Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • A man eating ice cream on the front porch of an old general store in Lorman Mississippi.
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  • Dirt flies up as horses gallop down the track in front of the twin spires of Churchill Downs. Horses are competing for a million dollar purse and a place in history.  First held in 1875, the Kentucky Derby is one of THE most famous two minutes in thoroughbred racing.
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  • Larry Visnosky plays with his pet bear, Coco in the Little Buffalo River in Arkansas, USA.
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  • Tail lights of a pick up truck glow as a miner drives to work and climbs a mountain road  through morning fog that hangs in southern West Virginia valleys.
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  • Friends on the beach at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
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  • A visitor looks out from the lighthouse at Bill Baggs State Park.
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  • Reflections in windows of the lighthouse at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
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  • Stiltsville: abandoned homes on stilts off Bill Baggs State Park.
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  • Stiltsville: abandoned homes on stilts off Bill Baggs State Park.
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  • The Cape Florida Lighthouse at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
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  • Key Biscayne from the lighthouse at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.
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  • A man with a shovels coal sludge after a mining accident occurred when the bottom of a coal slurry impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky broke into an abandoned underground mine in October 2000. An estimated 306 million gallons of oozing black waste containing arsenic and mercury killed everything in a creek and measured five feet deep covering nearby yards and surrounding some homes. Drinking water was contaminated for 27,000 residents as tributaries carried it to the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers. It is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the southeastern United States and although largely cleaned up, water quality issues exist and residents still find sludge and slurry in surface water.
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  • Streams are polluted with coal sludge from a mining accident that occurred when the bottom of a coal slurry impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky broke into an abandoned underground mine in October 2000. An estimated 306 million gallons of oozing black waste containing arsenic and mercury killed everything in a creek and measured five feet deep covering nearby yards and surrounding some homes. Drinking water was contaminated for 27,000 residents as tributaries carried it to the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers. It is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the southeastern United States and although largely cleaned up, water quality issues exist and residents still find sludge and slurry in surface water.
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  • Multi-state activists of all ages protest mountain top removal coal mining outside Charleston's state capital building.
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  • Vivian Stockman protests King Coal and mountain top removal coal mining joining a number of multi-state activists at the state capital.
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  • Protest songs by two like-minded friends entertained picnic patrons on Kayford Mountain. Ken Hechler, left, represented West Virginia in the US House of Representatives for nearly 20 years and was Secretary of State from 1985-2001. He died in 2016 at age 102. George Daugherty, known as Earl of Elkview, a trial lawyer specializing in medical liability cases, was a regular on a televised statewide country music show and co-hosted NPR's Mountain Stage. He died in 2017 at age 86.
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  • Aerial view of Hobet 21 mountain top removal coal mining site looms over one of the few remaining houses in Mud, W.V. Once this was a quiet rural community, but mining companies can legally come within 100 feet of a family cemetery and 300 feet from a home and they run 24 hours a day and seven days a week. <br />
Hobet 21 once produced about 5.2 million tons of coal, making it among the largest surface mines in the state. The Lincoln County mine expanded to fill in Connelly Branch creek, and after the company was bankrupt in 2015, the site was passed on to another firm who continued mining.<br />
The town of Mud hasn’t been much of a community in the couple of decades since the post office closed, but in 1998 around 60 residents remained. They had two churches and a ball field. In early 1997, Big John, the mine’s 20-story dragline, moved above Mud and more houses, near this one, were bought and destroyed.
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  • Activists protest mountain top removal coal mining at a rally outside Charleston's state capital building.
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  • Lorene Caudill prepares for their move by taking down family photographs. She and her husband Therman endured eight years of coal dust and foundation-shaking dynamite blasts as Hobet 21, one of the largest surface mines in the state, inched slowly toward them. They put up apples from their last garden and packed their belongings after signing a letter of intent to sell their beloved home to a coal company.<br />
The Caudills, along with other family members, did achieve a small victory by preserving ownership of a nearby ancestral home but only after a long battle—all the way to the West Virginia Supreme Court—with the coal company.  No one lives there now but the extended family gathers on weekends to garden and for dinners at the house, which was completely surrounded by mining. Since then, the house was burned down by arsonists.<br />
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The Caudill house, where they had planned on spending the rest of their lives, is a half-mile down the road from the old homestead. They are some of the last to leave the community. Therman Caudill, a retired schoolteacher said, “It took the coal company 125 years to run the Caudill family out of Mud River, but they finally did it.”
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  • A pregnant mare rolls in the mud with a plastic bucket over her mouth as a muzzle to keep her from being inadvertently eating caterpillars, thus limiting her exposure to toxins.<br />
In 2001, approximately 25% of all pregnant mares in Kentucky aborted their foals within several weeks (over 3,000 mares lost pregnancies), and abortion rates exceeded 60% on some farms because of Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome (MRLS).  The mysterious disease caused mares to spontaneously abort at an early term as well fully developed foals—the babies that survived had heart and eye problems. Those that didn’t die or were put down had brain injuries and are often referred to as “dummy foals.”  University of Kentucky estimates 1400 foals were aborted costing the state 336 million dollars.<br />
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What was known was that mares were being exposed to something in the fields—a fungus or mycotoxin that seemed to be related to the Eastern tent caterpillar that was found in cherry trees. Farms tried to limit their risk and exposure to the grass by putting plastic buckets over their mouths.
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  • Caudill family members rest on the front porch and yard when they gather on weekends to work in the garden and maintain their homestead. <br />
<br />
It took several years and a lot of money and determination, but kin of the Caudill family fought to keep their family homestead on Mud River from being taken over by the St. Louis-based Arch Coal Company. Nearly swindled out of their homestead, they battled all the way to the West Virginia Supreme Court where they finally won their case.<br />
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For 100 years, Miller’s wife and family owned the 75-acre tract that includes a farmhouse, built in 1920, several small barns and a garden. John Caudill, a coal miner who was blinded in a mining accident in the 1930s, and his wife, Lydia Caudill, raised 10 children in the home. <br />
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Arch Coal wanted to tear down the family’s ancestral home because it stood in the way of the company’s plans to expand its 12,000-acre Hobet 21 mountaintop removal complex. Hobet 21 produced about 5.2 million tons of coal, making it among the largest surface mines in the state. Mines like Hobet yield one ton of coal for every 16 tons of terrain that is displaced.<br />
Under Hobet’s plans, statements from Arch submitted in court say that “ a valley fill and an impoundment pond would destroy the inundate the farmhouse and outbuilding and bury the immediate surrounding land under the valley fill.” A lower court agreed with the company, but in the end, the family won.<br />
The mining operations have expanded to surround the Caudill property.
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  • Elevated view of a small mine operation finding coal after a larger company left. The owner of this operation stated that "One man's trash is another man's treasure." His equipment works on a mountain top coal mine.
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  • A boat motors past Stiltsville: abandoned homes on stilts.
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  • An Afro-Cuban dance teacher looks out toward the ocean.
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  • An Afro-Cuban dance teacher shows dance moves of sea goddess Yemaya.
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  • A woman looks out from the Cape Florida Lighthouse, rebuilt in 1847.
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  • A couple take in a view from Cape Florida Lighthouse, rebuilt in 1847.
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  • An Afro-Cuban dance teacher shows dance moves of sea goddess Yemaya.
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  • An Afro-Cuban dance teacher shows dance moves of sea goddess Yemaya.
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  • The Cape Florida Lighthouse, rebuilt in 1847.
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  • Keeneland Race track's Thoroughbred horse auction for two-year olds is where horses often sell for six figures. A bid spotter dressed in a tuxedo searches the crowd while a video showing the horse sprinting on the track along with the time is show on monitors above.
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  • Rental canoes rest beside the Suwanee Canal dug in the 1890's by Atlant lawyer Capt. Harry Jackson, who planned to drain the swamp for farmland before his com pany went backrupt. The canal is part of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refug e.
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  • Introduced Japanese kudzu vines overtake a car in a man's yard.
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  • Ted Tatum poses in confederate battle shirt at an annual June reunion of the Ta tum family at Waycross, Georgia, where as many as a thousand blood relatives ga ther for a weekend of music, food, and socializing.
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  • An alligator walks on the muddy bottom of the Saint Marys River.
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  • Beaver building a dam, Ozark Mountains area.
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  • Man dangling baby in a stream, Ozark Mountains area.
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  • Introduced Japanese kudzu vines overtake a car in a man's yard.
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  • Tree trunks wreathed in smoke from a forest fire.
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  • A motorboat in the Saint Marys River, on the Georgia Florida border.
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  • Mennonite farm child with horse in water hole, Ozark Mountains area.
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  • Multi-state grassroots environmental activists rally against mountain top removal in Charleston, West Virginia.
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  • Aerial view shows snow that accentuates the contours of a flattened, freshly cut mountaintop removal site in Cabin Creek, West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are blasted away to expose the seams of coal underneath.<br />
As much as 500 feet or more of a mountain summit may be leveled. The earth and rock from the mountaintop is then dumped into the neighboring valleys.<br />
Analysis from a study that Appalachian Voices commissioned along with Natural Resources Defense Council  shows that 1.2 million acres have been mined for coal. “Over 500 mountains have been leveled, and nearly 2,000 miles of precious Appalachian headwater streams have been buried and polluted by mountaintop removal.”
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  • Stone Farm, a 2,000 acre horse-breeding farm with a private track to train Thoroughbred horses is owned by Arthur Hancock III, a member of one of the pre-eminent American horse racing families.  Hancock has bred, stood, and sold some of the best horses of all time and two Stone Farm-raised, co-raced colts won the Kentucky Derby. Hancock and his wife Stacie, are outspoken about the ethics of the horse racing business.
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  • Pin Oak Farm owner and breeder Josephine Abercrombie ran a prominent 4,000 acre farm near Versailles. A horse lover in her childhood, she bred of highly-trained successful race horses. Racing season brings on a flurry of parties and social events. Abercrombie was philanthropic and highly respected. She died in 2022.
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  • Pin Oak Farm owner and breeder Josephine Abercrombie ran a prominent 4,000 acre  farm near Versailles. A horse lover in her childhood, she brought sugar cubes to her thoroughbreds hoping for a kiss on the cheek from a gentle mare and foal. Abercrombie died in 2022.
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  • With ears pricked forward, a yearling thoroughbred curiously awaits at a white fence on Manchester Farm, a Thoroughbred horse with a barn that is located on the backside of Keeneland Race Track. What makes Kentucky special is that it is geologically favored for horses. Millions of years ago, layers of shells were buried and the crushed limestone makes the grass rich in calcium. As the land sinks, hills and valley are formed which make a perfect terrain for building strong muscles when horses run.
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  • Wisps of smoke float from a burning Chinese herb on acupuncture needles used by veterinarian Rhonda Rathgeber to treat a mare for fertility troubles. The Chinese have been needling horses for several thousand years. Now Western vets are using such holistic remedies alongside traditional medicine or after it fails. Some believe the quick, painless pricks also boost the animal's athletic performance.
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  • A sick foal is tended to while lying on a mat under heated blankets in stall on a Thoroughbred horse farm. Veterinarians treated many foals when a number of mares delivered prematurely or aborted for a mysterious disease that was traced to tent caterpillars in the pastures.
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.
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  • Calumet Farm's mares and foals graze in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Successful thoroughbred race horses are so important to the culture that each farm has a cemetery honoring their Thoroughbred champions.
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  • Some prized horses live a pampered life in retirement and command large amount of money for breeding rights in the hopes they’ll pass on the best qualities of their bloodline. An Irish farm, Ashford Stud which is part of international horse racing business Coolmore, was built in recent years and features stone barns and bridges creating the charm of an earlier era. Stalls are filled with plush straw for bedding under chandeliers that shine in the cupolas.  <br />
Past Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch's stud fees are as high as $125,000 per mating. A farm worker leads the stallion to a breeding barn.
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  • White barns with red trim are characteristic of Calumet Farm, a 762-acre Thoroughbred breeding and training farm established in 1924 in Lexington, Kentucky. William Monroe Wright, founding owner of the Calumet Baking Powder Company created Calumet farm located in the heart of the Bluegrass, a well-known horse breeding region.
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  • The Bluegrass Region is rich with lore and traditions like the lawn jockey, a small statue prominently positioned on every farm with a lantern or hitching ring in one outstretched hand. Local legend says it memorializes Jocko Graves, who stood guard over horses for George Washington and froze to death holding a lantern in his hand. He was known as the faithful guardsman.<br />
Modern day watchman and farm owner Dr. Smiser West walks out his office door toward the lawn jockey painted with the colors of Waterford Farm.
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  • A jockey and horse walk back to the barn in a picturesque scene after an early morning workout during Keeneland race track's spring racing season. Founded in 1935, Keeneland takes pride in maintaining racing traditions. It was the last track in North America to broadcast race calls over a public-address system, not doing so until 1997. Most of the racing scenes of the 2003 movie Seabiscuit were shot at Keeneland, because its appearance has changed relatively little in the last several decades. The Thoroughbred horse track was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
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  • Morning workout on the track as Thoroughbred horses prepare for the Kentucky Derby. Jockeys and trainers train on the dirt track under the famous twin spires at Churchill Downs race track. This two minute horse race is one most famous in the world.
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  • A large field of Thoroughbred horses gallop in tight formation down the stretch to the first turn in the Kentucky Derby. Running on a dirt track, this two minute horse race is one most famous in the world.
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  • Crowds in the infield are a long-standing tradition at the Kentucky Derby where it is standing room only to watch the horse races. The general admission attracts those to an area where the beer flows freely and many end up sunburned from having no shade.
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  • Caretakers and surgeons wait in a recovery area with a 1,000-pound patient after he is moved into a mat. The thoroughbred received surgery at famed Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital which is respected throughout the world. They are known for innovative and skilled treatment for horses including surgery, internal medicine, advanced diagnostic imaging, a specialized Podiatry Center and specialized Reproductive Center. Thoroughbred horses are like high-powered human athletes and sustain repairable injuries that can keep them racing.
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  • War Emblem races down the final stretch to win the Kentucky Derby in 2002 at Churchill Downs.
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  • A children's beauty pageant at the Cullman County Fair.
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  • A children's beauty pageant at the Cullman County Fair.
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  • Guests at the Mediterranean Bistro, a wine and beer loft.
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  • A couple at 'Michael's Genuine Food & Drink' restaurant.
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  • A man works out along the beach in Lummus Park at sunrise.
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  • A man works out along the beach in Lummus Park at sunrise.
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  • Pastries at Buenes Aires Bakery and Cafe.
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  • El Palacio de Juogs, an ethnic juice bar where locals come for fruit shakes.
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  • Stacks of plates are put out for morning breakfast.
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  • A couple talk and laugh at an outdoor restaurant at night.
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  • Limes in a jar ready for tropical drinks at Scotty's in Coconut Grove.
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  • Walking in Lummus Park along Ocean Drive in South Beach.
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  • A sculpture of a wrestler, created for the Los Angeles 1932 Olympics.
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  • A 'Tweetup,' or twitter connection in Little Havana.
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  • Waterfront Scotty's Landing offers alfresco dining with a local twist.
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  • A bachelorette party waits for taxis on busy Lincoln Road.
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  • Heirloom tomatoes support a blackboard listing the fare of the day.
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  • A woman checks her cell phone on busy Lincoln Road.
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  • A large field of Thoroughbred horses gallop in tight formation down the stretch into the first turn in the Kentucky Derby. Run on a dirt track, this two minute horse race is one most famous in the world.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_737658.jpg
  • Thoroughbred racehorses break out of the starting gate at Keeneland Racetrack. Position is randomly picked in the electronic gate that opens when all horses are loaded.
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  • Boots McTaggart holds a February 1988 issue of the magazine.
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their home countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720970.jpg
  • Waiting in the paddock before a race is Pat Day who had a career win of over 8000 races.  A jockey’s life is not easy—a member of an elite club of professional athletes who maintain a near inhuman weight restriction that most Americans couldn’t pass.  He speaks with a trainer before a race and is surrounded by the trainers’ sons at Keeneland Race track.
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  • Stylish, extravagant hats are a long-standing tradition at the Kentucky Derby. Competition for the best dressed is nearly as fierce as the thoroughbred horse race outside. Women parade in costumed finery in the Turf Club in hallways lined with jockey's portraits at Churchill Downs.
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  • Residents gaze at a Nile monitor lizard captured near their homes.
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  • A volunteer cares for and feeds feral cats.
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  • A cat is given gas so he can be neutered.
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  • Seedd spread from Melaleuca pods by blowing in the wind.
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  • A Nile monitor lizard in the wild is captured for study.
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  • A boy begs his father for a pet leopard gecko at a breeder show.
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  • Children playing in the snow on a hillside outside their home in Sylvester.
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  • Hobet 21 mountain top removal coal mine grows larger and approaches a family home. Mines run 24 hours a day, seven days a week creating coal dust impossible to keep out of houses.
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  • Like a cancerous mutation of strip mining, coal mining involves entire mountaintops that are blasted away to obtain a small seam of coal. Unwanted rock is pushed into valleys and streams, destroying natural watersheds, leaving no vegetation, and turning the terrain into unusable land.
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  • A black bear sow and her cubs cross a gravel road on Kayford Mountain.
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  • Aerial view of a golf course on old coal mine site after it was reclaimed as mining in the distance continues.<br />
Twisted Gun Golf Club is an 18-hole regulation length golf course in Wharncliffe, West Virginia. The golf course is a reclaimed mountaintop removal site, and was recognized by golfonline.com in 2007 as number 17 on the “Top Fifty under Fifty” ranking of top 50 golf courses where the public can play for under fifty dollars. Twisted Gun in Mingo County near Gilbert, has been called the “jewel of the coal fields.”
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  • An inhabited house is next in line to be vacated and burned down as a coal company moves out families in the way of a growing mine. The homes were company owned.
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  • A mother and daughter and other family members visit at the end of a reunion of the Caudill/Miller family at their homestead in Mud, West Virginia. The family fought Arch Coal Company in court to keep their 26 acres where they plant a garden and spend weekends. The home stood in the way of Hobet 21, a 12,000-acre, mountaintop removal mine. After a long battle in court, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a Lincoln County family was wrongly forced to sell its home to make way for the surface mine. Justices said a lower court was wrong to discount the family’s ‘sentimental or emotional interests’ in the property in favor of the economic concerns of a coal operator.”<br />
<br />
The mining operations expanded to surround the Caudill property.
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  • Clear cut forest in preparation for mountain top removal coal mining. In the background is a reclaimed mine site and rock from an active mine.
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  • A ginseng plant and it's roots in a woman's hand as a family hunts for ginseng in a West Virginia forest. A native plant in the Appalachian forest, ginseng is highly prized and harvested as a cash crop. It has been used for centuries in North America and Asia for a variety of illnesses and to increase vitality.
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  • Mary Miller gives a warm hug and greets a young boy at a church ramps dinner.
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