When the Battle's Lost and Won

In the freezing cold, in the relentless heat, in the broad daylight and darkest night, people have been protesting new natural gas pipelines all over the place. And after being arrested and tear-gassed and shot at and half-starved, they have won.

On June 5 came news that the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline and the contemptible Dominion Energy's Atlantic Coast Pipeline are both now in no-go mode.

Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project cancellation is particularly welcome, in that the Supreme Court ruled quite recently that Dominion Energy could put the damn thing under the Appalachian Trail and through two national forests. But the company had already thrown tons and tons of ducats at legal fees and was facing yet more environmental impact statements.

What kind of name is "Dominion Energy" anyway? Sounds like something that would be run by Galactus or Magneto. Fuck domination! You wanna put your pipeline under the Appalachian Trail? I can tell you better places to put it. To shove it, actually.

The Dakota Access pipeline is better known because it runs through Native American lands and is strongly opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. This pipeline had been ordered to shut by President Obama in late 2016, but then the Orange Menace got elected and ordered the damn thing back into business.

But much of what the Menace has done to scuttle Obama's legacy has been done so stupidly and shoddily that it doesn't stand up in court. The DAPL is just another of these dumb-ass deals ... same as DACA.

Oil and natural gas are finite resources. Extracting them is costly and damaging to the environment. Wind and solar are infinite resources with much less environmental impact -- and it's not like these industries don't need workers!

Of course some fat cats won't rest until the last drop of oil is potentially sucked from the fossilized ground, but there is some dim hope that gas and oil are becoming as passe as land line phones.

And this hillbilly right here is rejoicing that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline won't wreak its devastation under the Shenandoah National Forest, the Monongahela National Forest, the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and even the Chesapeake Bay. For the love of all the Gods and Goddesses, busy and bored, can we just leave those mountains alone?

The Similarities and Differences between Riding a Bicycle in New Jersey and Appalachia, by Anne Johnson

      This essay will describe the similarities and differences between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia. There are many similarities and many differences between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia.

     First, one similarity between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia is that in both places, bikes have wheels. The wheels go around and the bike moves forward. You push the wheels with pedals, and this happens in New Jersey and Appalachia.

     Second, another similarity between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia is that in both places, bikes have handle bars. You use the handle bars to steer the bike. If you push them to the right, the bike goes right. If you push them to the left, the bike goes left. This is the same in New Jersey and Appalachia.

     Third, in both New Jersey and Appalachia, bikes have brakes. Brakes cause the bike to stop. This is important and it happens in both places. You sometimes have to stop.

     The first difference between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia is that in New Jersey you have to wear a helmet. This is the law. It is not a stupid law. If you are riding a bike in New Jersey and you get  crushed by a NJTransit bus, you want to look pretty in your coffin. In Appalachia you are not going to get crushed by a transit bus, so you don't need a helmet.

     The second difference between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia is that Appalachia has hills and New Jersey doesn't. New Jersey is basically as flat as a pancake, except where the road goes over another road, and that's a bridge, and it has a hill. In Appalachia there are basically hills everywhere you look. You have to pedal real hard to get up the hill, and then use your brake to go down, so your bike doesn't go out of control. In New Jersey you only need your brake to go around road construction, like those big orange barrels or the traffic cones. Which slows you up but not much, not like puffing up those steep hills in Appalachia.

     The third difference between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia is that you crash in very different ways. In Appalachia, you crash when you ride smack dab into a big-ass spider web with a spider as big as a half dollar sitting in the middle of it, which it then hits you between the eyes. Guarantee you are going to wipe out if that happens. In New Jersey, you crash because a speeding line of ginormous SUVs go roaring past you, honking for you to get out of the way, and then you come to an intersection with five lanes and you have to sit there surrounded by cars until the light changes, praying that everyone sees you and hoping that a few of them at least don't have active road rage against bicycles. This can lead to a crash. But it won't matter because you have a helmet.

      In conclusion, these are the similarities and differences between riding a bike in New Jersey and Appalachia. Thank you for reading my essay.