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In early July 2012 we drove to LA to do the voiceovers with David B. Steinberg, Annie’s brother.  David is a consummate professional, a musician who composes music and arranges scores for movies and commercials.  He is so good that he’s really fun to work with.  Below is the text that we recorded during this session in his living room.  This text shows the sequence of scenes that composed the structure of the film at this time.  The order of these scenes would change a little later in response to the critical screening we did at my old friend Andrea Cohen’s house on July 8th and then subsequent screenings we did in Charleston, West Virginia and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

V.O Opening

 

COAL WAS KING When I was born in Montgomery, West Virginia, in 1960. Just about everybody worked in one way, or another, for the mining industry. Mining is still the region’s main moneymaker but centuries of extracting coal from the Earth are taking a huge toll on the people and the land.  I used to think that the Appalachian Mountains would be there forever, that one-day I’d retire into their mystical embrace. Although much remains exactly as it was when I was a child, a radical form of coal mining, mountain top removal, is forever altering the landscape I call home.

 

Currently, I live in San Francisco where I’m an artist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Growing up queer in the heart of coal country I knew that I would likely never be able to get a job there, or want to marry a man who could.  Instead of King Coal, I wanted a Queen. Twelve years ago I married former sex worker, now sex educator and artist Annie Sprinkle.

When I look out over the city, I think about how much electricity we consume. Then my heart goes to West Virginia where I’m from.

 

Anne in Charlton Heights

 

V.O Super 8 Family Films

My sisters helped my father raise me after my mother died.  In spite of the trauma of her death, I had a fairly idyllic childhood. There was no lack of love.

 

Shoals Elementary, Corporal Punishment, Swimming Pool

 

V.O Family Pictures

My family has been involved in mining beginning in England in the 1600s.  My father’s father and all four of his brothers moved to West Virginia from Cornwall via the upper peninsula of Michigan at the end of the depression.  They started Marathon Coal Bit Company at the end of the depression. This was where I learned how things were made, coal was mined and business worked.

When you grow up in a place that is poor you learn to make do. Knowing how to “make do” was extremely empowering and helped me move forward in my life, especially as a young queer woman growing up in a man’s world.

 

Marathon

Pinups

Annie’s Ecosexual Interview

 

V.O. Dupont/Bell WV

WV is a beautiful, haunting, mysterious place during the day. At night the chemical plants light up the valleys with twinkling lights, and smokestacks belch gorgeous billowous smoke and fire. I used to think that these plants were magical fairy tale kingdoms. It is interesting the kinds of fantasies that children make up to explain what a place is and what it means.  Then later as adults we learn, there was some really some dangerous shit coming out of those smokestacks.  We have become dependent upon industry to fuel our contemporary lifestyles.

 

V.O Hawk’s Nest

Profits extracted from the land have historically been privileged over the people in West Virginia. One of the most tragic examples of this exploitation happened in the 1930’s, is the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, still considered one of the worst industrial disasters in US history.  Gauley Bridge, at the foot of the mountain, used to be called “the town of the walking dead” because so many men died while digging the tunnel.

 

V.O. Big Globe and Animation  

The Appalachian Mountains are the second richest biodiverse area in the Western Hemisphere after the Amazon. MTR begins by clearing the trees, then drilling the blast holes and filling them with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel.  Then the tops are blasted off and what the companies call overburden is pushed into the valleys below killing any animals, vegetation and streams caught in its path.

 

Big Globe

High Wall Text

Google Map

Explosion

 

V.O Vivian Stockman

The first photos I ever saw showing mountain top removal were by Vivian Stockman.  Her work also captures the spectacular beauty of the Appalachian Mountains. Vivian’s photographs inspired me to turn my own art making towards the fight against Mountain Top Removal. So I gave her a call, and she invited us up to her farm for a visit.

Stephanie Tyree

         Health Effects Use an image of lungs—

In addition to deaths caused by direct involvement in mining, surrounding communities experience increased rates of cancer, birth defects and lung disease.

 Ted Nugent

Don Blankenship

 DEP Protest, Joe Hamshire and Sarah Seeds

WV Hills Medley

Exhibition Coal Mine w/Leroy White

EcoSex Medley

Jack Spadaro

Gay Gathering

Invitation Making Party

Kitty/Kimberly, WV

Cindy and Roger in Pinch

 V.O Lindytown

 Lindytown, WV was a small mining community in Boone Country.  A couple of years ago, when a mountain top removal site was launched on the ridge above the town, Massey Energy bought up the community and essentially forced the residents to leave.  I saw the town just before the church and most of the houses were then bulldozed down to insure that the mountain top removal operation could proceed without community interference.

Grumble-tree climb

 Activist Montage

Activism is essential to social change. Anti-MTR activist tactics include protests, long marches and tree sitting for weeks at a time. A tree sit can effectively halt clear cutting and blasting on MTR sites. Locking down bodies to stationary objects, like a barrel full of cement, blocks access to strategic locations, gets press attention and garners public sympathy. Recently a group of Appalachian women shaved their heads on the steps of the Capital to show their solidarity with the mountains, and draw attention to what MTR has stripped away from their land and communities. Annie and I employ Ecosexuality, Sexecology and weddings to nature. We shift the metaphor from Earth as mother, to Earth as lover to entice others to love the planet.

 Tree Climb

 Stephanie II/Kinkaid, WV

 Larry Gibson

“We look at the earth as the lungs of the Earth”

Catherine Venable Moore, Poem

Paul Corbit Brown

Protests Daryl Hannah

Beth Vows at Kanawha Gardens

Wedding to the Appalachian Mountains

Jack Spadero–saying his favorite song is Hazel Dickens’ version of “West Virginia My Home”