@macaodha Thank you, Val-- your encouragement is always appreciated!  Great economic struggle followed the degradation left behind by mining and persists to this day.  

I hope you're getting lots of opportunities to keep making your wonderful music!  

Your music depicts the sadness very well Robin. Two musicians very much in harmony with each other.

We've practiced the tune and I replaced our work-in-progress recording with one more practiced.  :) 

The larger white rectangle is our house.  The shaded overlay is where there is a long-abandoned underground mine.  

@dusty The environmental degradation from clear cut logging, deep coal mining, coal strip mining, drilling, and, to a lesser degree, the mining of clay, is present here everywhere.  And some of these practices continue even now-- the number of trees being logged in more recent months is staggering.  It is both heartbreaking and maddening to see so little care given to the land and waters here.  

Thanks a bunch for listening and commenting!  I've been practicing to get those early noter passes on this tune cleaner so that each note sounds. 

P.S.- I'm making good use of the tuner.    

Robin, this is a striking tune.  It does not have the relaxing, meditative feel of most of your compositions, but rather an urgent, ominous feel.  That range of concerned emotions is also revealed in your description.

I went to college in Iowa, and one day my biology prof--an old conservationist named after Benjamin Franklin--canceled our regular lab and instead took us to visit an old coal mine.  For miles around the old mine it looked like a wasteland: gray earth with hardly anything growing. Apparently the dirt above the coal was really acidic, and as they dug for the coal they just dumped the acidic dirt on top of the Iowa topsoil, transforming Iowa's rich, productive, black soil to infertile, gray dirt.

You call it "timing." I call it "phrasing." Billie Holiday's notes didn't fall on the beat all the time, you know.  Neither did Frank Sinatra's.

Hey, @nate -- thanks a bunch for listening and for the nice comment!    

We started and stopped mostly together so that always makes for a successful tune.   -- this emoji is Mark, the tune's metronome.   -- this is me, an old lady bringing the expressive noter play with a funny-shaped noter.    

Again, many thanks!     

What you might describe as "timing difficulty" I would describe as expression. Love the song Robin

@dan & @ken-longfield Thank you, fellows, for listening and for your kind comments!  

There are folks who have worked to help clean the waters yet there is much more to be done before they are safe places to even wade.  Mine drainage is still problematic in the area.  The abandoned deep mines themselves present problems of a different kind (unstable landscapes).  And the de-forestation contributes to areas being more flood prone.   Lots of work to be done to mitigate the damage done yet work must continue for the benefit of future generations!

P.S.- Dulcimore Dan, I know you can keep time!  :)  

Sounds great, Robin. Living between to areas where mining was an important part of the economy I see the environmental problems almost every day. We did have some mines, mostly ore for making iron and steel. We supplied mostly wood to make charcoal and shore up deep coal mines.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Bravo! The good news is I can't keep time so it sounds perfect to me....