Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal

0:28Wait, you're listening. musical icon. Oh! My goodness! Hi, Lucky. It's so great to meet you. Oh, my God. I can't believe it. Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo, of course, is a famous cellist, kind of the famous cellist. He's won 19 Grammy Awards, produced more than 90 musical albums. But the reason we were sitting down to talk to him was... I'm a newbie at podcasting. We got together with our friend, producer, and host Ana Gonzalez, and they made a whole podcast series called Our Common Nature. And we loved the podcast so much that we wanted to sit down and talk to the two of them about why they made it. Yeah, so the idea for the podcast started with Yo-Yo, right?

1:20Like he'd been doing these outdoor performances for about a year. And he was basically trying to reconnect to nature himself and bring music outside of the concert hall, playing in locations that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find a classical music concert, like on a riverbed or by a coal mine in a cave in the woods. And they were these really intimate performances kind of to whoever was around. And at a certain point, Yo-Yo wanted to get this to more people. He decided he should have somebody on the ground with him with a microphone making recordings, making stories. And at some point, he and his team came to me and they asked, do you want to be that person?

2:02Do you want to be on the ground with a microphone making recordings with me? And I was like, yes, please. That sounds amazing. Well, I was so happy to meet Anna because she also works with children. You may recognize Anna's voice because she's also a producer on our sister show for families, Terrestrials. She has this wonderful podcast with children. And actually, I never grew up. So I started from a child's point of view. You know, we've all pestered adults with the question why at a certain age. It's usually around two or three years old. Why? Why daddy? Why mommy? me, but I think I never stopped.

2:45And then of course, in the natural world, which I came to later, although I think the fascination was there always, I think who hasn't looked out in the night sky and wondered what's out there? I mean, just all of that, that Yo-Yo just said, made it so fun to go with him because he is this great combination of childlike wonder, you know, just having fun playing such a people person and then would like prank me by like saying like, oh, I want to say something important and then like make duck sounds into my microphone. And the way that people opened up with Yo-Yo there, him having his cello, playing music as an offering, it opened up these worlds that otherwise would take years, honestly, of relationship building that we could do in a day.

3:36What I do as a musician is not unlike what a reporter does. I just have to report it through sound and you report it through words. Although Anna comes pretty close to reporting it through sound because in West Virginia, we had a lovely dinner for all the participants that were going to come in and they had a cider press. And guess what? Anna was there with her big fuzzy microphone recording the sound. I think that was the first thing I recorded was Yo-Yo pressing apples on an apple fork. Like I recorded people eating food and fire crackling and the crickets chirping. And so, yeah, I also thought the same thing in that moment, Yo-Yo.

4:19I was like, oh, we're doing the same thing. You have a cello and I have a microphone, but we're like relaying energy and sound and feeling in our own mediums. What Anna did and does is she's able to do not reporting on facts or even on knowledge, but reporting on experience. The series they ended up making together, I mean, it's basically Ana and Yo-Yo going around to different locations across the country, climbing mountains, rafting rivers, chanting to whales, bringing music to people in these places and then telling stories about those places and their connection to the natural world. And that hopefully these podcasts are there to give a sense of, through sounds and words, what it feels like to be there and to be part of every special community that we've visited.

5:28That gives us the best possible way of sharing a deep experience of a place with a radio audience. I think I said this to Ana when I first heard it. Like, it's sort of spiritually refreshing. It's kind of so at odds with all the news or other media that I feel like is out there right now. It feels, like, slower and richer and more human somehow. Thank you, Latif. I mean, yeah, I felt that way the whole time making it. It made it all worth it because everyone deserves that kind of four-dimensional view of their lives and where they live. So we decided to pluck one episode out for you to hear. It takes place in West Virginia and covers, among other things, a huge recent tragedy I had never even heard of.

6:25One of the oldest rivers in the world that is improbably called New River. and a famous song that you may have even sung at karaoke that's based on a lie. Take a listen.

6:41As a little girl, I would go with my granddad to the company store. And all the coal miners would be around and they would say, sing me that song. And they would pay me. So I would get a few pennies for penny candy and it was 16 tons. So I would sing 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and a deeper hit dead. St. Peter, don't you call me, because I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store. That's Diane Williams. She's sitting with me and Yo-Yo and a group of coal miners in New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. It's the first weekend of fall, and we're outside of a historical mine called Nuttelburg.

7:30The Appalachian hills around us are tight and thick with summer leaves. The river behind us is a constant flow. We just had a picnic of pepperoni rolls and Mr. Pibb from real-life coal miner lunch buckets. And then Yo-Yo stood up. As a stranger, I'm so overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation and gratitude for what you have done. It's important to unite all of us because you've united us once before in what you've done. So what would you like us to take away?

8:10Coal has formed the lives of so many West Virginians. It's formed this country, really. But there's a dark irony to coal. St. Peter, don't you call me coal? You hear it in that song, 16 Tons.

8:32And that irony makes it hard to get to know coal if you're an outsider. Especially today, as coal faces another challenge. The industry, especially in West Virginia, is shrinking. Coal is changing, but the culture of it is still there. in these Appalachian towns. So in this episode, we dig into the music and the stories of West Virginians whose lives are defined by coal to see what keeps people holding on to this place and the black fossil falling out of its hills.

9:15Hi, I'm Ana Gonzalez, and this is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. We climb mountains, play music, drive dirt roads, recite poetry, traverse rivers and oceans, and even our own brains, all to figure out how to better live on our planet. Together. Can I get you to do the classic intro, who are you and what do you do? I'm Yo-Yo Ma and I play the cello. Always great to see you. Always great to see you. Yeah, thanks for coming on this way. Isn't it weird that we have a podcast together?

9:57I know, it's fantastic. Yo-Yo and I traveled deep into the heart of West Virginia because it's a place we both don't know very well. And this trip, winding through Appalachian mountain towns, was a way to learn more about this place that holds so much of our country's history and identity. I was struck by the immense beauty of the landscape and the rivers, the mountains, and how extraordinarily kind the people we met were. I lost all my money but a two dollar bill. I'm on my long journey home.

10:36Back on that riverbank in New River Gorge by the Old Mine, we're here with a bunch of people whose lives have been touched by coal. Miners, of course, but also a poet and some musicians. We want to get to know this place, so we start on some common ground. You know, coal miners is gospel of music, country music. Oh, lovely. Kathy Matea. Oh, yeah. Kathy Matea, he said. She's a West Virginian singer-songwriter, and she's here too. Well, they're my people. I mean, they just are. Both of Kathy's grandfathers worked in West Virginia mines. My grandfather mined a 30-inch seam of coal. He did it with a pick and would pick sideways into the coal and work his way in.

11:22And my grandmother would sew leather patches onto the backs of the top of his shirt so that when he wedged himself in against the ceiling, it wouldn't wear through his shirts. Kathy grew up hearing stories like this from everyone in her family. They'd all gather in one of her grandparents' homes and tell stories and play music. That's where Kathy started playing guitar. Her parents would get her to perform, and this was around the 1970s when a new song was taking over West Virginia radio. How many times would you estimate you've played Country Roads in your lifetime? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

12:11Y 'all have to sing with me, though, because that's the whole point, you know. Take Me Home Country Roads is quintessential Americana music. People all over the world know it. And in West Virginia, this song is the song. West Virginia University football games, high school graduations, weddings. It is so nostalgic for this version of West Virginia that feels good. And it's absolutely beautiful. But it's not really true. Because all the specific locations they mention are in Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River, those are Virginia landmarks. And while the mountains and the river both technically travel into West Virginia, it's the most eastern side.

13:03And the song is just clearly not written for West Virginia. Kathy said that the songwriters had never even been to West Virginia when they wrote the lyrics. They were singer-songwriters in Washington, D.C., who started naming pretty landmarks in that general area. One of them was even thinking about his home in Massachusetts. But they decided to use West Virginia because it sounded really nice. The people who wrote it didn't know. But, you know, where else are you going to find a song that's coming out of all the dashboards of all the radios and all the cars in the country that screams West Virginia Mountain Mama?

13:38Take me home.

13:51It's like a place where people feel invisible. And so to have that celebratory song that's proclaiming our existence and that yearning to be there is profound for people who are from there. And we might be on completely different sides of the political spectrum and the social spectrum and all those things, but we can sing Country Roads together. So this song that the whole world thinks of as representing West Virginia actually doesn't. At least not, like, literally. And as we sit along the riverbank, a coal miner named Dorsal brings up another musician that he thinks represents West Virginia. Bill Withers, taste from here.

14:34Bill Withers, like, ain't no sunshine when she's gone. Just the two of us, Bill Withers, he grew up in a coal mining town in West Virginia. Yeah. Slab 4. Slab 4. Lean on me? He told me, Doris, that he wrote Lean on Me about living in the coal camp. You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand. Kathy met Bill one time, and he told her that this song about people leaning on each other, supporting each other, was written about coal miners. Nobody cared what color anybody was. This one was on the ground. Yeah, he said that's it. Nobody cared. It just wasn't a thing. In the community, everybody just helped each other.

15:16That's right. So always look out for each other. As long as you're on that same crew, everybody's the same crew. Always look out. I worked with a lot of black men, and they worked just as hard as the white men. And as long as everybody did their job, everybody got along really good. So they're saying that Lean On Me is about the ways minors supported each other, no matter their race. And I'd love to believe that life actually played out like that. But in the crowd, there are two Black women, Diane, who spoke at the top of the show and sang 16 Tons, and her mom, Zora. I'm Zora. Yeah. I've worked on the ground for 20 years.

15:56It's hard to hear Zora because she spent decades in the mines and now her lungs are damaged. So her daughter, Diane, who's sitting right next to her and holding her hand, she speaks up. This is my mother, Zora. She worked in the coal mines down at Maple Meadows for 20-plus years until it closed. She told us as we were growing up about the young men that she worked with. But she always had a story to tell about how the men would pick at her and would make her do their work. If she cleaned her belt, they would always leave some more for her to do. and how she used to threaten to beat their you-know-whats when she got them outside.

16:40Okay, that's a little different from Kathy Matea's read on Lean on Me. And it turns out that Zora and Diane come from a big mining family. Talk about history. So my granddad was a coal miner. My uncle was a coal miner. My mom. I still have a brother, Christopher Saunders, that's still working in the coal mine.

17:04If I want to get to know this place a little bit more, I have to meet Chris. I mean, in coal mining, we always say everybody's going to be black at the end of the day. Chris Saunders, after the break.

17:24Our Common Nature is back. We're in West Virginia meeting up with present-day coal miner Chris Saunders, who also happens to be black. And when you're underground, you put all that aside. If you have any prejudice in you, all that, because you've got to work together, you've got to work safe. Now when they come back up, it might be a different story. We met up at a local history museum in West Virginia. It focuses on coal mining, and there was an exhibit dedicated to his mom, Zora. Yeah, here. There she is. And this is one of the pictures. This was the crew that she worked with at the inn on the belt.

18:00And that's her. Whoa. That's her? There's this great photo of Zora in a hard hat and aviator sunglasses leaning up against a chain link fence. And she has the face of a woman who's put up with a lot of shit. And it's so true because there's still a stigma about women being in the coal mines. So, plus she was a black woman. So that stigma was there. Chris told me his mom came to coal mining as a single mom of four. She had moved down from New York City to take care of her aging parents and her dad actually was a coal miner. For Zora, working in the mines was a livable wage. It would pay for the house, the kids, the parents.

18:40But the other miners let her know that a woman, and a black woman at that, wasn't part of the boys' club. My mom's a hard worker. She said, I'm going to prove to you I can outwork you, I can outthink you, I'm going to treat you with love and kindness regardless of what you say or do to me. She said, sometimes you just got to let it roll off your back and keep on doing what you got to do. She had a guy that was always wanted to tell her the N-word jokes. She said, oh, baby, I ain't got time for that. I'll tell you what you do. Write them out for me and let me read them. So every day he's writing these big, long jokes, and she'll just fold them up, fold them up.

19:19And then he come to her one day, and he say, I'm the one dumb enough to be writing these jokes out, and you ain't doing nothing but throwing them away. She said, no, I got them all. I'm making you a book. Like, yeah, and buddy, he just laughed. He said, Mom, I'm sorry, you know. And that's just the way she was. She said, now, he gonna set up and waste his time writing these jokes out every day, and I let him do it. That's my mom, y 'all. I mean, that's just her. And this was just one of the stories Chris had about his mom warding off bullies. They'd steal her lunch. She'd bake brownies and put egg sacs in them.

19:54And so she knew exactly who was getting her lunch bucket. That's what they call it. Some days, she didn't have a good comeback or the energy to bake brownies. Some days, she was tired. She would always say, I've done the best I could for y 'all. I said, I know that, Mom. You know. And she would apologize for not being there a lot. So, but I had a great mom. Yeah. Still do. And I'm a big softie. Me too. Yes, but yeah, she's a, and she taught us how to love people. The sentiment behind Lean On Me was probably not true for Zora. But it is for Chris. He's committed to the job and his co-workers through thick and thin.

20:48You know, the money was good to be in Appalachian, to go to high school and get out and can make$100 ,000 right out the gate. 18 years old. Huh? I'm just telling you, that's the type of money they're paying you and give you health insurance for everybody in the family. And I look at it like this. I chose to do this. But if I got to be on oxygen again, I don't want it. Yeah. Do you think about that with your mom? Yeah. Zora's condition has worsened since I saw her along the banks of the river, and now she can't speak without oxygen. Chris is worried about her, but that's not the only thing he's worried about.

21:28We have what I call, I'm going to keep it right, kiss my butt curves. Like you're going to go around and then you go. So we get ready to go through a few of them down this way. If you look at a map of Route 3 heading west from Beckley, West Virginia, it looks like a squiggle. It follows every twist and turn of the Coal River. Through Eccles, Glen Daniel, Rock Creek, and Dry Creek, my producer Alan is swerving in the rental car with Chris Saunders as a passenger. And I'm in the backseat trying not to get carsick. I see a lot of Trump. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. All of us. We love Trump. Coming at it, yeah.

22:07Everybody. Is that because of the coal? That, and now he's an outlaw. So, yeah. Oh, they're like, this is my guy. Like, how much of the population is related to coal? Like? Probably 90%. Got it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's either railroad, coal, or timber. Yeah, and the railroad is how you move the coal and the timber. Right, right, right. Is this weird for you to be in a car where people ask you all these questions? Yeah, yeah, but it's all right. I like to talk. Chris, like a lot of miners, isn't quick to trust people with microphones. We couldn't get permission to even enter the parking lots of any of the coal mines that we're driving by.

22:50People are even suspicious of the North Carolina plates on the rental car. Oh, yeah, that's a lot of, he know he can't drive down here. What he doing up here? But this one here, love, this is the kiss your butt, what I call it. West Virginia is an isolated place. It's not only the geography, but the culture. People not from here don't always get it. And the truth is that coal formed these towns. Coal built these houses and set these families up for generations. Coal formed unions and made billion-dollar deals. But coal kills. And coal releases massive amounts of pollution into the world. People today don't usually understand why anyone in the 21st century would work in this industry.

23:37Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I was kind of lurid about talking to you at first. Yeah. I'm just being truthful. Yeah. You know, because I said, no, I don't want to say, you know, be nothing negative to what I do. And it's negative to every job. It really is. But it has been great to my family financially and stuff like that. Yeah. So. Yeah. But for Chris, mining is about more than just making money. It's about survival. In the 80s and stuff, I got into the drug trade and got on some stuff and had no business doing, you know. And then I started going to church in 93. It was the year I went into mines.

24:18That was just a prayer. I was like, well, God, here I am now. I need to provide for my family. The street life ain't going to get it, you know. and God opened doors. I wanted to follow in my mom's footsteps. And it's been a great way to provide for my family. I think that's what we're trying to get at. Right. It's complicated. Yeah, it is. The history and culture of coal is complicated. Human beings have actually used coal for fuel for thousands of years. People would just pick it out of the hills and burn it because coal itself is just fossilized plant material that's millions of years old. But it's only in the past century or so that coal mining in the United States has grown to be king coal.

25:07So much of our world is made with coal, and specifically West Virginia coal, because this is a special type of coal. They call it high metallurgical coal, meaning it's higher in carbon and lower in moisture than thermal coal, which we use for fuel and heat. High Met Coal is some of the best in the world to turn into iron and steel. That's the pride that I think that people in West Virginia must feel for having actually been the power source behind the development of iron and steel in this country, which meant westward movement, building railroads, cities. That connection was completely lost on me until I went there.

25:57Yeah, and it's still going today. So there is still that pride. The people who mine coal for generations, they still love it. The company I work for, I know they export to China, South Korea. You have a lot of big steel mills in India. And then you have Ukraine right now. I'll shut down, but Ukraine was a big steel producer for Europe. Yeah? Mm-hmm. And they're buying U.S. coal? Yes, yeah, because, again, you have the best coal in the world to make steel. The culture of coal mining is baked into West Virginia, but it's from another time when more people can get coal jobs. The mines themselves have become more automated and mechanized.

26:43The work is different, and they need fewer workers. Even though coal is still being used to make everything from electric cars to solar panels and housing, as we drive deeper down Route 3, the towns get smaller. We see abandoned company stores and downtown ghost lands. This was the old grade school. During the explosion, they were lined up from there on both sides of the road. He's talking about TV reporters from CNN and other outlets. Yep, all the way down. Yeah, that's where I had to drive through them every day. They would start right there. What those news outlets were covering after the break.

27:34This is Our Common Nature. I'm Ana. Before the break, coal miner Chris Saunders was taking us on a road trip all along Route 3 in West Virginia. And now we've reached our destination. Now look on top of the hill right here. You see where the tube went in? That's the coal seam right there. We pull off the road and park on the gravel beneath a long metal tube connecting one mountain to another. It's the conveyor belt that transported coal between mining operations. I don't know if you can see the black on top of the hill. Then you usually have other seams below it. But that's the Eagle seam that we mined.