T21:01:00.008-05:00

Five years.

2,000 jobs.

175,000 acres.

125,000,000 trees.

628,868,602 pounds of carbon.

It’s a pretty simple equation, really. Maybe too simple for people to wrap their heads around. It sounds like a con – like it couldn’t really be that easy.

But it is.

Plant an acre of hardwood trees, and in six to ten years, they’ll take at least 1.63 metric tons of carbon a year out of the air. Plant 175,000 acres of trees, take 285,250 metric tons of carbon out of the air every year, create 2,000 jobs, and reforest a seventh of the land left treeless by strip mining in Appalachia.

The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, which includes the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, state mining agencies in the seven Appalachian coal states, universities, environmental groups, citizens and industry representatives, is talking about just such a project. And the White House is at least considering it.

The beauty of the project is that it doesn’t require an argument about the appropriateness of mountain top removal mining, a hot-button issue that has led to violence and arrests, particularly in the West Virginia coalfields. This is something we can do for the environment and for the economy now. We don’t have to wait for a fight to play out in Congress or the courts.

This project, known as a Green Forest Works for Appalachia, deals only with formerly mined lands that are in a state of arrested natural succession. In plain language, land that isn’t growing trees.

In order to prevent landslides, regulators required coal companies to compact mine spoils. While it was the best science at the time, we now know that the combination of 200-ton trucks running repeatedly over the ground and bulldozers “tracking in” the rock and dirt creates a runoff coefficient roughly equivalent to a shopping center parking lot. That makes it impossible for tree roots to penetrate the soil, and contributes to erosion.

Add to that the fact that coal companies can hydroseed aggressive grasses, achieve the required percentage of ground cover and recover their bonds quickly, and it’s little wonder that Appalachia has ended up with somewhere between 500,000 and a million acres of barren grasslands with nary a tree in sight.

But several years of research has proven that trees will grow on those old, overly compacted sites, if they’re properly prepared. That means plowing the rocky ground at least four feet deep with a hook mounted on the back of a bulldozer.

Sites planted this spring by ARRI and its partner, the Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team, have a 90-percent survival rate after six months. The projects also proved that both coal companies and environmentalists will turn out to plant trees on abandoned mine lands. The projects were so successful that the two in Kentucky won ARRI and the ACCWT the Governor’s Environmental Leadership Award.

There are the obvious environmental benefits to the project, including reduction of erosion, reduced flooding risks, habitat improvement and carbon sequestration, but there are also economic benefits. Unlike previous tree plantings on strip mines, the current project plants a variety of high-value native hardwoods – oak, hickory, ash, persimmon, beech, black cherry. For owners willing to wait – land companies for example – those trees could represent a managed forest resource that will provide a future stream of income when the coal is gone.

And then there are the jobs.

Under the plan now proposed, 2,000 local workers would be hired by the fifth year, planting trees up and down the mountain range, but with most of the work centered in the central Appalachians – Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia – where the bulk of strip mining has taken place. And these jobs would not be limited to manual laborers with dibble bars and tree bags. The project would require heavy equipment operators, foresters, surveyors and administrative personnel. It would pump money into transportation, tree nursery operations, and local service industries ranging from restaurants and hotels to equipment rentals.

Will planting trees replace coal mining? No. But it is a piece of the puzzle.

An industry that provides 2,000 jobs is at least a start, particularly since many of the skills required are transferable from the coal industry, where jobs will be lost in the coming years. There is also a push to get active mines to adopt the Forestry Reclamation Approach. That method leaves the top four-feet of rock and soil uncompacted, negating the need to plow the land, but still creating a demand for skilled tree planters, nursery workers, and foresters.

While none of this addresses the energy problem, it does leave room for other solutions.

Wind and solar will become more in demand in the future, and where better to build those facilities than on mine sites that can’t be reforested? And if we are building that infrastructure on abandoned mine sites, why can’t we build the components on the mine sites that were reclaimed as industrial sites?

The coal production curve turns downward in 10 years, and our challenge is to replace coal with a sustainable economy before that happens. One question remains: Is 10 years long enough to turn an economy based on black gold green?

When the coal runs out

2009-09-07T14:35:00.004-05:00

When coal companies began moving into central Appalachia a hundred or so years ago, jobs came with them. And that is how coal companies have framed the debate over mining practices ever since.

Now environmental groups opposing mountain top removal and coal-fueled power plants are trying to frame the debate in terms of the environment. There is the loss of miles of streams, the destruction of viewsheds, the loss of habitat and species, the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, mercury in fish tissue, coal ash spills, the danger of slurry ponds.

Coal companies are fighting back with the same argument they’ve made for a century, and all over the region, people scared by the possibility of coal jobs going away are wearing “Coal, our future” t-shirts, and the state of Kentucky has even issued a “Friends of Coal” car license tag that pumps money into the industry advocacy group.

Guess which argument is resonating with the majority of Appalachian residents?

As James Carvel famously wrote on the wall of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign headquarters, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Well, what if it really is about the economy?

And what if the economic outlook for coal isn’t as rosy as the industry would have us believe?

We have been told repeatedly that there are 200 years of coal left in the Appalachians, but so far not one industry advocate I’ve heard has said what that estimate assumes. For one thing, it assumes all coal, not just economically mineable coal. For another, it makes no distinction between low-sulfur and high-sulfur coal.

According to the industry, the equation is very simple: Coal production good; environmentalists bad.

But what if the real danger to coal mining jobs isn’t environmentalists?

What if the real enemy is increased coal production?

What if 200 years is a fantasy, and what if we really have a tenth that long?

What if I’m not making this up?

The U.S. Geological Survey released the National Coal Assessment in July. That report says that coal companies in Appalachia can increase production levels for only 10 more years. That’s when economic coal reserves in the most heavily mined counties run out, and the production curve turns downward.

TEN YEARS!

Production is expected to drop to less than a third of current levels before the end of the century.

What then?

There are undeniable economic truths in the coal industry. Coal is a boom or bust industry. When demand goes up, price goes up and the coal economy booms. Production goes up and employment goes up.

Up until now, the downside of that cycle was that companies tend to over-produce, causing market gluts, followed by declines in production and employment. But if the USGS report is right, we are about to enter a different kind bust cycle.

And this bust cycle won’t end with the next cold winter. It will continue until the coal runs out.

Demand will go up, price will go up, production will go up, and employment will go up, in the short term, but then the supplies will begin to dwindle. Price will continue to go up because supply will not be able to keep pace with demand. This time, production will be hamstrung by the lack of mineable coal. Employment will go down because there isn’t enough coal to warrant a large workforce.

Given this equation, coal becomes more than just an environmental emergency, it becomes an economic and an energy emergency.

We have to address these issues. If production continues to rise, jobs will run out.

As coal production declines, energy will become more and more expensive.

It’s only a matter of time – and less time than anyone is willing to admit publicly.

The question then, is what alternatives do we have? I’ll explore some options in the coming weeks, from reforestation to wind, to alternative mining techniques.

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-08-23T10:09:00.005-05:00

It's nearly a year since I posted, but I'm going to be back in full swing soon.

I've spent the past two years immersed in environmental work related to coal, including stream testing, and reclamation of abandoned mine lands using a technique known as the forestry reclamation approach. Now I'm going to be putting that new knowledge and experience to work in writing.

Keep watching this spot, and others to be announced, for posts about energy technology, green jobs, and how we in the rural U.S. can learn from other countries. Plans are in the works for an environmental tour of a nation that is 100 percent energy independent, and I'll be blogging about the trip.

Stay tuned.

Funeral services to be held for Gish

2008-11-22T11:08:00.002-05:00

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Monday, November 24, for Thomas E. Gish, the longtime editor of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg.

Tom and Pat Gish bought The Mountain Eagle in 1956, and took control of the paper in January 1957. Over the years, they endured harassment, boycotts and a fire bombing after taking on corrupt county and city governments, and mining interests.

Tom Gish died Friday after a long illness. He suffered heart failure on Tuesday, and had been in a coma ever since. Visitation will be at the Letcher Funeral Home in Whitesburg beginning at 5 p.m. Sunday. Funeral will be the following day at Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church in Whitesburg.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Ben Gish of Whitesburg and Ray Gish of Brooklyn, N.Y.; three daughters: Ann Gish of Virginia, Sarah Oakes of Thornton, and Dr. Katherine Gish of Bottom Fork; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Crusading publisher who took on mining interests dead at 82

2008-11-21T17:26:00.003-05:00

Tom Gish, the crusading editor and publisher of The Mountain Eagle and my first boss in the newspaper business, died today. He was 82.

Gish was Frankfort Bureau Chief for United Press International and his wife Pat was a reporter for the Lexington Leader when they bought The Mountain Eagle and moved back to Tom's native Letcher County. Leaving his pregnant wife in Central Kentucky until the baby was born, Tom took over the operations of the paper in January 1957, just in time for the worst flood in 30 years. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, and much of the paper's history was lost to the flood waters. Tom put the paper out by himself as water rushed by the foundations of the building, appealing for help for the county.

Under his leadership, The Mountain Eagle gained a reputation for taking on entrenched interests in Letcher County. Both Gishes were tireless advocates for the poor, for the environment, for education, and for ethics in public office. In the 1960s, the paper became one of the first to decry the abuses of strip mining and it was burned to the ground for its trouble in 1974. A Whitesburg police officer was convicted of procuring arson in the crime, but a local judge probated his sentence.

Over the years, reporters for the paper have been threatened, harassed, prosecuted and even beaten. When I went to work there in 1986, right out of college, Pat's advice was: "If anyone doesn't like what you've written, just smile, tell them you're sorry they feel that way and walk away." Tom's advice: "Tell them to go to hell."

He was among the members of the first state school board to be installed following the landmark KentuckyEducation Reform Act of 1990, and spent many days traveling to Frankfort and around Kentucky, helping to implement the reforms.

Gish has been in ill health for years, and suffered heart failure Tuesday night. He had been in a coma ever since.

His leadership will be missed.

A Spectator Crime

2007-11-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a community buries a murder so deep that the people who live there forget what really happened, or even that anything happened at all.

Like Leonard Wood’s mutilated body, the facts surrounding his murder are buried so deeply that few people in Letcher County, Kentucky, know the atrocity took place. Even his name is not sure, with some reports calling him Leonard Wood and some calling him Leonard Woods. But Wood’s murder was so outrageous and his subsequent mutilation so horrendous that it made national news in a time when there was no television and precious little radio.

To find out more about Leonard Wood's murder, read my post on today's In Cold Blog.

Effects of Baze Case beginning to show

2007-10-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

The effects of the Supreme Court decision to hear the case of Kentucky murderer Ralph Baze are beginning to show. For more information, read my post today on In Cold Blog.

When is an apology not an apology?

2007-10-27T10:05:00.000-05:00

When it comes from Sam Adams The Beer. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams Beer, has issued a statement regarding its cease and desist letter to the Portland, Ore., D.J.s who bought the domain names samadamsformayor.com and mayorsamadams.com. Unfortunately for The Beer, there really is a candidate for mayor of Portland named Sam Adams, and the D.J.s bought the names with the promise of giving them to Sam Adams The Candidate if he would appear on their show.

Those two web sites have been temporarily pulled because of the legal action. Not much word yet on what other Sam Adamses are doing about it. Sam Adams The Author (me) is still blissfully using his own name

The statement issued later by Sam Adams The Beer actually uses the words "for that we apologize" in regard to the incident involving Sam Adams The Candidate, but that's about as far as the mea culpa goes. In fact, the apology isn't for threatening to sue, or even for saying the company was willing to "discuss" allowing Sam Adams The Candidate to use his name "probably for the length of time the election is being held." No, Sam Adams The Beer apologized for not researching the matter more fully before sending the letter.

In other words, Sam Adams The Beer is sorry its bullying tactics blew up in its face.

No one should really be surprised by a nonapology from the Boston Beer Company. President Jim Koch has been issueing pseudo sorries for quite a while. In 2002, Koch apologized for appearing on a radio show during which couples had sex in public places. The fact that one couple ... well ... coupled in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York caused a major uproar. Koch claimed he didn't intend to be part of a program that "crossed the line." He neglected to note that his company sponsored the event, and it was his second year to provide the commentary. According to Fortune magazine, each couple received a list of sites to be used for sex, with Saint Patricks listed at 25 points.

A beer by any other name

2007-10-26T11:02:00.000-05:00

Sam Adams has a problem. Oh, not me -- at least not yet. I mean the other Sam Adams. One of the other Sam Adamses. Actually two of the other Sam Adamses.

I happen to live in Kentucky. But Sam Adams who lives in Portland, Oregon, is running for mayor, and in doing so he's drawn the unwanted attention of a lawyer working for a third Sam Adams -- namely Sam Adams The Beer.

Mark Mason and Dave Anderson, hosts of a KEX-Radio show bought two web domains -- http://www.samadamsformayor.com/ and http://www.mayorsamadams.com/, and Sam Adams The Beer has had its lawyer send a nasty letter to Mason and Anderson demanding that they surrender the domains. The problem is, Sam Adams The Beer has been using the trademark since 1984 while Sam Adams The Candidate has been using his own name since 1963. Coincidentally, Sam Adams The Author (me) has also been using the name since 1963. On learning this, Sam Adams The Beer's attorney has hinted that she might allow Sam Adams The Candidate to go on using his own name as his web address until the election, but not after that.

So far, I haven't gotten a letter demanding that I surrender http://www.samadams.org/ or http://www.samadamsbooks.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure whether Sam Adams The Rocky Mountain News Columnist, Sam Adams The Philadelphia City Paper Film Critic, Sam Adams The NFL Tackle, or Sam Adams The KEZI Sports Anchor have had any contact from Sam Adams The Beer, but I'm sure we're all waiting breathlessly.

Some people are calling for a boycott of Sam Adams The Beer, but since Sam Adams The Beer is demanding that Sam Adams The Candidate give them his web addresses, I would suggest he at least give them something.

How about the finger?

Hoaxilla

2007-07-22T21:11:00.000-05:00

Back in May, I and about a thousand others reported on the giant pig that 11-year-old Jamison Stone killed in Alabama. It weighed in at 1,051 pounds, was photographed by a newspaper and was reportedly a wild boar.

The first reaction by everyone was that it was a hoax. Of course that was also the first reaction to Hogzilla, a giant hog killed in Georgia, but when investigators dug up the carcass they discovered it was indeed an outlandishly oversize hog. It wasn't quite as big as first claimed, but it was indeed humongous.

Turns out that the Alabama pig really was as big as claimed, but that's where the truth in the story ended. Field & Stream, the venerable hunting and fishing magazine, reports that the 11-year-old really did kill the pig, but there were several key facts that the "hunting guide" failed to tell anyone. Number one, the hog was killed on a fenced hunting preserve, and number two, it was so tame its previous owner had named it. The owner of the preserve bought Fred the pig from a farm four days before the hunt, invited the local newspaper to tag along, and took the little boy and his father straight to the giant pig. In other words, the "hunt" was roughly akin to what farm boys experience every November at hog-killin' time. They walk out to the hog lot, pull out the .22 and start the process of converting pig to pork.

Now the boy and his dad apparently didn't know the pig was a farm animal when they hunted it, but they certainly knew it was a game preserve because it charged by the pound for pigs killed.

This once again points out the unsavory practice of canned hunts, in which animals are confined on fenced farms and "hunters" pay big bucks to go out and take target practice on tame animals. The most notorious of these in recent memory was the case of Troy Gentry of the country music group Montgomery-Gentry, who pleaded guilty to shooting a tame bear with a bow and arrow, and then tagging it as though he had killed it in the wild. Presumably Gentry, the pretty-boy half of the music duo, was trying to improve his redneck credentials by pretending to be a brave hunter who tracked down a dangerous bear in the wilderness with only his trusty bow. Too bad the wilderness in this case was a three-acre woodlot surrounded by an electric fence, and the bear had the suspicously cuddly name of "Cubby."

(You're a real macho man, Troy. Maybe you should dump Eddie Montgomery and join The Village People. )

While Gentry's action was illegal, what the Alabama game farm did was perfectly legal. However, it was about at unethical as anything I can think of. Canned hunts not only take away the dignity of the animals, they damage the reputations of all hunters. The owner of the preserve should have to pay not only cruelty to animals, but cruelty to that little boy for the ridicule he's had to suffer for his prize pig.

As a side note, Field & Stream has a quiz this month to see whether you can tell the difference between a wild boar and a farm pig. If you plan to hunt in Alabama, it might come in handy.

Monster stalks the unfriendly skies

2007-07-13T13:42:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in the bowels of the U.S. Department for Homeland Security, a mad scientist is laughing maniacally as his creation rises from its slab. Its boots clump-clump across the floor and it roars its displeasure at the lightning bolt called September 11 that breathed life into its dead body. Small children flee from its withering glare. Women scream and men tremble with fear. The monster sees, and is satisfied.

Dr. Frankenstein is alive and well, and his monster is terrorizing airline passengers everywhere. Only the monster that the Frankensteins in government created isn't wearing its signature black t-shirt and suit coat: she's wearing a flight attendant's uniform.

Since Congress passed new laws making it a crime to interfere with a flight crew, stories just keep cropping up about grouchy flight attendants who have decided that annoying passengers are a threat to national security. More and more, the targets of the flight attendants seem to be children. A three year old and her family were kicked off an AirTran flight in South Florida earlier this year. Last year, a woman was removed from her flight for breast-feeding her infant. In 2003, a Northwest Airlines flight attendant finally pleaded guilty to assault after spiking the drink of an unruly 19-month-old with a prescription depressant.

Last week, an Express Jet Airlines flight attendant kicked Kate Penland and her 19-month-old son Garren off a plane in Houston, telling the pilot that the mother threatened her. The mother and other passengers say there was no threat; the flight attendant was simply annoyed because the child kept talking while she did her pre-flight safety instructions. After Penland refused to use "baby Benadryl" to quiet the child, the flight attendant invented the threat and had the pilot return to the gate to eject the mother and her son.

Sara Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, was interviewed about the situation on CNN Friday morning, but apparently failed to grasp the concept that this was a child. Nelson rambled on about the government's failure to provide security training to flight attendants, who she described as our "first line of defense" against terrorism.

Personally, I think Nelson is being unfair to the U.S. government. Our nation's flight attendants are doing a bang-up job at defending us, and we should be proud of their successes. Thanks to the billions of tax dollars spent and the coordinated efforts of brave stewardi like those mentioned above, we have absolutely nothing to fear from babies.

Profiled in Owensboro, Ky., newspaper

2007-07-10T22:20:00.000-05:00

Suzi Bartholomy plans to feature Precious Blood in her column in The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer tomorrow. (The paper costs a dollar per day to view on line, so be prepared if you attempt to read the column. The Google link to Suzi's name is the best I could do because of the accessibility of the web site.)

Suzi is an editorial assistant, columnist and avid reader, whose husband, a literature professor, runs a popular poetry reading series. Her regular column and her News and Notes column are widely read in Owensboro and the surrounding area. I worked with her when I was assistant city editor at the M-I.

Perhaps Kentucky, better than any other place, proves the adage, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." And perhaps no towns in the state but Whitesburg, where the crime detailed in Precious Blood occurred, and Owensboro are more illustrative of that fact. Whitesburg is in the far southeastern reaches of Kentucky, and Owensboro is in the northwest. Whitesburg lives and dies by coal, but corn is coin of the realm in Owensboro. Whereas Whitesburg is a mountain town, Owensboro is a river port. And while Whitesburg has a mere 1,600 residents, Owensboro is the third largest city in the state with a population of 55,000 and a metro population of 111,000. Despite those differences, Owensboro residents should identify with the folks in Whitesburg.

Letcher County, where Whitesburg is located, is on the Virginia border, but Pike County residents like to point out that their county, not Letcher County, is the eastern-most in the state. Owensboro is in the western third of the state, on the Indiana border, but people in Paducah scoff at the idea that Owensboro is western Kentucky. But more than anything, the two are similar in the closeness of their residents. Owensboro is a small town masquerading as a city. Its longtime residents are every bit as intimate at those in Whitesburg. I hope Owensboro residents enjoy Precious Blood, and find some common ground with their neighbors 300 miles to the east.

Back in action

2007-07-09T21:36:00.000-05:00

With a new baby and two crashed computers, I've been limping along on the Internet lately. One of my machines (my older, slower one) is back up and running now, so I should be posting more again.

For those of you who may have missed the earlier post, In Cold Blog is in full swing now. That blog is a joint effort by 30 true-crime authors, police officers, prosecutors, crime victims, and editors. It is the brain child of Corey Mitchell, author of Strangler, Evil Eyes, Hollywood Death Scenes and others. I've kept up with my once-a-month duties on that blog. You can find my latest post updating the case I wrote about in Precious Blood at that site.

Judge releases Genarlow Wilson

2007-06-11T12:11:00.000-05:00

A judge has overturned the sentence of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old classmate.

Wilson, an honor student and football star, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of being registered as a sex offender. His case had become a rallying point for people who believe he was wrongly convicted. A Monroe County, Ga., judge today (Monday) reduced that sentence to 12 months -- time Wilson has already served. He also voided the requirement that Wilson register as a sex offender.

The judge's ruling basically mirrors a Georgia state law passed earlier this year in response to Wilson's case. The legislature approved the law because of the outcry over Wilson's sentence, but did not make it retroactive.

Wilson, now 21, was one of six high school boys who rented a motel room, stocked it with liquor and marijuana, and invited female classmates to join them for a New Years party. The party came to light after a 17-year-old girl awoke the next morning naked except for socks. She called her mother saying she could remember nothing about the night before and thought she had been raped.

When police investigated, they found the motel room littered with condoms and a videotape showing the 17-year-old girl having sex with several of the boys, including Wilson, and a 15-year-old girl performing oral sex on Wilson and some of the others. The 15-year-old said she did not drink or smoke pot, and performed the acts willingly. All of the boys except Wilson pleaded guilty. Wilson stood trial, was convicted and received a mandatory 10-year sentence.

UPDATE 6/12/07 8:20 a.m.
Attorney General appeals; Wilson still in prison

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appealed the judge's decision to release Wilson. Rather than being released, Wilson remains in jail pending the appeal. Wilson has turned down an alternative plea bargain offered by Baker because it would require him to plead guilty to a felony. Though the proposed plea would remove the charge from his record and take him off the sex offender list once a post-release rehabilitation program was completed, it would also subject him to a 15-year sentence if he was found to have violated the conditions of his early release.

Wheelchair off to the races

2007-06-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

How fast can a wheelchair go? It depends on whether it's being pushed by an 18-wheeler.

Ben Carpenter, a 21-year-old man with muscular dystrophy, was crossing the street in Paw Paw, Mich., when the light turned green and a semi pulled slowly away from the stop line. The driver didn't see Carpenter, who was apparently so close to the truck that he was hidden behind the high hood.

The handles of the chair got caught in the truck's grill, and Carpenter was off to the races. The truck drove two miles down a two-lane highway before it turned into the parking lot of the trucking company, and a police officer stopped the driver. Carpenter wasn't hurt, but his wheelchair was a little worse for wear. It seems wheelchairs really weren't designed to hit 50 miles per hour on asphalt.

Book signings were fun, successful

2007-06-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank the folks at Waldenbooks in Ashland, Ky., and Borders Books and Music in Huntington, W.Va., for making Saturday such a great day. I'm including employees and the people who stopped to buy Precious Blood or just to chat. I hope and be back in the tri-state area soon.

While I was in Ashland, my old friends and fellow writers G. Sam Piatt and George Wolfford stopped by. The three of us were reporters together at The Daily Independent, but I haven't seen much of them lately. That's George Sam, Sam and George in the picture at the right. I saw a lot of old friends from my days in Ashland, and I made some new friends while I was there.

Paul at Waldenbooks has invited me back again, and the people who work at Borders were super, super nice. Both stores have signed copies of my book in stock, as does the Barnes & Noble in Lexington, Ky., where I signed books on May 18.

I also had the pleasure of meeting an 11-year-old New Yorker who has written his first book and is looking for a publisher, and a young man who has written a book of poetry to help him get through the death of his mother. It's good to see kids and teens who are interested in writing, and actually write without being told to by their teachers.

True crime has a new home on the web

2007-06-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

I wrote last week that our new true crime blog was about to launch. I'm happy to report that the launch was successful.

Last Friday (June 1) marked the first day for In Cold Blog, a blog devoted specifically to true crime. I had the honor of being the first to blog.

The new blog features 30 true crime experts. The lineup includes 22 true crime authors and eight others., including a police officer, a prosecutor, crime victims, forensic artists, editors, and television and Internet reporters. Each blogger will be featured one day a month, but may also post at other times.

In Cold Blog is the brainchild of best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell, who recruited the other bloggers to join him in the venture. Bloggers will write about cold cases, current crimes, and other subjects related to true crime. Readers are welcome to comment, and we'll try our best to answer.

The complete roster of bloggers is as follows:

Sam Adams, author of Precious Blood

Pat Brown, criminal profiler & author of Killing for Sport

Andrea Campbell, forensic artist and aspiring true crime author

Kathryn Casey, author of Die My Love, The Rapist’s Wife, A Warrant to Kill, She Wanted it AllCarol Anne Davis, author of Sadistic Killers, Women Who Kill, Couples Who Kill, Children Who Kill

John Ditmars, Travis County Sheriffs’ Deputy and Senior Corrections officer and aspiring true crime author of The Candy Man

Joseph Foy, witness who put serial killer Coral Watts behind bars for life

Ron Franscell, author of Fall

Michaela Hamilton, Executive Editor of Kensington True Crime

Steve Huff, true crime blogger

Laura James, Editor of CLEWS Historic True Crime Blog

Aphrodite Jones, author of The FBI Killer, Cruel Sacrifice, A Perfect Husband, Red Zone, All She Wanted and more

Andy Kahan, Director of the Crime Victims Assistance of the Mayor’s Office of Houston and leading voice against murderabilia

Joyce King, author of Hate Crime, Forgotten Hurricane, Growing Up Southern: White Men I Met Along the Way

Paul LaRosa, author of Tacoma Confidential & Nightmare in Napa and producer of CBS' 48 Hours

Gary Lavergne, author of A Sniper in the Tower, Bad Boy from Rosebud, Worse Than Death, Lives of Quiet Desperation

David Lohr, featured true crime writer for CourtTV’s Crime Library

Steven Long, author of Out of Control, Every Woman’s Nightmare, Death Without Dignity

Dennis McDougal, author of Blood Cold, Angel of Darkness, In the Best of Families, Mother’s Day, The Yosemite Murders and more

Corey Mitchell, author of Strangler, Evil Eyes, Murdered Innocents, Dead and Buried, Hollywood Death Scenes + more ***Editor of In Cold Blog***

Gregg Olsen, author of Starvation Heights, Cruel Deception, Mockingbird, If Loving You is Wrong, Bitter Almonds and many more

Donna Pendergast, Michigan Assistant Attorney General

M. William Phelps, author of Murder in the Heartland, Every Move You Make, Lethal Guardian, Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Perfect Poison

Dr. Katherine Ramsland, author of The Science of Cold Case Files, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers, The Human Predator, The C.S.I. Effect and many more

Simon Read, Author of In the Dark, On the House, The Killing Skies

Fred Rosen, author of Lobster Boy, Body Dump, Needle Work, Did They Really Do It?, The Historical Atlas of American Crime and many more

Harriett & John Semander, mother and brother of Elena Semander, a victim of serial killer Coral Watts (Harriett was instrumental in keeping Watts from being released from a Texas prison. John is a freelance writer and film producer living in Los Angeles)

Suzy Spencer, author of Wages of Sin, The Fortune Hunter, Wasted, Breaking Point

Mike "Necrolagnia" Stinski, Drummer/lyricist for death metal band Divine Pustulence and hardcore true crime fan

Carlton Stowers, author of Open Secrets, Innocence Lost, Scream at the Sky, Sins of the Son, Careless Whispers and many more.

True crime blog starts June 1

2007-05-31T13:23:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote that I was working on another project, and that I would have an announcement soon. Here it is.

Tomorrow, June 1, I'll be the first to post on a new true-crime blog called In Cold Blog. The blog is the brainchild of best-selling author Cory Mitchell. He's invited me and 28 other true-crime authors and experts to join him in the effort.

This should be a big deal for fans of true crime. To read the blog, just go to www.incoldblogger.blogspot.com. You'll find nothing more than an an announcement there today, but the blogging starts tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy it.

Move over, Hogzilla

2007-05-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

Hogzilla, an eight-foot, 800-pound wild hog killed in Georgia, is no longer the biggest beast on the block.

An 11-year-old Alabama boy has killed its granddaddy.

The Associated Press is reporting that Jamison Stone of Pickensville, Ala., killed a hog weighing 1,051 pounds. This isn't some farmer's overweight Poland White. This was a wild boar with five-inch tusks. The boy, his father, and two guides found the dinosaur-sized pig while hunting in eastern Alabama. Stone shot it eight times with a .50-caliber revolver before the hog finally gave up the ghost.

So what do you do with a half-ton hog? Eat it, of course. And how do you do that? One sausage patty at a time. The Stone family is having the hog ground up at a meat packing plant -- all except the head, that is. They're having a taxidermist mount that. No word yet on where they'll find a wall big enough to hang it.

Newspaper features story on Precious Blood

2007-05-27T16:15:00.000-05:00

The Independent of Ashland, Ky., has a feature story about PRECIOUS BLOOD this weekend. The story is written by Lee Ward, Lifestyles editor at the paper.

I'll be in town for a signing June 2, and Lee wrote the story in advance of that appearance. Thanks, Lee.

I worked at The Independent, known by staffers at the ADI, in the 1990s. It'll be strange to be in the old hometown. I haven't been there in about 10 years and most of the people I knew at the paper have moved on. I hope I get to visit with some of the ones that are still in the area anyway.

Interview with the Santa man

2007-05-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

I had a very pleasant interview this morning with Jack Pattie on WVLK-AM 590 in Lexington, Ky., about PRECIOUS BLOOD. Jack's a great guy and a fantastic interviewer.

I'll be at Barnes & Noble at Hamburg Pavilion from 5 to 7 tonight to sign copies and meet with readers.

New link added

2007-05-13T12:18:00.000-05:00

I've added a link on the right to a schedule of author events. Clicking will take you to samadams.org, but naming it as I have might make it easier to find.

The next events are on May 18 in Lexington, Ky., and on June 2 in Ashland, Ky., and Huntington, W.Va. You can click the link for more information.

Trial in football player slaying moved

2007-05-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

Thirteen years after University of Kentucky football player Trent DiGiuro was killed by a sniper, his accused murderer has won a change of venue.

The Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting that a Fayette Circuit Judge ruled May 8 that Shane Ragland's murder trial had received too much publicity in Lexington, where DiGiuro was killed. Ragland's trial will be moved to Louisville.

DiGiuro was shot and killed on his twenty-first birthday, July 17, 1994, as he celebrated on the front porch of a house he had rented on Woodland Avenue, near the UK campus. Ragland, a fellow student, was convicted of the murder in 2002 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but his conviction was later overturned.

Ragland has maintained his innocence, and has his own web site presenting his side of the story and offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to "the arrest and conviction of the actual killer of Trent DiGiuro (not Shane Ragland)."

On the radio

2007-05-01T09:19:00.000-05:00

I spent an hour or so yesterday afternoon talking with radio host Pam Shingler on WMMT-FM 88.7 in Whitesburg about Precious Blood. We covered everything from police procedure to Appalachian stereotypes, and it was a very pleasant experience.

I'll be on WVLK-AM 590 in Lexington, Ky., on May 18 to discuss my book with morning show host Jack Pattie, and I'll be signing books that afternoon at Barnes & Noble in Hamburg Pavilion. It's a strange experience for me. I'm used to being the interviewer, not the interviewee.

Professor apologizes for Appalachian slur

2007-04-25T09:07:00.000-05:00

Peter Gordon, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has apologized for comments he made in The New Yorker magazine.

Gordon used the term "Appalachian inbreeding" to defend the intelligence of a South American people he has been studying. Columbia was flooded with emails complaining about the remark and demanding an apology.

Apparently Gordon didn't see this paper from the University of Kentucky.

A depressing truth

2007-04-24T21:49:00.000-05:00

I spent much of today at a murder scene, taking photographs and walking the rutted road that the alleged killers took when they brought the victim to the site, killed him and dumped his body. It wasn't a fresh scene -- the body was discovered and removed some six months ago -- but it still brought the truth about violent death into sharp focus once again.

I've been at death scenes -- natural deaths, accidental deaths and murders -- many times. It's part of the job when you're a reporter, and I did that job for 18 years. It's also part of being a true-crime author. Every death is different, but there is one overriding truth in all of them: it is not glamorous. On television, in movies and in music, violent death is high art. The reality is that violent death is depressing and very often degrading.

The elderly victim from the crime scene I visited today was strangled in the middle of a muddy road, and his face was held in a puddle to make sure he was dead. Then he was dragged along the road and up a hill, losing scraps of clothing, shoes, and a cap in the process. Finally, his body was rolled down a hill toward a stagnant, algae-covered pond and left crumpled next to a foot-high pile of empty beer bottles. He lay there for two weeks before police finally located his body.

That place says more about the attitude of the killer or killers than any testimony at trial could ever say. This man's life was no more valuable than an empty bottle, no more than the rusted hulk of an appliance dumped over the hill a scant 50 yards away. The killer thought no more of this man than the jagged shards of coal and slate over which the body was dragged after the murder.

In the wake of the Virginia Teach shootings, attention is focused again on the movies, and music that might or might not incite kids into violent behavior. Rather than attack the movies, I believe a more effective means of addressing young people's fascination with death would be to expose them to the real thing. Real murder victims aren't glamorous. They're dumped with the garbage, or found floating face down in a cesspool.

Is Columbia professor qualified to teach?

2007-04-18T22:08:00.000-05:00

Peter Gordon, an assistant professor at Columbia University, interviewed by a writer for The New Yorker magazine used the term "Appalachian inbreeding" in a quote defending the intelligence of an Amazonian tribe.

The question now is this: Who is going to defend Gordon's intelligence? The quote was so stupid on so many different levels that it begs another question as well: Is Peter Gordon qualified to teach?

Columbia has a hell of a good reputation, but if it employs people of Gordon's caliber, that reputation might be in danger. Words cannot adequately express how colossally ignorant Gordon's statement was. And his non-apology ain't gonna cut it either. When called to account for what he said, Gordon stepped in the cow pie again.

Gordon told Lee Mueller of the Lexington Herald-Leader: "It was just a reference. I'm really sorry. I really was just talking about a tribe in Brazil." Since when does Appalachia have anything to do with South America? To make matters worse he said he would never intentionally offend Appalachians, noting that his wife lives in Northern Kentucky. Sounds an awful lot like the "some-of-my-best-friends-are-black" defense.

Don Imus just lost his job for using a racial and gender slur to describe the Rutger's women's basketball team, but it appears Gordon is going to get away with using an ethnic slur against Appalachians. Columbia's only response was that it doesn't censor its faculty.

Whitesburg suddenly a different town

2007-04-17T18:50:00.000-05:00

The city of Whitesburg, which I describe in PRECIOUS BLOOD as a town where alcohol is against the law, is now a changed place. As of 6 p.m. today, Whitesburg became wet.

When the polls closed and the votes were counted, the wet forces had won overwhelmingly. I don't have the total vote now, but with the two largest precincts counted, the referendum on restaurant alcohol sales was ahead by 261 votes. There are not enough registered voters in the third precinct to reverse the trend, even if every voter in the city limits voted "no."

But while the referendum passed by a wide margin, it will take at least four months before the first legal drink can be sold. The city will become wet 60 days after the election results are certified, during which time the city must appoint an ABC administrator and pass the other necessary ordinances. The licensing process will then take about 60 days for each restaurant that applies. This is a abbreviated information, of course. You can get the full story from the state ABC Board.

Once it's official, restaurants that seat at least 100 people and are inside the city limits will be able to apply to sell alcoholic beverages by the drink, as long as they earn at least 70 percent of their receipts from food.

Book signing on April 18

2007-04-17T07:51:00.000-05:00

I will be signing copies of PRECIOUS BLOOD at the Harry M. Caudill Library in Whitesburg, Ky., tomorrow, April 18, beginning around 9 a.m.

The library is just down the street from the Letcher County Courthouse, where the criminal proceedings outlined in PRECIOUS BLOOD took place in 2002. The signing is part of the library's celebration of National Library Week.

A tragedy and a failure

2007-04-17T07:14:00.000-05:00

Thirty-three dead. Twenty-four wounded. The number of dead and wounded in the Virginia Tech massacre speak not only to the unbelievable tragedy of the shooting, but also the failure of our society on many different levels.

Why would someone kill 33 of his fellow students? Why didn't the college cancel classes immediately when the first two bodies were discovered -- two hours before the deadlier rampage began? Why were students not warned of a possible shooter on campus earlier?

Police are still investigating the incident, but one thing has become abundantly clear already: If future tragedies are to be avoided, students must be taught how to respond to these emergencies. Witness after witness in the Blacksburg college said they hid under their desks while the shooter pumped bullet after bullet into their classmates. So far there is no word of anyone attempting to stop him. Students blocked the door in only one known case.

Students in the U.S. are taught from their earliest experience in school not to fight back. They are taught to be passive -- to take any abuse without striking out to protect themselves. If they do defend themselves, they receive the same punishment as the aggressor. This is a ludicrous policy. Confronted with a crazed shooter, passive behavior will only get you killed.

The first response should be to barricade the door and prevent the shooter from getting in. If that fails, students should be taught to respond with force. A man with a gun will probably wound an attacker, but he will certainly kill many if they hunker down under flimsy school desks. Those desks would be much more effective as missiles than as shields.

Would the number of dead have been less had students fought back? It's impossible to say. But the numbers certainly couldn't have been higher.

Plagiarism or something worse?

2007-04-11T14:26:00.000-05:00

Faces are red at CBS News over a segment of Katie Couric's Notebook that the network now acknowledges was taken almost word-for-word from a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow.

Notebook is a column-like segment in which Evening News anchor Couric allegedly opines about things that have caught her attention. I say allegedly, because CBS now says that a producer -- not Couric -- wrote the piece after the idea for it came up at a meeting about what the Notebook should include. CBS fired the producer, whom it declined to name.

The question is, which is most embarrassing: The revelation that someone at CBS plagiarized a column from the Wall Street Journal, or the revelation that the network's top reporter doesn't even write her own column?

And network brass wonder why CBS News comes in third in the big three's nightly news race.

Changes in Whitesburg

2007-04-05T07:52:00.000-05:00

It has only been two days since PRECIOUS BLOOD came out, and already some of the things described in the book may be changing. As I noted in the book, alcohol sales have been banned in Letcher County, Kentucky, since World War II, but an election is set for Tuesday, April 17, to change that within the city limits of Whitesburg.

The ballot initiative, if passed, would allow limited sale of alcoholic beverages in Whitesburg. Restaurants that seat at least 100 people would be able to sell beer and wine by the drink, though hard liquor would still be illegal. It would also be illegal for anyone to open a bar, since at least 70 percent of the establishments income would have to come from the sale of food.

Predictably, there's been a hue and cry from certain quarters about the vote. Personally, I hope it passes. While there are only four restaurants in town that are big enough to qualify for sales, I think you'll see more if the measure passes. I know for a fact that one large chain restaurant wants to move in, and I think others will probably follow suit. It would also allow restaurants to sell wine produced less than 10 miles away at Letcher County's only winery. Currently, the wine can be sold only at the Highlands Winery or to wholesalers.

Right now, anyone who wants a drink with their meal have to go to Perry County or the city of Pikeville, Ky., or to Wise County, Va., to get it. Whitesburg can only gain economically if tourists can have a nice dinner with wine there, rather than going somewhere else to get it.

Publication day!

2007-04-03T09:01:00.000-05:00

Today is the publication date for PRECIOUS BLOOD. Amazon is advertising that you'll get the book tomorrow if you order it today. You can order by clicking the PRECIOUS BLOOD links in this post, or by clicking the Amazon link on the right side of the page. You can also see the cover and read about the book at the above links.

A road for Rosie

2007-03-31T07:46:00.000-05:00

In World War II, women working for the war effort were epitomized by Rosie the Riveter, a woman helping to build bombers in Michigan.

Now, thanks to efforts by the Kentucky Colonels and the Somerset Junior Women's Club, Rosie will be honored in her home state. Kentucky Highway 1247 at Science Hill, Kentucky, will be renamed the Rose Leigh Monroe Highway. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on the change this morning.

Monroe, a widow and mother, moved to Michigan from Pulaski County during the war and took a job as a riveter in a plant that made B-29 and B-24 bombers. She was chosen for a Defense Department movie because of her name, and because of her resemblance to the painting of woman in a bandanna and overalls used on posters promoting women as defense plant workers.

Something I'll never experience

2007-03-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

One of the most spectacular tourist attractions in the world opened today, and it's one that I will never experience.

The Grand Canyon Skywalk has a glass floor that protrudes 70 feet past the rim of the canyon and 4,000 feet above the canyon floor. Those three facts are precisely why I will never be on it. I have a hard enough time with the Pinnacle Overlook at Cumberland Gap, and that's on solid ground with a concrete floor. I can't imagine standing on a four-inch slab of glass and staring straight down the maw of the Grand Canyon.

Hopefully others won't be as squeamish about the view as I am. The Skywalk could provide a much-needed boost to the Hualapai American Indian tribe. The tribe now suffers from crushing poverty and a 50 percent unemployment rate. It's leaders allowed a Las Vegas businessman to build the $30-million Skywalk in hopes that it will attract tourists -- and money -- to their home 90 miles west of Grand Canyon National Park. Construction of the attraction at the canyon, which the Hualapai consider sacred, was not without controversy. Let's hope the return is worth the compromise.

A busy time

2007-03-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of things going on right now. PRECIOUS BLOOD will be officially released April 3, but I've already been distributing copies to people who helped me and to media. The response has been good so far, and I'd like to thank those of you who have pre-ordered the books.

I'm also involved in another project that I can't talk much about yet, but keep checking this blog. There will be a pretty major announcement soon that should be of special interest to true crime fans.

And you thought flying couldn't get any worse

2007-03-20T07:41:00.000-05:00

When Paul Trinder woke up during the flight from Delhi to London, he thought the lady who had sat down beside him in the first-class cabin looked awfully ill, so he asked the British Airways flight attendant what was wrong.

The answer wasn't quite what he had expected. The lady that attendants had just plonked down in the seat beside Trinder wasn't sick at all. She was dead.

According to The Associated Press, the woman had died in the economy-class cabin during the flight, and attendants had moved her body and her grieving family into the first class cabin to give them some privacy. No one warned Trinder in advance; they just carried the body to the front and sat it down in the seat beside the sleeping passenger.

The AP quoted a statement from the airline that said about 10 passengers a year die in flight and, "The deceased must not be placed in the galley or blocking aisles or exits, and there should be clear space around the deceased. The wishes of family or friends traveling with the deceased will always be considered, and account taken of the reactions of other passengers."

Apparently the airline didn't include Trinder in that accounting.

The pork was delicious

2007-03-16T08:25:00.000-05:00

I had a nice dinner last night with folks from Appalshop Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and a group of faculty from NYU's Tisch School. The NYU group was in Whitesburg for its annual exchange with Roadside Theater, Appalshop's internationally acclaimed theater troupe.

It was a interesting evening, from the revelation by a film teacher that network television is now ordering short features as well as traditional half-hour and hour shows to the another New Yorker confiding that poke salat is one of her favorite foods. I spoke for about 10 minutes about small-town journalism and being an author, and in general had a great time. One surreal part of the evening was standing at the door of the Courthouse Cafe, where I have blended into the background for 20 years, and autographing books.

Blog interview on Emerge

2007-03-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Prado interviewed me in February for her blog " Emerge - New Authors," and the interview went up Monday -- by coincidence, the same day that Precious Blood became available for sale. You can read Jennifer's interview with me here.

It's here!

2007-03-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

Precious Blood is out early! Walmart, Barnes and Noble, and Booksamillion all list it as in stock and ready to ship. I had no idea it was already available.

Making the world safe for skiers

2007-03-11T22:02:00.000-05:00

You're a clerk on the midnight shift at 7-Eleven when this guy walks up wearing a ski mask, lays a candy bar on the counter and reaches for his hip pocket. Do you:

A) Scream, wet your pants and hand him the cash drawer
B) Grab the .38 from under the counter and drop the sucker, or
C) Take his money, hand him his change and wish him a good night?

Kevin Lambert of Winstead, Conn., hopes you don't take the Dirty Harry approach. Lambert was once arrested and sentenced to perform community service for posing for a picture in a convenience store while wearing a ski mask. Now he's started a web site dedicated to "Striving to keep America Warm By Combating Ski Mask Discrimination."

Lambert and a group of his friends now regularly go around town in ski masks to remove the stigma associated with the full-face toboggans that he says has been created by terrorists and robbers. Let's hope he lives to fulfill his dream.

Advertising run amok

2007-02-24T11:43:00.000-05:00

First, a bunch of dimwits who thought they were funny posted signs that people mistook for bombs in strategic locations around Boston to advertise a cartoon. Now a softdrink maker, who I won't identify here for fear of giving it the publicity so it so desires, has caused the historic Granary Burying Ground to be closed. The British-owned company hinted that it might have buried a coin worth up to $1 million dollars inside the cemetery, which is the final resting place of my namesake Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and other historic figures.

Treasure hunters showed up at the gate determined to find the coin, forcing Boston parks officials to lock the gates and post guards. The company has since admitted that it hid a coin worth $10,000 behind the lip of a stone doorway to a 200-year-old crypt.

Turner Broadcasting paid the city $2 million to offset the cost of police used to investigate the sign incident, and police charged the two men who placed the signs with crimes. Let's hope the Brits have to pony up the same sort of dollars to pay for their ill-conceived plan. The people who placed the coin, and ordered it's placement should also be charged. I can't help but wonder if someone involved got some perverse pleasure from the thought that treasure hunters might start digging up the fathers of the American Revolution.

Music City

2007-02-19T20:30:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Nashville, Tenn., where I visited friends and stopped by some fantastic bookstores.

This is the fifth time I've been to Nashville, and I always find something new when I go. It really is a beautiful city, with a lot of different things to do. Hopefully, I'll be going back for a booksigning after PRECIOUS BLOOD comes out in April.

Weirder and weirder

2007-02-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

Anna Nicole Smith spent her life in the tabloids. Now it looks like she'll spend eternity there.

Prince Frederick von Anhalt, the husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, has said he once tried to adopt Smith because "she wanted to be a princess," and since he was already married to Zsa Zsa, adoption was the only way to give Anna what she wanted. By the way, he also claims he had a 10-year affair with Smith and may be the father of her baby.

This guy just admitted publicly that he tried to make the woman he had had sex with for 10 years his adopted daughter. How twisted is that?

PRECIOUS BLOOD information on web

2007-02-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

Kensington Publishing Corp., the publisher of my book PRECIOUS BLOOD, has now added the book to it's web site. The book can be ordered direct from Kensington once it is printed. In the meantime, you can pre-order from most online booksellers, or through this page.

Forgiving and forgetting, or hiding the past?

2007-02-07T20:59:00.000-05:00

If you were hiring someone, would you want to know if that person had been convicted of stealing $500 from his previous employer? Do you think it's important for a school to know that someone applying for a job has served time for possession of cocaine?

If so, you might want to contact the Kentucky General Assembly. The House Judiciary Committee just sent a bill to the floor that would expunge some felony convictions from court records, the Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting.

Crimes eligible to be erased by the law include crimes such as theft of more than $300, possession of narcotics, and other Class D felonies. Class D Felonies are punishable by one to five years in prison. Violent crimes and crimes against children would be excluded.

Rep. Rob Wilkey, D-Scottsville, is sponsoring the bill. Currently, Kentucky law only allows misdemeanors to be expunged. Misdemeanors are punishable by fines or by 12 months or less in the county jail.

Harry Potter getting more exposure

2007-02-03T22:32:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is due in stores in July, but the buzz over the new book isn't the only exposure Harry Potter's getting. Daniel Radcliffe, the 17-year-old actor who plays Harry in the movies, is giving theater-goers the full monty in the play Equus in London's West End.

Parents who have taken their children to see Radcliffe fully clothed in the Harry Potter movies are not amused. The reaction from teenage girls is a little different. No word yet on if or how Radcliffe's decision to appear nude in the play and bare-chested in promotional photos will affect his role as Harry Potter.

Those of you want to read the book can preorder it on my other website. Those who want to see Radcliffe nude will have to see the play. Sorry.

Groundhog says spring is on the way

2007-02-02T09:58:00.000-05:00

Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous groundhog in the world, forecast spring this morning.

If you really think about it, the groundhog is never wrong. If he sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, it's only a month and a half till spring. Honest -- check your calendar.

No such thing as a free lunch

2007-01-30T10:30:00.000-05:00

A bald eagle in Alaska bit off more than it could chew when it swooped down into a dump and picked up a severed deer head.

The bird managed to lift off with the head, but it didn't get very far. Either weak from hunger or merely overestimating its own strength, the eagle struck a power line, causing an explosion that knocked out electricity to 10,000 residents in Juneau. The impact killed the bird.

The politics of sex crimes

2007-01-27T12:29:00.000-05:00

The Georgia legislature is finally poised to do something about the case of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old classmate.

Wilson, an honor student and football star, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of being registered as a sex offender. His case has become a rallying point for people who believe he was wrongly convicted.

A web site has even been created asking people all over the world to sign a petition saying, "I register my outrage and object to the wrongful conviction of Genarlow Wilson for Aggravated Child Molestation for a consensual sexual act with another teen. A ten year prison sentence is wrong. He should not have to register as a sexual offender."

As usual, well-intentioned people have over-simplified the situation.

Wilson was one of six high school boys who rented a motel room, stocked it with liquor and marijuana, and invited female classmates to join them for a New Years party. The party came to light after a 17-year-old girl awoke the next morning naked except for socks. She called her mother saying she could remember nothing about the night before and thought she had been raped.

When police investigated, they found the motel room littered with condoms and a videotape showing the 17-year-old girl having sex with several of the boys, including Wilson, and a 15-year-old girl performing oral sex on Wilson and some of the others. The 15-year-old said she did not drink or smoke pot, and performed the acts willingly. All of the boys except Wilson pleaded guilty. Wilson stood trial, was convicted and received a mandatory 10-year sentence.

Now people are screaming racism and demanding a full pardon for Wilson. Never mind that all of the victims and all of the accused were of the same race.

As a result of the conviction, the Georgia Legislature relaxed the law, reducing what Wilson admitted doing to a misdemeanor. Georgia courts refused to apply it's provisions to Wilson because the law specifically states it does not apply to cases before its passage.

The legislature is now taking what seems to me to be a well-reasoned step. It is considering another law, Senate Bill 37, that would allow judges to decide whether the sentences of people convicted prior to the new law should be reduced. You can read about it in The Macon Telegraph. If you feel Wilson should not have received 10 years in prison, then register your support for the new measure by e-mailing State Sen. Emanuel Jones at the following address: emanuel.jones@senate.ga.gov

Two months and counting

2007-01-26T15:53:00.000-05:00

PRECIOUS BLOOD will be available in stores beginning April 1. You can move to the front of the line by pre-ordering now. Thanks in advance to those of you who do.

And if the flight attendant has a tantrum?

2007-01-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

A family was kicked off an AirTran flight in South Florida after the three-year-old daughter threw a tantrum and refused to sit in her seat. Now there's a split between people who are applauding the airline and the rest, mostly parents, who know that children are not as compliant as single people think.

Crying children irritate everyone -- especially their parents. If I could have stopped my kids from crying in public I would have, but it doesn't work that way. Once they start, it's almost impossible to stop them. They're like the railcar fire near Louisville last week -- they just have to burn themselves out.

The only good solution is don't take them to a theater unless you're prepared to leave the movie in the middle and don't take them on an airplane unless you're prepared to jump.

Appalachian storytelling more than just talking

2007-01-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

My friend Angie DeBord, a storyteller from Virginia, asked me to help get the word out about the one-day storytelling class she will help teach at Southeast Community College in Cumberland, Ky.

Angie is a great performer, and I know anyone who takes the class will get a lot out of it. The information is below.

DATE:
February 10
(snow date February 17)
Saturday 9:30 AM - 4:30 PM
Cumberland

Overview:
Community Stories/Community Theatre is a workshop for members of community theatre groups or arts councils, community scholars, theatre artists, playwrights, storytellers, and community activists who want to learn the process of collecting stories from your own community and developing a community theatre production rooted in these stories. The session will include organizational information and grant possibilities as well as hands-on activities to model the process. Presenters: Angelyn DeBord and Theresa Osborne. Lunch will be provided. Cost is $10 payable at the door. Early registration is advised due to limited class size.

LOCATION:
Edsel T. Godbey Appalachian Center
Southeast Community College
700 College RoadCumberland KY 40823
http://www.secc.kctcs.edu/AppalachianCenter/Godbey.htm

TO REGISTER: Contact Judy Sizemore at circuit@prtcnet.org
Directions will be sent with registration confirmation.

Peter Pan, move over

2007-01-21T15:08:00.000-05:00

Yahoo news is reporting that pants will be a thing of the past next year.

The new bottom half for men? Leggings. That's right, the tight staple of women's wear is supposedly going to show up in the men's department.

As far as I'm concerned, they can stay in the men's department. I'd sooner wear a kilt.

Fire on derailed train still burning

2007-01-17T09:05:00.000-05:00

A fire that started before 9 a.m. yesterday (Tuesday) when a train derailed outside Louisville is still burning.
According to news reports, the fire was still out of control at 6 a.m. today. More than 60 firefighters were trying to extinguish it. Some worked 12-hour shifts.
The fire began when a CSX freight train derailed between Shepherdsville and Brooks. Fourteen railcars containing the chemicals butadiene and cyclohexane, both highly flammable and posing inhalation hazards. Residents and workers within a one-mile radius of the fire have been evacuated to shelters set up in Okolona, several miles northeast of the fire.
The National Guard has been mobilized and is helping monitor air quality.

Red Cross opens shelter for evacuees

2007-01-16T15:31:00.000-05:00

The Red Cross has opened up a shelter at the Okolona Christian Church at the corner of Mt. Washington Road and Preston Highway in Louisville for persons evacuated from the area around the train crash at Brooks.

Residents were evacuated from a three-square-mile area around wreck. Firefighters were allowing the fire to burn itself out. Fourteen railcars, some carrying chemicals that posed inhalation and explosion hazards, were still burning after the 80-car train derailed near Interstate 65, about five miles south of Louisville.

National Guard mobilized for train fire

2007-01-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

The Kentucky National Guard has been called out to help with evacuations around the train fire in Bullitt County, Kentucky.

The fire is still burning at 12:45 p.m.

Train wreck updates

2007-01-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

I just realized that Blogger is not time stamping updates to existing posts. The updates for the train wreck near Louisville are in the post below.

Another train wreck

2007-01-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

At least 14 tanker cars are piled up and burning at Brooks, Bullitt County, Kentucky, near Louisville. The train was operated by CSX Transportation. No other details yet, but I'll post them when I get them.

UPDATE: Airline flights have been diverted around the column of smoke from the train wreck at Brooks. Brooks is about four miles south of the Interstate 265 loop around Louisville. The wreck occurred about 9 a.m. Schools are being evacuated because of smoke from the fire.

UPDATE: Brooks is a populated place, not a city. It is just across the county line from Jefferson County, where Louisville is located.

UPDATE: The Louisville Courier-Journal is reporting that the chemical aboard some of the tankers is an inhalation hazard, but that the specific chemical is not known. This probably means the car placard is a non-specific placard. Such placards give general information about the chemical on board, but not the specific name of the chemical.

UPDATE: Brooks had a population of 2,678 in 2000. Louisville had a population of 256,231, but it has since merged with most of the Jefferson County to form Louisville Metro. The county had a population of 693,604 in 2ooo.

UPDATE: If the placard on the train cars reads "Inhalation Hazard (6)," The Emergency Response Guidebook recommends avoiding inhalation and skin contact and isolate any spills or runoff. The materials could cause serious injury or death. Responders should wear self-contained breathing apparatus, keep unauthorized persons away, stay upwind and stay out of low-lying areas. Enclosed areas should be ventilated.

It also recommends evacuation within a half-mile radius of the fire.

Since firefighters are using water on the blaze, it seems most likely that this is the type of material involved.

There is also a placard for "Inhalation Hazard (2), which is much more serious. This placard means the substance may be fatal if inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Dry chemical or CO2 fire suppressants only are to be used.

UPDATE: The situation at Brooks is apparently more serious than first thought. At least one of the tank cars involved in the accident contained butadiene, a chemical used in the production of synthetic rubber. Butadiene has a guide number of 116P in the Emergency Response Guidebook, meaning it is extremely flammable, will form explosive mixtures in air and may polymerize explosively when involved in fire or heated.

Ruptured containers may turn into rockets as escaping gas explodes.

In case a railcar fire, responders should evacuate everyone within a one-mile radius of the fire.

UPDATE: The Courier-Journal puts the fire near Huber Station Road, which makes the fire about halfway between Louisville and Shepherdsville, a city of 8,334 people about eight miles South of Louisville.

UPDATE (11:48 a.m.): Emergency Management officials say the chemical burning is cyclohexane, a chemical used in the production of acids used in nylon manufacturing.

Cyclohexane, under guide number 128 in the Emergency Management Handbook, is highly flammable and has many of the same dangers as butadiene.

What are we -- Cleveland?

2007-01-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire in Cleveland, Ohio.

Yesterday, the Kentucky River in Estill County, Kentucky, caught on fire. Or maybe it didn't -- emergency personnel disagree.

At issue is whether chemicals carried by four runaway rail cars got into the river and caught fire. Firefighters say it did. Emergency Management officials say it did not. You would think this would be a pretty simple thing to determine, and firefighters seem to be eminently qualified to make that determination. But emergency management officials, who arrived after the fire department, say no chemicals got in the water. Something's fishy here.

It's sort of like the change in stories about how the accident occurred. Kentucky State Police say the four runaway rail cars slammed into an engine parked on the track by CSX Transportation employees as a means of stopping the runaways. CSX says that never happened because it would be contrary to standard operating procedure. Yeah. Right.

Stupidity causes evacuation

2007-01-15T17:17:00.000-05:00

Residents in Estill County, Kentucky, had to be evacuated after four runaway train cars, one of which was carrying butyl acetate, slammed into a locomotive. Among other things, butyl acetate is used as a flavoring agent in foods and fragrances, but it is toxic in high concentrations if swallowed or inhaled.

Ordinarily, this could be labeled a horrible accident, but in this case CSX Transportation officials ordered the locomotive placed on the tracks purposefully to stop the cars, which had been rolling free for 20 miles. Maybe I'm the one off track here, but shouldn't you expect a fiery collision if you place a stopped locomotive in front of runaway train cars full of flammable chemicals? It seems to me the better course would have been to place a locomotive on the tracks traveling at nearly the same speed as the cars, then let the runaways catch up slowly. Or put the locomotive on the rails behind the runaways, then catch them and couple up. Either solution would have to be less catastrophic than the method used by CSX.

As it was handled, the end result was an explosion that destroyed all four cars and the locomotive, and caused a toxic cloud to spread over the community. Twenty homes, a coal tipple and a factory were evacuated. Residents in nearby Irvine were told to shelter in place.

The National Transportation Safety Board was on its way to investigate. Seems that someone has some 'splaining to do.

UPDATE: Now CSX "cannot confirm" that it moved a locomotive into the path of the runaway train cars, The Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting.

MySpace not my bag

2007-01-12T17:26:00.000-05:00

I was proud of myself. I had never signed up for MySpace. I had never visited it. I wanted nothing to do with it.

But then magazines and authors started putting up MySpace pages and I felt I was
obliged to visit and see how other writers were using it. Then I learned that you have to sign up for MySpace to view the content. I signed up, and I immediately regretted it. It is everything I imagined it would be, only worse. Crappy color schemes, virtual "friends" that show up unbidden, and faux popup ads.

Aren't the real popups bad enough?

I now have an empty MySpace profile, an empty MySpace page, and I'm sure I'll soon have a full email inbox -- full of spam messages because I had to give an address to MySpace.

When a phone was a phone; not an iPhone

2007-01-11T12:24:00.000-05:00

What I really want in a cellphone is to be able to call someone. That's all. I want to pick it up, dial a number and talk to someone. I don't want to listen to music on it, I don't want to surf the Internet, and I don't want to check my e-mail.

I've got a great little phone. It's about three years old -- prehistoric by cellphone standards -- but it makes calls. It has a few other features that I have used -- for instance I occasionally put something on the calendar if I don't have a piece of paper to write it down on -- but its main purpose is to call someone.

So now Apple Inc. is getting all this buzz over the iPhone. It calls, it surfs, it downloads, it messages, it dances, it sings, it gets sued. All for the Apple egotist. So egotistical, in fact, that Apple has used a trademarked name owned by another company to name its new $600 toy. Apple, of course, says Cisco Systems' resulting lawsuit is "silly."

Well Apple could have avoided this silliness if it hadn't been silly enough to use a name someone else owned for its silly new product. Yes, I said silly.

Why would anyone want a touch screen on a phone you carry in your pocket? It's supposed to have a "proximity sensor" to keep it from dialing, but what about scratches? How long will it be before you have drop another half a grand for a new iPhone because you can't read the screen anymore?

I carry my little phone in the same pocket as my change, my ink pens, and my pocket knife. I go hunting with it, camping with it, running with it. I've dropped it on everything from concrete to gravel to a hardwood gym floor. It still works, reliably, every time. Let's see the toy formerly known as iPhone do that.

No smoking, please.

2007-01-10T14:43:00.000-05:00

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has done something no man in the history of the United States has been brave enough to try: She has banned smoking in the Speaker's Lobby, the room where Members of Congress gather during votes.

Personally, I hate breathing secondhand smoke and I was perfectly happy when my county government banned smoking all together in public places. The District of Columbia has passed a similar ordinance, but neither law covers federal property because, of course, cities, counties and states can't regulate the federal government.

But Nancy Pelosi can -- at least her little corner of it. And she's a got a great big gavel to enforce her rules.

Winter finally arrives

2007-01-09T18:59:00.000-05:00

Too late for Christmas, but we have snow on the ground before Spring at least. I dropped my kids off at school this morning and picked them back up an hour later when school was canceled.

Is Miss USA a hillbilly, a redneck or something else?

2007-01-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

The Lexington Herald-Leader had an interesting article asking whether readers know the difference between a hillbilly and a redneck. Interesting, if for no other reason, because Lexington sits in the heart of the Bluegrass and I'm sure most of the people there are deeply offended by being called either. The debate came about because a plethora of bloggers, who don't know a certain part of their anatomy from a hole in the ground, decided that Miss USA is a hillbilly.

Obviously, they've never been to Russell Springs. There ain't a hill worthy of the appellation Appalachian within 75 miles of the place. For those of you who think everyone in Kentucky is a hillbilly, please look at a topo map. Kentucky is more than 400 miles from end to end, and comprises five distinct physiographic regions. Only one of those contains hills; therefore only one contains hillbillies.

Hint: We're in the eastern end, y'all.

Twelve weeks to go

2007-01-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

I'm sending back corrections on the page proofs of PRECIOUS BLOOD today. Since this is my first book, I really don't know what's next. The publication date is April 1, and the books are supposed to be shipped to book stores in mid-March, so there couldn't be much left to do.

Interview in e-zine this month

2007-01-03T21:22:00.000-05:00

My interview with author Bob Sloan is in Eclectica Magazine this month.

Bob is the author of Bearskin to Holly Fork, Home Call and Nobody Knows, Nobody Sees. He's also a fellow Kentuckian and all-around nice guy. You can read what he has to say in the Reviews & Interviews section.

Does your salmon smell funny this year?

2006-12-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

University of Washington scientists have some shocking news: Levels of cinnamon and vanilla spiked in Puget Sound during the holiday season. Researchers measured the levels of spices in sewage being pumped into the sound to determine whether these dangerous chemicals are making their way into the pristine waters of Washington state. Their conclusion? The levels of cinnamon, artificial vanilla and natural vanilla rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, spiking just after Thanksgiving. Now the researchers are worried that fish can smell the difference.

I'm not making this up.

People pay thousands of dollars each year for candles scented with cinnamon and vanilla, but researchers are worried because the levels of those same spices are going up in Puget Sound. Let's see, what are the greatest threats to water quality? Oil spills, artificial hormones from human medications, garbage dumped from ships, agricultural runoff, or spiced cider?

Someone paid for this study, folks.

President Ford dies

2006-12-27T00:09:00.000-05:00

Former President Gerald Ford died yesterday at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 93.

He was the first unelected vice president, having been appointed after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and he was the first unelected president, taking office upon the resignation of President Richard Nixon. He was also the first president I can remember with true clarity.

I remember Johnson to some extent, and I have vivid memories of some things during the Nixon administration, but I was ten years old when Ford took office and I became a political junkie. I collected the cartoons of Louisville Courier-Journal cartoonist Hugh Haynie -- a harsh critic of Ford's economic policies -- and I have to say that those cartoons probably did more to form my opinion of Ford than anything else. That opinion can be summed up with two Haynie cartoons. One shows Ford in a Boy Scout uniform; the other depicts Mickey Mouse covered in buttons with the acronym "WIN," for Whip Inflation Now, Ford's economic plan.

While he will probably never be remembered as a good president, Ford will always be remembered as a good man. May he rest in peace.

Christmas present

2006-12-26T12:35:00.000-05:00

FedEx just delivered the page proofs for PRECIOUS BLOOD. Now I have less than two weeks to read them, make any correction necessary and send it back to the publisher.

It seemed early to me until I started counting weeks. The books are supposed to be ready to ship by mid-March, which means there are only 12 weeks left to get it printed, bound, packaged and shipped. When they get my proofs back, there will be only 10 weeks. Time is winding down quickly.

Jeepers creepers, Harry's got a brand-new name

2006-12-21T12:22:00.000-05:00

J.K. Rowling has gone to great lengths to keep young readers on her web site, with a puzzle required to find the title of her newest (and last) Harry Potter book. No doubt my son will go crazy with it until he finds the title -- unless he looks here. The title is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

O.J.: The continuing saga

2006-12-21T11:06:00.000-05:00

The O.J. Simpson case is the murder trial that just won't die. Now the family of victim Ron Goldman has filed another suit against Simpson, saying Simpson is trying to cheat him out of money for damages from the previous suit.

Goldman says Simpson's deal with Regan Books for his nonconfession was structured to hide a $1 million advance and prevent Goldman from collecting. The full story is in The New York Times this morning.

How many are hidden?

2006-12-20T10:01:00.000-05:00

A Fayette County, Kentucky, grand jury yesterday indicted Robert F. Smallwood in the murders of three women over a seven-year period. Similar to the Ipswich killings in England, the three victims had histories of drug/alcohol/prostitution arrests. All apparently were strangled.

Police weren't able to connect the killings until DNA science advanced enough that they could match DNA found on all three victims. They also connected the same DNA to the 1993 rape of an 83-year-old retired school teacher. When police finally found a suspect, he was already in prison for violating probation on a drug charge. Investigators haven't said how they connected the case to Smallwood, but police said early on that there was no match of the DNA in the national DNA database.

Serial killers have always been seen as rare. But this case raises a question for me: If this killer, whether of not he is really Smallwood, went undetected for at least seven years, how many others are out there, hidden in society?

Trump to Miss USA: You're (not) fired!

2006-12-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

I know, you're wondering why this blog has an entry about Miss USA. Tara Conners is from Kentucky, and therefore it's of interest to me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even watched the news conference.

The summary is this: Miss USA Tara Conners was facing allegations to underage drinking, drug use and "sexual escapades." Everyone seemed to expect The Donald, owner of the pageant, to call her into his office and issue his now famous buzz words: "You're fired!"

Surprise, surprise, Trump called her into his office and gave her a second chance. Now there's all this talk about alcoholism, rehab, being "caught up in the whirlwind," etc. CNN newspeople are poo-pooing her "bright lights, big city defense," and brushing off her statement that she is not an alcoholic and saying she is "would be pushing the envelope."

Here's a newsflash: She just turned 21. She's essentially a college student. Alcoholism? Give the girl a break.

She just moved from Russell Springs, Kentucky -- population 2,399, with prohibition in full force -- to New York City. She's gone from being an unknown small-town girl to a glamorous job and an apartment in Trump Tower. She's not out of control; she's human.

Tasteless O.J. book not the cause of firing

2006-12-18T14:07:00.000-05:00

Judith Regan apparently was not fired from Harper Collins for the tasteless O.J. Simpson nonconfession. Harper Collins is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News, so it's not surprising that the company did not fire Regan for the horrible idea paying O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he would have killed his ex-wife if he had really been the person to do it.

According to The New York Times, Regan, who is famous for her loud mouth, made supposed anti-Semitic comments to one of News Corp.'s lawyers. The newspaper said the comments were made during an argument between Regan and the lawyer, who happens to be Jewish. The lawyer called News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, who ordered Regan fired.

Apparently there are some kinds of publicity that even Murdoch is afraid of.

Finished!

2006-12-17T20:07:00.000-05:00

My Christmas shopping, that is. The short story collection I've been working on is still hanging over my head like a hammer.

OJ's editor fired

2006-12-16T09:31:00.000-05:00

The New York Times is reporting that Judith Regan, the editor who attempted to bring us the ill-considered O.J. Simpson non-confession, has been fired.

Harper Collins, the parent company of Regan Books, announced Friday that it had fired Regan. The firing was effective immediately. Regan is a former tabloid reporter who apparently never left that lifestyle behind.