MOO!

I always find myself blabbering to people I don't know about my work. Sometimes, I suspect that it makes me seem interesting and it gives me something to talk about to people at parties, bars, laundromats, and other such public places when I am (as always) feeling awkward and misplaced. They, in turn, ask me if I have a website. This results in brief confusion over the website name and a "Oh, I'll totally remember that", knowing I missed out on an opportunity to get someone, anyone to look at my photographs, even if they are just my parents' friends with ties to art foundations in the L.V. or a family friend with links and access to the coal region.

I had 500 postcards printed up last spring for my senior show but carrying around 6x6 postcards all the time "just in case" is a huge pain in the ass. So, I said "Self, let's get some MOO cards so that when the conversation arises next time you have something to hand out!"

I personally think Flickr (if you don't know by now...) is one of coolest ways to catalog, share, print and use photos. God bless their little hearts for hooking up with companies like MOO and Blurb to make self publishing not only accessible and affordable but top quality.

I got my first set of MOO cards in the mail today and they are so awesome; they're like this little package of one hundred "Wee!"s. The color is pretty good, with virtually no color shift. They are, however, a little dense but they're not that far off from what I would want them to be. I had ten of my favorite Coal Hunkie shots cropped and made into cards. They're so adorable. I absolutely cannot wait until I get to hand them to people and to make another set with the stitched photos I've been working on. I also plan on taking advantage of Blurb at some point; it has the potential to serve up something awesome. Say, a book of this here blog, perhaps.

Greetings from Asbury Park.

The Paramount, Asbury Park.
Tuesday morning, around 10.30, I filled my gas tank at the WaWa out on 100, punched in Asbury Park, New Jersey into a borrowed Garmin*, and pointed my car east on I-78. I've spent little time in Jersey, with the exception of a vacation here and a bus trip to NYC there, my life generally has been spent ignoring the eastern neighbor of Pennsylvania.

My interest in Asbury Park, admittedly, was sparked by my intense love of Bruce Springsteen. His first 4 albums invoke imagery of a gritty seaside town and it's former glory as a place of summer play. Around the time I fell in love with The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, I read Fourth of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land by Daniel Wolfe. Fourth of July is a detailed look at the strange, strained history of Asbury Park. Founded by James A. Bradley (our headless statue below) in 1871, it was originally billed as a place for the moral to come and be rejuvenated by the healing waters of the Atlantic, as well as to worship in the Methodist tradition.



James A. Bradley
The history of Asbury Park is outlined and colored by the religion's strong hold on the city's progress, intense racial divide and by Springsteen's lyrics. I thought about this as I rolled through the town's wide flat streets and gazed across lots of raised buildings along the famed Kingsley Street, the town's main drag that runs parallel to the boardwalk and to the Atlantic.

I didn't really know what to expect when I decided to make the trip. I knew that a lot of the iconic buildings had been knocked over or left to decay. I didn't really expect new businesses going in along the boardwalk or the open spaces or the strangeness of the old seaside hotels being used as places of residency. New condos stuck out among dilapidated two-story hotels and the flat space the defined the beachfront.



The Casino.
The boardwalk is anchored on one side by the iconic decayed facade of the Casino, which is currently undergoing construction. At the other end, is the newly revived Paramount theater, it's gorgeous detailing brightly re-painted. Most of the old buildings along the boardwalk have been re-faced or raised in favor of new development. I was surprised to see the incredible amount of empty lots and open spaces, waiting for developers to come in and revive Asbury Park to it's pre-car glory.



Sunset Avenue Pavilion.
I parked close to The Stone Pony and spent the day dragging my sandaled feet along the boardwalk. I ended up at the Ocean Grove Pier, looking up and down the Jersey coast. It was a comfortable day and the sun was high and bright above me for the two hours I poked around. By the time I was finished with photographing the boardwalk, I had acquired a nasty sunburn. I took to driving around the town and debating taking a swim in the Atlantic for five bucks. My skin, in protest, throbbed, even with the air conditioning blasting. I decided to head home, despite wanting an ice cream and a dip in the ocean and more photographs. The drive home to PA was uneventful and I made notes of the names of places in New Jersey I should explore while I'm living at home.



The Stone Pony.


* I generally avoid using GPS-thingies but I wasn't up for getting seriously and painfully lost in New Jersey. The cliche of "What exit are you from?" is acurate; the interstate system is windy, difficult to navigate and fucking enormous.

Pulpish Genre of Books About the Fallen Coal Industry in PA.

I've read three books, 2 fiction, one non-fiction, in the last month (take a bit) about Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Region and I've been thinking a lot about the way former coal mining communities are represented in literature.

First, the non-fiction book was Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire by David DeKok. DeKok was a reporter for The News-Item in Shamokin and spent 8 years covering the complicated, convuluted story of Centralia. The book is intense, extensive and seriously engaging. DeKok lays out the 25 year struggle with the mine fire and the push and pull between the divided town and the state and federal governments. Even though the fire started in 1962, it wasn't really taken all that seriously until early '80s, when the mine fire gases were appearing in large quantities in people's homes and basements. To say the least, the Centralia mine fire was a messy, fucked up situation that really didn't have a good solution to it. DeKok does an excellent job of taking a very twisted situation and making it understandable. In doing this, one can't but help utterly baffled at the bullshit that the town of Centralia had to put up with before the government got around to doing something.

I mention the non-fiction book first, because it's, well, non-fiction. Nothing is embellished for the sake of entertainment or enjoyment for the reader. It is a straight forward account of the Centralia mine fire and not only is it baffling, it is a really good read.

The two fiction books I've finished recently were Now You See It: Stories from Cokesville, Pennsylvania by Bathseeba Monk and Coal Run by Tawni O'Dell.

Monk's book was okay and of the three books, by far my least favorite. I liked the format, since I often use it myself (short stories that tell a larger story about place), her writing and quite a few of the characters. I wasn't so taken with the end, since it seemed sort of tacked on to the rest of the stories. I hate the bit about the town exploding (see below). Generally, I was entertained by the book but felt sort of "whatever" about it once I finished it.

O'Dell's book, which I finished in three days, had me by the figurative balls 2 pages in. Her writing is eloquent and sucks one into the story so intensely that you absolutely cannot stop reading. I fell in love, intensely, (this is probably a personal thing too) with the narrator, the great Ivan Z., the town's fallen football star and current alcoholic deputy. The story unfolds in delicious little pieces and, as I said before, sucks you until you absolutely must finish the damn book TONIGHT. I really liked the characters, all of them, even the "bad guys". Part of me wishes I wrote the book.

That said, I've noticed something really amusing about these town books and a short story that I've been working on that is set in a PA coal town. There are a few things that a story set in a Pennsylvania coal town must have in order to make the story work and to contextualize the place. I swear to god, anyone that's written about a PA coal town must mention these things. I know this, because that story of mine is hinged on these things. They are as followed:

1. You must mention a mine fire that wiped out a town and it must cling to a handful of truth, which varies from story to story. In Coal Run, the main character's hometown is evacuated and leveled like Centralia. In Now You See It, Cokesville's ultimate demise was when the mine fire that burned in the culm dumps out side of town reached a natural gas pipe line, exploded (there was natural gas pipeline that ran along one of the coal veins that the mine fire was in) and destroyed the entire town. In the fiction story I've been working on, the characters pass by a place that is suggested to be Centralia while coming home from a funeral. Which leads me to my next point.

2. Someone must die in an occupational accident, since they are coal miners. It can be more than one person but someone always has to die in a coal mining accident. Coal Run starts with a massive explosion that shakes the entire town, starts the stated mine fire and kills 100 of the men. In Now You See It, the narrator's father dives/falls into a vat of molten steel (okay okay not coal but occupationally related, so close enough) and get delivered to the funeral home as a 150 pound steel ingot. In the story that I've been working on, the narrator's husband's best friend is killed in a mine explosion.

3. There is always football. Coal Run's narrator is a fallen star football player, who's life is changed by a freak accident a coal breaker. Football isn't just a sport in that place, it's a way of life. Bonus points for mention of local high school football. A serious nod if you can work in JoePa and Penn State; even better if you can get in a state professional team.

4. There is always excessive drinking. Beer, whiskey and sometimes vodka.

5. Because of this excessive drinking, there is stupidity fueled violence.

6. There are always big trucks and cars.

7. The women are as tough as the men.

There are a few other small things that link the two books I just finished reading together with the short story I've been working on but those are the major points that let someone know what place they are in when they are reading. Part of me wonders if it's cliche or if it's something that is needed to explain that place. It's like they belong to this weird world of close-to-truth, pulpish genre of books about the fallen coal industry in PA. It makes that type of place really sexy in a way that is both far from the truth. While they all explore the complexities of class, they romanticize the life that comes with living in such a place.

Which is why I am glad that I sandwiched DeKok's book with Monk and O'Dells'. He narrates the seriously harsh reality of living in such conditions and while the other books mean to point out to the reader the ugliness, no one really wants the characters in a fiction book to have face the type of nasty bureaucracy that Centralia faced. They want everything wrapped up in a sexy, coal dust covered package with a nice cover design, in order to entertain themselves for a few hours. Truth in a fiction book, like in most of the arts, is a really relative term.

Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed at my story's reliance on those points above to explain the complexities of living with coal mining. I was rolling around the idea of posting it here, since it's been pretty time consuming and I kinda liked it and now I think I might be too embarrassed about my reliance on the points above to really want anyone else to read it.

There was also something else I noticed as I read O'Dell's and Monk's bios on the back flap of their books. They both, after moving far and away from Pennsylvania, came back to it, to the place they clearly were much more interested in escaping. Characters in their books do the same. What is it about some Pennsylvanians that they just can't stay the fuck away from the place they were raised? It is obvious that I feel it too and I want to know what that means, what's the pull back to such a place mean?

Be Fierce! Be a Warrior!

Dear Ira,

If you didn't know already...

...I fucking love you.

xoxo

s.

NYTimes Article: Coal Country Looks to Natural Gas

I get excited* when things that I know and love get mentioned in a national and international newspaper.

I get even more excited when it's a place that I know like the back of my hand.

The article is actually a depressing, quick look at the ever-declining anthracite coal industry and local government buildings looking to switch to natural gas (cheaper) to heat them. This means I probably shouldn't be so excited to see it on the "front page" of the NYtimes this evening but it points towards the main issue that I am/was interested in when I was making Coal Hunkie and the things I still think about and pay attention to when I go back there.

*It's more of a "Hey lookit! Someone's paying attention!" excited than a glee-filled excitement.

Finally.

I nearly burst into tears when I heard he claimed the nomination.

While I know November is a long way off, here's to the next 4-8 years of change. Here's to a post-Bush United States. Here's to hope.