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From: Damewood, Lorene [damewood@ku.edu]

Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 8:41 AM

To: Carbon Pollution Input

Subject: Energy policy

 

I want you to consider the long term health effects resulting from the carbon spewing into the atmosphere from 

the coal-fired power plants in this area. I lived with a coal furnace as a young child, carrying in the coal and 

carrying out the ashes and cinders. I see the 100 car trains in Olathe transporting coal from Wyoming to 

LaCygne, which then burn and add pollution in the air. I've lived and worked in smoggy Southern California 

when we weren't allowed to send the children to the playground. I don't want to see the Midwest looking, 

feeling and smelling like that. Too many people have asthma to be adding to their woes. I want to see cleaner 

energy and see it fast. Don't let the foxes guard the power plants and the coal mines. Do your job and protect 

the environment; don't sell us short! 

 

Lorene Damewood 

1605 E Elm St 

Olathe, KS 66062 

913-839-3902 
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From: Rick Harlan [ricksongrick@gmail.com]

Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 6:27 AM

To: Carbon Pollution Input

Subject: coal--keep it in the ground 

Coal-- keep it in the ground until it's safe, if it ever will be; and economical, hard to believe now, as so-called 

alternative power comes online and scales up. 

Coal is unsafe now in 3 ways. 1. When it's mined and what it leaves behind, and the carbon and pollution from 

extracting it. 2. Transport: must move in open containers because of explosive danger from the dust, which is 

distributed all along the routes, where transportation tie-ups create more idling engines and carbon pollution. 

 And 3. When coal is burned there is NO clean-coal technology. Pollution emits, creating more greenhouse gas 

and raising the temperature of the earth our only home. 

Thank you. 

Rick Harlan 

ricksongrick@gmail.com

206-271-8871 

Bird to Human: I don't sing because I'm happy. I'm happy because I sing!

My life flows on in endless song 

Amidst earth's lamentation. 

I hear the real, though far off hymn 

That hails the new creation 

Above the tumult and the strife, 

I hear the music ringing; 

It sounds an echo in my soul 

How can I keep from singing? 

What though the tempest loudly roars, 

I hear the truth, it liveth. 

What though the darkness round me close, 

Songs in the night it giveth. 

No storm can shake my inmost calm 

While to that rock I'm clinging. 

Since love is lord of Heaven and earth 

How can I keep from singing? 

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, 

And hear their death-knell ringing, 

When friends rejoice both far and near, 

How can I keep from singing? 

In prison cell and dungeon vile 

Our thoughts to them are winging. 

When friends by shame are undefiled, 

How can I keep from singing?

[repeat first verse] 

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Pete Seeger helped to make this song fairly well-known in the 

folk-revival of the 1960’s. He learned it from Doris Plenn, who had it from 

her North Carolina family. It can be found in SING OUT, Vol 7, 

No 1, 1957. He changed many of the lyrics, making the song not explicitly 

religious like the original, written in 1860 by H. W. Lowry. The reference 

to prison in both could have originally referred to the fate of some 

abolitionists at the time; a consequence that still holds today for many 

of us who continue to stand up for truth and love, against domination and 

violence. 
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