I am
writing with pretty big news. Well - big for me. I am engaged to marry a
wonderful man named Sage (Robert) Phillips Russo! We met shortly after I moved
to West Virginia this summer and
decided to announce our intention to marry over Christmas when both of our families were in Maine
together.
I’ve always
had a flair for the dramatic and chose to officially pop the question by way of
a photo-video I put together. Watch it if you want – all the images are from my
journey through the summer into fall and winter. You can see it at:
Sage helped found Mountain Justice
five years ago and has worked as an organizer for Christians for the Mountains
for the past few years. He too has a pastoral call and is currently a seminary student
at EasternMennoniteUniversity where he will graduate
with a MDIV as well in the spring of 2011. I can sing praises about him from
sunup ‘til sundown and look forward to y’all meeting him.
We spent this long
holiday time soaking each other up and focusing on family time. I had the honor
of spending a week with his family over Christmas and then his parent’s drove
up to Maine to spend most of a week at the Vekasi household, where we surprised
(or sort-of-but-not-really surprised) everyone with our news.As you can imagine, our days have been filled
with planning of all kinds ever since, so a lot of the visiting and chatting I
wanted to do while in Maine will
have to wait until this spring when I come home again. We left Maine
reluctantly on Sunday and arrived at Sage’s home late last night.
We plan to marry on the coast of Maine
this summer, July 17th, followed two weeks later by a big potluck
bash in West Virginia at the
beginning of the Clifftop Appalachian String Festival. Mark your calendars now
because you all are invited to West Virginia
to help us celebrate our union and dance the night away – August 4th!
Anyone out there who has been meaning to visit…this could be your time! We will
have more information as we figure it out all at our new webpage (gasp) – www.mywedding.com/sarahandsage.
What can I say? We are of the technology age!
Meanwhile, wedding plans aside, I
am still deeply involved in the movement to end mountaintop removal and looking
forward to offering eco-chaplaincy support throughout the region as much as
possible. You may have seen mountaintop removal in the news recently. In the
past week several pivotal events have occurred. First of all, the highly
respected and peer-reviewed journal Science
published a serious article about the long term ecological consequences of
mountaintop removal mining and the valley-fill process. Link to the official
article info is here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/327/5962/148
and commentary about why this is so important hit the mainstream media far and
wide, for example, the Washington Post article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010702530.html?hpid=topnews.
If any more evidence was needed to end this practice – well, this iced the cake
so to speak.
Meanwhile, however, the EPA is
beginning to move on the mountaintop mining and valley fill permits, and the
agency actually approved one of the largest mine permits on hold – the Hobet 45
Mine in Lincoln County, WV.
More information is at http://www.ilovemountains.org/news/647
Please take a moment to contact the
White House and ask President Obama to end mountain top removal. He has the
power to end Mountaintop Removal altogether and turn around the EPA’s decisions
based on this scientific report. His phone number is 202-456-1454. There is a
great site with talking points and info at http://www.ilovemountains.org/science/.
They are trying to track how many calls are made, so if you have a second to
check this site out, please do so.
I hope each of you are well during
these times of global crisis and personal journeying. As you can imagine, I had
the opportunity to explain my wok situation plenty of times while meeting new
future family members over the holidays, and each time I was flooded with
gratitude for how much support I have received from each of you, financially,
socially, spiritually and physically. Thank you.
Also - I finally posted all of my
letters up on my website, so if you want to send someone in my general
direction or share the link, you can through http://ecochaplaincy.net/SVLetters.html.
