The music of Coal Mining

[zorgon]

Covered in Coal by Blackwater Outlaws

"Great with some pics of friends, and proud coal miners."

A lot of angry comments from miners. I would post a few but they don't talk 'polite'

[zorgon]

You forgot to mention antibiotics.  Sulphur, if you are not allergic, is an excellent topical and internal antimicrobial.

Yeah but that was just a quick quote to make a point. I will add that info to the Mineral thread that I really need to get back to. So far I have only one covered

[sky otter]

there was and is honor in the hard working miners

you want to see awfull make you cry stuff
check out the pictures at this link
they call it mountain top mining..

Below the densely forested slopes of the Appalachian Mountains in southern West Virginia is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called "mountaintop removal."

Based on data from NASA's Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine as it moves from ridge to ridge between 1984 to 2010. The natural landscape of the area is dark green forested mountains, creased by streams and indented by hollows. The active mining areas appear off-white, while areas being reclaimed with vegetation appear light green. A pipeline roughly bisects the images from north to south. The town of Madison, lower right, lies along the banks of the Coal River.

In 1984, the mining operation is limited to a relatively small area west of the Coal River. The mine first expands along mountaintops to the southwest, tracing an oak-leaf-shaped outline around the hollows of Big Horse Creek and continuing in an unbroken line across the ridges to the southwest. Between 1991 and 1992, the mine moves north, and the impact of one of the most controversial aspects of mountaintop mining—rock and earth dams called valley fills—becomes evident.

The law requires coal operators to try to restore the land to its approximate original shape, but the rock debris generally can't be securely piled as high or graded as steeply as the original mountaintop. There is always too much rock left over, and coal companies dispose of it by building valley fills in hollows, gullies, and streams. Between 1991 and 1992, this leveling and filling in of the topography becomes noticeable as the mine expands northward across a stream valley called Stanley Fork (image center).

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/hobet.php


Credit NASA

[sky otter]

hubby's father, much like  hubby, was a man out of time....
he was born  on the 4th of july in '08
he joined the service and then came home to mine coal during the day
in  18 inch seams..they laid on their backs and picked it out
and then came home and dug coal for the family furnace
he cleared the porperty with a draft horse and his own hands
and when the mining moved he went to the steel mill and never stopped telling those guys how easy they had it
he never owned or drove a car and had a sense of humor that was awesome..
he knew the land and taugh me where the water tables were and the veins of quick sand
running under the boro where a ancient dried up river had been

he passed in 78 and i miss him still..

sorry too much information but the coal mining stuff got me going

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

Midnight Oil  'Blue Sky Mine' says it all

I have been down mines, it's bloody awful, dangerous work.
My body is full of carbon fibres from working in composite materials & it will probably kill me some day.
What price technology?

People will always die for that to take place, sometimes they do it willingly, aware of the risks (most don't) but they used up their lives to make it easier for the next generation. It may not be fair, but it's what we do.

OK these days we are much more aware of the risks, and as the song says, i'll take a mine over a nuke station every time.

But we can-eventually-move on to the next phase of our development, where no-one has to offer up their lives for such a thing as energy, and no-one has do do these crappy jobs.

One such stopgap measure is water, HHO.

'Stan Meyer Verified' was one of my first posts here, yet no-one has bothered to read it yet....

[Iamschist]

Another song.



Here are the lyrics

Born and raised in a minin' town
Where most folks thought that up was down
We all lived and gave our soul
Did it all for ol' king coal

Daddy rose at the crack of dawn
When I could I'd tag along
Capin' said what a fine young man
Put a pick in that boy's hand

I feel the dust upon my tongue
Feel the pain down in my lungs
The time to leave has come an' gone
There's nothin' left but to carry on

Way down here in this ol' coal mine
Where the sun it dare not shine
I sweat an' toil till day is done
But I'll be back when mornin' comes

[zorgon]

'Stan Meyer Verified' was one of my first posts here, yet no-one has bothered to read it yet....

That is likely because it is in the Pegasus Energy team forum and as yet we haven't gotten many members into that group yet. We originally ran that forum on a Yahoo site and it was reserved fro serious researchers to get to work on solutions instead of just a chat format

Unfortunately since Matyas, who was heading up that effort, vanished...  there has been little activity.  Perhaps I will open it to the regular membership until we get more serious people involved

[Shasta56]

I have pictures of some of the old mines in Wyoming.  My paternal grandmother's first husband and her brother-in-law were killed in a mine explosion.  My dad almost lost a leg in the mines.  I can honestly claim to be a coal miner's daughter.  When I lived in Oklahoma the Peabody Coal Company was devastating the land around Chelsea with their mining operations.  Unfortunately, jobs in the area were scarce, so a lot of men worked for Peabody out of necessity.

Shasta

[Iamschist]

Shasta

My paternal grandmother's first husband and her brother-in-law were killed in a mine explosion.  My dad almost lost a leg in the mines.  I can honestly claim to be a coal miner's daughter. 

Thank you for posting.  That is interesting and sad about your family.  I wonder sometimes about families being drawn toward the same professions, not deviating to far from it.  My family has a connection with medicine, nothing fancy but still there.

I think it is also interesting that you moved so far and yet still were close to coal.

[Iamschist]

sky otter

Mountain top removal is environmentally devastating to an area.  The area cannot be properly rehabbed and aesthetically it is an abomination.

There are efforts to get rid of this practice.  i found this article, here is an excerpt:

More than 1,000 people are gathering in Frankfort, Ky. on Feb. 14 to celebrate I Love Mountains Day and call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining—a destructive practice that has shortened lifespans and caused illnesses in Central Appalachia for decades.
The iLoveMountains.org team has just launched an innovative new web tool to illustrate the overwhelming amount of data that shows the high human cost of coal mining, and we invite you to check it out. See it live now by clicking here.
The Human Cost of Coal page maps national data including poverty rates from the 2010 U.S. Census, birth defect rates from the Center for Disease Control, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and life expectancy and population numbers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The site also includes summaries for twenty-one peer-reviewed studies that show human health problems such as heart, respiratory and kidney diseases, cancer, low birth weight and serious birth defects are significantly higher in communities near mountaintop removal mine sites.

http://ecowatch.org/2012/mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-protest-draws-more-than-1200-in-kentucky/

As for your other post.  I understand the loss you are feeling.  I lost my Father not that long ago and he too was "one of a kind".  He was my best friend in his later years and I miss him too.

[Iamschist]

PLAYSWITHMACHINES

But we can-eventually-move on to the next phase of our development, where no-one has to offer up their lives for such a thing as energy, and no-one has do do these crappy jobs.

This is the hope/prayer of many of us.   Thank you for posting.

[Iamschist]

zorgon

Thank you so much for all your assistance with this thread.  Helping me with the presentation, all the beautiful pictures, how did you find all those so fast and whip them  right on up?  You pushed this thread into another level! 

Turned out to be quite a conversation , Thanks to you. 

[Shasta56]

I'm the second nurse in my family.  My mom's cousin Teresa was a nurse too.  I guess we decided we needed something other than coal dust in our veins.  I also steered my daughter into healthcare and she's the narcotic auditor at a local hospital.  I think about what my family went through with working conditions in the mines back then.  Not that it's wonderful now, but it was worse back then.  A monument stands outside Trinidad, Colorado, memorializing the victims of the Ludlow Massacre.  The coal companies were allowed to call out the National Guard to force striking miners back to work.  Most of those who died at Ludlow were women and children.

Shasta

[zorgon]

Dang... never heard of this one 

Ludlow Massacre


Portrait of men, boys, and girls at the UMW camp for coal miners on strike against CF&I in Ludlow, Las Animas County, Colorado; sign on canvas tent behind the crowd reads: "Dispensary and office of Drs. Harvey and Davis Union Doctors." Credit: Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library.

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914.

The massacre resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 25 people; sources vary but all sources include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF).

In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg.[1] The entire strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives, described as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Historian Howard Zinn has described the Ludlow Massacre as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history". Congress responded to public outcry by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the incident. Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day.

The Ludlow site, 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the UMWA, which erected a granite monument in memory of the miners and their families who died that day. The Ludlow Tent Colony Site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009. Modern archeological investigation largely supports the strikers' reports of the event

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia



Rockefellers owned the Mine and a Chase was the homicidal General? Go figure... The National Guard... wow  just like at Kent State...



Massacre

On the morning of April 20, the day after Easter was celebrated by the many Greek immigrants at Ludlow, three Guardsmen appeared at the camp ordering the release of a man they claimed was being held against his will. This request prompted the camp leader, Louis Tikas, to meet with a local militia commander at the train station in Ludlow village, a half mile (0.8 km) from the colony. While this meeting was progressing, two companies of militia installed a machine gun on a ridge near the camp and took a position along a rail route about half a mile south of Ludlow. Anticipating trouble, Tikas ran back to the camp. The miners, fearing for the safety of their families, set out to flank the militia positions. A firefight soon broke out.

The fighting raged for the entire day. The militia was reinforced by non-uniformed mine guards later in the afternoon. At dusk, a passing freight train stopped on the tracks in front of the Guards' machine gun placements, allowing many of the miners and their families to escape to an outcrop of hills to the east called the "Black Hills." By 7:00 p.m., the camp was in flames, and the militia descended on it and began to search and loot the camp. Louis Tikas had remained in the camp the entire day and was still there when the fire started. Tikas and two other men were captured by the militia. Tikas and Lt. Karl Linderfelt, commander of one of two Guard companies, had confronted each other several times in the previous months. While two militiamen held Tikas, Linderfelt broke a rifle butt over his head. Tikas and the other two captured miners were later found shot dead. Tikas had been shot in the back. Their bodies lay along the Colorado and Southern Railway tracks for three days in full view of passing trains. The militia officers refused to allow them to be moved until a local of a railway union demanded the bodies be taken away for burial.

During the battle, four women and eleven children had been hiding in a pit beneath one tent, where they were trapped when the tent above them was set on fire. Two of the women and all of the children suffocated. These deaths became a rallying cry for the UMWA, who called the incident the "Ludlow Massacre."

In addition to the fire victims, Louis Tikas and the other men who were shot to death, three company guards and one militiaman were killed in the day's fighting.

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia


Ruins of the Ludlow Colony near Trinidad, Colorado, following an attack by the Colorado National Guard. Forms part of the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.


Armored car, known as the "Death Car", for harassing mining strikers in Ludlow, Colorado. From 1913

Aftermath

In response to the Ludlow massacre, the leaders of organized labor in Colorado issued a call to arms, urging union members to acquire "all the arms and ammunition legally available," and a large-scale guerrilla war ensued, lasting ten days. In Trinidad, Colorado, UMWA officials openly distributed arms and ammunition to strikers at union headquarters. 700 to 1,000 strikers "attacked mine after mine, driving off or killing the guards and setting fire to the buildings." At least fifty people, including those at Ludlow, were killed in ten days of fighting against mine guards and hundreds of militia reinforcements rushed back into the strike zone. The fighting ended only when US President Woodrow Wilson sent in Federal troops. The troops, who reported directly to Washington, DC, disarmed both sides, displacing and often arresting the militia in the process.

The conflict, called the Colorado Coalfield War, was the most violent labor conflict in US history; the reported death toll ranged from 69 in the Colorado government report to 199 in an investigation ordered by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

The UMWA finally ran out of money, and called off the strike on December 10, 1914.

In the end, the strikers failed to obtain their demands, the union did not obtain recognition, and many striking workers were replaced by new workers. Over 400 strikers were arrested, 332 of whom were indicted for murder. Only one man, John Lawson, leader of the strike, was convicted of murder, and that verdict was eventually overturned by the Colorado Supreme Court. Twenty-two National Guardsmen, including 10 officers, were court martialed. All were acquitted, except Lt. Linderfelt, who was found guilty of assault for his attack on Louis Tikas. However, he was given only a light reprimand.

Rev. Cook pastored the local church in Trinidad, Colorado. He was one of the few pastors in Trinidad who tried to provide Christian burials to the deceased victims of the Ludlow Massacre. Cook died in 1938.

Ludlow Massacre Monument, prior to being vandalized and subsequently restored. Taken on April 28, 2005 by Mark Walker.

[zorgon]

Since this is about the music...

Woody Guthrie Ludlow Massacre



Howard Zinn on the Ludlow Massacre



Ludlow Massacre

This is my National History Day video on the Colorado Ludlow Massacre, it took 5th at the school

Ludlow: A Massacre of Human Rights

This is a 10 minute documentary about the Ludlow Massacre that took place in Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914 and resulted in the deaths of 19 people. This doc was created in 2003 and entered in the National History Day Competition where it placed 1st at the state level and was a national finalist for the Junior Group Documentaries. (Written, Directed, and Edited by Sarah Goode and Lila Creighton)

Quite a story... Never heard about it until today