Larry Gibson 1946-2012

I never met him.  I regret it.  I only make it back to West Virginia once a year, and the extra three-hour trip south from the Northern Panhandle seemed too long this past summer in between family commitments.  Now, it seems like it would have taken no effort at all to make the pilgrimage so many have made to Kayford Mountain.  My friend Mike had the good fortune of visiting him the summer before.  He said Larry was very clear.

He had a specific question for his visitors:
"Now that you've seen it; what are you going to do about it?"

from the New York Times Green Blog

and this video from the Guardian.

Iris Dement sings it

Nostalgias

The field I walked through to get to the school bus: here, my dad is heading out to play some bluegrass. 

What Polly Did

New music can be a beginning. One that struck deeply when it was released in February 2011 (and pushed my resolution to invest in DN, WV)  is  PJ Harvey's Let England Shake.  Dominated by the auto-harp and Harvey's odd vocal phrasing but rounded out by an amazing arrangement,  the music is the perfect setting for the stone: PJ's political (she calls it apolitical) message: England has wasted itself in war,  England deserves better; England is taken away from us, England made me;  England is at a dead end, long live England.

She taps into a form of tribal awareness (her "I" is always "We") I've heard in poets called to speak for a people (think Yeats, Walcott, Boland, Rich, Brecht).

To prove her sincerity (perhaps too much), she performs the songs from this album in a white dress with a raven crest of hair, auto-harp clutched to her breast.  She is Athena, the White Goddesss, Freya.  She is England.

Her disparagement of war as a way into the voice of her people is a large part of the inspiration of Dead of the Night, WV.  Here is one of the many strong songs from the album: