My mountain,
My Mother.
Weeping with the blood
of my Grandfather's fathers,
Faces, stained black.
My mountain
Wails for justice,
Losing her voice,
Like a dying wick
in a smoldering candle.

Her children,
in the corner,
surviving
on scraps
from the master's table.
Cloaked,
in darkness,
unknowing,
unseen,
While she is raped.

Everything pure.
Everything just.
Everything Sacred.
Reduced to ashes and soot for a dollar.

Labels: Appalachia, Appalachian life, coal, mining, mountaintop removal, poetry

Jean Ritchie has done so much to help preserve and promote Appalachian culture and narrate our story in the last 60+ years as have many others I could pull from the filing cabinet in my mind. Using traditional mountain and folk music to sing her family's (and her own) songs, Jean has become an outstanding voice of Appalachia in a world so unfamiliar with our plight.

Jean is an artist, an advocate, and a champion of our people.







I'd love to catch her the next time she's in Viper, just to thank her for all her contributions to preserving our culture she has made. The closest I ever got was when she was Grand Marshall of the Black Gold Festival Parade in Hazard a few years back, and I was like a kid in a candy store just to see her pass by.

Labels: Appalachia, Appalachian life, blue diamond coal, dulcimer, folk music, hazard, Jean Ritchie, Kentucky, leatherwood, mountain music, mountaintop removal, music, musicians, perry county, viper