Confirmed Presenters for the 2009 Heartwood Forest Council

Albert Bates

Albert Bates is an influential figure in the intentional community and ecovillage movements. A lawyer, author and teacher, he has been director of the Institute for Appropriate Technology since 1984 and of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee since 1994.

Bates has been a resident of The Farm since 1972. A former attorney, he argued environmental and civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and drafted a number of legislative Acts during a 26-year legal career. The holder of a number of design patents, Bates invented the concentrating photovoltaic arrays and solar-powered automobile displayed at the 1982 World's Fair. He served on the steering committee of Plenty International for 18 years, focussing on relief and development work with indigenous peoples, human rights and the environment. An emergency medical technician (EMT), he was a founding member of The Farm Ambulance Service. He was also a licensed Amateur Radio operator.

Bates has played a major role in the ecovillage movement as one of the organizers of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), and served as GEN's chairman of the board (from 2002 to 2003) and president (from 2003 to 2004). He was also the principal organizer of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and served as its president (from 1996 to 2003). In 1994 he founded the Ecovillage Training Center, a "whole systems immersion experience of ecovillage living." He has taught courses in sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and technologies of the future to students from more than 50 nations.

In 1980, Bates shared in the first Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) as part of the executive board of Plenty International.

Bates is author of many books on law, energy, history and environment, including:
Climate in Crisis (1990),
Voices from The Farm (1998) with Rupert Fike
The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook (1999)

His latest book is The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, published in 2006. In it Bates examines the transition from a society based on abundant cheap petroleum to one of "compelled conservation." The book looks at the ways of preparing for this transition. He regards the coming change as an opportunity to "redeem our essential interconnectedness with nature and with each other."

Joyce Bender

Joyce Bender is the Branch Manager for Nature Preserves and Natural Areas for the Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission. Joyce will introduce attendees to the ecology of east central Kentucky, where the Cumberland Plateau transitions to the Bluegrass region. Joyce was born in Ohio and received her undergraduate degree from Youngstown State University and her master's degree in biology from the University of Akron. She started her career working for the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves in 1980. Joyce worked as a botanist for the Ohio and Minnesota chapters of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and for TNC’s Midwest regional office. She has been with the commission since 1986 and developed the commission’s stewardship program. In June 2001, she was promoted to branch manager for Nature Preserves and Natural Areas. Joyce is active in promoting awareness of the threat invasive plants pose to our native biodiversity and serves as the president of the Kentucky Exotic Pest Plant Council and the vice president of the Southeast Regional Exotic Pest Plant Council.

John Blair

John Blair won a Pulitzer Prize for News Photography in 1978 and shortly thereafter started a newspaper called the Ohio Valley Environment, taking his environmental leanings and educating citizens of southwest Indiana and western Kentucky about the myriad environmental issues in the region. Shortly after, he formed Valley Watch with his friend and colleague, Tom Zeller, and became one of the most outspoken advocates for environmental health in mid America. He has served as Valley Watch president for most of its existence. Part of his advocacy was helping to defeat the ill fated Marble Hill Nuclear Plant in SE Indiana which give him training for things to come. For thirty-one years, His main claim to fame in the early years was "stealing the gold painted shovels" from a ground breaking ceremony for a hazardous waste plant in Henderson, KY in very public view in 1985. Since then he has successfully fought several hazardous waste incinerators, numerous coal plants, and "anything else that will have negative health impacts on my region." He has done all that as a volunteer, on a budget of less than $5000 per year. Currently, he is engaged in numerous coal plant fights in the Ohio Valley and although it is daunting for a volunteer to devote a lifetime to environmental health he has few regrets and a "whole book of stories to tell." His message today is, "Perseverance is the only thing that wins."

Teri Blanton

Native Kentuckian Teri Blanton was born and raised in Harlan County, the heart of the Kentucky Coalfields. She first got involved in environmental justice issues when her community of Dayhoit was contaminated by discharges from an electrical equipment reconditioning plant. With Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, she has been fighting mountaintop removal mining and protecting Eastern Kentucky streams more than a decade. Past Chair of KFTC, Teri was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship in 2003, where she completed the project “Exploring the True Cost of Coal; Stories from the Valleys.” She has served on numerous nonprofit boards and was Vice President of the Kentucky Riverkeeper in 2006 – 2008. She currently serves as a KFTC Fellow, where she is building capacity among coalfields residents in the Canary Leadership Network.

Syndee L’ome Eartheart

The Loving Heart Healing and Counseling Center

Joy Ezell

Joy Towles Ezell of Floridians Against Incinerators In Disguise is an active environmentalist, environmental activist, community organizer, and pollution fighter. She is the founder and leader of Help Our Polluted Environment In Taylor County, FL; Friends of the Fenholloway River; and one of the founders of Taylor Residents United for the Environment. She is also one of the founders of the Environmental Alliance of North Florida, and is President of the Florida League of Conservation Voters and co-chair of Floridians Against Incinerators In Disguise. Her son, Trey, encouraged her to help clean up the badly polluted Fenholloway River, saying every time they crossed the river, "Mom, make them clean that nasty river up." He was killed in a tragic automobile accident in 1991, so thereafter Joy has dedicated her life to working towards cleaning up the pulp mill pollution of the only industrial-classified river in Florida. Joy and her allies have challenged Procter & Gamble/Buckeye to improve their environmental practices in order to one day restore the once-beautiful Fenholloway River, the Floridan Aquifer, and the Gulf of Mexico. She has been featured on a number of radio and television programs on pulp mill pollution. She has also provided Congressional and other testimony regarding environmental health issues, dioxin, chlorine use, pollution, biomass, incineration, forest, and water issues, and has participated in national, regional, and state dioxin and health-related meetings since 1988.

Tom FitzGerald

Fitz is director of the Kentucky Resources Council, and a long time supporter of responsible natural resource management in Kentucky and nationwide. His presentation, entitled Margaret Mead Was Right: A Conversation About Energy, Community and Justice In a Time of Great Turmoil, will explore the linkages among many topics of interest to the Heartwood community and beyond. Tom’s organization is a non-profit environmental advocacy organization providing free legal, strategic and policy assistance to individuals, organizations and communities concerning environmental quality and resource extraction issues. From 1980 until 1984, Fitz was a staff attorney and environmental specialist with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky’s Lexington office. Fitz received his Juris Doctor from the UK College of Law in 1980 (Order of the Coif) and was a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow from 1980-1982. He is an alumni of Roger Williams College, Bristol, Rhode Island with a B.A. in American Studies with distinction. He has been appointed to dozens of advisory and other posts throughout his long career, and has been an Adjunct Professor of Energy and Environmental law at the Brandeis School of Law since 1986. His contributions to natural resources law, citizen involvement in government, and recognition of the quiet service of thousands of fellow travelers is unparalleled. He is married to a very patient woman, Jefferson County Family Court Chief Judge Patricia Walker FitzGerald, and has three sons, ages 23, 20 and 18.

Mary Anne Hitt

Deputy Campaign Director, National Coal Campaign, Sierra Club

Doc Hyena

Dr. hyena is a channeled amateur physician and has served as "sign a waiver sawbones" on some of the finest scavenger vessels afloat. He is currently losing his grip on the third dimension entirely, somewhere in Southern Appalachia.

Dr. Alice Jones   Dr. Jones, who will be speaking on water quality impacts from coal mining in Eastern Kentucky, is Director of the Eastern Kentucky Environmental Research Institute at Eastern Kentucky. Her 17 years of teaching, research, and applied planning experience has centered on the relationship between land use and water quality, including urban stormwater management, riparian landscape preservation, and rural best management practices. Her recent work involves both large- and small-scale watershed studies of water quality. She is also an area coordinator and water sampling trainer for the citizen-based Kentucky River Watershed Watch, a science advisor for Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Kentucky Riverkeeper, VISTA supervisor for the nonprofit Head of Three Rivers, in Letcher County, and on the board of the Eastern Coal Regional Roundtable. Jones holds a masters degree in environmental geography from Texas State University (formerly Southwest Texas State) and a PhD in City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University. She lives in Madison County, Kentucky, near an unnamed tributary of the left fork of Otter Creek of the Kentucky River, in the Ohio River drainage of the Mississippi River. 

Andy Mahler

Andy Mahler is a forest protection activist and community organizer with more than twenty years experience. He helped found Heartwood and several other organizations, including Lost River Community Co-op, which operates the Lost River Market and Deli, a member owned, natural foods grocery in Paoli, IN http://www.lostrivercoop.com/; and Orange County HomeGrown which operates two successful farmers markets and a variety of other projects http://orangecountyhomegrown.org.  He is currently organizing Renewable Energy Alternatives for Southern Indiana, and is a candidate for the board of directors of the local member owned electric utility, Orange County REMC.  He and his wife, Linda Lee own a rustic and eclectic farm and lodge called the Lazy Black Bear surrounded by the Hoosier National Forest where they raise, rehabilitate and release orphaned possums and other critters.  They host a variety of events at the Lazy Black Bear including house concerts, a two week permaculture course every summer, and the annual Heartwood Reunion which takes place over the Columbus day weekend in October every year (this year, Oct 9-11 -- please plan to join us).  

David Nickell

David Nickell is a native of Between the Rivers, which is now known as Land Between the Lakes. He was the sixth generation on a farm settled by Jeremiah Nickell, a Revolutionary War veteran given the land as payment for his service. Between the Rivers is the largest inland peninsula in the continental U.S. (bounded by the Cumberland, Tennessee and Ohio Rivers). For nearly 200 years access to the peninsula was primarily by ferry, with the result that a unique culture emerged. That culture had developed a sustainable relation to their land, with the result that the very last flock of wild turkeys, herds of white tail deer, etc. in Kentucky were Between the Rivers. The government responded by forcibly removing the Between the Rivers people, first to trap and relocate the game to the new refuges across the state, and then to establish a recreation area. Nickell, who now is a farmer and professor of philosophy and sociology, continues to be involved in the organized efforts of the Between the Rivers people to protect their homeland from the government’s mismanagement, and to preserve their cultural connection to their place.

Carol Rainey

Carol is a teacher with past experience at several Cincinnati area colleges. Back in the 80s, she was the coordinator of the Cincinnati chapter of the Nuclear Freeze, and since then has been active in anti-nuclear and anti-war organizing. Her recent book, One Hundred Miles from Home: Nuclear Contamination in the Communities of the Ohio River Valley, discusses the legacy of nuclear weapons installations built during the Cold War on the environment of the Cincinnati region. Despite the accidents in the nuclear history of the country, and the still unresolved problem of what to do with high-level nuclear waste, the American nuclear establishment the last ten years has been trying to make a comeback, arguing once again that nuclear power is necessary for American energy self-sufficiency. Carol will look at the arguments being presented for the return of nuclear power, including the arguments of the "pro-nuclear environmentalists," and present the counter-arguments that such a return would be dangerous, expensive and unnecessary. Carol Rainey has a PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati.

Mike Roselle

Iconoclast Mike Roselle is the undisputed King of All the Lowbaggers and has been active in the environmental movement since 1975. Amy Goodman has called him a "longtime activist" and others have called him a dinosaur. He is not a nurturing person but a real intimidating sonovabitch who cares little about what others think. Longevity is getting increasingly rare in this movement and Roselle has no idea why or what to do about it. He secretly thinks it is because people are having children, buying property and searching for financial security, or are simply too depressed and unempowered by all the grim news on climate change. But no one wants to hear or talk about that, do they? His only advice is to "suck it up and do your job" and his motto is "No Sniveling". If you think that a speech from such a person will help you to become a better activist, please attend!

Chris Schimmoeller

Kentucky’s own Chris Schimmoeller was volunteer coordinator for Kentucky Heartwood for 10 years, and a key factor in the organization’s growth and popularity across the state. She continues to be active on the Council as well as in issues of land use planning, forest protection, and community organizing in the lower Kentucky River watershed. She lives with her husband and daughters in an earth bermed straw bale house with all the comforts of home, but without electricity or “city” water. Chris will speak on Saturday on the history of Heartwood, activism on issues related to the Daniel Boone National Forest, and the challenges we face with natural resource issues as the first decade of the new millennium draws to a close.

Lorelei Scarbro

West Virginia born and raised, Lorelei is the daughter, granddaughter, sister, widow and mother-in-law of coal miners. She is the mother of four and the grandmother of one.

She joined the movement to fight mountaintop removal in 2007 when Massey Energy applied for permits behind her house on Coal River Mountain. She is currently employed at Coal River Mountain Watch and is a community organizer in the Coal River Wind Project which won the Co-Op Americas "Building Economic Alternatives Award".

She is on the coordinating committee for the Alliance for Appalachia and on the board of directors for Challenge WV. She is the recent winner of the West Virginia Environmental Councils Environmental Courage Award and a member of the Rural Education Working Group working on environmental policy to impact our national policy agenda.

Tom Weis

Tom Weis, who will speak on Seizing the Wind & Our Moment in History, will make the moral case for the rapid scale-up of responsibly-developed wind power to combat the ever-worsening climate crisis. Tom is president of Wind Power Solutions, and has been active in the wind industry since early 2004 as a public outreach consultant. During this time, he helped permit 600 MW of wind energy projects (valued at over $1 billion), chaired the American Wind Energy Association's (AWEA) 2007 Fall Symposium, and received AWEA's 2009 Special Achievement Award for his role in the creation of the American Wind Wildlife Institute. He served as board member of the Interwest Energy Alliance from 2005-2009 and continues to serve as Strategic Advisor to the Past President of AWEA's Board. He is also part owner of Asociados PanAmericanos, a developer of socially progressive wind projects in Mexico. More recently, Tom served on the campaign committee of a Boulder ballot initiative resulting in voter passage of the nation's first municipal "carbon tax." Prior to this, Tom directed a statewide "Save the Everglades" campaign for Clean Water Action in Florida; designed and directed a recycling center for Eco-Cycle; served as National Field Director for PEER; and served as Executive Director for the National Forest Protection Alliance. He has an extensive political background, including working on Capitol Hill as an environmental legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and directing field operations for presidential campaigns.

Christina Wulf

Christina Wulf lives in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. She writes, teaches writing, and digs up historical roots of environmental problems. She & her partner Danny Dolinger are Truffle Pig Publishing. Its purpose--to promote music and writing, and sniff out yummy and valuable subterranean treasures. Her Sunday morning workshop is a hands-on experiment about being committed to change while being open to outcomes beyond our current vision. Therefore it may be hilarious, disastrous, quirky, chaotic, groundbreaking, and/or maybe even productive. Best come on & see.

   

For more information, please contact:

Andy Mahler
Heartwood
812.723.2430 (h/w)

www.heartwood.org

Jim Scheff, Coordinator
Kentucky Heartwood
859.756.3206 (h/w)
314.971.4023 (cell)

www.kyheartwood.org