Andrew writes:
Hi
Denise,
Thank you for being an inspiring reminder that mountaintop mining
will not be stopped by anything but citizens rising up against the
"coal-o-cracy" running much of western Appalachia's mountains, including
our fair state of Virginia. I wish you all the best in your campaign,
and I hope people in WV wake up to how bought and paid for their existing
government is. Between the continued mountaintop removal, Gov. Cecil
the Road Builder, and Massey Coal's destruction of the Tug Fork a
couple of weeks ago, WV's rural residents are under constant assault
(come to think of it, I'm not sure it would be much of a picnic to
live in the Kanawha Valley's shadow of chemical emissions either.)
This morning's Washington Post ran a big article on you, so I hope
others have been inspired to action this morning as well.
I am a nationally touring folk singer and songwriter who passes through
different parts of WV several times a year (I call the Shenandoah
Valley home, a ways removed from King Coal's antics - here we fight
corporate industrial agriculture and sprawl for the same kinds of
effects they have on our communities.) I wrote a song about mountaintop
mining a couple of years ago after doing a concert in Williamson and
at Appalshop, and have used it to spread the word around the country
about what is happening in WV, KY and southwest VA. I have enclosed
the lyrics in this email if they might be helpful to you.
Thank you for standing on your principles! I wish you the best and
perhaps someday I will have the honor of meeting you. Thanks for shining
the light.
Best,
Andrew
Check
out Andrew's website: http://www.monumental.com/fallmtn
"Company Town" Andrew McKnight
1998 Catalooch Music, BMI
Verse 1
Coal trains run through
our veins, moving monuments to better days that mountain stands over
our darkened lungs, we've time to ponder what we've become
Chorus
In this company town,
it's what we know,
change comes hard, change comes slow
until the bottom falls out, that's how it goes down,
til the money's all drained, from a company town
Verse 2
Well-dressed Yankee bosses
worked us so hard,
for their well-dressed children and their well-kept yards
while coal camps echoed with mournful sounds,
of impoverished voices from deep in the ground,
under this company town
Chorus
Bridge
Our parents' memories
of World War II
the mines worked round the clock, was the American thing to do
families gathered round their radios,
to hear FDR say, we'd make it somehow, in our town
Verse 3
Bright shafts of morning
light, on jobless faces and their grim plight,
while four men and a dragline blow the mountaintop off,
to take its heart out, now it knows what we've lost
Chorus
Tag
til the life's all drained
out, of a company town
