Podcast appearances and mentions of Chuck Nelson

Erie City Council member Chuck Nelson joined us Monday to go over the challenges and positive outcomes in next year's city spending plan.

Erie City Councilman Chuck Nelson has been in the news lately, discussing the LERTA tax abatement program and his assessment that it isn't performing as promised. He is proposing a TIF, which is discussed in our Monday podcast.

On the Monday edition of The Joel Natalie Show, Erie City Council President Chuck Nelson shared with us the current situation with the city budget and the large deficits that loom for the municipality in the next several years.

Bob Rondeau and Chuck Nelson join Puck and Jim to discuss the PAC-12 championship game between the Oregon Ducks & the Washington Huskies, the demise of the Pacific Conference, their thoughts on the state of college football & much more.

Puck and Jim are joined by Chuck Nelson and Bob Rondeau to preview the PAC-12 Championship between the Oregon Ducks and UW Huskies. We play audio messages from listeners; Kidd makes his pick in Fact or Fiction and we have a new tweet of the day.

Mike discusses:  His coaching career, including time at Santa Monica Community College and an epic comeback against Orange Coast Community College and how instrumental all -time LEGEND  Randy Stoklos was,  some of the heaviest hitters he ever saw,  how he developed indoors as a player at places like John Adams Middle School, Pierce College, etc...  Playing with Dave Schaeffer indoors, and classic story of "breaking in" filling in for '64  Olympian and Stockton Club player,  Chuck Nelson in a tournament with fellow Olympians Rudy Suwara and Butch "4-F" May.   Support the show

Many assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw.Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with explosives in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal seams underneath vast swaths of forest, streams, and wildlife habitat. They destroy massive areas of wild land to produce a dirty energy that heavily pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Their use of explosives also allows them to employ many fewer miners.Mountaintop removal was one of the big environmental stories in the media in the last couple decades. There were massive protests and a lot of bad press for the coal companies.Now coal production is down in the US, and dramatic and shocking stories about mountaintop removal have largely disappeared from the headlines, but mountaintop removal has not gone away. As the easier-to-access coal is mined, the amount of land that must be destroyed by mountain removal to produce the same amount of coal has increased.One report that demonstrates this is from SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to study environmental damage. They published a study showing that the amount of land needed to produce a unit of coal in 2015 was three times more than it had been in 1998.Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk haven't forgotten what's happening in West Virginia and Appalachia, because they live it every day. They both work for Coal River Mountain Watch, the organization previously directed by Judy Bonds, the renowned mountaintop removal activist from West Virginia, who was the daughter of a coal miner and died of cancer in 2011 at age 58.Vernon and Junior's stories are urgent environmental ones, but they are also stories about the media and how we forget and move on.This episode of Chrysalis is the first in the Chrysalis Projects series, which highlights the work of community-based environmental projects.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Vernon HaltomVernon Haltom has a BS in Mechanical Engineering (Aerospace Option) from Oklahoma State University and a BA in English Education from Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He served six years as an officer in the US Air Force, specializing in nuclear weapons safety and security. He then taught high school English for two years and English as a Second Language to college students for four years. He began volunteering for Coal River Mountain Watch in 2004 and has served on the staff since 2005, serving as executive director since 2011. He was involved in founding the regional Mountain Justice movement in 2004, the Alliance for Appalachia in 2006, and the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (ACHE) Campaign in 2012.Junior WalkJunior Walk grew up on Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County, WV, taking part in traditional Appalachian activities such as harvesting ginseng and mushrooms. He worked for a time in a coal preparation plant and then as a security guard on a mountaintop removal site, where he learned firsthand the damage coal harvesting had on the mountains and the communities below.  He began working with Coal River Mountain Watch and other groups in 2009. In 2011 he was awarded the Brower Youth Award. Since that time his work has taken various forms, including lobbying on federal and state levels, gathering data for lawsuits against coal companies, and even getting arrested doing direct action at surface mines and corporate offices. In 2021 he was awarded a fellowship with Public Lab to help support his work monitoring the coal mines in his community via drones. Junior now serves as the outreach coordinator for Coal River Mountain Watch, monitoring coal mines in his community for environmental violations and guiding tours for visiting journalists and student groups.About Coal River Mountain Watch Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) is a grassroots organization founded in 1998 in response to the fear and frustration of people living near or downstream from huge mountaintop removal sites. They began as a small group of volunteers working to organize the residents of southern West Virginia to fight for social, economic, and environmental justice. From their humble beginnings, they have become a major force in opposition to mountaintop removal. Their outreach coordinator, Julia Bonds, was the 2003 Goldman Prize winner for North America. CRMW's efforts figure prominently in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book Crimes against Nature. They have been active in federal court to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permits for valley fills and made regional news with demonstrations against a sludge dam and preparation plant near Marsh Fork Elementary School. Find CRMW online: Website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.About Judy Bonds“Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, Julia “Judy” Bonds was a coal miner's daughter and director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Bonds emerged as a formidable community leader against a highly destructive mining practice called mountaintop removal that is steadily ravaging the Appalachian mountain range and forcing many residents, some of whom have lived in the region for generations, to abandon their homes.” - Learn more at The Goldman Environmental Prize Website.Recommended Readings & MediaSee more of Junior's drone work here and other Coal River Mountain flyovers here.TranscriptionIntroJohn FiegeMany assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw.Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with dynamite in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal seams underneath vast swaths of forest, streams, and wildlife habitat. They destroy massive areas of wild land to produce a dirty energy that heavily pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Their use of dynamite also allows them to employ many fewer miners.Mountaintop removal was one of the big environmental stories in the media in the last couple decades. There were massive protests and a lot of bad press for the coal companies.Now coal production is down in the US, and dramatic and shocking stories about mountaintop removal have largely disappeared from the headlines, but mountaintop removal has not gone away. As the easier-to-access coal is mined, the amount of land that must be destroyed by mountain removal to produce the same amount of coal has increased.One report that demonstrates this is from SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to study environmental damage. They published a study showing that the amount of land needed to produce a unit of coal in 2015 was three times more than it had been in 1998.Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk haven't forgotten what's happening in West Virginia and Appalachia, because they live it every day. They both work for Coal River Mountain Watch, the organization previously directed by Judy Bonds, the renowned mountaintop removal activist from West Virginia, who was the daughter of a coal miner and died of cancer in 2011 at age 58.Vernon and Junior's stories are urgent environmental ones, but they are also stories about the media and how we forget and move on.I'm John Fiege, and this conversation about Coal River Mountain Watch is part of the Chrysalis Project series. Here are Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk.---ConversationJohn FiegeI was hoping that you all could start by telling me a bit about your backgrounds and how you both came to work for Coal River Mountain Watch.Vernon HaltomMy background is, I was raised in Oklahoma, went to Oklahoma State University, went into the Air Force, went back into education, got my English teaching degree, and taught English for a while in high school, taught English as a second language. Just before I moved to West Virginia, I started learning about mountaintop removal. And while I was there I saw it in person and I met Judy Bonds and began volunteering with Coal River Mountain Watch in 2004. Came on staff at the beginning of 2005, and I've been there since.When I heard Judy Bonds on the radio in 2003, she was the Goldman Environmental Prize winner at the time. She was so inspirational and so motivational that seeing the problem of mountaintop removal and seeing what the coal companies were doing to the communities was unbearable.John FiegeAnd how about you, Junior?Junior WalkYeah, so I graduated high school in 2008. Shortly before I graduated, I realized that in this country you kind of need money to go to college. And so realized I wasn't really going to be able to do that. And so I was stuck here in southern West Virginia. And like many people who are in that situation, I went to work for the coal industry. At 17 years old, I went to work for the Elk Run coal processing plant in Sylvester, West Virginia. I worked there for about six months as I graduated high school and quickly learned that that's not something I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It's dangerous work, it's difficult work, and it doesn't pay enough.And so did some minimum wage work for a while, Dollar Store, Dairy Queen, that sort of thing. And eventually, I was offered a position as a security guard on a surface mine, and I figured sitting on my butt for 12 hours a day making money, I could handle that and so I did that. I did also for about six months, but within the first couple weeks of me working up there, I felt miserable about it. Sitting up there, watching that machinery work and them tearing down the mountains and knowing that the people who live below that mine site were going through the same stuff I went through when I was a kid. Contaminated water, dust, coal trucks rumbling by your house, trains. I felt bad about putting other people through that, continuing that cycle of exploitation.John FiegeWhen you were a kid, how aware were you of that as a problem versus just your reality that you didn't question?Junior WalkWell, we had well water at my house when I was growing up and they were doing coal slurry injection on the hillside above my family's home. And so coal slurry is a byproduct of coal processing. When coal is mined regardless if it's taken from an underground mine or a surface mine, the first stop for that coal is a processing plant. And that's where it's put through a series of chemical washes to be suitable to burn in a power plant to fit within clean air act regulations. And the byproduct of that is that coal slurry. So that's everything in the coal that they're not allowed to burn and put into the atmosphere as well as all the chemical agents that are used to take those impurities out. And they dispose of that in a few different ways, but one such way is by injecting it into old abandoned underground coal mines. And that's what they were doing right above my family's home. And so our water came out of my tap red for years, and I always knew that had something to do with the coal industry.In addition to that, through my entire elementary school career, I attended Marsh Fork Elementary, which at the time, was situated directly next to a coal processing plant and a coal slurry impoundment, which is the other way that the industry disposes of this coal waste. They put it into these huge earthen dams. So when you think about a dam, you are usually thinking about concrete and steel and that sort of thing, like the Hoover Dam. But when you're talking about a dam as in a slurry impoundment, you're talking about a bunch of dirt and rubble and trees that are dumped into the face of a valley, used to create a giant berm up to the top of the hilltop almost. And that whole holler back in behind there is back filled with liquid waste. And so that was right directly next to my elementary school.John FiegeWow. And that was one of the projects that you all did in terms of relocating that elementary school?Junior WalkIt was, yeah.John FiegeWere you part of that project?Junior WalkYeah. So essentially, while I was a security guard up there, I decided to come and have a conversation with Judy, who'd I'd known ever since I was a little kid, because I went to school with her grandson. And I think she also worked with my grandma at various times at gas stations and stuff. But from there, I started volunteering with Coal River Mountain Watch while I was a security guard. And a few months down the road, I was offered a position on staff. And I started on staff at Coal River Mountain Watch in January of 2010, and that's what I've been doing ever since.John FiegeWell, could each of you also describe the mountains and forests and waterways and biodiversity in Raleigh County and the area around Coal River Mountain?Junior WalkThe topography is large valleys with a bunch of smaller valleys jutting off from it, which are known as hollers. And then each of those little hollers have hollers branching off from it, just going way back into the mountain and up to the tops. And it can feel very isolated here because it takes so long to get to anywhere else. If you think about it, if you're up in the head of a holler that's in a holler, then you've got to travel out two hollers before you even hit the main road. In a lot of places around here, it's like an hour to your closest McDonald's or Walmart or any of that stuff.John FiegeAnd what are some of your memories from childhood of being within that?Junior WalkGoing hunting with my dad and my uncle, my papa. Traveling way back into the woods either in trucks and then later on, four wheelers caught on, and we'd take those. And just being in the forest and being taught how to bring food back out, why it's important for us to take care of these places where you can do those sorts of things.John FiegeRight. Right. Well, as the production of coal has been plummeting in the United States over the last few years, it's easy to think of American coal mining and mountaintop removal as vestiges of the past, but they're not. Can you all describe what mountaintop removal is, what it's like to witness it, and what's going on right now with coal mining in Raleigh County and in the surrounding areas?Vernon HaltomMountaintop removal is still going on. It's still expanding. They don't stop. There are new permits. The Turkey Foot permit on, it's well over a thousand acres, I want to say 1700 acres, on Coal River Mountain was approved last year. The valley fill permits for that will bury over three miles of streams, and that's just part of the overall 12 square mile complex on Coal River Mountain that includes the 8 billion gallon Brushy Fork sludge dam. So the myth that it's over is just that, a myth. And that's one of the biggest obstacles to our work because it's hard to get somebody to listen about your cause if they think that your cause is over.And our backyard is Cherry Pond Mountain, the Twilight complex there is 12 square miles and the coal company operating there, they have 81 civil penalty delinquency letters since December 14th. And they're still allowed to operate, they're still getting permits renewed.John FiegeYeah, I think that's one of the dirty secrets of our environmental regulations in this country is, industry is constantly violating those regulations and often being even fined for it, if not warned about it, but they keep operating. The money they're making is so much greater than the costs of dealing with those petty violations.Vernon HaltomOne of the permits that was recently renewed, it was actually signed on April 1st, April Fool's Day, the day after the company received a civil penalty delinquency letter. And the same company also had received a show cause notice just before that. It was something that we had requested because they had so many violations within the previous year. But the corrective action is what's called a consent order, where the company agrees to comply with the regulations and the laws, but there's really no teeth involved. They tell them they have to have three consecutive days of no coal removal and they're just going to schedule that in it. It's not going to be punitive.John FiegeAnd then there are no consequences. And the threat is, we might be mad at you.Vernon HaltomNo consequences. Sometimes the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will wag their finger. On rare occasions, they will slap a wrist, but usually it's just a scowl.John FiegeRight. And if you compare it to the daily profits, it's just nothing.Vernon HaltomAnd one thing that I think it's important too, I always say that mountaintop removal is the cradle of the climate crisis. So many people think that this is just a local problem, but it's not just a local problem. The coal that's extracted from the mountains becomes CO2 and contributes to global heating. The trees, the forests that are destroyed, and it's not just the trees, it's everything in the forest, is demolished. So there's no longer a carbon sink there and the blasting dust that goes into the communities, and Junior has a video, a drone video of a blasting cloud coming from Coal River Mountain drifting down through the communities of McDowell Branch and Workman Creek at least two miles. And that is deadly. Those health consequences that have killed so many of our friends continue unabated.West Virginia DEP will not issue a violation for fugitive dust. They just never do. That is what the main culprit in over 30 health studies now that have been done. It's increasingly apparent that breathing this ultra fine silica that's like very, very fine glass that goes right through your cell membranes is not good for you. It causes cancer and heart disease and birth defects. We've lost Judy Bonds for the cancer. We've lost Joanne Webb to cancer. We've lost Larry Gibson to heart disease. We lost Chuck Nelson to heart disease. We lost Carol Judy to cancer. We lost Vicki Terry to cancer.John FiegeAnd Junior, can you talk about, having grown up in those forests and on those rivers, what is it like for you on an emotional and a visceral level to witness the mountaintop removal and these other side effects of it?Junior WalkWe've lost a lot of friends in the course of fighting against this stuff. And seeing some of these places that I've grown up digging ginseng and hunting and riding four wheelers and hiking, seeing some of these places go from these lush, almost tropical type of forests up on top of these mountains where you're never going to run into another human being, into just a bare rock face, just a vast moonscape. It's like losing a friend.John FiegeYeah. I think one thing that's difficult for a lot of Americans to recognize is that close connection to the land, because so many people in our country have lost that close connection to the land.Junior WalkCan you blame them? Look at the land that they're given. You know what I mean? Most people looks out their window and they see a big old four-lane with stop lights and billboards and gas station signs and all that mess. And it's hard to feel a connection to that. I'm lucky for where I come up at.John FiegeLucky on the one hand, and then feeling the pain of watching it be destroyed on the other. And can you all catalog for me the impacts on ecosystems, on water and air quality, on flood risk, on human health, of mountaintop removal and other coal production in that area?Vernon HaltomWhen I first moved to West Virginia in 2001, the place was flooding. Some of the communities lost several homes, and most of that was in areas near mountaintop removal. Now, there are more valley fills and more mountaintop removal coming so the flood impacts is one of the first things that propelled the formation of Coal River Mountain Watch. So many people concerned about their homes from flooding in 1998 that killed two people in Artie, West Virginia. So that's one of the first concerns. Then you have the blasting, which emits the ultra fine silica dust and other pollutants as well into the lungs of children and elderly and everybody in between in the communities. And blasting also cracks foundations, cracks walls.If you're prone to PTSD and hear these massive explosions every day, that's not helpful for your mental health. The health impacts from mountaintop removal are deadly, so there's that. There's water pollution. The valley fills that are created continue to pollute the water for decades. We don't know yet how long, because the earliest valley fills are still polluting after 30 years or so.John FiegeCan you describe what a valley fill is and how it's done and why it's done?Vernon HaltomOkay, thank you. Because a lot of people get this wrong. So when you take the top off a mountain, you use a lot of explosives and you break the rock up and then you bulldoze it out of the way to get to the coal. Well, that rock and rubble has to go somewhere. So what the coal companies do is they dump it into the creeks and streams and hollows that are the natural contours of the mountains. They compress it, they pack it down. And some of them are miles long, and the miles of streams, over 2000 miles of streams have been impacted by valley fills.John FiegeCovered up, and they're gone?Vernon HaltomThey're covered and they're gone. They're buried. They're completely buried. They're hundreds of feet under this rubble. And so that contributes to the flooding, but you also have that contributing to pollution in the water because all this rock that was segregated from the rain and the sun and the wind for millions of millions of years is now broken up into smaller chunks. If you imagine grinding your coffee and putting it in a basket to make coffee, that's a similar process. So the rain leeches through that and the various minerals and pollutants that were locked up in the rock for all those millennia are now seeping back into the streams. And we don't know how long that will last, but considering the vast scale of these, it'll be forever. You have sediment ponds at the toe of these valley fills where the treatment is done, and that has to be done forever.We've seen coal companies go bankrupt or those obligations not being taken care of, otherwise. The coal companies aren't going to be there forever. When they stop doing that, it's still going to be polluting the streams. So we've lost a large fraction of the species of fish in a lot of the streams and a large fraction of the numbers of fish too, at least a third. So that is a huge impact.John FiegeThe forest itself in the valley is covered in this rubble as well, right?Vernon HaltomIt is.John FiegeSo you have a functioning forest ecosystem in addition to the stream ecosystem that are both completely covered with dirt and destroyed.Vernon HaltomAnd they're all interrelated. The leaves that fall from the trees are processed by the bugs in the streams, and those bugs feed the fish and some of the fish and bugs are eaten by birds. And it's a whole system of overlapping cycles that is part of the beauty of the Appalachian forests.John FiegeWell, and the rest of the country often views folks in West Virginia, and especially folks from coal mining towns and coal mining families as being diehard coal supporters and extremely anti-environmental. And the industries and politicians who profit tremendously from coal production, love to use the West Virginia coal miner as this symbol of American freedom and hard work and that type of thing. The view from the ground is always much more complicated. Can you all talk a bit about the communities in Raleigh County and the views of folks there toward coal mining and mountaintop removal and these coal companies, like Massey Energy, that profits so handsomely from this exploitation and destruction?Vernon HaltomReally quick, just let me point out part of the myth that everybody is for mountaintop removal. Consistently the polls and surveys show that people in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia oppose mountaintop removal two to one. That's not insignificant. And the idea that everybody in West Virginia works for the coal industry is also a myth. Less than 3% of West Virginia's workforce works for the coal industry. Less than half of 1% works in mountaintop removal. Some of that's clustered in specific places. There are a lot more teachers than there are coal miners in West Virginia.Junior WalkThings are always a lot more complicated than they initially seem from the national headlines, at least in most cases. And definitely, there isn't like a homogenous view that everybody in southern West Virginia shares about the coal industry. Opinions and political beliefs and everything else is just as diverse down in here as they are anywhere else. Sure, you've got people who are die hard coal industry supporters that whether they work in the industry or somebody in their family does or not, they're still going to believe whatever the right wing news media shoves down their throat about the coal industry and all that. But then you also have a lot of people who don't feel that way about it.The vast majority of people around here are apathetic about the coal industry because whether that apathy stems from just not thinking about it that much, or whether that apathy stems from a defeatist attitude of, oh, the coal industry, that's the people who have the money and the power and they're going to do whatever they want. That's probably different on a person by person basis. But then you also do have a segment of the population here who are vehemently against stripping the land. Even if they think that the economic benefits of the coal industry and of the past underground mining and stuff like that have been worth it, they'll still draw the line at mountaintop removal or surface mining.John FiegeSo one thing I see over and over again and all across the country, different industries, is this argument that industry tries to make, that the people in the communities where these polluting and destructive activities happen, they want that to go on. They want those jobs, they want the economic activity, they're supportive. The people who are against it are outside agitators or urban environmentalists or professional activists. All these terms you hear thrown around. And I was just wondering if you all could talk about that a little bit and this image that industry often tries to paint of the division between people from the community who are supportive and people from outside the community who are in opposition.Junior WalkFor sure. And I'll say that around here, the vast majority of the good paying coal mining jobs do not go to people who live directly around those coal mines. These people drive in an hour down into here to work, and when they get done working, they get to go back home and turn on their tap water and it comes out clean. They get to send their kids to school somewhere that ain't in danger from being too close to coal operations. They get to drive on roads in their little cul-de-sacs and middle class subdivisions and not have to be worried about getting flattened like a pancake by a coal truck.Those are the people who benefit from the coal industry. It ain't the people who lives in the trailer park right below the big strip mine who are now dealing with a bunch of runoff water and a bunch of dust and everything else.John FiegeAnd those micro differences of different communities is completely lost in the national conversation about these things, I think.Junior WalkAbsolutely.Vernon HaltomOne of the things in West Virginia is you have so much of the industry propaganda infiltrating the schools, even on Earth Day, Alpha Metallurgical Resources hosted kids from Clear Fork Elementary School onto their mountaintop removal site. They had big banners, their trucks. All that's really fun and cool if you're a kid, but Clear Fork Elementary is also within a mile of three mountaintop removal sites and a fourth one if Alpha gets their permit for that one. So there's that support, sometimes locally, but I think the people who are often opposed to it are intimidated, either intimidated by violence or intimidated by opinions of somebody's cousin's nephew's brother-in-law who happens to work for the industry.John FiegeAnd coal supporters often claim that shutting down coal production will destroy communities that grew up around coal and the economies that support them. What do you all make of those claims?Junior WalkI think if the coal industry brought prosperity and economic vitality for southern West Virginia, we wouldn't be some of the poorest counties in the entire nation. And I think that's the only argument that needs to be made about that.John FiegeRight. Well, y'all have mentioned Judy Bonds already, but she's such a big figure. She's the founder and director of Coal River Mountain Watch. She won the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize. Her unofficial title is The Godmother of the Anti Mountaintop Removal Movement. I know you both knew her and worked with her. Can you tell me a little bit more about her and just her personality and what role she played in bringing these issues to the national stage?Vernon HaltomI first met Judy in 2004. I first heard her voice on the radio in 2003 after she won the Goldman Environmental Prize. She was not tall. What she lacked in stature, she made up with in heart and passion. She was brave. There's a story of her chasing a bear off because it was intimidating her dog. She used her grandson's track shoes to throw at the bear. She was from a coal mining family. I was one of the people who helped carry Judy's casket to her grave in her backyard. She was the last person out of Marfork Hollow in the community of Packsville, that used to be there before the coal industry made it unbearable to live there.She cared deeply about her family. That's what got her into activism, seeing her grandson standing in a stream holding dead fish. I traveled some with Judy. Driving her car, you had to remove the pillow and scoot the seat back so that you could actually get behind the steering wheel. She loved her community, she cared about her community, even the people that wished her ill. And one of my sons middle names is Jude, and that's for Judy. She had such a huge impact on thousands and thousands of people that her shoes were hard to fill and nobody's tried to fill them and nobody can. But her loss from cancer from breathing mountaintop removal dust for all those years is a huge loss.Junior WalkI was real lucky to know her when I was a kid. My mom actually volunteered with Coal River Mountain Watch in 1998 right after everything was started up. She didn't do it for very long or anything, but I can remember going in there as a kid and they had big pieces of butcher block paper, essentially, on a easel, and she'd let me draw on them and stuff. And it's one of the first places I ever messed with a computer at, was at the old Coal River Mountain Watch office there. The one story that really sticks in my mind about Judy and me is, so when I was about eight years old, this is around '98, there was a community meeting at the old Pettus School, which doesn't exist anymore. Now, it's a parking lot for coal mines. I went there, my mom brought me there when I was a little kid, and I remember standing up and asking Judy if they want to blow up the mountains, why don't we all just hold hands around the mountains and they can't? I was a little kid.And then years later, you fast forward and I started working for Coal River Mountain Watch and all that. And there's this one point in time Judy looks at me and she said, "Junior, do you know you're the first person to ever bring up direct action to me?" Referencing all the way back to that. And that ain't something I talk about an awful lot because that's kinda unbelievable. When I first started working for Mountain Watch and stuff, the actions and all that had been going on for quite a few years-John FiegeReally?Junior Walk... from when I was a teenager and stuff. And I wasn't involved in any of that, so it's crazy to think.John FiegeWow, that's amazing. And Judy's known for doing this non-violent direct action. And at this point, I know you all are doing a lot of monitoring work on foot with GPS and with small planes and drones. Can you talk about the various strategies that Coal River Mountain Watch uses and how they relate to the work the organization has done historically?Junior WalkYeah, you pretty well hit the nail on the head there as far as our current strategy, which is the monitoring work, either going up in flights with one of our partner organizations, South Wings, in small aircraft to monitor these mines or with drones or on foot and just hiking around in the mountains and trying not to get seen by security guards. And yeah, I'd say over the years, Coal River Mountain Watch has employed a lot of different tactics, and we've had a lot of different campaigns to the ends of trying to be a nemesis to the coal industry. That's always been our main goal is to be as much of a pain to the coal industry as humanly possible. And so whatever projects we can figure out to work on to meet that goal, that's what we do.And over the years, we've done everything from lobbying in the state capital in Charleston, in Washington, DC, gathering scientific data from lawsuits, traveling around and telling the story of how coal mining has affected our community at various universities or events and things like that, to doing direct action work, getting arrested, doing tree sits and blockades and things of that nature.John FiegeAnd what has changed? I know you were doing more direct action before. What has changed? Has the political environment changed? Do you feel like other tactics are more successful now? What's the thinking there about the shifts in emphasis?Vernon HaltomA lot of the shift in emphasis is the myth that the coal industry is over. In 2015, it was in pretty much every major media outlet that King Coal was dead when Alpha Natural Resources, at the time, requested bankruptcy relief. That was taken as a sign that it was over. And we had allies who said it was essentially over. That's the quotation from their fundraising letter. And some of the minor victories, I call them minor victories, in lawsuits were over-hyped, I think. So a lot of the energy from direct action campaigns went to other related issues, pipelines, fracking and things like that.John FiegeAnd Junior, you went to Marsh Fork Elementary School. What was it like, one, to be there? What did you notice about going to school there? And then secondly, what was it like to then witness this fight as you got older and became an adult and then started working with Coal River Mountain Watch that was doing all this work with Judy around relocation?Junior WalkYeah. So I went to Marsh Fork Elementary from kindergarten through sixth grade, and that would've been from 95 until 2001. And yeah, I can remember dust in the playground, just like when you'd be let out for recess, if you was the first one over to the slides and stuff, there'd be a layer of dust just laying on everything.John FiegeAnd that was silica dust?Junior WalkIt was coal dust.John FiegeIt was coal dust.Junior WalkFrom the processing plant.John FiegeBut the ultra fine silica, that would be more in the air then-Junior WalkIt would be. And that's more from-John FiegeOh, that's from the mountaintop removal.Junior WalkBlasting. Yeah, exactly. Which there is a mountaintop removal site directly behind the processing plant beside the old school, but it wasn't active yet at the time I went there.John FiegeGotcha. So this was straight coal dust?Junior WalkYeah, it was just coal dust. So it got worse after I left, essentially. And I do remember the first silo that they built there, right directly behind the school. It's the only one that they actually built, but it was there when I was a kid, and I can remember the noise of them loading train cars. So imagine a train pulling through a tunnel in the bottom of a massive silo and then just a bunch of coal dropping into each one of those cars every few seconds. It was difficult to concentrate on anything.John FiegeWell, I'm sure that Joe Manchin's kids had to deal with the same stuff in their school-Junior WalkOh yeah.John FiegeDon't you think?Junior WalkGuarantee you that. Is that his daughter's the one that hiked up the price of EpiPens a while back? Yeah, no, I bet she's breathed all kind of coal dust in her life, huh? So from the time I got out of elementary school until I graduated high school, there was two kids that I went to elementary school with that had had cancer by the time we graduated high school, and one of them passed away. And I've had other people that I went to elementary school with who since then until now have passed away. I don't even know how many, but more than a couple. There was a girl that was in my grade that just died, I think last year-John FiegeWhoa.Junior Walk... from cancer. And I solidly blame the coal operations that we were going to school next to.John FiegeWow. And what's it like to see the school moved later and then to begin working for the organization that was responsible for that?Junior WalkTo know that the kids that would be going to school there now have a safe, clean school that they can go to just a few miles up the road from that one. It's amazing. That, to me, even though I was only involved a little bit right at the very end, that's still one of the proudest things I've ever been involved in in my life.John FiegeWell, and just makes it so much more powerful having gone to that school yourself. That's really an incredible story.Vernon HaltomYeah, I guess the sad thing is the new school is two miles from the Eagle 2 mountaintop removal permit. So when they get around to that portion of it, there's kids going to be endangered from that too, if the wind's blowing from the correct direction.John FiegeRight. And I think when people think of coal mining, they think of that, you dig a tunnel in the mountain and you go down there and the coal is there and you knock it off and you put it in rail cars and you send it out. Can you talk just a bit more about why they're doing this mountaintop removal? I know you mentioned it's cheap, but why is it cheap and why are they having to go for these thin sections of coal in the mountain now?Vernon HaltomIt's cheaper because it takes fewer people. If you go and watch a mountaintop removal site, you may see just a handful of people. There will be a guy driving that truck, a guy driving that truck, a guy driving that bulldozer, a guy driving that bulldozer, a security guy and a few people operating the explosives. So the energy and work that used to be done by miners is now done by explosives. And the explosive equivalent of 20 Tomahawk missiles is pretty substantial even though the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection calls that a small blast. It does a lot of damage and it breaks up the rock, and then you just scoop it up, push it down the valley, or push it onto another section of the mountaintop removal site and then scoop up the coal. It's fast and efficient. It's the low hanging fruit of getting to the coal.And if they want to come back later, they just spray some of those grass seed and fertilizer over it and call it good until they want to come back to it. The companies get a variance. They have all these variances, all these regulations and laws that they get the approval to violate, essentially, and they're not able to comply with the regulations. They can't even maintain a ditch. Right now they have a very bad open violation on Coal River Mountain because their ditch failed. The ditch that's supposed to catch the runoff and the sediment, and it's just too steep. And the laws of physics still apply in West Virginia regardless of what the coal industry and the DEP think.John FiegeAnd what's the danger of company abandonment and bankruptcies and all of that, thinking about these issues?Vernon HaltomA lot of the companies had what was called self-bonding, where they themselves guaranteed the money to fix up any reclamation if they were to abandon it. And that's not a good idea. And there are also other companies, insurance companies or what have you, that a company can get their reclamation bond through. But so much of mountaintop removal is subject to failure with too many bankruptcies or too many companies abandoning their obligations, that there is a real potential that the actual cleanup costs could fall on the taxpayer. And frankly, West Virginia taxpayers can't afford it. The state budget already gives more to the coal industry than they get from it.John FiegeWell, in the context of all this, Judy Bonds had to deal with continual threats of violence toward her, as have so many other people who've worked to stop mountaintop removal, like Larry Gibson, well-known activist who was working right near there. How much do you still encounter violence or threats of violence in this work?Junior WalkI'll say, when I first come on staff at Coal River Mountain Watch in 2010, before Judy would start her car, she'd have me go around and look at the underside of it with a mirror to make sure that there wasn't nothing going to surprise her when she started her car. And I think that since then, between the coal industry just generally not employing as many people as they did in 2010, as well as the shift of attitude of a lot of the local people after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion and the drop off of attention from the national news media about surface mining here in West Virginia as an issue. Also, something that's went away with all that has been a lot of the real visceral threats of violence and stuff from the other side, from the coal industry supporters. And that's not to say that it don't still happen, because it most certainly does. And I'm real careful anytime I leave the house just to remember that there are people around here that would rather see me dead. But in recent years, it hasn't been as bad as what it was at the height of the resistance to surface mining here.John FiegeAnd how about you, Vernon? What have you seen?Vernon HaltomBack in 2009, in June of 2009 when we had the big rally at Marsh Fork Elementary School and the protest and the march down to the preparation plant, pretty much everybody had their lives threatened then. My life was threatened, my wife's life was threatened. Judy Bonds was sucker punched. It leaves an impression that regardless of where you are, am I safe here? When is it coming? You're always looking over your shoulder. And some people get treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Well, when that trauma and that stress is ongoing, there's that concern, that anxiety, that it could happen. And there's also the concern and anxiety for ongoing mountaintop removal. It's a violent process. It kills people.John FiegeWell, what is y'all's vision of what a future Raleigh County or a future West Virginia could look like and how the communities there could find themselves in a much better place than what they have to endure currently?Junior WalkI do not care. It's not my problem what the future is going to look like around here. It's not my problem how a coal miner is going to make their truck payment that they went out and financed some ridiculous big old truck. You know what I mean? That's not my responsibility to come up with what a future's going to look like here. Just because I'm the one that's standing here saying that what's going on now is a problem and it needs to stop, that don't put the burden on my shoulders to tell these people what they're going to do next.John FiegeAnd Junior, is there a world that you want to live in there? For example, do you imagine, hope for, dream of a world without the coal industry operating? Or do you have a vision, not to speak for everybody there or the coal miners or anything like that, but for yourself? What would you like to see there that would be better for you?Junior WalkThe only thing I could see to make this area a better and more livable place is to do away with the coal industry, to stop them from operating completely like 10 years ago, and we haven't done that. They still get to do what they want, and it still makes this place miserable to live for most people or for a whole lot of people. And yeah, I would love to see what this area would look like without the exploitation of the coal industry. I'm sure we would be just fine. The vast majority of the people that live in these communities around here are all retired or disabled. The coal industry dissolving overnight isn't going to affect them. It's going to affect the people, like I said, driving in an hour every day. And whatever happens to them and their cul-de-sac and gated communities, I could care less.John FiegeRight. And why have you stayed?Junior WalkWell, I've stayed here because this is where my family is. Like I was talking about, I've traveled all over the country. I've been to almost every single one of the lower 48, and I've never found anywhere else that I'd rather live. This is a beautiful place. I'm lucky to be from here.John FiegeWhat keeps you going through this difficult work?Junior WalkWell, for me, personally, I'll say that I still feel like I owe it to the people who took me under their wings when I was first starting out in this stuff. Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson, Chuck Nelson, Sid Moye. There's many people that really put a lot of faith into me and put a lot of effort into molding me into who I am today. And I'll be eternally grateful for that. And I still owe it to them and to their memories to keep doing this work until it's done, until there is no more coal industry in southern West Virginia, because that's what they asked of me. And so that's what I'm going to keep doing.And then on top of all that, you can't live around here and see the way that people are exploited and the things they're expected to live through and live with and be okay with and not stand up and say something about it. If you can sit there on your hands and keep your mouth shut just to protect your paycheck from seeing some of the things I've seen, then you're not a good person, and I try to be a good person.Vernon HaltomThe persistence, I think, is something that Coal River Mountain Watch is known for since we started so long ago. We tend to be stubborn and we tend to be bulldogs in the sense of hanging on and sticking to it. I think our passion is seeing it through and not walking away from it. And that's something we do for the love of friends and family that aren't able maybe to take that stand or who would like to, but for whatever reason are intimidated by the threats of violence. But when you have family members who have died from it and you see it, or you stand in it, or you breathe it, or you feel the dust in your teeth, it's gritty. You become a part of it and it's more infused into you. And it's very much a battle, not just for the community, but for the sake of the planet. What happens in West Virginia affects people in the low-lying islands in the Pacific. It affects people impacted by hurricanes.John FiegeAnd you hinted at this idea earlier of, if we can't stop mountaintop removal, what hope do we have of dealing with these big global issues of climate change? It feels like such low hanging fruit and so obvious that if you're going to start somewhere, let's start with that.Vernon HaltomExactly. There's no better low hanging fruit in the climate crisis battle than mountaintop removal.John FiegeNot only do we not need coal anymore, but we don't need to destroy mountains to get to it.Vernon HaltomWe don't need to destroy mountains and kill people to profit a few coal barons who control the state legislatures and much of the government itself. That wealth has power, and the people who breathe air and drink water have very little power in comparison. But eventually, there are more of us than there are of them, and we'll eventually outlast them. We've gone through how many iterations of Alpha Natural Resources, Alpha Metallurgical Resources, and whatever company name they're going to pick next year, that we'll eventually wait them out.John FiegeWell, what do you all hope that listeners can take from this conversation and your stories, and how can they get involved and support some of the work that you're doing at Coal River Mountain Watch?Junior WalkIf there's some big problem in your community that you feel passionate about, do something about it. First and foremost, do whatever you can, devote your life to it. But don't just let injustice stand because when you're quiet about it, everybody else is going to be too. It only takes one person to stand up and raise hell about it for other people to get brave. And then the second part that I'd like for people to take away from this is that these issues that we deal with down here in southern West Virginia related to the coal industry, they are just one issue in a sea of similar problems that goes on around this nation and around the world when poor people get exploited by wealthy people. And that's really the root issue that we're dealing with here, is the exploitation of this land and the people who live on it by wealthy interests that live elsewhere.And this issue here, it's not the capitalist system that we live under gone wrong by any means. It's the capitalist system that we live under going directly 100% according to plan. This is their plan. We live on a planet of only a set amount of resources. And the capitalist system that we live in is based upon this concept of exponential growth of more and more and more and more, consume, consume, consume, consume. And those two facts are going to eventually come to a head. Both of those can't coexist, and that's what they're trying to make happen right now, globally. And that's just not how that works.Vernon HaltomI'd like to echo what Junior said about tackling the challenges in your own backyard. There's something everywhere that people can be plugged into and have that local voice. If somebody wants to help, if they want to help our organization specifically, it's CRMW.net. We're always underfunded. There's more work to do than we have time to do.John FiegeJunior, one more thing I wanted to ask you. Could you talk a little bit more about the drone work you've been doing and more about what it is you're filming and what impacts either you're hoping it's going to have or that you actually seen it have already?Junior WalkFor sure. So I've been using drones to film and document these mine sites since about 2016. And generally, the idea is you fly the drone, you find something that they shouldn't be doing or that's messed up on their site that they're going to have to fix. You take that information to the DEP, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, and then you make them make the coal company fix whatever it is that you found. And so generally, the fines and stuff that they get are just a slap on the wrist. They're factored into the cost of doing business. But what really hurts them is when we find stuff that they then have to take workers and equipment away from actively mining coal to then go to a different section of the site and repair, and that's what really hurts them economically. And in our hope, that is what will make it less economically feasible for them to keep their operations open.John FiegeGreat. And have you seen results from that?Junior WalkTo some extent, for sure. We've definitely had to force, or we've been able to force coal companies to have to go back to sections of their site that they're pretty far away from and fix crumbling high walls or dig stuff out of a sediment ditch. And I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that, yeah, we've been able to cost them a pretty penny.John FiegeWell, Vernon, Junior, thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for all this amazingly difficult, but important and vital work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for keeping at it.Vernon HaltomThank you, John, for providing us a platform to tell the story and let people know.Junior WalkYeah, I appreciate you. It was great talking to you.---OutroJohn FiegeThank you so much to Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk. Go to our website at chrysalispodcast.org where you can find out more about Coal River Mountain Watch and the legacy of Judy Bonds. Plus, see some of Junior's drone footage of recent mountaintop removal operations.This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Brodie Mutschler and Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Juan Garcia. If you enjoyed my conversation with Vernon and Junior, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at chrysalispodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

Lead to Succeed: Conversations with U.P. Business Leaders is an interview series focused on leadership in the Upper Peninsula. Chuck Nelson, CEO of Dickinson County Healthcare System in Iron Mountain, shares insights on how DCH has continued to lead the community through the pandemic, opportunities for growth and talent attraction in the U.P., and how the U.P. benefits when business leaders work together.For more information on Dickinson County Healthcare System, visit dchs.org.Learn more about InvestUP at https://www.investupmi.com. Connect with us on social media at https://www.linkedin.com/company/invest-up-mi/.

Join Marcus Atkinson and his guest, Chuck Nelson as they discuss his new appointment as Erie City Council President on this episode of NEXT.

We kept the focus right on the City of Erie Tuesday, as we welcomed Erie City Councilman Chuck Nelson back for a deep dive on the city budget. We talked stormwater fees, parking tickets and the looming deficit.

On our 2-22-22 episode we welcomed TWO newly-elected city council members: Chuck Nelson, and Jasmine Flores. Our extensive in-studio conversation centered around how their perspectives on their new leadership roles in Erie, relationships on Council and with the Executive Branch, and solutions for some of Erie's biggest problems.

Join NEXT with Marcus Atkinson and his guests; Chuck Nelson, City Councilman Elect, Jezree Friend, Sharp Iron Strategies, and Ashlyn Kelly, YEP Civic Engagement Chair as they discuss the local political campaign results in Erie, PA.

Lead to Succeed is a monthly interview series focused on Leadership in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Hosted by Steve Arwood, former director of the MEDC, this episode welcomes Chuck Nelson, President and CEO at Dickinson County Healthcare in Iron Mountain, Mich.This series is presented by InvestUP, the leading economic organization for the Upper Peninsula. For more information, visit www.InvestUPmi.com.

Appalachia is a region with a rich and complicated political history that is often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in other parts of the country. In a special “Marc Steiner Show” first, Marc and TRNN audio engineer Stephen Frank take listeners on a narrative journey through the politics and economics of Appalachia today. Guests in this segment include Marie Gunoe, director of the Mother Jones Community Foundation and longtime environmental activist and community organizer in West Virginia fighting to protect communities and the environment from the harmful effects of mountaintop removal mining; Chuck Nelson, a retired fourth-generation coal miner, member of the United Mine Workers of America, and board adviser and volunteer at the Mother Jones Community Foundation; and Hy Thurman, author of Revolutionary Hillbilly and one of the founding members of the Young Patriots and the first Rainbow Coalition.Then, in our second segment, Marc talks with Erica Payne, president and founder of the group Patriotic Millionaires, and Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires, about their new book, "Tax the Rich!: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer," and about the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways the U.S. tax code is a racket designed to benefit the rich.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Production/Postproduction: Stephen Frank

Appalachia is a region with a rich and complicated political history that is often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in other parts of the country. In a special “Marc Steiner Show” first, Marc and TRNN audio engineer Stephen Frank take listeners on a narrative journey through the politics and economics of Appalachia today. Guests in this segment include Marie Gunoe, director of the Mother Jones Community Foundation and longtime environmental activist and community organizer in West Virginia fighting to protect communities and the environment from the harmful effects of mountaintop removal mining; Chuck Nelson, a retired fourth-generation coal miner, member of the United Mine Workers of America, and board adviser and volunteer at the Mother Jones Community Foundation; and Hy Thurman, author of Revolutionary Hillbilly and one of the founding members of the Young Patriots and the first Rainbow Coalition.Then, in our second segment, Marc talks with Erica Payne, president and founder of the group Patriotic Millionaires, and Morris Pearl, chair of Patriotic Millionaires, about their new book, "Tax the Rich!: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer," and about the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways the U.S. tax code is a racket designed to benefit the rich.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Production/Postproduction: Stephen Frank

Join NEXT with Marcus Atkinson and his guests as they talk about their platform for the 2021 City of Erie Council election for the upcoming election cycle. Today we are joined by Chuck Nelson, Elspeth Koehle, Liz Allen, Jasmine Flores, Marcus Yuille, and Greg Brown, all running for the 2021 city council race for the City of Erie. Note: all the candidates for the 2021 City of Erie Council race were contacted and only the ones included in this episode returned the request to be on the show.

Bob Rondeau and Chuck Nelson, the long-time radio broadcasting pairing for UW football, join Puck and Slickhawk for our Dynamic Duos segment to reflect on their tenure together with the Huskies.

Bob Rondeau and Chuck Nelson, the long-time radio broadcasting pairing for UW football, join Puck and Slickhawk for our Dynamic Duos segment to reflect on their tenure together with the Huskies.

Al Scates Part 2.Al discusses: What it was like coaching volleyball at UCLA during the early years in the late 60's on a "shoe-string" budget, including using hand me down uniforms from the UCLA basketball team courtesy of Coach Wooden, his time competing on the USA men's indoor National team and Hollywood Y in the early 60's leading up to the '64 Olympics, including the travesty of Harry Wilson's gross incompetence as a coach, and SHADY political choices of players selected for the team done behind closed doors, which left SEVERAL of our BEST players off team, including Al Scates, Rolf Engen, Jack Henn, Walt Schiller, and OUR BEST player, Gene Selznick ( who had the foresight to recognize the USA needed to play by the international rules with 3 blockers, while WILSON insisted on playing by the OLD rules with 4 blockers, which would come back to haunt them) , in favor of lesser talented players that Wilson took to appease his fellow political co-conspirators, how the experience of being left off that OLYMPIC team he DESERVED to be on in favor of Chuck Nelson, led him to throw his heart and soul into coaching and become the greatest collegiate men's volleyball coach EVER, his coaching philosophy during his 50 year career at UCLA that led to 2 USVBA Collegiate Championships before volleyball was a NCAA sport, and an additional 19 NCAA Championships thereafter, his infamous winner/loser Blue Curtain at UCLA, that rewarded the best players playing time on the first team, regardless of their pedigree, and an awesome story about how Sinjin Smith wasn't performing the way he was capable of on the first team, so Al sent him behind the blue curtain to learn to work harder under the tutelage of Mike Stormin' Normand, which ultimately made Sinjin the HARDEST working player he ever had and how it rubbed off on Karch Kiraly when he arrived a few years later, some great USVBA Nationals stories he recalls, including a time seeing Lyle " Spike" Boarts run through the hotel lobby NAKED :), and how the '64 Olympic Men's Indoor team in Tokyo could have done SO much better had they LISTENED to our best player and visionary Gene Selznick and incorporated the international rules into their game plan....Support the show (https://godstoghosts.com/donate/)

"Husky Classics" in 60 brings you a condensed radio replay of a classic Washington Huskies game. Today's episode, presented by Audi, features the 2001 Rose Bowl game, as 4th-ranked Washington battled No. 14 Purdue. Bob Rondeau, Chuck Nelson and Bill Swartz had the call from Pasadena, California on January 1, 2001.

Chris discusses why the state and nation is taking such unprecedented action regarding COVID-19 and is joined by former NH Attorney General Tom Rath, Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce President Tim Sink, GOP Political Analyst Mike Dennehy, Paradigm Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning owner Steve Labbe and P&N Automotive owner Chuck Nelson.

On Thursday, the show came back to the ongoing conservation about the Erie County Community College. Joel invited two Erie citizens who are passionate about our community but have very different perspectives on this topic. What resulted was a civil and informed debate with Charles Nelson, a proponent of the Community College, and Jon Whaley, who is opposed to the stand-alone institution.

The first installment of "Purple Friday" will include a Friday Flashback to 2009. The Huskies football team shocks 3rd-ranked USC 16-13 on a last-minute field goal on September 19, 2009 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. Bob Rondeau, Chuck Nelson and Elise Woodward had the call on the Washington ISP Sports Network.

Another substantive, uplifting and challenging conversation Friday as we brought on church leaders to talk about the state of our faith communities. Joel Natalie interviewed Bishop Lawrence Persico, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Erie in a wide-ranging conversation about protecting and reaching out to the 1,000's of Catholics in the geographically-largest diocese in Pennsylvania. Then Pastor Nichole Schreiber of Erie First Assembly of God, and Pastor Chuck Nelson or The Cross-Erie spoke about meeting the physical and spiritual needs of those in their congregations and in the community.

In this episode we talk with Chuck Nelson, the Executive Director of The Judd Leighton Foundation. Chuck was born in Plymouth, Indiana, but soon moved to South Bend, first living on the West Side and later moving to a hot just South of Notre Dame. Our conversation centers around his current interest in economic development and entrepreneurship, Notre Dame’s relationship with the city, and memories about South Bend’s booming past that affect the way he thinks about the city today.

Listen to this week's message from the series Playlist from special guest, Chuck Nelson.

Chuck Nelson, Guest Preacher

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson talk about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Forza Motorsport 3 and Borderlands.

Back from summer vacation, Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson review Wolfenstein and Guitar Hero 5.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson look at what gamers can expect from this year's E3 event before shutting down the studio for the summer.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson talk about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel and the upcoming Columbus Ohio Retro Gaming Society event.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson talk about the glut of new Guitar Hero games headed for the market.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson talk about Demigod.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson review Empire: Total War, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection and Ready 2 Rumble.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson talk about the new Nintendo DSi, a couple DS games and the death of D&D co-creator Dave Arneson.

Shawn Sines and Chuck Nelson recap COSI's Guitar Hero tournament and talk about Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Many thanks to the Open Journal program of kpft.org as Houston R.A.N. presents "The War on Appalachia" on 90.1fm Houston and 89.5fm Galveston or kpft.org on the world wide web on July 21st, 2008. Learn a little from guest speakers Ed Wiley of Pennies of Promise and Chuck Nelson and Maria Gunnoe of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition We will be talking about the hidden war on the people and mountains of Appalachia.

Many thanks to the Open Journal program of kpft.org as Houston R.A.N. presents "The War on Appalachia" on 90.1fm Houston and 89.5fm Galveston or kpft.org on the world wide web on July 21st, 2008. Learn a little from guest speakers Ed Wiley of Pennies of Promise and Chuck Nelson and Maria Gunnoe of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition We will be talking about the hidden war on the people and mountains of Appalachia.