Well i just thought that i would write a little note. I haven't been able to keep up the reading of the digest for a few weeks. I feel a bit sad about that...but really its not my fault. I have had finals and thanksgiving break. Yes i am a college student who so lovingly discovered Over The Rhine through my Cincinnati friend in the spring of 2002. Well i am surrounded by Karen and Linfords coal mine memories and steel filled air. I am in steubenville which is about little less than an hour from where Karen grew up. The songs take me to the places that i tend to forget even though i am right in the middle of them. I recently bought The Darkest Night of the Year...and i have fallen in love. Coal Train is one of the songs that speaks of the industry through music alone. Ohio is also so wonderful...the lyric....The land lay bare...someone turned a profit there..and a good son lost his life in a !
strip
pit....speaks of so many of the lives in this area of the world. I look over the the Ohio river and i see the wall of West Virginian mountain that is bare of trees...and you can see the layers of rock...the trucks bringing coal...and the smell of the steel mills fills the air. I woke up this morning smelling what i thought was gas...or car exhaust...but it was the steubie stench...the mills hard at work. Well i know this is turning longer than i wanted it to be but that is okay..sometimes we need to take a break from studying and just talk. Well my Cincinnati friend and i took an excursion to Barnsville, Ohio to see what made Karen who she is. This was in September. It was fun. Sadly my letter is getting too long. I shall talk more about my Barnsville trip later when i have more time. I love talking to all of you and i hope that you had a happy holiday. Ride on the backs of the angles
tonight.
"Wecome to the goldrush....wait till after dark...open up the cealing....we'll be realing...we'll be breathing on a spark.."