This is a complete digression from my normal topics but something quite close to my heart.
I've just finished reading a book of poems entitled "Kettle Bottom" by Diane Gilliam Fisher. These are poems about coal camp history in 1920-21 West Virginia, when many bloody battles were waged between miners and company-hired goons. Few people know that our own federal government sent our own troops to fight against our own people in West Virginia. Yes, miners agitating for just slightly better working conditions were cause to call out the army. Many of these miners had recently been part of that army, in World War I. What a nice thank-you to our veterans!
Anyway, this book of poems heartbreakingly captures the experiences of the miners, miners' wives, and the children - who were also sometimes the miners. Reading it now, in 2005, these poems about events more than 80 years ago break my heart and bring me to tears. First, because Fisher is an excellent poet. But second, because I come from a coal-mining family, and these poems speak truth about my feelings and experiences, and what I know my grandparents lived through. One of my grandfathers entered the mines at age 9, the other at age 12. My father died at age 57 of a heart attack brought on by black lung disease. I know people who have survived cave-ins, and I am a distant relative of one of the Quecreek miners rescued from a flooded mine in 2002.
Because this book moved me so deeply, I Googled Fisher's name to see if I could somehow find a way to send her a fan letter. What I found were a couple of reviews of the book, and I decided to take a look. In Erin Murphy's positive but patronizing review, we are told that the angel metaphor in one poem is "a bit too poetic for a miner's wife". Too poetic? Because miner's wives are too stupid and low-class to know anything about angels and what their wings would look like? And even if they did know, they don't have the depth of soul required to create metaphors in their own existence? Well, thank you for insulting my mother and grandmothers, Ms. Murphy. She is also critical of a poem in which a wife speaks back to a doctor, not believing that she would have had the gumption to do it. But there were and are plenty of feisty women in the mining community. And she's cranky about the central piece, "Raven's Light" which chronicles a miner's thoughts after he's trapped by a cave-in and knows he will not be rescued. "Too organized, too ordered" she says. But for me it helped me think more closely about that which all mining families try not to think about. It was incredibly painful to read but I am so glad it was written.
Now, Ann Stapleton, on the other hand, plainly shows in her review that she gets it. Thank you, Ann.
You might ask, what is a "kettle bottom"? It's a large rounded piece of rock that can drop, without warning, out of the surface of a mine tunnel. They are formed from the petrified remains of tree stumps. They can weight hundreds of pounds. And they can kill a man. I first learned about kettle bottoms from my brother, who had all-too-familiar experience with them during his mining days.
Now, with all this history, how could I fail to be totally offended by General Electric's new ad campaign about coal mining? Follow the link, and scroll down to "Model Miners". View the video of the ad that purports to tell you how beautiful and sexy coal mining can be. This commercial should make you barf up whatever you have most recently eaten, if you have even a shred of humanity in your soul. I, personally, wish that I could barf my share upon (a) whoever thought up this ad campaign and (b) whoever approved using it. Coal mining is beautiful and sexy, oh yeah baby. Coal mining: how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
- For my father's mashed thumb and permanently disfigured thumb and thumbnail.
- For the coal dust my father could never completely scrub out of that thumb - or his lungs.
- For my father's black lung.
- For my father's heart attack at age 57.
- For my brother's broken wrist.
- For my uncle and his buddy who were trapped under a roof-fall (thankfully rescued).
- For the crippling arthritis in my uncle's shoulders and back.
- For the lost childhood of both of my grandfathers.
- For all the worried hours my grandmothers and mothers spent waiting for their men to return home after a shift.
- For my anxiety as a child that if Daddy was 5 minutes late coming home, maybe the mine had killed him.
- For roof falls, kettle bottoms, gas explosions, and flooding.
- For the thousands of miners who die each year in China's unsafe coal mines.
Oh, I could go on, but you get the picture. One of the most offensive things about General Electric's commercial is the selection of music to accompany the ad - the song "16 Tons". "You load 16 tons, and what do you get?/Another day older and deeper in debt./St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store." This song is not metaphorical, it is literal. Coal companies used to pay miners not in U.S. currency, but in something called scrip that the coal companies printed and coined themselves. This scrip - surprise, surprise - could only be spent in the store owned by the company. Miners had to pay for their own tools and often started out work in debt as a result. Miners were paid by the ton of coal loaded - and that ton had to be shoveled by hand into a cart that was hauled out of the mine by a mule. My grandfather worked this way. So, that song has some particular meaning to me. And those General Electric folks should be ashamed to show their sorry asses in public. Unless they are offering themselves up to be barfed on by me.
I am most grateful to Seth Stevenson for this excellent critique of the offending ad on Slate. Stevenson quotes the ad guy in charge of this travesty as saying "you can picture miners singing this song [16 Tons] without any negative feelings."
I would now like to nominate the ad guy, Executive Creative Director Don Schneider, of BBDO, for the award for Stupidest, Most Offensive, Most Hideously Insensitive, and Most Disgusting Human Being. And if anybody runs into him, please barf on him for me.
7:22:57 PM 
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