Open letter to Big Coal

open letter to Don Blankenship, Bill Raney, CEO's of Consol, Peabody, etc.. Big Coal, Friends of Coal... etc

May all your wives, lovers, prostitutes, boy-toys, hobby friendships and any family who still freely associates with you go raw vegan gourmet and suddenly find your scent repulsive and your ruddy utterances distasteful.

May the first born of all of you and your employees, down to the mail clerks, housekeepers and refuge workers, all turn Non Profit, grow an intense love for ancient growth forests, medicinal plants and mushrooms and an overall diversity of wildlife. May all other members of your close and extended family and friends start collecting starving, injured and abandoned cats.

May all the people who inadvertently share your name denounce your affiliation.

May all the cartoons depicting your image be hilarious and poignant, and although you can not quite understand them, may you be surprised to find they are traveling the metropolitan museum circuit.

May all the tomatoes that come your way be organic and vine ripened.

May all the politicians and housewives and teachers who share your views, who refuse to stand against you despite their lack of support or those who do support you in any way share your fate.

May a flower grow on the grave of a buried stream every time you speak the truth, and may you live until every stream has a flower, or is exhumed.

May every MTR engineer quit beer and TV and start buying land with mineral rights intact, stocks in wind and night classes for green technologies. May everyone of them be physically, mentally and financially prepared to close the site and start on Appalachian Restoration, and the New Green Advance.

May your life be remembered for your works.

May every West Virginian find their identity in the beauty and bounty of the mountains and not in the generations of exploitation, humiliation and degradation of Coal companies who have stolen our land, murdered our leaders, cheated us, lied to us and told us coal mining was the only thing we were smart enough to do.

May you have a clear view of what you have done with your life and all the repercussions of your actions for at least thirty years before you lie on your death bed. May you review your contributions to Our People and Our Land on a nightly basis.

May you be visited by the spirits of the people and the land you have touched, the places you have visited your footprint and the very soul of the Mountains and Hollers you have worked.

May you and your families drink the ground water of the mountain springs where you have tread, rest in the shade of the trees of that land, eat the plenty that you have created, swim in the mountain lakes you have damned, and breathe the air of your processes.

I want for you the full scope of the heritage you have left for the rest of us. Please accept this gracious gift ; may it keep the light in your eyes.