Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal (5 page)

Carla Gover, one of the region's most popular singer-songwriters and a current Appalachian Music Fellow at Berea College, remembers
being at a crowded event in Eastern Kentucky when Ritchie performed the song in front of an audience full of working and retired coal miners. “Mountain men do not always cry easily,” says Gover. “But when Jean sang ‘Black Waters' there was not a dry eye in the house. Tell me, how many people can make a roomful of coal miners cry?”

Despite their obviously being social commentaries, Ritchie's songs speak to everyone as moving narratives. Instead of being accusatory and in your face, Ritchie's lyrics are simultaneously subtle and blunt, so that the listener realizes what is being said before he or she even knows it. “Her songs are powerful social statements, but in a way much different than, say, Bob Dylan's ‘Masters of War,'” Gover says. “Jean is one of the most powerful, subtle, graceful, potent political songwriters ever to come out of this music-laden state, and she does it so effectively that there are many who probably don't even think of her as a political singer.”

1977's
None but One
is Ritchie's most critically lauded album; it was even awarded the prestigious Critics Award from
Rolling Stone
magazine. The album contains two more of Ritchie's famous songs of social consciousness, “None but One,” a treatise on racial harmony, and “The Cool of the Day,” an ancient-sounding spiritual that demands environmental stewardship and which is now being widely used as one of the major anthems in the fight against mountaintop removal. It is a song that has already achieved classic status by being included in the hymnal of the Society of Friends. Ritchie allowed Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to use the song on their popular compilation
Songs for the Mountaintop
, which raises money for the fight against mountaintop removal. In 2007 Ritchie performed the song at the Concert for the Mountains, an event held in New York City with Robert Kennedy, Jr., in conjunction with a delegation of Appalachians who attended the United Nations Conference on Environmental Sustainability and spoke out about the devastation caused by this form of mining.

“I never feel that I'm doing very much to help our poor
mountains,” Ritchie says, sitting at her dining room table with her hands folded before her. “Beyond making up songs and singing them, I don't know what else to do. I've never been good at waving flags and shouting through loudspeakers, so I'm wondering what there is of an activist about me. It seems an accolade I don't deserve.” Ritchie grows quiet for a moment, her face turned to the white light of the window again. She grows visibly upset, but manages to contain herself. “Sometimes, when I think of how it's all gone…well, I better stop about there.”

Ritchie is now able to look back on a life well lived, one full of music and service. Her accolades are many. In 2002 she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest award given in the nation to traditional artists and musicians. She is one of only fifty-seven others to be given the honor, along with such people as Hazel Dickens, Bill Monroe, Wanda Jackson, and John Lee Hooker. She has received honorary degrees from the University of Kentucky and Berea College. An anonymous donor recently asked Lincoln Memorial University to organize the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Literature, a $1,500 annual allowance to an emerging Appalachian writer and the largest monetary prize given to a writer in the region. Her original compositions have been performed by such artists as Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, The Judds, Kathy Mattea, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and many others. Recently, a play entitled
Sing up the Moon
, a look at Ritchie's life and songs, opened in Pennsylvania and is preparing for a run in New York.

Ritchie says she's trying to slow down these days. “I'm trying very hard to retire,” she laughs. But she can't help contributing to the fight against mountaintop removal in whatever way she can. More than anything else, Ritchie serves as a guiding hand for the movement, a figurehead whom everyone involved can look to for inspiration, and one whose eloquent wisdom is hard to deny.

Kate Larken is a writer, publisher, and singer-songwriter from Kentucky who has emerged as one of the leading musical voices
against mountaintop removal. She says that Ritchie serves as “a light we can follow through all of this darkness.” Larken, who often leads crowds in sing-alongs of “The Cool of the Day” at anti–mountaintop removal rallies and other events, depends on Ritchie's long-standing example as guidance.

“I'm inspired by Jean's generosity these last few years. Seems to me that she'll do whatever she can to help in the fight. Even in her eighties, she's not sitting back and letting others fight it for her; she's not fooling around—she's serious and she's active,” Larken says. “I'll swear, I believe Jean Ritchie will walk 'til morning—if that's what it takes—to help lead us to where we need to be so we can all see this thing more clearly.”

Although it has become harder and harder for her to get around—mostly due to a bad ankle—Ritchie tries to be as active in the struggle against environmental devastation as she can.

In May of 2008, Ritchie traveled back home to Eastern Kentucky to receive another honorary degree, this time from Union College in Barbourville. She elected to not speak at commencement, choosing to sing instead. Her set came about halfway through the two-hour-long program, but before that, people were already restless. Those in the upper bleachers fanned themselves with their programs. Babies cried. Everyone seemed to be milling about, going in and out to smoke, staying just to see their friend or family member graduate. But when Ritchie sat down with her dulcimer and began singing “Shady Grove,” the commotion ceased. No one moved a muscle. The more than a thousand people filling the gymnasium were all unified in listening to her, watching her, feeling her good spirit wash over them. It was a magical moment, and it grew even more intense once Ritchie decided that she wanted to sing one more song. She stood on her own and looked out on the crowd, making eye contact with almost everyone.

“I wrote this next song about thirty years ago,” she said, “about something that I felt was very important. And it turns out
that it's still about something important.” Then she closed her eyes and sang:

My Lord, he said unto me
“Do you like my garden so fair?
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the grasses green
And I'll return in the cool of the day.”

Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
This earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day

Then my Lord, he said unto me
“Do you like my pastures so green?
You may live in this garden if you will feed my sheep
And I'll return in the cool of the day.”

Then my Lord, he said unto me
“Do you like my garden so free?
You may live in this garden if you'll keep the people free
And I'll return in the cool of the day.”

Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
O this earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day.

At that point, the only sound in the huge room is that of people crying. They may not know that they've just heard an environmentally minded hymn, but they all are aware that they've just witnessed something very powerful. Perhaps a few of them have even been changed forever. Then they stand up, with none of the
hesitation that usually occurs with standing ovations. Everyone is on their feet, and the applause is thunderous.

After commencement, on their way out, people push and shove to speak to Ritchie, to thank her, to touch her. She is treated like a prophet here in her homeland. One woman, dressed in a bright Sunday-best dress and tottering on white heels she is not used to, stands nearby but will not approach Ritchie. Her Appalachian hands—big, hard-working, liver-spotted—hold tight to the shoulders of her young granddaughter, who wears an Easter hat for the occasion of seeing someone, perhaps an older sister, become the first college graduate in the family. The woman leans down to the little girl and whispers, “Look, Cassie. That's Jean Ritchie. This is something to remember, baby.”

Just as when she was twelve years old, Jean Ritchie knows who she is and knows what she believes in. So many years ago that little Singing Girl of the Cumberlands thought to herself, “I felt proud that I was who I was.” But that child also felt alone. As a twelve-year-old, she could have had no idea that one day she would bring so many people together, making all of them realize that they were not alone. She could not have known how proud all Appalachians—and all people who believe in standing up for what they believe in—would one day be of her, too.

When the interview is over, Ritchie frets that her visitors have not had anything to eat, having dined just before arriving at her house. Like a true Appalachian, she can't stand the thought of us leaving her home with an empty belly or an empty hand. She produces a box of chocolates and insists that we take them. “You didn't have any coffee or a bite to eat or anything,” she says, with concern.

She also can't resist the Appalachian tradition of following visitors out the door when they depart. She comes out on the porch with us as we load everything back into our car and prepare to leave. She talks to us the whole while as we arrange camera cases and backpacks and tape recorders, wishing us well, telling
us about her next planned trip to Kentucky, where she has always maintained a second home in Viper, unable to completely move away. Just as we are fixing to leave her driveway, Ritchie leans on the porch railing and holds up her face so it can be touched by the surprisingly warm March sun. She closes her eyes for a moment, and she can't help but sing: “What wondrous love is this / O my soul, o my soul.”

Upon reopening her girlish eyes, she sees that we are about to pull away, so she gives a hearty wave. Her smile is like a prayer.

Jean Ritchie talking…

My childhood home there in Viper was a place of a happy childhood. When you have a happy childhood you can romanticize your memories. The whole family was there. It was a beautiful place. The mountains really were our backyard. We were right there by the branch, and the mountains were all around us. They were the front yard and the side yard and the backyard.

There was a certain old path we used to take up to the cornfield. We'd all go up together to hoe corn, all the sisters and brothers, with a mule to plow around the hillside before we hoed. There was this certain little path we took, and I took it not too long ago, showing George exactly where we crossed the creek here and where we climbed the hill there, you know. We'd avoid the road by taking these shortcuts. You'd climb down a clift in one place. We used to go to the cornfield like that. We'd sing and talk.

I remember us carrying our dinners up to the fields. This one time, my sisters Colleen and Edna and Pauline ganged up and made up a story. There was a tree—there were a lot of trees like this, but there was a great big beech tree that we'd always pass, and it had big old roots that made little circles where they went into the ground. They told me that little people lived down in there, little fairies, who lived back under the tree, and they said the roots was their front porch. We'd take little gifts there—little coffee can lids full of water and honey. They had me believing this was true.
And to this day when I pass that tree I still want to put something down there for them, some kind of offering.

When my people first came to Kentucky it was just subsistence farming.
⁸
But by the time I was around, most all of the men worked in the mines. All my cousins and uncles, and people all around us. All the men.

My brother Raymond worked underground, and the thing we noticed most about his hardships was when he got appendicitis. His appendix burst, and he was just lying there in the mines for about fourteen or fifteen hours before they got anybody in to help him. We thought we were going to lose him, thought he's going to die, but he made it through that. It was just neglect, nobody from the company came to get him. They figured since it wasn't a mining accident they didn't have to worry. Poor man.

My other brother worked in the commissary, and I remember one time he came home with a can of condensed milk. We everyone stood around and took a drink, having a little taste. I remember that it was the smoothest, most wonderful taste. We used to long for him to bring that home. And he'd bring little treats home that we didn't get all the time. His name was Truman.

I first took note of the coal companies and injustice when they started strip mining. There was a big uproar when that started. People started fussing just like they're doing now over the mountaintop removal, but they didn't get very far, as you can see, because they just stripped all over the place. They kept saying, “Aw, it'll all come back, it'll all grow back.” Then they'd throw down a few little grass seeds and they told everybody that the grass would grow and the trees would grow and so on but it never was the same after that. You can see all those bare places still, where they first did it.

The memories are all about little things, like the head of the holler. There was a knob that stuck up, and we called it the Tater Knob. It looked just like the end of a potato. There was a hole up there and you could throw a little pebble down it and you could hear it going and going and going. It was probably down in some
old coal mine. But maybe it was a natural cave or something. It was a place we used to play, and they leveled that, they took away the Tater Knob. That's the thing you think of. I don't think, “Oh, what they're doing to the land!” I think, “They took away the Tater Knob!” It's that connection that's being lost that's so important, especially to the ones who remember that land, who know that land, who played in those places.

They're destroying our memories, but they're destroying our whole country—you know what I mean by that, that usage of that word, with “whole country” meaning our region.