Country Roads Parody Video(Music Video about Mountain top removal)

[sasquatch]

Run time: 04:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oG3iK_SQzY   Posted on YouTube: February 20, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 20, 2009 By DU Member: sasquatch Views on DU: 1051

 
Damn these bastards that do this to West Virginia.

[lob1]

1. Back around 1975, John Prine wrote and sang a song with the same

sentiments, called "Paradise". The song still moves me.

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

Chorus:
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

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.

Repeat Chorus:

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.

Repeat 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 waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

Repeat Chorus:

[sasquatch]

2. I've heard that song before on a classic country station

[lob1]

3. They used to play John on country AND rock stations.

But the fact is, he really was more of a modern folk singer.

[dolphinsong285]

13. Thanks for the lyrics to this great song.

And mention of John Prine --one of the best. Isn't it sad that, after more than thirty years, we are still fighting the same battles, and moving backward instead of forward? What has happened to us? Our technology has evolved, but we have become more base, more vulgar, more selfish.

[leftyclimber]

4. Please recommend this, folks. Our beautiful state continues to be destroyed by these monsters.

I found out THIS WEEK that Morgantown's water was not safe to drink for the entire month of October 2008. Nobody ever saw fit to mention it to the public -- I found out from a local water quality activist, who mentioned it in passing during a conversation.

As the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit is exploited more and more in WV, that poison will be added to our water along with all of the acid mine drainage, "valley fill" (for those who don't know, the Bush admin renamed mining waste "fill" so the mining companies could dump it in our streams), poisons from coal-fired power plants, and God knows what other toxins.

I don't know whether to :cry: or :nuke:.

[HillbillyBob]

5. I grew up in Mineral County, seeing strip mining all through WV,

Western Md and W Pa. It sickens me I have written and called and done every petition that I can. I don't freakin understand why folks there still vote for Byrd and Rockefellers and Manchin. WTF is wrong with the rest of WVa? I have tried to get my family off their dead asses to get out and vote..oh it doesn't matter is the answer I get. My grandparents do vote and they vote for to get the coal corpses out. I just am at a loss. I live in NC now I left years ago because being gay I would be dead by now I was marked before I even left high school, now my health is too iffy to live there without proper hiv care.

[leftyclimber]

7. Yeah, there's a lot wrong here, and a lot that could be made right.

And a lot of the time the alternatives to Byrd, Rockefeller, and Manchin are even worse than the incumbents (although I voted Mountain Party this last GE -- I just couldn't cast a vote for Manchin and no way was I voting R). Byrd gets us money, so he'll be there until he dies, then things will *really* go to hell here because we won't have the power on Appropriations. Mollohan's another turd we can't seem to flush, although Nick Rahall's starting to grow on me.

I think a lot of the voter apathy is because King Coal has run the show for so long that folks can't imagine the state any other way. They've given up. You can only try to change things for so long with no (or punitive) results before you just quit trying.

Even living as close to Pittsburgh as I do, and in a university town to boot, I'm just knocked on my ass by the level of bigotry flying in all directions here, although it's just as bad in rural parts of Oregon, where I grew up. It sounds like under the circumstances you were smart to get out (although it's sad that you had to) -- the health care here's not getting any better, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it get worse before all is said and done.

I love this state, but I won't be staying here either. Once I'm done with school I'm gone. Come to think of it, a lot of my problem is the first sentence of this paragraph. So many young people have said the same thing, then followed through.

[TNDemo]

6. If you are interested in this, rent the DVD Kilowatt Ours.

It takes on this subject.

[ThirdChoice]

8. John Denver would love this video....

....but he would cry at what is being done to West Virginia. He was one of the original music activists trying to help the environment. He did a benefit concert for The Wildlife Conservation Society in 1995.

[Turborama]

9. Happy to send it to the greatest! Also, just gave it 5 stars and watched it on high quality full

screen. Added it to my Facebook profile, too.

This is a real eye opener and needs to go viral so people finally wake up to how their own beautiful country is being pillaged in such an unsustainable way.

Thanks for the share.

(edit, I had said 'also' twice and hated the way it made me sound like you know who)

[elleng]

10. Keep in mind that those who say we have so much coal

is referring to THIS.

And think of the 'lovely' ads for railroads on tv; they're a BIG coal supporter.

Its a big part of environmental issue, and must be thought of as such. SO, I suggest we raise this to President Obama's level. He may or may not be aware, but he SHOULD be, and should help address the problems. He was, after all, discussing coal/natural gas (I believe) with Harper in Ottawa yesterday.

PS, my daughter is at WVU in Morgantown and loves it; wonder what she was drinking during October!

[leftyclimber]

15. Probably the same unfit-for-human consumption water the rest of us were.

:(

I've switched to bottled, which I'm not a fan of for other environmental reasons, but I haven't been able to find out whether a regular household filter takes/took care of the problem (high total dissolved solids, which in this area includes mining waste ... yummy).

ETA: Part of the problem we have with whether the water here is considered safe to drink is that WV's environmental regulations are incredibly lax. So under current WV law that water was considered safe to drink, even though scientifically the TDS levels were unacceptable. The coal and timber industries own the government, and have pushed to keep environmental regs lax so they can extract our resources more cheaply.

[Turborama]

11. Please Digg it...

Here's the link: http://digg.com/environment/Country_Roads_Music_Video_about_Mountain_top_Removal#

[Mabus]

12. Two of my friends Mike and Guin are there fighting

Here's a video of them earlier this week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLQdCA9l4Qc

[elleng]

14. Lets watch.

'Paul Cellucci, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, said Canadian officials were worried about pressure from Canadian and American environmentalists to restrict imports to the U.S. of oil derived from Alberta's oil sands, where refining generates high levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Cellucci said he didn't think Canadians had to worry following the agreement after hearing Obama compare the oil sands to America's coal industry.

"Clearly, Obama is not going to shut down all the coal burning plants in the United States," Cellucci said. "He's putting the oil sands into the same basket. It sounds to me like he's not going to support restricting oil from the oil sands from coming into the United States."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/20/AR2009022000180.html