Three Beautiful Things 01/26/08: Pepto Starbucks, Harlan County, The Americans

1. Last evening's chili had me feeling queasy this morning, but a cinnamon scone and a grande house with room at Starbucks miraculously helped settle down my internal combustion.

2. Our students in Fat Cats and Underdogs expressed high regard for the men and women of the coal mining town of Brookside, Kenucky in their struggle for justice while striking for union representation in the astonishing documentary film "Harlan County, USA". It was really gratifying that our students felt such respect for working class people who are often looked down upon and made fun of because of their speech patterns, clothes, dental problems, and the work they do.

3. I don't remember having heard of Robert Frank and his influential and controversial 1959 collection of photographs, "The Americans". Bob Edwards devoted his radio program to this collection today and I spent time looking at Frank's brilliant pictures online. I can hardly wait to find a copy of the book and examine it more closely.

Three Beautiful Things 06/13/08: Harlan Joy, Paul Pierce Respect, Tiger Woods Awe

1. I read my WR 122 students' papers on Harlan County, USA. When I planned this course, this was the one "text" I had the most doubt about. I absolutely love this movie, but I didn't know how it would play for my students. I need never worry again. Not only were my students' insights thoughtful and illuminating, many expressed being blown away by the movie. Reading their words of enthusiasm filled me with joy.

2. I went back to Linda's work area in our division office and we broke down Game 4 of the NBA finals and marveled together that the Celtics came back from a 24 point deficit and won that game. For me, the highlight of our post-game analysis was our agreement that Paul Pierce has played with the strongest resolve we've seen in a player for a long time. He's just plain tough.

3. Linda and I also broke down the US Open. We didn't know, as we talked, that Tiger Woods had charged up the leaderboard with a 30 on his back nine and catapulted himself into second place. We talked about Woods, though. We agreed that we have loved every moment of watching him play. Linda and I know golf. We know the difficulties of the game. We are in awe of Tiger Woods' skill and mental strength and of his charismatic presence on the golf course.

Three Beautiful Things 06/10/08: Exam Time, Hero's Journey, Mining Coal

1. The final exam environment today in my World Lit class was cool to me. Ashleigh, with a Venti Starbuck's drink, and Kati sat on the floor, backs up against the wall, typing out their exams on their laptops. Teresa and Kelly needed a power source and sat at a table at the front of the room facing the rest of the class. Others had strong batteries. Many wrote with pens. Red Bull cans, coffee mugs, stacks of the course's novels and poetry, students freely leaving to stretch or go to the rest room, air thick with concentration.

2. Lina's research essay looks at the Chinese immigrant experience and the labor they performed on the transnational railroad in terms of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. It's an ingenious approach and is developing into a wonderful paper.

3. Fernando, a student from Costa Rica, came by my office this evening to talk about coal mining, inspired by our class having read Sky of Stone and viewed Harlan County, USA. He also watched Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days episode on mining coal in West Virginia. He's intrigued by the demands of the labor, the conditions it's practiced in, and its importance to the USA -- and how different it is from anything he has known in Costa Rica.

Movie: Harlan County, USA

Barbara Kopple (pictured above) hadn't yet made a feature length documentary movie when she started work on a movie that would explore the United Mine Workers of America's election between reform candidate Arnold Miller and longtime incumbent Tony Boyle. When a strike at the Brookside, KY coal mine broke out in 1972, Kopple and crew moved to Brookside and "Harlan County, USA" resulted.

It's a harsh, sobering, and, inspiring movie. The strike is its main focus, particularly as it documents the role of the miners' wives in support of their husbands and as it looks at Basil Collins, an infamous strike breaker, and his men who were scabs and gun thugs.

As compelling as the main story of the strike is, the genius of the movie lies in its detours. The UMWA election story gets told in "Harlan County, USA". On New Year's Eve, 1969, Tony Boyle's leadership opponent Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, along with his wife and twenty-five year old daughter were murder in their home.

The movie takes a brief look at this murder, at the ascension of Arnold Miller as the reform candidate, and at Tony Boyle's being tried and convicted for having hired two men to murder his opponent. It also covers Miller's successful campaign to unseat Boyle, before Boyle was convicted.

This detour into the corrupt practices of Boyle and the divisions within the United Mine Workers of America keeps the movie from being an uncritical view of the United Mine Workers of America.

Yes, on the local level, the union is the coal miners' only hope for better pay and benefits and for an increased focus on safety. But, at the national level, the union organization is in the same league of corruption and greed as the mine operators it purports to be in conflict with.

The movie's other detour is its examination of blank lung. The coal operator's are as callous toward the miners' pulmonary health as they are to the miners' living conditions (no running water or indoor toilets). The pictures of older miners at pulmonary capacity machines and others being treated with respiratory therapy deepens the movie's overall story of the terrible plight of these miners.

In fact, the miners are being crushed underneath layers of power weighing down on them. The Brookside mine is an Eastover mine which is run by Duke Power of North Carolina which is under the sway of the nation's petroleum companies and all of these entities have the government regulatory agencies, particularly the Bureau of Mines, on their side.

The government wants the mines to operate so steel production continues unabated and so the nation's electrical demands are met. Then, as today, mines are given safety extensions, are subject to less than rigorous inspection. Miners' wages are kept low. Benefits are lousy. Lower company overhead means cheaper steel and electricity.

It's a dictatorship. The miners have next to no real control over their work and their lives. In fact, the strike the movie covers happens because Duke Power refuses to recognize the miners' vote to join the United Mine Workers of American.

The movie, released in 1976, is not titled "Harlan County, KY". It's "Harlan County USA". It's a microcosmic look at the USA, labor conditions, power, health, corruption, disregard for miners and other workers, and indifference in the USA for anything much beyond production and inexpensive products.

The movie always makes me think of the Silver Valley and my hometown of Kellogg, Idaho.

What I experienced and witnessed in the world of hard rock mining and smelting could have been made into a movie called "Silver Valley USA".

I lived in a place where the environmental indifference and disregard for workers was also a microcosm of the USA itself.