The Author

Marc

Marc’s blogs will be found under The Red Clay Country Diary.

It’s an homage to his current home.

Marc was born in the hills of Central West Virginia in 1986 to two conservationists (unbeknownst to baby Marc, and much to his rebellious chagrin he’d make another generation) . He was relocated all over the southern Plains for the first few years of his life before finally becoming somewhat permanently settled on the shore of Lake Erie in Northeast Ohio. There he grew up, and made the rural agriculture of the area as much his home as he made the abandoned industrial yards around Cleveland his stomping ground.

He roamed and rambled from school to school (racking up 4 in 4 years) before more or less staying in Western New York to get a degree (he tried to buck the family tradition and received a degree in history), still not far from the rust belt culture in Buffalo and Rochester, and went to work for the first time (no point in avoiding it) in conservation trying to protect local farmland from suburban development. After school was done and he’d grown tired of New York winters he moved closer to his Appalachian roots and took another land protection job in the North Alabama Appalachian foothills.

Marc is very passionate about environmental, media, rural issues and issues of rural culture. He also feels it is his duty to keep other blogs held accountable. While he’s probably doing it a service in terms of credibility, his continual attacks will probably not leave him loved in the blogosphere.

Regular Contributors

Mike

Drawing a Line

Mike was born in 1985 in Lockport, NY and raised to be good, play sports and do well in school. He and his family then relocated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from 1995 to 1999 where he was influenced by all sorts of crazy European and Asian families and where he picked up all of his strange liberal quirks like empathy and cultural sensitivity

Longing good candy, cool toys and up to date television, Mike and his family came back to Lockport in 1999. There he attended high school and reacquainted himself with the American Way. A “conspiracy theorist” teacher at Lockport High introduced him to politics and suggested that China might become important someday in the near future; he has been hooked on both subjects ever since.

Mike recently graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a BA in International Relations and minors in Asian Studies and History. In place of playing make-believe with Model United Nations and organizing with Democracy Matters, he now spends his free time blogging and looking for the next step in life. He spent the summer and fall working as an organizing fellow and Field Organizer for the Obama campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

His entries on the site are collected under the category Drawing a Line.

Kate

Kate will be writing media criticisms as The Gadfly

Kate was born and raised in a dying industrial town in Upstate New York, an area she sees as a microcosm for a majority of America’s many detriments and successes. After earning a degree in History and American Studies, concentrating on Environmental and Native American History, she decided to try out state politics. Hating office work with every fiber of her being, she went back to school and is currently a graduate student, studying for her Master’s in Journalism and is the web editor for Jerk Magazine, an independent Syracuse University student-run publication. She writes mainly about the inadequacy of mainstream media reporting.

Clark

Clark was born in Morgantown, West Virginia  and grew up in Olney, Maryland and Frankfurt, Germany.  After graduating from the University of Maryland in 2007 with a degree in Government & Politics he went to work for a non-profit organization named Project Vote Smart in Montana for a little under a year, and then spent the summer and fall of 2008 in Prince William County, Virginia helping Obama become the first Democrat to win the state since 1964.  In between immersing himself in exit polls and playing pick-up games of basketball, he enjoys spending his free time proselytizing about The Wire to the point of obsession.