A train carries coal near Ravenna, Ky., Aug. 21. Throughout the mining region of central Appalachia – West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee – mountaintop removal mining has flattened more than 500 mountains and led to more than 2,000 miles of steams being filled in, according to The Alliance for Appalachia. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn
" . . . . With sweet and scarless sky stir in my ears, speak there of God’s love, O live air, of patience, penance, prayer: World-mothering air, air wild, wound with thee, in thee isled, fold home, fast fold thy child."
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, from "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe" in Poems 1918 and referenced in Marya Grathwohl's Climate change, spiritual practice and Mom's meatloaf, published on Global Sisters Report
