Spirit in Action

Money, Mines, Mountains, & Magpie Music

Greg & Terry of Magpie create beautiful, conscious music with a message, often around environmental subjects. Today they address, in word and music, issues surrounding climate change, mining, mountain-top removal, and preserving life on this planet.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 28 Sep 2014
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And my lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - I love hearing from passionate workers for our world, and all the more so when those workers combine deep knowledge and insight with superb artistry. That's what we've got today for Spirit in Action. Our guests are Greg Artsner and Terry Leonino, who when they perform music together are known as magpie. If you're listening back in April around Earth Day, I invited on a number of my guests to share songs about the current environmental issues of our time. And at that time I did talk to Greg and Terry about some of the music they've done. And they came up with five songs on exactly the central struggles to protect the Earth that I was looking for. So instead of putting in only one or two songs along with other folks I had featured, I recognized that I needed to give them a full hour on mining, on climate change, and mountaintop removal and the like. We're headed over to New York State now to talk by phone to Greg Artsner and Terry Leonino, magpie. Greg and Terry, it's great that you could join me today for Spirit in Action. - Well, Martin, thank you for inviting us. - You know, the first song that I heard you do that in my mind connected you with the environmental concerns was swimming to the other side, which I realized is Pat Humphrey's song. But when I heard you perform that, I said, oh, these people really love the connection to the wider Earth. So it's completely natural that I have you here today for this Spirit in Action program following up to Earth Day. I think every day should be Earth Day for all of us. It's a holiday I like the best. How do you celebrate Earth Day typically? - Well, we're always celebrating Earth Day, as you mentioned, in fact, we do lots and lots of performances in schools, and that's the way we always end our show is to tell the kids, you know, every day is Earth Day. - And our performances are often, during that week, we're often overbooked, and we've been trying to make everybody realize it's not Earth Month because schools especially tend to do that. They segregate things into months, and a lot of other people who work for, like the Rachel Carson Council and other activists, organizations that deal with protecting the Earth will often have us come and do a performance on that day. - Yeah, Earth Day becomes Earth Week, becomes Earth Month, you know, and so, yeah. We're very busy, usually, in the month of April, and we're then usually right through May, and the environmental stuff is just, well, I've been living an ongoing day-to-day thing with us. We don't seem to segregate it from any time of year. - One of the things that I really like about your music, and one of the reasons it captured for me, and I've had you on my Spirit in Action song with Soul Programs before, is implicit in so many of your songs is that connection to Spirit, is that connection to the big picture, and sometimes people see Spirit as kind of a narrow thing, but I see it as the entire breath of life around us, and that comes through in your music, so let's talk about some of the issues that you've written songs, you've been performing songs about recently. You know, there's so much going on that needs our attention, and I'm afraid that the forces in government are not so much aligned in our interests. Where exactly do you live? - Now we live in what I lovingly call the cataracts. That's between the Catskill Mountains and the Anirondack Mountains, but this was a place that my mother lived for a little while. We had her up in the house next to Kim and Reggie, and we always wanted to move here, and we bought the little house next to them, and got my mom a few years out of the oil, Houston Count of Texas to live up here, and then once she moved back to Ohio with the rest of my family, where Greg and I are originally from, Greg and I moved up. I guess it's been how many years now, Greg? - Well, I don't know, we've had the house for 20 years, but we've only lived here for maybe five or six. - It's been here since 2008, full-time. - And if I recall correctly, it's Sunny Oaks that is to say Phil Oaks sister, who kind of recruited took you all in as mother hen around there, didn't she? - Kind of, yeah. - Oh yeah, she wanted to start an artist community and thought that Woodstock got too much of the artist, and she thought, you know, hey, we'll get Kim and Reggie up here, Terry and Greg, and a whole bunch of people. She's quite a mover and shaker in the town. - She brought a lot of artists up here, and it's the time that she was doing that. She was also working as a real poor. So, she was, she did the area, and she was taking us all around and showing us all the various different places that we could live, you know, so. - And we saw the house next to Kim and Reggie kept picking and going, we could live there, we could live there. - Beautiful, beautiful place. You know, it's a beautiful place, and we love, we do a lot of traveling, obviously, we're on the road a lot of the time, but, you know, this is our respite place for women to do come back here, it's, you know, we're tucked away in the full mountain hollow, it's a remote, so a few miles outside of the village, and it's just gorgeous, and, you know, you come up here, you take a deep breath, and you take in some of the power of nature around you, some of it. - And since we think about it so much, we wanted to live in a place where everywhere you walked was like living in a painting. - It's very restorative. - Well, your music's restorative. Some of the issues, though, that you've been dealing with, and not just this year, I mean, it goes way back. Since you've been doing it all along, I wanted you to share about your song, "Wash Our Spirits Clean," because 20 years ago, already, you're dealing with issue that, for so many people, just caught up, you know, 10 years ago. Tell us where that song came from. - Well, what happened was that a few years ago, we were invited by the Connecticut State Chapter of this year, our club to come and perform for their first annual awards bank, with their scene, they had a scene for the bank, but I guess the keynote speaker and everything else, was gonna be global warming. At that time, it seemed that a lot of organizations were beginning to really turn their focus on to the topic of global climate change. So we said, okay, well, we'll be happy to do the gig, and then we started looking around, well, let's do a special song just for them. And thinking, well, John Muir was the founder of the Sierra Club, and he was obviously a visionary environmentalist. Let's go back and see if we can find anything that John Muir said that might be germane to the topic of global climate change, you know, a hundred years after his death, a hundred years after he did his major work. So we went and we looked and we found lots of things that he said that if you extrapolate them, perhaps take them out of the context in which he wrote them. They were very, very prophetic, yeah. In fact, the one line that jumped out at us, the biggest was this whole thing about the mountains, mountains are speaking to us, and when mountains speak, the wise will listen, and we start thinking, well, that's what we're talking about here at Kilimanjaro, other mountains around the world that have been festooned, if you will, or bedecked with glaciers, and ice caps, no caps, many of those are melting as a result of global climate change, if that isn't the mountains speaking to us or what it is. - And then there's the whole first about, we see the storms coming, you know, Greg and I have, when we wrote that song, we had no idea we were gonna be victims of Hurricane Irene, and we're still recovering up here in the mountains, and Kim and Reggie and Greg and I were hit so bad that with this storm, and this was Irene and Lee back to back, that it washed out the bridge to our house, and all those could not even get to our house for three months until we had a bridge built. Greg and I had to put in a big retaining wall around our house because our little tiny streams turned into a 50 foot river, and we're still recovering from it, and it's been a number of years now. And of course, Sandy happened after that, and there's been a lot of these climate change things that have happened, so now the song even has more depth and meaning, since we wrote it, 'cause we now have the personal experience of not only singing about it, but actually living through some of the very things that it addresses. - And the song is "Wash Our Spirits Clean." It's by Magpie, which is Greg Artsner and Terry Leonino. (gentle music) (gentle music) ♪ We see the storm comin' ♪ ♪ We see the storm comin' ♪ ♪ A flood of water, a fire of ice ♪ ♪ Amidst prescient horrid weather ♪ ♪ Yet the morning stars do sing together ♪ ♪ Wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ This earth will wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ We are but the flame of hope igniting ♪ ♪ The battle we have fought and are still fighting ♪ ♪ They're speaking to us now ♪ ♪ They're speaking to us now ♪ ♪ On Denali Everest Kilimanjaro ♪ ♪ Helping glaciers glisten ♪ ♪ When mountains speak the wise will listen ♪ ♪ Wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ This earth will wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ We are but the flame of hope igniting ♪ ♪ The battle we have fought and are still fighting ♪ ♪ We're moving forward now ♪ ♪ We're moving forward now ♪ ♪ From the darkness of unbelief ♪ ♪ For when comes the light ♪ ♪ People's heart is always right ♪ ♪ Wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ This earth will wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ We are but the flame of hope igniting ♪ ♪ The battle we have fought and are still fighting ♪ ♪ Keep close to nature's heart ♪ ♪ Keep close to nature's heart ♪ ♪ Live in a creation's dawn and disappear despair ♪ ♪ It's always sunrise somewhere ♪ ♪ Wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ This earth will wash our spirits clean ♪ ♪ We are but the flame of hope igniting ♪ ♪ The battle we have fought and are still fighting ♪ ♪ Our love for this earth is now uniting ♪ - Inspired by many of the words of John Muir, wash our spirits clean by magpie. And I've got Greg and Terry of magpie with me today for spirit and action. Wash our spirits clean climate change looking ahead. I mean, we knew already in the 90s, it was very clear that climate change was happening. It's firmed up a lot since then, but it seems like no sooner do we deal with one of these issues like climate change or try and turn our attention to it. Then we have so many other things that are jumping in our face at the same time. Tarsans and the whole pipelines with that has been a frightful thing that's emerging. It's like, we're not going towards the cliff fast enough. Let's put a little bit more pressure on the pedal. - Exactly, and of course there's this wonderful organization called the Cowboy and Indian Alliance with CIA that has been really working on the XL pipeline issues. And we've just been in touch with Russell means his brother who's working on it, Bill, who we saw at that Kent when we were there for the 44th commemoration of the shootings there and he was one of the speakers. And he spoke about the XL pipeline and all the problems and the Tarsans and the things that the Cowboy and Indian Alliance is doing. So we may be doing some work for them again, coming up in the near future. - And you can't get involved with an issue like that without making a song about it, can you? - Exactly, well, we already sent him follow the money 'cause we thought that fit. It certainly addresses the issues of our addiction to oil. - Yeah, and we, we listened to him speak at Kent State and he was eloquent and he came up with that. Apparently the people in the native communities out there and in the Dakotas, they're referring to the Keystone XL pipeline as the Black Snake. - So we're gonna try to write a song for them based on that. - We're thinking that that's a very poignant image. - Is there a song that you'd like to share relative to some portion of that work? - Well, follow the money actually is a pretty poignant song in that sense. - Tell 'em why we wrote it. - The topic of follow the money is certainly oil. Let's start it off as a support song for an international organization and NGO called Oil Change International. And Oil Change International's mission is to attempt to break the corrupting grip that oil profit money has on governments around the world. Obviously they're really fighting a huge uphill battle and particularly here in the United States but these oil companies are not just American companies and multinational corporations. So it's a problem that is certainly widespread and here we are doing the exact same thing in terms of Keystone XL. You're talking about Canadian corporations that have huge amounts of money and they can pay for media. They can certainly manipulate politicians and if you don't believe that politicians are manipulated by oil profit money, you've gotta be living under a frack rock because it's just, it's so obvious. And that was basically the gist of our song. If you wanna know what's going on in terms of government malfeasance or corporate malfeasance or any kind of corruption vis-a-vis corporations and control of government and control of politicians, all you gotta do is follow the money. - Plus we wanted to end it on an upbeat note with a little solution. Many, many years ago one of our Canadian friends from Toronto said I really hate all these protest songs that are complaining. They just, all they do is complain and they tell you about the issue but they don't ever tell you what the heck you can do to get out of it and so they're depressing. We took that to heart many years ago and wanted to try to also think of ways we could help celebrate what we can do and solar power obviously is one of the big chances for us to get out from underneath all this oil and reach towards the sustainable because the sun is one of the most wonderful gifts on the planet so we had to stick that in at the end. - I think there's a contradiction there. You said the sun is one of the most important gifts on the planet, that goes back to a older way of thinking. The sun's pretty far away actually even though it looks small, you know that. I just, okay. (laughing) - I'm Magpie, I knew what it meant. The lifeline, that's right. (laughing) - Well this song is so fun and you do it so funny E. So I want people just to get in here and enjoy following the money. The song is Follow the Money. It's got Magpie in there and some other folks. - Oh yeah. - Basically have a wonderful saxophone player Lee. - Really cool. - She's an astounding woman jazz performer and saxophonist and she plays on it and it's just full of-- - Rawly Brown. - And Rawly Brown on the guitar. And it just rocks, it has a lot of fun. - Follow the money. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Follow the money from the oil can ♪ ♪ From Iraq, Nigeria and CalX fan ♪ ♪ Follow the money from the tanker boats ♪ ♪ To the halls of Congress ♪ ♪ Where it buys the boats ♪ ♪ Follow the money till it makes you sick ♪ ♪ And you slip and you slide on a big old slick ♪ ♪ Follow the money ♪ Follow the money Our addiction to oil is at the core 'Cause we're learning 'cause we're learning more and more They keep on drilling to the ends of the earth How many barrels is a human life worth? How long will it take for us to see? Somebody owns the powers that be Follow the money Follow the money Follow the money from the old hands From the rack Nigeria they can't stand Follow the money from the chakra boats To the halls of congress driven by the boats Follow the money till it makes you sick And you slip and you slide on what they call sleep Follow the money Follow the money I wish politicians would stand again With big oil money and their campaign They gave them big tax breaks subsidies Our pockets are empty and we'll own our knees Be pea and have a burden Don't have to comply they got the very best Congress oil money can buy Follow the money Follow the money Follow the money from the old hands From the rack Nigeria they can't stand Follow the money from the chakra boats To the halls of congress driven by the boats Follow the money from where it's kept right To the office of the president Follow the money Follow the money We know that there is a better way When the people of the world don't have our say It's time for all nations to be arranged It's time for a global oil change To save this planet it's not too late It's time for separation of oil and state Follow the money Follow the money Follow the money to solve the power Free energy ever in daylight out Follow the money to power that's free We don't mean the oil of a machine Follow the money from the halls of state From the power of the hell got a separate Follow the money Follow the money Follow the money from the old hands From the rack Nigeria they can't stand Follow the money from the chakra boats To the halls of congress driven by the boats Follow the money In the mix you take in this whip I love the money Follow the money Follow the money Follow the money What fun, follow the money I love dealing with serious issues With humorous tone It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's 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keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up It's important to keep our spirits up Jobs plummeted the number of jobs in the state of West Virginia Is considerably less than that now Probably less than half of what it was So when they talk about jobs even that's a lie So the companies And again there's another follow the money Sort of situation because the coal companies Have tremendous profits they make a lot of money And they have tremendous sway over the politicians The politicians are certainly not going to say anything To endanger their relationship with the coal companies Because the coal companies pay for their campaigns You know they can just lie And lie and lie and lie through their teeth While they're completely destroying the earth And destroying people's lives There's got to be a better way There definitely has to be a better way To produce electrical energy in this country Than to just completely Bliterate hundreds of mountains That are completely irreplaceable And what represent In the United States Our tropical rainforest You know for many years now We've talked about the decimation of the tropical rainforests And equatorial zones around the world But what's happening here in the United States And Appalachia is tantamount to that And outside of those states Where people live with it on a daily basis People are just routinely ignoring it So we wrote this song and it's based on The story of Larry Gibson Who passed away last year Great loss to the environmental movement Larry was a force of nature He was an intrepid person Who just absolutely was unabashed Speaking truth to power And he held out on the last little Mountain Ridge piece of property That his family gave him for hundreds of years And he refused to leave Even though the company is the coal company It's a massive coal company They had everything that they could to get him to leave He absolutely refused Even when everything around him All his old family property had all been turned into moonscape He still stayed there So we wrote this song Based on things that Larry had said He was telling his story And his struggle against the coal companies We feel that telling story songs Really helps people connect with the reality That there are people that on a daily basis Have to deal with things that Most people in large cities don't even Understand the connection to you Mostly because we're so disconnected by computers And live in a virtual world Unfortunately more than any of us should And the song is Ching-Chor by magpie Back in these hills and hollows Hidden from your view There's a worst destruction of the earth That anyone could do Lasting off the mountain tops For the cold that lies below Killing every living thing Where now black waters flow With their drag lines and their big trucks They'd take more cold each day But it's underneath our mountains So they'd just blast them away For purple mountains And they'd see once our nation's home And now it's raked and pillaged By the parents of in cold My family has lived here Two hundred years or more This mountain top is all that's left And what we had to bore Now just look around you And tell me what you see Death and desolation Where living forests used to be With their drag lines and their big trucks They'd take more cold each day But it's underneath our mountains So they'd just blast them away For purple mountains And they'd see once our nation's home Now it's raked and pillaged By the parents of in cold My seat tried to drive me out By terror and by fear They'd shot and burned and threatened Everything that I hoped there This fight has been so fierce It tore my family apart But how could I just walk away This land that is my heart Down on Mars for Creek is our children's school In the shadow of masses Toxic, black and countable The kids who learn and play They're barely due complain Of every kind of sickness That no one will explain With their drag lines and their big trucks They'd take more cold each day But the kids who learn and play Their daily due complain Of every kind of sickness With their drag lines and their big trucks They'd take more cold each day But it's underneath our mountains So they'd just blast them away For purple mountains And they'd see once our nation's home Now it's raked and pillaged By the parents of in cold [Music] Tell me now who is to blame Who shakes King Cole's hand Who fails to protect us And who sells out our land It's greedy politicians And the company's back and called From the judges up to the president I won't blame them all Go tell your friends And your family, those who listen And will hear Help us stop this devastation For all these mountains Disappear And you hear my story It's time to take a stand For purple mountains Majesty, for the people and the land With their drag lines and their big trucks They'd take more cold each day But it's underneath our mountains So they'd just blast them away For purple mountains Majesty, once our nation's home Now it's raked and pillaged By the parents of in cold Now it's raked and pillaged By the parents of King Cole [Music] Greg and Terry Of Magpie are here today For spirit and action Their song "Bearens of King Cole" About mountaintop removal About people living facing down This kind of destruction You know, we don't have mountains Here in Wisconsin where I live But we do have some beautiful areas Of rolling hills, just scenic beauty And where we find the fossil fuel Crazed destroying our area Is with taking down these hills So they can get the sand out of them It's cheap accessible sand Which then goes down frack mines Around here, there's a number of different towns Villages where they're taking down the hills And I've had some other artists on To share their songs about Fighting frack sand mining As well as fracking Right, well any time we think That we can be extractionist To the point that we have become as a society Mostly due to corporate powers That we wish we had more control of We're in trouble because we have to be sustainable We cannot be extractionist Whenever we wake up to that reality I hope it's just not too late Let's talk about fracking Because I don't think they're doing it right where you are Is that not possible right in the mountains? Not yet, they're trying to Several of our local counties And towns have opposed it To the point of banning it And Sonny's lucky her little town of Franklin Have finally banned it there We're still struggling to get it done Here in Middleburg and Schoheri And Koval Schill, which are the next three towns Next to her town But we're still working on it because we are on this The Marcellus Shale? Right, we're right on top of the very place That they want to We're at the northern end of the Marcellus Shale So the Marcellus Shale, of course, is the whole Underground Shale rock formation That goes well down into the Catskills All through the Catskills and down into southern New York And across into Pennsylvania So that whole area is really, it is in fact That a bed of amazing A shale gas deposits And, of course, what we've seen In the state of Pennsylvania Is an amazing gas drilling boom And, of course, with that kind of a gas drilling boom You're going to have all of the accompanying problems And, of course, the people who are involved in gas drilling And people who are benefiting by leasing their lands To the gas drillers, they just want to say Well, if there's nothing wrong, there's no problem But even they have to admit that there are problems And probably the least of the problems Is that they've turned these rural places In some cases, incredibly beautiful wilderness Rural places into industrial sites That's just the beginning, you know, where they come in With these massive amounts of infrastructure material You know, they've got to bring in drilling equipment And they've got to bring in the chemicals and the water And that means truck after truck after truck They've got to bring little rural roads into industrial highways And we've seen that first hand in North Central Pennsylvania It's a pretty ugly thing And now, of course, what to do with all the waste Is becoming another huge problem And we're causing fracking Because they're drilling these huge places To deposit the waste in Youngstown Which has caused earthquakes And down in Virginia and all over the country, actually And we just found out the other day It just came to light That the fracking companies in Pennsylvania Have been using the wastewater treatment systems of Ithaca, New York To deposit all their waste Because they don't know what to do with it all Instead of trucking it out, they've put it through the sewage systems there And those plants cannot handle that type of toxic waste And this thing is that it's toxic It's not just toxic chemicals, but it's also radioactive Because the shale rock is full of radioactive material I was just reading an article this morning About the state of Ohio and how the state of Ohio And how the state of Ohio has basically decimated Or completely, let's say weakened The regulatory infrastructure In terms of controlling the influx Of fracked wastes that are coming from other states And particularly from Pennsylvania They've basically become, Ohio State has become repository For fracking wastes from other states And, you know, this is serious business Because, you know, you're talking about injecting Fracked waste water and other toxic chemicals Which are not just toxic, as I said, but also radioactive Into holding tanks and into underground pits And underground veins Which, this is dangerous, it's extremely dangerous And there's almost no regulation for it Or inspection for it in the state of Ohio And, you know... And our first nations have dealt with this for so long That Greg and I way back in the 1990s I wrote a song called "Water is Life" Because the elders asked us to come to dinner And possibly write a song about what's going on in their reservation Which was fracking way before it was front page news We always try it out on the first nations Or the native people in this country first To see, you know, what will happen And, of course, one of the others said to me, "Well, you know, Terry, water is life." None of us, not any species, not any human beings, Not any plants, none of us can live without water And it is probably the most important Natural resource on the whole planet And so we wrote that song And then we also wrote another song That was really more specifically focused on fracking itself here in New York Called "Water from the Rock" So those are basically... And we wrote another one and we haven't recorded yet Which just asked a bunch of questions That a lot of people just aren't asking And then the song is called "Home" So we're kind of focused on that particular issue here in New York You know, we've got some serious pressure coming from the south Trying to bring fracking into Scohary County and rural I do want to listen to both of those songs But first I wanted to ask you a question Just to clarify for our listeners before they hear it in the song In "Water from the Rock" You refer to our commons And it's a concept that's been lost I mean, I think in many, several of the states in the eastern part of the US They don't refer to themselves as states They're actually the common wealth Is the concept of commons still clear and used in your area? No, not really, although it ought to be used everywhere This is, to me, one of the major issues When you're talking about these kinds of things But yeah, Australia was mentioning extractionists You know, corporations are private entities Who have money in profit as their bottom line And very little concern for what we refer to as the commons Now the big commons, the number one and number two commons Are air and the water And then, you know, the number three common is essentially our land So we all, yes, we have private property So, you know, Terry and I have a couple of acres up here in the mountains This is our property But we also have... Yeah, we think of ourselves as stewards We have two streams on our property And we have a 375 foot deep well But that well, you see, that well taps into an aquifer That's actually a kind of a... If you looked at the aquifer of the Cascale Mountains It's actually a whole series of aquifers And it's sort of an underground network of water And my well connects with my neighbors well And my neighbors well connects with her neighbors well You know, four or five miles down the road The fact of the matter is these underground water sources Are not just isolated and they're not, you know, my well is in just one little tiny pool of water underneath my house So when we're talking about fracking, you know, they're talking about drilling right through the aquifer Into the Shale rock below But when they go through that water, they're going through everybody's water that's in the neighborhood And it connects with people who are miles away And it connects with people who are miles away So it's not something that's just isolated and it's, you know, not something that's just somebody's private property And of course, when we're talking about water, everybody needs it And we're talking about air, everybody needs it That's what we mean by the commons Everybody owns it, it belongs to everyone Our Commonwealth, so two songs from Magpie about fracking and its side effects It's a fact on the life of the whole and the life of the commons The first song is "Water is Life" from the 1990s about fracking Talking with the Dinne people, the Navajo And then we'll follow that with "Water from the Rock" Thank you both Greg and Terry for joining me today for "Spirit in Action" Thank you for keeping up the good work in story and song Well, let's come back at you because we need people like yourself to broadcast That there are communities and people out in this world With spirit and passion to save and protect the earth Water is life, water from the rock Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Standing on this rocky shore, something holds my eye On that perfect, far distant line Where water meets the sky I don't need a mighty ship Sailing across the sea For fathoms deep within I know What you mean to me Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Out on the wide Pacific, under the sun's relentless glow Your waters rise up to the skies Where western winds will blow Those clouds and shroud my mountaintop Feed the forests with their rain Then runs down to the rivers And back home to you again Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life I'm gonna lay my body down On the salty kitchen And let the waves wash over me The foam running through my hand Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Everything I am and everything I need I know it's true, it comes from you Your water is the seed Little mother ocean planet In a universe so wide We've got to rise up like the moon And try to turn the tide Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Mother ocean nourishes me at full moonlight Tied at the edge of the sea, water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water is life Water from the rock Water from the deep deep world That gift from down below Where our teas and waters flow It isn't anyone's to buy or sell To buy or sell Water from the rock Water from the rock Water from the deep below It's our commons, it's our right Feel its power, feel its might Carry on the words so all will know So all will know Fire in the water, fire in the water Puting flames burning in the glass How can they not see That their grief is killing me While they make a killing Drum for the gas Drum for the gas They're breaking and taking The earth they're shaking They don't really care what they do Leave our poison morass Help themselves to the gas Then they turn around and sell it back to you Sell it back to you Fire in the water, fire in the water Poison in the water that we drink We've got to drive them back And stop their frack attack Build a chain up Fire in the water, fire in the water Poison in the water that we drink We've got to drive them back And stop their frack attack Build a chain up Fire in the water that we drink We've got to drive them back Build a chain up Fire in the water that we drink We've got to drive them back Fire in the water that we drink They're breaking and taking The earth they're shaking They don't really care what they do Leave our poison morass Help themselves to the gas Then they turn around And sell it back to you Sell it back to you Water from the rock Water from the rock Water from the deep, deep, well To buy our silence, try they will But they'll never keep us still To save our water we will fight like hell We will fight like hell [Music] Those songs "Water is Life" and "Water in the Rock" with the last two songs picked out by Magpie for today's Spirit in Action But I have one more song I'd like to sign off with The one I mentioned at the beginning of this interview The one that sewed up my passion for Terry and Greg's artistry Again, it's by Pat Humphries But this is Magpie's wonderful rendering of the song Swimming to the other side We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action We are living with a great big different We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in a stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground We walk on cherishing the beams that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side I am alone I am searching The hungering paralysis in my time I am balanced at the break of wisdom I am impatient to receive a sign I am on the forward with my sentences Open imperfection Be my crime In humility I will listen We're all swimming to the other side We are living with a great big different We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in a stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground We walk on cherishing the beams that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side On this journey thoughts and feelings Finding intuition my head my heart I am gathering the twos together I am preparing to do my part All of those who have come before me band together and be my guide Loving lessons that I will follow We're all swimming to the other side We are living with a great big different We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in a stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground We walk on cherishing the beams that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ When we get there we'll discover All of the gifts we've been given to share Have been with us since lives begin And we never notice they were there We can dance at the brink of wisdom Never recognizing that we've arrived Loving spirits will live together We're all swimming to the other side We are living with a great big different We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in a stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground We walk on cherishing the beams that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side We are living with a great big different We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in a stream together Some in power and some in pain We can worship this ground We walk on cherishing the beams that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side Loving spirits will live forever We're all swimming to the other side The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is spirit in action With every voice With every song We will move this world alone With every voice With every song We will move this world alone And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [MUSIC PLAYING]