New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007

Subject: New Yorkers-Come if you can
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 01 May 07 - 06:47 PM

Next week,Appalachian friends and neighbors will be in NYC, rallying at the UN against Mountain Top Removal. Some will gather with us for a concert, "Music for the Mountains," on Tuesday evening May 8 at 7:30 PM, at St. Mary's Episcopal church, 521 W. 126th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam. Songs and stories from people struggling to save their communities, their homes,their precious places. My family and I will be there. Please help save the Appalachian Mountains.

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 May 07 - 07:36 PM

I'd be there if I was there, if ya know what I mean, Jean! Anything to stop the raping of our land.

There is more about the issue at Mountain Justice Summer.

Of particular interest might be a link to Coal River Mountain Watch's culture page with 718 excerpts from sound recordings and links to photographs and essays from and about the region's "old times."
P.S. And new times
Thanks, Jean.

kat

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can 730pm - 8 May 2007
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 01 May 07 - 08:12 PM

Sounds like a wonderful get together and for a great cause. I wish I could make it ..I have to keep my pottery open that day but have a song for me ."My homes across the Blue Ridge Mt's"" !!! . All the very best Guy

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: Leadfingers
Date: 02 May 07 - 05:51 AM

Sadly , at that time I will be floating round the canals with a crowd of folkies ! Looks well worth it for any one on the right side of the pond though.

Subject: Lyr/Chords Add: PARADISE (John Prine)
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 02 May 07 - 06:02 AM

Wow. I clicked on that site katlaughing - horrific! It reminds me of a John Prine song I love to play:

Paradise
John Prine

C                     F            C
When I was a child my family would travel
C                                 G            C
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
C                                        F       C
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
C                     G            C
So many times that my memories are worn.

C                                  F          C
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
C                            G       C
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
C                                  F          C
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
C                               G          C
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waiting
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 20
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 May 07 - 12:07 PM

refresh!

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: InOBU
Date: 02 May 07 - 02:54 PM

Hi Jean:
I will put this up on the Quaker news group. Do let us know if there are any other events around this. I will try very hard to be there that night. I will also let folks in my band know tonight, Linda can then pass the word around the Mennonite community.

In frith and friendship
Lorcan Otway

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 03 May 07 - 11:52 AM

Thank you, folks...it's a cause so dear to my heart, and should be to everyone's- terrible things are happening. Last week a land agent called me and asked it I'd give permission for his company to use my holler (hollow) which runs a mile behind our house, up to the head of the holler- to dispose of the "fill" from a new road they're building!
The little stream is already in trouble from both underground and surface mining. This would finish it. No more trees- no more birds and small animals. And one of the world's important water-sheds is facing extinction from these practices.

I don't have time left to do much, but I'm doing what an old lady can. I just hope that people can learn to understand what untold harm they are doing to the world, before it's too late. Lorcan, come say hello if you get there!   Jean

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 May 07 - 12:40 PM

A fine cause Jean and one that lives close to my heart as well. I grew up in eastern Ohio, a part of the country that is not as often mentioned but was strip mined so badly through the 20th century that it is almost unrecognizable in many places. It too is owned by the interlocking directorates of big steel and big coal.

In east Ohio there was always this strange irony. The equipment they used to ravage the land was also remarkable as tourist attractions. Some of the largest ditching shovels and draglines worked there, owned by the power companies to get to the coal "efficiently." They had names like "Gem of Egypt" and the world's largest dragline was called "Big Muskie." In the 50's and early 60's it was a Sunday drive to go see "The Gem" at work. Later in life I found myself rightfully protesting the same machines I had found so exciting as a child.

ON THIS SITE you can see some of those machines as they were and what they could do. The site is done by some folks who wanted to preserve some of it as part of our "heritage." No thanks.......If the look of the land and the poverty of the region isn't heritage enough, we don't need Big Muskie to remind us.

On that site you will also see a shovel named "The Silver Spade" which was put back into action several years ago and now it too is being scrapped, the last piece of the "giants" to exist and a minor and yet kinda' significant victory for those of us who have fought strip mines for years.

That should qualify as a tiny bit of good news for your rally Jean! Count me as being there in spirit.

Spaw

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 20
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 May 07 - 03:43 PM

They had those in Wyoming, too, Spaw, may still for all I know. It was a terrible awesome sight to see what they had done to the earth.

Jean, good for you for taking care of your holler. May it always be so for all of the hollers.

luvyakat

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 May 07 - 04:09 PM

I can't really imagine how awful this is because I'm not there but in England. However I do, of course, know the damage that's being done to our own earth here, not least because we have so little of it and it's being destroyed far too rapidly. Stripmining is horrible. I do so hope Jean's holler is saved.

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: InOBU
Date: 04 May 07 - 09:01 AM

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

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 05 May 07 - 03:26 PM

Our two sons will be with me onstage- Peter on guitar and Jon on banjo, and they'll sing refrains for, "Black Waters," and do a verse each for the closing song, "Now is the Cool of the Day," with everyone singing on the chorus we hope. Wish you could all be with us!

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: Big Mick
Date: 05 May 07 - 03:35 PM

Dear Jean, I so wish I could be there, and were I home I would be. Unfortunately I am going to be in the Omaha area organizing packing house workers. I would sure love to be there. Please give my regards to your family and good luck in the concert for this noble and important cause.

Much love,

Mick

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 06 May 07 - 02:30 PM

The

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 07 May 07 - 07:44 PM

NOTICE: The May 8th Appalachians Against Mountain Top Removal has been remove from St. John the Divine to St. Mary's Episcopal Church, 126st St. between Broadway & Amsterdam. Hope you who were coming can still make it! Same time, etc.      Best,   Jean

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 07 May 07 - 07:49 PM

SO SORRY! This change had already been made- another Senior Moment?
Well even if it's true (the S.M.), hope to see some of you there! JR

Subject: RE: New Yorkers-Come if you can -kytrad - 8 May 2007
From: InOBU
Date: 09 May 07 - 07:28 AM

What an important and wonderful evening... there is so much to be done... Genie and I were there with one of our bandmates, and another Quaker couple... Charles, an older member of our Meeting said that Jean's performance brought him back to listening to her decades ago... ( and you were WONDERFUL last night! ) I'm writing up notes on the important message about what the loss of Appalachian mountain tops has on us all... but on a musical note... the music was just wonderful last night, a really wonderful sampling of the living musical tradition in Appalachia. Jean sang a song she wrote... a wonderful hymn to the earth and humanity which I will teach the kids in our First Day School (Quaker Sunday school)... and of course the great, "Shady Groves..." well more on this later...
Thanks again Jean for letting us know about this evening
lor
PS I am posting photos to the mudcat photo group on Flickr, so anyone who was there who can help with names... would be welcome to provide the same, link to come soon...