Word: coal
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...traditional themes of patriotic pageantry, it sees the national character as violent, deceitful and cruel. Firearms or knives are used in seven of the plays. The other two practice violence of the soul -- a bankruptcy "trial" that turns a man into a serf on land he owned, and a coal-mining contract, foisted on an illiterate, that turns his homestead into a moonscape for a fee of a dollar an acre. Although the plays trace the fortunes of seven generations of three intertwined families, there is not one unalloyed hero and only one heroine, the daughter of the coal-mining...
...greed. The most beautiful words spoken are about the few hundred acres of land on which all the action unfolds -- so ablaze in spring that one character equates Moses' burning bush with a scarlet azalea -- yet it ends up despoiled and abandoned, wanted by no one save for the coal that lies beneath, and that can be reached only by scraping away the last remnants of soil, life and growth...
...first five playlets embrace 90 years, from the Revolution to the Civil War, during which the families stave off the larger world and live independent if hardscrabble lives. The second half traces the coming of coal mining and company towns, the rise and decline of unions, the exhaustion of the old industrial base and the rehabilitative efforts of environmentalists -- all outside forces that the locals cannot resist...
Restic began working in the coal mines when he was 15. According to Pennsylvania state law, you were supposed to be 17, but because his boss was a family friend and because his family needed money, Restic was hired. Thus, while many students his age spent their time after school at the drugstore drinking sodas, Restic spent his shoveling sand out of 45-ton boxcars...
...school, whose space limitations forced several after-school activities to meet in a former coal chute, is slated for demolition in early November. Students have been relocated to St. Joseph's, an abandoned parochial school in Somerville...