Dialogical Communication and Digital Citizenship in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania

Melissa R. Meademelissa.meade@temple.edu

advancing toward the ruins of the BreakerPhoto credit: Melissa R. Meade, 2014

proposed digital project: Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania

A user-friendly, content management website, The Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania Digital Project coalesces writings, artifacts, interviews, commentary, ethnographic vignettes, oral histories, photographs, maps, books, and letters with user-generated content, user-curated content, and citizen journalism. The project continues the momentum of the pilot project begun in December 2013 as a Facebook page (now with about 8,000 followers) which later added a WordPress-based website featuring researcher-written cultural essays, offering a rich digital resource for community engagement, teaching, future research, and general information.

Map image courtesy of US Geological Survey: Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

site under development

overall research

•broadly, the lived experiences of social and economic change

•explores restructuring of de-industrialized Anthracite Coal Region

critical engagement

community members are

producers of knowledge

invite residents to read images/materials & offer interpretations

as a dialogical form of communication

to support participatory public culture

Facebook page with curated content and user-generated contenthttps://www.facebook.com/AnthraciteCoalRegion

current space for user content

fragmented digital footprint

WordPress-based platformanthracitecoalregion.com

Collaborator, Jennie Levine Knies, Head Librarian, Penn State Wilkes-Barre

through curated content and user-generated content / comments

• place-based intensities and flashpoints emerge: e.g. demolition of the Saint Nicholas Coal

Breaker, last anthracite breaker built before 1960

residents’ processing of the demolition of the ruins of Saint Nicholas Coal Breaker

Photo credits: Melissa R. Meade, 2015

Samuel: To Reading Anthracite, the breaker is a liability that’s only value is scrap metal. But to those involved with the preservation of our anthracite heritage, its value is much, much more than the sum of its metal.

testament to time and a particular economic configuration

a figure of memory

Samuel: Another part of our anthracite mining heritage going, one excavator bite at a time. Very sad!

“the ruined place itself remembers and grows lonely” (Stewart, 1996, p. 93)

lonely ruins

my mother: I could cry when I see it.

How do residents relate to local landscapes and ruins?

What does extraction mean to residents in this single-industry area?

What is the socio-economic legacy of the Anthracite Coal Industry? And, as an example, what happens to a community when a coal breaker—the archetype of coal extraction—sits in ruins on the landscape for 45 years, only to be torn down without much fanfare?

(de)industrial life scenes

community members as producers of media

impact of past extractions hopes, on economic prospects, and on bodies

feeding the rats while the “mine was playing out”

Jennifer: My dad John, his father Andrew, and my uncles John and Lawrence worked in the tunnels putting up props. This was especially grueling and important when they were "robbing" whatever coal was left when the "mine was playing out." I marvel at their bravery and strength in this dangerous job. They told me that they always left a little of their lunch for the rats because when the rats left, there was deadly gas and an explosion imminent. [emphasis original]

breaker scene loomed large

Deanna: They just threw him on the porch. Because that is what they did. The only thing that my aunt remembers of the event as a little girl is being pushed into the living room and there laid his dead body.

Alice: She was Lithuanian.

Me: How did being Lithuanian help her to survive with young children? What made that different?

Alice: That means she hustled. That is how we survived. A Lithuanian woman can hustle.

a sense of powerlessness

Stanley: That is why the [preservation] project never got off the ground … there is coal under it and these coal barons still control Schuylkill County [name of the county].

Jacob: There are buildings in other towns in this county that need to be removed and the county claims them as national history and puts them in the county and state’s historical society. Due to the owners of this property, this building was basically bought out of the historical society in the late 80s so it can be taken down.

poetic wordsSally: We are watching the stripping of the land where Saint Nicholas Breaker once stood. Two steam shovels are working hard at getting every ounce of coal out of the ground … In a few months it will totally be wiped off the map and all that will remain is a chain link fence and steam shovels digging up the coal they found. Wonder how long they knew there was a thick vein of coal under the surface of the Breaker property? And I wonder if they will put the earth back to original form when they are done collecting every speck of coal. I hope so. [emphasis added]

losing the magic of commoditySally: Thanks, Sean Wargo for sharing your photos of the demolition of the St. Nicholas Breaker. Makes me want to cry to see it like this. Where that black car is parked - take a straight line across the highway (Rt 54) and that is where my Grandmother Timms lived from 1929 until her death in 1944, and then my aunt and her husband continued to live there until 1988. Can't believe how they tore up the real estate digging out the vein of coal they found. Hope they put it back the way it should be when they're finished. [emphasis added]

Randy: Leave it up. It’s a monument to hard work.

Reading Anthracite: Sean Wargo, would you kindly post these to our page? You've done fabulous work and we'd love to see you get credit! Photo credits: Sean Wargo, 2015

environment

Donald: … [W]e are still going to look in the mountains and see black.

just an everyday black cloudJane: I worked at the school across the street. I remember all the train cars loaded with coal and the dust blowing all over the kids at recess!

Rachel: There was so much activity there in the 60s. As a student at St. Nicholas, I remember watching from our classroom as the trucks and trains would pull in and out. We were so easily distracted!! On windy days we couldn't go outside for recess due to the coal dirt in the air. It was very sad to see our school destroyed by fire and equally sad to see this landmark dismantled.

silt storms“It was impossible to breathe in the area without nostrils being ringed and coated in black. The silt also caused grit between the teeth and the wind-whipped particles stung the eyes. The storm, similar to one two weeks ago, came three days before Palm Sunday as people in the path of it tried to clean up their homes for the holidays … Some people had lights on as they came through the heavy concentration of black dust on Route 54 just north of the Saint Nicholas School, which lies in the path of the storm.” (The Evening Herald, 1977, March 31)

light to drive through the light of day

Sally: My grandmother lived directly across from the entrance to the breaker and just below the St. Nicholas Elementary School. The breaker worked 24 hours a day and that rail yard was never empty of coal cars filled with coal waiting to be shipped out. When a windstorm came along, that fine coal on the culm bank blew around like the desert sand. It was pitch dark and you needed to turn the headlights on to see where you were going. The silt seeped into every crack and crevice of those company homes—there was coal dust all over the inside of the homes. And yet, those folks remained living there for over 85 years and would still be living there if they could, same for working in the breaker.

a deindustrialized region’s identity

• important for economically vulnerable small towns and cities and single-industry areas to have public spaces dedicated to documenting residents’ reflections on the history, culture, and media representations of their region

“Twice a boy and once a man is a poor miner's lot”

• the coal breaker represented the life cycle of the miner

• removing any trace of this symbol empties the place of signs of mining people and mined people

• miners’ labor has been rendered superfluous yet physical traces remain on bodies and on the landscape

challenges

• populate new site with content • build a larger project team, including an intern• funding

future plans (list of 27+)• offer various search tools that will let users conduct

personalized data organization and retrieval with different categories.

• use mapping technology to relate particular curated material to photo vignettes, video interviews, oral history films, etc.

• add digital models/maps

Thank you!melissa.meade@temple.edu

Follow the project on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AnthraciteCoalRegion