Janie, you are such an eloquent and important writer. Your piece should be submitted to NPR and they should air it, with you reading it. If they did that, coupled with one of Jean's songs and comments from both of you, it would be a shining moment in broadcast radio, imo.

As I read your words, I know the country you speak of was the home of some of my ancestors and I shake my head in sadness knowing it hasn't been what they knew and lived in for a long, long time. I also remember riding through parts of Colorado with the same kinds of mining encampments left over from gold and coal mining, with the tipples and slag all round. Heck my first husband and I used to drive out to a small coal mine, back our truck up and have the operator fill it to burn in our little stove for heating. When I was a kid, we lined the potholes of our driveway with "clinkers"...the leftover slag in our furnace which had to be cleaned out everyday, after we'd filled the hopper with coal. We had coal dust all over our window sills, etc. and I remember mom complaining about it being so hard to keep the house clean. I was a kid and didn't think a thing of it, except I liked filling the coal bucket, then dumping it in the hopper and cleaning out the red-hot clinkers. We never thought a thing of what we were breathing back then.

It's a strange old world. I hope we can all find ways to really change our lifestyles, as you say...the next generations need us to do that and need us to help them learn better ways of living.

Mitakuye Oyasin (We are all related.