King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!

Subject: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: InOBU
Date: 10 May 07 - 05:15 AM

Well, not this road, here and now. Appalachia is a place of great riches and great poverty. Most of the riches the coal industry has systematically stolen from those who live in that region with the help of gun thugs and politicians for generations. It was getting better. President Clinton was treating the coal industry as it should be treated, with criminal prosecutions for poisoning our rivers and our bodies with mercury in every state needlessly for years. Coal invested one hundred million dollars in the election of a politician who would make their crimes legal, and their investment paid off,

George Walker Bush's "justice" department dropped the prosecution of coal burying power plants, and made the dumping of mining waste into the nations water systems and the pumping of mercury into our bodies, legal. Now, many of you might wonder how the executive branch of government can change laws, after all, aren't they presently of the party that rails against judge made laws? Well, the judge who ruled that the coal companies were breaking the clean water act by dumping mountain tops, and tons of precious lumber, and arsenic and other heavy metal pollutants into the streams in the valleys of Appalachia asked the same question. So far the only answer has been the coughing of the children of Appalachia choking on the particulate matter from the blasting of their mountains by now federally protected criminals.

Jean Ritchie Road. Every week the equivalent force to the bombing of Hiroshima is used in Appalachia by the coal industry to blast the tops off mountains and send the results, minus the coal into the valleys, destroying one of the most precious resources in this nation for one of the most destructive and wasteful sources of power we can use. As coal is mined the water in the streams of Appalachia turns as bright orange as the T-shirts of the Appalachian people who came to bring this concern to the people of New York, at an event this week. One young mother joined the fight when she saw her daughter standing among dead fish in the stream that runs behind her house.

Our dear treasure, Jean Ritchie http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorcanotway/491497986/ tell us that her property is threatened, as fill is used to build an access road, to continue the destruction of her community. There was a great deal of outrage, expressed on her behalf to the Governor of her state, and so, he is responding to the anger. He has named that road, "Jean Ritchie Road."

Jean, have you a middle name, we might call you? Or better still, can we demand that this road be stopped and some already existing road, which brings music lovers to say, Asheville, be called after you instead?

Why should we care, from Seattle to New York? For thirty years the levels of mercury in our environment has been dropping. Since Mr. Bush has taken his blood money from King Coal, the mercury levels in the environment have risen six percent. Mercury, one of the most deadly poisons in our ecosystem, is released when coal is burned, as well as when it is mined. And so, the coal industry is not only poisoning fish in Appalachia, but they are poisoning fish in New York State, and in the blood of every American. The levels of mercury in the blood of many American woman is enough now to cause cognitive damage to their offspring. King Coal is not only killing the mountains of Appalachia, but destroying the future potential of our nation as well.

Jean deserves better than this road, not only for the rich treasure of her music, but for being a part of bringing this knowledge to us, as we sleep in ignorance here in New York. Maybe it would be more appropriate to name a road going to some great seat of learning after her. For generation bigots have referred to the hill folk of Appalachia as "ignorant hillbillies." Well, I was among the ignorant here in New York, that great Rome of the modern world. I did not understand how burning coal was filling my blood with mercury. Well, the sons and daughters of Appalachian miners and hill folks came to my city and gave me quite an education.

Folks like Julia Bonds, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorcanotway/491497994/   ;who faced threats from the coal industry to come and teach us ignorant city folk a lesson every American voter should understand care about deeply.

My thanks to all the people who came to New York from Appalachia to tell me all the above, and to Bobby Kennedy, Jr., http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorcanotway/491521247/ spoke eloquently to this issue as well.

For more, go here... http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/index.php and go here http://www.crmw.net/culture.php and then... do something.

All the best
lorcan

PS Anyone who can do blue clickies for the URLs be my guest and accept my thanks.

okay. Link-faery

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:42 AM

aka Desolation Row

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: InOBU
Date: 10 May 07 - 03:00 PM

Thank'ee Link-Faery!!!!! Hello McGrath!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:08 PM

The road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions!

There may be a connection here, or not!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: frogprince
Date: 10 May 07 - 08:17 PM

Dear God; makes me wonder if the gov is just a totally clueless lunk, or if it is really a gesture of utterly sarcastic cynicism.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:02 PM

Knowing KY governors, I say it's a lot of both.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:08 PM

Perhaps Kytrad will advise as to what we can do?

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: InOBU
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:48 PM

Oh, I wish all of you were at the concert and get together. Peace, yop, It is great if Jean has ideas about what to do, but I really think we all can get thinking, and become a flea bite on the soft parts of King Coal... a thousand flea bites might... well, equal one good snake bite?
Cheers
lor

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:34 PM

Thank you Lorcan, for coming and also for writing about it. I told about the road name as a "funny story," and example of folks who don't listen to what others are really SAYING. It was ironic to me that, after all my resistance to their eviction of folks near the road and destruction of their homes; my letters and protests to the state government- about all the problems we were having from strip mining; after all my protest songs, going on over many years,- someone wants to "honor" me by naming the road after me! This is a road that is two miles long, will cost 35 million dollars. It does make for safer driving- but most of the traffic will be coal trucks to and from the strip mines, and the Mountaintop Removers.

What can I suggest? The Mountain Top Removal is just heartbreaking, I can't bear even to list the terrible things happening- pollution of our air, our water,the very earth beneath our feet. Destruction of habitat for the birds and animals we have known as neighbors all our lives, worse- the destruction of one of the country's important watersheds. You can imagine all the arguments for both sides, but not room to name them here. So, a few things to do:

Go online to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a wonderful and struggling organization to which I belong, and learn what's happening and why, and the things we can do to help.

I'm well up in years, but am doing the bit that I'm able to do, even with my current croaky voice and unstable walking. One thing I cannot understand is,- the few greedy people who will benefit financially from all this- what about THEIR kids? Don't they care if their own kids get left with a dying world?

PS: Lorcan, thanks for putting the pictures on. The first one was nice. I'm thinking I'll distribute that other one- of me lifting the heavy autoharp- to all the mountaintop removers- maybe it'll scare them out of their meanness!      Love to all,   Jean

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:37 PM

It's easy to see why people love you so much, Jean.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:46 PM

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth link.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Peace
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:54 PM

Another KFTC link.

How to become a member or associate member.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: InOBU
Date: 11 May 07 - 05:55 AM

Hi Jean and folks...

I think the slow responce to this thread, might be people thinking it is a troll flaming you Jean... but, I wanted to get folks to have a look at all this, so maybe if it stays current for a little while more people will read it. And when they do, I hope they realize what is happening in Appalachia, to paraphrase the Los Vagas commercial in reverce, does not stay in Appalachia, but the poison they unlease on your home, Coal companies then spread around the whole nation.
All the best
lor

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 May 07 - 09:49 AM

InOBU-

I think you're correct that the thread title discouraged some of us from reading this thread. We see so many inappropriate "attack" threads nowadays.

And, Jean, thanks so much for responding.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Flash Company
Date: 11 May 07 - 10:16 AM

Jean.... lovely to see a post from you, as an old (as in really old) UK admirer I am pleased to see that you are still up for a fight!
Family experience of the same problem in the UK, an uncle of Sheila's lost his farm to open cast mining and comitted suicide. As the Man said,' They know not what they do!'

FC

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 May 07 - 06:53 PM

Well, Jean, I'm going to email the KFTC address to my friend Alice. Even though she's in Northern Kentucky it'll get her blood flowing and being retired (twice) she's now become incredibly politically active.

I'm not living there anymore, so I can't do much, at least not directly.

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:17 PM

I finally stumbled in here--just to see what this was all about. I'm not surprised! Jean, and all the good folks, keep up the fight.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road!!!
From: InOBU
Date: 11 May 07 - 09:44 PM

Yes... my idea for a thread name backfired, so do tell others to stop by and read all this...

hanging my head...

=(

lor

Subject: RE: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road! Jean oks thread
From: Peace
Date: 21 May 07 - 03:54 PM

Refresh.

Subject: RE: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road! Jean oks thread
From: InOBU
Date: 21 May 07 - 05:05 PM

I like the addition to the thread title! Thank you mud-elves
lor

Subject: RE: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road! Jean oks thread
From: InOBU
Date: 22 May 07 - 07:00 AM

Maybe we need a new name for this thread intirely, like King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!   ??? I can't beleive no one cares that they are being poisoned... maybe we need a new thread name contest...

Subject: RE: Just Say No To Jean Ritchie Road! Jean oks thread
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 07 - 04:36 PM

Maybe more people have to see the thread.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 22 May 07 - 05:48 PM

It's a sad day when we are told not to eat the fish in the streams, what little fish there are due to the mining and forestry clogging up and polluting the spwaning grounds... among other things. Mercury, cadmium, lead, sulphur emissions from burning coal that cause acid rain and kill pristine lakes hundreds of miles away....

I could go on and on, but, I'll just say thanks to Jean and people like her who do what they can to enlighten the rest of us.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 30 May 07 - 08:32 PM

Bob Kennedy Jr. said an alarming thing in his great closing speech to our audience- that even the "farmed fish" in this country are contaminated and could have very bad effects on those consumers thinking they were safe. He said many other things that made us see how our world is getting more dangerous, more expensive just to live in, more damaged as to land, water, air, trees and all growth... I guess I'd give up and become a hermet- but now even the hermet has no place left to go.   JR

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Sorcha
Date: 30 May 07 - 09:10 PM

I'll go forth, and sign. But, did you know, you can no longer buy a mercury thermometer in the US? All digital (and they aren't really that accurate either.)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 31 May 07 - 04:39 AM

Sorcha, hate to contradict, but digital thermometers are every bit as good as mercury ones, price-for-price. It's just that nobody ever bothered to check the accuracy of the old ones. You can't put the whole lot right in the oven though, just the probe.

Paradise - John Prine

When I was a child
My family would travel
down to Western Kentucky
Where my parents were born
and theres a backwards old town
Thats often remembered
So many times,
that my memories are worn

(Chorus)
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County
down by the Green River
where Paradise lays.
Well I'm sorry my son
but you're too late in asking
Mr. 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 Avery hill
Where the air smelled like snakes
We'd shoot with our pistols
but empty pop bottles
was all we would kill

(chorus)

And the coal company came
with the worlds largest shovel
and they tortured the timber
and stripped all the land
well they dug for their coal
'til the land was forsaken
and they wrote it all down
as the progress of man

(chorus)

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 5 miles away
from wherever I am

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County
down by the Green River
where Paradise lays.
Well I'm sorry my son
but you're too late in asking
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Aug 08 - 02:31 PM

Thanks for the John Prine song,long one of my favorites,PMB...Everyone also ought to know of Kathy Mattea's new album, COAL. She's a dedicated Appalachian with a splendid voice, and I'm honored that she opens it with two of my songs, "L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore," and, "Blue Diamond Mines. It's rich also with songs by Billy Ed Wheeler and Hazel Dickens. A fine album. I'm just back from the Philly Festival where I was again honored with joining a Saturday afternoon workshop, son Jon and I, with Kathy Mattea and other fine singers, all exposing coal problems in Appalachia. We had a full-hillside audience, so I hope we spread some further knowledge and concern.

Jean

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Peace
Date: 23 Aug 08 - 03:00 PM

Congratulations, to you, Jean.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 23 Aug 08 - 05:26 PM

Yeah... folk on, eh! Good on ya!

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: maire-aine
Date: 23 Aug 08 - 06:55 PM

Just this afternoon, on the "Folks Like Us" radio program, Matt Watroba played John Prine's PARADISE, a timeless classic.

Maryanne

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 04:53 PM

Somewhat related. In the waning days of his time in office, it seems the shrub has plans for some mountain tops:

Here's the really dirty part of coal. First, this preface: After a year of record profits, coal operatives will receive nearly $2.8 billion in tax credits in the recent Wall Street bailout.

And last Friday, with all of the banter about "clean coal" drowning out the critics, the Bush administration quietly moved to alter one of the last remaining laws protecting against the wholesale clear-cutting and horrific strip mining practice called mountaintop removal in Appalachia. This is the process of blowing the tops off mountains and dumping the remains into the waterways or valleys -- over 1,600 miles of streams and 470 mountains in central Appalachia have been erased from American maps.

The rest of the article is HERE and well worth the read, imo.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: InOBU
Date: 25 Oct 08 - 09:30 PM

Dear Friends:
I wish to start by saying I AM voting for Obama - but like McCain, he is for "clean coal". Please all, write and tell him there is no such an animal.
Lorcan

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 01:20 AM

You all in Amyrkay might be interested to know that we Aussies are now playing that game - a certain power station is nearing the end of the local mine, but they found a whole valley just near, and now the farmers have found that their underground water has dried up after all the 'test drilling', and much, much more... :-0

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 09:17 AM

Some info...

http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/environmental_management/impact_assessment/current_eis_processes/new_acland_coal_expansion_project/
http://www.newhopecoal.com.au/activities/coal-operations/acland.aspx

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Oct 08 - 10:08 AM

Thanks for bringing this thread back, Kat, I've been meaning to look into this more. The 30 day comment period needs to be used well to keep the coal companies from getting worse.

SRS

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 11 Jun 09 - 09:44 PM

The Story with Dick Gordon on NPR broadcast an interview today with Maria Gunnoe who just won a Goldman Environmental Prize for her work trying to stop or control mountaintop removal. Maria lives in Boone Co., WV on the place she was born and raised. Her land was devastated by flooding as the result of mountaintop removal. She has encountered fierce and sometimes violent opposition in her community from miners, but has not backed down. She is from a coal mining family.

In one of the most poignant parts of the interview, she repeats a conversation with her Grandfather, who called her Sissie, as he sat and watched out the bay window as his own homeplace was buried by a mountain turned upside down into the valley. I'll put it in quotes, though I may be off a word or two. "Sissie, there is something wrong here. There is more coal coming out of here than there ever has been, and there are fewer men mining than there ever has been." She says he died a brokenhearted man.

The interview can be heard at A Fight for the MountainTops.

As most of ya'll know, I was born and raised in West Virginia and a big part of my own identity is bound up in those hills and hollers. I was moved to tears as she shared what drives her to advocacy in the face of significant opposition from some (but certainly not all) of the people she grew up with. Her sense that who she is grounded in those ancient hills.


If you ever get a chance, also see In Memory of the Land and the People. This is a documentary film done by old friend of mine, Bob Gates, in the early 70's. It focused on strip mining in West Virginia and Kentucky.

'Spaw, I'd love to see you get around to that long post you talked about writing up thread.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 11 Jun 09 - 09:49 PM

More at Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition about Maria's work and mountain top removal.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 11 Jun 09 - 09:55 PM

Summary of Maria Gunnoe's experience and advocacy at http://www.goldmanprize.org/2009/northamerica

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: maire-aine
Date: 11 Jun 09 - 11:43 PM

Thank you for keeping this thread alive. My father was from a western PA coal mining area, but I only went back there for the first time a few years ago. I had hear about strip mining, but never seen it up close. I was appalled at what it had done to the area. More people need to hear about this.

M

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 12:33 PM

I'm from Mingo County.

Whoever throught we'd look back to the "good old days" of strip mining.

"Clean Coal"?

Russ (Permanent GUEST and WV expat)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 12:50 PM

Thought I would put in a plug for olddude's song Appalachia. It's in the list on this page.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 07:55 AM

I had the same thought, Russ.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: kendall
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 08:42 AM

One of the great Indian Chiefs, whose name I forget, said to an Indian Agent from Washington, "When the last tree is cut down, when the last stream is polluted, only then will the white men realize, you can't eat money."

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 12:57 AM

Kendall that is an eyeopening as plain as the nose on ya face statement by that indian chief. We in on this earth are heading i think destruction because the few greedy rich cannot think past their wallets. They are all just a bunch of selfish ....................!

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 17 Jun 09 - 02:05 AM

Guest, while I agree with you, the responsibility goes well beyond "the few greedy rich."

The construction workers that came after Maria Gunnoe to the point she put a tall chain-link fence around her house for protection are not the greedy rich.

Most of those of us who have become so acclimated to air conditioning or a winter thermostat set at 72 or 68 degrees F, or with so many of our other electrical appliances, or with our "silent electrical "users (think of the red light on your power strip,) are not part of the few, greedy rich.   

It is not just the rich. It is our generally high standard of living, (at least in this country,) and each of our individual failures to fully appreciate and accept the consequences of our choices, both short and long term, for ourselves, our progeny, our neighbors-next door and across the world, and our species.

It is our culture. And it may well also be our human nature.

We best get evolving. As a species, our behaviors are becoming increasingly less adaptive.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 10 Jul 09 - 09:07 PM

Just watching some old videos on you tube and saw something I thought was appropriate here.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 11:32 AM

Janie,

Sorry to be so late.

Your post of 17 Jun 09 is well put.

But...

I think we always need to be a bit wary of the temptation to "blame the victims."

Trillions of dollars have been spent using the best marketing machinery in the history of the world to teach people to want more and that wanting more is a good thing.

For example, if relatively cheap food is available 7 by 24, if it has been engineered to create a constant craving for it, and we are inundated with ads for it, how blameworthy is the individual?

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 12:32 PM

The lifestyle thing held against the rape of the land for the good of the economy and a better standard of living becomes just to far fetched for words. Russ and Janie both have good points and that is what makes it so dichotomous.

Since Russ is from Mingo County...........Somehow the following represents the whole thing in a nutshell......or on a mountaintop.

THIS IS SO BIZARRE that words escape me.......

Spaw

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 07:51 PM

Spaw,

Thanks for the comment.

Good to hear from you.

Yes, I am a WV expat. I chose to be. I choose to remain such for many reasons.

Time passes. Things change. Towns become cities, farmland becomes malls and subdivisions. But no matter why it is happening and who is to blame, I am currently unable to find words to express the way I feel about the obliteration of my county.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: Janie
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 10:08 PM

Spaw, that leaves me utterly speechless.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 12:06 AM

So we're all struck speechless!

But that brokedick jadrool of a nabob governor there made some remarks (I can no longer find DAMMIT) to the effect that not only were the people of WVA getting the profits from being the coal supplier to the country but that USEFUL RECLAMATION (like the golf course) could only add to the revenues and pleasure of its citizens.

Is he for fuckin' real?

He forgot to mention the carnage and rape of the land and wildlife or the fact that the ground water continues to get worse and worse in shades of gray to black. There's a lot he forgot to mention.......

Its another page in the dichotomous history of coal but this latest destruction and those who support it are just out beyond the pale. I fear for what atrocities may be on the horizon.....Whe I was a kid we would go out on a Sunday to see the great stripping shovel, the "Gem of Egypt," later replaced by the "Silver Spade." Nobody liked strip mining but the technology was impressive as it was later when the world's largest dragline, "Big Muskie".........a brute of an earth mover with a freeway sized bucket. Why did we do that?

In other parts of the Appalachians, deep mines were killing men in any number of ways and stealing the land right out from under what had once been the rightful owners. And yet we were all told that that what would save the region was coal, Appalachia's greatest natural resource. So we fought for the rights of miners to earn a living when we should have fought for the government programs that went everywhere else.

Christ almighty.........I wanna' kill somebody just thinking about it. I hate myself for ever looking with anything but disdain on that vile black rock. How much land gone? How many dead and dying of horrid diseases? What was the cost........and can we ever measure it against the gain, no matter how much it may be?

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 10:16 AM

Not at all related to this thread, but is the best place I know to hope to communicate with Russ right now.

Russ, I'm over on the Eastern Shore of MD right now at my sister Annie's house. She was sharing with me about a private festival she attended a week or so ago on the Sassafras River where she met and greatly enjoyed a guy named Russ and his wife Gail, and that Russ was from Mingo Co.

Was that by any chance you?

Janie

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 11:07 AM

Janie,

Bingo!

Annie is super cool. Tell her to give you a heads up hext year so that you can come to sassafras too.

Russ (Permanent GUEST unmasked)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 11:10 AM

Spaw,

I appreciate your passion but the "brokedick jadrool of a nabob governor" wasn't elected because he promised to bring the coal companies to heel.

If you want a short or non-existent politcal career in WV, threaten the power structure.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 11:30 AM

Yeah......I know.......and more is the pity. I have personally believed for some time that there is no winning in WVA or Kentucky or Ohio or anywhere else that coal holds serve. The rich get rich and the rest of us..................Doesn't mean I have to like it or that I can't rant and rave but I really don't know of any action that will turn the tide in any major way.

Spaw

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 22 Jul 09 - 11:26 PM

The billboards promoting coal driving up I-77/WV Turnpike are remarkable. They are clearly geared toward West Virginia voters, and I imagine they are highly effective in getting the voters behind the Coal Lobby in WV.

And more thread-drift to contact Russ.

Russ, Annie says to tell you that you and Gail have to go to the Getaway. I can vouch for what a wonderful gathering it is for singers. There are two threads recently started about the 2009 Getaway. It is sponsored by FSGW, and Annie and I have attended the last 6 or 7 years. A wonderful retreat held at West River, about 35-40 minutes south of Annapolis on the western shore of the Bay. It is not a festival. It is a participatory retreat with people interested in every "genre" of folk music.

Check out past Getaway threads, and/or e-mail me at endresgardenataoldotcom.

Annie was quite firm that the two of you would love it and wanted me to contact you regarding it - and she is not generally so vehement!

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF U
From: Janie
Date: 22 Jul 09 - 11:44 PM

The billboards are striking. Very simple, pristine white with one line in coal black. "Clean coal? YES."

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 23 Jul 09 - 06:23 AM

Janie,

Thanks for the heads-up and the email address.

Looks promising.

We've got to stop meeting like this:)

I will email you.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Canyonguy
Date: 22 Dec 09 - 06:23 PM

Get behind Judy Bonds

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Andy Peterson in Portland OR
Date: 23 Dec 09 - 12:41 AM

The only way we are going to STOP mountaintop removal is to close down the coal fired power plants that create the demand.

Portland, Oregon has an air pollution problem, especially when the east wind blows out of the Columbia River Gorge. On the other side of the Gorge is the PGE coal-fired power plant in Boardman.

We are working _very_ hard to get this plant shut down, as well as one in Centralia, Washington. Most of the coal for these plants, several trains _every_day_, comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 02:00 PM

I see the is a show on Spike TV called "Coal". Forgive me if this was posted elsewhere... is it any good?

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: Janie
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 05:52 PM

I saw the first one. I believe it is a 6 episode reality series, and yes, it is.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 06:23 PM

I have seen all three so far and agree with Janie. Its a deep mine show and if it doesn't do anything else, it brings out quite vivdly the "Dichotomy of Coal."

While we are concerned over what mining does to the miners, the land, and the community, it pays the rent for so many............


Spaw

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: gnu
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 09:09 PM

Maybe off topic...

On a previous coal type thread that was not long ago (I wish I could recall/find it) I.... wait... I have a thought... nope... I searched mountain top removal to no avail.

Anyway... I recall somone posting about their home county. I went to google earth and zoommed in. I was fascinated by the railways through the valleys... nay, fucking amazed!!!! The money... the men... the time... the equipment!!! Seriously. Follow these rails through the mountains on google earth from the mountain tops of Appalachia to the seaports and it's a journey worth taking. It is truly fascinating.

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: Janie
Date: 16 Apr 11 - 11:32 PM

Maybe even more off-topic, gnu, but the same can be said for the building of roads in West Virginia. The building of the railroads, the WV Turnpike, and later, the interstate and "corridor" system of roads built nearly to interstate standards required innovative development and pioneering of engineering technologies later used throughout the world. Bad for the environment in many cases, but good for mobility, and also resulted in the better standards of living, including health care, that accessibility brings.

West Virginia is unique in that it is the only State that is completely within the rugged terrain of the Appalachian mountains and plateau. This has huge significance in terms of culture and economy, and has, for the most part, meant that marketable natural resources (lumber, coal and natural gas,) have been the only realistic means of livelihood in the region since it was settled by Europeans. Even pre-European populations of Native Americans did not tend to establish settlements there. It was hunting grounds for a number of tribes, but home base for none after the "Mound Builders."

I grew up in the Kanawha Valley in the 1950's and 60's. Pre EPA and environmental laws.   Chemical Valley.    Isolated as we were, during the Cold War and time of nuclear proliferation and testing, the Kanawha Valley was considered a prime target for nuclear attack. We were among the three top concentrations for the US chemical industry. Union Carbide, Monsanto, I.E. Dupont and FMC had plants all up and down the Kanawha River. I don't recall, but some of them may have had their Corporate headquarters located there. The air stank. The water in the Kanawha was a chemical cesspool and was undrinkable. Even though the waterworks were on Elk River, the backflow from the Kanawha into the Elk often made the water taste and smell so bad we couldn't drink it, and occasionally, even in the absence of the standards we have today, there would be advisories to not drink tap water due to chemical spills that had backed up into the Elk.

Environmental laws changed much of that beginning in the 70's. The air never stinks. I still wouldn't eat anything caught in the Kanawha, but fish other than carp and catfish do live and thrive there now. The water from the Elk, while still silty from the long, long history of timbering along it's long flow, does not get seriously contaminated by chemical backflow from the Kanawha, and never stinks coming out of the tap, or has an "off" color.

Most of the chemical plants are gone - moved overseas to places where it is still legal to pollute heavily, where they are even welcomed as economic engines, as they once were in the Kanawha Valley. The jobs went with them, as well as the environmental disaster.

Remember the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster? The methyl isocynate leak that killed thousands of people in India? 3 miles from my mother's house, where I grew up, there is an underground storage facility where, until just a few years ago, large amounts of methyl isocynate was stored. The stockpile is now greatly diminished, and as the result of a law suit, will soon be entirely gone, moved to I know not where, but assuredly to a Third World country with little or no enironmental law. The original stockpile belonged to Union Carbide. Driven by our own national environmental laws, not matched in India, at least at the time, Union Carbide had moved most of it's production of this lethal chemical to Bhopal. They were still storing it in my back yard, so to speak, but were no longer manufacturing it in my backyard at the time of that terrible disaster.   Soon after that disaster, Union Carbide sold it's operations in the Kanawha Valley to a French company, now in the process of also closing down operations there due to environmental regulations and public concern. There is significant public debate now about the number of jobs that will be lost when the storage facility completely shuts down, vs concern about the number of people who will find themselves unemploed in the near future.

FMC and Monsanto are long gone. IE Dupont remains, though a much diminished presence. Union Carbide may still have some operations in the Valley. I'm uncertain about that. Thousands of jobs in the Kanawha Valley have been lost over the past 35 years. Not gone, but moved overseas where people desparately need work and where environmental laws are virtually non-existent.

Cost-shifting, in every sense of the word.

I venture to guess the major industry in West Virginia now is health care. As the coal mines became more mechanized, the chemical industry moved overseas,, and the timber all got cut, the demographics of the state shifted and WV now has a much higher than national average percentage of population over 65. Hell, I've been gone 26 years - as tax dollars dried up, a social worker like me had to move on to keep working. I am still well plugged into friends and family in WV, and also pay some attention to economic and census data and the trends they reflect. My nephew, about to finish up his medical residency on Long Island, is the only person I have heard from in a very long time who is moving back - landed a job in the Kanawha Valley with no problem and as already bought a house in Charleston. Non eof his friends, none of the children of my old friends, or their grandchildren are staying or returning.

Good for the local and regional environment. Bad for the economy of WV and for the culture there.

It is a big world, at least from some perspectives. In terms of regional and national environment, West Virginia's economic and cultural losses represent a regional and national environmental gain. If one comprehends how small this globe is, however, there are no winners. Some other countries on the other side of the globe, (i.e. many families and individuals who previously barely managed subsistence living,) benefit in the short term, but will pay the same, or perhaps an even dearer price as their environment becomes increasingly toxic. Other very third world countries are already reaping the short term economic benefits and the long term detriments of a toxic environment from the reality of environmental protections that exist in first world countries but not other places.

In otherwords, at this point in time, I don't see any net gain globally.

Where ever one lives, whatever one's perspective, there are choices to be made that will have profound effects around the globe.

Pardon my eyeglazing ramblings.

Janie

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 08:51 PM

Janie,

Well done.

gnu,
It was me.

Here's a link to get started.

Mingo County WV

Zoom in on the gray areas.

Watch a county disappear before your very eyes.

Russ (Permanent GUEST and WV expat)

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: catspaw49
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:09 AM

Janie, while "beautiful" cannot describe what you wrote, it most certainly was beautifully written........and above all, it is truth. What has sustained so many has destroyed so much.................


Spaw

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 09:50 AM

Corporate greed=oil and gas companies, mine owners, Tea Partiers who want to deregulate a government who really protects us, union busters, crooked politicians,
a Pentagon who sucks up taxpayer money......................

these are all directly or indirectly responsible for blowing up the tops of mountains and putting people below at risk.

Garrett Hardin, the etho-biologist and environmental professor from Santa Barbara
put it this way..............aphorism......................

"You can't just do one thing."

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 08 Dec 12 - 04:20 PM

forwarded message:

Subject: Save Blair Mountain from dirty coal companies
Dear Friend,


Historic Blair Mountain, the site of one of the largest labor uprisings in U.S. history, in 1921, is under assault by the coal industry.

Coal companies want to use explosives to destroy Blair Mountain through a process called mountaintop removal mining -- the most destructive form of coal mining there is.

West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has the power to save Blair Mountain, but so far has refused to use it.

Tell West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin: Save Blair Mountain from dirty coal companies.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/save_blair_mtn/?r_by=51716-3290185-JlIqTOx&rc=paste1

Subject: RE: King Coal Dumping on Jean Ritchie and ALL OF US!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 08 Dec 12 - 05:46 PM

Recent reports indicate that the main coal company in this particular case has announced that it will cease all mountain top removal mining in that area.

It would appear that additional petitioning in the case would be redundant, although resuming, preferably with new petitions, might be needed if the company fails to follow through as promised.

While the announcements made reference to "environmental issues" and made other attempts at claims they were responding to "public concerns," the simple fact, and likely the most important consideration in the mining company's decision, is that falling coal prices have made it unprofitable to operate mines of the kind.

New natural gas availabilities have made it much more economical than coal, and resulting shutdowns of coal fired generating plants needing maintenance and updates have made conversions or replacements with gas fired generation more profitable, so the demand for coal is evaporating.

So instead of more mountaintop removal mining, we'll have the much cleaner(???) fracking for natural gas, ... but mostly elsewhere.

Status updates based on something more reliable than chain letters are still of value, to be sure that the intended changes are implemented, but the expectation would be that the "forward" immediately above will still be arriving for at least the next ???? years.

John