Song 234: Seven weeks from the last playlist song by a personal friend, this week's track is They're Building a Pipeline by my old Berkeley colleague, friend, and (for about a year back in the '80s) housemate Carol Denney, who also wrote the song. She sets up an engaging slide show for this song's YouTube video, with pictures that apparently come from a West Virginia music festival she attended in August of 2014. On her last day at the festival, she read about the pipeline that Dominion wants to build through nearby national park and wilderness areas, and she wrote this song about it. A few years ago, when I mentioned fracking to her in a holiday card, she hadn't heard the word, and apparently none of my other CA friends had either, but by now they all know what it is, and they know something of the trouble it can cause for people who have to live close to it. Carol understands very well what her lines about how "they say that the pipeline/will help out our town/won't be any leaks or/spills on the ground" really mean during an era when pipeline leaks and spills occur on a daily basis, often with devastating consequences. From the saying "You wine 'em, dine 'em, and then you pipeline 'em" that makes the rounds within the petrochemical business circle, according to former industry insider Chip Northrup, clearly that crew knows they don't build pipelines for the purpose of serving the public, so yes, they're calling it progress all over again but many of us know that it's not.
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