Comments on: Rêves de poussière (Dreams of Dust)

By: Mark Nowak

Mark Nowak — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:02:40 +0000

Thanks for the great comments to this posting. Rita, I hope lots of folks will look at the link you provided; Mozart, I sent you a few things I thought might interest you through Myspace; and Jasper, thanks for bringing up GE Energy’s *vile* advertisement–for the other side of the (visual) conversation, people should search “China Coal Mine Died” at the Getty images site. Also, the history of “Sixteen Tons” (the song in the ad) is quite interesting, and Youtube has some great versions by Johnny Cash, The Platters, and others.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Again, thanks for this, Mark. We’ll miss you when your tenure here is up.
Because my son is in an “accumulatory” phase–he loves rocks, gems, gold, all things “precious” or “rare,” which means whatever he decides it means–I recently took him and my nephew to a mining town in Nevada (Virginia City). You know, the air in that town, it’s soaked with blood. You can feel it. It’s not extracted from the ground, gold; it’s extracted from people. From what I gather, though, Virginia City was one of the first places where the miners unionized.
You’re probably already hip to these, Mark, but I wanted to add to your bibliography Cesar Vallejo’s Tungsten as well as the recent Thomas Pynchon novel, which I’m yet to finish, Against the Day. It deals with pre-IWW militancy among Colorado miners. More than any other Pynchon novel, the conflict in this one is clearly, starkly, between capital and labor. . .
Also, do you remember this advertisement? Coal, it’s sexy. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1A146sANdg

By: Mozart Guerrier

Mozart Guerrier — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:22:19 +0000

thanks, a lot for this article. i’m so naive that i didn’t know mining& miners rights, was such a huge human rights issue. The words that you wrote about hughes… keep coming back over and over in my head. the film looks stunning. thanks, again.

By: Rita

Rita — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:04:41 +0000

Hi Mark,
I am so glad that you are blogging up a storm of conscience and poetry–it’s wonderful to read the interview with Phinder and to learn about your work around mines. I hadn’t known about Spring Hill, NS, but I do know that Canadian mining companies are inflicting devastating damage around the world and in Canada itself (http://www.miningwatch.ca/ – click on companies and then Platinex to find out about how exploration for platinum led to the incarceration of First Nations leaders in northern Ontario who refuse to allow their traditional lands to be mined and exploited).
I like how you described “first person singular meets the first person plural on the global scale.”
In solidarity,
Rita

By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:03:29 +0000

I thought right away of the coal miner and poet, Joseph Skipsey, much beloved by Basil Bunting, who’d seen a mining disaster or two himself in Newcastle.
Here’s Skipsey’s poem, “Get Up!”
“Get up!” the caller calls, “Get up!”
And in the dead of night,
To win the bairns their bite and sup,
I rise a weary wight.
My flannel dudden donn’d, thrice o’er
My birds are kiss’d, and then
I with a whistle shut the door,
I may not ope again.