For whatever it’s worth, I feel I owe an explanation to many of you who are concerned about my well being during my upcoming fast. It’s something I feel I must do, and I hope that after wading through these pages, you’ll have a better understanding of how I’ve come to this decision.
There’s a history here, and as I compose this message, I realize I’ll have to provide you with something I was hoping to avoid: An autobiographical sketch, which if nothing else you may use as a cure for your insomnia. Fasting is an exercise that is—for lack of a better word—inconvenient. I feel I must go to some trouble to give you the reasons why I’m giving up eating for an extended period, despite the fact that, aside from its necessary role in the maintenance of the body, it’s one of the joys of life.
So please bear with me.
At age 11, I ran an iron spike through my heel in a display of boyish exuberance and was off my feet for several days. A kindly neighbor thought to give me something to read during my convalescence. It was a dog eared, taped-together, pocket size edition of The Red Book of Birds of America.
I was hooked from the git-go.
On the very first page was the portrait of a loon—a poor one compared to others I was later to see—but with the backdrop of an open-water wilderness, including a forested shoreline, cattails, and other features of an unspoiled wetland. There was immediately stamped on my impressionable psyche a burning need to see, experience, and learn more about this magnificent representative of Nature in the Raw. As I leafed through the pages and other images of bird life were revealed to my attentive eyes, my awe and wonder grew. I soon realized there were a good many more birds in the world than the limited number in my little volume, and life would not be worth living until I had copies of The Blue Book of Birds of America, and The Green Book of Birds of America. These were advertised in the frontispiece of the Red Book, and I nagged my parents unmercifully until to my everlasting joy, they appeared in my stocking the following Christmas. Further nagging managed to score me a pair of 3X binoculars, and not wishing to press my luck with Mom and Dad, I turned to my Grandfather.
Fortunately for me, Grandpa Cook was a soft touch, and as a result of my impassioned beseeching, I received a copy of what was for the time (1940) one of the definitive ornithological works of the day: Birds of America, edited by T. Gilbert Pearson. (The book, I understand, is now a collectors item, and though having being leafed through thousands of times, my copy is only a little the worse for wear, and still usable as a reference).
My interests in birds expanded to include pretty much the rest of the animal kingdom. Using whatever references were available, I learned what I could about the creatures I chanced across during regular hikes to the many woods, fields and streams around my home in Hopewell, Virginia. Hopewell was—and is– a blue collar town—the self proclaimed chemical capital of the South—and just about every adult male wage earner, including my father, worked at either Dupont, Solvay Process, Hummel-Ross Fiber Corp, Tubize (a maker of rayon) or Hercules Powder Company.
Many locals hunted and fished in the area, which included—in addition to large tracts of forests and open fields– the confluences of the James and Appamatox Rivers and their semi-tidal marshes. But few had much detailed knowledge of the native flora and fauna. Most people in Hopewell and vicinity would have thought a scarlet tanager was a brand of paint, and every snake one came across was either a copperhead or a water moccasin. Not being able to discuss my interests with a fellow nature afficianado was somewhat lonely and frustrating. Indeed nature study was considered an offbeat pursuit among the city’s mixed population of Armenians, Greeks, Eastern Europeans, Jews; all of whom had gravitated to the area during the World War I era, when Dupont, in its search for cheap labor, had lured them thither with the promise of jobs. But as my family was loving and supportive, I wasn’t too put out by some of those within the Hopewell culture that tended to regard me as an oddball. Harmless, to be sure, but an oddball nevertheless.
To fast forward the reel, my passion for knowledge of the natural world was subordinate to a number of things as time went on; the usual hormone induced adolescent chaos, and as America entered the WW II era, surges of patriotism in my youthful breast. This led to my enlistment into that honored institution, the U.S. Army.
And as fate would have it, an experience in the military led to a resurgence of my interest. A fellow GI sold me a pair of 7X50 binoculars. I’d never beheld any wild thing through anything stronger than a three power binocular, and like the first peek at the pages of my first bird book, it was instant fascination.
We were at the time on a troopship in the middle of the Pacific, and I was able to follow with greatly enhanced vision the flights of the shearwaters and petrels in the wake of our vessel. Nothing, I mused at the time, was more romantic, dreamy and awe inspiring than the sight of these feathered vagabonds, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, dependent entirely on their remarkable aerial prowess and their ability to exploit nature’s maritime provender. They were epitome of untamed nature, and the sight of these winged creatures in this water wilderness was a soul-stirring experience which inspired awe and wonder–and reinforced my appreciation for the marvels of Creation.
My reawakened interest was sustained throughout the voyage, and received another boost when we arrived in San Francisco Bay. While fellow GIs crowded the railings for the first sighting of land and civilization since leaving Yokohama, I was ogling the bird life through my 7X50s. Gulls, cormorants, pelicans, most of which I’d seen only in books, passed within view in a never ending parade.
And as luck would have it, we were sent to Camp Stoneman, a military base somewhat off the beaten track and populated by forms of wildlife other than GIs with hormones, prior to discharge. Jack rabbits frolicked within a stone’s throw of the mess hall, and the open stretches surrounding some of the buildings were the foraging grounds for horned larks and other open country bird life. With a couple of good field guides acquired during a weekend in San Francisco, I set about adding to my knowledge, and when finally I was discharged and en route home on the train, I bird watched through the window from California to Virginia.
With the GI bill bankrolling my education, I enrolled as a journalism major at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University). At the end of my sophomore year I was recalled to military service with the outbreak of the Korean War.
Once more, fate intervened to get me back on track. Carolyn Derby and I had met in an economics class at RPI and were married six months later–after I’d been sucked back into the army. Knowing of my then latent passion for nature study, she persuaded me, after the army let me go, to enroll in Cornell as a conservation education major. Not only did she handle the paperwork to confirm my eligibility for continued veteran educational benefits, but she took an office job to supplement our meager income. Carolyn changed my life for the better in many other ways, but that’s another story.
My course work at Cornell mesmerized and enthralled me for the next two and a half years. I studied ornithology under Doc A.A. Allen, a boyhood idol of mine and a frequent contributor to the National Geographic. I enrolled in just about every course the conservation department had to offer, and learned to identify the common vertebrate animals of the northeast and most of the common plants. As part of an Ichthyology course, we were required to I-Dee most of the fish species of the Great Lakes drainage basin, and our instructors were often able to collect over 20 species from nearby streams with only a couple of sweeps of the seine. I reveled in the biodiversity of our corner of the planet as it was in the 1950s, and during summer jobs as the nature study person at summer camps, and later as a classroom teacher in the public schools, I was fulfilled to the utmost in sharing my knowledge with others and adding to my own education.
In those days, the nature enthusiast could expect a different form of wildlife with every turn of the path.
Revisiting my former stomping grounds in Virginia after graduation from Cornell and a few years experience as an educator, I greeted as old friends the blue grosbeaks, the warblers–prairie, hooded, and Kentucky, along with the cricket frogs, fence lizards, box turtles; the list goes on and on. High in the autumn skies, large flocks of nighthawks were common sights as they drifted southward to their wintering grounds in Argentina. In Penn Yan, New York, over the years of my longest and most rewarding tenure as a science and biology teacher, I frequently conducted informal, after hours field trips to the gorges and gullies of the area. Under almost every rock, as well as in the tiny rivulets that trickled through these meandering natural trenches, there was usually a salamander or salamanders of one kind or another, plus other interesting life forms.
That was yesteryear. For a former naturalist whose interest in and concern for the natural world has spanned over half a century, the loss of so many once common and beloved species has been traumatic and depressing, depressing to an extent that has resulted in a loss of enthusiasm for a field of study that had stoked my fires in bygone years.
My boyhood haunts, where I came to know the grosbeaks, warblers, and other once abundant members of the creature kingdom have been converted to shopping malls and housing tracts. A fisheries researcher would be hard put to collect more than two or three minnow species from the same waters that yielded twenty or more in my student years. The proliferation of motorized traffic in eastern Virginia—only one of many examples of how so-called progress has impoverished our lives–has all but decimated the populations of box turtles, snakes, and other creatures that have not learned to look both ways before crossing the highways. Air, soil, and water pollution, along with other forms of environmental degradation, have robbed us of our natural heritage and birthright, namely the infinite variety of life forms that once flew through our skies, swam in our waters, and enriched our space with their beauty, their voices, and their strange and fascinating ways.
In the year 2009, I am, and have been for several years, an environmental activist.
I have exchanged my academic interest in the world of nature for a commitment to see that some of it is left for succeeding generations to study and enjoy. My sorrow over the changes that self aggrandizing humanity has wrought have resulted in my decision to fast, and I will do so, as indicated in my statement, in a very public place before those with the power to bring about needed reform.
But I’m not without hope. I’m inspired and energized by the young people here at Climate Ground Zero, who at great personal risk are carrying on a campaign to stop mountaintop removal by nonviolent direct action. Despite the awesome challenge of climate change and other threats to the global ecology, there’s a new awakening among people and a renewed commitment to save Mother Earth from the excesses of our own species.
I’d like to be a part of this commitment.
Roland Micklem
Rock Creek, West Va.
Nov. 20, 2009
Tags: Fast, Mountaintop Removal, Roland Micklem
[...] June 2007 « Roland Micklem’s Open Letter on His Fast to End Mountaintop Removal [...]
Go Roland! You will be in my prayers- thank you for your work and your willingness to sacrifice your health and well-being to save our beautiful mountains. With love, Sierra
Roland, you are an inspiration and an example of good to all caring people. I want to personally thank you for coming to Coal River, for what you are doing and the sacrifice you are making. West Virginia could use a lot more Roland Micklems.
Governor Joe Manchin would do well to read your open letter. In so doing he may find the heart and soul he misplaced somewhere between ambition and humanity. May God bless you Roland, you are making Him very proud.
Roland you have a remarkable amount of Ghandi spirit and integrity. I am mucho proud to know you and we will pray for you and for a positive effect of your action on the Coal River environment.
I do not what this fellow hopes to acomplish. He traveled the country, no doubt by car, yet decries “The proliferation of motorized traffic in eastern Virginia….” Presumably, he lived in houses whose construction displaced the little critters he studied. And no doubt he has made a purchase or two at a shopping mall that was formerly a “creature kingdom.” So now, after a lifetime of living off the public teat as a teacher, he goes on a hunger strike. Piffle.
Wow, Flat Top, How can you presume to know anything of a man you know nothing about? Presumptuous…indeed.
Roland, all I can say to YOU is “thank you.” And also that you will be in my prayers. Please be mindful of your health. What you are doing is important.
From all the way down in “Hotlanta”
Thank you so much,
“SevenCell”
http://sevencell.wordpress.com/
Mikey must be running low on young college students and now he’s exploiting the seniors.
Dear Roland,
Thank you for you commitment and sacrifice, I hope your efforts get the attention they deserve.
Here, outside Philadelphia, a grassroots group successfully prevented a water utility from opening a facility that would have drawn up to 70% from a scenic waterway. One of the techniques we used was to file a class action suit against the utility on the grounds that this facility would take away value from the properties along the waterway, under the rules of eminent domain. Eminent domain gives the right to take property for the public good but requires “due monetary compensation.” Therefore, we argued the utility had to pay the difference in property de-valorization caused by their project. The company abandoned the project. Maybe this approach (on a much larger scale) could work for the people of West Virginia. Good luck. Basic information on eminent domain can be found on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain)
Warm Regards,
Greg
Seven Cell as you say you are in Hotlanta but you attack Flat Top as not knowing Mr. Micklem. Seems thats a pot calling the kettle black. If you know WV and the mountains so well why not come and stay this winter in good ol’ Appalachia. I mean you are complaining about “Hotlanta”. You never know Flat Top may know him and I never know you may have been Daniel Boone, in that case we both don’t have an argument. We would love to have you here not depending on Coal to keep you warm.
No Flattop, you don’t know who you’re talking about. Roland gets about by bicycle, walking or thumbing rides. We’ve walked with him and watched him not get mad, but try to educate people such as Flat top here. He also lives with less than just about anybody I know. If we all were as sustainable as Roland has been his whole life, we’d have no need for blowing up mountains for the coal beneath them. And we’d all see the need for keeping the water, air, and land clean for all living things.
Shame on the Governor of West Virginia for allowing his state to be destroyed in such a devastating manner! Allowing a few to take what’s under the ground and leaving the results to poison and sicken those who live there, and also destroy any future endeavors.
Roland, Thank you for your inspiration and action. A bird lover from my youth, I despise the grinding destruction of the earth.
Hmmm, Gov joe just been around 5 years or so. MTR about 30+. Not just one man, but many.
I’ve known Roland Micklem since I lived with his family when I was a student in Rochester, NY in the late 1960′s.
One thing he didn’t tell about in his biographical notes is his love of music….after dinner we used to sit in the living room of
that comfy old house and sing for hours, Mick strumming the autoharp, teaching me mountain folk songs and lighthearted ditties he brought from Virginia. Mick, I appreciate what you and your colleagues are doing to end mountain-top removal. The coal will only last a little while, but devastation lasts forever.
People all over the country are acting locally to curb environmental destruction and safe what is left of natural habitats, including here in the Northwest. Long ago you swapped carbon footprint for the tracks of nature and a long march towards environmental justice. Keep singing as you follow your heart– encouraging the next generations to commit to saving the Earth. Peace!
Seven Cell: Presumptions are rebuttable but you said nothing to rebut mine. June and Phil: I am glad he is not driving, at his age. My observations about his selfd-described vast travels, where he purchses (or purchased) his needs and wants over the course of his lengthy life, as well as where he has lived (tree forts or houses) remain unanswered. He had his and now at age 80 he wants to deny others theirs. Do as I say, not as I do.Groovy.
Well if the Lord put Coal in the state of West Virginia he must have had something in mind to do with it….duhhh! I can not believe how silly you GREENIAC’S are. I want to say to Maria Gunnoe, that log house you are supposily building, well sister LOG= TREES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gov. Manchin is only doing what is right, he knows what runs WV and half the United States……..You people need to go protest IRON or something else and leave Coal alone or else you will be sitting in the dark…..
[...] with Uncommon Productions was pretty much an expansion of the message on my sign. I gave a brief history of experiences in my life which led me to do this fast, including my years as a naturalist and teacher, my awe and [...]
He lives with “little”, yet he has a computer to put his “adventures” on here, wow!
Congratulations greenies! I understand that some 500 WV coal miners soon will be losing their jobs, thanks to your good works. That must make you all very, very proud. I guess that ensures that future generations of you Volvo and Prius- driving libs will have real-live poor folk to visit now and then in the mountains. Some of them will no doubt entertain you with their music and mountain ways. Lovely. On behalf of the wives and children of the 500, have a Merry Christmas–and keep those lights low.
Thank you Roland, you give me hope that we, as a nation will see that our current choices are destructive and unneeded. Current technology already exists to power our lives, yet we continue, as a nation to collectively consume more and more without thinking of consequences to the very things that support life on our planet. It truly is madness. Flattop: you act as if coal is the only way to keep the lights on… I really recommend that you do some more research into the subject. My solution would be for Alt. Energy companies to come into west Virginia and hire away all the people who risk their lives mining coal: and let them be the ones who power our green energy economy: then the gov. Of west Virginia wouldn’t feel the need to keep feeding this beast of an industry. No paycheck from a coal company should be worth more that destruction that is created by the proccess of mining it to a workers own community. They may be giving you a dollar, but they are taking your life.
MaryD: Thank you for your suggestion. I accept it in the manner in which it was offered: cynically. I wish to reciprocate so please consider my suggestions for you. One, take a writing course. Persuasive writing is least effective when the writer is constantly distracted by egregious errors in spelling and punctuation. Two, your solution reminds me of the felon Rodney King’s rhetorical lament, “Can’t we all just get along?” No, we can’t. We cannot as long as there are people who want to force their world view and their cause de jour down the throats of the rest of us. Your sophomoric solution is quite humorous and the depth of your thinking defies measure, absent a microscope. Your solution “…would be for Alt. (sic) Energy (sic) companies to come into west (sic) Virginia and hire away all the people who risk their lives mining coal.” Gee, what a wonderful idea! What say we do that next Tuesday! I especially like the pretense of your interest in saving the lives of coalminers. That was a nice touch, albeit an insincere one. As for your baseless statement that I am acting as if coal is the only way to keep the lights, you could not be more wrong. I also favor nuclear power expansion. Good luck with the writing course.
It is only recently that I have entered into this battle between Pro-Coal and Anti-Coal. Now, I am trying to educate myself about the issue as much as possible by reading as much as I can about the subject. I would like to say as a newcomer that I find it incredibly sad and unproductive for people to be so contemptuous with each other. Spitting names at one another like “Greenies”, “Greeniacs” or “Volvo and Prius- driving liberals” is what children do because they don’t yet have the ability to be rational and to control their emotional urges. Too much cynicism PREVENTS a person from really listening to the other person’s story. If you can’t listen then you never learn and if you don’t learn then you don’t grow and if you don’t grow then you are stuck. Stuck with accepting things as they are. I am not concerned about someone’s grammar, but instead WHAT exactly they are trying to say to me. If all a person is trying to say is “shut up and go away”, well then that makes for a very boring discussion indeed, simply because there is no discussion. No discussion= no resolution. It seems to me that Roland Micklem is not saying “shut up and go away”, but is instead saying, “I love these things about my country. I know other people would get happiness from these things, so we must not destroy them.” Jobs can be replaced, life cannot be.
“I am not concerned about someone’s grammar, but instead WHAT exactly they are trying to say to me.” That’s nice. Now, why is it that you wish to apply your standard to others? Because you are accepting of the writing equivalent of eubonics, must others also accept it? Your pomposity and self-righteousness are nauseating. Your smugness is unbearable. But when it comes to your juvenile, bumper-sticker preachiness, it is quite humorous. Oh, and when you have a minute, could you please first provide the thousands of jobs and billions in revenue that you would take from West Virginia before you take them. Better move quickly on that: healthcare is dead and cap and trade is next to fall. Thanks.