Anthracite

Beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, individuals identifying themselves as Poles, Slovaks, Carpatho-Rusyns, Ukrainians, and others began what would eventually become a mass influx of eastern and central Europeans into Pennsylvania's anthracite coal mining region. These people brought with them languages and customs quite alien to the longer-established groups that had settled the area many years earlier. At times the Slavs clashed with these groups, as well as among themselves. Eventually, however, they wove their way of life indelibly into the multiethnic fabric of the growing region. The Anthracite Coal Region's Slavic Community presents a pictorial history of Slavic people in hard coal country, conveying the unique and rich culture brought to the area with the arrival of these diverse communities.

This book is an archaeological excavation of anomalous phenomena that still lingers to haunt various locations in the anthracite coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The unearthing of this haunting presence is both a metaphorical excavation (the bringing "into the light" of various dramas, events, and experiences of an individual and collective nature), and a physical engagement (the emergence of ghostly presence through investigative field performances). This anthracite coal region drama is viewed through the use of a "deep map" of short, but compendious, "ghost" narratives. This "deep map" consists of autobiographical events, symmetrical archaeological practices, memories of local places, ethnic folklore, haunting traces and manifestations, natural history, the use of ascientific fieldmethodology, and a sincere, and profound,sensitivity to the land. These "ghost" narratives are a subtle, multi-layered and "deep mining" of a small regional landscape that has long been neglected, and been perceived as "insignificant" social history. This book is meant to change that perceptionthrough a sensualunearthing of its haunting uncertainties.

Committee Serial No. 38. Legislation to authorize Government stockpiling of anthracite coal to maintain normal production and employment in anthracite region and to establish a National Anthracite Board in the Interior Dept.