Dear Jean:
I will also get Friends (Quakers) in Unity with Nature, to make an anouncement this coming First Day, I will be giving a talk about Quakerism at Trinity Church, that day, so I will also let folks there know.
Did you know Tom Scott? He played with Woody Guthrie, back in the fifties, early sixties, died in the early sixties. Oscar Bandt had lovely things to say about him, a few years ago... His daughter Suki (short for Suzanna Kirbride) is in our Meeting. I'll give her a call as well...
We are postponing a band rehersal, so members of my band and I can come to this event, so I expect I will see you there. It is easy to spot me... as a plain Quaker I look a little like the Quaker Oats box... or some Amish fellow who misplaced his buggy... ( well Mennonite, we wear buttons... )Speaking of which, one of my band mates is Mennonite, I will ask her to let the New York Mennonites know about this as well...

I can hardly find words to describe my feelings, when I found myself driving through Appalachia, a few years ago... my band had been playing in Ashville, and there was a major detour returning to New York, so on a lovely sunny day, we found ourselves driving through wooded hollers, the road soaring up, or diving down, tight turns along switch backs... members of the band actually got sea sick from the turns... We stopped at an inn, with a long porch in a town that some well know movie was shot... I forget the name, weekenders? We had a meal and played some music on the porch and got an invite back to play for a festival. It was right after September, 2001. I told the owner that some of my music reflected my Quaker opposition to war. The owner said, "Well, that would be just fine. We can sit here after you perform, and I can try and disuade you from your passifist ideas. We have a number of passifists up here, Quakers and River Bretherin. The difference between them is when you speak to Quakers about your beliefs... they listen!" Whenever I think of the mountains, I think of that friendly conversation, the openess, the clear air and exilerating beauty. At my age, I find myself looking at the hair on my brush, or in the tub drain, and think of the bare spots on my head, with a sort of sadness. Unlike loosing one's hair, the balding of America, but clear cut logging, and strip mines, well, we don't have to spend money on Rogane, we do have to spend money on other ways of making electricity, of using less, so our nation does not loose its looks or its soul.

My dad dug coal, for a short while when he was a young teanager in the depression... he hated it so much, he seldom spoke of it. As we go back to a time when the government is soft on regulation it looks like the US is back to seeing miners as expendable, and the land as well... both flesh and blood and the land are too precious to waste.

See you soon, and thanks so much for bringing this concern to us.

lor