Time has come to close more Polish coal mines

Significance Efforts to tackle financial problems at state-owned coal miner Polska Grupa Gornicza (PGG) were deferred during the two-year election cycle which ended in July. PGG faces the imminent threat of insolvency unless it agrees to major restructuring. Impacts Coal mine closures in Upper Silesia will increase unemployment in the region but other firms may come in that require blue-collar workers. PGG restructuring will cut into regional support for PiS in the long term, possibly with a decisive effect on the 2023 local elections. The EU will maintain its pressure on the Polish coal industry, seeking further closures and the phasing out of coal power.

Jason Miller

Born John Anthony Miller in Long Island City, Queens, New York City, playwright and actor Jason Miller had deep connections to the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. The son of Irish American parents and grandson of a coal miner, Miller was reared in the Lackawana Valley. After earning a BA from the University of Scranton and studying theater at the Catholic University of America, Miller lived in New York City to pursue a career in acting and playwriting....

Harry Caudill

Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (1963) is arguably the most famous book ever written about Appalachia. Caudill was born in a hollow near Whitesburg, Kentucky; his father, active in local politics, was a farmer and a coal miner. Although his family did not suffer from Depression-era poverty, young Caudill was deeply affected by the hardship that he witnessed in coal towns and by the environmental toll that clear-cutting and coal mining took on the landscape. Caudill served in the military during World War II, earned a law degree from the University of Kentucky, and opened a law practice in Whitesburg, Kentucky....

The Vanguard

Chapter 2 examines coal miners during the 1930s through the 1950s, when coal was a central industry both for the U.S. economy and for the growth of industrial unionism. It highlights the vanguard role they played in the labor movement in general and in society at large, especially in the South. It also examines their solidarity and their ability and willingness to help workers in virtually every other industry. They were one of the few groups in the old AFL that had a public commitment to racial equality and a good record on that score. The chapter exposes the myth—accepted by the vast majority of analysts—that coal miner union organizing was facilitated by governmental legislation, especially Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act.

Alegorie Polski w gmachach publicznych i kościołach województwa śląskiego na wybranych przykładach (1922-1939)

Utworzenie autonomicznego województwa śląskiego w ramach polskiego państwa narodowego oraz diecezji katowickiej wiązało się z reorganizacją systemu władzy, w którym poczesne miejsce zajęły grupy polsko-śląskich duchownych oraz urzędników i świeckiej inteligencji. Ich wzajemna rywalizacja oraz wspólne dążenie do nacjonalizacji Górnoślązaków w duchu polskim inspirowały dwa odmienne, choć spokrewnione dyskursy, w których wykorzystywano środki obrazowe. Wśród nich znaczącą rolę odgrywały alegoryczne wizualizacje Polski, zakorzenione w tradycjach sztuki polskiej przełomu XIX/XX wieku. W wystrojach gmachów Sejmu Śląskiego i Śląskiego Urzędu Wojewódzkiego oraz starostwa powiatowego w Katowicach zastosowano motyw Polonia Triumphans. W pierwszym z przypadków rzeźbiarz Jan Raszka nadał personifikacji wczesnośredniowieczną stylizację, nawiązującą do piastowskiego „złotego wieku”, a u jej tronu umieścił asystę w osobach hutnika i górnika, stylizowanych na kresowych rycerzy. Inna z płaskorzeźb przedstawia Polonię jako Nike i Wolność prowadzącą do boju powstańca śląskiego, zobrazowanego jako hutnik z młotem, oraz żołnierza walczącego z Czechami o Śląsk Cieszyński. Wątek zbrojnej walki o granice pojawia się także w malowidłach Felicjana Szczęsnego Kowarskiego w budynku starostwa, gdzie ukazaną w postaci greckiej heroiny Polonię z mieczem i tarczą flankują postaci śląskich herosów – całość programu ma jawnie rewizjonistyczną wymowę. Wyraźnie większe bogactwo wątków prezentuje zespół trzech obrazów Józefa Unierzyskiego, zamówionych do kościoła mariackiego w Katowicach. Ich centralną postacią jest Maria Królowa Korony Polskiej, przybierająca cechy Polonii Triumphans. Fundamentem łączności Górnego Śląska z Polską jest tu wspólna katolicka wiara. Górnośląski lud pod przywództwem bliskich mu kapłanów włącza się u stóp Madonny w nurt polskiej historii, określony dziejową misją przedmurza chrześcijaństwa, wnosząc jako wiano żywą religijność i pracowitość. Na zlecenie proboszcza ks. Emila Szramka malarz zaprezentował zrastanie się z polskością jako naturalny i obustronnie korzystny proces. The creation of the autonomous Silesian voivodeship within the borders of the Polish nation state and of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Katowice meant a profound change in the distribution of power, the groups of Polish-Silesian clergy and Polish bureaucrats, as well as secular intelligentsia gaining increasingly in importance. Their rivalry and common effort to polonize Upper Silesians inspired two different, although interrelated discourses, visual means being involved in both of them. Among the motives, implemented in the propaganda, allegorical depictions of Poland - rooted in the traditions of the Polish art of the turn of the twentieth century – played a significant role. In the decorations of the edifices of Silesian Sejm and Silesian Voivodeship Office and of the county authorities they were shaped as the personification of Polonia Triumphans. In the former case the sculptor Jan Raszka represented the allegory as an early medieval figure, reminding of a „golden age” of the Piast dynasty, seated on the throne and accompanied by a coal miner and a foundry-worker, stylized as borderland knights. In another bas-relief Polonia was depicted as Victory and Liberty leading into battle a Polish-Silesian insurgent, rendered as a foundry-worker with a hammer in his hands, and a soldier, fighting against Czechs for Teschen Silesia. The strand of military fighting over disputed territories occurs also in the paintings by Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski in the Katowice County Hall, where Polonia, depicted as a Greek heroine with a sword and a shield, is accompanied by Silesian heroes and the meaning of the decoration is manifestly revisionist, advocating moving Polish border westwards. A conspicuosly wider range of contents is reflected in a series of three paintings by Józef Unierzyski, ordered for St. Mary’s Church in Katowice. Their central figure is Mary the „Queen of the Polish Crown”, assuming the features of Polonia Triumphans. The connection between Upper Silesia and Poland is founded here on the common catholic faith. At the feet of Madonna Upper Silesian folk, led by clergy, that remains faithfull to its popular roots, and bringing its vivid religiosity and dilligence, joins the stream of the Polish history, determined by the historical mission of antemurale christianitatis,. Commissioned by the parson Emil Szramek, the painter represented the growing together of Upper Silesia and Poland as a natural and mutually profitable process.

DNA damage assessment with buccal micronucleus cytome assay in Turkish coal miners

The aim of this study was to assess DNA damage in Turkish coal miners with the buccal micronucleus cytome (BMCyt assay as the least invasive and therefore most practical method that may find wider application in coal miner biomonitoring. Buccal epithelial cell samples were taken from 54 coal miners and 42 controls from Zonguldak, Turkey to establish their micronucleus (MN), binucleus (BN), condensed chromatin (CC), karyorrhectic (KHC), karyolytic (KYL), nuclear bud (NBUD), and pyknotic (PYC) frequencies. We also analysed the effects of confounding factors such as age, years of work at the mine, smoking, alcohol drinking, and use of protective equipment on differences in MN frequencies. Two miners had confirmed and three suspect pneumoconiosis, whereas 49 displayed normal chest radiographs. MN, BN, KHC, and NBUD frequencies were significantly higher in coal miners than controls. Years of work at the mine also showed a significant effect on buccal MN frequencies in coal miners, but we found no correlation between MN frequencies and age, smoking, and alcohol consumption. In conclusion, BMCyt assay proved itself an accurate and practical screening method, as it can detect DNA damage much earlier than pneumoconiosis develops.

A Rare Case of Pericardial Effusion in a Patient with Silicosis

Silicosis is an occupational lung disorder caused by inhalation of silica dust. It not only causes respiratory disorders but also affects other organs. We report an extremely rare case of silicosis complicated by pericarditis in an 83-year-old male. He had been working as a coal miner and was diagnosed with silicosis at the age of 63. Because he had experienced repeated pericardial effusions, he was referred for a surgical pericardial biopsy to elucidate the cause of his repeated pericardial effusion and to perform pericardial fenestration. Thoracoscopic surgery was performed. The pericardium was resected, and a drain was placed in the left thoracic cavity. Histopathological examination revealed the pericardial degeneration due to silicosis, suggesting that pericarditis and pericardial effusion are related to silicosis. The operation was successful, and he experienced no recurrence of pericardial effusion at the 7-month follow-up.

‘That rather sinful city of London’: the coal miner, the city and the country in the British cultural imagination, c. 1969–2014

The article proceeds from the observation that in the contemporary British cultural imagination, the figure of the coal miner tends to be presented as the embodiment of anti-urban and organicist qualities that in continental Europe are more commonly associated with the peasantry. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Raymond Williams, the article traces the genealogy of this ‘structure of feeling’ back to the time of the miners’ strike of 1984/85 and further back in the 1970s. It argues that the ‘ruralized’ miner was one imaginary in a complex power struggle over the ‘real’ identity of miners that was waged between the industry and the state, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Coal Board (NCB), and, crucially, inside the NUM itself. ‘Ruralization’ was most vigorously promoted by union militants who sought to displace an alternative vision, championed jointly by the Coal Board and union moderates, which had situated miners firmly at the heart of industrial modernity. It was only in the wake of the defeat of the miners in the 1984/85 strike, and during the subsequent cultural reworking of this strike, that this structure finally gained dominance.