tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2559338475355849735..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Slag (Coal Country, Appalachia)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12073143075158813392013-04-11T02:47:40.943-07:002013-04-11T02:47:40.943-07:00WB,
Many thanks.
Whether in navigational, mathem...WB,<br /><br />Many thanks.<br /><br />Whether in navigational, mathematical, or (figurative) human terms, dead reckoning is of course a limited and faulty form of calculation.<br /><br />But as limited and faulty creatures, what other kind have we got?<br /><br />(And by the by, we'll be having no moments of silence for the Iron Lady here.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-85001612600900607372013-04-10T13:55:51.665-07:002013-04-10T13:55:51.665-07:00the depth/ accumulation the pulmonary/ soot burden...the depth/ accumulation the pulmonary/ soot burden/ dead reckoning<br /><br />All those everyday dying breaths leading to such a density. <br /><br />soot burden - those two words stick especially.<br /><br />With Thatcher gone, I've been thinking about the Miner's Strike in the UK; what it meant for us on the left and at the same time how the industry wore at the lungs and the landscape and the air.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73919741932849871882013-04-10T01:00:51.858-07:002013-04-10T01:00:51.858-07:00Marie,
What this post has been crying out for -- ...Marie,<br /><br />What this post has been crying out for -- a smile!<br /><br />But will the heavens ever smile upon the violated earth of Appalachia?<br /><br />Much as one would wish to say the scenes captured by Jack Corn in the 1970s represent only a passing moment in the history of this part of the country, there's the sobering truth that the filthy business of coal extraction had been going on in this area long before he arrived with his camera ...and did not cease with his departure. As long as there is something remaining in the earth that the energy business wants, it's always going to be a case of (as the expression used to have it) Katy-bar-the-door.<br /><br />Only the methods and scale of the operation have changed.<br /><br />Just consider (for example) the meaning of the phrase "mountaintop removal mining".<br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/eight-billion-tons-of-what-america-got.html" rel="nofollow">Eight Billion Tons of What America Got Out of Kentucky (Eastern Coalfields, Then and Now)</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35908569068083518692013-04-09T16:18:18.610-07:002013-04-09T16:18:18.610-07:00I thought so :-)) It made me smile.
but wedding of...I thought so :-)) It made me smile.<br />but wedding of word and text.... has to be a happy one!Marie Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07787850063283960703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-760544958821565752013-04-09T09:04:56.668-07:002013-04-09T09:04:56.668-07:00Nin,
Clean Coal, games with words, round and roun...Nin,<br /><br />Clean Coal, games with words, round and round, squaring the circle that will always be broken. <br /><br />And talking of... words... oops, Marie, the old miner/matchmaker meant to say "weddings of image and text"!TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-83051717576885457972013-04-09T08:54:35.157-07:002013-04-09T08:54:35.157-07:00So depressing. You drive through W. Va. now and t...So depressing. You drive through W. Va. now and there are all these signs for Clean Coal, a favorite myth of politicians. <br /><br />Great poem and photos. <br /><br />If only there were light at the end. Somehow. Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-88668993564068575332013-04-09T07:36:23.838-07:002013-04-09T07:36:23.838-07:00Thank you Marie, that means a lot, your marvelous ...Thank you Marie, that means a lot, your marvelous weddings of word and text have been an inspiration -- a revelation, really.<br /><br />Kent, the Steve Earle plaint seems to give voice to the trapped young men in those mined-out towns captured in Jack Corn's eloquent series -- everyone, as per your report, requiring but not getting that elusive "chance to do something, anything else".<br /><br />Curtis, The Tennessee Ernie hit single version of the song came out nine years after Merle Travis had recorded it on an album called Folk Songs of the Hills. The song is generally credited to Merle, though there is probably a prior source.<br /><br />Travis said the chorus ("another day older and deeper in debt") came out of a refrain oft repeated by his father, a coal miner.<br /><br />However the liner notes of a 1966 Folkways album by George E. Davis, a Kentucky coal miner turned folk singer, credit the song to Davis, who claimed to have writ the song in the 1930s.<br /><br />The Davis version has interesting elaborations of the familiar lyric.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfQDS1MWyeY" rel="nofollow">Lew Dite tenor banjo cover of George E. Davis version</a>.<br /><br />Hazen -- 'twas ever thus. As you would well know -- that's your precinct, after all.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-20909486982133528262013-04-09T06:46:36.424-07:002013-04-09T06:46:36.424-07:00“. . . to account for the human price . . .”
Two ...“. . . to account for the human price . . .”<br /><br />Two years ago, big coal companies in the region formed a dummy corporation to buy up all union contracts. Now the dummy (Patriot Coal) is declaring bankruptcy so it won’t have to pay health benefits to retired union miners, and to escape other contractual obligations as well.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-20915817128305937962013-04-09T06:11:52.680-07:002013-04-09T06:11:52.680-07:00Re: Steve Earl
All of this, TC, all of this is wh...Re: Steve Earl<br /><br />All of this, TC, all of this is what drew my Grandfather, a teacher no less, "out of (t)here" to far-away sleeping on depression era Detroit park benches for a chance to do something, anything else.<br /><br />For his trouble, as was the fate of any production foreman/supervisor at the time, he graciously spent his "free" weekends tending the expansive lawn and painting/repainting the mansion's outbuildings on the Briggs Bloomfield Hills family estate.<br /><br />Years later, I spent an afternoon inside that by then time-ravished, leaky Big House wondering which rooms he might have plastered.<br />kenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12448791356455016794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-381111117165767412013-04-09T06:06:43.205-07:002013-04-09T06:06:43.205-07:00Mighty grim, Tom.
Sixteen tons--Tennessee Ernie F...Mighty grim, Tom.<br /><br />Sixteen tons--Tennessee Ernie Ford.<br /><br />When the oil runs out, and nuclear has finally been abandoned, the coal will be the fall-back energy.<br /><br />First-hand reports tell us living in a coal-rich environment was oppressive. London in the 19th Century was like Purgatory. Householders would have to take down the heavy Victorian curtains and wash off the accumulated black soot periodically. The air in London was like "pea soup"--black pea soup. Black dust everywhere. People with all kinds of respiratory disorders. What with the heavy humidity of the British Isles, and all that coal soot, it must have been a dreary place.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-52189603779177155012013-04-09T05:20:43.444-07:002013-04-09T05:20:43.444-07:00Again such wonderful photos, poem. I really like t...Again such wonderful photos, poem. I really like the way you combine text and photo, and the research behind. A lot of work. From one underground to another one...Marie Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07787850063283960703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54418307652436590172013-04-09T05:03:26.879-07:002013-04-09T05:03:26.879-07:00Merle Travis: Sixteen Tons (first recorded 1946)
...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pfVvqLM_e4" rel="nofollow">Merle Travis: Sixteen Tons (first recorded 1946)</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPvHo1EA7gA" rel="nofollow">Forty-Two Years: A Original Song about Coal Mining and Black Lung, by Nimrod Workman, Chattaroy, West Virginia ("Both lungs were blowed down/by breathin' bad air")</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OhRoeMfd3I" rel="nofollow">Nimrod Workman, in Harlan County, USA (1976), Barbara Kopple's documentary about coal miners' 1973 strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCiVMngILEI" rel="nofollow">Harlan County, USA (trailer for the 1976 Barbara Kopple documentary)</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUGXsRwL4qw" rel="nofollow">Harlan County 7/6/2010: Steve Earl --"I'm gonna get out of here someday"</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com