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Eighth Annual Gathering:
Mountain Women Gather to Celebrate, Create, and Become "Water Watchers" Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN June 18-20, 2009  Joyful
singing and dancing, tearful stories of struggle, and empowering
support and friendship, fueled the spirit of this 8th biannual
gathering. Women learned about themselves, their home places, the
lives of women in urban neighborhoods and in war-ravaged Afghanistan
through stories of water. Local women from the Scott and Lee County,
VA, and Clairfield, TN, home circles gave a human face to the
destruction of mountain-top removal mining. Tika Gurung, an aid and
development worker visiting from her base in Kabul, the Himalayan
mountains, shared photos and stories of women in that city to which our
nation is so tumultuously linked. Seventy
women from several Appalachian states (VA, TN, KY, WV, GA) along with
friends from St. Louis, Missouri, Brooklyn, New York and Kabul,
Afghanistan, joined together at Lincoln Memorial University in
Harrogate, TN around the theme “Celebrating Our Home Place: this Earth
is Home to Me” as part of In Praise of Mountain Women, a twenty year
old Appalachian group. This year’s 8th gathering centered
around Water, life-giving, life-altering, and in great peril in
Appalachian mountain communities and in urban watersheds and
across the planet. Building local, national and global friendships, the women of In Praise upheld the critical role of water everywhere, from the oldest mountains, the Appalachians, to the youngest mountains, the Himalayans. All present volunteered to be water watchers for their home communities. This commitment recognizes the role of women as caretakers of family and of the home place, be it in Southwest Virginia, New York City or across planet earth. Read more in our newsletter (2.3 MB, pdf.) Visitors
since July 2008:
Last updated 7/09.
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