Lazy, Hazy, but not Crazy

I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted to this blog. For months after beginning a strategy for losing weight last November, I posted every week, usually to give updates on my progress and delve into the successes or struggles I experienced. I transformed my eating habits and lost thirty pounds, and though my goal of forty-four pounds remains something I'd like to reach, I've decided to live with this weight for awhile without "trying" so hard to restrict my eating. And so far I've done pretty well, though predictably, I'm at the high range of the weight I decided to allow myself for "maintenance"-- 180 pounds (I had started at 209).

I don't feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I've been decidedly less ambitious than in the months previous to July 3rd when the fundraising event for AWARE: Artists Working to Restore the Environment was held. I had put so much effort into making that a success (netted over $3,000, $2500 of which I'll be distributing to WV Environmental Council and member groups, the rest of which will be used for upcoming projects), that my wife had mused that I was working harder in retirement than I had for years.

So the rhythm of activity has definitely slowed, and I've actually had time to sit down and read a little in the last couple weeks, ride my bike regularly, play a bit more music, even actually doing a "bar gig" of sorts (tip jar Tuesday at the Boulevard Tavern), dusting off a slew of my original songs many of which have not been played in public much over the years, some of which have only been heard by Rita and a couple others. Not that they've been heard by many others after playing Tuesday night -- it was a pretty empty room. But it was good practice, and when I finished my second set and called it a night with a solo rendition of the fiddle tune, Catharsis, a complex G-minor rockin' contra dance favorite, the eight or nine people at the bar clapped and whistled.

Tonight, old friend Joe McHugh and his wife, Paula, will play for a FOOTMAD Wandering Minstrel Concert I organized for them. They live in Washington state and came here to do a couple programs at the Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV, and this is their last stop before heading home. I may also play a little fiddle before the anti-Mountain Top Removal at Kanawha State Forest rally at the WV Capitol beforehand (5 pm).

Rita and I fly out in the morning for ten days in Colorado Springs (visiting grandchild, Jack Martorella, and his parents), Albuquerque (daughter Hannah and husband), and points in between. So this is retirement during lazy, hazy, not too crazy days of summer 2014.

An Impossible Task

In 1990 after my third year as an elementary school classroom teacher, I attended a 4 week intensive "Invitation Summer Institute" led by Dr. Fran Simone of the WV Writing Project. I eventually became involved in the leadership of that group and in the National Writing Project. Along with 39 others, I was asked to write an essay about my NWP experience to celebrate the 40th summer of holding these summer programs, which started in Berkeley, CA and spread around the country. They published my essay today: http://our.nwp.org/ Here it is:

I (along with 39 others) was asked to contribute 500-1000 words summing up what NWP means to me. I’m not sure I could do it in a book length piece, though maybe I could do it in a haiku:

Young struggling teacher

Lifted by Summer Institute

Retired Director

No, doesn’t come close. Okay, who is my audience? Is it young teachers entering the profession, floundering as I once did? Feeling overwhelmed, small, under a microscope, everyone expecting that college and student teaching has created a professional who knows the answers, but finding that it’s not as easy as it looks, and that these eager or bored or angry or sad or hurting or confused faces cannot be fooled; they know when you are confident and when you are uncertain, and they crave your certainty, your control, they want you to have all the answers, to make it easy for them, and ultimately you learn you’re all in the same boat, learning together, but the lessons are painful and lead to sleepless nights.

What can I tell the young teacher attending a summer institute for the first time—that it’s never completely under control? To have ideals, but not hold yourself to them? To understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough? To try to create community? To listen to students, especially the ones who are the most difficult? To give everyone a voice? To write, write, write, and share, share, share? To understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations, objectives, and content standards, and that schoolwide, districtwide, nationwide goals will come and go and ultimately you should strive to make your classroom a place where learning takes place most of the time? It sounds somewhat defeatist; but it was my Truth. And every student I have met years later has smiled when she asked, Do you remember me? Yes, even the young man last week who was picking up the garbage can from my driveway.

Or am I speaking to the NWP veteran? The Director who has spent a career in the university setting and was asked to take on this extra project and found it taking over his life and career, guiding his research, pushing him toward leadership, management, budgeting, administrative roles he never envisioned. Or am I speaking to the classroom teacher who found a home in her local writing project with like minded teachers who supported each other as writers, who listened to and responded to each other’s stories of divorce, deaths, and illnesses, of births and embarrassing moments, of likes, dislikes, travel stories, fantasy, or poetry. Who got asked and answered, Yes, and found, as I did, it was not like at school where you learned that saying yes could lead you to doing other people’s jobs, to jealousies or politics, to uncomfortable positions making presentations of new strategies or curriculum that someone else decided was best for your school or district or was purchased from a textbook company and you were to follow the script and tell others to be true to the Program. Somehow the writing project was different; the teachers were working together, supporting each other, asking questions, exploring new methods that they truly believed in, and….what is it, what’s so different about this? Oh! They’re listening to ME! They think I have ideas worth listening to! These amazing teachers who have so much to teach me think I have value? I’ve never heard that before! Yes! I will present my classroom demonstration at that workshop; I will help write that grant; I will attend that national meeting. Oh my goodness, here are these amazingly smart people from all over the country, and they all listen to each other, they all work together, they all write, they all ask questions, none of them claims to have all the answers! Yes, I’ll serve on a national committee; are you kidding? You want me, an elementary school teacher to co-direct the Rural Sites Network? Yes, I’ll write an article, participate in a study. Just say yes became my rule of thumb when it came to NWP.

Only when I saw my local writing project in danger did I say no to NWP. No, I can’t right now, I have to lead at the local level. And that was truly the hardest work, at least for me. How can anyone ask busy teachers to do more? And how can an outsider really operate in a university? But those are simply questions, the answers are, in the end simple: It’s never completely under control.  Have ideals, but don’t hold yourself to them. Understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough. Try to create community. Listen to the teachers, especially the ones who are the most difficult. Give everyone a voice. Write, write, write, and share, share, share. Understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations. Oh, I left out one important ingredient…celebrate success! Congratulations on 40 years of changing the lives of teachers through holding Summer Institutes and improving teaching and learning throughout the world, NWP!

A Non-Religious Prayer

*2 Day Diet Report at end

I was musing (isn’t that the promise of this blog?), about how I ended up so incredibly busy working the last couple months, even though I’m now fully retired. Somehow my musing led me down the rabbit hole of religion and my beliefs (or lack of). Because the way that I have approached the creation of the project that has consumed so many waking (and dreaming) hours, AWARE: Artists Working in Alliance to Restore the Environment (www.awarewv.org), is not very different from the way “true believers” approach their lives.

Though I don’t attribute my mission to an outside force, or God, I do feel an inner compulsion that is probably very much like the feeling religious people express when they say they were “meant” to do something or any of the many ways that idea is expressed.

When I consider the compulsion that drives most of the human population to attribute their success or failure, their purpose in life to an outside force, who are willing to give money and time to create organizations, buildings, cities, and even whole countries (and dreams of all humanity) dedicated to worshiping or celebrating that force, I can’t help but believe that there are, at the very least, biological and physical properties that these ideas derive from.

What I mean by that is that the practice of religion or the practices of religion have real benefits for people whether the beliefs of religion are scientifically observable or confirmable or not. For instance, we know that prayer, or meditation, has value whether the mind is focused on a supreme being or on clearing the mind of clutter. Singing and dancing in large groups or chanting has benefits and can result in states of euphoria whether this occurs among groups of worshipers or attendees of rock concerts or dance events.

So, to me, it’s no big surprise that soon after retiring in the months following the chemical spill into the Elk River which tainted the water of Charleston, WV and 9 surrounding counties, after attending meetings and rallies and lobbying on Earth Day, I began to feel as if there was something important I could contribute. In retrospect, my dreams and fantasies about how I would accomplish this were wildly optimistic. Like someone who reports having received a “vision from above,” it was very difficult for people I talked to about this to convince me that success would be difficult, slow, or unlikely.

Stories abound in all human endeavors of people who believe: in their religious visions, their business endeavors, their scientific pursuits. Rarely is it smooth sailing from vision to reality.

On Thursday, July 3^rd, a scaled down version of AWARE’s first event (my first idea for helping raise money for environmental organizations involved a stadium or the Civic Center) will take place at the Woman’s Club of Charleston. There will be some popular local bands, singer-songwriters, and a few artists selling work. There will be snack food and a cash bar with wine and beer. How many people will show up? Hopefully advance ticket sales do not tell that story, because that number is small. How much money will actually make its way to the groups I hope to help? It’s all in the hands of….no, not a magical power. It’s in the hands of a small group of people who are dedicated to the idea that it’s important to be ACTIVE in environmental issues, and the many other people who have heard of this event, seen the posters, handbills, e-mails or Facebook invites, and are balancing the possibility of going out on a Thursday evening before a holiday for a good cause.

Yes, it’s in their hands…your hands. I hope to see you there if you’re in the area! And, I offer this blessing, as blessings and prayers, I believe, need not be solely for the religious to dispense or benefit from: May your life be enriched through generous giving of your thoughts, time, and resources to finding ways to help make our planet a cleaner, healthier, and more beautiful place for all life.


*My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 34, June 30, 2014

I took a week off from blogging last week, but maintained 177 at weigh in both last week and this week. I seem to have reached a plateau for the past month or so, and will now stop posting weekly, but I will continue posting once at the beginning of each month for at least the next 6 months. I'm still hoping to reach my goal of 165 pounds and maintain that weight, but for now I am very satisfied with my weight and as long as I remain below 180 will remain so.

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  177 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  no change

Total Gain/Loss:  -32 lbs.

Songwriters, Bars, Drinking, and Not Smoking

I’ve never spent much time in bars.  When I reached legal drinking age I was already a self-described “country hippie” with no money, and not much of a palate for alcohol. The stringbands I performed in from 1972-83 occasionally played in bars, and by then I enjoyed a few beers in the course of an evening, but generally found the drunks who hooted and hollered and sometimes got belligerent as the evening turned to morning to be obnoxious and not the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. When I was dating between marriages, I started frequenting the Empty Glass, a Charleston live music, liberal, social watering hole, but that didn’t last long. The fact is, I don’t like drinking too much and waking up tired or feeling sick and don’t like spending twenty to fifty dollars doing it.

But, I’ve started going out to a bar on Tuesday evenings where a couple local singer/songwriters have started what they call SongwriterStage—a “songwriter in the round” format (though it’s not in the round, it’s three songwriters on stage taking turns), which is common in Nashville for showcasing the wealth of talent available there. I’m finding, as are the 10-20 who have been showing up with me on Tuesday evenings from 7pm-10pm at Timothy’s, a basement bar beneath the Quarrier Diner on, you guessed it, Quarrier St., that the Tri-State area has a wealth of singer/songwriting talent as well. Last night I enjoyed listening to TimBrowning, Mark Cline Bates, and Jeff Ellis.

Singer-songwriters are a pretty needy bunch; that is, they need to find people to listen to them. If you know any, you know that they are likely to sit you down and ask you to listen to their latest song. That’s what they need—at least one person to listen. Here in the Internet age, they might record their new song and throw it up on the web for the whole world to hear, and who knows, for awhile two or three people a day might actually click on it to listen, and if it’s good, maybe twenty, and if it’s great and they’re very lucky, maybe thousands. Maybe they’ll get so well known they can go on the road, get gigs, wake up in a different place every day and almost make enough money to live on.

Anyway, I’m not sorry I didn’t make it as a singer-songwriter back when I had several dozen songs about love and loss and made my CD called Lessons Life’s Taught Me, letting my girlfriend at the time take a picture of me with a cowboy hat on, leaning reflectively against a tree. Continuing as a teacher until I had 25 years under my belt and a pension equivalent to half my salary was a much better outcome.

Tonight, after Timothy’s wound down, I strolled over to the Boulevard Tavern where some friends who play celtic music were playing for tips. Okay, it’s not just songwriters who need to be heard, I guess. I had my third drink there and was feeling pretty good, chatting everyone up about the fundraising event July 3^rd that has been consuming my life lately.

A handsome young bearded fellow responded that he’d heard about it, and even been invited to sell his art there. As we tried to figure out why we looked a bit familiar to each other and whether in fact I had invited him to show his art, it was revealed that he’d gone to high school where my daughter had and knew Hannah. A heavy set girl in the next stool turned to look at me and said, “You were my 5^th grade teacher.”

About that time I started feeling a little old. So here I am at 4 am writing my blog, because I’m somewhat prone to insomnia anyway, and while I fall asleep easily after drinking, I don’t sleep that long.

Thankfully, I don’t smoke anymore and they don’t allow smoking in bars in Kanawha County, which makes the whole experience so much more pleasant, and means I don’t smell like an ashtray and hack and cough because drinking used to be accompanied by chain smoking.

All this to say what Larry Groce says at the end of every Mountain Stage show, “Go out and listen to some live music wherever you are.” Yes, socialize, talk (as long as you’re not near the front of the room), but also, spend some time listening carefully. You might be amazed at how talented the folks you’re listening to are, and that's what they want, for at least one person to listen--even more than money, but drop a generous gift in the tip jar, so at least they can pay their bar bill.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 32, June 16, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  177 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  +2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -32 lbs.

Deep Dark Secrets (a story)

I wrote this story a couple years ago...I post it today because I've been just too busy working on my AWARE project to devote time to writing. When I started this blog, Paul Epstein Muse, I thought I'd be posting more of my "creative" writing, stories, or chapters of a book I was working on, than essays or posts that are more reflective, such as the 2 day Diet reports (this week's is posted at the end). I was told by my writing group when I wrote this that it was a bit too heavy handed....what do you think?

Deep Dark Secrets
(c) Paul Epstein 2011

Let’s see, I guess this thing is recording.

Umm, this is Anthony Wallace Casto, Jr., they call me Junior Casto, and I’m down in the Omega #3 under Kenner Mountain on, ummh, November the 17^th, two thousand and ten. There’s been an accident down here and there’s men dead. Two right here in this area didn’t make it to the emergency refuge….uhhn, shoot, I, I r-really do want to live…  I’m recording on this SmartPhone hopin’ the truth will come out someday and them that’s responsible gets what they deserve.

After the explosion, I thought I was already dead. I come to and there wasn’t no sound. It was so quiet, the ringin’ in my ears sounded like wind screamin’ down the holler. I don’t think I was out no more than a few minutes. I didn’t think to look at my watch. It was probably about two hours into the middle shift. I got my breathin’ unit on, took a look around, saw I couldn’t get out and the others in this room was already dead, and come to the refuge shelter. I’m good here for at least a couple days if everything keeps working. Enough food and water for a week or more since it’s made for six men. I figure I got a fifty-fifty chance.

I been down in the mines twenty-six years, and I’ve done about every job there is to do. But I ain’t exactly a coal miner now. I work in the mines, so I’m a miner, but I don’t actually dig the coal, I just work on the machines. I keep things runnin’. What is a miner these days, anyway? An equipment operator.

The explosion didn’t start here. It was probably in one of the other rooms in this section. The continuous miner in this room was down, that’s why I was here. I was inside the fifty-ton monster, workin’ on it. Reckon that’s what saved my life. Anybody that might hear this and not have no idea what a continuous miner is, it’s like a squashed down bulldozer ‘bout twenty feet wide with an arm in the front holdin’ a cutter that looks like a big paint roller with teeth. It cuts into  the coal seam.

If a mountain was a layer cake, the coal’d be the icing ‘tween the layers. The continuous miner crawls through the seam, cuttin’ the coal and shovin’ it back behind at five tons a minute. It’s remote controlled. Like them drones in Afghanistan. They sit in a comfey ole’ chair underground somewhere out west. Like video game players. Nobody shootin’ at ‘em. The continuous miner operator, he’s in the mine twenty or so feet behind his machine, and if he brings the roof down, it’s comin’ down on top of him, too.

A crew comes in behind the continuous miner puttin’ bolts up into the ceiling to keep it from cavin’ in. Another guy dusts with limestone to keep the coal dust from buildin’ up, and another crew has to work on ventilation so’s the methane can’t build up. They was short a couple coal dusters lately, and that’s probably why we had this explosion anyway. Otherwise a little methane might o’ burned off and not gone nowhere. When there’s a lot of coal dust, it blows up big.

It’s the roof bolters who are layin’ back there dead. Willie Ray Tomkins and Punk Wallace. Punk was my second cousin. I told him he ought to find another operation. I told him it wasn’t safe here. But you know how these kids is these days. They don’t believe in nothin’ nobody tells ‘em. They sure as heck don’t listen to experience. Think they know everything. Wonder if it’s got somethin’ to do with them video games they play. They think they can fight and kill anything and everything. Real life ain’t that easy.

Kids ain’t like they was when great-great-grandpappaw Castigliari first come here from Italy to Mingo County, WV when he was sixteen.  He’d already been a miner for three years back in the old country, as the old folks called it. They mined coal by hand back then. They laid on their side in a thirty-inch seam, dug the coal out of the wall with a pick-axe, shoveled it into a cart and pushed it out of the mine theirselves. Nowadays if they ain’t usin’ continuous miner rigs, you’re operating one of them long-wall miners. They’re as big as a few football fields. Roll through the inside of a mountain eatin’ coal and let it cave in behind it. Do the work of a couple thousand miners workin’ by hand.

Course, a lot of guys work on strip mine sites these days. They ain’t coal miners if ya’ ask me. Mountain top removal is just movin’ dirt and rock. They work in daylight. Not much danger there compared to being under a thousand feet of rock.

But still, we wouldn’t have to be dyin’ down here if it wasn’t for them greedy devils upstairs. It’s all about production. You got to get so much coal outta here every hour and if there’s a breakdown then the next shift has to try and make up for lost time. The foreman, he’s like, “Boys, we got to bust ass this shift and we got no time for the b.s. if you know what I mean.” Well the b.s. he’s talkin’ about is all them safety procedures we don’t do half the time. That’s why this is the most dangerous operation in the southern coal fields, and that’s no lie.

It didn’t used to be like this. Not when the union had a lock on things. Oh, there’s still a few union mines workin’ underground operations, but you can’t get on ‘less you got family already inside. Them jobs is like gold. Not that we don’t make good money, too. We do, but money ain’t everything. My daddy and my granddaddy was both union all the way, and they’ve probably done worn out their coffins rollin’ around these last fifteen years since these non-union outfits has taken over and run out the unions.

The union used to keep scabs and non-union outfits out any way they had to. They’d flatten the tires of any miner took a non-union job. If that didn’t run ‘em off, they’d shoot at their radiators. Next time, it’d be the windshield. Not no more. Ben Jenkins, he’s the guy that runs Omega, he’d got around the union by settin’ up little non-union operations that contracted out the work on the cheap. Pretty soon, he just told the union to go to hell, ran his union company outta’ business and opened up a new, non-union company. The State Police went after anybody that tried to stop the scabs, and nobody stood up for the union. Jenkins got the law in his pocket, from the deputy sheriff on up through the state police and into the governor’s office. Then the governor’s people leans on MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Them’s the ones supposed to check up on the mine and make sure we’re following all the safety regs. Make sure the emergency shelters is stocked up and the belts is clean, the air’s flowin’ like it should, the equipment is kept up.

It don’t take much to set off an explosion, what with methane seepin’ up out of cracks in the floor and fine coal dust everywhere. If the methane builds up, one little spark can set off a chain reaction when conditions is right. Well, conditions was right today. Two good men dead between me and a cave-in. Don’t know if there’s any more cause I’m totally cut off back here. Just me and two dead men. DEAD! I’m sorry, I can’t…hnnn, hem.

There’s got to be at least six or seven more over in the room where the explosion started. Probably started with a spark from a cutter so the operator, roof bolters, ventilation crew that was workin’ that room, I figure they must be gone just from the blast. How many more depends on how much more roof come down on guys or trapped ‘em somewhere and whether they can get rescue crews down here.

Thing I’m gonna miss worst is my kids, Dreama and Troy. She’s six, and he’s nine. Well, I guess that ain’t right. It’s them’s gonna miss me. Like I missed my dad after that big rock dropped off the ceiling of the Monagan mine and put his lights out. He was only forty-nine. I was nineteen, drivin’ a delivery truck because I’d done vowed and declared I wasn’t never goin’ to work in a mine, but after he died and mom didn’t know how she was going to keep making the mortgage on the house he built out there at the head of the holler, Mama needed me to make enough to make the payments, at the very least. They put me in workin’ right away, the guys in UMWA. They took care of me. They’d say, “look at that Junior Casto—now there’s a miner just like his daddy. You don’t need to hold his hand in the dark, no sirree Bob.” They kept me outta trouble and taught me what I needed to know. Mostly they worked things by the book—they made sure things was safe and everything worked right. And they took care of them that was havin’ trouble. When Jake’s wife got cancer and his mother was too messed up from her meds to take care of his kids, they found ways to cover for him so he’d show up on the books for a whole day even if he only clocked in and dusted one little section. Some of these older guys who were maybe too feeble or gimped up, they’d work it out for them to get a job they could do in a section that wasn’t hardly producing, dustin’ a little bit here and there, do a little maintenance.

It ain’t like that in the non-union mines. They find out you’re sick or you get old and can’t keep up, you’re gone. All about efficiency and production, you see. And if they got a few men out, they put the dusters and ventilators into doin’ somethin’s gonna move the coal out faster. You wouldn’t have that in the union mines. No sir. You had a job to do and they didn’t tell you to do somebody else’s job. If there wasn’t enough workers to mine coal safe in a section, then you’d go over to another section and help them out or you’d just do some maintenance you been puttin’ off for a rainy day, but you didn’t work with no short crews. Sure, your production might be down some, but we was prouder of the number that said how many days we worked without a work accident than how many tons of coal we drug outta here.

Now it’s going back to the way it was. Oh these non-union mines know how to make it look good. They’ll have all kinds of slogans like, “Safety is our First Job!” Or “No Chunk of Coal Worth a Miner’s Life!” They have mandatory safety sessions where we get trained on the new safety equipment and the latest rules and regs. They tell us if you don’t think somethin’s right, just say so and they’ll shut her down. No coal mined until it gets fixed. I dare you to try it though. Tell a foreman it ain’t safe and you ain’t goin’ down and you’ll be lookin’ for a new job next week. 

They tell us MSHA inspectors are our friends, just lookin’ out for us. And then they turn around the next day and give us a heads up when they find out an inspector’s on the way and tell us to go to a different room that day. Or shut down a few rooms and send out a dozen extra dusters before they get here. Because it’s the same ones who’s cookin’ the books. One set of inspection reports for MSHA inspectors and one set for the company managers so they know what the real picture is.

Yeah, that’s supposed to be a big secret, and it is. I’ve asked a few friends here and there if they heard of that and they look at me like I’m crazy. Of course, maybe they’re lookin’ at me like that because they know the truth but know better than to say it out loud. Some of ‘em needs a job that bad. Dexter Mullins said he’s hopin’ to die down here. Really. Because he knows if he dies on the job, the company’s gonna make a big payout to his family. Million bucks, maybe more. Enough to pay off the mortgage, which he got way behind on last time he was laid off, enough for their kids to go to college. Fact is, we all know we got a way better chance of getting’ hurt or sick with black lung than winnin’ the lottery.

Well I reckon I’m gonna shut up. You might be wonderin’ why I ain’t said good-bye to my wife. I’ll tell you why. It’s cause we say goodbye to each other every day before I come to work. We done made all the arrangements a long time ago. We both know it’s just a matter of time. That’s the way it is for the miner. You know there’s a chance you ain’t comin’ home. So I know she loves me she knows I love her and there ain’t nothin’ gonna come between us long as I’m alive. She’ll stay strong for the kids, cause that’s what a miner’s wife does. And everything I’m sayin’ here, she knows it, and she knows that if I don’t come back it’s gonna be up to her to tell what I know. Cause it’s been getting worse every year I been in the mines, and it can’t keep getting’ worse.

More miners been dyin’ it seems every year. They have their investigations and they make new laws about safety equipment that’s needed, but that ain’t the problem. It’s them greedy devils at the top runnin’ these companies and treatin’ us like dogs. No, not dogs, like machines, only they treat machines right ‘cause they know if they don’t get the maintenance they need, the coal’s gonna just sit where it is in this here mountain. No, they treat us like the preacher says they treated the slaves in Egypt. They just worked ‘em to death, and if one fell, another one picked up where he left off. Cause the Pharoah didn’t care nothing about the Jews, they was just work animals to them. And one was just as good as another.

Only they was buildin’ something. They was buildin’ them Pyramids that lasted for thousands of years. And the Egyptians, they was celebrating their leader and sending him off to heaven. That’s what they thought. I guess it ain’t too much different here. Everybody down here loves coal and loves the company. It’s our way of life. In school, you couldn’t say nothin’ against the company or against coal. If someone started talkin’ environment they just got drowned out or beat up. I did it myself, took up for coal. But when you been inside the mines awhile, you start to see things a little different.

You see some of these companies don’t really care nothing about the people who live here. They talk a good game, but they’re just makin’ more and more money so’s their owners can buy another Lexus or another plane and jet off to the other side of the world and have dinner with a politician or a Supreme Court judge who’s going to rule their way in a case to let them screw another worker or a thousand of them, take pensions away from retired miners or their health care, or steal somebody else’s land or pollute the air more or fill our streams with poison or cut down our mountains. They spend more on billboards and TV ads about Clean Coal Keepin’ the Lights On than they spend in Mingo. As far they’re concerned, it’d be better if these little towns died out and we moved so they could mine every square inch of West Virginia. All in the name of jobs while at the same time, every year they buy bigger machines and lay off more miners.

Yeah, I’m probably gonna die…uhnn, ahem, shoot…Preacher…he says I’ll go to heaven. I ain’t been perfect, but I been saved. I’ve got drunk plenty and done things I ain’t proud of. I ain’t always been a great husband, but I’ve done what a man needs to do for his family. Anyhow, I’ve spent most of my life down here in hell, so the preacher says I got a right to spend eternity in heaven. Hope he’s right.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 31, June 9, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  175 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -34 lbs.