A Million Coal Miners Died for You and Me

    They worked the black seam, together, as Sting sang in his first solo album.

    Some might say they were working for their own self interest, for their own selfish desires of putting food on their plates. But in the bigger sense, they were mining the black pits and holes of England or elsewhere for energy that pushed and built up the infrastructure of our world, from London to Surrey (wherever that is), to Brighton, the beach where my son was watching feats of parkour type display, to Birmingham and Leeds and other industrial spots and centers, over to the Low Countries where the Dutch and the Belge (sp.?) made their iron works and smelted fires, to help build up the earth through ships and machines and edifices, surely.

    All of the ants of the earth, from the United States to Brazil to Russia and Japan, sacrificed their lungs and souls to extract this pollutable (not a word, but should be) rock, possibly bituminous, to feed the engines of our planet to get where we are today.

    My UCLA professor Bell wondered how much of the wealth of Britain came from the back sweat (my word) of the Latinos and Caribbean  peoples over the centuries. Yeah, sure.

    "Your economic theories make no sense." Quotes Sting. Gordan Sumner, is that his real name?

    What is your real name? It is real, surely.

    Like the words I type now.

    I type, virtually.

    So, what of those coal miners. (?) Some lived to be old. Others died prematurely. They all worked for the greater good. Do we believe that, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx?

    Discuss.

    "Power was to become cheap and clean." Goes the song.

    We all pay today, everyday. More and more energy and power. Some of us profit from it. We gas up our vehicles, we run all the devices and motors in our homes, such as air for the outside and the coolers of the refrigerators. The ovens, both convection and microwave. I used my printer a few times yesterday. The tone ink is getting low, it says.

    Thanks, coal miners. For finding and moving the energy towards us. The consumers.

    We, the ones living cancer-free in 2025, basking in electricity that comes from our wall sockets, as the car powered by a chord I saw under the late summer moon last night, walking with my wife in the cool suburban streets.

    Less fossil, more clean.

    As I play another round of chess with a random player from... Ghana.

    All this energy. Millions had to suffer and die, (okay, they did not have to, but it happened), to get to where we are today.

    So, thank you coal workers. All energy workers, everywhere. The engineers, the scientists, the laborers.

    We all have amounted to something.

    Do  you think?