This year, The Appalachian Studies Association will award OVEC and our website – www.ohvec.org – its e-Appalachia Award for 2007.

Dr. Emily Satterwhite, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, e-mailed us the news.

She wrote, "I have personally used your website in teaching Appalachian studies here at Tech and am delighted with it …"

A big thanks goes to Spencer resident Don Alexander for his technical expertise in creating and maintaining the website.

Thanks to everyone who helps by contributing content for the website.

by Cameron W. Barr, Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2006

Paperless electronic voting machines used (in) much of the country "cannot be made secure," according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.

In a report hailed by critics of electronic voting, NIST said voting systems should allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a machine’s software. NIST endorses "optical-scan" systems in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by a computer and electronic systems that print a paper summary of each ballot, which voters review and elections officials save for recounts.

by Alvin Powell, Harvard News Office

The head of the U.S. government’s renewable energy lab said the federal government is doing "embarrassingly few things" to foster renewable energy, leaving leadership to the states at a time of opportunity to change the nation’s energy future. Dan Arvizu, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said a brief opening exists to dramatically increase the energy generated from renewable sources in the coming decades, but more resources and a national policy are needed.

On the 35th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek disaster, we can look back at how far we have come, and how very, very far we have yet to go before King Coal no longer rules our lives with its uncaring iron fist.

by Winnie Fox

They’ve got no heart
They’ve got no soul
But they’ve got money
They’re "friends of coal"
They’re Pruitt and Nehlen
They’ve got no feelin’
But they’ve got money
They’re "friends of coal"
They’re Blankenship & Harless
For your welfare, they could care less,
But they’ve got money
They’re "friends of coal"
The Medco and Walker Machinery
Have to save their bottom line
Lord knows they have no spine
The only green they want to see is money
You mountain people just don’t matter, honey
Our politicians are not too bright
But there’s no government oversight
So they’ve got money
They’re "friends of coal"
Our regulators have gone to hell
They must be under an evil spell
‘Cause they’ve got money
They’re "friends of coal"
Three million pounds of dynamite
Blow up our mountains day and night
And Walker "Big Cats" do the rest,
Tearing the heart from our mother’s breast
God save us from "These friends of coal"

Buffalo Creek photos by The Herald-Dispatch and Charleston Gazette.