Coal Notebook

COAL NOTEBOOK

COAL NOTEBOOK

November 2007

Coal is dirty. It comes in lumps. It comes in bulk. It’s tied intimately with boats and trains.

And steam engines, and making iron and steel.

It’s only usefulness is in its consumption.

It is not glamourous. It is practical. It is the sun, preserved in airtight darkness, until it’s available for cashing out. It is about infrastructure. It is the Industrial Revolution.

It is modern civilization.

Like a food chain; grain is to cow, trees are to coal.

Burning coal is burning trees that have been value-enhanced.

Mining: dangerous, dirty, black lung, dark. Men dying. Children and animals put to use. Men too, obviously. But it’s bad luck to see a woman around a mine.

You’re only paid by the amount of coal you put in the cart - not the time it takes to get to the coal, not the time it takes to put on your oldest, dirtiest clothes, that once they come to the mine, will be worn until they fall apart. The mine is a certain death sentence for your clothes, only a possible death sentence for a miner. You’re not paid for the rock you move other than the coal, so you try to only dig coal.

That means if the coal seam is only four feet high, you’re working in a tunnel four feet high.

If the coal seam is only two feet high, you work on your belly.

Air can kill you. Earth can kill you.

The works are always filling up with water, which can kill you.

And fire – usually in the form of an exploding fireball, obviously that can kill you.

None of the elements are your friends.

Look at a deep coal mine – literally, you’ll see the depths someone will go to get a paycheck.

Any time you work where death is random and invisible, you start getting superstitious.

Miners told us about goblins and dwarves and kobolds and demons. And sometimes bumping in to random devils and demons, and maybe Satan himself. There’s usually a little sulfur in any lump of coal. That doesn’t help demystify things.

Coal is dead things. Pressed together, with the oxygen taken out, so they stop decaying.

Among coal seams there are plenty of fossils ferns, bugs, plenty of imprints of what this stuff used to be. You die once, and you get squeezed into coal. When you burn a lump of coal, something is dying the second time. And the dust is poisonous and the fumes are poisonous.

Horses as draft animals - when miners get vacation, they may get to take the horse that works with them up to the surface for a onceevery-few-years vacation. The horse emerges blinded, and it may take a day before it can see.

How reluctant are they to return to the mine at the end of the week off?

Canaries are the classic. Put in cages at the end of a very long stick, they can be thrust into a space, up near the ceiling and observed, as well as hanging out while miners work. Mice were used, but then it was hard to tell if they suddenly died. A miner will never be mean to a rat. They are given portions of a miner’s lunch, sometimes trained as pets. They will run from unseen danger. Miners will try very hard to follow just as quickly.

Women are bad luck around a coal mine. You never want to see one just as you’re going down for a shift. Unthinkable they would ever be down in the works.

In a coal mine, there are three Deadly gasses choke damp (dampf meaning fog or vapour) CO2 – when exposed to the air and decay continues – suffocation (remedies included being put face down in a hole, survivors might suffer some “lightness of brain”)

CO - incomplete combustion, would occur after a fire or explosion – white damp – CO is ordorless, but often there would be reports of fragrance, miners inhaling a balmy scent and being struck down – canaries were the protection against white damp in 1600s dogs were used – often being lowered down a shaft to see what happened (but maybe only after a miner had been killed).

Fire damp – methane – most fatal, appearing more and more as mines got deeper, build up along ceiling or it could come hissing out of a fissure, when contact with open flame or a spark – explosion – sometimes victims could be shot out of the mouth of the mine like a cannonball – FIREMAN – covered in soaked rags, crawl around on the floor with an open flame on a stick trying to burn off the methane (“frighten the fire away” “Chase it with his stick”).

Experiments with phosphorescent fish for illumination Drainage – the first big restriction on mining was water table – how to keep mines from flooding, being full of water, or breaking through and killing miners.

A mine that got too close to a river in Scotland – the river broke into the mine drift and gurgled rapidly into the fissure, leaving only mud and a bunch of fish wriggling on the ground – as it filled up the mine, it backed up the air until the pressure built up, then the air pushed all the water back up – bursting up through hundreds of acres of ground

Early solution – digging “watergate” tunnels 18” wide for miles/ as little as four feet tall, but mines started pushing to a depth was this was no longer practical. Then the development of the steam engine as a mine pump device. Early steam engines were so inefficient they could only be used at a coal mine, because they consumed so much coal.

Miners paid in wage per coal loaded, and in bulk amounts of coal for heating their clap board houses (guy in Glace Bay’s house made out of timber collected from old outhouses)

THE TYPES/ QUALITIES OF COAL jet/lignite (brown coal) – easy to carve: bituminous – easy to burn, dirty: anthracite (hard, and hard to ignite, but burns hot and clean) coke: coal, charcoal: wood, coal contains sulphur to a greater or lesser degree smudges and lumps – these are not glamourous names Coal fogs of London always described by colour – why? Different fogs seemed to have different chemical compositions or just reflections of sun and artificial lights?

Anthrax and carbuncle both named after coal: always associated with disease

In England: called “Sea–coal” coal as we know it was tied in name to the sea, to a means of transport, to the easiest seams to find it (the barren cliffs fronting the sea – the surf cut) The fight to not burn coal – keep fireplaces alive (the practicality of a coal stove/furnace vs. open hearth’s aesthetic pleasure). London, America – value of the fireplace, the disdain for a closed stove, the distrust of the smell of burning dust. People switched to coal only with great reluctance. Nobody wanted to give up the open flame of the drafty fireplace.

Coal Fires (in China annually, wild coal fires produce as much CO2 as all the cars and light trucks in the USA) Coal Power Plants – the problem of cleaning the turbines – massive amounts of build up, climbing up inside the fans and metal

HISTORICAL MOMENTS CHINA Carving jet from 3000BC – jet carving fully established industry/burning of coal 300BC Kaifeng Capital – 1100s Coal has become prime source of heat Great Leap Forward – disaster of personal coal furnaces

ENGLAND/WALES Romans burning it in Britain for the eternal flame of the temple of Minerva at Bath.

1306 King Edward bans burning of coal – 1st offense punished by “great fines and ransoms”, 2nd would be the destruction of your stove/furnace.

Sea-coal – coal transportation was the basis of the British navy, the coal fleet was the training ground for naval supremacy Newcastle – first coal capital (“that’s about as useful as bringing coal to Newcastle”) Opening of Manchester and Liverpool Railway – death and mayhem.

Engles as factory owner by day, revolutionary by night – the money from the factory keeps him comfortable while writing his manifesto.

USA/NORTH AMERICA Aztecs carved jet and burned coal Leigh River Navigation projects Summit Hill to Philly War of 1812 – Jacob and Cist, arcs of coal going one-way 1818 – White and Hazard 1825 – Schuylkill Canal The first trains were woodburning, and were painted bright colors, only with coal do trains have to be painted black because the smoke is so filthy – with woodburning though, there were lots of sparks and embers in the smoke – passengers always having to put out fires from embers, either on wood of passenger car, or in the hair or clothing of each other.

Each seat comes with a bucket of sand for use in such purposes.

Labor struggles – among the most bitter and deadly of any industry: Molly Maguires, Ludlow Massacre, Cape Breton

STARING OUT TO SEA AND THE DARKNESS UNDERNEATH

Cape Breton is the tip of the finger of Nova Scotia sticking out into the Atlantic. A timezone beyond the east coast of the US, still 3000 miles to go to Europe.

On a cold, wintry day on the east coast, waves pound the rocks. The sky hardly brightens for the storm clouds, the water churns an even darker grey. Below the water is where men encounter the real darkness.

The headhouse stands just back from the edge of the cliff. At the start of a work day, you would climb on board a rolling trolly and push off with just a rope holding you from a 65 degree free fall, and you would be lowered out and down, rolling below the waves and below the water. For maybe 45 minutes you would roll at high speed, playing cards with your lunchbox between your boots, into the permanent dark of the coal beds. Coal beds stretching in twisting directions out deeper and deeper under the Atlantic.

The local miner starts describing the number of deaths, the explosions he’s just escaped. The worst one took down a whole section right next to him. Had no idea how many men had been working that section. The mine cars were knocked out of action, so he had to walk all day/night back to the surface. When he got there, they were looking for volunteers, so he turned around and went back with a rescue crew to pull out all the bodies they could carry and bring them back for the 3rd stretch of that steep walk.

How could you do that? How could you work in such a dangerous environment? His response; The only other option was fishing, and there’s NO WAY they’re getting me out on one of those little boats in the Atlantic in the winter.

Coal mining was the sensible option. Statistically speaking, I think he’s right.

COAL STORIES

husband/son killed in mine The Lucky Ones - the two survivors of a huge cave in trying to live in the small town afterward. The resentment the town shows them when all the other men were killed. son convincing father to let him work/first day at work citizens leading campaign against coal stoves navajo coal/Los Angeles - polluting other places chimney sweeps and getting stuck in coal chutes coal supply ships, steam freighters and coal, where there’s steam there’s coal (until fairly recently) the EXPERIENCE of coal? chutes, delivery, stoves, lighting, fussing over, shortages, The ESSENCE of coal... the cost, the obscuring of colour, a life after death Life is heat and the world is cold Home is darkness Through stone that has forgotten the sun, forgotten the air I sweat like a dog under the icy sea, chipping and blasting my way farther and farther from family and friends

I am the tip of a long root of fresh air Of a massive plant that covers the earth There is nothing left to feed upon but the very rock below The rock of ancestors By living in the future, we are living on the past And so I come, Hello, Underworld.

The tiny breeze I bring resumes the decay in the dead stone I am here to return the hard, dead masses to the light For one more, brief, inglorious life I am a herald of resurrection, A messenger from the world of light But everything I touch is darkness All I breathe is darkness, It fills my lungs, pushing the oxygen farther and farther from my blood It covers my body, until only the white of my eye suggests I am still alive The stone tries to render me darkness before I return it To the surface it has forgotten, except perhaps as a fragment in some geologic-time nightmare I am here looking for sacrifices I am disturbing the dead I am looking for souls ready to die a second time

They are not coming of their own volition They fight back in their way It is only fair We all kill to remain what we are The clothes I wear will never leave this place Now they exist only for the darkness My family will never see them again, They will never see where I spend my days All of this must remain under the ocean Two worlds I go between them every day In the shack on the island, exposed to the cold sun and the stinging rain and the snow that could bury us I hold a shovel of coal before the stove and Wonder at the rock Have I seen this one before?

Is this one that I rescued from under the sea?

I say good bye again as it hisses Unmade, back the way it came Ire like brimstone Returning to the air, to radiance Pushed reluctantly back toward the sun

In the morning, it has gone and left the stove empty And so I must go and find more Because every oven in the world stays hungry In another fifty years, how tall will the chimneys be?

How deep will grandchildren have to travel to find work?

II

The first thing you notice when you run away from home is the breeze.

There's a little more bite.

Streetlights wont keep you warm, nor being seen as a silhouette in a shop window.

Restaurants keep their air on to keep the lingerers moving.

If we were born alone, how long before we would figure out how to dry off with a towel?

A motel room can be hot but only the ritzy ones can get warm.

The cat points to the line between sun and shadow, the evidence in the pavement long into night.

Ever ridden a truck bed in summer, staring at the sky?

Amazed at the sudden warmth when the stars disappear for a shock of overpass overhead?

At what point do you trade a view of infinity for the colorless objects that can hold a little heat forever?

There used to be utility to a basement A need.

Now it’s a place to rent out To shave a little off the mortgage.

Gone are the days of writing on the factory wall just by running your hand through the grime these days Nothing is as expensive as enclosed, empty space.

And nothing cheaper than plastic.

More than ever there is romance in broken signs, shattered windows, dirty brick, twisted metal, ragged pavement, sooty furniture, warped glass, cranky animals and old curmudgeons.

Anything to get our hands dirty again.

Since perfection’s a dime a dozen, the only thing left to shoot for is: ragged and drafty and full of nails.

There’s only one constant in the world; things ain’t like they used to be Language was invented So people could better complain.

It is a characteristic of any animal that made it past reptile.

And some plants.

When the King decreed an End to the Open Hearth, to be replaced by Coal Stoves for Everyone, People did not yield civilly.

Generations of warming devices later, it remains easy to understand their misgivings.

Too bad perfection keeps changing It always seems a good idea at the time Sure takes a lot of mistakes to make a little progress _____ Darkness is so rare We see deep grey and trip over ourselves to call it black We live in the narrowest spectrum of light listen to radios that dial a tiny band of frequencies, Even pianos are only getting smaller.

Imagination overfed and reluctant to take advantage of gym membership, All that binds us is the sense of being tired. and we remain oblivious to the customary corruption of each angel. _____

Coal is the heat that means business Put away your fireplaces and flambés Your cigarillos and sparklers Pull out your steel bridges and railway lines And toast to heat without flame.

Money buys distance, and Poverty pulls you closer to the source.

The deep rock miner must surely sometime swear, “GODDAMN! How deep do the dead things go?” _____ Rats running in to a sinking ship Day after day after day You get so used to having an ocean above you That when you walk home, you wonder that you don’t just float away It’s easy to forget how dark darkness really is It’s amazing how dirty you can be, and still get clean A hobby is something where mistakes are not deadly

You can’t worry about dying every day If you want to get something done Imagine a rock the size of the world And you have to drill little holes in it To blow it up one cubic yard at a time And stop to pick up all the pieces as you go.

If you repeat the same actions fast enough long enough surely you must eventually begin to soar. _____ Lets adrift the canal The backsides of industry Brick and now trees, vines, feral grasses Discard chute of history.

Unimportant us.

No movers and shakers Just seekers of real shade instead of shadow Very large heavy things float; that was the idea.

So now my heart on a barge to make it to market day The old smokestacks are welcome eye candy for the soul Go to the desert if you want to see empty sky This is a forest of brick and iron, a jungle of smart ideas.

After pyramids and parthenons, cathedrals and train stations, very tall buildings to cubicle lawyers and accountants, Now there are condos, and an infinity of dull houses lined up like two mirrors facing off Energy jumps between logical routes _____ This is in honor of all the non-photogenic children, Loved only for their heat, and all the work they get done.

No one wants the pretty maids to do the heavy lifting

Are you a nugget or a lump?

Will you become powder, or just dust?

An iron stove has no currency When a bonfire is an option But in the land of electric heating, That stove is king.

Blowing on a fire can signal one of two intentions Just like the word Inflammable.

Either way, there’s a lot of things in this world That ain’t pretty ’till you set them on fire.

Burning fresh wood Gets you a lot of dancing and prancing The heat that’s all smoke and no flame Comes from burning the thing that’s been dead too long In the strangest of circumstances, Grandma always would gleefully inform, "Nice girls don’t play with coal." _____

I dream I find an old elevator.

I rattle the door closed and push the only button.

And I go down for a very long time.

The wood is close and damp, the squeaking of machinery does not reassure.

The air intensifies and beads wet on the metal.

And I am still going down.

I step into an underground world.

Small, muscled people working in a cathedral of stone.

I do not let them see me; I know what they would do.

Caverns and light and blackness Crystal and staircases and tools of divine perfection.

Black rock extracted and chipped away Chisled in their bare hands Small, muscled lungs clear the dust and chips Revealing tiny creatures cupped in a palm Slowly coming back to life

Silvered reptiles and birds without eyes Winged things with diamond beaks.

Membranes translucent enough that no one colour could ever be agreed upon.

Sometimes the miners blow too hard, and the tiny things disintegrate like the rock from which they came.

Just enough breath is important.

I return to the elevator before I am seen And it is all too fast returning.

I wake up from the dream, yearning to see much, much more.

But they know I had been there.

My plumbing rattles, and the phone line statics Like never before.

They are sending me a message from underground; If I tell no one what I have seen, They will let me live.

And so my days go on, my phone next to useless, the walls shuddering when I turn on the tap.

From the subway windows, strange glimpses in the distance.

And so I tell no one Any of the miracles I have seen.

III Basement Living Blues

My bed’s in the basement It’s always cold down there (x2) The furnace is blazing but the heat all goes upstairs.

It’s dark in the basement Just a little window on the ground (x2) Every night the hungry creatures Are outside poking round.

It’s cold in the basement My bed’s a cement slab (x2) No comfort under the kitchen Longest winter I ever had.

I bought a new stove.

It harnesses wasted energy.

I loaded it up with lists of French verbs And two years of piano lessons A frustrating relationship, a gesture toward A second career, and all of my time Sitting in traffic.

I broiled some cutlets; They tasted like flaming oak and sage.

In about a year, I’ll have another decent meal.

IV

The churches are built cold and stinging.

These days at least, they don’t invite lingering prayers.

Anytime that’s not summer, wood and stone trump skin and bone.

It’s enough to make one long for a little taste of the fires of hell. Just a little.

Our own heat flies away, bored Wants nothing to do with us.

And just as it gets going, it’s barricaded by the tall ceilings, Clawing at the stone to get to heaven, Reunite with an indifferent sun, Home Everything warm wants to give up and go back.

Rise again, after falling to earth.

Heat’s such a sissy for nostalgia.

Nothing makes sense when you’re cold, Except fire.

The most basic instincts are the last to go.

The lizard’s brain in winter moves like a glacier.

It will put its head in the furnace to try to remember, Like reading descriptions of an old dream That may as well have been someone else’s.

Well, it’s too cold to bury anything tonight.

Everyone’s waking up with stiff necks.

Couples fight over the comforter, Glaring accusations in the dark.

Anyone on the street is only rushing to get back inside, Every exposed skin cell wails like an abandoned child. civilization must have started some winter like this, When someone first dreamed of central heating, double-paned windows, someone to sleep next to, and someone else to get the fire going before either of you got out of bed.

Try to pull yourself up from bed, Look through the frost on the window, Before your breath obscures an alien planet, where all the molecules move a little slower.

A sparrow sits in a bare branch, indifferent to the freeze.

He could fly south if he wanted.

But no, just sits, cleaning his wing What clearer sign that we will forever be on the defensive?

On the bank of a thinly-frozen pond, listen, If there is a warm breeze and the ice is fragmenting No longer one heart, but now jostling each other like late commuters.

Or just break the ice with a fist, and before your hand goes numb, take a shard, tap on the lake. (But don’t fall in.)

How can something so deadly ring with such a beautiful sound?

V

We quibble the few degrees between death and a comfortable vacation Unacquainted with the proper temperatures of empire Where the biggest furnace wins.

Big ideas in fat suspenders and overachieving mustaches Discover even the rocks can be beaten like dogs, to do tricks they would never imagine on their own.

As if the bridge emerged willingly from the granite cliffs As if the tracks across continents bubbled up of their own volition Tangling the heels of dinosaurs eons ago.

Steam turbines, egret feathers, and temperance crusades, Coal-dust mascara and pig-iron cummerbunds Forging hoop skirts and petticoats and bustles caramelized carbon Scraping the rock with painted nails.

Dynamite the mountains so hope lofts with the dust The looms stopped stopping, the silence can’t hurt you now.

Cool the earth back into balcony rails, giant telescope housings, Gondolas for dirigibles and private ceremonial cannon, Statues of ornithologists, museum sprinkled sculptures, Beaver pelt retrieval devices, cane tips, the colour of lead rouge.

Battleships, submarines, and lace.

It took civilization how long to trust money that was not metal?

With power comes impulse shopping.

Ease brings introspection breeds strange needs.

Cast your unrequited lover’s heart as civic monument Melt it down with the heat of your own.

Shovel faster, so the not-yet-real looms larger People are forgotten, as the shapes of their dreams raise new eyebrows.

Ghosts pouring out of ol’ steam trains Dinosaurs jostle over factory towns Pterodactyls, ground sloths, and ancient starfish smell the same A billion little fishes we have never dreamed Landing on the roofs Catching fire with memories of the underworld.

The simpler the form, the closer to infinity.

It takes so many memories to push a locomotive.

So many, they stopped painting the trains emerald and vermillion and mauve.

The resurrected have no time for colour.

Blow the whistle in celebration: Second chances for the dead!

Opening eyes no longer moist For a brief reminder of life and summer One last time, staring into the sun Before the smoke clears

The neighborhood burned while we were away No one hurt, no homes lost, just the hills down to the rock, shade already forgotten.

A forest shrunk to pebbles.

Neighbors bubble with tales of dodging the apocalypse Gesture at the trenches with shiny bottles of beer.

All we can say is that our cars were filthy upon return.

We stare at the rocks and look for the glow and crackle All trails closed for fear of erosion The ground too weak we would break its bones.

So we look back through binoculars Pine ash and memories of wild mustard Seven million stoves lit in unison, Instead of a century of hot dinners and full kettles.

Only the golf course was saved.

What do you make of the earth turned upside down?

Lunar surfaces born premature, We who spend our lives chasing the perfect degree, along with the lizards and lobsters and migrating swallows.

It is hard to be moderate about survival That which we need is most likely to lose control.

The deer and the coyotes were in this together, Nothing left but wide-eyed carbon, staring in one direction

Blast furnace in reverse.

Spark trumps axe every time.

If only there were a stove fed by memories That could temper us against the whims beyond our skin.

We are left a little less at home Who came late to the backwards resurrection.

Coal Piece Victoira Rance

Clare Whistler: performance, collaboration Alex MacInnis: texts, video, collaboration Victoria Rance: sculpture, curtain, collaboration Jane Buckler: text Firebird Tale Sophia Campeau: dance Keith Datcheler: Bunces Barn Raphael Whittle: graphic design Thank you Clare Whistler 25 November 2007

Audio interview “Hearth” video: Jim Davies Thanks to Lynda Davies, CHIK Project, Dover Museum Notebook Sources include: Coal: A Human History, by Barbara Freese The volunteers at the Cape Breton Miner’s Museum, Glace Bay